CHAPTER 14: AHSOKA TANO

Coruscant

19.5 BBY (16:5:17 GrS)

All in all, this had been a great week for Ahsoka. For reasons she could not figure out, the Sector Governance Decree had been rejected and sent back for revisions. In her timeline, the bill had passed, giving the Supreme Chancellor the authority to unilaterally appoint Governors and Moffs to rule over planetary systems and regions of space. These Governors and Moffs then had executive veto power over planetary legislatures.

More alarmingly, a select twenty were each given individual unilateral authority over one of the Republic's twenty sector armies and the ability to ignore regional authorities and senators alike at a whim. While the Senate opposition successfully blocked the actual appointment of the first of these Republic-era Moffs—Moff Wilhuff Tarkin—the creation of the Oversector Moffs in particular were the final straw that pushed a dozen factions over the edge, causing them to join the Separatists, adding further to the Galactic bloodshed.

It was also the final impetuous for the Petition of 2000, a well-intentioned protest against the continued erosion of democracy that Palpatine had used to cull dozens of senators from office after Order 66, bar those who'd publicly pledged their loyalty to the Empire, renounced the signing, or otherwise made viable excuses for why their names were on the petition.

Without the Sector Governance Decree, Palpatine won't know which Senators are disloyal, and the Bothan Spacer Coalition won't preemptively attack the Republic, meaning the Empire won't respond and leading to de-escalation, Ahsoka thought with a smile as she ran back to the van, following the power cord. I don't know why this has happened, but this is great. Things are working out even better than I predicted.

Better still, with Obi-Wan and Anakin back, Ahsoka had the opportunity to do something she had been aching to do since her arrival.

o.o.o.o.o

Well after midnight, in the empty parking lot of Dex's Diner a large black windowless speeder van was parked. It wobbled gently, shifting left and right. Stowed in the glove compartment was a holocron of knowledge detailing how to perform a memory rub.

With careful precision Ahsoka used the Force to maneuver a Kaminoan resonance imager into the center of the rear compartment. The resonance scanner had long proven far heavier than any of the components for consciousness transfer had been, though the practice in telekinesis had at least been welcome.

Slumped against the diner's back wall were Commander Cody, Captains Rex and Vaughn, the ARC Trooper Jesse, and the Clone Commando Gregor—Unconscious, dressed in hospital gowns, and handcuffed.

It had been a project she'd been working towards for some time, first she'd knocked out and de-chipped a few random troopers who were off-duty, slowly building up experience in locating and removing the chips, then a handful of members of the 501st, 212th, and 104th who were on leave, and now five of the Clones she knew needed to be de-chipped the most.

"Finally," Ahsoka muttered under her breath. Panting as she lowered it into the back of the van.

A loud metallic clunk rang through the parking lot. Hawk-bats fluttered away, screeching angrily as they vacated their rooftop perches.

Crouching, Ahsoka sighed in relief, wiping the sweat for her forehead. That should be close enough to connect this extension cord to one of the power sockets in the diner. The Togruta's footfalls echoed off the permacrete as she walked through the parking lot, unlocking the diner's door with a surreptitious wave of the finger.

She ran into the darkened building, plugging the power cord into a socket at the booth nearest to the door. There. Got it.

Thankfully Flo was shut off for recharge, otherwise this would've gotten messy quicker than she was prepared for.

o.o.o.o.o

Sheev Palpatine

At first, as he watched the scene unfold on a holoterminal, Palpatine had been mocking Ahsoka under his breath. "You stupid little inept Jedi. You could park the speeder nearer to the door."

However, before long, the Sith Lord's mouth had gone dry. In one of the very few instances of such an occurrence since his early days as Hego Damask's—Darth Plagueis's protegé and apprentice, Palpatine felt not just concern or worry but actual fear. His hands soon trembled as he scrutinized the screen in front of him. The last time he felt such an emotion was seeing the imposing, nigh-unstoppable, form of the Zillo Beast glowering at him through his office window.

Tano knows, he gasped. "Ahsoka Tano knows!"

There was no denying it. Through the scope of a Clone observer's helmet binocs projected onto the office terminal, the Sith Lord was witnessing Ahsoka Tano perform brain surgery from a speeder van in the parking lot. Sidious knew his inability to view premonitions, something which had mysteriously begun several months ago, had led to him scrambling to keep tabs on dozens of individuals at once.

A surgical laser was cutting into one of the Clones' heads right at that moment, practiced and precise.

Tano had been doing this for some time it seemed, who knew how many Clones she'd compromised by now.

Snarling in fury, Palpatine stormed into the center of his study, up to the holoprojector, one explicitly linked to the CIS communications network he needed to enact the final stage of a plan a thousand years in the making. Execute Order 66. Execute—

"No…" he gasped in horror to himself. If I execute Order 66 now, while Tyranus yet lives… While the Separatist fleet is on its way to Coruscant... It's too risky. It was already taking all his self-control to not throw his powers around in a blind rage. But he could not do that either, for a display of such caliber would only alert the Jedi to his presence.

The Council suspected him too much now, despite his efforts to use his advisors as dummies to distract them.

Just because Ahsoka Tano knows about the inhibitor chips, he briefly reassured himself, calming down, does not mean she necessarily knows about Order 66. She might be…

What an absolutely ridiculous thought! Sidious scowled angrily, glancing at his reflection in the window. Beyond his image, the night-time cityscape and the moving lights of Coruscant's unending sky traffic lanes gleamed. I can't execute Order 66 yet, the time isn't right, but there's no telling how many Jedi she has told. Logically, she found out about this from Fives… If I assassinate her, it will look even more suspicious. Not to mention I will lose Anakin unless I create a convincing enough lie that someone else was responsible, but only Tarkin would have a plausible motive and he himself is too valuable for the time being.

He reached for the holoprojector, ready to dial Darth Tyranus's hyperspace code, to tell his apprentice of these disturbing developments.

"NO!" he hissed to himself in an angry whisper. "Tyranus cannot know of my weakness! Anakin… I must observe the future..."

Sidious could sense the Dark Side whisper a warning—a warning that his placeholder apprentice would betray him and attempt to unleash the full might of the Separatist war machine against the Republic, no doubt with the goal of killing his master in the process. It would then be trivial for Tyranus to make himself Emperor, ruling over that which remained.

At that, Sidious retreated back into his windowless study, pulling a black cauldron out from beneath his desk.

He sensed the vague frustration of the Dark Side, whatever was happening was not entirely ordained by the Force, which meant there was yet a chance that events would reassert themselves, or that something could at least be salvaged. Pulling out the cauldron, he began chanting in ancient Sith, a ritual he himself had learned some time ago from Darth Traya's holocron.

Plagueis had never put much stock in alchemy, visions, and sorcery unless it suited him; the high-minded Muun and his own Bith master had been too anchored in logic, too unwilling to allow the Dark Side to flow through them in such a manner.

Darth Sidious was not. And he would see to it that events remained on course, no matter the cost.