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 26: The dust of the stars

=RK=

Part 5

=RK=

Temporary Chancellor's residence

Republica 500

Coruscant

There were days, a lot of days lately when Satine regretted becoming Chancellor. That she regretted being a dictator in all but name held on a short leash by many of her "allies", the same allies who ensured the Republic died and now gathered like vultures to gorge on the carcass was merely the crowning achievement highlighting everything wrong in the Core. It was telling that the situation was bad enough that Veil's suggestions and ideas sounded better and better with every passing day, something that said many less than flattering things both about Satine herself and the situation everyone was stuck to their necks in, when not outright drowning in endless problems.

The Chancellor's newest headache came into the form of something actually predictable, which she didn't see coming due to multiple factors – all the unrest on Coruscant, the fact that she was still finding her legs on her regular job, not to mention all the conflicting interests and organizations vying for her precious time. While an explanation, it was no excuse. Satine finished her calming tea, took a few moments to freshen up with the help of a maid-droid, and walked into the living room. Her current residence was a nice, more than large enough not to be stifling, even when almost constantly hosting groups of aides, messengers, and what should have been a ridiculous number of guards geared up for war, which was, of course, another sign of the times.

"Cody, you can let them in," Satine told the Commander of her Protection Detail and regally sat in the most comfortable armchair in the room. She offered a brief, genuine smile to the first two guests who entered, hand in hand, then a guarded one to the Toydarian. He was very blue, had an unusual large snout, and wore naval blue robes accented with gold.

"Padme, Anakin, it's always a pleasure to see you." Satine greeted. "And this must be Director Tyros?"

"Madam Chancellor, it's a pleasure!" The Toydarian offered an exaggerated bow while flying in place. He spoke with just a hint of a buzz in his voice, perhaps an artifact from that almost comically over-sized snout he was blessed or cursed with. "I'm Director Zavara Tyros indeed, and I have the honor of Chairing the Coruscant Energy Commission."

"The pleasure is mine. Do make yourselves comfortable. I'm afraid this isn't a simple social call, is it?" Satine politely invited her guests to sit. "I recall a scheduled meeting with a Director from your Commission before the unpleasantness at the Senate. However, I don't recall an appointment afterward. I must admit that before Padme here contacted me, the existence of your organization and its purpose has slipped my mind."

"That's one of the things we need to talk about, Chancellor," Anakin muttered darkly while glaring at an unoffensive wall.

"What my grumpy husband means, is that it appears we have an issue, Satine. Someone in your staff is playing gatekeeper and likely selling or denying access to you." Padme explained.
Satine scowled at that. Back on Mandalore, something like that would have been unthinkable, then again, she used to be surrounded by her people, many vetted over years and decades of faithful service in the government. Here on Coruscant? The place was a snake-pit at the best of days and you never knew who you could trust. No, in fact, you knew that there was almost no one here you could actually trust because everyone and their pets had their own agenda or worked for someone who did.

"I'll look into it and make sure that if this grave accusation pans, out such a state of affairs, won't repeat itself," Satine vowed. Needless to say, living up to this particular promise might prove easier said than done. She briefly glanced at the soldiers guarding her, who thanks to the smart camouflage of their armors were nearly invisible against the walls. Perhaps selecting someone from the military for the job, because at least she knew that those who were opposed to the current state of affairs either left to various secessionist enclaves or already tried to kill her so everyone still serving in the Grand Army would at least make an honest attempt… Right?

Satine was very well aware of what a slippery slope such a decision would be, not to mention the optics, which would be free fuel for the propaganda already painting her as a terrible Mandalorian dictator, hell-bent on destroying the Republic, among other things…

"That's good to hear, Madam Chancellor. Unfortunately, it's merely the reason why we hadn't met much earlier. I understand that Senator Skywalker and her husband will be leaving tomorrow, so I won't be wasting your time with long speeches and presentations. In short, due to the disruption of logistics from the war and various systems seceding, Coruscant is about to run out of easily accessible sources of power. Out of system imports accounted for nearly ninety percent of our energy sources and while there are contingencies in place to meet demand with closer, less economically viable sources of energy, this takes time. Do note that I'm merely representing the energy regulatory body and not directly the various energy-producing and distribution corporations which provide Coruscant with all the energy it needs. Some of them are in better shape than others, which means that we'll be seeing blackouts in places sometime before the situation planet-wide becomes critical."

Of course, something like this would slip under everyone's attention! Satine wanted to curse and rage, but instead, maintained her composure and studied the flying alien for a few moments.

"You of course are carrying detailed briefing on the situation?" The Chancellor asked.

"Right here!" Tyros patted a part of his robe and produced a handful of data-chips, which he placed at the antique wooden table standing between them.

"I'll have my staff examine them later." Satine nodded. "What are we looking at in the short term?"

"Projections show that we'll need about three to five months to activate previously economically not-viable energy sources and set up logistics chains to supply us while increasing local infrastructure to better utilize the energy from the system's star. Before the latest wave of secessions, we were looking at about two months for meeting our energy needs and the reserves we had would have been enough. As thing stand, we'll have to either find more supply in the short term, risk rolling blackouts across most of Coruscant or touch the strategic reserve meant to power the planetary shields." The Director waved his stubby hands apologetically.

"That's why I insisted we met as soon as practical when I learned about Director Tyros' problems earlier today," Padme added.

"I understand." It was either incompetence, treason, or the usual political games Coruscant was infamous for, which obviously trended to kriff over everyone and everything with gusto as long as at least a few of the participants got what they wanted, or at least ensured that their rivals didn't get their desires. 'Why was she trying to not only protect this system but ensure it was about to get even worse in the future with much less control and oversight for a lot of powerful parties?' That thought flashed through Satine's mind like a burning blade.

The answer was obvious, of course, her home, which was under siege, the same home in which the powers that be in the Core would have happily left to burn. At times like this, Satine wondered why she ever tried to play the role of the benevolent Chancellor the galaxy needed, yet tried its best to block at every step. Not to mention, that it was exactly times like these when Veil's whispers of treason were most alluring, and even sounded perfectly logical. Because if the system was this broken if the Republic's most powerful members gleefully betrayed it for power and were ready to replace it with an Empire so they could benefit at the expense of everyone else… Why wouldn't Satine and those standing with her do the same, if for no other reason but to ensure the security of their people?

With each passing day as a Chancellor, it was becoming harder and harder to keep such thoughts at bay. More than once, in moments of weakness and intense vexation, Satine had found herself willing to follow Veil's advice with all it entailed, only to step back from that path once her temper cooled down. Needless to say, every time, it was becoming harder and harder to do so, not to mention, Satine already ran out of good reasons for trying to be the one more or less honest woman in politics on Coruscant.

Satine shoved that dark train of thoughts aside and brought back her full attention to the conversation. If nothing else, the timing was fortunate.

"Padme, Anakin, it looks like I'll have another task to pile on you for your field trip." She nodded at her friends, then turned to look at the Toydarian. "Director Tyros, as things stand now, how long would our current reserves last without having blackouts?"

"About a month or so. It's not like we're cut off from deliveries, it's just that they're far from sufficient to meet the demand and it's not like we can cut it down much in the first place. Trillions are living and working on Coruscant. Keeping them all alive and reasonably comfortable takes a tremendous amount of energy."

"That goes without saying. You mentioned that some energy corporations will go out of fuel sooner than others?"

"That's true and without direct intervention, we won't see their competitors bailing them out. Doing so would be a bad business you see, because if their rivals fail, they could buy them out and increase their share of the market, thus profits."

"Something like that, for short term profits no less, is unacceptable. Director, you'll arrange a meeting with the CEOs of every energy corporation on Coruscant that matters and your organization. I'll make sure to either attend in person or send a representative."

=RK=

Part 6

=RK=

Flag Bridge

Kuati Star Dreadnought Defender

Neimoidia

When the first Mandators entered service two decades ago, many viewed them with fear, derision, and anger. Many of their rivals saw Kuat's newest, at the time anyway, Star Dreadnoughts as both unacceptable escalation at a time the galaxy, or at least the Core, was at peace and had been for a long time. Eight kilometers long, heavily armored and protected by powerful shields, these behemoths were in practice mobile forts able to absorb and dish out a tremendous amount of punishment. That was back in the days when they were still working under the restrictions imposed as far back as the Ruusan Reformation, limiting hyperdrive range and armament. In practice, as the Corellian Cruisers – their answer to the Mandators, demonstrated in battles all across the galaxy, super capital ships suffering by said restrictions were still tremendously powerful assets.

Defender and a few of her sisters didn't suffer from that flaw. The long months they were relegated to system defense duty allowed Kuat's engineers to slowly and painstakingly overhaul the ships as much as possible – while a complete replacement of the hyperdrive system wasn't feasible, nor needed, because those ships were never intended to operate far away from their home bases anyway, the incorporation of Guardian system and weapon overhauls turned the Star Dreadnoughts into something to behold.

When all was said and done, all super capital ships were blunt instruments, lacking the relative agility and grace of conventional cruisers. Their mere deployment away from their base of operations was a statement of intent and a not-insignificant investment of resources – it took a lot of hypermatter to power such massive vessels and propel them through hyperspace. Some of those facts turned out to be very good things, as far as Admiral Belinda Konig was concerned, because Neimoidia wasn't merely defended by rings of powerful orbital defenses and a substantial fleet. The damn mud-ball had each of its hemispheres covered by a paired ground to orbit weapon installations, an Ion Cannon, and a Hypervelocity one. The former was able to temporarily knock out a cruiser with a clear hit, or strip the shields of such a ship and partially disable it with a grazing one, thus leaving it open to be damaged by the later weapon or any available Separatist space forces.

The enemy commander was a canny one as well, he or she waited to reveal those nasty surprises until Admiral Konig managed to fight her way to Neimodia's orbit and locally crack the space defenses. She lost three ships that way, forcing her to back off and reevaluate her tactics.

The solution was simple, if time-consuming, considering the restrictions she had to operate under. Admiral Konig used her super capital ships to shield her conventional forces. A Star Dreadnought or a Battlecruiser was large enough, had shields strong enough, to tank multiple Ion Cannon strikes and even if the active defenses failed, the sheer bulk of those ships meant that it took multiple hits to take them out of action for a time, allowing the ships to rotate out of the line of fire. Not necessary intact, mind you. Even now, the Battlecruiser Kuat was crawling home after suffering a power-surge that overloaded her shields, opening her for two Hypervelocity cannon strikes on the starboard, followed by the CIS mobile units doing their best to swarm her and cripple her in place, so she would remain in the range of ground-based weaponry. That particular exchange ended up in a tactical draw, with both sides losing multiple ships and thousands of dead, before the Kuat, managed to craw away and recover from the Ion strikes.

This pattern kept repeating itself – the Separatists would retreat under the protective umbrella of their orbital defenses, baiting Admiral Konig to go after them, and when she got her ships close enough for their weapons to be fully effective, they were in the range of the ground-based weapons. The moment the enemy managed to disable one of her capital ships, they tried to at least mission kill it by surging forth in a localized counter-attack, which while predictable and expensive, meant that she had to be much more conservative than even the worse case estimates. Still, she was winning the space battle, if only because her super capital ships were built to survive this kind of punishment and strike back. Without them, the butcher's bill for victory would have been nearly unacceptable. It was already too high anyway and the ground invasion of Neimoidia was yet to begin.

The only good news was that for the past twelve hours, the enemy had been much more reluctant to sally forth and go for one of Konig's disabled ships, for the simple reason that the three days long constant fighting saw their mobile forces reduced to a shadow of their former self, a still powerful and dangerous shadow, yes, but still a far cry from the small armada hiding behind the fixed defenses when the Republic fleet arrived.

=RK=

The Lucky Lady
Supernova remnant SN-Kilo-64

After a week spent within the ancient asteroid base, the treasure hunters left, in the company of two mostly operational battleships loaded with all kinds of goods. Unfortunately, due to fuel constraints, they had to send them to a meeting point in deep space, where their cargo could be unloaded and when practical, enough fuel provided so they could reach friendly space. This was bod a good and bad thing as far as the crew of the Lucky Lady was concerned. On one hand, they lost two potentially very powerful escorts, which at last in theory could be sacrificed if they ran into something nasty, on the other hand, without two battleships accompanying them, they could remain quiet and inconspicuous for the last part of their hunt, before heading back home.

Their final destination was three hundred light-years away from Korriban, deep within the nebula cloud created by a relatively fresh Supernova Remnant. The star responsible for it blew about four thousand years ago and the whole area was still relatively hot, both in absolute terms and in radiation, making navigation a bitch, the region dangerous, and thus ideal to hide things in. Their target was another unremarkable system, this time nicely backed by the Supernova. The local star was unstable, most of the asteroids in the system had been blown away from the nova's shock-wave, turning them into interstellar irradiated shotgun-blast, and the sole planet in the system had been scorched, then baked by radiation, something which might have been regrettable, if the place wasn't a dead rock with which used to have a mild acidic atmosphere, which was one of the reasons why this was the last destination. Most of the gear the Clones would use on the surface would need long scrubbing and decontamination if it wasn't damaged too badly from the exposure by whatever the hellish place had brewed since the last time someone visited.

The only good thing about the place was that due to its location, no one had bothered to hide the entrance of the bunker. Oh, it was built deep within the bowels of a canyon, where various rock formations hid it from direct orbital observation, however, if you knew where to look, the thick black slab of metal posing as an outer door was impossible to miss. Due to the environment, there was no physical way to unlock those outer doors, you needed to send a coded transmission and if you messed that up, then you would have to deal with whatever defenses the paranoid Sith had put down to mess up your day, then burn your way through meters thick, warship grade armor.

"Here goes nothing… Cifor mumbled from the relative safety of their APC, which even now had to endure a mild, highly acidic, and very much radioactive rain. He sent the transmission and the three Clones within the small steel coffin waited with bated breath.

No weapon emplacements appeared and tried to smear them all over the canyon walls, which was always a good thing in Sergeant Holt's mind. On the other hand, nothing else happened either, which was less than ideal.

"The receivers might have died…" Kal suggested.

"If that's the case, this side trip was a bust," Holt grumbled. "We don't have the time and heavy equipment to dig our way through."

"The General would surely be satisfied by our haul from the previous site?" Cifor suggested.

"We got those artifacts, which were our primary objective, however who knows how useful those things would be after sitting in stasis for thousands of years." Holt shrugged. "The rest of the haul might be useful for the egg-heads back in the Core."
"It better be. Even with all those droids helping, it was a pain in the ass loading up those battleships." Cifor whined.

What did Holt ever do to deserve being stuck with these jokers, especially Cifor, for so long, he would never know?

A deep growl came from outside, immediately followed by the ground lightly shaking below the APC.

"Kriff me, it worked!" Cifor exclaimed.

The black slab of metal was moving – slowly, ponderously, and it was obvious that the mechanism doing it was damaged, or perhaps it was merely shoddy engineering because the light ground tremors didn't abate until the door was wide open, revealing a huge, pitch-black cavern ready to swallow them.

"Once more into the breach…" Kal muttered and drove the APC forward.

=RK=

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