Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed or Star Wars. They belong to their respective copyright owners. This story is not created with commercial aim. I make no money from it.

Phase 24: Operation Citadel

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Part 1

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Republic R&D centre

Coruscant

Four new department heads sat on the other side of the table and every single one of them did their best not to meet Valentra's eyes. The previous directors were either under investigation or already in prison and the less said about Dr Solumn, the previous head of the facility the better.

Contrary to standard security procedures, there were four more people present thanks to the holonet. Personally, Telar was familiar everyone from the later group – they were the liaisons to the GAR of the most reliable industrial powerhouses the Republic currently had. The only unusual face there was Onara Kuat who had taken personal interest in ensuring that everything went in smoothly after the disaster that struck her homeworld. Anaxes naturally came next, represented by Marjolee Holt, one of the Directors of the Anaxes Shipyards. She didn't represent just her corporation but in fact the whole Anaxian military-industrial complex, which has had very close ties to the Republic during the twenty five thousand years it has existed in its different iterations, a relationship that lately survived even the long rocky period that there was no real Republic-wide military existing. With the GAR's announcement and the Republic re-militarising in a breakneck pace when hostilities commenced, the relationships smoothed and went back to its historic high. With the latest developments, it was no stretch to say that generally Anaxes, both their politicians, military and even industrialists were very much on board with the new course charted for them all.

Next came CEO Lucas Crown, from Rendili StarDrive. His presence was in theory an odd choice considering that currently Rendili's outer system was under CIS control and it has been that way since the enemy Grand Offensive. On the other hand, the planets itself and its shipyards were perfectly intact and quite safe behind heavy static defences, the local defence fleet and large garrison of GAR naval and ground forces. Considering that Rendili was literally on the front-line, the Republic did manage to slip through a few convoys with reinforcements and a threat of massive counter-attack has so far held the enemy presence in system in check under the threat of being captured between the defenders and heavy reinforcements. Needless to say, securing the system for good was high on the Republic's objective list in the short term. Having those shipyards operating back on hundred percent would come in very useful.

Last but certainly not least was the representative from Alsakan. She was an unusually tall, thin woman who looked like she could break in two if too strong a wind blew at her. Her modest appearance – a nicely cut business suit that wasn't the height of fashion nor did it appear to cost more than Telar's monthly wage in contrast to what the other liaisons wore, belittled the power Nika Yullin represented.

She was from Alaskan and now, after the utter insanity that was the past week, her political and industrialist masters were finally fully on board. That by itself was a great news for the Republic in the long run… or what replaced it. Alaskan with its trillion citizens, just on the planet itself, the huge economy that they represented, all their allies and massive industrial power were about to be fully unleashed for the first time in ages. With the calamities that befell Corellia, Kuat and Rendili being behind enemy lines, Telar wouldn't be surprised that if by the time the dust settled, Alaskan would become the largest source of warships and other military related hardware for the GAR. Just the preliminary estimate of the industrial expansion they just began was frankly frightening and that was on top of their shipyards technically being the second place the Republic could currently produce star dreadnoughts after the fall of Corellia. While until now no new ones were under construction there, Alaskan, along with Kuat was the second system that not only had retained the capability to build those behemoths but had actually built one and had it in service. All other super-capitals on disposal of the Republic had came either from Kuat or Corellia, with only the former going to the expense of producing actual Star Dreadnoughts.

The message was clear to all – Alaskan was back making waves and the deals the Chancellor, and military for that matter, made with them would ensure they would be among the leaders of the new order.

Needless to say, that fact would be making a lot of people very uncomfortable but fortunately, dealing with those usually wasn't his job.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we're here today to lay down new production priorities for the war efforts. Once we're done, our respective legal advisers and departments will iron out the various details. First, capital ship production and new equipment for them. Interim Director Hosh, you have the floor." Valentra began the meeting.

The only Sulustian, who was incidently the shortest being in the room, looked particularly uncomfortable when everyones undivided attention fell upon his small form. As he began to speak, a translator on his person ensured everyone heard clear basic.

"I'll begin with Project Phalanx, which I'm best familiar with considering that until recently I was in charge of overseeing it. As you should know, the first phase was an unmitigated success. The Mark I Guardian system provided itself successful enough that now its successors are standard on all new construction and I don't believe that we have left any surviving ships without at least the basic package. Mark I was the rough first retrofit, with the current Mark II being build into the designs greatly increasing its capabilities. We're currently working on the Mark III. With it we hope to counter potential future development in the strike craft niche meant to operate and survive in current Guardian dominated environment. A potential upgrade for the Mark II, working designation Block V, is a full integration between the data links of a whole battle group and centralized command of the system, further increasing system capability..."

A very dry and technical explanation followed, with the important points being that once ready the upgrade should be easy to incorporate in already operational systems, for it to shine fully, it would require the full Mark III system.

"Next, Project Hermes – while we are making steady progress, the only notable breakthrough at this time is an upgraded engine design for the Victory Mark III Star Destroyers. The design should be fully finalized, tested and ready for full production if you so choose..."

This one was important, considering a planned shift from the latest iteration of the Venators to Victories once the groundwork for a full mass production was laid down. Nothing groundbreaking in the short term, but still very useful. The closest thing to a game changer in the foreseeable future would be the last project the Director would be covering.

"Third, Project Dragon Scale. Currently, one of the great vulnerabilities of modern warships is the inability to keep fully powered both particle and deflector shields due to interference. Further, ship based particle shields are inherently weaker due to worse scaling up of modern systems. Dragon Scale is intended to sidestep said problem by greatly enhancing a warship's armour thus covering said weakness. The theory behind the project is solid, and the basic concept an old technology that fell out of favour with the blaster and turbo-lasers becoming mainstream weapons, we estimate we'll need at least another year before we have a prototype that might be able to be useful against warship grade weaponry. On the other hand, preliminary investigation points at the concept being rather useful against missiles and mass driver weaponry on the vehicle scale – we've provided the necessary information to the relevant department. It should be noted that if Project Dragon Scale is successful, its implementation would require a serious redesign of a warship's armour scheme to install it, perhaps to the point of being practical only for new construction."

Hosh paused to take a sip of water before coming to the most relevant part of his report.

"Finally, Project Antares. It has a simple purpose – investigating the potential of anti-mater of being a viable power source and weapon for warships. The inherent dangers compared to hyper-mater and fusion should be obvious. While anti-matter has been used both as weapon and power source in the past, the containment systems existing at the time simply made it less than practical, especially for warships, which by definition are expected to be shot at. Now, project Antares had three separate sub-groups. First, power generation – needless to say, it is significantly more efficient than the best fusion plants we have, however it pales in comparison with hype-matter. While anti-matter won't be useful for primary warship reactors anytime soon if ever and so far studies and experiments point at not being worth replacing fusion reactors with it," Now the Sulustian actually smiled, "we did make a breakthrough in the past few weeks. This is because of our experiments with the second area of study – anti-matter directed energy weapons. We do have prototypes in testing and while they aren't much more effective against deflectors than turbo-lasers and it is not a good idea to use such weapons in atmosphere, their effect on armour is simply devastating. Further, even if Project Dragon Scale is a complete success and copied by the enemy, it would provide little to no resistance to anti-matter beams. Here comes the reactor part – instead of carrying large amounts of volatile anti-matters, we propose to use dedicated reactors that can create it and if necessary serve as a tertiary power source for a warship."

"Time until you're past the prototype stage? Estimated date for beginning mass production?"

"Three to six months for limited production of anti-matter beam weaponry, perhaps six more months if we go with creating and testing the right type of reactor for a ship to produce its own ammunition that way."

"How would it receive and store the ammunition otherwise?" Yullin asked.

"This is covered by the last part of the report, which by itself makes project Antares a success. With current technology, we can enhance the warheads of our warship and even small craft missiles with at least fifty percent yield for existing missile types. For capital ship missiles, the increase can be up to seventy to one hundred percent, depending on design. With missiles built from the ground up to incorporate antimatter, perhaps as a fuel as well as warhead, we can achieve tremendous increase of firepower, especially at short range, which is the best considering the proliferation of effective point defence systems."

"Thank you, Director. As you might have figured out, this meeting have multiple goals. At least in part it is to give you head's up for future developments so you can plan for potential shift in priorities." Valentra explained. "Second, as per the latest agreements, we are disclosing certain capabilities so they can be not only incorporated in future GAR design but among your own defence fleets. Now as far as what the GAR needs warship wise… Once the Victory Mark III design has all building blocks ready for mass production we will require a gradual ramp up in production to coincide with a cut in Venator build up. The end goal is to replace the Venators with the newer, more capable design. Once the Project, Codename Imperator is past the prototype stage, we'll require initial limited construction run to iron out any possible issues before ordering a large batch of those ships. Once operational, the Imperator Project is to be known as the Palpatine class..."

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Interlude: A Master and his Apprentice

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Aria watched fleets clash through her Master's eyes. For once, this was no memories from his past but a battle unfolding in a real time. Multiple formations, both Republic and Separatist, danced through space manoeuvring for a better position. While the enemy was certainly outnumbered, the CIS commander had enough ships to cause significant damage if he got the chance and he was doing his best to do precisely that.

The battle has been going for nearly half an hour now, yet no shot was fired – there were just over twenty sub-formations jousting for better positions. The Republic battle groups did their best to maximise the advantages granted to them by numerical superiority, while the Separatists were attempting to minimize it and achieve local firepower superiority if nothing else.

"Did you plan this, Master?"

"I'm merely taking advantage of the opportunity to train our crews and officers."

Being where she was, Aria could feel the amusement that her question about plans rose within her Master. She knew now that what many accused him of wasn't true, that he didn't plan to throw the whole galaxy under the thrall of the Dark Side for the hell of it… and it was too bad that his detractors weren't going to believe it even if he swore up and down to his dying breath that this was indeed the case.

She remembered the conversation they had on this topic yesterday, while awaiting the fleets to be as ready as they could get in the time available before the operation launched. It was both amusing and educational to figure out that she had insights that her Master hadn't considered before.

From where he stood, his actions did make sense, kind of, especially now that she knew him better than anyone else alive. Yet, from an outsider perspective…

"Master, you came of nowhere, impressed Palpatine enough to give you the rank of a General if for no other reason so he could keep a close eye on you… You began to reform the military at the first opportunity, found yourself as the person in charge of all GAR units on Coruscant and while I know you never intended to get to that point anytime soon if ever, you did grab the opportunity with both hand and ran with it..."

"Well, yes. Doing anything else would have been foolish. I couldn't disregard such incredible opportunity..."

"That's not anyone believing you a threat saw it, you know that, right?"

"I was careful not to step on too many toes, unless I absolutely had to..."

"Yes, right… So making sure a great many Jedi were for all intents and purposes demoted and thus eroded their control of the military while gaining its loyalty wasn't aimed at weakening the Jedi Order and a step toward neutralizing them for good? It wasn't a part of your dastardly plan to take control of the Republic and turn it into your image?"

"You know as well as I do that at the time I was perfectly content to work with the bloody fools. You are in my head, Apprentice and you did see my memories." A hint of frustration pulsed through Aria.

"I do. Everyone else? They either see you as the Saviour who came to the rescue in their darkest hour – that's both the Republic as a whole and the military, or they see you as someone who did his best to subvert them, throw away any civilized notions of conflict and corrupt both the army and the Republic at its core."

"I couldn't possibly corrupt or make the Senate worse than it was when I arrived even if I tried!" Her Master protested. He did have a point, about the Senate anyway…

"I know, Master. You did show remarkable restrain…" Though both knew if the Clones weren't conditioned to follow Palpatine's orders and were as open for outside influences as regular professional militaries, by the time Veil came back from Mandalore, he might have been tempted to move openly or not so openly against the Senate. He did that anyway – it was then when he finally admitted to himself that the institution as a whole was more trouble than it was worth and with it, what passed for democracy in the Republic.

"You know, Master, it might have been better if you had planned for seizing power since the start. That might have given you more options when everything began going to hell..."

"You know I don't want the bloody job, Apprentice. You are aware how soon my temper would have frayed beyond repair and then all bets would be off. It might have worked in the long run if we didn't have to worry about the Separatists, but with them, Sidious, the Jedi and the Clones in play… If it wasn't for such a messed up turn of events we wouldn't be here."

"Again, I'm aware of it. What I'm trying to point out, Master, is that some of your actions are directly responsible for how we got here. In fact, with the way things were going, I'm not surprised the Jedi as a whole turned on you, though their timing might have been better. To play a devil's advocate as your people used to say, while your actions taken one at a time have very good explanation, especially now that I know your mind, from an outsider's perspective… You were constantly proving your detractors right, both among the Jedi Council, in the Senate and obviously among the Intelligence community. Should I go on? I can do this about most if not all of your actions. For example...How you handled Kenobi on Ryloth, the way you influenced him to consider that a peacekeeper's mindset doesn't really work in a real war and it would get his subordinates killed… Which it kinda did..."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions and isn't that rich coming from a Sith?"

"Indeed, Master. You did what a good military officer would do, pointed out his mistakes, educated him how to handle similar situations better, make him see the truth of what fighting this war means or at least begin to… At the same time, arguably, you were leading him towards the Dark Side, slowly but surely corrupting him and the soldiers under your command."

"It's a quiet thing, to fall."

"Quoting Kreia again?"

"She had some great lines, even if she was a crazy bitch in the end. For some things, she was right though. While I didn't and still don't want Obi-Wan to fall to the Dark Side, you're right. I've been leading him down a darker path, one that would be anathema for the Jedi Order of this era."

"Master, you've been slowly leading everyone down that path, the same one you chose to walk so long ago."

Outside, the manoeuvring for better position suddenly ended in an explosion of violence and Aria was thrown away from her memory. The enemy made a coordinated tactical hyperspace insertion to strike two of the Republic sub-formations and Aria's Master responded almost immediately by calling the reinforcements waiting in hyperspace and throwing his remaining battle groups into the fray.