Interlude
Palpatine stood with his back to the door, thoughtfully tapping his fingers against the polished edge of a mahogany desk while staring through the window.
They had failed to prevent the message from being sent. However, that had still been enough to determine where it had gone.
Naturally, the enemy had not been stupid enough to transmit it directly. The signal had been routed through a chain of shadow proxy servers and broken into separate packets, but Sidious had direct access to all of Coruscant's resources. The most advanced algorithms in existence, combined with the immense computing power of the capital world, were already an extremely formidable weapon even before taking his best specialists into account.
Sidious narrowed his eyes slightly as he studied the holographic projection of the Unknown Regions. The signal vector disappeared into a sector listed on official star charts as a "dead zone." In his personal archives, however, within ancient holocrons recovered from ruins and carefully preserved by the Sith Lord, that system had a name.
Praxis.
"An arrogant, slippery worm," he whispered quietly, with equal parts hatred and admiration in his voice.
Brute had turned out to be considerably more intelligent and dangerous than the Sith Lord had expected. After disappearing from sight for only a short time, he had somehow discovered an ancient base belonging to the Sith Empire, gathered the refuse of the galaxy around himself, and gone so far as to begin constructing a state of his own.
Worse, he had infected the masses with his Idea, one directly opposed to Sidious's own plans.
Still, simply attacking their little enclave with overwhelming force was not yet an option.
Unfortunately, even his Grand Design had weaknesses, and the greatest of them was the Jedi. They would be very interested in discovering an entire star system left behind by the ancient Sith, but handing them whatever Dark Side secrets were hidden on Praxis?
Absolutely not.
Dooku presented the same problem. Was it really wise to give him an opportunity to become even stronger?
There was also the fact that, according to Sidious's information, the anomalies surrounding the system functioned as a first defensive layer, reinforced by traps installed during the era of the ancient Empire. A large fleet might simply never make it through intact.
It was possible to navigate the passage with the Force, of course, but that would require sending at least one Force-sensitive individual along with the strike force.
Silence filled the office for several minutes before Palpatine finally reached a decision.
"This requires a fast and precise strike using a small elite force," he concluded.
He activated an encrypted communications channel, and several minutes later the holographic image of Count Dooku appeared within the office.
"My lord." Dooku bowed his head. "My agents report suspicious movements involving considerable forces within the Unknown Regions."
"That is precisely why I summoned you, Tyranus," Sidious replied without emotion. "Your former 'instrument' has developed an excessively high opinion of himself. I have located his refuge, but the passage into the system is unstable."
Sidious turned slightly toward the holographic map.
"Someone has provided me with more precise information about the system, including a vulnerable point in our future enemy's defenses. I will transmit that information to you as well. Assemble an advance group of automated cruisers under the control of droid commanders and strike without delay."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"One more thing. Any information recovered there is to be transmitted directly to me. Do not betray the trust I have placed in you, Tyranus. Operate secretly and use small, elite forces. The enemy almost certainly has spies inside the Confederacy. We cannot allow valuable information to be destroyed because someone panics."
The projection vanished.
Palpatine turned back toward the panoramic window, where a blood-red sunset cast crimson reflections across the horizon, and continued considering how this new variable would alter his plans.
End of Interlude
The data on the holographic projector froze before being replaced by a short message.
Connection terminated.
Silence settled across the bridge.
"Forty-two seconds," Elara said quietly, her fingers motionless above the console. "From the moment our agent Kaelen was discovered on Coruscant until what I assume was his elimination, only forty-one seconds passed. Kaelen is gone... but he made it. We received most of the data."
I stared at the columns of decrypted files scrolling across the screen.
The price of that valuable intelligence had been the life of one of my subordinates, even though I had never met him personally.
Still, I was the one who had sent him there.
It was a little late for emotional torment. He had understood the risks when he accepted the assignment, but even knowing that did very little to improve my mood.
"Forty-two seconds is too fast even for the highest levels of ISB command," I said thoughtfully, keeping my eyes on the red indicator marking the severed connection. "I doubt ordinary investigators were following Kaelen. This almost certainly required direct intervention from the Chancellor."
"The proxy servers are still holding for now, but I doubt that will last." Elara quickly brought a schematic of the relay network onto a neighboring display. "I routed the transmission through a dozen false nodes in the Outer Rim, but if Palpatine's specialists are involved, then it is only a matter of time before they identify our location."
"Well, now Sidious knows that I know he intends to 'purge' the R.G.A. cells, and he understands perfectly well that I am not going to sit here and wait for him."
"You think he'll strike first?"
"I would bet he is already giving the order."
I turned toward the tactical table, where a three-dimensional model of Praxis and the surrounding region of space rotated slowly among representations of the system's various anomalies.
"Fortunately for us, Palpatine is not going to bring the entire Republic armada here yet. The Jedi would ask far too many questions. That means we should expect the Confederacy."
I studied the map for a moment.
"My guess is a small advance force intended to choke us before we can properly establish ourselves here. So... want to be my deputy for a while?"
I asked the question jokingly.
Elara rolled her eyes.
I grinned and continued.
"Put Security on alert and order the shipyards into defensive readiness. We also need to bring the fleet online. I hope they managed to finish work on at least a few ships. I heard the first fuel shipments arrived, but I have not been keeping track of the rest of the situation."
"Fine. We're in the same mess together anyway, so I'll supervise the preparations," Elara agreed with exaggerated generosity, already typing furiously into her datapad. "I think I can make things a little more unpleasant for them this time as well. I found all kinds of interesting things in the local archives."
She smiled slightly.
"It's a shame we don't have time for a proper cyberattack, but I can at least imitate the radio traffic of a fleet panicking because they weren't prepared for the enemy's arrival. They'll definitely intercept that."
We moved into the Military Council chamber, where Khem joined us.
The Dashade silently took his usual place behind me while I studied the constantly updating picture of nearby scanned space.
Occasionally, new points appeared on the tactical map. These represented another ship carrying R.G.A. specialists arriving to establish a proper base, exchange experience, and accelerate the ideological integration of our new allies.
What pleased me most was that recruitment for the first Commissariat intake had already been completed.
None of the recruits were Force-sensitive, but for the moment that was more than enough. Their first task would simply be maintaining morale among the troops.
Obviously, building a strong political system in only a few days was impossible. All we were really doing was buying time by giving people something they would be willing to fight for.
I quickly issued the Commissars a short directive: keep the garrisons alert, suppress dangerous rumors, and personally inspect the readiness of the personnel for their first true battle in centuries.
Drill was one thing.
War was another entirely.
A heavy silence settled over the chamber while everyone focused on their work. Only Khem occasionally gave a pleased grunt or growl, like a shark detecting blood in the water from kilometers away.
Then the alarm siren suddenly screamed.
Long-range gravitational anomaly scanners deployed at the outer edge of the system had detected ships emerging from hyperspace.
I checked the time and grimaced.
We had managed to complete only the absolute minimum of the preparations we needed before Palpatine's hounds finally reached us.
I assumed they were being led either by Dooku himself or by Ventress.
This time I would not be so merciful. At the very least, if it was the persistent witch, I would not allow her to escape again.
Another bargaining chip for whatever future negotiations might take place with Talzin.
"Oh, wonderful..." Elara muttered as preliminary data appeared over the central tactical table. "Munificent-class frigates and two heavy cruisers equipped with systems that prevent conventional tracking. Fortunately, the technology we inherited from the Sith Empire gives us a little room to maneuver."
She expanded the tactical projection.
"They will reach effective weapons range against the first defensive line in approximately three hours."
I examined the information Elara had provided regarding our own cruisers.
About sixty percent of them had received fuel.
Well, it was better than nothing.
Naturally, charging into battle immediately would have been... strategically questionable, to put it politely.
Part of me badly wanted to launch a surprise attack, board the enemy flagship, and deal with the entire problem personally.
But I was not some insane Sith incapable of controlling his impulses.
Probably.
We needed to meet the enemy from prepared positions.
At the same time, I had no intention of allowing them to approach too close to the station. Praxis possessed a respectable defensive shield, but if the enemy began firing everything they had, I doubted it would survive for long.
Once the shield failed, the entire station would effectively become a hostage they could use against us.
That was precisely why the ancient Sith Empire had scattered so many traps among the surrounding anomalies, including gravitational systems and even automated ones.
Until now, however, we had never activated them.
"I wonder who guided them through the anomaly field," I muttered thoughtfully.
Almost as though answering the question, a crimson local-alert indicator appeared on the tactical table.
Elara immediately worked through the console, frowned, and brought up medical telemetry from the prison sector.
"Oh. I think I know the answer," she said. "I took the liberty of putting a little extra surveillance on our captive witch, so you're welcome."
She pointed toward the readings.
"Look at the telemetry from her cell. There are some extremely abnormal activity patterns. I have no idea what she is doing, but whatever it is, it is dramatically affecting the ambient temperature."
I closed my eyes and reached into the Dark Side.
There it was.
The residue of her "magic."
Apparently we had underestimated the limitations of Dathomirian rituals.
I was hardly the greatest expert in Dark Side practices, but I had studied them extensively enough lately to recognize the general pattern.
That lunatic had apparently found a way to substitute her own body for the ritual tools we had confiscated, sacrificing her life force, or something close to it, to sustain the spell.
Whether she was transmitting directly to Talzin, somehow sending the information to Sidious, or whether the old fox had simply sensed the Dark Side disturbance and intercepted the signal was another question entirely.
I returned to the guard report and read the short note from the duty officer.
Over the last half hour, the prisoner had repeatedly inflicted small cuts on herself using broken fingernails.
That supported my theory.
I concentrated on the residue of the ritual.
It was difficult, but eventually I managed to feel what she had been doing.
The damned witch had been pointing the enemy directly toward one specific weakness in our defenses.
I had no idea how she could possibly know about it from inside her cell, but she had identified the technical gap around the outer fuel docks, where hyperfuel was currently being transferred.
"No more than two hours remain before the enemy advance force exits hyperspace," Elara summarized as she set aside an empty datapad.
"Well... how very kind of Varg to point directly at the weakest part of our defenses," I said thoughtfully. "Perhaps we can turn that into a trap."
I paused.
"Although right now I suddenly feel a desperate need to have a very personal conversation with someone."
...
A thin crust of dried blood covered the walls of the witch's cell.
Varg had used her own fingernails to tear open the veins in her forearms and draw narrow ritual lines across the metal.
Maul walked beside me while Khem remained hidden somewhere in the shadows, nearly impossible to see.
The Zabrak had said nothing when I explained the reason for our visit, but the moment we crossed the threshold he inhaled deeply and concentrated a dense current of the Force around himself.
Dathomirian "magic" collided with his raw power.
The blood-colored mist hanging above Varg's head immediately dispersed.
The witch jerked and looked toward us with bloodshot eyes.
She could barely breathe, yet her fingers continued scraping across the floor, feeding pulses of energy into the mystical symbols she had drawn.
"You're too late, Sith," she rasped, exposing bloodstained teeth. "Mother already knows everything, and she will save me."
Well, that was a remarkably useful explanation.
I was genuinely grateful.
Now I understood that she was still maintaining the ritual even here, although she had somehow hidden it from me.
Someone on the enemy side was receiving the signal.
And if we left her alone, she might even be able to start coordinating their fleet directly once they entered the range of whatever strange sight this ritual granted her.
So I stepped forward, raised my right hand, carefully controlled the output, and struck her with several arcs of lightning.
Apparently our witch had learned some method of seeing into places beyond the reach of ordinary vision.
Probably another part of the ritual.
Whatever the exact mechanism, I had no intention of allowing it to continue.
I simply knocked her unconscious.
"Keep her like this," I instructed Maul as I lowered my hand. "Do not allow her to regain consciousness until the enemy exits hyperspace. But do not kill her yet either."
I glanced toward the unconscious witch.
"This should only be temporary. The technicians will soon restrain her thoroughly enough that she will not be able to perform any rituals at all. So don't worry. You will still get your share of the coming 'fun.'"
Maul gave a quiet snort, adjusted his grip on his lightsaber, and took position beside the prisoner.
...
The bridge of the dreadnought Guardian of the Core was filled with controlled activity.
Beyond the panoramic armored viewport hung the dark disk of Praxis and the long structures of the outer refueling docks.
General Grievous stood at the right tactical terminal.
His metallic fingers clicked sharply across the communications controls as he activated the encrypted module we had acquired during the events on Raxus.
"Fighters are loaded," Elara reported without looking up from her console.
"Don't rush," I replied lazily, staring into empty space.
Approximately four minutes later, space in front of the refueling piers finally distorted.
One by one, Separatist vessels began emerging directly from hyperspace.
Their forward shields were lowered, leaving them prepared to immediately open fire on the vulnerable storage tanks toward which the witch had guided them.
I still had no idea exactly how they had intercepted her signal, but they did not seem to hesitate even for a second over the possibility that it might be a trap.
That bothered me slightly.
Never assume your opponent is an idiot.
Perhaps they had another advantage hidden somewhere.
"Do it," I ordered despite those thoughts.
Unfortunately, this plan required sacrificing some of our less-than-honestly-acquired wealth.
At that moment, Elara activated the emergency purge.
Gigantic streams of oily liquid fuel erupted from Praxis's main transfer pipes into open space at enormous speed.
Under the starlight, the material shimmered as it expanded rapidly in vacuum, turning into a vast, dense cloud of gas.
Within seconds, the entire forward section of the approaching Confederate advance group had disappeared inside it.
At the same instant, Grievous entered a short command sequence into his terminal.
It was a special encrypted master code with the highest possible priority for Separatist automated navigation systems, slightly "improved" by Elara.
Grievous's normal codes were no longer valid, but fortunately our "cool hacker" had uncovered a remarkable amount of useful material inside the ancient station's archives.
For twelve seconds, the engines of all ten enemy vessels shut down.
The Confederate fleet drifted under its own momentum directly into the densest part of the fuel cloud and lost all maneuvering capability.
I stepped onto the forward platform containing the controls for the station's shield-focusing emitters.
Bringing my palms together, I called upon the Dark Side.
The familiar burning sensation appeared in my chest, and it felt as though molten lava had replaced the blood flowing through my veins.
I directed the accumulated energy into the technological arcs of the station's fixed emitters, using them as a gigantic amplifier.
Light erupted from my fingertips.
An immense blast of Force Lightning surged outward, captured by the focal lenses of the Guardian of the Core, and transformed into a thick, continuous beam of blinding white energy.
It struck directly into the heart of the drifting fuel cloud.
Naturally, I could have simply fired one of the ship's guns and achieved essentially the same result.
But where would the fun have been in that?
There was no sound in vacuum, but the flash was so intense that the filters in the bridge viewport darkened instantly to protect our eyes.
The gas detonated.
An enormous hemispherical volume of plasma expanded through space, followed immediately by an exceptionally powerful electromagnetic pulse.
Dense flame swallowed the frigates.
The hulls of the Munificent-class vessels crumpled like thin sheets of metal as internal compartments detonated from the heat.
The electromagnetic pulse, however, caused the greatest damage.
Microcircuits, logic processors, control systems, and the wiring of the droid crews burned out within fractions of a second.
Within moments, the enemy fleet had been reduced to glowing, smoking hulks without firing a single shot at the station.
...
The armored viewport filters aboard the Guardian of the Core slowly returned to transparency as the plasma glow from the explosion faded.
Not one of the ten enemy ships had managed to fire a single weapon.
The electromagnetic pulse and immense thermal wave had destroyed their internal systems along with their crews, regardless of whether those crews were organic or droid.
"The fuel piers were not damaged," Elara reported as she sent a text log to my datapad. "The detonation occurred fourteen kilometers from the outer docking clamps. The load on the stationary shields has already dropped, and there is no hull damage."
She glanced toward me.
"It is a shame we had to waste so many resources, but I suppose this was probably the best possible outcome. We did not even need your backup boarding plan."
"What condition are the wrecks in?" I asked while scrolling through several pages detailing fuel and gas expenditure.
"All eight Munificent-class frigates and both cruisers are completely without power," Grievous answered, his metal fingers tightening into fists with a quiet grinding sound. "They did not suffer critical structural damage. If we deploy construction tugs, I estimate the R.G.A. shipyards can restore them to service within one week."
"Palpatine just paid for the modernization of our fleet himself," I said with a quiet laugh as I set the datapad aside. "Begin towing operations immediately."
My expression hardened.
"Still... something tells me that was only an advance force testing our defenses. It is too early to relax."
The repair craft had barely begun leaving the docks when another alarm filled the entire command bridge.
The main tactical table turned crimson as the long-range sensors detected a massive, unprecedented surge of gravitational instability on the approaches to the system.
Several of the ancient traps activated, forcibly pulling portions of the incoming fleet out of hyperspace.
Clearly, however, it was nowhere near enough.
This was no reconnaissance force.
Space along the very edge of the Unknown Regions seemed to tear apart under the sheer number of objects emerging from hyperspace.
"Mass emergence of unidentified vessels," Elara stated dryly, announcing the obvious. "Looks like the main armada has arrived."
A faint smirk appeared at the end of her sentence.
"What was that expression you used? You 'jinxed it,' right?"
One after another, metallic silhouettes dropped from hyperspace roughly one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers from Praxis.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty combat vessels.
Enormous Providence-class cruisers and heavy Confederate frigates began arranging themselves into an unmistakable siege formation.
The enemy had emerged beyond the effective range of our stationary weapons.
Since we had no intention of flying out to meet them and offering a fair battle, they were free to prepare their attack for the moment.
At the center of their formation loomed a flagship dreadnought transmitting an encrypted, highest-priority command signal.
"Count Dooku," Grievous said with unmistakable hatred as he stepped toward the panoramic viewport. "He brought the core of the entire Confederate fleet with him. I assume they are preparing for bombardment."
So that was exactly what I had expected.
The first strike had merely been bait intended to make us spend resources eliminating it.
Now the Count himself had entered the battle, and he possessed a significant advantage in raw combat power.
But who said I had not prepared for that?
End of Chapter