Mace Windu took a deep breath as he stood in the centre of the lecture hall. All around arranged him on high levels like the inside of a vast sphere, were Jedi of all ranks. Like the majority of the rest of the Temple, the lecture hall had been one of many places in the Jedi Temple that had been devastated by the Daleks in their attack, but unlike the war room and other parts of the Temple, it wasn't as bad. The Jedi Master was not looking forward to this meeting. The council had decreed unanimously to announce to the rest of the Order what the senate had planned.

"Thank you all for coming," Windu began as any remaining stragglers found their way inside, some taking a seat while others just stood, "especially at such short notice. I'll keep this as brief as we possibly can, as there are still arrangements to be made to move the majority of the Order from Coruscant, but this news affects all of us."

The Jedi were silent. They sensed this was important.

Mace Windu steadied himself. "The Chancellor has made a final decision on the status of the Grand Army. Two months ago, as you remember, the planet Kamino was devastated by the Dalek attack. During the attack the Daleks cut off all communications so every world was unable to call for help beyond sending a distress call, in the aftermath of the attacks, we realised several planets were more heavily hit than others. Coruscant was one of those worlds, and so was Kamino. This isn't news to any of you, but the attack on Kamino was devastating. We know the Daleks devastated the planet, polluting the oceans, and even destabilising the orbits of the moons. This has had a lasting and permanent impact on Kamino, causing the mass extinction of several indigenous species. The Kaminoan people themselves lost many of their cities, and they have lost millions of their people, but they have lost nearly all of their technology, including the cloning facilities. Now, the cloners were already preparing new generations of clone troopers. They are now lost to us, the Jango Fett genetic samples, gone for good."

Anakin listened grimly, but considering how close he had been to the investigation before the clone army was unveiled to the galaxy at Geonosis, he knew there had been hundreds of unanswered questions about where the clones came from, and the whole mystery of Sifo Dyas's final days.

"Due to the enormous loss of life on a galactic scale and the humanitarian efforts, the Republic's economy doesn't have the resources to rebuild Kamino's cloning facilities on top of helping them rebuild their civilisation. The Kaminoans are likely more interested in ensuring their people don't become extinct," Windu went on, "on top of that, it would likely take years before they are ready to produce a new clone army at all. So the senate has decided to build two new armies for the Republic."

Anakin exchanged a look with Aayla Secura and Ahsoka while the Jedi listened without too much surprise. They had known this was inevitable.

"The chancellor ordered a committee to look into the quickest but most thorough way of constructing a new army of battle droids. But Palpatine also came up with a second plan, and one we weren't privy to until a few days ago," the Jedi Master continued, his usually grim expression even more solemn than normal. "Many senators do not like the idea of constructing an army of battle droids to fight a second army of battle droids, and so they all drafted legislation to begin recruiting and training ordinary citizens in combat."

"This is gonna destroy the clone's morale," Ahsoka whispered.

Anakin was silent for a moment. In truth, he wasn't really surprised with any of this news. He'd known like everyone else just how much damage Kamino had taken in the Dalek attack, and he had already known just before Master Windu had made it clear to all of them in the hall there wasn't a hope of the Kaminoans getting back on their feet to building another army for a long, so they'd need something else to fill the void.

He knew many of the Jedi weren't happy with the clones; some of the Jedi viewed the clones as expendable as did officers in the army and navy, like that moron Ozzel, but he didn't know how they would feel about this news. He knew they would view any new battle droids like they would the clones; as expendable, and they might even view the droids with suspicion and even fear as they'd been fighting battle droids for a while now.

But he wasn't sure how they'd react to fighting alongside ordinary people.

Would they be as detached and even cruel to the normal soldiers as they were with the clones?

That was one of the problems with having an isolationist lifestyle; you could hide away inside a cold marble temple and not bother with truly going out into the galaxy, but when you stole children and coldly told the families to forget about them, that they had to let them go, but would they arrogantly dismiss them if they were fighting alongside them?

The clones might be genetically engineered to accept such treatment and contempt, but ordinary people wouldn't take it. Anakin frowned as his mind conjured an image of a group of soldiers fighting alongside a faceless and uncaring Jedi Master who treated them awfully and they turned their weapons against the Jedi and gunned him down, overwhelming the Jedi with force.

"It's bad enough they're planning on building battle droids, but this," Anakin shook his head before he raised his hand. "Master Windu," he called summoning a holo drone to augment his voice.

"Yes, Knight Skywalker?"

Anakin took a deep breath. "There hasn't been any Separatist activity for a while," he said, knowing what he was going to say could be construed as treason, but he needed to get this out, "and the Separatists are just as battered by the Daleks as we are. To just ignore them would be suicidal. The opportunity we have here is to build up as much force as possible, and get out after them and force them to help us find the Daleks."

"You mean work with the separatists to find the Daleks?" Aayla said.

"Yes, the Daleks didn't discriminate against us, but at the same time, the Daleks have given us a massive opportunity; the Republic can take over some of the factories and industrial centres in the separatist territories, and we can use them ourselves, and force the separatists on their knees. We can end this war for good," Anakin said, using the Force to get a feel of the reactions from the rest of the Jedi.

Normally he would act with emotion, but there were times when he did think logically and with reason. He only hoped his idea worked.

-8-

The pirate ship was darting through the solar system, oxygen-enriched flames mixing with the leaking and unstable energies of a heavily damaged hyperdrive engine sputtering in the vacuum of space before they were snuffed out like a candle. Behind the pirate ships were three Dalek fighter ships.

The pirates had spent a fortune on their ship.

They had gotten it outfitted with some of the latest black-market weapons and shield generators that were dangerously close to the military grade of the spectrum, and their hyperdrive had been refitted and replaced so many times, with modifications built into the space warp field generators to make the pirate ship faster than anything in the galaxy. The captain of the group was a smart Twi'lek woman who wanted her gang to be the most feared and she had made sure all of their cash had been invested wisely in the building of a starship that could outgun even a Trade Federation mothership.

The band of cutthroats had assumed and even hoped with their high-quality weapons they could be invincible. But the Dalek fighter ships were a different breed of predator. Their engines were fast, their weapons were unlike anything the pirates had seen before. Each time the pirates had tried to jump to a system, they were quickly attacked again and again and again, forcing them to flee again before the Daleks became frustrated with the chase and targeted their engines so they couldn't jump into hyperspace again.

On the bridge of the ship, the Twi'lek captain coughed hard as she looked around. Electrical fires were burning through the consoles and already too many of her crew had died. All because they had seen something they shouldn't have. She had already sent a transmission through to the Republic and to the Separatists when she realised there was nothing she could do. She'd had to perform a lightspeed skip through this part of the Outer Rim just to send it off, but even then she didn't know for sure if the transmission got out or not.

Those were her last thoughts as the bridge blew up around her.