Chapter 117: Marshaling of the Light

Warning! Chapters 115-117 were all posted back-to-back, make sure you pick up reading in the right place if you're returning to this fic!

Chapter 117: Marshaling of the Light

– Antar System – 24.3 BBY –

Rahm Kota smiled with grim satisfaction as he gazed out the shipyard window at a construction droid, watching it finish painting an emblem on the side of the Dreadnaught. Once painted a dull grey, the ship had been repainted in bright white and gold, and the droid was putting the final strokes on an older and more militant version of the Jedi Crest. Instead of a pointed star surrounded by spread wings, those same wings now surrounded a stylized hand holding a lightsaber aloft. It wasn’t the banner of the old Army of Light. There was too much political risk in reusing that. Instead, it was a more obscure emblem from the Jedi past. One that would still be easily recognizable as a variant of their Crest, but which would show that this was very much not a diplomatic vessel.

Despite not reusing the banner, he had little doubt the name would end up the same, if they had cause to use this ship and the others of its origin that were even now being worked on. Unfortunately, as much as he genuinely wished that not to be the case, the fact that he’d been given the go ahead for this project months ago was telling. Even the High Council, as stiffly divided as they still were on some matters, could not deny the weight of evidence. War was coming, and neither the Jedi Order nor the Republic were ready for it.

Not yet, at any rate.

They would be.

At least the Order would, to the greatest extent Rahm himself could arrange for. This, the first ship of the Katana Fleet that had finished full refit, was one of six currently being rebuilt at the now much-expanded and carefully hidden Atarian Ranger shipyards. Nor was such the only place that work was being done. A quietly purchased mobile shipyard was out among the Katana Fleet itself, doing initial repairs to get ships in a state to be moved elsewhere, and someone had gone digging in the archives for other options. In doing so, they’d stumbled into mentions of the infamous Space City.

The near-planet sized space station properly known as the Nespis VIII spaceport was a truly ancient mega construct, even by the standards of the Jedi Order. First built sometime during the dawn of the Republic, it was added onto many times until, roughly 10,000 years ago, it had become one of the Twenty Wonders of the Galaxy. One of the few not suspected of having been built by a precursor race, in fact. The massive city in space had made it through thousands upon thousands of years of galactic conflict, including both the Old and New Sith Wars and the destruction of the Cron Drift. These days, however, it was largely abandoned.

In fact, the Jedi Order had been one of the few groups who still visited it semi-regularly. It was, after all, one of the very few places in the galaxy where a full backup of the Jedi Archives existed. Aside from them and various artifact hunters who liked looking through that station for prizes to sell to collectors, virtually no one visited the massive station any longer. Shifts in trade lanes and discovery of better hyper routes left it poorly positioned to be the trade hub it had once served as. Which was incredibly convenient, as it happened, since the massive station had once possessed the ability to service and repair even ships the size of a Katana Dreadnaught.

Rahm hadn’t been out there yet himself, leaving the refurbishing to others in their compartmentalized conspiracy. He had the reports as the overall leader of the effort, though, and knew there were already an additional three Katana-class ships under rebuild at those facilities. A number that would grow in time, as there was a lot of old capacity there that could be brought up to at least a basic level of function. Which was all they really needed to handle the ships, considering the fleet they were restoring wasn’t honestly that old and in quite good shape. The Katana Fleet had only been out in the deep black for twenty-two years before Master Krintu had stumbled upon it six months ago, after all. Which, given the number of droids that had been included and were still doing upkeep, meant that the ships were remarkably well preserved.

They were also, it had to be said, something of a testament to Rendili’s designers.

The original, laughably inappropriately named, Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers had possessed a plethora of issues. Slow, under-armed for their tonnage, with poor power systems, and far too large of a crew requirement. Their only true good point had been being incredibly tough, with excellent shields and even better armor. What had been largely lost in the many, many jokes made about the infamous ‘Dark Force,’ after it vanished, was that Rendili hadn’t made merely cosmetic changes to the ships. Reducing the crew complements from 16,000 to barely over 2,200 had left them with a lot of free space, and their designers had known better than anyone what the design’s flaws had been. In their attempt to tempt the Republic into more purchases, the power systems had been entirely rebuilt, the armament upgraded substantially, and the original hangar expanded.

Original Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers had been armed with 10 medium turbolasers, 20 light quad lasers, and 20 heavy laser canons. Heavily armed by the Ruusan Reformation limits, yes, but hardly suitable for the name of the class. With the Katana-class, the designers had gotten wise and leaned into gaps in the Ruusan limitations. The quad lasers had been upgraded to heavier models and listed a ‘point defense,’ the heavy laser canons had been ripped out and replaced with capital ship grade ion canons which hadn’t been restricted half as heavily by the Reformation. The medium turbolasers had remained…in theory. They had, however, stolen an idea from KDY and made those ‘medium’ turbolasers so robust that they could be ‘overcharged’ to fire something much more like a heavy turbolaser bolt. So much so that very minor tweaks made now were converting them into heavy turbolaser batteries.

Then, of course, had been the shields and small craft. The shield upgrades had been run of the mill, but brought them up to snuff with any modern warship, if not actually a bit better than anything of comparable size. The original version of the vessel had also only supported a single 12-fighter squadron. With a lot of extra space still available, even after beefing up the armament and shields, the designers had tripled that capacity and added space for dedicated landing craft. The ships even had experimental AT-PT walkers aboard, a product line of Rothana Heavy Engineering that hadn’t survived the loss of the fleet. Not to mention the Variable Altitude Assault Transports (VAATs) required to deliver the walkers and troops.

While still not exactly deserving of the name ‘Dreadnaught,’ Rahm had to admit that the Katana-class refits really had been a massive upgrade. More than enough so that they genuinely deserved to be called a heavy cruiser, at least. It was a shame they’d suffered from the Dark Force disaster, really, as a revitalized Judicial Forces with plenty of ships of this class would have gone a long way to prevent some issues like the Stark Hyperspace War or Invasion of Naboo. Hell, it would also have left the Republic in far better shape for what he could feel in his bones was coming.

Well, the Republic’s loss was the Jedi Order’s gain, for now. They had two hundred of these ships to restore, after all…and working on so many of them would give them the expertise needed to build still more of them if they needed them. Added to efforts to quietly secure as many of the Munificent II and Defender II class vessels that the League of Free Stars were now phasing out from their main fleets, and the renewed Army of Light would have a very solid core to build around. Even if it likely wouldn’t be nearly enough to truly counter what the Trade Federation was building.

As he turned away from the view, his grim smile turned into an urchin’s grin that would have surprised almost anyone who knew him. That grin was brought on by the sight of a handful of happily arguing Jedi Sentinels that had ended up working with him to finance all of this. When he’d first started approaching a few people to question about how that little detail might be covered, he’d be very startled by a quick discovery. Specifically, that the Sentinels sub-sect of the Jedi Order had made a long-standing game out of coming up with ‘the most creative ways to break the economy with the Force.’

Apparently, the fact that Sentinels often went undercover had inspired a multiple-melinna-long right of passage, of sorts. One that had new Sentinels challenged to figure out how to fund their first few undercover operations without getting yelled at by the Order’s logistics people. It turned out that the most independent-minded of the three major ‘branches’ of Jedi had a long habit of not exactly reporting all their assets.

Which rather explained how so many of them seemed to have their own ships, come to think of it.

To be fair, as had been hastily explained to him, they all kept a careful eye on each other to make sure no one was abusing their little tricks to live lives unbecoming of Jedi. They were just…’augmenting their ability to do good by creatively redistributing wealth from criminals into operational funds.’ A near-direct quote from the Sentinel who’d explained it to him, and which still made Rahm’s lips twitch at the way the woman had somehow gotten it out with a straight face.

Not that he was complaining now.

Frankly, the sheer number of ways they’d come up with over several thousand years was mind boggling. As was the contents of some of the Sentinel-only ‘black’ accounts that had built up over numerous generations following the tradition. Even with a lot of money going to various charities, those accounts had contained billions of credits. Billions of credits which his eager group of reprobates had cheerfully turned into a hell of a lot more via use of some of the more common and untraceable tricks.

Sports betting with foresight used to predict outcomes, gambling against rigged establishments, market manipulation based on predicting insider trading. Those were just the more normal methods, with increasingly bizarre ones that nevertheless worked helping hide the flow of credits still farther. He had to admit the one sentinel that had created a business selling plushies of Master Yoda and a few other famous Jedi was particularly humorous, and likely good PR too. Though he was certainly going to enjoy watching the first time the young Twi’lek woman had to explain to Master Yoda why there were a couple of planets out there where his image was a beloved children’s toy…

Admittedly, he was partially looking forward to seeing her squirm out of hind-sight irritation that likely wasn’t very fair of him. He’d been a little annoyed to discover that the Sentinels likely could have funded the entire Jedi Order since the Ruusan Reformation without the Senate paying a single credit. Then again, the Jedi had wanted to look beholden to the Republic for funding, so he knew his irritation wasn’t truly fair. Besides, it was proving useful now. As the sentinels wiggled their fingers into the galactic economy with undisguised glee at getting a chance to put some of their more bizarre plans to work, he was confident their projects weren’t going to run into funding issues.

Coming up with enough personnel for the ships was a bit more of an issue, but he was hopeful some of his suggestions about the Agricorps and Explorer Corps would pay off there. At least to provide them with an officer core. Not to mention the expanded recruiting efforts that the Rangers were now engaged in. It still wouldn’t be easy, but the galaxy was a huge place and quite a few of the more honorable races out there retained a deep enough respect for the Jedi to make for fertile recruiting grounds. Which meant Rahm felt it was doable, at least.

When whatever disaster he could feel on the galactic horizon broke, Rahm Kota was going to do his best to make sure their enemies were unhappily underinformed about just how ready the Jedi Order was to face the onrushing storm…

… … …

– Ossus – 24.2 BBY –

At well over 800 years old, Grandmaster Yoda was not overly accustomed to dealing with people older and, very possibly, wiser than he. Certainly, he was far from the only centuries-old Jedi in the Order. Even just on the High Council alone, Yarael Poof and Oppo Rancisis were both in their third centuries, and Yaddle was only two centuries younger than Yoda himself. There were others outside the council that were even older, for that matter. He was one of the bare few who actually knew Master Fay’s age, Master T’ra Saa was well into her fifth century, Tera Sinube was well over four hundred, etcetera. Many of them were quite wise and Yoda was not nearly foolish enough to ignore their experience.

All of them paled next to the Neti meditating across from him.

He and Master Windu, in their respective positions as Grandmaster and Master of the Order, had been surprised when a physical messenger had arrived bearing one of the sets of security codes provided to Shaak Ti. The young Torgutan woman, clearly but subtly radiating the Force, yet utterly unknown to either of them, had quietly arrived in the wake of Ambassador Rotsino of the League of Free Stars delegation.

In the chaotic energy caused by the Ambassador’s presence, Kalda Ra had faded into the background to the various Senators and political factions. She might, in truth, even have been missed by the Jedi Order if she hadn’t specifically sought out a private audience with Yoda and Master Windu. Something which, given she carried one of Master Ti’s high-security codes and a verifying message of who she was, had gotten her the audience she’d wanted.

They had been subsequently been taken off guard at the invitation that she’d carried as her primary message. An invitation for either of them, or one of a very small and select list of other Jedi Masters, to visit the planet of Ossus and the relatively new Ossus Academy, which they hadn’t even known existed. The fact that the invitation had come signed by Jedi Master Ood Bnar of all beings, another fact authenticated as real by Shaak Ti’s own message, had moved Yoda to personally take the invitation. After, of course, arranging to be gone on one of the rare ‘meditative retreats’ he allowed himself away from the Temple.

He hadn’t been able to pass up the opportunity to speak with the long-thought-dead Jedi, who had been considered a legendary sage of great wisdom even in his own time. Nor had the request for secrecy bothered him, given all they knew that was going on in the galaxy at the moment. He had brought only a single other with him, a promising Jedi Knight named Vetna Mooncrest, as Yoda himself was no skilled pilot. The Route to Ossus required such skill and Knight Mooncrest was quite talented, while also being someone Yoda had believed to have a sufficiently open mind for what lay at the other end of the journey.

The young woman was, even now, recovering from healing that Master Bnar had overseen personally. Healing that had fixed the congenital disability that had left Vetna requiring implants to function her entire life. The fact that Kalda Ra, the young Togrutan that had delivered the invitation, and had apparently only started training a bare six months previously, had done the healing? Healing that all the most talented healers at the Jedi Temple had been unable to provide?

It had been humbling to Grandmaster Yoda.

Even more humbling had been his talks since then with Master Bnar. The Neti had been over two thousand years old before he’d gone into hibernation, and possessed incredibly deep knowledge of the Jedi Order’s history. Much of that knowledge was of things, be it details of ancient events or outright Force Techniques like the healing Kalda Ra had used, that had long been lost to the Jedi Order. Some of it during the New Sith Wars, yes. But even more of it had been lost during events like the Sacking of Coruscant that had happened just a few centuries after Ood Bnar’s time. Indeed, some of the knowledge were things that had even been lost with Ossus itself to Exar Kun’s machinations.

Yoda felt almost like he was a Padawan again.

He didn’t hate the feeling, but he was certainly somewhat uncomfortable with the revelations of just how little the modern Jedi resembled their past. Particularly when Master Bnar had been able to legitimately highlight past mistakes that had been repeated within Yoda’s own lifetime…or a bit before, with the Ruusan Reformation. Nor was Ossus Academy itself the most pleasant of revelations, given just how different it was structured to the Jedi Order. Yet, with it being led by Ood Bnar, it was difficult not to call it a legitimate successor to the old, pre-reformation Jedi ideals. Ones that Yoda was finding all too reasonable, in light of many of the faultlines and cracks he’d begun to notice in the modern Order.

As they meditated together, the current Grandmaster of the Jedi Order contemplated ways to shift course to repair some of those issues. As well as what to do about the existence of this Academy in general. He personally had no issue with its existence, guided by who it was and with several others involved being individuals that he genuinely respected. Yet, its existence was going to become public knowledge sooner or later, and he couldn’t say that the more traditionalist members of the Order were likely to take it well.

Sighing, he pushed the thought aside again to focus on one of the interesting new, or rather old, tricks that the venerable Jedi sitting with him had freely shared. Similfuturus wasn’t quite a lost technique the way some of what Bnar knew was. Yet the ability to use it a great range, including interstellar distances, was something else entirely. Something which, given Yoda’s strong connection to the Force, promised to allow him to communicate discretely with Jedi he’d set to tasks best kept out of normal communication channels…

… … …

– Nelvaan Shipyard Complex – 24.3 BBY –

Lieutenant Commander Aleste Greenscale, now assigned as the military attaché and liaison for Shil Tervo, had a hard time keeping the huge smile off his face these days. Studying all of those old ships from the Hutt mothball fleets, proving in the process that he was extremely gifted at adapting old systems to modern hardware, had been incredibly enjoyable. Just as enjoyable had been taking the opportunity of their little downtime to meet and get to know his now girlfriend Reeta Jewargtail. Yet, despite that period of his life being so amazing it felt like years rather than just one single standard, his new job was even better.

After all, there were precious few people in the galaxy that got to participate in the design of an entirely new battleship class.

Outside the Core Worlds, no one even had battleships any longer. Oh, sure, those converted Lucrehulk-class ships that had been found in the Nimban yards technically qualified. At least if you squinted hard enough. In truth, they were closer to upgunned and heavily shielded carriers than they were true battleships though. No, for a true battleship, you had to look to the major Core worlds.

Corellia had some massive Star Dreadnaughts still, and KDY’s Mandator-class Star Dreadnaught featured in quite a few Core Worlds defense fleets. Frankly, Aleste considered the Mandator in particular to be an insult to proper battleships, as it was pathetically under gunned for its tonnage, due to Ruusan Reformation limits. Though he personally suspected most of them had been ‘refit’ by the fleets they belonged to in ways that made their official armament so much false data.

The ship that his new boss, Mister Tervo, was leading the design of, though? Oh yeah, Project Miruko was a proper battleship. The name was still weird to him and he wasn’t sure what the significance of it was, but the hull design was going to be just in excess of five point two kilometers, with a truly exciting armament that included a modernized battery of the Silencers that had been copied off the ancient Harrower that Aleste had worked on. With multiple particle beam projectors as well, along with an upgraded version of the Graviton Beams that could create gravity shear on shields rather than being next-to-useless against them? The ships of the new class promised to eat Mandators for breakfast.

Without salt.

Of course, they were only two months into what was likely to be a multi-year design and prototyping program for the new battleships. But that just meant more time for Aleste to enjoy working on the single most exciting project he’d ever heard of! Yes, life was good for Aleste Greenscale, and he was hopeful it would stay that way…

… … …

–Coruscant - 24.1 BBY –

Mace Windu sat with Master T’un, both of them facing Master Taria Damsin as she gave her report. Taria was not the actual head of the Jedi Shadows, but Mace didn’t know who was. Master T’un, as the Master of Records for the Council of First Knowledge, almost certainly did. It was, after all, First Knowledge who the Shadows reported to. Something which might seem odd to outsiders, but made perfect sense when you realized that the primary job of the Shadows between major wars was to hunt down Dark Side artifacts. The Jedi Order was hardly blind to the fact there were entirely too many old Sith holocrons, carvings, ghosts, and so on out there. Every one of those they could hunt down and either eliminate or hide in a vault was one that wouldn’t revive the Sith Order or create a Dark Side cult.

Besides, coming back to the point of who knew about what, ultimately whoever the current head of the Shadows was, part of their job was to investigate Mace himself, in his role as Master of the Order. It was for that reason that the Master of the Order was never aware of exactly who the head of the Shadows was. Despite knowing he’d almost certainly been investigated when he ascended to the position, due to his creation of Vaapad, Mace had never even been able to guess. Which, frankly, he took as a good thing, since it meant whoever it was, they were good at their job.

What he did know, and why he was here listening to this report, was that Taria Damsin was a high-ranking member of the Shadows. Despite being relatively young, she was also extremely talented, and was the High Council’s current contact with their most elusive group. Personally, he was suspicious of her supposedly developing Borotavi syndrome on a mission not too long ago. No Jedi, particularly a highly-paranoid Shadow, should have failed to notice eating a poisonous mollusk. He honestly suspected that she’d been earmarked as the next head of the Shadows and was in the process of slowly, ‘tragically,’ vanishing from an ‘incurable condition.’

“That’s the last of it. We finally got someone in place to check on the Sorcerers of Tund and, while they are still there, there is no evidence that any of them have left their isolation. More concerningly, there is evidence that someone else’s agents had managed to scour the planet before us. Almost certainly within the previous decade. Most likely, they snuck in as part of the Republic sticking their nose into the situation with the Toongs. They didn’t poke the Sorcerers themselves, as far as we can tell, but they certainly hunted down a lot of artifacts we’d rather have ended up vaulted or destroyed.”

Mace frowned, but it was Master T’un that spoke up.

“That, unfortunately, fits the pattern we’ve started to notice. Many of the places that the Shadows or other Jedi have visited, looking for the Sith, have shown evidence that others beat them to it. Most likely the very Sith we are hunting, looking for more knowledge for their own collection. This is most concerning, as it means we may be dealing with a group who have collected quite a bit of esoteric knowledge from a dozen or more different sources.”

Sighing, Mace nodded.

“The High Council is aware, and just as concerned about that fact. Yet, there is little we can do but continue hunting and preparing. On the topic of both, how is recruitment of more Shadows looking?”

Master Damsin shrugged, looking a bit unhappy.

“It was going well. Until more than two thirds of our potentials fucked off to the Hutt Crusade. That action attracted a huge chunk of the Jedi most likely to be proactive. On the plus side, now that it is winding down a bit some of them are coming back, and they’ve gained new skills and mindsets that make them even better potentials than before. But we’re having to vet them extremely carefully to make sure they didn’t get into anything…unfortunate…in their jaunt through Hutt Space.”

Mace nodded, though again it was Master T’un who spoke up next.

“And the other initiative?”

Damsin brightened visibly, a smirk lifting one corner of her mouth.

“That one is going extremely well. We were right to think that a lot of the former initiates that had been shuffled off to the various service corps really just needed time to settle down. The tween and teenage years are truly a kriffing stupid time to judge someone’s personality stability. Seriously, who thought that was a good plan?”

Shaking her head, even as Mace fought a wince since that was mostly a post-Ruusan thing, Damsin went on.

“We’ve also found some troublesome individuals among the corps that we’ve had to…deal with. But so far several dozen former initiates have proven to possess the right temperament to be turned into undercover, Force Sensitive, agents. We’ve already trained up the first batch and begun deploying them in ways that will let us eventually follow up on the information provided by people like Masters Tholme and Shaak Ti.”

That information brought a pleased, if slightly grim, smile to Mace’s face. It had been a long time since the Jedi Order had needed a true intelligence service of its own, independent of the Republic. But that didn’t mean they’d lost all the institutional knowledge required to set up and run such things. Already, they were working to fold many of the independent networks various Sentinels had put together into a more cohesive overall whole. Adding some more capable, Force Sensitive agents and handlers, to glue the network more fully together would only improve the quality of the result.

“Let’s turn for a moment to discussion of new information from other sources, then. To see if we can aim them a bit better…”

The meeting would continue for some time. Just one more in hundreds needed to put the Jedi Order back on a war footing before it was too late and they were caught with their pants down, at least those of them that wore pants. That expression wasn’t the best fit for an order that mostly wore robes. An idle thought that Mace quickly dislodge and discarded. He still wore pants, after all. Just under the robes. Not all Jedi enjoyed the draft that came from doing flips without suitable protection…

… … …

Sasha Belphont had to admit, she hadn’t expected the life of a spy to be just as thrilling as some of the holodramas made it out to be. Oh, it didn’t actually match the holodramas, and she certainly knew that her own experience was far from typical for how most spies worked. The sort of nonsense action-holos got up to was really more the sort of thing that wetworks and blackops teams got up to, not spies. Proper espionage was normally much lower key than that. A typical spy should be unnoticed and unremarked upon. A file clerk, a security chief, even a maintenance worker whose job naturally gave them access most wouldn’t have.

Boring, in other words.

Normally, if things got exciting for a spy, it meant something had gone horribly wrong and they were in extreme danger. The thing was, though, that Sasha was not a typical spy. Well, not the most typical sort of spy, at least. Her sort of spy had also existed for most or all of galactic history. Honeytraps, concubines and mistresses, side pieces that people assumed were nothing but empty brains and spread legs, and thus said too much around. Her time at the Naked Nymph had been along those lines, though honestly on the tame end of the spectrum. She hadn’t had to actually fuck anyone, other than the cute LIS agent she’d seduced, and the occasional pawing at her ass and tits had barely bothered her.

She’d also proven that she was good at the job.

Enough so that, when the world where the Naked Nymph was located had been taken and pacified, LIS had decided she was a valuable asset and come up with a creative new direction to take her particular set of…skills. Specifically, they’d asked if she was willing to become a bit of high-society arm candy, an escort that specialized in handling clients like KDY executives or Trade Federation board members. Sasha, unlike the vast majority of their other assets, had pre-existing exposure to that sort of high society and influence. Her former Master had moved in those circles, and she’d been on display and expected to ‘know the rules’ as she served or performed for all types and sorts at his functions.

That combination of willingness to use her sex appeal and preexisting knowledge had caused the LIS to pitch the idea. Sasha hadn’t needed long to think about it, either. A chance to legitimately do all the shit she’d seen the actual nobles and such get up to? Eat the fancy food, get the 10,000 credit massages, and bathe in the blood of the most holy virgins? Sign her up!

Okay, well, maybe not that last one. She hadn’t seen anyone do that, thankfully, and didn’t have any interest in something that creepy herself. Totally sounded like something some of the creepier nobility and hereditary rich of the galaxy would do, though. Particularly the women, if they thought it would magically make the look younger. Seriously, she was grateful her former Master had come down hard on anyone who tried to fuck with her. Some of those rich bitches could be spiteful when you were prettier than they were.

Or had better tits.

Given that Sasha had the best tits. Crimson, bouncy and altogether glorious, she could forgive their jealousy. They’d known they were inferior in the bounty of bosoms, a small victory she’d mentally held over all their heads whenever she’d caught their glares. Sure, it was just naturally good genes and clean living on her part, but you took what you could get when you’d grown up knowing you were doomed to be a slave, and then spent half a dozen years actually as a slave. Knowing she also had better tits than all those other girls back in her clan that hadn’t been sold off still warmed her heart at night, too, as a matter of fact.

Mostly when she was playing with them, of course.

Enough about her tits though, at least for now. It was a topic that anyone could enjoy, but not the point! Well, they did have nice points, but…nope, focus! Even if this Blissex guy was kinda depressing to deal with, and his daughter was a right raving cunt, Sasha was making good progress with him! He obviously needed a sympathetic ear, and he was very high up the ranks of Kuat Drive Yards. Honestly, she even felt for the dude, as he was clearly unhappy making weapons of war, just as his old friend Tervo had quietly admitted to her. A gentle soul stuffed into a role making violence happen. She could work with that. By the time he left the resort world he and his daughter were vacationing on, she was sure she’d have him wrapped around her little finger!

She just had to hope that the background LIS had put together for her held up to the scrutiny his security people were undoubtedly putting her under. She was pretty sure it would, but nothing was certain given how good KDY’s internal corporate security was. Besides, the thrill of danger that it might not did add to the excitement of her new lifestyle a bit. Really, she’d never imagined she’d enjoy the thrill of this sort of hunt as much as she did, but she wasn’t about to complain that she’d apparently found some sort of calling in life…

... ... ... ... ... ...

A/N 1: Oh no, oh dear, oh my. Just how will the Republic and Palaptine deal with the fact that THIS time the Jedi aren't idiots...and won't actually NEED the Clones.

A/N 2: Master T'un and Taria Damsin are both actual Star Wars characters. Pretty much the only characters we know of that were on the Council of First Knowledge (probably) and a modern Shadow.

A/N 3: The sexy spy is back, and she's found an important person to latch onto...

A/N 4: You probably know this bit by now, but I need to say it anyway ;-)! Once per release, I point out that I have a  Page with Early Access content. In example, I just released chapters 118-121 of Displaced Hero there, adding another 15,000 words which will remain in Early Access until next month. Similarly, there are at least a few Early Access chapters there for ALL of my stories, though NONE of them are ever permanently paywalled. All fanfiction content I make ends up here (or on Fanfiction.net and Questionable Questing) eventually, as new content for each story is released. Typically, there are 75,000+ words of additional early access content for patrons at any one time, all for just a dollar a month! As well as chances to vote in polls that influence which stories are updated, pairings, and other such things.