Why do I even try? Obi Wan thought with a sigh. His transmission with Plo Koon was certainly a strange one. Hopefully it would be worthwhile, since Gunray was getting closer and closer to escaping the grasp of the Jedi. Both Anakin's fleet and Obi Wan's was trying punch forward and attack gunray's flagship. Anakin was able to inform them that the flagship in question was the Lucrehulk-class Battleship that Dodonna had engaged at close range. Obi Wan recognized the model ever since Naboo. This time, they were the ones with the numerical advantage.

Anticipation is distraction, he reminded himself. Admiral Yularen's flagship, the Resolute II, was going to need fighter escort soon. The Hyena-class bombers were decimating the shields of the Venator. Fighters that could have attacked the Federation fleet were being recalled. Thankfully, Anakin had relinquished his fighters and allowed them to assist the capital ships. A few minutes late and Yularen would have been destroyed. However, his own ship was undefended and bombers were acquiring new targets. New bait.

Anakin wouldn't take that well if he were killed in action, Obi Wan thought sadly.

An officer called out that the shields on his own command ship were failing. Hyena-class bombers, hundreds of them, were dropping payloads of proton bombs onto the hulls of destroyers. The few clone pilots stationed were destroying what they could. Where was Anakin when he needed him?

He watched as a trio of bombers banked directly for the bridge. Turbolasers attempted to defend the bridge to no avail. The end seemed near. Under intense fire, the ship was pounded by this unending swarm of armored insect-like cruiser killers. The Viceroy's trump card was certainly effective. Obi Wan expected resistance but this was stunning, even for the Separatists. The Trade Federation would make the Republic pay steeply for every victory achieved.

The viewport was clouded by new fighters. The Alpha-3 Nimbus-class starfighter squadrons, more commonly referred to as V-wings, that Dodonna deployed just hours before. They almost seemed to appear from nowhere, though Obi Wan wasn't complaining. The similar design to the Delta 7s was not lost on the Jedi Master. Wheras those ships were primarily meant for diplomatic escort, the Alpha-3s were designed entirely for space superiority. An upgrade to the Z-95 headhunters that the Republic used when resources were low and favoring speed instead of power. The amount of warships only seemed to increase in diversity and abundance throughout the conflict. As long as it meant a quicker end to the conflict, Obi Wan would tolerate it. Lately though, the amount of warships that were built seemed to increase regardless of the conflict.

The militarization of the galaxy might be more permanent than the Jedi wanted to believe. Thinking that the galaxy could suddenly return to what it was before the Clone Wars was foolhardy. Too many had died.

Whatever they're purpose, the Republic starfighters had returned, just in time to save the Republic fleet. Clone aces were far more maneuverable than the clunky bombers. Clouds of superheated gas formed around the Venator before vanishing into proton particles. Unusually, it was not Anakin saving him this time. He would have grinned had the situation not been so dire.

The irony to all of this is that if Anakin's force was able to engage the enemy fleet minutes sooner, the defending fleet might have lost their own starfighter defenses. Then the Republic could launch their own bombers and begin to harass the droid fleet. Unfortunately, Anakin didn't take into account that the Nemoidians might send their own bombers first. It was a last minute resort and it would mean that this Trade Federation fleet would be extra vulnerable to attack. They would have to be resupplied with new Hyena-class bombers. Granted, Obi Wan would have to find him first.

The battle raged on for several more precious minutes. Watching helplessly, Obi Wan watched as the Lucrehulk-class battleships began to shift trajectories. Knowing that they were preparing to enter hyperspace, he called out orders to attack the engines. Turbolaser bolts collided with the battleships, smashing through armor plating.

But it was too late. Viceroy's ship along with several others vanished into the expanses of space. Only a few droid starfighters remained. Clone pilots mopped them up before they could engage in suicide runs against the Republic ships.

Grimacing, Obi Wan could only imagine what Anakin was thinking right now. They weren't thoughts Obi Wan wanted to read.

The mission was a failure. Viceroy Gunray had slipped away.

He hoped that Plo Koon and Quinlan Vos had succeeded where they had failed.

These days, an appointment with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was not something to be taken lightly-even for a member of the so-called Loyalist Committee.

Appointment?

More an audience.

Bail Organa had just arrived on Coruscant, and was still wearing the deep blue cloak, ruffle-collared shirt, and knee-high black boots his wife had laid out for him for the trip from Alderaan. He had been away from the galactic capital for only a standard month, and could scarcely believe the disturbing changes that had taken place during his short absence. Alderaan never seemed more a paradise, a sanctuary. Just thinking about his beautiful blue-and-white homeworld made Bail yearn to be there, yearn for the company of his loving wife.

"I'm going to need to see further identification," the red trimmed clone trooper stationed at the landing platform's Coruscant security checkpoint told him.

Bail motioned to the identification card he had already slotted in the scanner. "It's all there, Sergeant. I'm a member in good standing of the Republic Senate."

The helmeted noncom glanced at the display screen, then looked down at Bail. "So it says. But I'm still going to need to see further identification."

Bail sighed in exasperation and fished into the breast pocket of his brocaded tunic for his credit chip.

"Sorry, sir," the clone spoke, waving him through after recognizing that Bail was who he claimed he was. "Orders are orders. You're free to go."

Bail laughed to himself. Free to go where? he wondered.

The new Coruscant, Bail answered.

Faceless, blaster-wielding soldiers on the shuttle landing platforms, in the plazas, arrayed in front of banks, hotels, theaters, wherever beings gathered or mingled. Scanning the crowds, stopping anyone who fit the current possible terrorist profile, conducting searches of individuals, belongings, residences. Not on a whim, because the cloned troopers didn't operate like that. They answered merely to their training, and the duties they performed were for the good of the Republic.

Deep down, Bail knew that this wasn't their fault. They were just doing their duty as soldiers. Or as the clone said moments ago, following orders.

That didn't mean Bail had to like the change in routine. And it still made him uneasy as the war dragged on. One heard rumors about antiwar demonstrations being put down by force; of disappearances and seizures of private property. Proof of such abuses of power rarely surfaced, and was quickly discredited.

The omnipresence of the soldiers seemed to bother Bail more than it did his few friends on Coruscant or his peers in the Senate. He had tried to attribute his agitation to the fact that he hailed from pacific Alderaan, but that explained only some of it. What bothered him most was the ease with which the majority of Coruscanti had acclimated to the changes. Their willingness-almost an eagerness-to surrender personal freedoms in the name of security. And a false security, at that. For while Coruscant seemed far from the war, it was also at the center of it.

Now, three years into a conflict that might have been ended as abruptly as it had begun, every new security measure was taken in stride. Except, of course, by members of those species most closely associated with the Separatist agenda-Geonosians, Muuns, Neimoidians, Gossams, and the rest-many of whom had been ostracized or forced to flee the capital. Having lived for so long in fear and ignorance, few Coruscanti stopped to question what was really going on. Least of all the Senate itself, which was so busy modifying the Constitution that it had completely abandoned its role as a balancing arm of the government.

Before the war, widespread corruption had stifled the legislative process. Bills languished, measures sat for years without being addressed, votes were protested and subjected to endless recounts… But one effect of the war had been to replace corruption and inertia with dereliction of duty. Reasoned discourse and debate had become so rare as to be archaic. In a political climate where representatives were afraid to speak their minds, it was easier-and thought to be safer-to cede power to those who at least appeared to have some grasp of the truth.

This high up on Coruscant, one couldn't be a pedestrian. Walking was an activity reserved for the bottom feeders who occupied Coruscant's reflectively lit sub-levels. Bail hailed a free-travel air taxi and instructed the droid driver to take him to the Senate Building.

Even outside the normal skylanes, above the myriad and abysmal canyons that fissured the urbanscape, far from patrols of security soldiers or the prying eyes of Republic spies, Coruscant looked much as it had for as long as Bail had known it. Traffic was as dense as ever, with ships arriving perpetually from all points in the galaxy. New restaurants had opened; more art was being created. Paradoxically , there seemed to be more joviality in the air, and more opportunities than ever for vice. Even with trade disrupted to the Outer Rim, many Coruscanti were living the good life, and many Senators were continuing to avail themselves of the limitless privileges they had enjoyed in the prewar years.

From up here one had to look closely to observe the changes. In the oval, twin-drive air taxi, for example. Running in tiny print across the passenger's-seat display screen was a public service ad extolling the virtues of COMPOR-the Commission for the Protection of the Republic.

NONHUMANS NEED NOT APPLY.

And there, dazzling the sheer face of a towering office building, a piece of late-breaking HoloNet news detailing the Republic's victory at Cato Neimoidia. Lately it was triumph after triumph, praise for the Grand Army of the Republic, all glory to the clone troopers.

Rarely a mention of the Jedi, save for when one of them was commended by Palpatine in the Senate's Great Rotunda. Young Anakin Skywalker or some other. Otherwise one rarely saw an adult Jedi on Coruscant any longer. Spread thin throughout the galaxy, they led companies of troopers into battle. The holofeeds were fond of using the phrase aggressive peacekeeping to describe their actions. Back when he was on Christophsis, helping with the transfer of crucial medical supplies, he got to see this aggressive peacekeeping first hand and the courage that the Jedi displayed to help besieged worlds. It was to the extent that friendships could be forged with them, Bail had come to know a few: Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Mace Windu, Saesee Tün-the privileged few who also were allowed to meet personally with Palpatine.

Bail stirred in his seat.

Even Palpatine's harshest critics in the Senate or in the various media couldn't hold him fully accountable for what Coruscant had become. Though hardly the innocent he sometimes pretended to be, Palpatine was not to blame. His talent for being at once sincere and exacting was what had gotten him elected in the first place. According to Bail Antilles, at any rate, Bail 's predecessor in the Senate.

Thirteen years ago the Senate was interested only in ridding itself of Finis Valorum, Antilles had once told Bail. Valorum, who had believed he could put honesty on the Senate agenda. Even in those days Palpatine had had his share of influential friends. Still, Bail couldn't help but wonder who might have succeeded Palpatine as Supreme Chancellor if the Separatist crises on Raxus Prime and Antar 4 had not occurred when they did, just as Palpatine's term of office was ending. He remembered the arguments that had raged over passage of the Emergency Powers Act; that it was dangerous to "change dewbacks in the middle of a sand dune." Back then, many Senators felt that the Republic should bide its time and simply allow Count Dooku's movement to play itself out.

But not after the full extent of the Separatist threat became clear.

Not after some six thousand worlds, lured by the promise of free and unrestricted trade, had seceded from the Republic. Not after heavily armed corporations such as the Commerce Guild and the Techno Union had partnered with Dooku. Not after the entire Rimward leg of the Rimma Trade Route had become inaccessible to Republic shipping.

As a consequence-and by an overwhelming majority-the Senate had voted to amend the Constitution, and to extend Palpatine's term indefinitely, with the understanding that he would voluntarily step down from office when the crisis was resolved. In short order, however, the likelihood of a quick resolution evaporated. Formerly gracious and unassuming Palpatine was suddenly democracy's champion, vowing that he could not condone a Republic divided against itself.

Rumors of a Military Creation Act began to circulate. But Palpatine himself had refused to come out in favor of building an army for the Republic. He left that to others-the Senate's nominal Sand Panthers. Finally he attempted to arrange a peace summit, but Count Dooku had refused to attend.

Instead came war.

Bail could recall clearly the day he had stood with Palpatine, Mas Amedda, Malastarian Senators, and others on a balcony of the Senate Office Building,
others on a balcony of the Senate Office Building, watching tens of thousands of clone troopers march into the enormous ships that would take the war to the Separatists. He could recall clearly his utter disconsolation. That after a thousand years of peace, war and evil had returned. More accurately, been allowed to return. He could have sworn, that on that day, Palpatine was grinning with confidence. He didn't know what it meant, and to this day it still left him with more questions than answers.

Regardless, Bail had put his feelings aside and had played his part, endorsing bills he might have previously denounced, supporting Palpatine's "efficient streamlining of cumbersome bureaucracy." It wasn't until passage of the Reflex Amendment, some fourteen months back, that his fears had begun to resurface and intensify. They intensified when Duchess Satine of Mandalore pleaded for a chance to arrange a meeting with the Separatists and the Republic, only to end in failure. The sudden disappearance of Senator Seti Ashgad after he had argued against installation of surveillance cams in the Senate Building; the suspicious explosion of a star freighter aboard which Finis Valorum was a passenger; the passage of a security bill that granted Palpatine wide-ranging powers over Coruscant…

The behavior of the Supreme Chancellor himself-frequently isolated by his covey of advisers and illegal cadre of red-robed personal bodyguards; his unbending resolve to continue fighting until the war was won. Gone was humble, self-deprecating Palpatine. And with him, tractable Bail Organa. Bail vowed to speak openly of his concerns, and he began to cultivate friendships with Senators who shared those concerns.

Some of them were waiting for him when the air taxi touched down in the broad plaza that fronted the mushroom-shaped Senate Building. Padme Amidala, of Naboo; Mon Mothma of Chandrila; human Senators Terr Taneel, Bana Breemu, and Fang Zar; and alien Senator Chi Eekway.

Slender, short-haired Mon Mothma hurried to embrace Bail as he approached. "A momentous occasion, Bail," she said into his left ear. "An audience with Palpatine."

Bail laughed to himself. They did think alike. Padme hugged him, as well, though somewhat stiffly. She looked radiant. A bit more full-faced than Bail remembered, but the very picture of classic beauty in her elegant robes and elaborate coiffure. A golden protocol droid stood behind her. She told him she had just returned from a wonderful week on Naboo, visiting with her family. Perhaps something else was amiss but he couldn't recognize it. Maybe it was the stark contrast between Padme and Palpatine.

"An extraordinary world, Naboo," Bail said. "I'll never understand how it spawned someone as stubborn as our Supreme Chancellor."

Padme scolded him with a frown. "He's not stubborn, Bail. You just don't know him as I do. He'll take our concerns to heart."

"For all the good it will do," Chi Eekway said, displeasure wrinkling her blue face.

"You underestimate Palpatine's acuity," Padme said. "Besides, he appreciates frank speech."

"We've been nothing if not frank, Senator," darkcomplected, bib-bearded Fang Zar said.

Padme glanced at everyone. "Surely, faced with all of us…"

"Had we a tenth of the Senate we would prove too few," Bana said, draped head-to-toe in shimmersilk.

"But it is important that we hold to our intention." Eekway nodded gravely.

"It can be hoped," Fang Zar said, "not counted on."

The conversation turned to personal matters as they entered the vast building. They were an animated group when they finally arrived at the holding office, directly beneath the Great Rotunda, where Palpatine's human appointments secretary asked them to wait in the receiving area. After an hour of waiting, their spirits began to flag. But then the door to Palpatine's office slid open, and Sate Pestage, one of Palpatine's chief advisers, appeared.

"Senators, what a surprise," he said cooly.

Bail came to his feet, speaking for everyone when he said: "It shouldn't be. The appointment was confirmed more than three weeks ago."

Pestage glanced at the appointments secretary. "Really? I wasn't informed."

"You most certainly were informed," Padme said, "since the appointment was secured through your office."

"Several of us have risked much and traveled great distances," Eekway added. Instead of being intimidated, Pestage spread his hands in a patronizing way.

"Such times require sacrifices, Senator. Or perhaps you feel you've risked more than the Supreme Chancellor has."

Bail spoke up. "No one is implying that the Supreme Chancellor has been anything but tireless in his… devotion. But the fact remains that he agreed to see us, and we're not about to leave here until he honors his pledge."

"We're not asking for much of his time," Terr Taneel said, in a more placating tone.

"Maybe not, but you must realize how busy he is. What with new developments occurring daily." Pestage looked at Bail. "I understand you've become quite friendly with the Jedi Council. Why not visit with them while I attempt to reschedule you?"

Anger mottled Bail 's bearded face. "We're not leaving until we see him, Sate."

Pestage forced a smile. "As is your prerogative, Senator."

Anakin was pacing angrily behind Obi Wan. They were both aboard the Resolute II, watching the now abandoned space battleground. Starfighters patrolled the Venators as repairs were being carried out inside the star destroyers. Red paint was smeared with carbon scoring and the armor plating was dented by the vicious bombing runs that occurred hours ago. Cato Nemoidia was under the influence of the Galactic Republic once again. If Plo Koon's discovery was authentic, they had a lead on the figure who was believed to be a myth. The mysterious Darth Sidious.

Obi Wan had sent a signal to the Jedi Council about Plo Koon's discovery. It wasn't the first time that the Kel Dor was able to provide critical knowledge to the Jedi. Months prior, Sifo Dyas ship was rediscovered, the Jedi that had apparently ordered the construction of a clone army.

The very same army that had been fighting against the droid armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

However, that order made to the Kaminoans turned out to be tied to Tyrannus. Jango Fett, the clone's template, had hinted at this Tyrannus but Obi Wan did not recognize at the time. However, when the trail Syfo Dyas left behind led to the Pykes Obi Wan learned that Tyrannus and Dooku were one and the same. The Sith had meddled with Syfo Dyas intent to protect the Republic. But what that meddling consisted of was still unknown.

Obi Wan turned to face Anakin. "Perhaps you should return to your starfighter, where you can pace in the expanses of space."

"I saw him, Obi Wan!" Anakin growled. "I could have shot him down if I knew it sooner."

"And what would that accomplish?" Obi Wan reflected.

"Well, it would be one less Separatist to worry about" Anakin said quietly. "Besides, didn't Master Plo find a lead?"

"Perhaps, but we'll find Gunray again" Obi Wan said, trying to instill some confidence in his former padawan. "Try to be positive."

"I'll be positive when that Nemoidian is rotting in a cell" Anakin answered. "You know maybe I could have done something if I had support. I could have called on-"

He paused. Obi Wan stared at him, recognizing who he was talking about. Anakin turned his face away and let the conversation drop. A Republic shuttle emerged from hyperspace, flying towards the Resolute II.

"I believe that our visitors from Coruscant have arrived." Yularen spoke up, his grizzled face revealing the age that has crept onto him. His hair fading into a rough gray. Obi Wan was glad that he hadn't aged quite as fast.

"Greetings, Kenobi and Skywalker" a familiar voice chimed in. "Found a discovery, you have."