I ain't Lucas or Takahashi-sama.

Needless to say Horse surprisingly won the large story poll, a surprise really. A Third Path has already won the March large story poll so don't worry HP fans you will get your fix for large chapters next month.

This has been edited by Hiryo and Arcanasage. Hopefully this means that there won't be many mistakes large and small, but since this is the first time Arcanasage has edited for me, please be gentle LOL.


Chapter 23: Hard Choices

Well before Ranma and company assaulted the mountain on Wayland, indeed, only two days into their slow approach to the head to the planet, Master Sora Bulq reached out to the Order. This came as a surprise of course, and many of the High Council were very dubious about the wayward Master's sudden desire to speak to them.

Moreover, the way that he had reached out to them was strange. Instead of going through official channels or over an open Hypercom connection, Bulq used the Order's own secret, secure Hypercom uplink system. These systems, like the one that Ranma and Shaak used, was a special device that hardcoded a hyper signal, further hiding it within the Hypercom's base operational signals.

They were expensive and rare, the Order not having the ability to build them without outside aid: the computer cores were just too detailed and expensive, costing as much as four capital ship computer cores. Indeed, most of these systems had been handed down for centuries, and were only used by Jedi Shadows, which was why the Order had begun to use the courier system they had. Making the Jedi even more paranoid was the fact that Bulq had never been a Jedi Shadow, and there was no way he should have had this system, unlike Shaak and Ranma, who had been given one of their own.

Sora of course knew his means of communication would make the High Council leery of him, and he allayed those concerns as best he could right off the bat. "Before you ask," he said as his vision coalesced above the hologram projector in front of the high Council, "I was given this before her death by The Dark Woman. She and I had many a discussion before her death."

"That does not make us any more understanding of your intention," said Master Rancisis, not opening his eyes from where he had been meditating. Yoda was listening as well, but his eyes too were closed while he concentrated on his connection to the Force.

Neither they nor any of the other council members reacted to the mention of what might have been the most serious loss the Jedi Order had sustained in recent years: the death of An'ya Kuro, the Dark Woman. She had died in mysterious circumstances a year and a half ago when investigating a rumor of a resurgent Bando Gora in the Inner Rim. No one knew how she had been overcome, but her body, sans it's head, had been found and returned to the Order about a month after she had cut off all communication even with her fellow Shadows. A team of Ten Jedi had been sent to investigate, but they had found nothing.

Yet to those who were looking at the physical form of Master Sora Bulq in the hologram, the man had very much changed since the last time those of the Council had seen him. The Weequay's skin was grayer, his eyes deeper set, and he looked exhausted, tired mentally and physically in a way that few Jedi would allow themselves to be.

"Call us for a reason, you have," Yoda intoned without opening his eyes. "Explain, you will."

"Very well, Master Yoda. I wish to see if we can come to an agreement, in order to end the hostilities between the Confederacy and the Jedi order." Bulq smiled wintrily. "Note, I said between the Confederacy and the Jedi order. Not the Confederacy and the Republic." He sighed sagging in the pickup. "Being the leader of the Confederacy has been rather like riding a Rancor without the Force. I daren't get off, because the moment I do, it will ravage not only me, but everything else around me. But, I am still riding it, and I have done what I can to mitigate things. I finally was able to stop them from continuing to attack the Jabiim of late and I even forced the Techno Union's senator to formally apologize for his actions."

"He did indeed," said Master Depa Billaba scowling faintly before she hid it behind cupped hands as she leaned forward. "His apology came out of the blue, but it did seem to soothe some of the tension within the Senate. But, there are still far too many on both sides clamoring for war."

"Because there are far too many legitimate reasons for the Separatists to have issues with the Republic as it is organized now. But I am not here to reiterate those positions. If you want, we can go over them later. However, you should know that the Techno Union's attempt to reclaim the planet where Master Fay was unlawfully incarcerated has had reverberations and has allowed me to push through a more conciliatory diplomatic position in regards to the Jedi Order. But there are still far too many people on my side of this conflict that believe that you are simply tools of the Republic. I intend to try and change that if I can."

"A meeting in person you wish to have?" Yoda asked.

"Yes, Master Yoda," Sora Bulq said simply. "There are secrets, things that you need to know, my reasons for allying myself with the Confederacy…" he then smiled thinly, yet obviously enough for the Hypercom to pick up as he went on. "The Darkness is always brightest directly underneath the candle."

That phrase made every Jedi there sit up straight, even Yoda opening his eyes to stare into the pickup. None of them said anything for a few moments, until Mace Windu replied for them all. "Very well, we will meet with you. Be warned, in these parlous times we are not willing to assume you are dealing with us in good faith. We will have plans in place to deal with treachery."

"After so many years of tension, I would think you fools if you did not," Master Sora Bulq said dryly.

"I noticed by the way that you have made a clear delineation between the Order in the Senate in this communication," Master Koon said. "Do I take it aright that if we reach an agreement, that agreement will not be between the Confederacy and the Senate."

"It will not. It will be between the Order and the Confederacy. If we can make this agreement, then the Jedi order might be able to simply stand aloof, not taking part one way or the other in the conflict between the two political parties. That I think would be better. After all, who is the real enemy here?" Bulq finished, his voice once more hinting at far more than the words used, before he disconnected the call.

The debate from that point went on for several hours, well into the night of the city, and it was a freewheeling one, with everyone having something to say, save Master Yoda who remained silent, his eyes closed as he meditated. Master Rancisis eventually joined him, letting their younger fellows continue to argue it out as the aged Thisspiasian was not one for talking all that much anyway.

Eventually, Mace's opinion, that they had to give this meeting a chance, won through, and it was decided that they would be sending a force to speak directly with Sora. Choosing the group to go took two more days, during that time, all of the Council carefully watched the goings-on across the Republic. They did indeed notice a lessening of some of the physical tension, and the media coming out of the Confederacy was no longer so anti-Jedi.

Of course, this did not actually mean all that much, since this change was instantly seen by many in the media as a sign that the Jedi were trying to switch sides or turn against the Senate and the Republic as a whole. Whatever the Jedi's own public relations experts, of which there were few since Master Coleman Trebor's death, that opinion grew on some planets while on others it did not gain much headway. The Peace Party as a whole took the idea of the Jedi trying to move to a more neutral position and tried to run with it as a sign the Senate too should try to shift away from a wartime footing. But they didn't get very far. The debates on the Military Creation Act continued to rage, although the Chancellor seemed to be playing for time, working with the Order to do so and reaffirming his position as someone they could work with.

Eventually, it was decided that along with Mace, two more Jedi who knew Master Bulq personally would go. Mira was an orphan who had, after being brought into the Order, become Master Bulq's padawan for a time. She was a consummate Consular, with a dual specialty in negotiation and healing, although no skill with a lightsaber. Terrence Kai-Yung was another former Padawan of Bulq's, although he had become a Guardian, following in Master Bulq's footsteps, a quite good duelist, if not an overly imaginative one. If anyone besides Mace might be able to sense the Dark Side in Bulq, then it would be these two.

One pupil of Bulq who was not chosen to go with them was Knight Quinlan Vos. This was not to say that the young Jedi Shadow would not have been a major help. But he was not even in the temple at the moment. Instead, he was once more working with his former Master, Tholme. They were deep in the Core, working to follow a money trail that, to the locals seemed to only lead to a large scale organized criminal enterprise.

Tholme believed it was part of something more. They were too free with their money, and far too select in the companies they attempted to purchase or manipulate.

Mace was grateful for that, really. As good as Vos was in a fight, and he was somewhat decent for a Knight, Vos rode too close to the Dark Side even now and given Bulq's leaving the Order and his possible connection to the Sith, Mace and Yoda were both concerned that perhaps Vos really hadn't been rehabilitated, but instead turned into a ticking time bomb. It was why they had made it impossible for Vos and his former padawan Aayla Secura to meet.

Ten more Jedi were chosen from among the masters and Knights, who did not want to become involved in the conflict between the Separatists and Centrists, mostly Consulars, but with more than a few Guardians and a lone Warden. Along with this diplomatic group would go nine others, all young Knights who had been put through the toughness training on Kashyyyk, which had yet to become accepted among the Consular sect but now was fully accepted by both Guardians and Wardens.

They would have several Consular class ships – ships that would be called destroyers in an organized navy after they had been retrofitted - as well, ready to hyperjump in, to offer support commanded by other Jedi. The ships themselves had been loaned to the Order by the Chancellor after secretly going to him, warning Palpatine that if any word got out about this, it was likely that Master Bulq would just not show up. With the offer of peace on the table the Chancellor had readily agreed, although he had looked very disbelieving that the attempt would actually work.

This was not exactly a frame of mind that the Jedi themselves were ignorant of. After all this time, Master Sora Bulq had burned quite a few bridges with the Order. Yet still, he had been a Jedi, one revered as a master duelist, a well-known economist and law-master. They had to make the attempt.

"And, if he turns out to be a Sith," Mace said on the eve of his leaving, his normal cold face even more so than normal, "he will not be leaving that moon alive."

"The Sith, far better than we at hiding they are. See truly you must," Yoda said sternly looking up at the far taller man. "Distracted by the shadows you must not be. Strike the source of the shadows you must. A shatterpoint for yourself, this mission could be."

"It is not," Mace said simply. "The future might be clouded to me, but still, I must take the chance."

"A gamble it is, but Master Sora Bulq, gambling with more than we." Yoda acknowledged. "Force him into the light this will, solidify the Order's opinion on him and his followers, one way or the other, it will."

Without further fanfare Mace and his group left.

A day and a half later they arrived at the place of the meeting, a moon that held a certain rocky, austere beauty. There was water here, tiny streams here and there and life too. Spindly trees with an almost metallic sheen to their bark could be seen scattered everywhere and even large, if not very dense forests. The various flowers also had tiny lights, which kept away the local bugs, while luring in animals so that the pollen of the plants could be spread. No animal had yet evolved past the size of mid-tier predators on this world, and it had been a vacation resort for several dozen nearby planets, catering to people who wanted to get away from it all.

When they landed, Mace and his fellow Jedi noticed their ship was not the only one there. A small exotic goods type Sluissi freighter was also setting down on the moon as they came into the system. But the Jedi, leery of a trick, took several moments to scan the environs around the moon, and then bombarded it with sensors before setting their own single ship down. The other Consulars, the ones who had been retrofitted as military ships, remained around the hyperspace jump limit just in case of trouble.

Master Bulq did not meet them by the ships. Rather, a single middle-aged woman was there, rather dumpy and completely unthreatening. Needless to say, many of the Jedi did not take this at face value, but after probing the woman with the Force were satisfied she was no threat. "Masters Jedi, please follow me, Governor-General Bulq has booked the Cliff Top Reach for your discussions."

"Booked? I take it you are still open for business? I had heard that the parent company of the resorts here had gone under," Master Windu asked.

"Indeed, but we are still making enough money to make our own way. We are a consortium now, local of course, and we do not do nearly as much business without the ability to tap into the Holocomm media but we are still solvent. I am actually the supervisor for our spaceport, hence why I am meeting you. As a neutral party, Master Bulq felt my involvement would put you at ease."

The Jedi were shown to several skimmers, one for every five Jedi and the skimmers quickly took them over the landscape of the moon. It was austere, alien to every Jedi there, which they all took in. They moved up a rocky landscape along the side of a hill overlooking a cliff face, that fell away into a forest in the distance below, one spotted with truly massive trees of the local type, with hundreds of avians flying above it, their colors as bright and varied as a rainbow.

Master Bulq was waiting for them outside the large resort there. He nodded to them all, sending a smile toward Clare in particular, and gesturing them to follow him inside. He remained silent as the other Jedi entered the building behind him, beyond a, "Thank you Larissa," to the woman who had guided them there.

She nodded, and with the drivers of the skimmers, left the Jedi there. This did not escape the Jedis' notice, nor did it escape their notice that it had taken them several hours to get here from the spaceport. But, they were confident in that they had not detected anything from orbit. Even if this whole mansion was stuffed full of troopers, the Jedi would be able to fight their way out at worst.

Ahead of them Sora left the actual building via a back door, gesturing the Jedi out with him onto a wide, magnificently cobbled patio, complete with dozens of soft chairs. There he sat on a chair in meditative pose, his back to the cliff face behind him as he turned to gaze at them. "I have always found environments like this soothing. When one wishes to connect to nature after all, one does not need to look for someplace green or vibrant."

"You did not call out to us as you did to simply espouse the pleasantness of this view to us my old friend," Mace said, even as he too looked out over the expanse around them.

"I second that motion Master Bulq," Mira said, smiling warmly at her former master. "It has been pleasant to see you of course, and I would willingly speak about many things, but in this day and age, I think we all know we need to concentrate on the reasons behind this meeting."

Bulq smiled. "The young might lack the patience of the learned, but that does not mean they cannot understand the center of the argument. I wonder, however, how much has the high Council shared about the dangers of the Sith?" he asked, his tone suddenly abrupt, almost brusque.

"We have begun to share what we know and can prove about the Sith threat with various Masters, and Knights. There are still numerous things we do not know of course, and our own plans against the Sith have been kept secret and will remain so," Mace replied calmly, while the other Jedi stirred.

This was, after all, an extremely new thing among the Jedi Order, where information on it spread very, very slowly, as the High Council vetted whoever they told about it, let alone their own secret moves. Nonetheless, at this point more than two-thirds of the Order's Masters and Knights knew about the Sith threat, and every Jedi in this party knew about it.

"And still you see no recourse but to work with the Senate? To be part of the problem as the Confederacy puts it?"

"To our eyes," interjected one of the other Jedi, a young Muun Knight, "It is the Confederacy that is the problem."

"There are terrorists on both sides, but it seems as if it is the Confederacy that has been escalating things, while the Senate is simply responding," said one of the other Jedi, Terrence this time, and very reluctantly. "There is only so much we can do as simple mediators after all."

"As simple mediators, who take the side of the Republic in nearly every negotiation or confrontation, yes," Sora retorted. "But I suppose that is that my own investigations have not been followed up on."

He then seemed to change the subject again, mentioning a Jedi Master, who had seemingly retired from the Order. "Did you ever wonder what happened to Siolo'urmanka? One of the Lost 19 he was. Or the former Jedi Master Anoon Bondara and his Padawan Assant? I believe that they were both slain by the Sith who was later killed on Naboo by young Ranma."

Those words seemed to have an effect on the other Jedi, as what had happened to those Jedi, especially the great Swordmaster Siolo'urmanka, were mysteries that had long plagued the Order. But Mace cut through the confusion before they could be sidetracked. "Enough. if you have a reason for having abandoned the Order and taking up the position of head of the Confederacy, please, elucidate us. I assume you are mentioning the Sith as the reason for this move?"

"Very well. I will come to the point. I have known about the Sith for at least five years if not longer. I do not know who precisely he is, but I do know that he is hiding somewhere either within the Order itself, or within the Senate," Bulq baldly stated, taking Mace's direct probe and turning it to his advantage with ease.

From there he began to share evidence of this idea. Bits and pieces of missions he'd been on, while still a member of the Order, conversations with a few other Jedi, mentioning that almost a thousand Jedi still believed as Master C'baoth's admirers had before he had been basically carted off on the Outbound Flight project: that because they had the Force, that made them superior to those who did not, a belief that was at the center of the Sith way of viewing the world. "The moves in the Senate, the consolidation of power, the continued corruption, the disparity between the treatment of some worlds in comparison to others, the primacy of the Core Worlds. All of that points to someone in power. Someone twisting things to their own advantage."

As his old friend was talking, Mace at first listened calmly, believing that even if Bulq was wrong in how he had gone about it, he would at least have good reasons for his leaving the Order and joining the Confederacy. Then as he continued, and Mace saw the impact he was having on the other Jedi around him, Mace began to reach out with the Force, trying to get a sense of Sora Bulq. He had done this before, the two of them having met more than once since Bulq had left the Order. What he found this time was the same as it had been then. The same surface thoughts, the same surface appearance of a concerned, yet determined and highly opinioned moral person, centered in the Force.

But as he listened, and as he remembered Master Yoda's warning, Mace became more and more certain that what he was sensing from his friend was simply that, simply the surface, a mask hiding what lay below. The other Jedi with him were being slowly swayed by Master Bulq's words, by his counter arguments to their own, but now, several hours into the meeting, Mace was certain. I am facing an enemy here.

In a lull in the conversation Mace spoke up, from where he had been sitting, listening quietly. "Shadows and words. On the surface there is scant little to compare the two, but as shadow can hide someone, so too can words hide intent. You claim that you joined the Confederacy to combat this hidden danger from the Sith, you provide supposition and rumor as evidence. Yet at the same time, you back several of the most corrupt parties in the Republic, while claiming that you are standing against the individual that put them in such a position. No. This is all mere words, with no substance behind them."

He stood up, staring at Master Bulq, who had not moved from his position, and it was as if in so doing he broke whatever hold Sora's words had on his listeners. Several of the other Jedi stood up as well, spreading out as they stared hard at the Whiphid Jedi, as others, Mira among them, stayed in their chairs. "When did you fall to the Dark Side? Did I have a hand in that? Did our work on the Vaapad push you into the Dark Side, or simply cause you to become fascinated with it's easy road to power?"

At that, after a moment of shock, the other Jedi, even Master Bulq's old apprentice, Mira stood as one, staring at their former comrade. Reluctantly, and she was still staring at Bulq in shock, willing him to deny Mace's words. Yet he didn't.

"The second," Master Bulq replied, his tone light. "Our work on it, the power in anger, in manipulating that Dark Side emotion, fascinated me. But I was not the first. I am the Master now, but I was not then. I was telling the truth just now. At the time of my recruitment the Sith was hiding within the Order," he said with a faint laugh. "But I suppose now that you have seen through the shadows as you put it the time has come to declare war outright."

He stood up abruptly, but Mace already had his lightsaber in hand, and was leaping forward, faster than any other Jedi there could have responded to. Yet instead of hitting his lightsaber against Master Bulq's or hitting Bulq himself, a force field appeared around the Weequay.

He tapped the floor under him, smirking slightly. "I have always been amused that most people forget that force fields can be used by people, not just droids, so long as the individual is able to deal with the radiation. As a Weequay I of course have a higher level of tolerance for such than a human would."

As Sora spoke, the doors to the hotel behind them opened, as did the windows above them on the second and third story of the mansion. Seventy droids soon appeared, leaping down to flow out in a half circle around the Jedi who quickly formed into a circle themselves, facing outward.

These droids were the same variety that Ranma would later run into on Wayland: thin of body, with glowing red eyes and a very humanlike form, they were agile droids with vibro-staffs in hand. They bent low to the ground, one end of the staff extended like a spear towards the Jedi, standing lightly on their robotic feet.

Out from the doors, leading into the building, came four others. Three of them were Jedi who it was known had left the Order to work with Master Bulq since his leaving the Order in taking a position as head of the Confederacy and one other. The last was a known Dark Side user, who the Order had long thought tied to the Sith, the assassin who had slain more than a few Jedi over the past few years snarled at them, twin lightsabers in her hands, their color red.

"These are my Magna Guard Jedi, an experiment if you will to see if robots could be programed to fight against Jedi in close combat. And you no doubt recognize my followers Dark Jedi, all who will prove to all of you the power of the Dark Side. I want Mace alive," Master Bulq stated, still behind his force field, he glanced at young Mira, who was staring at him in shock and horror hesitating only for a moment, but the words came out still crisp and commanding. "The rest, kill them."

His former apprentice was still staring at her former Master, when the battle was joined.

She was only saved by the intervention of one of the other Jedi, who quickly interposed himself between the oncoming enemies and the dazed Mira up. "Mira get a grip! We need help here." She twitched, but nodded, and as the droids charged forward, she and the others met them with lightsabers in hand.

The twin lightsaber user made straight for Mace, grinning evilly. "I have longed to see if you were really as good as people say Mace Windu. I am Asajj Ventress and I will be your killer."

Mace allowed a thin smile to appear on his face as he surged forward. "Such questions often cost more in answering than most would wish to pay young lady."

She sneered at that, and then the battle was joined. Instantly as the battle began, the Magna Guards proved they were extremely agile and well trained. All Magna Guard were decently programed, constructed and fast on their feet. Beyond that, Master Bulq had trained these himself, along with his apprentice, Asajj.

Within seconds of the two sides meeting, three of the Jedi were cut down, causing the Jedi to recoil in surprise. At the same time, Asajj launched herself toward Mace, and the two of them started a duel in the center of the patio, while the other Jedi fell back into groups of four or three working together against the greater numbers of the Magna Guard. The better duelists moved to counter the two Dark Jedi, while Mace kept one eye on Bulq.

The Magna Guard proved again and again in the next few minutes that it wasn't their numbers alone that made them dangerous. The Vibro-staffs of the Magna Guard were all created with cortosis metal, making them almost immune to the lightsabers of the Jedi. One more Jedi fell before the others adapted and then the first Magna Guard fell.

One of the younger Knights, Alaris Fen, a human Knight born on Coruscant, took a hit to the forearm, but the vibroblade couldn't get through his durability. He twisted around the next strike and Alaris's blade chopped the Magna Guard's head off. He then blocked two more strikes, dancing between and over them using the Ataru form, cutting down at their heads. The droids finally started to get in one another's way as he kept on attacking, moving around and attacking from above every chance he could get, his lightsaber a constant twirl from one hand to the other. "Shift to Ataru, their teamwork is vulnerable against mobile targets!"

In this manner he was able to destroy three more droids. But ironically this put him too far away from his fellows for them to support and he was slain in turn, his leg then his head hacked off by one of the Dark Jedi. No matter how high a person's durability, there was a limit to how much heat based damage they could take. Still the others who could, took his advice, and the Magna Guard started taking loses, especially from the six other Knights who had gone through the toughness training.

The Jedi fell back, pressed hard towards the edge of the patio and now Bulq became involved, keeping away from Mace for a moment. He wanted his former friend to feel despair, to know loss before he broke him. To that end, he used the Force to leap away from the center of the patio to the outskirts, where he cut down one Jedi, the same young Muun who had spoken up at the start of the discussion. He then engaged two more, pushing them back, including one of his former Padawans, Terence. This in turn let them be cut down by his Magna Guard. When Terence fell, Bulq didn't even pause in his attack, stepping over his body like it was garbage.

In the center, Mace was dealing with the Magna Guard around him, keeping four of them from overwhelming the others. Asajj too was attacking him and was making Mace work for it. She had trained extensively against Bulq, and Mace's use of Vaapad, a style which used the anger of his opponents to power his own attacks was almost nullified. For a few minutes Mace was able to hold her off with subtle use of Force Grabs and Pushes, which finally broke her self-control. "Force curse you face me blade to blade you…"

Even as she lashed out in anger, her twin lightsabers flashing into an attack, Asajj's eyes widened in shock as she realized her mistake. Through the use of Vaapad, Mace used her anger, and Asajj's lightsaber was deflected into one of the Magna Guard, cutting it in two. Mace then ducked practically in half lashing out to one side to cut a second droid apart before kicking off the ground over their heads, engaging Asajj the last two Magna Guard fell, their heads bisected from above.

She was able to shift to a defensive style, but this in turn pushed her off-balance, and Mace's lightsaber slammed into her body and arms. Thankfully for her, Asajj had taken her toughness training to a level few Sith could match, far beyond the level the Jedi had been able to reach. She screamed in pain, but the pain fueled her Dark Side powers and she came back into the attack, not noticing how even now Mace used her anger, guiding her through several Magna Guard, which were cut to pieces by their flashing lightsabers, while Windu dodged and blocked or otherwise redirected their own attacks.

During this time five more Jedi fell, along with an equal number of Magna Guard around the rest of the battle. This left less than half their starting numbers, and the Magna Guard were still each of them learning as the fight went on.

They were losing, and Mace could see it. Turning he saw Bulq cut down another Jedi, and at the sight, Mace shouted, "Leap! Over the edge!"

With that, Mace reached out for the Force with a power and speed that he shocked Bulq, using a Force Crush to shatter more than eight of the Magna Guard, hurling them into the Bulq and the Dark Jedi with him. One, Kadrian Sey, was smashed in the leg and in the next second was cut in two by one of the other Jedi who had been engaged her, Sian Jeisel. The Devaronian woman then leaped clear with a cry of effort, crossing more than two hundred yards to put herself over the edge in an uncontrolled tumble, avoiding Bulq's lightsaber by the barest millimeter.

Mira followed her over the edge a second later. She had only been able to hold her own thanks to her use of Force push and Force Grab, her lightsaber ability nowhere near good enough to face the Magna Guard and had been moving in the direction of the cliff face anyway. She had been hoping against hope that her former Master would be unwilling to kill her or order her death, but that hope had collapsed as the battle continued and she watched Bulq cut down Terrence. She now hopped backwards over the edge, using the Force to slow her descent and reach out for Sian at the same time, slowing the other woman's fall at the same time.

Soon the others followed, with Mace hurling himself over two of the remaining Magna Guards, his swords lashing down at them. The Magna Guard had learned during the battle though and were able to block his blow. One nearly took the Korun Jedi's foot off with its vibro-bladed ended staff, but he was past it and falling down over the side of the cliff face the next second. The other survivors also retreated, disengaging and leaping over the side of the cliff face with the kind of abandon that only Jedi could've gotten away with without special equipment.

The Magna Guards halted at the edge, staring down after them, then looking over at their Masters. Looking over at her two surviving fellows then to Master Bulq, Asajj touched the places where Mace's lightsaber had seared through her clothing to leave harsh, red welts on her skin, nothing much in the scheme of things, but showing how she would well have died if not for her toughness training, and all because of a single mistake. "Master, should we…"

"Do not follow just yet. Stay with the Magna Guards. Mace is good and will keep the others together. If we become separated, we might be overwhelmed," Master Bulq replied with a shake of his head. "This did well for a first battle of the Magna Guard at least."

"But we didn't get them all Master Bulq!" shouted one of the dark Jedi, but he calmed down instantly as balk looked at him. "Sorry, Master."

"Do not let your anger control you," he said coldly. "If you do, you are nothing more than a berserker."

He looked at them all, and as one they intoned the Oath of the Sith. "Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through control of that strength I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The Force shall free me."

After they finished the recitation, Tyranus nodded firmly. "Good. Split up. Send for more droids from the spaceport. You will each take 10 Magna Guards. We will comb the forest from every direction, find the Jedi, pin them down and overwhelm them. Remember, we must take Mace alive."

As the other two turned away, Asajj sidled up to her master, a sneer of contempt on her thin, tattooed face. "Do you really think you will be able to make him talk? Shouldn't we just kill him?"

"Perhaps not," Master Bulq replied, showing the self-understanding that was one aspect of his personality that made him so valuable to the Sith cause. "But I am going to make the attempt. And if we are able to take one of the others alive, perhaps there will be better means to coerce him to talk than outright murder."

He then turned away, pulling out a communicator. This linked him directly into the Hypercom array elsewhere on the moon. He said a simple line, "Launch Operation Theta," before turning away, gesturing to a few of his own Magna Guards before turning to the other Dark Jedi allowing a faint, eager smile to appear on his face. "Come. Let us hunt."

In the distance, an explosion rang out, as the ship the Jedi a arrived on exploded from being fired upon from above. The next instant, every other ship on the planet lifted off heading to space. Elsewhere, the Consular class destroyers sent to back up Mace and his people were ambushed. A Lucrehulk dropped in on them, and through use of an interdiction field pinned them in place while jamming Hypercom signals. The ships died in a short battle after that, never even able to scratch the paint of their attacker.

When he heard that, Tyranus was already on the outskirts of the forest where the Jedi had fallen and he smiled thinly in victory. One way or the other, Mace and the few surviving Jedi with him would not be leaving this world alive.

OOOOOOO

At the same time that Mace and Sora were meeting, a soiree was going on in the senatorial district of Coruscant. This was in no way unusual. Parties, dinners, outings of all sorts – save perhaps simple quiet get togethers - were the grease that let the wheels of government move. More were done in places like this than were ever done in the public eye, or on the senatorial floor, even if the final word always was stated there.

Padme Amidala moved through the party she had helped organize of various Peace Party members, several dozen Centrist senators, and the most moderate Separatist members those who had begun to turn against their own party, when it came to light that Jabiim had taken a Jedi hostage in an attempt to hand her over for further aid from the rest of the Confederacy. That act, especially the Jedi in question, had forced many of the formerly Separatists Senators to break away from the party line. And from there, they all began to mingle, talking quietly, discussing the Military Creation Act, discussing the Confederacy, what was to be done, and their own positions.

For her part, Padme was of the firm opinion that despite having backed the Chancellor and everything else he'd done since taking the post, that he was wrong in this: That the Republic creating its own military, or rather finalizing that creation, manning the ships that had already been built, and so forth, would not decrease the danger of war or show that they were serious about protecting themselves. Instead, it would rather be the last sign that the Confederacy needed to bring all their disparate populations together in a war, which on their side of things, would seem as if it would be to protect their own planets and interests from Republican domination.

She had tried to make that point to Palpatine, but the Chancellor, despite not taking part in the debate was adamant that the Republic needed to be able to defend itself. "I cannot tell you everything my dear. But I believe that the Confederacy's legitimate grievances are not enough to offset the abuse of power inherent in their position and in the individuals, who make it up."

"It was one of only four times they'd argued and the only time Palpatine had not persuaded the much younger Padme to his own position. She was very much against any kind of war and refused to change her mind now. No matter the provocation, open war would be far worse than the cold war they were entering now.

Master Koon and Master Billaba were also there, talking quietly to the senators. They were showing their continued support of talking and dialogue over war. Yet at the same time, Padme knew rumors abounded that the Jedi had recreated the Army of Light, which had been outlawed at the Ruusan Reformation. Still, they were able to defuse things via a show of Force from them, as it seems they have these past few days. I doubt they have a large force, indeed, I doubt the Jedi themselves have anything of the sort, but they and their allies were at least able to defend the Jabiimi and let them retain their newly democratic government.

And then there's the tale of the so called Force Warrior, Ranma and his assault on Jabiim to rescue Master Fay. Hmm… I haven't thought about him in years, I wonder if he is still as wild as he was back then. I pity Master Ti if that's the case. Actually, is she still assigned to him? Hmm…

Shaking that thought off, Padme noticed another human senator moving towards her. Instantly Padme moved over to two other women talking quietly in a corner, her lips twitching in something between a snarl and a scowl. "Do you mind if I join you ladies? I believe that Sen. Licentis is about to make another pass at me, and..."

"And my being a respectable married woman acts like pepper spray or the equivalent?" asked the older of the two archly, before laughing. She then looked at the younger Padme and asked kindly, "How are you doing?"

"Drained," she replied bluntly, seeing no reason to prevaricate, not with Mina Bonteri. The woman had helped her get her feet under her when Padme first became a Senator. "This topic is divisive in the extreme and trying to be a voice of reason when reason has so clearly been tossed out the door by so many people is difficult."

"But rewarding in a way I would say," said the other woman, Mon Mothma of Chandrila. She was of an age with Padme though unlike her Mon Mothma was a staunch Centrist. Mon Mothma though came to that position because her family had been part of the bureaucracy of the Republic for thousands of years. She firmly believed that, while overhauling that bureaucracy was necessary at this point, breaking away from it wasn't. She and Padme were of one mind on this. No matter what the reasoning, breaking the Republic would not only break the unity of the galaxy, but would mean a return to the time of warring nations. Every little subsector or power would be out for itself, the more powerful sectors conquering the least powerful and so forth.

Glancing behind her, Padme saw that her ruse it worked, and the middle-aged roué had backed away, scowling slightly as he moved off to try and flirt with someone else. "How anyone can even think of romance and I use the word very loosely, at a time like this I do not know!"

"I don't think even if you stretch that word to its utmost you would be able to accurately describe what he has in mind my dear," Mina laughed.

"I was trying to be polite, I was taught by my older and wiser fellows, to try and be respectful even of those who have obvious intellectual handicaps," Padme replied, deadpan.

"Oh well struck," Mon Mothma chortled. "Two insults in one breath!"

Mina simply glared, "Really? Making a comment on my age? Rather lowbrow for someone so young and vibrant as yourself isn't it? Or should I make comments about how you shouldn't be let out this late without a minder?"

The three women chuckled, a rare moment of fellow feeling despite their vast political differences. But Padme's laughter cut off abruptly, as out of the corner of her eye she saw both Jedi stiffening in shock. "What is…"

As she watched Master Koon had been moving towards the three women, while Master Depa Billaba began to grab at the nearest senators, shoving them towards the doorway. "Ladies, we have sensed a rising danger through the Force. I think we all need to leave right now."

Padme and the others instantly followed him. At the same time, several security guards entered the large room, where the party was occurring.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" shouted one of the security guards, "There has been a security warning issued for this building. Please exit the room and this floor in an organized…"

That was as far as they got before the room exploded. There was fire and a shockwave, which erupted like a volcano in the center of the room, expanding outward quickly.

Padme saw a large piece of the floor exploding upwards towards them, then heard the whizzing thump of a lightsaber cutting into something before her vision was occluded by the robe that Master Koon was wearing. Then a rebounding piece of shrapnel slammed into the back of her head and Padme knew no more.

The beeping of some kind of medical device woke Padme up out of darkness, causing her to cringe in pain as her body instantly informed her of all the little ways it ached. She blearily opened her eyes whimpering in pain the instant light filtered through. "Don't do that!" said a voice nearby. She heard the sound of hurrying feet, and a piece of blanket or something was pressed over her eyes. "You have a concussion and even with modern medicine we have to be careful with brain trauma."

"What happened?" she moaned, her voice an almost broken croak in comparison to her normal powerful voice.

The man winced, although of course Padme couldn't see it at the moment. He patted her hand asking delicately, "Are you sure you…"

"What happened?" Padme growled, her voice firmer, and her hand moved from under his to clamp down on his wrist with enough force to actually cause his hand to go white.

The doctor gently disengaged from her, but still answered him. "It was a terrorist attack. They targeted the party you were at. We've been dealing with the wounded ever since. Thank God this is Coruscant and we have an unlimited access to bacta tanks at least. Even so, a lot of the partygoers died during the explosion."

Padme's breath caught. "H-how many?"

"Are you sure you…" the doctor tried again, unwilling to let Padme strain herself.

"How many!?" Padme interrupted demandingly.

"I will answer that," said another voice, one that she recognizes as coming from Master Koon. "We were unable to feel any danger in the Force until it was too late to save everyone I'm afraid." The Kel Dor Jedi's voice was stern and unyielding, taking all of the guilt of that fact upon himself.

"Master Billaba paid the ultimate price, but she was able to get Bail Organa and two other Senators, although Senator Organa was touch and go, until we got him in the bacta tank. I shielded you and attempted to do the same with Senator Mon Mothma. I did not succeed in her case. I'm sorry to say that Sen. Mon Mothma is dead, as is Madame Bonteri…"

From there, he listed several more names, and it was all that Padme could do not to weep. She recognized each of them, and the majority were her friends and allies. In a single day she had lost nearly everyone she could call a true friend in the Senate. The impact on the Peace Party and any ability to conduct talks between the various political parties would not occur to her until much later. Now she had no thought for that, only her grief. "H-h-how long was I out?" she rasped, choking back tears.

"Only a bare few hours. Yet the individuals behind this assault have already been caught," Plo Koon replied. "The Senate Security Force was apparently already on their trail but had no idea they'd succeeded in planting this explosive. I questioned them closely, and through the Force I have felt their guilt, Senator. They will be tried and executed soon enough." The Kel Dor's voice was fierce and approving, As a Kel Dor he saw the world very much in black and white, and as such, believed in corporal punishment far more than most Jedi.

Mon Mothma dead, Mina dead, Bail nearly dying. This was a disaster, Padme thought, an utter disaster. Herself and Bail the only survivors from the senators from the Peace Party who had been at that party. A disaster. "Who… why? Why were we…"

Master Koon's next words mercilessly dashed any hope that Padme might have had about where this attack had come from "Separatists, separatists targeting Senator Bonteri. The rest of you, were simply bonuses. They wanted to punish what they saw as treason to the Confederacy."

Padme fell silent, then asked, with foreboding in her voice, "What else have I missed?"

"The Chancellor has pushed forward the vote on the Military Creation Act, and the Jedi are formally removing all objections to it," Master Koon said, his own tone full of sadness. "I am afraid that whatever our wishes, the time has come to stop trying to talk with those who would rather simply kill us all. I am sorry, more sorry than I can say Padme, but I believe, at this point, there is no recourse but war."

OOOOOOO

Corellia's senator was a human named Garm Bel Iblis, a former Corellian Security Senior Administrator, the local police forces equivalent of an admiral, since CorSec saw to both planetary and space-based security for the system and for their wide-spread legitimate shipping businesses (as opposed to their equally massive 'illegal' shipping businesses). He was a middle-aged man, who was a veteran of both militant and political arenas, and he had long suspected there was something behind the Chancellor's outward appearance of a staunch anti-corruption legislaturist. The violence and how little headway had been made into corruption the past few years had only solidified that thought.

The creation of the military creation act was the final straw for him, and he had pushed his Dictat, the leader of Corellia, to state that the sector would be recessing itself from the Republic using an old law called Contemplanys Hermi. As it was one of the most populated and most industrialized systems even in the Core Worlds, easily placed in the Top Five, as well as one of the first member nations of the Republic, that law had been on the books for millennia and was still viable.

But if Bel had thought that this maneuver would remove them from the war, he was sadly disabused of that notion approximately two days after Tyranus' ambush of the Jedi who had been sent to treat with him and about five hours after the attack on Padme and the Peace Party. Because at that point, the Confederacy released its massive war machine, in a multipronged assault into the Core Worlds, starting with the Corellia sector.

There was no buildup. There was no need, the Confederacy already had several planets nearby, which they could use as launch points and did so. Four massive fleets slammed into the Corellia sector, each of them targeting four different planetary systems. Each fleet was consisted of twenty Lucrehulks, fifteen smaller carriers, forty-eight Munificent class cruisers, more than a hundred gunboats and literally uncounted waves of Vulture fighters aboard the Lucrehulks and the smaller carriers.

The first to feel the sting of the Confederacy was Duro. A massive industrial system built around mining complexes on the ground and a booming export business, Duro had been a solo member of the Republic on its own for a long while, having its own Senator. But even so, the Duros people had followed Corellia into recessing itself from the rest of the Senate like the rest of the Corellia sector.

And Like all Core Worlds it had defenses: a planetary shield protecting hundreds of planetary-based turbolaser batteries behind dozens of orbital defense stations and several dozen starfighter wings. It didn't have any actual capital ships thanks to the Republic's long injunction against member worlds building such yet, despite that lack, it would be a hard nut to crack.

That was why General Grievous, who had been made Supreme Commander of the Confederate forces, had come here personally. The other three fleets would be hitting softer targets with the intention of conquering them, to occupy them and then use them as forward repair and resupply points for the next operation. But what the cyborg Kaleesh Mandalore would do to this planet would mark the death knell of the entire sector.

From the flagship of his fleet Grievous watched as the Vulture fighters roared in, and felt his few remaining facial muscles twitching under his mask. He heard, and had to hold back an electronic laugh at the squawks of the defenders shouting out how they were neutral in this war. Hmm… while the bleating of plant eaters matter not to the predator, I suppose that a moment like this calls for some drama.

With that in mind, just before they entered weapons on range, he signaled the human communications officer to open up a channel.

The face of the Duros male on the other side of the communication had only a brief moment to look happy before he took in Grievous' face, the metal mask that covered his ravaged face, the gleaming yellow eyes in that unfeeling countenance. As the man's own expression changed to one of horror, Grievous spoke. "There is no such thing as neutrality in this war. You are either with us, or you are against us. And since you are against us, you will die. Surrender in the next four minutes, and I might be merciful. If not, then you will die, and your planet with you."

He had been told to be as brutal as possible, not that Grievous would have been willing to be anything different. Tyranus hoped to overawe and break the back of any Republic morale at the outset of this war, and Grievous knew precisely how to do that. Still, he had also been told to make the attempt to force Duros to surrender, since it could be a major defensive fortress in the future.

Yet, Grievous knew how to make fear a weapon, and so he just stared at the man as the fleet moved into the system. The man tried to stammer tried to make their position plain tried to waffle, and Grievous was silent. Tried to obfuscate, to say they could join the Confederacy after a time of discussion, or some such rot, and Grievous was silent, letting his predator's stare work for him. Then at precisely four minutes, he cut the connection, and held up two of his hands, in wide fists to his flag bridge's crew, all androids or experienced soldiers pulled from the various Confederacy planets.

Then he spread his robotic claws out in either direction. "Spread, and burn."

With that call, the fleet spread out, and the hundreds, perhaps nearly a thousand freighters that had already scattered found themselves under attack. The gun boats and smaller carriers broke formation, spreading out with their Vultures to destroy the space-based industry throughout the system. Everything. Every small installation, every ship every sign of sentient life in this system outside the defensive formations in orbit over Duro burned.

The defending starfighters raced out to engage them of course. They were in turn overwhelmed, swamped by Vulture wings who soaked up their losses before moving on. Few of the locals had the new Aethersprite fighter, indeed they were still using last generation fighters, and the Vultures were more than a match for them except at long range, where the better targeting computers and instincts of a human was able to overcome the greater speed and reaction time of the droids.

After only about thirty minutes, the starfighters retreated in disarray, and the outer regions of the system belonged to Grievous.

"My lord, we are still getting repeated calls from the locals," the admiral's communications officer, a Muun, reported.

"Ignore them. We gave them a chance. Now they will suffer the penalty."

At Grievous' words, the living members of his flag bridge all gulped, the sound audible over the normal background noise of the various computers and consoles. The cyborg held back a sneer as he heard that, knowing then the second portion of this operation also needed to be seen to: he had to prove to his own side that there was no going back, that they were in this war to the bitter end, and it would cost them in lives and in blood, not just in droids. Only in doing so would they become strong enough to win.

For the next few hours the main fleet remained in place as the smaller groups moved around the system, wiping out what they could. Then Grievous ordered in the main fleet straight toward the planet. "We will engage them in segments. Those orbital fortresses are situated that only five of them can support one another. That makes each group vulnerable."

Despite having known about this part of the plan for days, two of his captains protested. "Our ships are not close-range specialists!"

"Your ships are dreadnoughts," Grievous roared back, cowing the men instantly with the Force of his glare even through the pickup. "We will wipe out one group of those space stations, and then bombard the planet's shield, until such time as we can launch starfighters against the planet." With the two objectors cowed, Grievous turned his attention to another order. "Pull the starfighters and gunboats back for a moment."

As the rest of the fleet re-coalesced around them, The Lucrehulks shifted formation into a line, then created a loop almost. The first one came into range then moved on a long curve away from the targeted stations, firing as it did. Banks of turbolasers pounded out as the five defensive bases, each as large as a Lucrehulk and even more heavily armed, took the opportunity to hammer that first ship as hard as they could. But then the hoarded Vultures and gunboats roared out, closing with the fortresses. The planet's own remaining starfighters launched, and the planetary-based turbolasers and ion cannons also opened up, reaping a toll on the attackers despite not being designed to target such small adversaries.

The first ship, Grievous' own flagship, the Fleshtearer, turned away its shields having been hammered badly but still up as the line of Lucrehulks came into range. More and more of them came in to hammer the enemy, being hammered in turn, but now the fortresses were forced to divide their power, doing far less damage while taking more of their own.

Normally a battle like this would have favored the defenders, even with Grievous using a rotating line formation. With the planetary shield generator to back them up, the fortresses could have taken the pounding of three or four times their number of capital ships. But Grievous had two advantages: one, he had those numbers and then some. Two, he had the Munificents.

As the Lucrehulks began to create a ring that constantly had several ships facing in towards the defending line, the Munificents went above and below them. Their main double-barreled turbolaser were stronger than the batteries of turbolasers on the Lucrehulks, and they worked in groups of ten to hammer the defending fortresses. Alone they would have been overcome, but with the defenders foolishly spreading their fire among the Vultures and Lucrehulks, the planetary shields were eventually hammered back, forcing the five targeted fortresses to see to their own defense.

It was slow going of course, taking more than half a day. Duro was a Core World, with the highly advanced, very powerful and above all durable energy grid that implied. But without the other fortresses to come to their aid, the battle was not in doubt.

When the shields were battered back behind the fortresses, Grievous ordered his ships to close in on them, his formation becoming a shallow wall rather than a line, the Munificents moving into formation alongside their fellows. The Munificents hammered the shield while the Lucrehulks continued to trade body blows with the fortresses, several losing shields and actually taking losses, while four Munificents reeled out of formation, their shields cracked and their weapons offline.

At the same time, the defenders were taking even worse of a pounding. One of the fortresses fell quickly, a lucky strike from a gunboat unloading all its concussion missiles into a single bit of shielding, letting in more fire. Ion cannon fire ordered from Grievous on that point shattered the fortress's shields, and an instant later the fortress exploded from the hundreds of concussion missile and proton torpedoes that slammed into it.

Another nearby fortress also started to falter, while at the same time, one of the Lucrehulks was forced away, its surface flaring with ionic discharge from a lucky strike from a planetary ion cannon bolt that had gotten through its downed shields. It limped out of formation while its sister ships continued the slugging match.

Hearing a particular telltale warning noise Grievous snarled in triumph, turning to look at one of his adjutants. "Report."

"We have incoming… five, six, seven hundred, repeat seven hundred medium to large ships. Most are reading as freighters, but they are coming towards us at speed. They are broadcasting as the Corellian Security Force." That being, a Harch, reported. "I am reading at least… twelve wings worth of starfighters coming in with them at minimum. At this range I can't make out types."

"Grievous to all planetary bombardment vessels. Switch targets. Repeat, switch targets, close and commence orbital bombardment." Grievous intoned. "Ten salvoes each, then prepare to disengage on the curve I will be sending you. Remain locked on the planet for as long as you can, while we pull away."

The battle shifted instantly on his orders while behind his fleet, the newcomers slaughtered his wounded vessels and the few scattered smaller carriers which he had been using as bases for his equally scattered starfighter patrols. Those loses didn't matter though, they had done their job. And as they died, the rest of his fleet hammered a full-scale orbital bombardment into the already battered shields of the planets.

Two more Lucrehulks and seven more Munificents paid the price for coming closer to the planet as the defenders gleefully shifted fire from the scattered starfighters and gunboats to their true targets. The Lucrehulks survived, their weapons and shields down from ion cannon blasts then their surfaces flayed by turbolaser fire from the surviving fortresses and the planet. The Munificents did not survive, two exploding as their engines blew, four just disappearing into gas and vapor, the last cracked in half.

Yet the planetary shields went down in this quadrant, the local energy grid unable to keep up with the demand. And the instant he saw that, Grievous gave the order, which would etch his name in the annals of history. "All ships, unload all your Proton torpedoes at the planet."

From that one weakness in the shield, death flowed out, the shield failing as the energy grid that fed the generator died. Thousands or proton torpedoes slammed into the planet in an ever-widening wave of destruction and death, which spread out from that one point, even going over the horizon from the attacked point as quasi-intelligent torpedoes looked for undamaged quadrants of the planet to immolate themselves upon.

One minute, the planet was alive with billions of sentients. The next, perhaps a little under a million survived, if that. Worse perhaps was that the destruction also released intense degrees of vapor and dust and as the world burned, Grievous smiled under his mask, ignoring the pain of his pulled skin as he took in the immolation of a space-faring species home planet.

Behind him, the vengeful CorSec forces crashed over the back of his fleet. The wounded Lucrehulks died, torn apart like blue whales facing a pack of sharks and piranha, slaughtering droves of them but still going down. Two more faltered and six of his smaller carriers, along with the two dozen anti-starfighter frigates he had held back earlier fell, swarmed over by the CorSec forces.

Yet in dying, they blunted the CorSec forces for long enough though dragging more of the CorSec forces down on them in their death throes. This allowed the rest of his fleet to reach the hyperspace jump limit where they jumped out.

To all of the locals, those who survived, and the CorSec forces, it looked as if his forces had been beaten off, the orbital bombardment a result of the fact he, Grievous, knew he had lost. That was not the case. Instead, it had been a show of callous calculation both on the strategic and the logistical level.

Logistically, Duro was a major source of various minerals necessary for hyperspace engines and power generators. Without them, more than a dozen sectors would see a sharp decrease in their manufactory capacity.

And strategically, this move, and the other three, smaller attacks, would open up Grievous' real target. After all, with their allied planet in such desperate straits, Duro would pull in aid from Corellia, and the other attacks would pull off their remaining security forces. Leaving Corellia itself open to attack.

One world made uninhabitable, three others taken by our other forces, and soon, five more in a single system to either be destroyed or taken in turn. For an opening campaign, I suppose that will do, Grievous thought, with dark delight.

OOOOOOO

While Grievous lead his Grand Fleet into the Corellian Sector, several hundred more attacks were being launched. The sheer size and aggressiveness of the Confederacy Navy would later be a source of much chagrin and would spur the creation of the Republic Intelligence Commission, so they could attempt to predict the next wave of attacks. But at the moment, there was no time for that, only panic.

Admittedly, most of the initial targets of that armada were simple ones: outposts, trade zones, planets that had heretofore been single bastions of Republic loyalty in Confederacy-dominated sectors. Consolidating in other words.

The attack into the Corellian sector was easily the largest, even after four smaller fleets broke off from Grievous' own armada. But there were others, attacks meant to conquer and control specific targets. Not targets of opportunity these, but strategic and logistical bases. Two Ord systems and their sector fleets fell. They fell fighting, but they were still overwhelmed. Other places, associated with the production of Tibanna gas and other important resources, like Thyferra for its bacta, were targeted as well. Several of these assaults were beaten off, others shifted to actual sieges, thanks to the strength of the local defenders, but not all. Not at all.

OOOOOOO

And as his pawns did their parts to further the Great Plan, Sidious too had his role to play.

While 'Palpatine's' face held a serious, disturbed mien, inside if he had been anyone else, Sidious would have felt like releasing a gloating cackle. He was not that sort though, so he only allowed himself a hate-filled moment of ecstasy as he looked toward the Temple, while he walked across the wide bridge that linked the senatorial district to the Jedi Temple. Today's attack had gone magnificently and he would have to send a congratulations to his true apprentice Komari Vosa, who had recently claimed the name Darth Sanvia, an old Sith word meaning torture. She felt it appropriate in many ways, and Sidious agreed.

Sanvia had planted the bomb, which had slain so many senators and one of the accursed Jedi magnificently well, so well that his own security forces had barely been on her trail, and then had led them directly back to her patsies too. It was very well done and a sign that Sanvia was getting better and better at the clandestine side of the war against the Jedi which was her purview.

True, several of his Centrist senators were dead, but Sidious was fine with that. Martyrs, after all, are always useful. The attack had eliminated any moderate voice in the Separatist faction in the Senate, as well as many of the Peace Party members, silencing several more for a time. The Military Creation Act had gone in within a few hours of the event. Amidala and Organa would wake up to find their Peace Party shattered and discredited in the Senate. Watching their members scrambling for ways to prove they could join the Centrist party had been rather amusing.

How the two Peace Party leaders would respond at this point was anyone's guess. Organa will probably continue on trying to mitigate the violence, but he will be a lone voice in the dark, further and further ostracized as the war continues. Amidala, her reaction is harder to calculate. She believes in the power of a democratic government the deluded girl, so she might simply go along with things. But at the same time, she might quit the Senate entirely. Given the girl's odd presence in the Force having her out of sight like that would be annoying.

Still, that was for later, and Sidious put his thoughts on that matter to the side. Right now, he had to set up the Jedi for the final fall. And here, like with much of the Great Plan, I didn't even need to make many changes from the way Plagueis and I had planned it out before the Chaotic Locus arrived. Truly up to this point he has only been able to slow things down, not change the outcome. The Jedi will fall. The Sith will rise. And I will rule over everything.

In moments after entering the temple, they sent the Chancellor along with his financial advisor and guru sitting across from the high Council in a half circle around them. With Plo Koon missing for the moment, and Yaddle's position not having been filled, yet coupled with the death of Billaba that very afternoon, the council hadn't even needed to shift their chairs, a fact that added to Sidious's internal dark glee.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Chancellor said formally, speaking up, and thereby taking advantage of the discussion before any of the Jedi could do the same. I am here to officially inform you that the Senate has agreed to the Military Creation Act, and to war against the so-called Confederacy. This last act was just too much for anyone to ignore, and much to my own chagrin, the time has come to show steel instead of the open hand to our enemies."

"Certain we are it was a Confederacy operation?" Yoda said, looking old, far older than the last time Sidious had seen him.

Of course, when you are older than dirt, that is not, saying much, Sidious thought, coldly. Yoda both infuriated him and was one of the few Jedi that concerned him the most. His skill with a lightsaber was utterly terrifying, far more so than even Mace Windu. His strength in the Force was also dangerous, although there at least Sidious knew he could match him.

"My security forces were able to capture the majority of the people behind this attack. They first stole the designs for the building, then created a security backdoor. With that they were able to sneak in and emplace the bomb barely an hour before the meeting began. If not for Master Billaba and Master Koon feeling the danger with their Force powers, everyone at that soiree would have died. All of them are known Confederate sympathizers who live here in the Senatorial district, although before this they were careful to keep their noses clean, as it were," Sidious replied in his Palpatine persona, burying his real self once more deep, deep under his public ego.

There could be no mistake now. Everything had come to this moment, this time, balanced on a knife's edge.

"One of them got away, a young woman who is known to work for the Confederacy as one of Master Bulq's hatchet women and general special agent. She might have used local talent, but the Confederacy wished to silence their own moderate voices and also sought to kill several other key senatorial members in one move."

"Our condolences on the loss," Rancisis said, frowning. "And though we are reluctant to admit it, we too understand that there must be war at this point. Indeed, ever since the events around Jabiim we have been preparing for it."

Palpatine laughed quietly. "I think quite a bit longer than that. After all, Master Bulq, he is not just a Jedi, is he? Nor even a retired one. No, he is something else entirely."

"What do you mean?" Ki Adi Mundi asked coldly.

The Chancellor shook his head, pulling out a recording device and setting it into the hologram machine in the center of the room. "This was delivered to my office three months ago. I have kept it a secret since, even from the Jedi Order due to what it contained. I think it will show why I have been unconcerned about the growing questions about manpower, and what I meant just now."

Inside the recording device was Master Sifo-Dyas, the same Jedi Master who the Sith had tricked into creating the clone army. Indeed, the entire recording had been created by the man himself although it had not been intended for the Chancellor, of course. Not that Sifo would mind. After all, the man had been dead for years now, and changing those bits of the recording had been ridiculously easy. Even doing so in such a way so no amount of examination could discover the changes was child's play for the Sith and their resources.

As the Jedi all started at seeing a man they had all long thought dead, the recording began. "Chancellor, I realize that this is highly unusual, but I must ask that you keep this communication a secret, both from your fellow senators, and especially from the bureaucracy of the Republic, as well as from my own Order. I have reason to believe that my Order is hiding a grave threat within it and if we have not been able to see it up to this point, who is to say where within the Jedi Order that threat lies."

Sifo paused, staring straight into the pickup as if he knew those words would have shocked his listeners before going on. "I have been sensing a shift in the Force, tides and changes for years. I have meditated, I have communed with the Force as deeply as I possibly could. I have researched, I have gone to several planets where there have been recent outbreaks of violence and where Jedi have gone missing, searching for evidence of the deaths of the Jedi there. I have come to a horrifying conclusion, to the only conclusion that I possibly could. I fear that the Sith have returned, clothed in the cloaks of my brethren within the Order. Yet I have no proof of that last. I do have proof of a connection between them and the Trade Federation. A communication that…"

From there, Sifo shared several bits of evidence that pointed to the Sith being behind the conflict around Naboo as well as the ties that had at that point slowly begun to bind the Commerce Guild, Techno Union, and Trade Federation together. "I urge you to watch them closely. However, by this point I fear we are too late, and war is inevitable. To combat that threat, I have met with the clone masters of Kamino and then removed all mention of them from the Republic's database, and from the Jedi Order's own computers."

That caused murmurs of shock and surprise among the younger members of the Council. Sidious was pleased to see that even the more senior member members were startled by it. "He was that worried about a traitor within our ranks?" asked one of them, young Agen Kolar. A Zabrak, he had replaced Coleman Trebor upon his death more than two years ago now, and despite being a talent with his lightsaber he hadn't really stood out much to the master of the Sith.

"Look at Master Bulq and mention that again," whispered Ki Adi Mundi.

"And remember who he always argued with. Master C'baoth and the Force supremacists," added Master Tiin in a whisper, unwilling like Ki Adi to speak too loudly while the recording was playing.

"After placing the order, and choosing the soldier, I and my acquaintance decided to lead the Sith off. This is the last communication I will be transmitting to you or to anyone else. I will willingly sacrifice myself to lead the Sith away. I hope that the clone army is enough to stem the tide. I fear that it will only be the first step of many needed to see the Jedi and the Republic through the dark times to come."

There the communication cut out, and Palpatine reached forward, pulling the data crystal out of the holographic device. "You are free to ask for a copy of this, but this is the original, and I will keep it with me. I tried to trace back where this communication came from, and found it had been stored in a simple drop box at a bank, with orders to the bank to send it after a certain number of years had passed. I have no idea where this Camass is, but they will be sending this army of clones out to the Republic, and we will make use of them. However," he said sternly, "this is also a Force-related matter. Master Bulq has proven himself to be the Sith that Master Dyas was worried about. He has gathered Jedi to him, and the Jedi Order must lead the fight against him."

"We are not soldiers," argued Adi Gallia.

"I'm not asking you to be simple soldiers. I'm asking you to be captains, commanders, generals. The Republic has a few admirals, a few captains, but it does not have anyone who has been to war. The last war that the Republic fought as a body was the Stark Hyperspace War, and that was a single sector insurrection. The Jedi have their history, the Jedi have their training, the Jedi have the Force as do our enemies. You must take the lead in this. The Senate will demand no less. If you're unwilling to take up the fight against your fellows, what is the Senate supposed to think?"

Despite his vast amount of self-control, it was all Sidious could do to keep his triumph from showing as one after another, the High Council bowed to his wishes. But he kept control of himself, nothing, absolutely nothing giving a hint of his real feelings.

Only Yoda said nothing, staring thoughtfully at the holographic device. But even he nodded in the end, agreeing to become the overall supreme commander of Republic forces. "For now, only. Long term, retain that position I will not," Yoda intoned coldly. "A Jedi, always more useful at the front will be. Discussing this clone issue, and the morality of it in greater depth we must."

"Agreed. For now, given the attacks happening, I am afraid we will have to make use of them at least for a time," Rancisis added, scowling.

"I will leave you to it then gentlemen. I have a speech to prepare, and a declaration of war to issue," the Chancellor said, standing up and bowing towards them all. "And, as you Jedi would put it, Let the Force be with us all going forward."

But Palpatine was about to learn that the future was not nearly as clear cut as he hoped...

He was barely back into his office when he felt it, a shift in the Force, the Veil of the Dark Side suddenly dissipating. The Veil unraveled. It didn't cease to, no, something had hit it like a blast of air hitting a cloud, something had hit it so hard, that the future of the Great Plan, which even after the arrival of the Chaotic Locus had still been almost predetermined, was suddenly changed, suddenly different, in doubt.

As the Master of the Sith he was directly connected to the Veil of the Dark Side, that connection covered by his Force Stealth. His connection acted like a tunnel covered by a chameleon cloak so as to not to be seen by his enemies. That meant that even as he reeled under the Veil's momentary destruction, Sidious was still hidden by the cloak, still hidden enough to avoid detection by the Jedi.

But, that connection also reverberated back along his Force powers. That shift in the Force hit Sidious's brain like someone had just taken his head, made a drum out of it, then had the most drum-happy, heavy metal rock 'n roll band play it's loudest songs, with every musical note hammering into his head. All this sent Sidious reeling, his teeth clenched so hard one of them shattered in his mouth to keep from screaming.

Even through his pain though he ground out, "Close the door, the door!" Even as his brain started to shut down from the pain, Sidious had one thought above all else. The Jedi cannot find me. Cannot! "Activate plan poisoned tooth," he snarled out to his two aides, Sate Pestage and Sly Moore as they entered behind him.

Sly grabbed him by the shoulders and began to help him towards the distant, oh so distant, chair by Sidious's desk while Pestage nodded rapidly and left quickly. "What is it, what happened?" Sly asked, her own face looking pained and her Force Stealth flickering before she righted it. The Umbaran woman was a Force Adept who had been missed by the Order in the past, and who Sidious had taught something of the Dark Side to, making her an acolyte. She has little power, but she was an incredible organizer and spokeswoman.

"S, something shifted in the Force. Worse than anything I've ever felt before!" Sidious said, with far more honesty than he would have shown at any other time.

Sly's eyes widened. She had barely felt anything, something like a horrid migraine. "Worse even than the…"

"The Chaotic Locus's arrival effected both the light and the Dark Side of the Force! This only affected the Veil, it tore it away!" At that point, the Chancellor's ability to speak coherently faded as another wave of agony went through his head. He collapsed forward onto his desk, and it was all he could do to keep his heart from stopping from the ongoing pain. This state of being would remain the case for more than a day and a half, after which even Sidious, with all his self-control and pain tolerance, would be out of action for two days more.

As Sly tried to take care of Sidious as best she could, Sate Pestage instantly put into motion prepared rumors that an attempt to poison him had actually gotten through for once. Not enough to put him on his deathbed, only enough to make him riotously ill. Previously created video evidence of this was provided, and with everything else going on, it was easy to believe that someone would attempt to poison the Chancellor at this time.

Even the Jedi didn't raise any issues with it, dealing with the revelations that he had laid out to them earlier that day. As well as the fact that the Veil was gone, at least for now. No, note even the Jedi would be able to see any connection between the two events. They would have their hands busy with other things.

OOOOOOO

Back in the temple,Yoda was the first to feel the Veil shattering. He could also feel more of the Force further from his person out into the galaxy than he had for more than a hundred years. As he and the other Jedi felt the shift, Yoda instantly began to react to it.

He could feel the future, see what was happening, and began to bark out orders, treating the rest of the high Council almost as if they were messengers, but not quite. "Message to Master Koon you will send. To stay with Senator Amidala he is. Important to the future she and the Peace Party will be. Assign more defenders to them we will."

"Further, send aid to the Green Jedi we will. The attack into Corellia, real target Corellia it will be, not Duros. Faint it is. Evidence we have not, but belief is there. Further, send aid elsewhere we must." he rattled off several other names, including the agricultural worlds.

Here Master Rancisis spoke up. He could feel some of the same dangers that Yoda could approaching those worlds, yet he did not lose himself to the Force as Yoda was in danger of doing in his sudden exuberance at having their connection cleared of the Veil. "We cannot."

Yoda turned to look at him, and Master Rancisis met his stare calmly. "I understand what you might be sensing but, that doesn't matter. We simply don't have the military strength necessary to be strong everywhere."

Yoda frowned, but then nodded his head. "Apologies I do give to you all, forgot I have. To be strong everywhere, an impossibility it is," he said. His ears then drooped. "Too late we will be for several of the Agri-worlds. Double down we must on Corellia. Allowed to fall it cannot be."

OOOOOOO

Other Sith were not nearly as badly discommoded as Sidious, although even then it came as a massive shock. Deep in the bowels of Coruscant, Komari reeled away from the training dummies that she had been fighting, snarling out, "End training session!" as her Force powers backlashed within her, almost like being electrified from the inside out.

This didn't stop one of the droids from slamming its lightsaber into her face, and she howled in pain. But not only had she taken the toughness training to even greater heights than any other individual had been able to, but the lightsaber itself was low powered. It stung her eye something fierce though, and Komari used a magnified Force Crush fueled by her anger and pain to destroy the droid in a welter of sparks and screaming metal.

A second after, she fell to the floor the pain came from the Veil being torn away worse than anything she had ever felt even during her training under Sidious. It wiped her mind away for a time, leaving her a pain-filled husk.

Darth Tyranus however faced a much greater threat, having been locked in combat at the time. He was nearly being overcome by Windu when the Veil was torn away. The two of them were currently engaged deep in the forest of the moon, Tyranus and his group of Magna Guard having brought Mace and the Jedi to bay. They had held them there as the other Dark Jedi and their squads converged. But now, Bulq let out a pained cry twisting away.

Even as one hand rose to clutch at his head, Tyranus shouted out, "Magna Guard, change directive, protect me!" This caused one of the guards to turn his back on Mira, who cut it down, but the others raced into battle Windu, pushing him away from Tyranus who stumbled away through the woods.

"Force curse it!" Mace shouted, before turning the full fury of his Vaapad technique on the Magna Guard. They fought back, and very well thanks to their cortosis staffs, holding him there until Bulq was well away. Once out of sight Bulq pulled a Force Stealth technique around him, hiding his presence as he stumbled away. There was now no thought in his mind but the need to escape, to gain distance until whatever Force technique had hit him faded.

Elsewhere in the forest his apprentice also reeled, stumbling to one knee. Asajj turned it into a roll to get away from a hacking slash from one of the Jedi, who had gotten separated from the others. In fact, she nearly killed that Jedi with a backwards cut from her second shoto, but when he leaped away, she stumbled to her feet and away from the man behind her. This left the man, a Trandoshan Jedi Knight named Tran Raal, to the mercies of the Magna Guard who, after a brutal fight finally were able to kill him. One of them stabbed Raal through the eye, which bypassed his durability. But that only happened after he had destroyed eight of the ten Magna Guards.

The pain continued for several hours after, crippling every Sith in the galaxy for a time, although thanks to quick thinking only one of the Dark Jedi died. Luthara, a former Falleen Jedi Knight, was cut down by Windu when his cries of pain brought Windu, Mira and Sian's attention to him. He attempted to use his pheromones to turn the women against Windu, but this failed and he died quickly.

After that, the Jedi were able to link up, or rather, the survivors were, having lost sight of one another during their leaps off the cliff. Through the battles in the forest, five more of them had fallen, leaving Sian, Mira, Windu, a human Jedi Master named Marva Zane, and a male Iktotchi named Ashak Ves to find one another through the forest.

OOOOOOO

Of course all the Jedi felt the Veil coming apart too, although few outside those in battle were in a position to make use of it consciously, at least at first. Yoda did so, and over the next few days, the Confederacy would find its fortunes on the various battlefields slowly shifting, as the opponents lost the momentum in some of their attacks, although not all of course, as Yoda slowly rerouted men and material to them under various Jedi Generals.

The Green Jedi to a man and woman felt it and could see their future. They could see the attack coming on Corellia, and wherever they were, whatever they were doing they returned home to defend their system. Most had already been on their way to Duro, but now shifted targets. The attack on Duro was a feint, and they would no longer fall for it. Corellia needed their aid, and the Green Jedi would answer.

Other Jedi felt the shift and reacted to it as well, one of whom was Master Fay. She and Aayla had been meditating in the living quarters of the freighter that Master Fay had commandeered on Jabiim when the feeling of the Veil between them and the Force disappeared. It was almost like someone pushing against a wall suddenly finding the wall was no longer there. They both stumbled and were back in their bodies an instant later. Aayla was blinking in shock, shaking her head woozily as her lekku spasmed. "What the heck?"

"I can feel it," Master Fay said with a smile. "The Veil's has been dissipated for a moment. Hold, I will answer your questions if I can in a moment." She breathed in, then closed her eyes, and once more plunged her consciousness out into the Unifying Force. The Force welcomed her in a way it had not in over a century. There was no current that she had to fight against, no undertow tearing at her being attempting to blind her senses, only warmth and welcome as the Force reached for her just as gleefully, and she smiled. The times may still be dark, but the Force will always be there, a hand outstretched, ready to lend its aid.

A moment later, Master Fay's consciousness was back in the physical realm. She hopped to her feet, her eyes gleaming with more energy and eagerness than she had felt in years. Not even when around Ranma had she felt this good. A few minutes later Fay turned from a map of the Republic broadcast onto the wall of the living area to Aayla, who had been attempting the same thing. She came away rather bemused, like a person who was so used to being weighed down by something that they didn't honestly understand how to act once that weight was removed.

"Come, I have triangulated where the individual we are searching for must be." Fay twitched an ear toward the hologram before pointing at a single system well out in the Unknown Regions, one that the navigational data net had no information on. "There is where we will find the individual I'm looking for, the one who I feel is almost as important for the Force to defeat the Sith as Ranma himself."

Aayla nodded and hopped to her own feet eagerly. "What are we waiting for then?"

Shaking her head at the younger woman's joyful happiness, Fay followed her up to the cockpit, wondering what the Force had in store for them.

OOOOOOO

On Wayland, Ranma was sitting out on the side of the mountain under a tree that honestly looked almost like a Baobab tree except its skin was a mottled blue and green rather than brown, and the leaves were all wrong. It was raining, but she didn't care, leaning back and letting the rain that got through the leaves hit her face. After my time on the Jabiim, I suppose most people would be a little weirded out by the fact that I'm actually enjoying this, but there're a few differences. One, there is no mud. Two, this doesn't look like it's going to last all that long. And three, it's actually kind of pleasant here despite the rain.

Pushing all that aside, Ranma turned her attention back down the slope of the mountain face to the open entrance. Opening the massive hangar bay doors, had been one of the first things they had done after seeing to the wounded. It was more symbolical than anything else, since the fortress had its own air system and whatever, but Ranma felt opening the doors like this was important.

After that, those Jedi able to move had left the interior quickly for a time. Even Shaak hadn't stayed with the wounded, just needing a breath of fresh air after being in that place. She had confessed to Ranma at the time that, "It is like being in a deep, dense smog, the fumes making your eyes water, the smog so dense you can't hear anything. The Dark Side is so strong in there," she said with a shudder.

Ranma had instantly offered to help of course. But since Ranma couldn't use Force Light no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't really do anything in this area. Of course, Ranma was also immune to the miasma unlike the Jedi, so it was a tossup.

Down below, Ranma could see the two remaining Nova Guard standing around the funeral pyres they had lit. Their species burned the dead to ash. The ash would be taken home to be spread out over the mountain range that, according to local myth, had been where they had originally evolved.

Ranma could also see Ahsoka and Anakin down there. For once the two of them were not at each other's throats. Shaak was there too, standing apart from the two youngsters for the moment as they spoke quietly.

Her eyes narrowed as Anakin turned away and started to come up towards him, and she kicked out to one side at Kit. He had been laid out on the slope by the tree, staring up at the sky with his hands underneath his head, a wide smile in his face as his entire body was getting pelted by the rain. "Look alive oh water-loving one, Anakin's coming up here."

"Is he done asking about the funeral rites of the Nova Guard then?" Kit replied without turning to look at Ranma. Kit had joined Ranma out here, and the two of them had talked for some time about the dead, then simply fell silent, a companionable silence as they each just took in the nature around them. Ranma wasn't one to meditate like that, and yet, after the fight inside the tent the mountain, some peace and quiet was just what the doctor ordered.

"Probably." When Anakin was close enough, Ranma asked. "What can we do for you Anakin?"

Anakin stared at Ranma, shaking his head. "I'd felt the Force giggling earlier, but you know it's kind of weird, but a few years apart from you and I completely forgot about your curse? Well I didn't forget so much as repress the memory of it." He shook his head dryly. "A young man just entering puberty shouldn't run into a boy who changes into a girl with a splash of water. It just does weird things to one's mind."

"I am so not sorry at all for that," Ranma said, shaking her head with a laugh.

Anakin nodded at that, then knelt down to get under the leaves with Ranma, who moved over to give him some space.

He glanced over at the Nautolan master, who simply waved one hand. "I'm perfectly fine where I am, thank you."

Anakin nodded at that, then leaned back on the ground himself. They were silent for a time, the two older men waiting for Anakin to speak, as Ranma's eyes drifted back down to the funeral pyres again. To Anakin and Kit, their losses had been bad, but completely understandable given the nature of their enemy, and the prize they had one.

To Ranma, those losses were friends, men and women that he had come to know and like. Men and women, he had agreed to train, and whose skills had, despite being fantastic, had not been up to the numbers they'd faced here.

As if he'd sensed Ranma's thoughts Anakin spoke up seemingly on a random topic. "I looked at some of the bits and pieces of the droids that were left over. That new type? I found at least a dozen serial numbers on it. But most of them are Techno Union stuff, they have this style to their gear, I guess. The others are called Magna Guards. I found the name on the inside of their chest plates. I think I can figure out who actually designed them eventually, if that's any help in the future. It's funny though, their learning and adaptation nodes in their computer brains, are much larger than anything I've ever seen before."

"What does that mean translated into normal speech?" Ranma asked, pulling at her long ruby red hair. As she had grown during her time here in this universe, Ranma's hair in his female form had darkened considerably, and Ranma now knew if she had ever seen her mother again, the family resemblance would've been impossible to miss.

"It means they'd be able to learn to a far greater degree than most droids. Frankly I have to wonder if maybe they got the idea of watching HK in action."

Ranma snorted. "And did you mention that to him?"

The droid had been assigned to guard the injured, which rather neatly also put HK in range of the surprisingly chipper Dralshy'a as she healed in the bacta tank. Ranma was now interested to see what ideas the two of them could come up with, and in no mood whatsoever to try to mitigate the carnage they would no doubt cause in the future.

"No thank you I'd like my limbs where they are, well, those I have left anyway," Anakin replied dryly waving the stump of his arm.

His listeners both laughed, and Ranma once more marveled at the job Micah had done with this kid. He watched as Anakin looked down at his stump of an arm, anger, rage, guilt and a lot of other emotions shifting across his face. Ranma would have addressed them, but before he could, Kit was standing up, smiling at Anakin. "Come Anakin, I feel a walk coming on. I always feel a little walking and exercise before some meditation is the world of good."

"Meditation?" Anakin said with an eye roll.

"Yes indeed, although I think you'll find my version of meditation, especially on the topic we will be discussing will be rather different."

The two Jedi nodded to Ranma, who nodded back, as she went back to staring out around them.

She didn't turn as a rustling reached her ears simply smiling and grasping Shaak's fingers as they wound around her own. The familiar feel of her montral tapping against the top of her head made Ranma smile. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Drawn, exhausted, somewhat fulfilled at the moment. I have been using Force Light in order to try to mitigate or dissipate the Dark Side energies that linger within that place. I've had quite a bit of luck, but it is hard work."

"And Ahsoka?" Ranma asked, leaning up to kiss her crimson-skinned wife on the cheek, then the lek nearer her.

"She is understandably distraught. While we Jedi are always taught not to form attachments, for they open us up to emotions, she is both young, and I certainly haven't been pushing her to become an unemotional robot," Shaak said dryly. "Ahsoka has not been exposed to death before this, save on our Shili after the Wedding Disaster. And there beyond Master Yaddle, she hadn't gotten to know any of our dead. This time around, Micah was not only well known, but taught her a time or two on Kashyyyk. She was friends with both the Nova Guard and the Mandalorians who died, good friends with several. Ahsoka had even gotten to know the slicers during our trip into the system and nearly all of them were killed as well. It is hard for her."

"You sound proud of that," Ranma queried, turning in their little bower to face Shaak full on, one eyebrow rising in surprise.

Shaak simply smiled back. "I am," she said honestly. "If she was the sort to simply disregard the death of friends, especially at so young an age, she would not be my padawan."

Ranma wondered at the amount of simple joy in that statement Shaak put out. Is that what it's like, to have a single student? Setting that little a mystery aside, Ranma nodded. "And so, she's asking the others about how their cultures deal with it?"

"I gave her that idea yes. After talking about how Jedi deal with death, how we celebrate their lives, and continue to protect the living as they did in their deaths, and we reject grief for its own sake. Grief can all with all too easily lead to anger, at their passing, fear of dying ourselves and from that comes the Dark Side."

"Especially in a place like this," Ranma finished for her.

"Exactly. That is why I have forbidden Anakin and Ahsoka from returning inside for now. I'll let them come back in once I'm done, done… I don't know the word to use."

"Cleansing," Ranma supplied, grimly. "Like getting rid of a cancer, cleaning it out cleansing it from the galaxy."

Shaak smiled at the sheer amount of grim satisfaction she heard in Ranma's voice there. "And you, are you going to get any rest?" Ranma asked.

Smiling serenely Shaak shook her head. "I am a Jedi, I will rest when the job is done."

Ranma scowled, then leaned forward, kissing the other woman hard. Startled by the sudden assault, Shaak didn't respond to Ranma's kiss for a few minutes, but then slowly got into it, their tongues moving in and out of one another's mouths as Ranma took the dominant position, while still in female form. Eventually the redhead pulled back to stare at her Togrutan wife. "Just so long as you take some time for yourself to recharge your batteries okay?"

Shaak nodded laughing, "Do you have an idea in mind?"

The redhead shrugged, gesturing out over the world around them. "Anakin and Kit just left on a little walk, who's to say we can't just take our own later?"

"I'll keep that in mind." With that Shaak pushed to her feet before leaning down and giving Ranma another kiss, although she didn't linger. "That is for later. I have to get back inside to cleanse the fortress. With Obi-Wan and K'Kruhk still in the bacta tanks, I don't want to leave them there. Could you keep an eye on Ahsoka for me?"

Ranma nodded, and watched with a smile on her face as Shaak headed back down to the hanger doors, her rear swaying. When Shaak was gone though, Ranma stood up and headed down herself. She had a young girl to talk to.

OOOOOOO

Kit and Anakin moved through the woodlands around the mountain of Wayland in silence as Anakin's thoughts started to go around and around, back to the battle, and what he had done wrong, and then what he should have done and how it had been his fault his master had died. Eventually Kit broke the silence. "Your thoughts and feelings are being broadcast Anakin. Anger is in there for certain, but so is fear and a lot of guilt. I would've thought that Micah's final words would have dealt with the guilt."

"How could they. It was my fault that he died," Anakin said with a scowl. "If I hadn't gone ahead from the rest of you…"

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps he would've died in another way. The past is the past, second-guessing one's actions is a thing best left to historian rather than Jedi. If this, if that, we Jedi deal in the reality, not what could have been." Kit then grinned, turning his head to look at Anakin to make certain that the expression was seen. "Unless of course you believe your connection to the Force can enable you to time travel?"

Anakin blinked, then surprised himself by smiling back. "Well, I suppose we could theoretically do something of the sort if we got out far enough away from the sun so that we could see the light of yesterday, but even so…" His good humor left him almost as fast as it came. "That wouldn't actually be time travel, and Master Giiett would certainly still be dead."

"Exactly," Kit nodded. "Yet, he was your Master. I'm not telling you to stop grieving. That would be stupid."

The blunt tone of the other Masters voice caused Anakin to bark out a laugh and Kit's smile widened a bit. "But I am going to tell you to let go of your grief and your anger. They serve no one. And after our time here in this mountain, I would have thought that you know that anger itself is a weakness not a strength."

Anakin nodded slowly. "The Dark Side users here, they tried to use their anger, their hate against us. I could feel it always pressing in on my Force Precognition, slowing my movements down. It didn't seem to help them much."

"True. Although I'll warn you that is only because of your, as previously mentioned, profound connection to the Force." The green skinned Jedi smirked. "Myself, K'Kruhk, and the rest have experience against similar feelings. In the case of Shaak and Ranma, extensive experience. Very extensive experience."

He broke off then as he spotted what he had been looking for: a tiny stream with a fast-flowing current that carried them into a larger river down below. Excellent.

He sat across from Anakin with the stream between them and the rain still coming down above as he pulled out what looked like paper from somewhere. "Where did you get that? You have pockets hidden under your robe?" Anakin asked confused by the small mystery.

"No, but while Shaak decided to emphasize her training in toughness and durability, I wasn't able to do so to the extent she did. On the other hand, I did travel with Master Fay, and between us, we were able to discover another way of using a Living Force. Expanded pockets are an amazing invention, actually better in a way then the durability training sense. After all, until you take that talent to the point where you can stop a lightsaber blow, you are still vulnerable." He touched his arm ruefully remembering how he had lost the limb and how Master Fay had reattached it on the living planet. "Trust me, and that point is extremely hard to reach."

"The locals seem to have figured it out. I remember one or two of them stopping my lightsaber blows with the arms and feet at one point." That had been a little surprising and nearly cost Anakin's life at the time, although it had happened so fast at the time that it hadn't really registered.

"Yes, that's one of the things were going to have to look into here. If the Sith figured out a way to somehow heighten the repulsor-based toughness training adapting it for the Order could be a major boon. In any event, that is neither here nor there. We are here to speak about Micah Giiett. His life and his legacy… i.e. you."

"Ah, I…" Anakin floundered as he watched Master Kit's deft fingers work on the piece of paper. "Um, does that mean, am I to be a Jedi Knight now? Or will I have to find another teacher."

"Have to find a teacher? No. But do you think you are ready to be a Knight?" Suddenly, the Nautolan's eyes were locked on Anakin's, a pressure building up between them as the other Jedi brought his Force powers to bear.

Anakin knew that he couldn't lie, not to himself, and not to the other Jedi as he looked at him like that. "No," he said, forcing the word out despite a last vestige of his habitual arrogance trying to stop him. "No, I don't think I'm ready for that. Maybe I would've once thought that way, but Master Giiett, he taught me that simply relying on the Force and a good connection with it is not enough to become a Jedi Knight. Every mission we went on, I learned there was still so much more to learn."

"Tell me about that," Kit requested, his tone light and friendly as his fingers worked on the paper. "Tell me about your first mission with Micah. And the lesson you learned from it."

"Hah! That's easy, my first lesson? No matter how good a starfighter pilot is, he's always vulnerable when he sets his plane down. We were taking out a band of pirates at the time, but we didn't realize that the local mayor…" From there, Anakin expounded on the tale, which became a lesson in overconfidence.

After he finished speaking, Kit set the little paper fish into the river. It actually hadn't been paper at all, but some kind of plastic that was a malleable as paper as well as being waterproof. The stream pushed the little fish through the water down away from them. Anakin watched it go and missed Kit pulling out more of the substance, his fingers already moving over it. "And what happened next, you spent quite a few years I believe on Ryloth. Why? What were you doing there?"

Several hours passed like this, with Anakin watching Kit make these odd little fish, and eventually joining in, while going over his memories of Micah. He covered the good times, the bad times, and most of all the laughter and the learning. Kit interjected at times with his own memories of Micah who Kit had met several times before, and his own former master, long dead now, killed in a riot in the Core World of time a tale finished Anakin felt his grief lightening, the memory of his time with the man destroying his grief at the at Master Giiett's passing.

And finally they talked about this mission and what he had learned here. Anakin held up a final, far larger fish, that the two of them had built together, combining their efforts. "I… I have learned that the strength the Dark Side can bring you is fake. Anger, hate, the emotions exist, but the power they give, is just a fast power up, like a weld on a ship's torn armor rather than replacing the piece of damaged armor."

Kit nodded having gotten used to the way the younger man spoke, frequently dropping in engineering similes when he talked about the Force and his lessons. "Exactly. That is the greatest secret of the Dark Side, the one those who use it refuse to understand. That there is no strength to be found in the Dark Side. Strength comes from within, from control, from will, and fighting for others. It is only when these come together that a Jedi can truly be as good as he can. And that is Micah's final lesson to you. Remember his last words, and always be wary of arrogance and how it can lead to the Dark Side."

With that, he moved his hands away from the fish that Anakin was holding. Anakin took a deep breath, feeling his mind and soul centering themselves in the Force, before he then released the fish into the water.

He fell silent watching it for a moment before Kit's voice pulled his attention away. "Excellent, now, let us see about your lightsaber skills. I saw you in battle of course, but even a Jedi cannot analyze another's abilities during such a situation. Or at least, I can't."

Anakin grinned and leaped backwards, heading towards a nearby tree, which he kicked off, coming back in as his lightsaber flared from where it was suddenly in his remaining hand pulled from his belt by the Force. Despite his speed though he found his blade intercepted by the green of Kit's own lightsaber, before he was forced to dance away, then back again at Kit's wild lightsaber style threw off his stride. Still, he leaped away, bouncing up into the foliage, forcing Kit to follow them, where the two clashed and clashed again, the *thrum* and *SPZZ* of lightsaber combat filling the forest.

Below them, the giant fish made its way downstream. It moved slowly, serenely, like a promise given form.

OOOOOOO

Later that very evening, Ranma forced Shaak out of the mountain once more, threatening to drag her out by her leg if she didn't come with them. The two of them, with Ranma still in his female form – the Jedi all said it might rain again – as the two of them left Wayland, heading out deeper into the untamed, undiscovered forest.

About halfway through the night, Shaak and Ranma had hunted down a small predator of some kind. It had four large primary limbs like any other four-legged animal, and two secondary limbs on its back. It looked almost silly, but it was fast, able to change direction on a dime, had large fangs and also seemed to spit acid.

That caused them both to wonder if it was an even edible after killing it, but Ranma shrugged the worry away patting his stomach. "I'll eat first. After living with she-who-could-not-cook for so long, I'm pretty much immune to poisons and anything else."

Shaak chuckled at that. "I think next time we meet up with any Wookiees, I'm going to have to try to start an eating competition. It would be amusing to see, which of you can take more spice."

"Their spices and meals routinely burn the throats of humans, don't they?" Ranma asked idly, like someone commenting on the weather. "Sure, that sounds like an interesting challenge."

Shaak leaned into her from behind as Ranma turned to cut into the animal kissing her on the back of her neck underneath his pigtail. "Thank you, I needed this after spending most of a day inside that mountain."

Ranma's smile widened so much that she could practically feel it from behind her, and she replied, "No problem, wife of mine."

At that, Shaak's own smile widened, and she nipped at her skin with the sharp teeth that was a hallmark of the Togrutan people. Then both of their stomachs rumbled as one, and Ranma's laugh rang out through the woods. "It looks as if our lords and masters have decreed they must have their sacrifice first before any of our own fun time," Ranma joked looking over her shoulder at Shaak and licking her lips ostentatiously.

She smiled back and the two of them worked together to skin and start roasting the animal over a fire, trying different spices that both of them carried in their ki space with bits and pieces of the meat. At the same time, Shaak's Force senses became aware that they were no longer alone. "Ranma…"

"I see them, yeah, they're not nearly as good as those six-armed fellows were at keeping hidden, are they?" Ranma hadn't been able to detect the Myneyrsh until they launched their ambush, and even after that the Jedi and Ranma still had trouble detecting them and their presence in the Force. These though, well while they were decent enough for barbarians, that wasn't actually saying much.

The next instant, several of the aliens they'd fought in the mountain appeared all around them, growling angrily, their spears pouring together to. "Peace, please," Shaak said, using the Force to make her words understood as well as injecting her intent into the minds of the Psadans. We are not here to steal your land, we are not here to fight or anything else. If we have entered your domain, we will simply leave."

Instead of even letting her respond the aliens charged, while she was still talking one of them shouting out, "Kill the users of the blades of light that are not the holy red! The Lord of dark who gave us land will reward us for their lives!"

Moments later, Shaak stood back with a laugh. She and Ranma dealt easily and very swiftly with their Psadan attackers who had neither the durability of their fellows who had been experimented on within the mountain, nor any of the swiftness of the Myneyrsh, which had made them dangerous. She looked over from where she had knocked down two of them with a Force Push, keeping them on the ground with ease, having slashed their primitive spears into pieces with her blade.

Shaak stood back waiting for the local's next move, but the others weren't even looking at her in favor of staring at Ranma. She was currently tossing one of the bipedal rhino-like primitives up into the air with one hand and catching it.

"Does anyone else wants to try to fight us?" Ranma asked still tossing her poor victim up and down.

When Shaak translated this via her Force powers, the Psadans rapidly shook their heads. "Good. There's not gonna be any more talk about us being enemies from beyond the sky or the enemies of the lord of Dark right? Although that part might be true, in your case we're not your enemies, unless you make us your enemies. Okay?"

Again the rapid head shaking and Ranma nodded, caught the Psadan that she had been tossing up and down one last time and set him on his feet, even going so far as to brush some dirt from the creature and straighten up the jerkin he was wearing. "In that case, get lost." she finished, almost pleasantly, although there was nothing pleasant about the giant head technique she used at the same time to emphasize the point. In his female form this made Ranma look like a redhaired demon and looked much scarier than it did in her male body.

The rest of the locals scrambled away and Shaak let loose another laugh, the sound like tinkling bells to Ranma's ears. "That, I don't know, was that little too close to bullying?"

"We tried to talk them down, and then they attacked us, not the other way around," Ranma said.

"True," Shaak said, her concerns ameliorated.

"And…" Ranma said as she moved over, hugging the other woman from behind. "I take it you're feeling better?" she whispered, her voice low and almost shy, yet also affectionate.

Shaak hummed, then twisted around in Ranma's grip, leaning down and kissing her ardently.

Later, as they were cuddling naked underneath another strange local tree, Shaak murmured, "Now I'm feeling better."

Ranma laughed, but her laugh broke off in a moan as one of Shaak's fingers gently strokes down her wet core. Soon enough the two of them were going for another round as Shaak took the initiative once again.

They didn't return to the mountain, until late the next morning, where they were met with a smirking Kit and Janice at the entrance. "Damn if the two of you aren't glowing," Janice quipped. "After-combat sex is the best isn't it?"

"Er, I'd say any kind is great so long as it's with the right person, but that's just me," Ranma replied. "Whatever floats your boat Janice."

"Ouch." Janice mimed being shot while the others laughs.

"Far be it from me to tell the two of you what you can or can't do at night, but next time I think you need to take a communicator with you. We were just told by Anton, who I just had to force to eat some actual food rather than a caffeine stick, has cracked some of the damaged files. A lot of it still encrypted, but he says he's got a starting point," Kit interjected.

All levity banished from Shaak and Ranma, and the four of them hastened inside the mountain, heading down into the bowels towards the command center, with Ranma making a quick stop over in the Wild Blade to grab up a bulb of hot water.

In the command center they found the others, already sitting around the slicer at his position. "It's about time," Anakin groused.

A second later, Ahsoka smacked him upside the head. "Quiet! You're a padawan, you don't get to tell Jedi what they should do, especially not a married couple. Especially not if you're just jealous, which you are."

"Enough children," Shaak said shaking her head at them both. "Anakin, you were out of line to take that tone with us, so long as our friend didn't tell you something that was time sensitive. Being anxious and annoyed at the drop of a hat isn't exactly a good sign for her self-control."

Anakin scowled, but shooting a glance towards Kit, subsided as Kit simply nodded once to him. "I apologize, I'm just a little antsy at the moment, I mean we've done a lot of good here obviously, but is it going to last is the question. Are we going to figure out who the Sith really are from this? Because it obviously wasn't the people we killed here."

"We can only hope, although if you recall we were already told a hint that might eventually lead us to who the Sith are, or at least the planet he is currently hiding on."

With that, Ranma splashed herself with a cup of hot water, changing forms into his male body, and sprawling out next to the now incredibly startled and gasping slicer. "Oh right, you hadn't seen that before, did you? We were so careful about it when we arrived here. Well, cold water changes me into a girl, woman now I suppose, hot water changes me back. My male body's my original, and no, nothing else changes. Now can we continue? What have you found?"

Ranma was getting sick of explaining his curse by this point. Next time I'll not explain it at all, I'll just act surprised or blame it on the water or something. Anything to shake up that freaking data dump I have to give.

Shaking his head at that, the slicer turned back to his work. "Right, coding, right, things that don't change at the drop of a hat, like worldviews or how the galaxy works, or where the hell does her body mass…" he struggled for a moment, breathing in deeply. "Right, sure yes. Anyway… um, since we were able to take so many of the laboratory computers intact, that gave me a good starting point to figure out bits and pieces of the main computer data core the parts, which dealt with the well the experiments and… stuff… in there. I've cracked all of that open."

With a few key taps, he brought up several lists, displaying them one after another on the screen in front of him. "Er, I'm not going to look at the experiments again, that's just… no. I looked at one, and that was enough. If you all want to look at the details, I suppose Jedi have stronger stomachs then we mere mortals. But this is a list of the experiments and the things that…"

"I apologize for interrupting but what is that?" K'Kruhk queried, pointing to one line on one list.

The slicer enlarged that list saying, "It looks as if this is connected to the experiments they ran on those Terentatek." The man shuddered, remembering how he had seen one of those things tear apart two of his fellows as easily as someone else would be able to pull a claw off a crustacean.

"Yes, I can see that, but those are names, aren't they? Surely they didn't name the creatures," K'Kruhk replied.

Ranma walked over to the nearby communications panel, linking to Tune in the Wild Blade where it was sitting half in, half out of the hangar bay. "Tune, I'm going to read off a few names to you. See if you have them in your astrogation databanks, will you?"

"Affirmative master," said the voice from his communications device. Tune had not liked being forced to rely on hardline cables to Ranma's wrist computer in order to communicate with words and had refused to leave his small insert in the cockpit of the Blade ever since Ranma had dropped him off there before their assault.

After a moment of reading the names off, Tune came back. "Master, they are all known empty systems. Systems without planets around brown dwarf stars with no known local resources or anything else to draw exterior development."

"Other asteroid bases," Shaak declared, instantly getting the connection. "Other places where they were breeding the Terentatek, places where they could be sent from and if they were discovered, they would still have the samples here in Wayland."

"That's an awesome start. Send that list to Tune," Ranma ordered. "Tune, look for any other star system names throughout this information, tell me if you find any."

This took several minutes, while the Jedi had the slicer bring up some information about the experiments themselves. Looking over the information disgust became plain on every Jedi's face, and Shaak instantly sent Ahsoka away, ordering them to join HK by the doorway. In particular the way the way the bugs were created was horrifying, dealing as it did with torture and corpses, and after hearing a tiny bit of that Ahsoka went without protest. Anakin looked as if he too wished he could have been sent away after that bit.

That was enough for Ranma to try and ignore the rest of that conversation. He actually began to hum to himself in order to drown it out.

After a few minutes Tune's voice came back, cutting through the discussion around the Jedi, which the slicer was very thankful for. Both he and several of the Jedi themselves were looking very green around the gills which was not a good look for any of them besides Kit, Ranma reflected. "Master, we have three other systems mentioned here. One of them is Vjun."

"Search for that entry," Ranma ordered turning back to the slicer, "Vjun."

The Jedi read off the experiments that had occurred on Vjun, shaking their heads in disgust. A local group of scientists called the Mecrosa Order had been turned subtly into a Sith cult, worshipping the Dark Side. They performed experiments on themselves and unwilling patients in order to see if they could rediscover how a Sith Lord named Karness Muur had created what was called a Rakghoul virus. The experiments had succeeded somewhat in driving its victims insane, although they failed to discover a way to change the infected physically beyond a certain point. But there was no way to control it, the virus had escaped, and the planet had quickly become infected from one end to the other, including the people who had created it.

"An entire planet sacrificed, for a failed experiment to re-create some other Sith's strange Force 'spell'," Shaak said shaking her head. "The Sith truly are evil aren't they."

It does seem to go with the territory," Ranma replied, a snarl on his own face. "From what I know of their code it might seem like it's a somewhat understandable idea, but eventually if those emotions are all you listen to, your empathy for other people goes away, and without empathy, all you are is a monster. Anything else Tune?"

"Two other planets master, one of them is Korriban."

Kit nodded. "The Sith home world, an obvious place to perform experiments."

"One is unknown to me, Osiris. When I view the names on a visual screen however, that name is black, so that could mean that the experiments there were canceled. The last system name I have been able to find though is another place we have been, albeit years ago. Tatooine."

"Wait what," Anakin barked, coming upright from where he had just begun leaning against the wall in shock. "There was a Sith experiment on my home world?"

"Yes," both the slicer and Tune replied, with the slicer already pulling up the relevant data. "This is one of the bigger files on here, it's actually a voice recording."

A moment later, a voice came in over the intercom. It was deep, sonorous, old too to Ranma's ears, and though there was nothing obviously evil in it, there seemed to be something 'off' almost with the way the individual who had been recorded was speaking, a kind of inflection that set Ranma's teeth on edge. "This is the final recording of Darth Plagueis on my attempt to create a vergence in the Force. It will be stored in my own Sith holocron, and in the studies 'the Science of Creating Life, and 'Manipulating the Force on the genetic level'."

Those words caused Shaak's eyes widened, and she glanced over towards Anakin who also had stiffened. Ranma hadn't, which Shaak supposed he might be forgiven for: forgetting a single conversation they had with Qui Gon Jinn on the Tatooine years ago. Nearly going on six years now she thought to herself, shaking her head and staring straight ahead as a recording of the voice continued.

"Through manipulation of Force particles, I attempted to create life. This area of the Force, I label it the anima, is an area which the Dark Side would never normally be able to touch. But I have attempted to do so through my mastery of the internal workings of the body. The process left me drained and is… inconclusive. I suspect that the vergences has been created, yet it will be many months before the gestation period of this human woman will allow me to see for certain. Unfortunately, there has also been a backlash from the aperion, what others would call the Unifying Force. It is almost enough to make me believe the Force has an overarching Pneuma of its own. A horrifying thought, as it would negate any aspect of self-choice. Or perhaps not."

The voice paused then, almost like an absent-minded scientist having to drag his mind back to the topic at hand. "At any rate, the backlash has taken the form of the deteriorating health of my other experimental subjects. Many of them have died for no biological or medical reason I can discern, while this woman, a slave chosen at random from a nearby world, remains alive. Perhaps her will is strong, perhaps it is the new life within. Regardless, she too is fading. I will attempt to keep her alive, but if the Force itself, or the aperion, does not wish me to succeed, then I doubt even my mastery of the Dark Side will be enough."

There was another, longer pause and then the voice spoke again. "Addendum to the last statement. I have kept the woman alive for three months, enough time to see if my attempt to create a vergence took. There is no sign of it in her. Something has changed within her, her presence in the Force has changed, but there is no sign of her being pregnant with the Vergence. Over that time not only have all my experiments died, but so too have hundreds of people around the planet, struck down by sudden maladies from nowhere. It is clear now the aperion is actively against the artificial creation of a vergence. I have decided to discontinue the experiment. I will release the human female in the nearby town and leave this ball of sand. This line of experimentation is a failure, but there are others still available to me.

Anakin had fallen into shock by this point, just staring at the screen his eyes wide and his jaw slack. Seeing this Ranma put an arm around his shoulders, shaking him. "Easy there, kid."

"I, how can you say that?!" Anakin freaked out. "I just found out I was a kriffing experiment by a Sith! I think I'm going to be sick…"

"Don't," Kit said firmly, coming over to grab at Anakin's other shoulder. "You might have been born that way, but you are no experiment! You are no controlled creation. Your choices are your own, your mind is your own." He suddenly smiled widely. "All this means is that you have no mysterious father out there that could pop up at any time to confuse the issue. Wouldn't that have been horrifying."

That astonishingly made Anakin chuckle, shaking his head. "All right, I can sort of understand that I guess but, I mean…"

"The best way to thumb your nose at your creator would be to do all you can to wreck his plans, and those of the Sith as a whole," Shaak added, with K'Kruhk and even Ahsoka nodding in agreement.

Anakin slowly nodded, then his nod became firmer as he went on. "Okay, okay. I'm calm… sort of. That is going to take some getting used to. But you're right. I am not a creation. I am a Jedi. And I will not let the Sith win."

Ranma smacked him on the shoulder with a smile. "Well said."

"Is there anything else that can you can tell us about any experiments that might be going on elsewhere?" K'Kruhk asked.

"No," Tune replied for the slicer. "I don't see any other names on here at all, let alone names of known systems.

"There are a few experiments on here that don't have anything to do with the Dark Side I don't think, but they are well beyond my knowledge. An artificial hyperspace corridor? I've heard of that kind of research before, but there is an actual design for something like that on here, although it would be insanely expensive to build. A few other things, a massive dreadnought, other experiments in computer technology and stuff like that, which is revolutionary," the slicer said, sounding enthusiastic once more before shaking his head as he remembered K'Kruhk's original question. "Beyond that, nothing."

Ranma nodded slowly, then looked at the slicer closely. "Let me guess, that bit was the easy part."

The man nodded dully. "Exactly, the rest, the rest like I said is just garbled junk. I don't have any kind of starting point with any of it."

"Okay, so if you're the only slicer here, how long would it take you to get anything else useful?"

"How many decades do you have?" the man replied bluntly.

"Then it is obvious what our next move should be," Kit said looking around at the others. "We need to reach out to someone, get some more help in here. Maybe even tell someone else about those asteroid bases."

Agreed. We went into that base thinking we would find something important, but we could've just as easily destroyed it from orbit seeing as beyond the Terentatek all we found were Sith artifacts," K'Kruhk said. "Having a Jedi be part of the operation would be enough, I think.

"Let's get in touch with the Balmorrans, use them to pass on messages," Ranma said.

"He's got a point, and frankly, it's a far better idea than us simply sitting here, trying to do all this computer work on our own. Let's face facts, even if Anton tried to teach us, among us all, Anakin's the only one who has any kind of head for or engineering at all. Unless…" Shaak turned to look at the heretofore silent HK.

The combat droid stirred shaking its head from side to side. "Annoyed Grumble: Mistress, I might be a superior electronic brain, but that doesn't mean I am an expert at date retrieval or code-cracking. If the code was based on droid cant, perhaps I could be of use in this non-violent endeavor. As it is, that is not the case, which I am most grateful for."

"Then there's only one question: should we use the Hypercom here on Wayland to signal out?" Ranma asked. "Do we think the Sith know that we've taken Wayland?"

"Yes," every Jedi there said as one, even Ahsoka. "That shift in the Force," Anakin continued with a laugh, a grim one, and accompanied by a smile that showed far too much teeth, but still a laugh. "That shift in the Force that we felt when we first entered this mountain, that will have warned the Sith that something's up."

"Okay, so secrecy is no longer going to be possible when it comes to our taking this place. The Sith will do two things." Ranma held up a finger. "One, they will either attack here in order to dislodge us, in which case, we'll need help to hold this place as well as help to go through all the wrecked files. Two, they'll hunker down, cut all ties, and bury themselves as deeply as possible."

Shaak instantly agreed with her husband. "Yes. They may toss legions of pawns away in an effort to dislodge us here, that is their normal default action. But they'll also be burying themselves."

"But they won't be able to do enough," the slicer interjected, shaking his head. "I mean like I said after we first took control of the command center it'll take a while, even if we get an entire army of slicers in here but we've got everything in that data core. Months to repair the damage done, months to decode it all, but it's still there. We've got the Hypercom array and know the relay center it sends signals to. We can find them!" he nearly shouted, remembering how his friends had died here, as well as the little bits of the experiments he had looked at.

"I really doubt that there will find a profile of the Sith anywhere in there, or even a recording of his voice. These guys are paranoid to the degree, and besides, why would they even keep that information?" Ranma asked, shrugging his shoulders. "For now though, let's get in contact with Balmorra."

The others all eventually nodded as well, in the slicer shrugged, I got to work on encoding the Hypercom message. A moment later, they were connected to the nearest relay, and from there to the Balmorrans. The Chief Fabricator and Siri Tach stared through the pickup at them and the man spoke up first smiling thinly. "I take it that your mission was a success?"

"We're not going to be on the line for very long, but in a word, yes," Master Shaak said, speaking up for them all as the most senior Jedi there. "I regret to inform you that we took severe losses in our little mission, both among our own troopers and, alas the majority of the technicians you loaned us. But we have targets we would like you and Master Tachi to do something about." With that she gave the names of the four systems that held the Terentatek breeding centers.

"Search those systems thoroughly, and you will find several targets. I stress that these are targets that must be bombarded from orbit. You do not want to take on the creatures that are being created there."

"Understood," the man said while Siri Tachi leaned forward.

"I have to ask, I do not see Knight Kenobi or Master Giiett with you. Were they casualties as well?" her voice was so level, only other Jedi could have detected any hint of concern or worry in it.

Shaak however caught it, and further had an inkling of Siri and Obi-Wan's relationship. "Obi-Wan is alive, but currently enjoying an extended stay in a bacta tank. He will be right as rain given enough time. But Master Giiett has passed on into the Force."

Wincing, Siri bowed her head in acknowledgement and sorrow at that while the man turned grimmer. "That is a sore loss, even if I'm happy the Knight Kenobi survived. "The Republic will no doubt need every Jedi to do their utmost in the days to come."

Hearing that, Shaak frowned. They were so far apart that even with the physical picture to guide her force powers she couldn't get a sense of the man through the Force, but she was somewhat decent at reading body language and facial expressions. "Something has happened. You are far too grim for the information we have shared just now."

"The war's begun. The Confederacy's launched a massive assault on the Republic, several of them in fact." The Chief Fabricator shook his head. "If I had known how big a material difference there was with the forces the Confederacy has built up in relation to the Forces the Republic has access to, I'm not certain I would've sided with the Republic."

Ranma frowned at that making a mental note of it, while Siri simply gave him a glacial look and the man quickly said he was joking. The way the guy spoke there, there was something off about it, something that niggled at his mind.

When prompted, Siri and the Chief Fabricator supplied them with information on what had been going on of late in the rest of the galaxy, and the Jedi on Wayland stared, shock and horror appearing on their faces as Anton opened up a holographic map of the Republic to show were the attacks were occurring. The attacks flared in tiny, malevolent red dots scattered across the map, showing very clearly that in this war, there would be no clear cut lines, no real borders. But even so, some patterns were already emerging.

"We're going to have to do something aren't we?" Ranma asked rhetorically, looking around at the others.

K'Kruhk studied the map, frowning pensively. "Yes, but the question is what. Which battle should we toss ourselves into?"

"Is that even a question?" Anakin nearly shouted, pointing at one of the planets being attacked, one of the known Agri-corps worlds. "We need to save our fellow Jedi!" Technically speaking the members of the Agri-corps were not called Jedi, having not made the power cutoff, or been chosen as padawans, but the sentiment was there.

Shaak agreed, while Kit didn't, arguing that they should reach out to the Order and ask for more information on this secret mission that Mace was on to reach out to the Confederacy. Siri had been told about it in her last update, which had happened just an hour before the group on Wayland called, but she hadn't been told where the discussion was happening. "We need to save Master Windu. That will also possibly allow us to cut the head off the Confederacy. The Jedi on the Agri-worlds will know to hide and survive until they can be rescued. The ambush on Master Windu has given us an opportunity we cannot overlook."

Shaak shook her head. "Who's to say that killing Master Bulq would stop the Confederacy in its tracks. He might have revealed himself to be a Sith, but the individuals under him are all in this for their own gain just as much as they are afraid of him."

"I think we should stay put," K'Kruhk argued. "We are sitting on the biggest real victory we have scored against the Dark Side since the Sith threat revealed itself on Naboo. We cannot afford to lose control of Wayland."

Oddly, Ahsoka was silent not giving an opinion. Instead she was looking torn, unsure what the best option was.

"You're all wrong," Ranma interjected firmly. The others turned to stare at him, as he had been silent since the communication with the two on Balmorra began. He spoke up now though, waving his finger through the hologram of the Republic. And more importantly, the reports coming in from the Corellia sector. "You're thinking short term or just about the Order and the Sith. Kit, Shaak's right, and Master Windu can look after himself. If he wasn't killed in the initial clash, I'll trust that Baldy to stay alive until someone else can rescue him. Shaak, Anakin, Kit's right. The agricultural worlds are mostly wild, so the Jedi there can retreat into the boonies. Right?"

Anakin scowled, but nodded reluctantly, and Ranma sent him a nod before going on. "But the Corellia sector's already seen the worst attack the Confeds have thrown out so far. On Duro, a planet that, for all its industrial power, is a bit player without its relationship with Corellia."

Shaak instantly got it, and breathed out, "A feint. Duro wasn't their main objective on that front."

"Right. All war is deception, a famous philosopher on my world said that once. You have to deceive your opponents, get them to assume you're weak where you're strong, attacking where they expect, while striking elsewhere, and always remembering how you can win the war, not just a battle. Corellia is where the main attack is going. And," he went on overriding Anakin's budding protest as he tapped the symbol for Corellia itself, "even if you think only in terms of the Order, the Green Temple's in Corellia."

Ranma looked at the Jedi sternly. "That's the only way to stop the Confederacy from simply going on the attack constantly. We smash in their noses, we shatter their ships, we make it bloody. Not just to stop them, but to also show them what we think of, of FUCKING atrocities."

While Ahsoka jumped at the sudden shout and Anton flinched, the Jedi simply nodded. "I agree. But, I believe that we should leave Cro and Anton here, as well as the two injured Mandos. Obi-Wan is still in the bacta tank. K'Kruhk, I believe you should stay as well as Anton to continue his work. You will be under command of the defense of the mountain," Shaak said, her tone ending any attempt at debate anyone might have been thinking about raising.

"And," Ranma said grinning suddenly banishing his earlier rage. "I think that makes our decision of how to get some help in here for us." He looked over at Cro, who straightened from where he and Janice had been talking quietly amongst themselves. Both of them were ground pounders for preference, not for either of them was this talk of grand strategy or even space battles. "If we called in the Nova Guard, how many of your regiments would you be able to get here quickly?"

"The speed question is one more for Tune than me. But we have rate fifteen regiments ready to go at any point, including transport," Cro replied.

"And if you can get a few of those regiments here, can you hold this place?"

Cro snorted, an odd almost saxophone-like sound coming from his specie's larger than human nose and through his respirator helmet to boot. "Be serious! There's nothing wrong with the outer defenses in the mountain save for the damage we did to them and we didn't destroy many of the batteries. There is even the planetary shield generator. With that, the outer defenses, they'll have to go overland rather than try to bombard us from orbit. We could hold out for months, easy. We even have four of your Katana-class cruisers."

By unspoken agreement, everyone who knew about the Katana fleet had dropped the original class label. The term dreadnaught was for a certain size of ship after all, not a class of ship which, while decent, were not nearly that big or dangerous.

"On top of that. We're not the only ones in this fight. I think it's time for the Mandalorians to get involved," Ranma said looking over at Janice.

She smirked at him giving him a thumbs up. "Hah! I bet Bo-Katan's just waiting for the call. In fact, I have to wonder if she and the rest of the Reborn aren't already on the move.

OOOOOOO

Master Dooku stood on the bridge of the Katana class heavy cruiser Errant Soul as it flashed through space, swatting aside the scattered starfighters that had been holding station above the moon that was their current target. "There appears to be no capital ships in orbit, am I correct in that assumption?"

"You are," said one of the Mandalorians nearby, the captain of the ship. Like all the others, being away from their own territory and more importantly with war imminent, all of them were wearing their helmets so Dooku had to rely on the different colors marking individual Mandalorian's armor to tell their rank. In point of fact Dooku was the only person aboard this ship that wasn't wearing beskar. It was one of the tenants in the Resol'nare: to always be ready for war, to protect yourself and those of your clan. "I don't know why, the debris we found a few moments ago indicates that there should be at least one Lucrehulk class somewhere around here, but it isn't in orbit."

"Despite their vast amounts of buildup in material, I rather doubt that such vessels can be used…" Dooku broke off, staring at the distant planet on the other side of the moon. "I stand corrected." The enemy capital wasn't launching starfighters however, instead, it was simply moving directly towards them. Hubris, or lack of starfighters? Regardless, their hubris is well founded.

The Mandalorian captain, who had never given Dooku his name, shook his head. "Sir, we can't tangle with that thing. Even if we had three or four more heavy cruisers with us, it would only be in even fight if you took the Vultures of that ship out of the equation. Alone, we won't even hurt that ship."

"Understood captain, but can you keep their attention on you, while you drop myself and a few of your Mandalorians off?"

Even though his face wasn't clear through the mask, Dooku knew that won him a scowl from the other man and knew the reasoning behind it. In normal circumstances, the captain of the ship would leave the Errant Soul in orbit in the hands of his second-in-command in order to lead the ground team personally. That was part of the Resol'nare just like wearing their beskar. To Mandalorians it was far more honorable to face your enemies in infantry style combat. One on one bouts were even better but saved for specific circumstances.

Eventually the captain's professionalism won over his own desires for personal honor, and he nodded. "We can send you down in the impact shuttle Sir, although picking you up is going to be a treat."

"Understandable captain and thank you once more for your help."

The Mandalore grunted something inaudible through his helmet and turned back to his control console. After all, just because they really didn't have much of a chance against the far larger, far heavier armed, far more heavily shielded and durable ship, wasn't any reason not to give it his all. Especially since it still wasn't launching Vultures for some reason. That gave his ship a chance to at least get away.

Not two minutes later, Dooku was sitting in a small very cramped troop transport. It was nominally for a full company of Mandalorians, but most of that size had actually gone into ablative armor, so it could be shot at a planetary atmosphere like an overlarge missile and hit the ground at speed without actually damaging any of its internal systems, although it's forward mounted quad cannons would be ruined, leaving it's four top mounted quad lasers to give covering fire upon takeoff. It was crude, almost primitive, but very much in keeping with the Mandalore ethos in terms of their orbital drop tradition: fast, hard, and on target.

And at the moment, considering that speed was of essence, Dooku had no problems with any of that.

The co-pilot turned around in his chair, his helmet's visor glinting slightly off the overhead lighting as he looked at Dooku, "We're about to be launched sir. Do we have a specific landing zone to target?"

"I'm afraid not, lieutenant." The man's actual rank was something more along the lines of squad leader or company leader, which amounted to a single word in the Mandalore language but Dooku had made a point of not learning too much about the Mandalore language, the Mandalorians tended to get somewhat twitchy when he tried. At the same time, his study of the Resol'nare had gained him some respect. It was an odd dichotomy, but one Dooku had gotten used to long since.

"So… we're going for by gas and by gosh then?" the pilot asked, his tone sardonic as he too turned his helmeted head around to look at Dooku.

"Certainly not," Dooku huffed, unclipping himself and moving forward to take the controls from the copilot, closing his eyes. "You do after all have a Jedi with you, and it is Jedi that we are going to be saving down there."

There were some grumbles at that from the squad behind him, but not many. Dooku had won quite a lot of respect among the Mandalorians over the past few years, and all of them knew that they were in an alliance with the Jedi, primarily to get their had hands on the abilities Ranma had shown them, but also to have, honestly speaking, an excuse for war. Dooku had slowly started to have a few doubts about the efficacy of this alliance in the long term for a few reasons:

One, there were actually far more Mandalorians than the Jedi Order had thought there could be even near to a thousand years after the Dral'Han. They been able to man an entire flotilla's worth – twelve ships - of Katana class heavy cruisers and raise several armies worth of Mandalorians on top of that, while also providing themselves with several fighter wings. Those numbers came from an entire sector, but the speed with which that sector came together once the message of the Reborn began to spread, was astonishing. The sector itself was in no way an industrial powerhouse, and they would have a lot of work cut out for them, reclaiming planets and bringing them up to whatever kind of economic level they could. But even so the numbers that they had even now, barely three years after Bo-Katan took the helmet of Mandalore, was telling.

Second, there was a fierceness, a fiery determination in the Mandalorian's culture, one built for expansion, both as an ethos and as a society. Dooku was profoundly grateful that the changes to that ethos the Reborn had created spread as it did. But if the Mandalorians were ever to shift back to their previous incarnation, then the Jedi, and Ranma, might well have created an even worse enemy for themselves.

They hit atmosphere then, and Dooku's idle thoughts banished as he started to use the Force to direct the ship. It was shaped like an armor covered arrowhead with a blunt tip, the tip always angled down towards the ground.

"You do know we're heading to crash into a forest, right?" One of the Mandalorians behind him pointed out.

He sounded young, and Dooku could already hear the gentle teasing of his fellows begin. "I do know that yes, young one," he replied calmly, his voice cutting through their words. "That's precisely where we need to be. If you haven't already done so I suggest you strap in."

He heard the fumbling behind him and the chuckling and teasing getting worse. Then there was silence, as they came into range to see the fight below, their own speed picking up as they did.

OOOOOOO

In the forest, after a night spent hiding as best they could through Force Stealth and Force Cloak, the surviving members of Windu's party had found their positions compromised by heat seeking droids, which in turn had called in the Magna Guard. Now they were once more surrounded by thirty Magna Guard, Asajj, and Sora Bulq. The two Dark Jedi were nowhere to be seen, not having found them just yet with their own groups of Magna Guard, but the thirty in front of the four of them were probably enough on their own without the two Sith added to the equation.

Even so, Mace did not let the odds effect his stern, unyielding demeanor. He stood in front of the other three, creating a point to their diamond formation that faced towards Sora. "It is not too late, you can still come back to the light and turn away from the Dark, Master Bulq. You felt it, you felt the tearing of the Veil. The tide has shifted! The Sith have no future now."

"So you say," Sora chuckled, lifting up a lightsaber. It was not the one he had been using before. The hilt of this lightsaber was longer, gently curved like a duelist's blade with a large, spiked tip on the bottom that looked as if it could be used as a blunt object. And when that blade activated, it was crimson in color, matching the twin blades of Ventress to his side and those of the two Dark Jedi, whose names Mace didn't know.

"Kill them," Bulq ordered, pointing the tip of his lightsaber towards Mace.

With that, the Jedi were in a fight for their lives once more. The Magna Guard closed in, each of them almost as good as a fully trained Jedi Knight. Indeed, they were better than most, Mace acknowledged even as he sliced three of them apart. The Magna Guard were fast, agile, quick to learn, but unable to deal with Force attacks, which he had used to freeze those three in place before hacking them apart in a single blow. But they were deadly opponents for the rest of the Jedi who quickly found themselves retreating.

Asajj and Sora closed in hard, concentrating on Mace, coming at him from different angles to force him to twist his head one side to the other in order to keep an eye on both. With the Force that wasn't exactly difficult, and as the battle joined, he defended himself ably, even as he fell backwards towards the other Jedi.

Twist, turn, slash, jump, lightsaber flashing to one side. The next few seconds went like that, brief instances of conscious thought, as Mace gave himself to Form Seven in a way that he had very, very rarely had to do before. The key to Vaapad was to be a mirror, to take the anger and hatred of your enemy, and sort of reverberate it backwards, not just as mirror would but a ripple using the anger of your opponent, to empower your own Force Precognition and rebounding attacks without the user actually feeling those emotions himself.

The problem was that Vaapad had to feed on the anger of the user's opponents, the speed and ferocity and rage that they imbued their own style with redirected. That wasn't happening here. Neither of his attackers were giving into their anger at the moment. Sora was cold calculation and grim determination, burying whatever hate or anger he felt underneath an ice-like control that was frankly a little disturbing to sense in the Force minus his old friend's external mask, matching Mace's Force powers with his own, showing a strength he hadn't had before. Asajj was trying to copy Bulq in his icy control, with only scant success it had to be said and she was concentrating almost entirely on the physical.

But the two of them were doing something that he had never thought a Sith could do: they were working together. Whenever he could get through the defense of Asajj for a blow at her eyes or throat, where she might have been vulnerable despite her toughness training, Sora was there. And he couldn't get through Sora's own defenses as he was defending against Asajj. One on one, Mace was certain he could have beaten each of them eventually, despite the durability they both had shown in their clashes so far against lightsaber strikes. But together…

Mace leaped away, using a Force Grab trying to push Asajj off-balance and into Sora, but Sora simply twisted around, pushing on Asajj's back with one hand heaving himself up into the air after Mace, forcing him to block his blow with his lightsaber. Because he was off balance as he did so, Mace was sent tumbling. He used the tumble, flipping himself around on the ground even as he grabbed at the earth all around them, hurling the loose stone and sand of the moon's surface into the air in an effort to stop Asajj from closing. It didn't work, and she broke through, attacking Mace before he could set himself. "Die Jedi!"

Mace was barely able to get his purple blade up in time to block her downward stroke. For just a second, Asajj made a slight mistake, let a bit of her frustration show, and that enabled his own Force powers to overcome her Precognition in a few seconds of furious assault, battering her twin lightsabers out of the way to either direction, then slashing across her chest, only to narrow his eyes as his blade was once more stopped by her skin. But then, Sora was there once more, his own lightsaber flashing in to nearly decapitate Mace.

A Force Crush reached out even as Mace was forced to dodge, his hand outstretched towards Sora, but Sora simply broke it with an almost contemptuous ease and continued his assault methodically. "You see old friend," Sora said almost casually as he continued his assault, his blows coming fast and certain, none of the pain or fear he had felt yesterday present in his tone or stance, the Weequay having overcome the pain of the Veil's dissipation. "The Dark Side is the stronger."

"If that were true, I would already be dead, and the Veil would still be in place," Mace taunted.

Asajj snarled some kind of response in a language that he couldn't bother to translate at the moment, but Sora didn't say anything, since his communicator just beeped at him.

He frowned looking down at it, and then gestured to several nearby Magna Guard to come in to take his place against Mace as he leaped backwards, Asajj covering him for a brief second before they too engaged the blade master. They had been waiting around the battle, not because they couldn't get involved, but because they seemed to understand that only a few of them could engage the Jedi at any one time without getting in one another's way. During the battles in the forest they had attempted to attack all at once several times, but their ability to work in tandem was limited to only around eight paired individuals at a time. Anymore, and they started to run into issues.

Even so, one of the other Jedi had already fallen, Master Zane having fallen in the defense of Mira who was barely up to defending herself from one Magna Guard at close range, let alone more. Around her Sian Jeisel leaped, twisted and twirled, using a variant of the Soresu mixed in with Ataru in order to try and stop their enemies from surrounding them while Mira concentrated on using her Force powers.

But they weren't actually killing any more of the guard, and for a moment, Mace felt despair. Then, he saw Sora frowning at his communicator before staring up at the sky.

At the same instant he felt the arrival of another Jedi, another powerful Jedi. One who, more than five years ago had also been rushing to his rescue unanticipated. I suppose two times in five years isn't enough to make it a habit, but it is enough to make me very, very thankful for such unlooked for aid.

Asajj was distracted then, and realizing that he couldn't take her down quickly due to her insane durability, Mace used the rebounding effect of their last lightsaber clash to get some distance, and twirled around, one hand raised like a claw at shoulder height before he wrenched it across his body like he was trying to tear a cloth screen. Seven of the Magna Guard were crushed releasing a tortuous sound of bent metal as he crushed them with the Force. "Retreat!" he shouted to Mira and Sian who did so at once leaping backward several hundred yards.

This was good, because at that moment there was fire from above, heavy laser fire slamming down all around. The two Sith and three Jedi were able to shield themselves, or simply get out of the way via Force Precognition, but many of the Magna Guard died. Then ship was slamming into the ground, with enough force to send a shockwave through it, as Master Dooku leapt out from the side of the ship, followed by armored Mandalorians.

The sight of them made Mace blink in shock. He had known for a long time that the Jedi Order had created an alliance with the Mandalorians, but it was still utterly bizarre for a student of history like himself to see Jedi and Mandalorians working together. "Never would I have expected to see this even six years ago."

"Bah, we are the Reborn! And where such as Atin'la Ruug'la Shaan (Mandalorian for Tough old Bastard) we will follow!" shouted one of six of Mandalorians who blasted up into the sky via their jetpacks. Behind them, six more marched out in teams of two, laying down heavy covering fire with squad based weapons, E-web repeating blasters that began to hammer hard against the Magna Guard. Several more of them died, while the others attempted to shield themselves with their cortosis staffs. But while they were deadly in close range, at long range they lacked any ability to reply.

Four of the Mandalorians in the air closed with Asajj, while the remaining two laid down even more covering fire on the Dark Jedi, who had just shown up with their own troops forcing them to retreat. The two of them shifted into a Sith based Shien, battering back the bolts they were coming towards them, and more than one of the Mandalorians went down as Dooku closed, clashing blade to blade with Bulq. "Sora Bulq," he drawled, greetings. "Or I suppose you would have a Sith name now, could you elucidate me as to what it is?"

"I am Darth Tyranus!" Sora said coldly, as he clashed with the other lightsaber Master. "And you will regret ever appearing before me Master Dooku."

"I rather doubt it." The two of them danced back and forth, moving in a straight line first one way, then the other, then around, neither of them taking to the air or using any flamboyant tricks, simply feeling one another out for a moment. That moment ended sharply and very abruptly between one pass in the next as the Master of Juyo and Vaapad took the lead, using his thundering anger and rage at this interruption on his enemy. Now facing an opponent that couldn't use that anger against him he let it loose in a series of sharp twists and slashes, as he leaped around and over the older Jedi.

Dooku remained in place, simply turning with him, seemingly slower than his enemy, yet each strike was blocked by his own green lightsaber. At one point he blocked directly behind him, the blade pressed almost against Dooku's back to block the blow from his enemy. Then he was twisting around, lashing out himself. Five rounds of parries followed, with Tyranus continuing to whirl around Dooku as the older Jedi used the momentum of those blocks to add to his speed and cutting power.

Then as Tyranus took a step, Dooku gestured downwards slightly. "Your footing is adequate at best. You have little of the lower body control that is a necessity to bring a duelist to his finest form."

At those words, something impacted Tyranus' leg, making his footwork just a tiny bit uneven, and in that moment, Dooku attacked like a striking serpent. "A small mistake can cost you tremendously!"

Tyranus was barely able to dodge the third blow in that sequence, and the fifth one slammed into the side of his head but stopped there, forcing Dooku to rebound himself, twirling around several more ripostes, before bringing his lightsaber down in an arc to intersect the other's red blade, halting his momentum. "Interesting, you have gone through the toughness training. I wonder though, do you know that it can be overcome?"

His tone was coolly sardonic, calmly arrogant as he stood across from Bulq his lightsaber up in the salute position before he took a few flickering steps forward, attacking once more in a glorious cacophony of moves thrust, slice dance, moving quickly, easily pressing Tyranus, none of his earlier stolid nature visible now. He was testing me! Tyranus thought angrily, before twisting around the other man lashing out with a kick that was blocked by an upraised knee then pulling out his second lightsaber, the green one he had been using during the initial ambush the day before.

Armed with a lightsaber in both hands he attacked even more fiercely, twisting around and leaping up over Dooku, trying to take him by surprise. He even decided to throw in some Dun Möch. "You will not be the first overconfident Jedi I have killed, not even the first I have killed today. But do you know the first Jedi I killed after becoming a Sith? I believe he was a friend of yours. You, the great duelist should have wondered more about what your friends were up to when you were so busy with the Chaotic Locus. Or else your friends will simply… fade away. As Sifo-Dyas did."

"Ah, trash talk. You do know that Ranma does that all the time, yes? And to a far greater degree than you have so far shown. Pity. As for my old friend Sifo… If he is one with the Force, that is on your conscience murderer, not mine." Even as he spoke though, the Master of Makashi launched a furious assault, that would've made any onlooker gasp in astonishment at the speed and dexterity. His lightsaber first lashed out meeting first one, then the other blade in Tyranus' hands, then down at his leg before ducking down to the side from another blow coming up into a thrust before twirling around again coming in hard.

It should have been impossible for Dooku, who used the traditional dueling Form, to deal with Tyranus as he used Jar'Kai and Juyo in a seamless, aggressive, furiously and above all mobile assault. Tyranus was stronger in the Force, he was far stronger in the Dark Side, and he used that to fuel his Force Precognition and his general abilities. He had trained his body to an insane degree, faster, stronger than any Jedi. Even Windu, he felt, would have eventually been defeated.

Yet, for all of that, Tyranus felt himself being overcome quickly. The old man was simply too fast. His own Force powers was enough to match Tyranus' Force Precognition, but it was Dooku's speed that truly surprised Tyranus, nearly breaking his own concentration on the Force. Somehow the older man was able to impose his own blade between himself, twisting his body this was and that, forcing Tyranus to do a lot of the work, while it was always Dooku pressing in an attack even if Tyranus thought he had a brief advantage. At one such point, the Makashi master capitalized, his blade lashing out through Bulq's defenses. And when Dooku's lightsaber slipped through Tyranus' defenses, it seemed to shimmer, slamming into several minutely different portions of the Sith's body.

After two such blows, Tyranus realized what Dooku was doing. The heat! He knows it isn't just toughness that can make one immune to a lightsaber, but the ability to withstand heat! How Dooku knew he could overcome Tyranus' toughness like that was a mystery but an immaterial one at the moment as he found himself pressed back and further back.

Elsewhere in the fight, Asajj was dueling with the four Mandalorians who had closed with her. She found this tough, since two would close then break off, while the others would lash out with blaster fire. They couldn't do much damage to her, but Asajj in turn couldn't hit them at all.

Instead of capitalizing on this, Mace raced to the aid of his fellow Jedi against the surviving Magna Guard the Mandalorians kept the enemy reinforcements at range. He arrived just in time to save Mira from being decapitated from behind, cutting her attacker down, while the wounded Sian fell to the Magna Guards.

In a desperate effort to get a blow in, Tyranus overextended in a lunge, which Dooku carried past him, his lightsaber up and close to his body as he got within Tyranus' reach. Then to Tyranus' surprise an elbow lashed out catching Tyranus on the side of his head causing him to stumble, the first time Dooku had used his body to back up his lightsaber form. Then Dooku's blade was coming up and around as he bent himself backward to avoid a blow from Tyranus. The dueling master's blade cut into Tyranus' offhand just under the shoulder, cleaving through the already weakened and heated skin.

"Grah!" Tyranus bellowed, before lashing out with Sith Lightning.

Dooku blocked this, redirecting it towards Asajj, who was forced in turn to parry it into the ground, which allowed two of the Mandos to unload their wrist rockets into her. She screamed in pain and shock as the blows landed, blowing her off her feet, but out of the way of the lightning. She was able to get to her feet a second later, much of her clothing gone, but her body intact, and more than one Mandalorian whistled, for various reasons. Despite her training and the tattoos covering her body Asajj was still a good-looking woman.

One of them died a second later as Asajj used the Force to pull her lightsaber toward her through the air, the blade cutting him in two from behind. She grabbed the hilt out of the air a second later, and the then was forced to dodge backward once more as one of the E-Web repeating blasters turned in her direction.

Tyranus had not stopped his Force assault on Dooku during Asajj's wardrobe malfunction, and as Dooku started to move towards him through the Sith Lightning changed tactics, letting the technique end in order to lash out with a Force Grab, then a Force Choke. The first was broken before it could latch onto the older man, but the second got through, the speed of the two attacks surprising Dooku. It latched on around his throat, choking him for a second as Dooku tried to use the Force to pry his enemy's grip loose.

Then Mace was there, leaping down towards Tyranus. Tyranus stopped his attack on Dooku, instead and holding Mace in the air, for a split second before flipping back towards the trees which had remained upright at the edge of the dropships impact zone.

Mace made to go after him, but Dooku, recovered now, grabbed his shoulder with his free hand. "No. There is a Lucrehulk in orbit that might even now be killing our only means out of this system. We need to retreat."

For a moment, Mace's inner darkness, the very spark of combat lust that had made him create Vaapad, came to the fore, railing against retreating now. But the hard, calm nature Windu had schooled into himself beat that part down, and he just nodded, looking over at Mira. "Let's go."

Dooku and Mace were the last to board the ship moving under cover from the Mandos, of whom eight were still alive, the others having fallen to Asajj or returned blaster bolts. They were still staring at Bulq and Asajj in the tree line as the ship blasted off, heading for space.

"Will we need to pick up anyone else?" Dooku asked solicitously.

Mira, Sian and Windu all winced. Mira in particular looked almost like she was about to break down. The former padawan of Sora's was not made for combat, let alone the reality of death and war like this. Worse, she knew she had been a liability throughout this engagement. Mace's simple word of 'no' made her flinch away.

"How many others…" one of the nearby Mandalorians asked, thinking of their own losses in that small battle.

"Too many," Sian replied shaking her head as she wearily slid into an empty seat, nodding in thanks to the Mandalorians on either side of her.

Dooku nodded, as above them the Errant Soul came around the planet at speed, its large hanger bay doors opening. "There will be more before this is all over."

Below them on the moon Tyranus stared up at the retreating ship then turned back to Asajj. "You did well," he said brusquely, his lips a thin line. "Very well. After I am fitted with a new arm, we will hold your ascension ceremony my apprentice. You are worthy of becoming a Darth."

As Tyranus had known it would, this snuffed any thoughts of attacking him in his wounded state out of the other Dark Side user as well as making both Dark Jedi, Tol Skorr and Artel Darc, stiffen in shock and anger at being passed over. They were however mere Dark Jedi, not Sith, as Asajj was and knew it, backed away quickly. "Think of the name you will assume at that point. Think carefully, as it is the name you be known for all time by thereafter."

Asajj bowed deeply, his words washing over her and binding her even more loyally to him, while Tyranus turned away, thinking hard. He would need a clone arm to be prepared for him, which would take many weeks, and then even longer to put it through the toughness training, which would not be pleasant. Especially since it has been proven to be less than the complete defense we had hoped. Too much heat spread too quickly through your body still allows it to be overcome by a lightsaber. Damn it.

Still, Tyranus would have time, while he was convalescing to think about that and about other things. Many things. The shock they had all felt two days ago, the weakening of the Veil, and, perhaps more importantly his observation on this battle. Not on Windu. Windu was a known enemy, an excellent one that Tyranus might well have been overcome by alone if not for the toughness training. No, it was Dooku's intervention that held Tyranus' attention. Or rather, one, specific and very strange observation: Was it just me, or has Dooku somehow not aged from the last time I saw him? Indeed, even if you take the Force into account, it seems almost as if… but that is impossible. Isn't it?

OOOOOOO

The Wild Blade settled into orbit over the large asteroid that Tune had randomly decided to use as their jump off point for the attack on the Confederacy forces, which would be attacking Corellia soon enough. To their surprise, they weren't the first ship to arrive. Five other Jedi-allied ships were there as well along with a starfighter squadron piloted solely by Jedi. Two combat vessels, both were Consular class, which Ranma reckoned to be the equivalent of destroyers, if that. The others were transports holding Master Tiin, Ki Adi Mundi, and two hundred other Jedi Knights and Masters who had been on Coruscant.

While Shaak and Kit were talking with the Jedi – four to a ship – aboard those vessels, they learned that Yoda had figured out the real thrust of the assault into this sector and had sent Tiin and the others. The Iktotchi shook his head in the pickup, gesturing with one hand towards Shaak. "Yet I have been told that I am not in charge of this battle. You, Master Ti, and you Ranma, are. You have the most combat experience of any living Jedi, in space or on the ground and experience trumps book learning."

From his expression no one could tell what Tiin thought of that, but Shaak simply nodded. "I understand, and do not doubt I will be asking you for help in planning the starfighter side of the battle. We will also be asking for help from the Mandalore if she comes herself."

"Which she will," Ranma interjected from where he had been replacing the batteries in his lightsaber. He'd been forced to overload the plasma beams, heating them to an even higher degree than normal in order to cut down those first two Terentatek he had tangled with in Wayland. "Bo missing a set-to like this one, please. Even if she wanted to, she'd never live it down."

About six hours after they first arrived, word reached them via one of the Aethersprites, which had popped out to a nearby system to connect to the Hypercom. Corellia was under attack, and more than half of its available ship strength was still around Duro. The news of what had happened to that planet also reached them, and Ranma's rage at what he thought of as senseless killing was a thing to see, even if it didn't affect the Force around him.

Not fifty minutes later, the Mandalorians arrived. They brought eight heavy cruisers of the Katana class, and their flagship was something even larger, although still smaller than Lucrehulks or other dreadnaughts. It looked like someone had taken a sheath of arrows, then added heavy fins in several different places along its length then shoved it down a manta-ray's throat while the manta ray was up on one wing, before mounting guns literally everywhere they could on it.

Where the thing came from Ranma didn't know, and when he asked, HK and Tune didn't know. "Rueful Appreciation: it looks as if they took several different capital ship designs, smacked them together and then decided to see if the unholy amalgamation could be of use. But it does have an appreciative amount of firepower which makes everything more acceptable."

Rolling his eyes at that, Ranma got ready to leave the ship as Shaak finished guiding the Wild Blade next to the Honor's Cost, the odd battleship. He was not surprised to see a whole wing peeling down to let the smaller starfighters enter. The Wild Blade was just a bit too large to fit inside the hanger forcing them to take the ship's one shuttle over.

When she saw Ranma and Shaak come out of the shuttle with Janice, it was all she could do to click her coms off and keep her squeal to a low enough level that it couldn't be heart outside her helmet. Oh my god they are both wearing armor! And Ranma is even carrying a Mandalorian style helmet. YES, we will make him a Mando'ad yet!

She moved forward at that point, holding out a hand, but wasn't particularly surprised when Ranma pulled her into a light hug, slapping the back of her armor. "Hey Bo, glad you got the message."

"Me too. This should be fun," Bo replied, before she suddenly frowned inside her helmet, looking around them. "But not to put too fine a point on it, but is there a reason you left the rest of your squad behind Janice? And I would have assumed the Nova Guard would want to have sent an observer to our planning session at least."

"Ranma and the others exchanged glances, and Janice twisted around, activating a remote control. Behind them a large lifter came out of the shuttle. On it were the forms of the three dead Mandalorians: Natasha and Thomas held in preservation tanks laid out on the pallet to either side of the helmet and armor of Jethro, the woman slain during the Wedding Disaster part two by the bugs. "I'm afraid that at the moment, I'm the only one of my immediate traat'allit (family squad) on her feet. Kad is in the bacta tank, only luck he survived and Dralshy'a is out of action until the girl fits herself with a robotic arm."

Hearing HK shift to one side and his speaker squeaking Ranma turned and glared his droid into silence. This was a solemn occasion, and his particular brand of humor would no doubt ruin it.

"I see…" Bo-Katan nodded her head slowly, gravely. "Did they die in battle?"

"Yes," Shaak said, speaking before Janice could, her voice low enough so Bo-Katan had to strain her helmet's audio receptors. "Jethro died during a wedding on Shili when the Sith attacked us there, killed by a treacherous weapon. Thomas and Natasha died in our most recent mission, when we attacked a target, the Sith will sorely wish we did not find in the first place, let alone take intact."

Bo-Katan nodded again, her helmet moving up and down with the same ponderous gravity as before. "Good. That will comfort their clans. For now…" she gestured to one side and several men who had been working on a few starfighters came forward, taking possession of the bodies. "They will be looked after in our morgue until we can hand them over to their clan heads. I think most of those are serving with us right now, so it won't be long. But we have important things to talk about. "

In her office, Bo and Janice removed their helmets, with Bo nodding to the other woman and saying formally, "Be welcome in my house, defended by my jirude (arms)."

"My irude will aid in guarding this house should the need arise while I am here." Once Janice was done giving the formal reply, she and Bo embraced like old friends, which they were, then Bo pulled the other woman over to a wet bar on one side of her office.

Moments later they were all sitting around the large table that dominated Bo's office aboard the Honor's Cost, with Ranma and the others giving a very abbreviated version of the battle on Wayland and before that on Shili. Through that tale Bo wore a look of grim approval. It would bring the clans of the dead much honor to have had them be a part of such an assault, one among many since they had won the right to train with Ranma. Although she did have to hide a wince at realizing that yes, it was now as permanent as it was going to kriffing get between Ranma and Shaak. That ship sailed long ago girl. There are other ways to get him into the Mando'a, just look at what he's wearing.

Shaking her head of such thoughts, Bo-Katan told them a bit about what the clans had been up to, then put on her helmet as she received a call from the watch officers, telling her that Master Tiin and a few other Jedi were being ushered aboard. "You and I will have to spar after this campaign's done with Janice, I'd love to see what training with Ranma's done for you. Still, for now, it's time to put our war faces on."

Janice nodded and clamped her own helmet down. While she was fine wearing just her chest plate on the Wild Blade, here in Mandalorian territory, and meeting other Jedi, she would go with her full suit on.

Tiin joined them then, looking around at the others before centering on Shaak and Kit. "I note that you have Master Giiett's padawan with you but not Master Giiett, nor Obi-Wan. I assume there is a tale there."

"You are correct, but I will send you a report of it," Kit replied blithely. "For now, know I have formerly taken Anakin as my padawan. It has been many years since I taught anyone, but I suppose it should be like riding a bicycle. Down an embankment into a gorge, perhaps, but still, like a bicycle."

Anakin laughed, while Tiin tried not to let his eyes roll in response. He had never understood Kit Fisto, not his sense of humor nor his wild, unpredictable nature. But he did respect him, and perhaps a younger master would do well with someone like Skywalker. "Very well. In that case however, perhaps we should talk about why we are here instead of continuing to bandy meaningless words."

The discussion turned serious at that point, while Tiin shared everything they knew about the fleets which were fighting it out across the Corellian Sector. "Master Yoda is certain that the Grand Fleet will strike at Corellia, and I think that is accurate, although it is not what I would do if I were them, especially not since a full day's passed. I would simply leave at this point. There is no way they can hold Corellia, or even do to them what they did to Duro, not with the planet warned."

"Not even with most of CorSec elsewhere?" Bo-Katan asked.

Shaak nodded firm agreement with her old semi-rival. "Besides, you're forgetting that this whole war was started by the Sith. And who do the Sith hate? The Jedi. The Green Temple is their main target. That is why we also felt that Corellia would be their target."

"Fine, but that still doesn't mean we'll have a chance of stopping them." Tiin scowled as he admitted that, but there was no attempt to prevaricate or lie to himself as he spoke. "If they bring more troops in then all we have here will not be enough to even slow them down. The Katana class dreadnaughts are good, but they can't match Lucrehulks, not even five to one."

Shaak was about to reply to that then frowned then as the warning lights flared in the room accompanied by a strident alarm. Before Bo-Katan could do more than rise to her feet though, they both cut off and one of her bridge officers, a lieutenant sitting the watch called in. "Erm, Mandalore and guests, we have new arrivals. Lots of them. Um… I think that our starfighter problems been solved, and then some…"

OOOOOOO

Grievous held back a mad cackle as two-thirds of the Grand Fleet which he had gathered for Operation Anvil, the attack on the Corellia sector, entered the Corellia system. As they exited hyperspace the Lucrehulks automatically began to launch starfighters, wing after wing. Those Lucrehulks were all of the remodeled pure-combat type, and all of them could make any other carrier used in the known galaxy look tiny in comparison both in size and the amount of starfighters they could house.

"Now," he said staring at the tactical screen and the red dots indicating the five inhabited planets of Corellia. "Now, let them fear!"

Elsewhere, the rest of the Grand Fleet had been broken up still further dozens of small groups and one large group. The smaller groups were all on what amounted to annihilation raids, hitting targets that could be struck without too much loss, destroying anything that crossed their path in this sector. Orbital infrastructure, trade vessels, mining equipment, mining installations, in system craft. All of it was fair game for those spoiling raids, while the majority of the other planets in this sector would be left alone. It was after all a Core sector, which meant that every planet within it had large local economy, and planetary shield generators. None of the disparate forces he separated from his main attack force had the amount of firepower necessary to get through such a shield let alone the other defendants' static defenses.

Doing so, coupled with the attack on Duros would have tied up the vast majority of the Corellian security forces. The ships, that massive fleet of large and small refitted freighters, which had been sent to aid against his original large-scale attack, were now pinned there by the need for humanitarian aid. They would be further pinned there by the seven Lucrehulks he had split off to assail them.

Those ships alone wouldn't have been able to break that large an armada of course although they might well have gutted it. No, the Lucrehulks in question would simply randomly jump into the system, launch their starfighters with orders to destroy anything they came across, then they would jump out. It was enough of an ongoing assault to pin both CorSec and Republic attention there on Duros. Coupled with the Confederacy's spoiling attacks on the nearest Ord system, Ord Ramon in the extremely important Humbarine Sector the Republic would be strapped for forces that could get here quickly. And even if they might have otherwise thought to do so, Iblis's decision to remove Corellia from the Republic in this tumultuous time would bite him in the ass.

And with the CorSec forces away, Corellia will only be defended by its in-system ships, still formidable, but not enough. Those that aren't in mothball anyway, Grievous thought, scowling angrily behind his mask as more and more data came in from his starfighters as they ranged out ahead and all around his fleet.

Corellia had been the site of dozens of massive battles in its long, tumultuous history, going back as far as knowledge of Republican history went. Several battles in the New Sith Wars, more in the Great Sith War and undoubtedly more before that, let alone the other numerous small-scale wars always cropped up in times that could otherwise have been called peaceful. He sneered behind his mask at the use of the word in his own mind as he stared at the detritus that littered the outer zone of this star system.

And hidden, seemingly scattered randomly among that detritus were ships, thousands of them around nearly as many small space docks. More ships than he had under his command at the moment, lots more. Of course, the vast majority of those ships were small, retrofitted freighters and other craft that were only vaguely warlike. But a few were dreadnoughts the size of his Lucrehulks. A few were even larger, system patrol craft that didn't have hyperspace drives. Ancient of course, but with their weapons and defenses routinely upgraded they could be a threat in the future.

Yet most of those ships he could see were in mothballs, derelict ships that had no reactor mass in their cores, and the majority of the active defense forces he could see were starfighters, as well as medium to small freighters much like the group massive group that had assailed him in Duro. These were the famous Corellian YG and YT light freighters, loved and bemoaned by traders all the Republic over for their ease of use, long life span, and how easy they could be turned to carrying contraband in their multitude of hidden and varied compartments.

Mixed among them were CR90 corvettes, dangerous little frigates, but frigates for all their excellent design. Gozanti class light cruisers too, slightly more dangerous, but more rated to hunt down and destroy pirate bands than stand in a battle line, they lacked the shielding to fight on an even footing with his Munificents let alone his Lucrehulks. And there were hundreds of gunboats, a number that was somewhat surprising, but given again the fact that JumpMaster 5000s were built for anti-pirate work, against his own capital ships, they would be a paltry defense. No, the only real mobile threat in this system is…

A voice from one side interrupted Grievous' observations from his tactical officer. "I'm currently reading eight-hundred starfighters, fourteen Gozanti-class light cruisers, one thousand two hundred and twelve gunboats of mixed classifications, and eighty-two freighters, although some of them are really large. Further in-system, I am getting readings of group of six in-system dreadnoughts. Even at this range the energy readings I'm getting off those are… profound."

The man sounded worried, yet Grievous simply nodded. Of course they would be powerful, simply the size of those ships could've told anyone that. Staring at them, he wished for a moment that one of the other 'opening gambit' operations had been chosen.

If they had, Corellia would not have been targeted for many years, and he could have attacked this place with his planned flagship the Malevolence and its massive ion cannon, larger by far than any such in existence even on planetary defense bases. With it, all of Corellia would've been laid bare to him in a matter of moments. But that ship was at least a year and a half away from completion, and Grievous was a professional soldier enough to understand he had to make bricks with what clay he had on hand.

The Vultures started forward as his main fleet continued on its way, batting aside what defenses there were in the outer area of the system – scant little - moving towards their first target, the main planet of Corellia. Grievous would've normally started with one of the two twin planets, Talus and Tralus, given the fact they were closer to where the Grand Fleet had jumped in, but the Green Temple was on Corellia itself, and he fully agreed with his orders on this score. The Jedi were the ones that had to die to make up for their intervention in the war between his people and the Huk. Destroying one of their temples and all within sounds like a fantastic start to me.

They had finished smashing aside the defenders, when things began to happen that told Grievous he wasn't going to have this battle entirely his own way. First, most of the defenders did not attack piecemeal as he had hoped. Instead, the starfighters his ships had seen had done so, ambushing his own starfighter screen and then retreating while the freighters had attempted to get through behind them. Nearly all of them died at long range without even landing a single blow in return. But they covered the Gozanti cruisers that had been stationed in the outer system in small packets as they raced in to meet up with the dreadnaughts. The corvettes too retreated in good order, splitting off to add their anti-fighter fire to the orbital defense of Corel.

That was all understandable and could be planned for. What happened after he broke off several of the smaller carriers and their complements of Vultures, was not in Grievous' plans. Like in Duro, they were ordered to destroy targets of opportunity. Many of those targets in this system were the previously mentioned mothballs ships, hanging derelict on out-of-the-way shipyards, seemingly randomly placed around the outer system. This was why Corellia had been a target after all: this system alone could add a significant number of ships to the forces the Republic could bring to bear if allowed to bring them all online.

One such group, two wings of Vultures and a single small carrier, approached a space yard where ten frigates sat unmanned. A second later their weapons came online, controlled by the station, they were hooked into but still working for all the ships themselves were dead. The starfighters took heavy damage from the hundred plus quad lasers on those ships, before they destroyed them and the station that had been directing the defensive fire.

Another carrier got too close to what it thought was a derelict, while its attention was on another nearby station. The derelict exploded, smashing the carrier's shields flat. A second later from out beyond another seemingly derelict super-heavy freighter came dozens of local starfighters, the Model LAF-250 Corellian security forces fighter which his scanners hadn't been able to detect before this. With only two paltry laser cannons they should never have been a threat even to the smaller carriers, but with its shields down and leaking atmosphere already, they swarmed over it like so many tiny piranhas eating a whale alive. The carrier's Vulture fighters jumped on them a moment later, but the ship was already lost even as they butchered the CorSec fighters for little loss.

"Order those ships to… what is that…" Grievous muttered, staring as the tactical screen updated again. 15 massive freighters, the kind that made even Lucrehulks look small in comparison to what they could tote at least were powering around Corellia coming towards his fleet in a semi-cone formation. "What are they doing?"

The ships in question were not warships, the very idea was laughable. Indeed, they were simply a hyperspace engine with gantries connecting it to an admittedly large cockpit. on which dozens of freight hauling boxes could be hung. To call them ships was a sort of misnomer, even if they could enter hyperspace, they didn't have any weapons, they didn't have the energy for them, they didn't even have the space for them.

Grievous stared at the tactical screen as his tried to think of what those ships could be doing. Then his eyes widened and he shouted out, "Warning to the fleet, slow our acceleration, send the starfighters forward to engage those freighters, order the starfighter droids to destroy every cargo container out there!"

His flag bridge hopped to it, the communication specialists along one wall already programming in the orders to the Vultures, while the others relayed his commands to the various capital ships. His flag captain called a second later, looking quizzical. "What are we afraid of here?" he asked bluntly. "Those ships can't be any kind of…"

"Use your fool head! This is Corellia, one of the greatest manufactory centers in the galaxy and we were forced to wait a day to resupply our starfighters. What you think they could do in that time if they even had an inkling we would strike here? Or even if they didn't and just wanted to resupply Duro?!"

"…Mines…" the man gasped. "Concussion missiles, proton torpedoes maybe, although…"

"Perhaps not all of them will be filled with that kind of thing but enough. And a container like that can carry an entire ship's complement. If one of our Lucrehulks was hit by that, its shields would die. If any of the other ships did, they would die!"

As the cyborg watched the Vultures raced ahead and his suspicions were quickly proven accurate. The ships, either on autopilot or driven by suicidal Corellians, dumped their cargo in such a way that they added as much momentum as they could to it before hand, flinging the cargo out in a wide parabola filling space with debris in every direction, making it almost impossible for his fleet to go directly towards their target. "Order the rest of the starfighters forward, disengage them from their search and kill missions. We need that cleared!"

This operation took several hours, during which Grievous stalked his flag bridge, the metallic thrum of his joints loud, as he paced, terrifying his people. His supposition however had proven correct. Several times cargo pods had opened, and proton torpedoes or cushion missiles lit up their internal drives closing with and, utterly destroying starfighters in the area. He was losing them, more than two thousand so far, but he had starfighters to spare.

His caution was further justified when groups of supposed starfighters were raced out. These turned out to be survey drone ships, which jumped on his Vulture fighters, connecting to the nearest ordnance and sending them in or simply exploding themselves.

Watching the ongoing cleanup job Grievous scowled angrily, thinking then deciding. "Shift targets for the fleet to the twin planets!" They can't possibly do that trick again and we can reduce one or two of the other worlds in this system then come at our main target from another angle.

It turned out that the cyborg was wrong in that assumption. When he started to move his fleet towards the twin planets and Centerpoint Station eighteen more giant freighters appeared, tossing their own cargo in another parabola towards his fleet, above and below, at an even faster speed. Those containers would become navigational hazards in the future, but it was quite obvious the Corellians, Drall, Selonian and Human, were not willing to hold anything back in the defense of their system. It was a sign of desperate bravery that won respect from the sentient members of the attacking fleet.

That was not the case with Grievous. "Dammit!" the former Kaleesh warlord roared, bringing one of his cyborg arms down to slam hard into a console to one side. Luckily, that was just the console that monitored the ship's internal atmosphere, so his fit of pique cost the flag bridge nothing.

After that outburst Grievous calmed down, slightly anyway. "Redirect the fleet again," he grumbled, he glanced at one of the side boards, and then pointed at his tactical officer. "You, keep an eye on the debris field battle." He then pointed at another, a communications specialist. "You, order the fleet colliers to jump in. We will need to be replenished with Vulture fighters.

Those traps might've been set to strike our capital ships, even Lucrehulks would've been badly damaged by that debris field if they stumbled into it. But the Vultures are not moving fast enough, and if the alternative is to slow down still more, to allow the Corellians time to recall their fleet… With that, he looked over at a few of his men. "You, bring me up the record data of which of the Lucrehulks have proven the worst at live-combat exercises in the last ten training sessions."

The next moment, when the locals tried the same trick again, creating a new debris field that slightly overlapped the next one above and to the side, the Grand Fleet didn't stop. Instead, it rearranged itself with five Lucrehulks set in a cross formation, in the front, with the other ships directly behind them, all of their scanners on high.

The five Lucrehulks in the mid-in the front plowed into the debris field, creating a path like a bulldozer would through snow. Except of course snow didn't explode occasionally when you ran into it as this did. Although, nowhere near not as much of those containers exploded as they had feared might be the case.

Those ships still took damage. After all, a card container ship like that could hold a full ship's complement of proton torpedoes are concussion missiles, and if that hit you all at once at a range that you couldn't defend yourself for more than two or three dozen, it still hurt.

Their shields flickered and died and the five leading ships began to take real damage, weapons starting to go off-line, bits and pieces of hull blown off. But they were through, and the surviving starfighter Vultures from the initial attempt to clear up the space joined them, falling back in around their fellows as the five front-most ships retreated. Those ships would need months, if that, in the repair slips, but they were still in one piece, and the local's tricks had stopped.

Even better, the one true mobile threat had yet to engage his fleet, showing a cowardice at marked odds with the rest of the defense. Grievous wondered why, but in the end it didn't matter. Run now or stay and fight in orbit of Corel. They will still die, and I will conquer and then refortify this system. With that done, and the locals enslaved, we will then be able to turn our attention to the other nearby worlds.

OOOOOOO

On Corellia other people were watching the events in space. One of them had access to a Hypercom and knowledge that there were friends nearby.

When he saw new icons appearing from hyperspace, that man smiled grimly, and contacted those friends. Damn me if the Jedi weren't right about the main attack being here. I didn't believe them, and even if I had, we couldn't leave Duro to fend for itself. Still, recriminations later, now it's time to see if they have been able to gather enough force to help us through this storm. Corellia will never submit to the bootheel of the conqueror! "This is General Bel Iblis. I'd suggest that if you wanted to jump in, now would be the time."

The next second as the supply ships and colliers bringing in starfighters moved in system towards the Confederacy fleet, which had not stopped to wait for them, more hyperspace jump icons appeared and General Garm Bel Iblis smiled grimly. "You will take Corellia over my kriffing dead body and the body of every CorSec officer," he said to no one in particular, although that did not stop the men and women in his command center to roar their agreement to the sentiment.

OOOOOOO

When he had first been told about the new type of starfighter, Ranma and the others aboard the Wild Blade were so insistent he try, Anakin had been a little annoyed. There was no way they could be better than his Aethersprite, after all, he had been part of its design process! Then when he strapped in and felt the maneuverability and reaction of the Sekotan starfighter his second thought was, "I have to get me one of these!"

As a Jedi Anakin knew he should not covet, but oh, was he coveting at the moment. The Sekotan starfighter moved like a kriffing dream. Responsiveness, reaction time, whatever you wanted to call it, under his command his starfighter moved like a literal extension of his body. And Ranma said this wasn't even a paired seed-ship, I think he called them? How much more responsive could they be if I had gone through the same thing he and Master Ti did to make the Wild Blade?

After the Sekotan starfighters had arrived Anakin had perforce been let in on the secret of their creation, although he had not been told where they came from. Anakin didn't take it personally anymore. With the Sith out there and their proven ability to ferret out information there was no doubt in his mind that there were just some secrets that had to be kept.

He brushed his hands down along one side of the cockpit, fingering the small controls, frowning a little. The offensive punch of these starfighters still left much to be desired, but that was okay, Anakin could deal with that. And so could the forty other Sekotan starfighters that he was currently controlling.

Ten thousand Sekotan starfighters came out of hyperspace and went on the attack quickly thereafter, flinging themselves with reckless abandon onto the rapidly fleeing supply ships. Weapons not really geared towards anti-capital ship warfare lit those ships up, and eventually putting them down through sheer weight of numbers. Which was actually quite nice to have on my side for once, Anakin reflected, as he twisted the yoke of his starfighter around into another attack run. At the same time forty other fighters followed him in, two of them moving ahead of him to take shots on their shields that would otherwise have forced him to change course at the very least.

Zonama Sekot had been told via the Hypercom and then a relay from the Dac of Yoda's concerns for Corellia, the fact that they had to stop this attack, and Zonama had decided to do what it could. And it had done so in style. It had used up its horded resources, its seed plants, its vast beds of ship-coral to create this force of starfighters. So much so that it would take months before it could build up any kind surplus again.

Only about two hundred of them were piloted ships. The rest, had been given simple orders follow by the mind that had helped create them, the mind who had given birth to the seeds from which they had been molded: target the enemy that was targeted by their piloted fellows, and protect those piloted ships. Despite that lack of pilots, the Sekotan drone fighters was a major force multiplier, an extreme one. And they, and the Mandalorians and their addition, could hopefully turn the tide here.

On the heels of the Starfighter assault came the Mandalorians and Ranma and the Wild Blade, coming in from another angle, down and almost at ninety degrees from the Grand Fleet of the Sekotan starfighters and their battle. As they did, Bo-Katan grimaced, staring at the tactical plot. "We're still looking at better than two to one odds, Lucrehulk against our heavy cruisers alone," she said into the intercom. "That doesn't even consider the rest of their fleet." Still, a whole lot more of the defenders are still in one piece than I thought at this point. The Corellians were able to reign in their captains, for once.

"We have help on the way, pair up with those dreadnoughts, for now." Came the reply from Shaak.

"And we just wiped out their starfighter reinforcements Anakin broke in gleefully. "You just wait, you'll see, we can do this!" While several hundred of the drone starfighters had perished, not a single piloted vessel had done so as they wiped out the colliers, as well as several of the smaller like carriers that that still been out and about destroying industrial targets and the scattered mothballed ships.

"And it looks as if the locals aren't without their own tricks either," Ranma added with a grin audible through the pickup. "For now, let's get it stuck in!"

With that, the Sekotan starfighters roared towards the invading fleet from one side, while the Wild Blade raced in with the Mandalorian and gathered Jedi ships from the other.

OOOOOOO

Staring hard at tactical readout, Grievous scowled, thinking quickly, remembering his list of objectives, and the tools he had to do them with. "Split the fleet into three parts," he ordered finally. "The remaining small carriers are to form one group with the gunboats and anti-fighter frigates. They will form a shield against those incoming starfighters from behind."

"And the remaining Vultures?" his tactical aide asked.

"No, only half of their own surviving wings. Keep all the Lucrehulks' wings with us," Grievous ordered, his almost robotic voice even colder than normal.

"Sir, against those numbers…"

"Look closer fool!" Grievous rasped out, angry at being questioned but unwilling to kill this man, a Neimodian who had proven a positive Jedi at logistics. "Those starfighters do not seem to be as good at killing capital ships as they are at killing other fighters. I refuse to lose more of our Vultures in a fight like that now that we have had our supply of the flying droids so badly sheared back. No, they will be of more use against the starfighters that are with the incoming heavy cruisers and the Corellian defenders. As well as… that ship."

Grievous had been told of the Wild Blade, and of its owners. Their persistent survival against everything Tyranus had tossed at them amused him, but if they wished to meet him in a space combat, where their ship's abilities but not their own could be used, he was more than happy to oblige them.

"And the other two portions you ordered?" his aide asked, cowed if not convinced.

Grievous thought for a moment, then said, "Radio Commodore Kirst. Tell him and his squadron of Lucrehulks are to peel off with two-thirds of our Munificent class to go with him as well as their accompanying frigates to pin down the enemy fleet." That should be enough to destroy the Wild Blade, those incoming ships and the remaining Corellian ships even if they will be able to meet up with the local dreadnoughts first. "The rest of the fleet will continue on course for Corellia Prime."

Those dreadnaughts and the rest of the Corellian fleet's unwillingness to come to grips with him was now made clear. Still, their decision to retreat to a centralized location would allow him to get in close and hammer the planetary shields down in order to let his ground units land. Once that was done, Grievous could then reduce the orbitals at his leisure.

"That isn't going to be easy…" his aide began when Grievous voiced that thought.

Now thoroughly enraged at this man's continued questioning, Grievous' unwillingness to deal with the man ended. He reached over and grabbed the complaining man's head, snapping his neck and hurling him aside in a single motion.

His hunched from straightening up to make him seem even more imposing, Grievous glared around his flag bridge. "Does anyone else wish to voice concerns?" he asked, sneering the last word. No one took him up on that offer, and he smiled thinly. Then carry out my order… what is happening now!?"

OOOOOOO

Anakin and Master Tiin exchanged information as they flew there starfighters in along with hundred-and-fifty Mandalorian starfighter pilots seconded to the starfighter wing from the of the heavy cruisers, and fifty other Jedi. "We're going to get hurt, no two ways about it, but we'll get through them. And after we do, it's the short flight to that, next we'll be able to pin them against the planet. The only question is, should we stay and wipe that screening force out or just race past them as best we can."

"Do not get cocky young one," Master Tiin cautioned. "These ships we're piloting weren't built to take on starships, they're almost pure anti-fighter ships, and while that will serve us well against the starfighter component of that force ahead of us, the ships are going to be an issue."

Then he too noticed what had paused Grievous in his oratory a moment ago. Hundreds of new starfighter icons appearing from around the system, and from Drall and Selonia. They flew directly away from the incoming enemy vessels, forming up into one group, five wings strong, and all of them were composed of two starfighter types that Tiin had never seen before, a thought he voiced now.

Anakin had long been involved with the Aethersprite development project, and through that had also looked over a lot of other information about planned or starfighters that were going to hit the open market. He recognized those, and actually began to smile. "I think those are Corellian Y-wings. The others are VCX system Starfighters. Those are small, highly maneuverable, but lacking in shields and striking power. The Y-wings are the opposite in that they fly like pigs but have decent shields. I wouldn't trust them in a dogfight, but, they make great bombers."

With that he opened the communicator, and began to sift through the various signals, until he heard a voice. "Incoming fighters, incoming fighters, this is Corellian Security Forces presumptive-wing commander Sariff Fel. I sure as heck hope I'm not talking to the ether here, but it looks as if we can help one another here."

The voice was jovial, but forced, and almost sounded frightened, yet determined for all of that, and Anakin remembered that a lot of local militaries had the tradition of conscripting pilots or personnel as needed in a crisis. "This is padawan Anakin Skywalker, I and Master Tiin are in charge of this attack. If you hold off your own attack, I think we can coordinate a multi-pronged assault here. If we do it right and don't take in a lot of casualties against this force, we can hammer the main armada too."

The voice on the other end chuckled grimly and replied, "That is precisely my idea too young'un, let's get to it."

Although part of him bristled at the young-un part there, he's still grinned at the can-do attitude of the other man had evinced despite his fear. Corellians were bawdy, sarcastic, had weird senses of humor, and above all, were never known for giving up. I wonder if the Confederacy realized what they were getting into here. Then he looked at the wall of capital ships forging their way inward toward Corel, and took a tally of the damage already done, grimacing slightly. Okay, so maybe they knew precisely what they were getting into here. But we can still stop them and I mean to damn well try!

OOOOOOO

Once more wearing the synaptic helmets, Ranma and Shaak were in communion with the gestalt of their ship riding the predatory mind of the Wild Blade, as they with now combined formation of mixed capital ships, while the Mandalorian and Corellian starfighters spread out around them. There weren't many starfighters there, the Mandalorians hadn't been able to bring more than a few dozen squadrons, pulled here and there from wings scattered across their sector. They hadn't been able to pull all of their capital ships together either, leaving behind three of the Katana class and the majority of their homebuilt ships.

Indeed, they would probably going to be running into trouble at home with a few dissidents on Gargon as it was having cut the orbital patrols to the bone. But neither the two of them nor Bo-Katan cared about that. "If we win, we can go back and crush any attempt by the local crime bosses or corrupt officials to regain their power and probably gather a lot more recruits to initiate into the ways of the Mando'ad," Bo-Katan said philosophically. "If we lose, then we lose and I'll be dead so the future will be someone else's problem.

She wasn't exactly an Empire builder, but in that one sentence Bo-Katan showed why the Mandalorians were so dangerous, Shaak reflected. They weren't a species, they weren't even a religion, not really, they were instead a belief system, a way of life. Thank goodness the Reborn's message has spread so fast among them.

Nearby, Ahsoka stretched out her arms above her head, cracking her neck and shoulders, then wiggling her fingers, her eyes closing while she centered herself in the force. She felt Master Ti's Force presence nearby, a calm soothing presence, as her Master whispered, "Good padawan, good. Remember, in the Force we are connected. No matter what comes, no matter what trial, meet it with your head held high and trust in your allies and in the Force."

"In other words, time to spit in the eye of the hurricane, and kick its ass," Ranma quipped completely decapitating the moment of solemnity. "Tune, bring up the song, We Will Rock You. Some moments demand musical accompaniment."

Shaak's laughter rang out along with Ahsoka's, and even HK got it on it, as he took command of the anti-fighter weaponry, while Shaak took command of the main weapons and Ranma took over piloting. "Ready?"

A second later he felt the affirmative of Shaak through their link to the ship as Ahsoka and HK chorused "ready/Enthusiastic Shout: Ready!"

And then Ranma gunned the engines. Instantly the Wild Blade stopped pussyfooting around at less than half speed with the rest of the defender's ships, and they gunned forward.

On the flag bridge of the ramshackle dreadnought, Bo-Katan laughed as she leaned back listening to the sound blaring through the still open coms, exchanging a glance with Janice, although of course both of them were still wearing the helmets. She could feel the eyes of the other woman, and her delight, almost as if she too were a Jedi.

Two of her bridge officers weren't as used to Ranma's ways though and began to mutter to one another. "They're Dini'la (crazy)!"

"One ship against thirty-two Munificent class, and forty-eight frigates?" the other man echoed.

"Please, this is not even the craziest thing I've seen the two of them do," Janice said with a grin, hidden by her helmet.

The Wild Blade raced forward, no, it rocketed forward. Via their connection to the gestalt both Ranma and Shaak had informed the ship's consciousness that if they didn't win through this, there would be no tomorrow, and the ship had replied by answering their calls for more energy, readying itself for the battle to come.

Corellia had to hold. Oh, perhaps strategically, that wasn't the case. Given the size of the Republic, even the loss of Corellia could be borne somewhat easily. But Ranma and Shaak were not strategists, they were not Fleet Admirals.

Ranma was a martial artist, and he had his Code, a Code which told him to lay down his life in the defense of others if need be.

And Shaak was a Jedi. Many Jedi would possibly not have become so personally embroiled with the battle, could possibly have thought about the larger picture. Others like Anakin would've looked at the Jedi that would die on Corellia as the true loss of a Confederacy victory here. After all, out of several trillion souls, only one would be found able to use the Force. But Shaak was not like that. She cared, and because she cared, she would sacrifice herself just as readily as Ranma would.

With their greater range the Munificent class opened the battle early, slamming out shot after shot from their battle line, which was more of a giant square in space, going up and down from the plane of the system. They were, trying to bracket the incoming Wild Blade, figuring to destroy it whatever it was trying to do by racing forward alone. But the Wild Blade was just too fast, too maneuverable. And Ranma had faster reflexes even than most Jedi, even if he couldn't quite feel out the Force like they could. His sixth sense was nothing to sneeze at, even at ranges like this.

He twisted the ship this way and that, slowing their pell-mell race forward, but not by much. Still, each of the enemy ships got off seven salvos from their massive spinal mounted turbolasers before Shaak murmured, "We are in range. Ahsoka?"

Ahsoka had been peering over the data coming in from the ship's scanners, arguing quietly with Tune as Ranma concentrated everything he had on piloting the ship. They could ill afford to take hits at this range, not because any single hit would damage them, but because Ranma knew that this was going to be a slogging match and every little bit helped.

Eventually, Ahsoka murmured, "Okay I've got a target, it looks as if it took a bit of damage somewhere. The Munificent at the bottom corner of the sunward flank of the square and the two frigates behind it, both of them are damage too. They could be quick kills I think."

"Good choice," Shaak murmured, and then, the Wild Blade was slewing around, twisting while taking a few hits now as it was almost turning its broadside to the enemy's' fire, which was precisely the wrong thing to do in a ship like the Wild Blade with all of its weapons pointed forward.

But, this lined them up on the Munificent class they were going for. It tried to evade their fire, but the Wild Blade was too quick, and the magma cannons flared, pulses of red energy, far darker and larger than turbolaser bolts, flashed between the ships, slamming into the enemy cruiser.

The phrase that Ranma always used to describe why the Wild Blade could have such a magnificent impact despite having so few actual weapons came back to Shaak as her fingers mashed the firing controls. The phrase was power to a point. Other ships spread there turbolaser batteries out everywhere along their length so they didn't have to turn in order to bring guns to bear. Only the Munificent class had the same design as the Wild Blade with the two massive spinal mounts turbo laser batteries pointed forward. But the six plasma cannons on the Wild Blade were each actually more powerful than the turbolasers on a Munificent and they were all pointed forward.

They smashed the shields, of the enemy ship, causing them to flare, then the ion cannons hammered in, the shields flickering followed by proton torpedoes which slammed into the enemy shield at the same target area of about fifty yards wide. The next second, the shields failed at that point, and the next blast of ion cannons roared in. The shields didn't come back online in time, and then their generators exploded in ionic fire which spread across the surface of the enemy cruiser.

The plasma cannons fired again, their rapid rate of fire almost as deadly as their power. The enemy ship exploded as their blasts hammered into the power source of the spinal mount causing a chain reaction.

As the explosion spread, the Wild Blade continued on its course swimming through the debris, ducking around and through the aft of the ship as it spiraled away, bringing its guns to bear on a frigate. Only a single salvo brought down the other ship, which was actually more of a size with the Wild Blade than the Munificent, turning it into so much floating debris, as Ahsoka shot out a gravity anomaly at the other.

This was a new trick Ahsoka had thought up. After all, if the tiny, black hole the dovin basal created to turn aside torpedoes or missiles could do that, couldn't also be used as a weapon against smaller ships?

And it worked. The gravity anomaly ignored the frigate's shielding, tearing at its structure, causing its shields to die and HK instantly began to fire, targeting its flag bridge, literally decapitating the smaller ship.

Then the Wild Blade was to the side of the main wall of the enemy formation, and some of them were turning. Others were not, continuing to wait for the incoming mixed formation.

OOOOOOO

On his flag bridge Grievous scowled angrily. The speed of the Wild Blade had taken him by surprise as well its quick destruction of the three ships they had targeted. Already he could see the Munificent battle line under Commodore Kirst deforming in an effort to deal with it and still present a united front against the incoming Republic forces.

Even as his own portion of the fleet crashed into the defenses around Corellia itself, he had enough presence of mind to bark out an order. "Order the Lucrehulks under Commodore Kirst to deal with the Wild Blade on their own. They are to pull back from the line and pin it in place if they can."

As he watched the heavy cruisers that had arrived with the Wild Blade and the mixed Corellian forces had cut the range already. They were taking fire of course, but their evasion skills were decent enough, and only one out of every five shots hit home at this range. They did damage, the sensors of Kirst's ships could tell that more than one shield among the Gozanti cruisers or the CR90 corvettes dimmed noticeably. Two such corvettes were unlucky enough to be hit by three bolts each from his Munificents. One exploded, while the other one shattered, able to launch escape pods before dying.

But the majority would be able to close with the Munificents, and if they could, the problems with the Munificent class's durability might come into play against the Katana class of the enemy. But, Grievous was still confident that his portion of his fleet would win, they had the numbers to do so and really, Kirst only needed to hold.

He turned his attention back to his own portion of the fleet then, as his flagship took fire from the orbital space fortresses. Those fortresses were smaller, far more ramshackle than the ones over Duro, but there werefar more of them. Far more, and all of them were set up in crisscrossing lines around the planet, rather than in equidistant defensive points around the globe. And as he watched, primitive thrusters began to activate on several fortresses around the planet away from his fleet, pushing them into an orbit which would eventually bring them into the battle sphere.

"Corellians," he growled, his voice an alloy of all too mortal anger and mechanical fury. Too clever by half, too quick to modify their creations. This was not going to be an easy battle, even if he had the tonnage advantage.

OOOOOOO

Over the next forty minutes, Grievous' predictions on both fronts proved accurate. The fight between Kirst's portion of the fleet, dominated by the Munificents and the Lucrehulks he had sent to support them, bogged down into a slugfest, going back and forth, as the Wild Blade did what it could to disrupt the battle line, zooming away from the Lucrehulks, who simply didn't have the legs to catch up with it. Indeed, his orders actually put them out of position to help support the portion of the battle line that the incoming Mandalorians hit a second later, spreading out and engaging with the Munificent class on one half of the line while the Corellians, less organized simply hammered into the square everywhere. Corvettes and cruisers zoomed around, starfighters on both sides dove and fired throughout it all.

Several of the Munificents had been allowed to spread too far, so that they and their accompanying frigates were not in range to support one another, and they died in the next few minutes, as they were pounded into rubble by the dreadnoughts and the heavy cruisers of the Mandalorians. The dreadnoughts peeled off then, closing with the Munificent's, taking what damage they could, in order to deal some out and killing several more. As Grievous had predicted, the durability of the Munificent class once theirs shields were worn down was proving a distinct liability. Wearing those shields down took a while, but once it was done, it took barely a minute to turn a fifty-seven million credit ship into so much slag.

The Lucrehulks moved to meet them and a slugfest began as the greater numbers of the Gozanti cruisers and corvettes met up with their better armed and armored fellows on the Confederacy side. the Wild Blade helped for a few moments helping to kill five more ships, then twisted around, racing to catch up to and then pass the Mandalorian and Jedi heavy cruisers.

Because the heavy cruisers under Bo-Katan's command didn't turn to reengage with that portion of the enemy fleet. Instead, they pushed on, away from that portion of the battle, towards Corellia itself. That surprised the enemy, and they were slow to reengage, and when they did, they found the Corellian dreadnoughts more than willing to remain right where they were, blasting it out with the enemy.

It was only then that Commodore Kirst realized they'd made a mistake. The Corellian dreadnoughts, didn't have the legs to really bring any of the invaders to battle, their engines were old, not very efficient, and slow. But what they did have was shields and weapons aplenty, and despite being marginally smaller than Lucrehulks, they were giving better than they got. Yes, the Munificent class could hurt them and shields were going down already across those dreadnoughts, which rolled in place to bring their other shields into play but not enough. And their armor and weapons were such that even when their shields fell, they were still deadly.

Now that they were being engaged, they did not let any ship near them get away. The instant one tried, all of the dreadnoughts would shift fire to it, and any nearby Corellian cruiser or corvette would join in. And a flaw in every capital ship was that their aft shields were not nearly as powerful as the rest of their shields, a necessity given the nature of engines.

Those dreadnaughts would die, it was almost certain as the battle in that sector slowly turned against the defenders. But they would keep that entire portion of the enemy fleet engaged for now.

Meanwhile, the Mandalorians accompanied by their starfighters and the Wild Blade headed for orbit over Corellia and the larger portion of the attacking fleet.

Grievous scowled as he saw that, then his scarred face twisted into a grim smile as another few of the defending battle stations blew up under his fleet's fire. His own ships were taking hits, but Corellia lacked the planetary based turbolasers and ion cannons of Duro thanks to the previous Dictat's distaste for such. They made up for it in their orbital defenses but even so, his ships were winning this fight.

In fact… he frowned thinking, then nodded brusquely. "Let us give them something else to think about, peel off the fifth and sixth squadrons, order them to fire into the planetary shield. Create a corridor, and then launch the entirety of our invasion force."

One of his men made to object, but a hiss from one his fellow nearby made him pause, and he grimaced, nodding. Most of their landing force was droids; in fact the entirety except for one Jedi who had joined the Confederacy cause were droids. So it wasn't as if they would lose anything if they were forced to leave the army behind. Instead he asked, "Their orders Sir?"

Grievous hummed, then pointed at the icon on the planet that indicated the Green Temple. "There. Tell them to attack there." Then he thought for a moment and smiled looking over at his communications specialist. "At the same time, I want you to find out where their command center is, and if it is on Corel, as I suspect. Then tell the captain to prepare several of the special penetration type orbital bombardment munitions."

Creating a momentary flicker in a planetary defense shield, especially one with as many redundant generators and power sources as the one on Corellia, was difficult. It took the eight Lucrehulks ordered to concentrate on it fifty minutes of heavy bombardment, while at the same time they and their friends were being hammered hard by the defenders. One Lucrehulk was forced to pull away, clawing for the hyperspace limit while several more lost shields.

Grievous knew the wounded would never reach there, but he had ordered it to break off anyway, hoping to at least pull some of the starfighters fighting elsewhere behind his fleet onto that easy kill away from his main force. That part of the battle was ending, his gunboats, and smaller carriers having been wiped out. They'd taken a toll on the enemy fighters, a little over two thousand having been wiped out in turn, by his estimate. But he was grimly certain that the remainder would barely pause to rearm themselves from whatever small spaceports the Y-wings had come from before attacking again.

The landing force launched by his Lucrehulks flew across the line previously created by the planetary shield heading towards the ground far below. The first few ships landing pell-mell, wherever they could, creating havoc among the planetary defenders. Many of the locals, even among the criminal element, took up arms against the invaders in those scattered troops, and none of them really made much headway. But they were never really the main threat anyway. The others though landed in prepared groups, creating beachheads on the planet below, while Corellian security forces raced to intercept or interdict.

But most of the Corellian security forces on the ground were policemen, not really planetary defense forces, of which there were barely two army groups worth previously scattered across the globe. General Bel Iblis had brought them together early on during the space battles though, and using the magnificent public transportation system available on Corel, they closed with and hammered hard into one of the landing zones, containing it. But the others, four such landing zones spread out quickly, their forces making for the Green Temple, each of them containing the equivalent of six regiments of B1 and B2 combat droids along with a battalion of hover tanks and artillery units.

The Jedi were ready and moved to stop their progress at the edge of the capital city. But while Jedi could have an impact out of all proportion to their numbers, there were still only four hundred and fifty of them capable of fighting within the Green temple. And that wasn't enough to truly block the attackers coming from even one of the landing zones alone and they were rapidly losing ground.

OOOOOOO

In the Wild Blade Ranma cursed as Ahsoka relayed what was going on, shaking his head angrily. "Dammit, there goes our best case scenario.

"If they were willing to launch an invasion and all there was no chance of us stopping them in space Ranma," Shaak soothed, an ocean of calm to Ranma's earthquake fury. "We can only do what we can. And after all, isn't that why we dropped off Kit with the Mandalorians?"

Nodding at that, Ranma had to open up the communications to Bo-Katan's flagship. "Are you going to go down there, or are you going to stay up here?" he asked bluntly.

"Down there," came the equally blunt reply. "I might be Mandalore, but my training has always centered on infantry combat, and I've led a few campaigns on the land already at this point. Up here I'm just another set of eyes. And I've got a fully army group of Mandalorians ready to drop," she added, her voice turning suddenly chipper. "Looking forward to it actually."

"Heh, go get 'em Bo, and give my regards ta Kit too," Ranma said, as the Wild Blade began to come over the horizon to see the battle occurring above the globe below.

Behind them portions of the planetary shield came down at the Mandalorians request, although the sight of the Mandalore's helmet in their pickup caused many of the Corellians to flinch back, after all, Corellia had seen Mandalorian invasions before. But that was truly ancient history and right now, the defenders need all the help they could get.

On her flagship Bo-Katan marched down into her specially prepared dropship, a dropship that would basically be only carrying her, her Bes'uliik and Kit Fisto, who was already there. The Jedi was meditating sitting in front of the Bes'uliik, who, like the beast it was programmed to act like, occasionally grumbled and twisted it headed this way and that. "Ranma sends his regards and tells us to get it stuck in," Bo quipped.

"Indeed," Kit said, opening his large black eyes quickly and getting to his feet while the Bes'uliik turned to its mistress, making happy electronic rumbling noises. "Then I suggest we do so. Although I have to admit to some excitement at seeing a true Mandalorian orbital drop."

Other such dropships were carrying hundreds of Mandalorians, or dozens of them, plus more than a dozen AT-PT walkers. These weapons of war had been found scattered aboard the Katana fleet, the majority of which had been turned over to her people for just such occasions at her and Dooku's request. She hoped they would come as a surprise to the enemy, along with the heavy weapons they carried, just like her Bes'uliik. She patted the robotic beast affectionately as she pulled herself into the rider's position behind its head, and strapped herself in. Kit got behind her his wide mouth stretched further by a grin, Bo-Katan felt herself returning as the dropship launched.

A moment after the dropship launched down past the planetary shield, they swerved off, not going in for a landing yet. No, they would hug the outer edge of the atmosphere just below the planetary shield, until they were right over their targets. From there, the Mandalorians would perform their signature orbital drops, straight down on the enemy, shock and awe personified.

Moments later, Bo-Katan was the first out of her dropship, her Bes'uliik roaring out into open-air, then plummeting down as it's personal shield activated, and she started to line up shots going downfield towards the landing zone below from her extremely long-range rifle. "On the bounce Mandos, kip and kill at will!"

If any of the Jedi who had severe misgivings about the alliance between themselves and the Mandalorians heard the raucous war cries from thousands of Mandalorians throats, as they might well have died of apoplexy. Kit on the other hand simply laughed behind her as he held on for dear life.

OOOOOOO

Above the dropships, the Wild Blade was now taking hits as hard as she was giving them out. The ship was moving as fast as Ranma could push the engines, twisting wildly in an effort to deny her enemies the ability to pin her down, moving in and around the heavier Lucrehulks, and the debris that was scattered so liberally over Corel's orbit. But the Lucrehulks were just too tough! Ranma and Shaak worked like the seamless team they were in order to line up shot after shot against a single Lucrehulk, which Tune had deduced was the enemy's flagship. But its shielding was able to shrug off their attacks, twisting just enough to make the damage spread a little, and the enemy dreadnaughts' shields were far tougher than the Munificent class they had dealt with before. One portion eventually shield down, but it twisted even so the following proton torpedoes hit shields that were still online, and then the Wild Blade was forced away by the combined firepower of that ship and its fellows.

Now the heavy cruisers also came into the fight. But not only were they outnumbered, but they were outclassed. The Mandalore and Jedi ships were taking a beating, while the orbital defenses themselves continued to be destroyed. Two more Lucrehulks reeled out of the battle, making for the distant hyperspace jump limit, but that still left 18, and most of the defensive fortresses were gone by this point, and seven heavy cruisers had been forced out of the fight in turn.

The Wild Blade's shielding went down the next instant after Ahsoka had shouted that fact out, and they started to take pounding on their hull, as Shaak quickly pulled in the shield nacelles, hiding them under the coral armor.

At that point, Ranma did something that he hadn't done before: he reached out with his own 'Living Force' into the ship, bolstering its internal energy sources as they worked to toughen this coral armor. Deciding to give it up on taking out the flagship, he then twisted the Wild Blade twisted around, dodging more fire and then going for another Lucrehulk, which had just lost his shielding from continuous pounding from a band of Jedi-commanded heavy cruisers dishing one out as well.

Two of them were turned into shattered wrecks before the Wild Blade got into range, but then it was behind the Lucrehulk, and once more, it's power to the point principal worked out, destroying the armor around the enemy ships engines, then laying them bear to the ion cannons, which shorted them out. Power died throughout the ship, as its own energy runs worked to spread the ionic damage. Several nearby fortresses and heavy cruisers instantly shifted fire, blasting it with full broadsides, destroying the ship in an explosion that lit up space like a minor sun.

The Wild Blade attacked another Lucrehulk a second later, but the Lucrehulks were moving, so that none of them had any blind spots any longer, shifting out of position to hammer the few remaining orbital defenses or the planetary shields and into a more defensive formation, while still lashing the attackers and defenders with far more firepower than they could pull out.

One Mandalorian crewed ship exploded. Three more reeled away, diving down and away, moving around the planet's orbit to put it between them and the ongoing battle. They were pursued by starfighters, but even as badly wounded as they were, the starfighters weren't going to be able to get through their overlapping fields of fire.

Starfighters up to this point had proven very little threat to either side of this slugging match. But that was about to change, and Ranma let out whoop of delight as Anakin, Tiin and their starfighter wings finally arrived.

OOOOOOO

Grievous scowled angrily, cursing his earlier overconfidence. Thanks to his mistake with the starfighters earlier in the battle, the Confederacy forces were now faced with the one thing that Grievous had been certain they never would face: an enemy that had the numbers advantage in starfighters. Those starfighters were for the most part designed to fight other starfighters, but there were still a lot of them, and the strange new ships from the Corellians, slow as they were, made up for that loss of anti-ship capability. As he watched two wings took a single Lucrehulk under fire, and proton torpedoes slammed into it again and again.

The shields fell, and the Corellian starfighters pulled away, letting their fellows finish the ship off. Hundreds of those starfighters died, but they took the ship with them, and only two of the bombers had died in the doing. He began to tally up their losses, and as well as the time and frowned. He knew a portion of his Grand Fleet was using hit and run tactics to pin down the majority of the hyperspace capable CorSec forces. But it was coming on time where those forces could arrive here to throw themselves into the battle. Those ships for the most part were not made for war, but they had been refitted for such and there were a lot of them. Coupled with the surviving Corellian ships elsewhere…

The enemy starfighters continued to die in droves under the fire of his Lucrehulks, as he surveyed the whole overall battlefield. He was confident he could still win the battle in orbit, as well as the other. If that is, they had time. Even if they didn't, he was confident that his forces could destroy the defenders, but how many of his ships would die in the doing?

Normally Grievous wouldn't care about that kind of thing, after all, the Confederacy had a massive material build up ready for this war. There would always be more ships, more droids. But much of that surplus was already invested elsewhere, and he couldn't decide just now what was more important, preserving his own fleet or destroying Corellia.

The battle around the Corellian dreadnoughts was also playing out as expected. One of them was dead, but it had taken one of his own Lucrehulks with it, the enemy dreadnaught turned into a derelict, the Confederate ship shattered into pieces. The other four were still going strong, on both sides, and the Munificent class was also doing damage even as they fell to the fire of their lighter opponents, while the CR90 corvettes had proven not very effective until the enemy's shields went town. Those dreadnoughts would die, but they weren't dying quickly. And as he watched, five more ships died in that area of the battle, and another, already badly wounded Lucrehulk, was mauled by the Wild Blade.

Then suddenly one of the Lucrehulks facing the local dreadnaughts vanished from his screen. "Replay that," Grievous ordered, looking over at his replacement tactical officer.

The man did so, and Grievous blinked in shock as he watched several small freighters, the YT and YG freighters which he had completely discounted had joined that aspect of the fight, and several of them had actually rammed the ship. Grievous then jerked his head to one side, taking it in the local battlefield, as he saw more and more of the Corellians doing the same thing, hundreds of small freighters lifting off Corellia and up towards his orbiting fleet.

Most of them died the instant they passed the planetary shield as they clawed for space but another Lucrehulk vanished, rammed successively by seven small YT freighters, no doubt loaded to the gills with explosive material. In the other portion of the battle another Munificent fell, and then another, torn apart by the Corellian light cruisers after its shields went down from another ramming assault.

"Those aren't droid ships there tossing away, those are freighters, manned freighters. I'm not reading any escape pods either!" said one of his men.

Grievous was astonished although he didn't show it. He had expected something like this eventually to appear in this war, but for the Corellians to embrace suicide in order to destroy his ships now? That was something beyond his expectation.

Just then a YG freighter got through the defenses of his flagship and crashed into it. A supernova exploded across his shields, and at the point of impact the ship's shields went down.

Thanks to Shaak's Force Precognition, the Wild Blade was there a millisecond later, hammering in hard before the shield could reform. The Wild Blade's ion cannons had been shot away during the battle, but two of its magma guns were still online, and it still had more than a dozen proton torpedoes. It unloaded all of them in a wild fusillade into the Fleshtearer and whole quadrants of weapons went dead, as Grievous reeled to one side, the internal gravity cutting out as the ship's captain shifted internal power to shields.

That made up Grievous his mind for him. "Retreat! Pull out of orbit, get the other ships around us to defend us, let nothing through! Destroy everything we can in orbit as we go, and unload all our orbital bombardment ordinance at the planet. But we are beaten here for now." Despite no longer having taste buds, those words tasted like ash in Grievous' throat, and he glared hatefully at the Wild Blade and the ships around it. There will be a reckoning! he vowed.

OOOOOOO

Ranma let out a shout of joy as he saw the Lucrehulks peeling away from Corellia orbit. "We did it!"

The sign of reckless courage by the Corellians had seemed to shake something up in the enemy's command structure, made worse when the Wild Blade had gotten in some body blows on the enemy flagship. This was made worse a second later as the dead Corellian dreadnaught suddenly came alive, its engines once more online. It lurched forward, slamming with ponderous speed but a whole hell of a lot of mass into an Enemy Lucrehulk that had come just too close to dodge or destroy it before it could ram. The Lucrehulk's shields popped and the two titanic ships slammed together, before the dreadnaught's engines blew, tearing the enemy Lucrehulk apart.

At that, the enemy commander in charge of that force had obviously also had enough. The two fleets moved away from one another, the Corellians too battered too pursue as the Confederacy forces moved towards the hyper limit.

"I'm getting reports on the ground, two of the five landing zones are already contained, Bo-Katan is wiping hers out, and moving on to the next one, but the green Jedi are beset in the temple, and the city around them is suffering horribly," Tune said.

Ranma sighed and nodded pulling away from his own pell-mell race after the Lucrehulks, allowing them to get in a few passing shots as he peeled away back to orbit. The fighters under Anakin and horn would continue the assault on them, but in that defensive formation, they would lose hundreds, possibly thousands of drone ships, for every blow they landed and even with the Y-wings added in, that wasn't going to mean much. Behind him, the battered form of the remaining nineteen heavy cruisers settled into orbit. They too had no desire to face the Lucrehulks again in battle. In contrast the starfighters swept after them, eager to claw a few more ounces of flesh from the enemy.

But generally speaking, the fighting was dying down all over. The campaign to save Corellia had ended, and the Jedi and their allies had won. Although, staring at the star system and the stark lack of ships and other signals coming from all around it, comparing it to his memory of the time they had been here years ago, Ranma was grimly certain that the price of this victory, once fully tallied, was going to be a painful one.

End Chapter


Well, the immediate reactions to the collapse of the Veil has begun, and will continue for some time now. Beyond that, I hope you all enjoyed the start of the Clone Wars, and look forward next time to both Ranma and the Reborn's reaction to the clones as well as Sidious's return to full function and his search for answers.