Chapter 128: Jedi Grinding

Warning! Chapters 127-130 were posted back-to-back. Returning readers make sure you pick up in the story in the right place ;-).

Chapter 128: Jedi Grinding

– Jedi Temple: Coruscant  – 22.9 BBY –

“Are we entirely sure this is a good idea? Even if we pick our targets incredibly carefully and with as much foresight as we can manage, given the veil has recovered, being wrong even once could cause disaster. Either by the information we know leaking to the Sith, or one of those we think will jump one way, jumping another and outing our preparations to the Senate.”

Plo Koon’s question was, unfortunately, entirely reasonable. Equally unfortunately, it was also true that there wasn’t much of a real choice. Something Mace put forward as carefully as he could with his reply.

“There is little other option. If we don’t warn at least some of the people who could make a difference, the very first strikes may end the coming war before it starts. Worse, once we unveil our own fleet, it will be clear to everyone that we knew something. Our list of allies has grown thin enough simply under the strain of our recent anti-corruption efforts. If we are also, rightfully, accused of not warning anyone of what we knew? The Republic as a whole may well turn against us. Given we have reasons to suspect Count Dooku, we could hardly flee to his new Confederacy. Nor should we, as they are nearly certain to be the aggressors.”

Grimaces filled faces in the ancient War Room. While this was a High Council meeting, for the first time in a millennia, it was not being held in the High Council Chamber. A proper accounting of just what all was in the Jedi Temple, during the security sweep, had reminded everyone that the sprawling edifice of their home had a lot more space than it actually used. The Academy, where initiates lived and trained, took up only a quarter of the temple, for example. The section which housed the High Council also housed the offices of the Jedi Service Corps…and the deeper bits of that section also contained things like armories and high security War Rooms.

The Jedi Temple of Coruscant was old, even if parts of it had needed to be rebuilt several times over the span of thousands of years. It was old enough, in fact, that it actually sat on a natural mountain. It was one of the precious few buildings on the entire upper level of the ecumenopolis that very technically sat, at least partially, on the actual surface of the planet. Of course, the central Ziggurat had been expanded outward several times. The original Grand Temple was never really used and barely even accessible. But that was somewhat beside the point. Said point being that they had remembered they legitimately had proper secure meeting places intended to be used in times of war. Built for those purposes during wars of the ancient past.

One of those rooms had now been refurbished, updated, and they were using it now. Of course, half of the High Council was also missing, out doing entirely too many tasks that demanded high-level involvement. Yet, all of those currently on planet were in the room now, discussing the possible dissemination of the information they’d gathered by various means so far. About the Separatist buildup, yes…but also the Republic buildup, and regarding the existence/reemergence of the Sith. As Mace had just stated plainly, warning no one while they had obviously known, would do them no favors in the eyes of the Public or the Senate.

“Master Windu is correct. Even if we completely finish with our current projects and begin building additional ships and ground forces, we can’t handle the numbers the Separatists will have on our own. Nor do the Judicial Forces, even with the ORD systems having been recently bulked up, have the firepower needed. At least some of the major players out there need to be pre-warned, or else the opening days of the conflict will be an unmitigated disaster. One that will be blamed squarely on us as a target of convenience.”

Eeth Koth’s voice was wary as he spoke. Koth had been one of the neutrals, not taking sides in the issue of the Hutt Crusade, and the reason for that had proven invaluable as the scale of their problems had grown. Prior to his stint on the High Council, Master Koth had spent his years training Sharad Hett going from far-flung world to far-flung world, quelling civil wars and dethroning tyrants. He, of perhaps the entire High Council, had perhaps the closest thing to a ‘military background.’

Even after becoming a member of the High Council, Koth had taken part in the Stark Hyperspace War with Mace Windu and Adi Gallia, and several other conflicts besides. In many ways, he’d become their military expert, even if people like Rahm Kota or the Gray Paladins were handling the more day-to-day aspects of their own buildup. Thankfully, with his word added to Mace’s, the others present nodded, ceding the point. Master Koon spoke up again a moment later.

“Very well. If we are agreed, then it is only a matter of deciding who we can warn with the least risk. I believe we need to consider at least three factors. Reliability, ability to contribute politically, and the current size of security forces each planet or sector may have available. They won’t have time to raise an army or navy entirely from scratch, after all.”

So continued a grueling meeting, where the High Council would determine who they should pass on what information to, in order to give the Republic a chance in the opening rounds of a war they were all now certain was coming. It’s not like all those ships the Republic was building in secret had crews, after all. Nor would they be enough on their own, if they had the numbers of both sides even partially right…

… … …

– Space City – 22.8 BBY –

Anakin Skywalker had to admit that his current ‘mission’ was enjoyable, despite technically being a punishment. At least sort of. It was…annoying…to be effectively cut off from all contact with the outside while stuck on Space City. Even the high-security comm he normally used to keep touch with his mother wasn’t something he was willing to risk using here. Not after being forced to sit through weeks of lectures on proper security procedures. He knew the only reason he hadn’t been in more direct trouble, had barely gotten a slap on the wrist honestly, was because of how many other padawans had been in the same lectures.

Honestly, he was fairly certain all of their respective Masters had gotten most of the harsh words, for not teaching them what the Order said was basic common sense.

Not that they were wrong, in hindsight. The longer the lessons on both security and the ethical reasons it was important had gone, the more he realized he’d screwed up. Not, as the instructors had been careful to point out, out of any major fault of his own. A rare case, in his experience, of the Jedi Order owning up to an institutional failure rather than blaming individual Jedi. They’d trusted Masters to teach ethical privacy concerns and fundamental security measures to their padawans, and a lot of Jedi Masters apparently just…hadn’t.

Anakin hadn’t realized just how bad it was to share details of political negotiations with people like Supreme Chancellor Palaptine, for example, as he hadn’t understood that a huge chunk of the reason people called on Jedi was for a neutral party. Passing on all the information to someone who might well be a rival politician, even if they were one of the good politicians, was a massive breach of that neutrality. One Anakin now realized he was guilty of contributing to. The fact that several Masters had ended up expelled from the Jedi Order for corruption, two of them even awaiting outright trials by the Judiciary, underscored just how serious it was.

Honestly, it was one of the few times he was glad he was still a padawan, as official displeasure had skipped them for the most part. Sure, he was sort of restricted, having all of his comm traffic monitored for the next three years and stuck for the entirety of this year somewhere out of regular communication. But he hadn’t been like Obi-wan, who’d been given a survey of the Planet Hoth as a shit detail for his own failure to teach security or monitor Anakin’s comm usage. Anakin felt a bit guilty about that, admittedly.

Doubly so since he was seriously enjoying the job he’d been assigned to.

Discovering that the Jedi were taking the threat of war seriously enough to quietly build up their own private fleet had honestly been a huge relief. Something that restored some of his faith in the Order, just as their recent anti-corruption raids had. Being assigned to a team of professionals and other Jedi who were designing new starfighters for that fleet though? That was amazing. A little frustrating at times, as well, since they were specifically being forced to design fighters for non-Force Sensitive pilots, which was a lot harder than he’d expected. At the same time, though, it was a fun challenge…and they were going to be working on a Jedi-specific variant once the initial design was done! One which, as one of the best Jedi pilots currently alive, he was going to get to test pilot!

Yeah, even if it sucked he couldn’t send messages to his mom for a bit, this assignment was honestly pretty fun. Besides, she was doing fine these days and, last he’d spoken with her, she had shifted to League Space. Tattoine wasn’t the hellhole it had been before, what with Hett working to build a new and fair government there, and his mom hadn’t been needed to act as a go-between with the world any longer. Frankly, he was happy she had apparently taken a new job working at Tythe Central. If there was one place in the galaxy that was safe, the center of the League’s power was probably it. More so than even most of the Core Worlds Anakin had been to. Those always had random crime rates that were uncomfortably high, even if they were safe from external threats.

Yeah, life was okay, for now, and hopefully the fleet they were building meant the Jedi would continue being proactive the way they had been in the last few years. It had, he thought, been a long overdue change to the Jedi Order. One he was pleased to see, even if he thought maybe the League had even better ideas, going after the Hutts the way they had…

… … …

– Hoth – 22.7 BBY –

Obi-wan was extremely grateful that he didn’t hate the cold. His Padawan, who’d never quite adjusted after his childhood on Tattoine, would have been an extra special level of miserable on this particular world. In fact, he was fairly certain that Anakin thought the mission was entirely a punishment detail for his Master, and Obi-wan hadn’t disabused him of the notation. In truth, there was most likely an element of the Council’s displeasure with his errors not catching the massive security breach Anakin had been over his entire padawanhood.

Yet, the problem had proven sufficiently systemic across the entire Order, that ‘punishment’ missions weren’t really happening. Every task Jedi Masters were being sent on these days served at least one, and usually more than one, purpose. Yes, the Masters that had kriffed up their security the most were getting some of the worst assignments, yet they weren’t unimportant ones. Obi-wan, in particular, wasn’t surveying an ice-world like Hoth for no reason. Specifically, he was scouting a number of ancient locations, looking for any that might be intact enough to hide another of their satellite academies.

The world, despite being a seemingly useless chunk of ice, had enough legitimate traffic to discreetly hide comings and goings from it. The largest attraction on the world was the Ceyan Range Raceway, a somewhat major stop on a couple of the galactic podracing circuits. In addition to that, there were facilities used by a few star touring companies for ice-boarding, hover-skiing, and big-game hunting. There were even a few small operations that extracted Lumni-spice from the world.

As one of the, if not the rarest form of spice in the galaxy, that last operation was lucrative…for those who managed to pry it away from the territorial Dragon slugs who fed on it. Add in the planet being a semi-popular place for smugglers to operate out of, and you ended up with a remote world with no real permanent settlements, but which still had enough space going traffic to hide the operation of one of their academies. At least so long as they kept the number of flights made to or from it down.

Of course, that was only if it could be made practical.

Which meant finding something that could be used as a starting point, so they didn’t need to move in enough heavy equipment to create a from-scratch base. That would be noticed and would render the idea not worth pursuing. Thankfully, or perhaps not if you were him and stuck surveying the possibilities, the Jedi Order also had old records on a number of bases that had existed on the world in the past. One was fragmentary knowledge from a major battle fought on the planet during the New Sith Wars, while others had been pulled out of the derelict space station the League of Free Stars had handed off to Master Eno Cordova.

Apparently, both the Old Republic and Sith Empire had possessed significant bases on Hoth during the Great Galactic War and following Cold War. Both the Whiterock Wastes and Icefall Plains had old potential bases, ones built to wartime bunker standards, which might mean they were still some degree or flavor of intact. Likewise, there was data claiming that the Ortolans had attempted to colonize the world, building geothermal taps that it might still be possible to update to modern standards, without having to drill down to the mantle from scratch.

As his speeder approached the location they had for ‘Aurek Base,’ Obi-wan just hoped that one of the possibilities played out. He might not hate the cold, but he wasn’t a particular fan, either. So it would, as Anakin might say, ‘kriffing suck,’ if all his efforts to endure turned up no usable result…

… … …

– Jedi Temple – 22.6 BBY –

Shaak Ti cut her most recent padawan’s braid with solemn formality, even if she was practically beaming inside. Asajj was radiating just as much happiness, even if she was looking a touch ragged after going through the Knight Trials. Due to being trained entirely away from the Temple, Asajj hadn’t been able to skip any of the five traditional trials, as was sometimes the case with padawans who had recorded missions that met the conditions. Trials of Skill and Courage were the most commonly bypassed, and Shaak honestly felt they could have been with Asajj as well, given her history.

Other steps, like the Trial of Spirit, were almost never skipped. Never, period, for Jedi raised during peace time, and only under dire or desperate circumstances even in war time. Facing the Mirror, as it was often called, was the test most likely to be failed…and the most likely to reveal darkness in a padawan that their Master had failed to discover or address. The deep meditative trance that forced one to confront their inner fears and demons was never pleasant, but it was also the truest test they had for selecting those who could overcome the darkness all sentients had within themselves.

Shaak Ti had not feared at all for her latest student’s ability to pass through that fire. In truth, she knew that Asajj had already faced her true moment in the crucible when her first Master died. Now, with her having completed the entire set of trials with flying colors, she was no longer Shaak’s padawan, but a Jedi Knight in her own right. Of course, what was about to happen was going to set an Akul among the chickens in some ways. But they could handle that.

Hopefully.

Grandmaster Yoda, personally presiding over this particular knighting ceremony due to Shaak having warned him in advance, tapped the floor with his gimmer stick and spoke the words needed.

“Rise, Knight Ventress, and speak your code.”

Asajj, who had knelt to have her braid removed, braced herself as she rose and spoke with confidence, even knowing she was about to spark a bit of a flame the Order might not quite be ready for.

“Emotion, yet peace.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Passion, yet serenity.

Chaos, yet harmony.

Death, yet the Force.”

It was an ancient version of the Jedi Mantra. Far more so than the one spoken by any modern Jedi during this ceremony, and many of the Masters present stirred in disbelief at it being spoken here and now. Disbelief that redoubled as an echo of approval surged back from the Force in response to Asajj’s conviction. In reality, the old code meant virtually the same thing as the ‘modern’ code and, up until the Ruusan Reformations, it had been common for Jedi to choose one or the other…or even a couple of other minor variants. All had the same core meanings, but each version tended to resonate more with some Jedi than others.

Yet, since the Reformation, all Jedi had used a single version. A version that meant the same thing, but which was far too often corrupted into meaning something else entirely. Interpretation had changed the meaning, stripping the modern mantra of its original symbolic meaning in place of overly literal alternatives. Too many forgot that Odan-Urr had been a poet, and his version of the mantra was meant to be symbolic of the meanings explained at length in the far greater volume of ‘The Teachings of Master Odan-Urr.’ An entire series of texts that should be required reading, but for some reason haven’t been for centuries. Standing all on its own, the older code that Asajj had just recited was, Shaak Ti felt, more true to the Jedi ideals.

Which didn’t stop the murmurs from spreading as Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order, accepted Asajji’s oath without question or comment. In doing so, he endorsed it as a legitimate alternative and left her position nearly unassailable even by the most rigid of traditionalists, who were not going to like this at all. Not even with the Force itself having surged with approval. It might well cause more cracks in the Jedi Order, but Shaak Ti thought they would be the healthy sort of cracks this time, if managed well.

After all, her own efforts to sway the group she’d exposed to Master Shan’s teachings were coming along quite nicely. If the Order could just get through the next year or so without fracturing, it might yet heal and once again become the beacon of Light in the galaxy it was always meant to be…

… … …

– Brighthome Space Station – 22.5 BBY –

Master Adi Gallia nodded in satisfaction as the streaks of hyperspace muddled into view with abnormal, but expected, lethargy. Brighthome Station was a nearly-forgotten piece of Jedi history, which had only possessed a very small staff of caretakers when she’d arrived months ago. Once, it had been a major Jedi Outpost serving the Mid Rim, and one of the handful of places in the galaxy that contained a backup of the Jedi Archives. As, over the last thousand years, the Jedi Order had contracted and grown overly attached to the Republic instead of retaining independence, Brighthome and been partially shuttered.

Not entirely, mind you.

No, Brighthome had remained in use, positioned in the Mid Rim, as a relay hub for multiple of the Jedi Order’s agriworlds. It had also served as a common resupply station for the Explorer Corps, a deep-space jumping off point for clandestine missions, and more. By the large, however, it had mostly been kept operating as a space dock and storage hub, with the rest of its facilities largely shut down. Most had forgotten it existed, even within the Jedi Order, if they didn’t have some reason to make use of it.

That had all changed in the last several months.

The agriworlds were actively being raided for talent these days, reassessments being done on a huge number of those who had been sent to all of the Service Corps for not making the cut to become padawans. The best of them, who’d grown out of flaws like quick teenage tempers or ego, were being quietly offered another chance at training as a means to bolster the number of active Jedi. Even those who still were not suitable for such roles, however, were being winnowed through to find those with no malice or bitterness toward the Jedi Order as a whole.

Those that passed that metric were quietly shuffled off to military academies, naval schools, judiciary positions, or a dozen other places. Even the youngest of former initiates sent away had a decade or more of experience with the Force tricks designed to aid in rapid learning and skill retention. With that in mind, hundreds of them from all the Service Corps were being put into positions to soak up the skills the Jedi Order was going to need, with the war they could all see coming on the not-so-distant horizon.

The result, predictably, was that they’d also been able to consolidate their agriworld operations. They didn’t shut them down, of course. Such would be far too noticeable to the many eyes that kept watch on the Jedi Order. But Jedi hands were being replaced with droid workers, and the remaining actual Force Sensitives concentrated on just a few worlds.

Neither of the agriworlds that had transshipped through Brighthome were among them.

Deliberately, of course.

It meant that those worlds no longer required the security measure that was that transshipping. Brighthome had been used specifically to prevent the general galaxy from knowing exactly where they might be able to kidnap a few hundred partially-trained Force Sensitives. It was for this reason that Brighthome had just…floated out in Dark Space, between star systems, quietly existing and doing its part.

The thing about Brighthome though?

It could move. Including through hyperspace.

Not very fast, of course. It was a large space station, not a proper ship. But the station was hyperspace capable. It had, admittedly, taken some time to bring that capability back up to snuff, but it had been well maintained for the most part. Now, as it removed itself from the region of space everyone knew it had been in, and crews far larger than its normal compliment worked to bring the old teaching and training facilities aboard it online? Brighthome was once more set to become the mobile Praxeum that it once been designed to be. Once they arrived at their first new hiding place, where the station would be farther refitted with defensive weapons and provided with a fighter compliment, they would also receive multiple youngling clans. Whereafter, the station would go into hiding in remote parts of the galaxy, places hard to navigate without the Force as an aid.

Whatever else happened, the future of the Jedi Order would not be so easily targeted as it might have been, if the upcoming war had caught them napping…

… … …

– Pammant Space Shipyards – 22.4 BBY –

Tholme was both satisfied and worried as he worked to cover up the additions he’d made to the programming of the droid workers of the Pammant Shipyards. The worry, of course, came from what he’d found while tracking the military buildup of the separatist movement. He was, at this point, virtually certain that Count Dooku was one of the current Sith, his findings in that regard passed on to the High Council via secure drop some months ago.

Unfortunately, the timing didn’t add up for him to be the Master of the Sith that had been killed by Obi-wan on Naboo. Meaning that, terrifyingly enough given how good the Count was, he was likely the Apprentice that had replaced that particular Sith. It may even have been Qui-gon’s death that pushed the already dissatisfied former Jedi Master over the edge, though that was only Tholme’s personal theory. He didn’t have enough proof to even be absolutely certain the man was a Sith, which complicated matters a great deal.

Proving it to at least his own personal satisfaction had, however, at least allowed him to focus his efforts. Instead of splitting his attention between trying to find the Sith and trying to map the growing crisis, he’d doubled down on the latter, hoping to find the other Sith in the process. He hadn’t managed that, not yet at least, but he had gathered quite a lot of information about the separatists’ buildup in the process. Which included the discovery that the Pammant Shipyards were being used to build true military ships that very much violated the current armament laws. The largest chunk of finished ships were a 2km plus scale cruiser-carrier variant called the Providence-class, but there were also unfinished hulls of a much larger series called the Subjugator-class.

The size, armament, and number of ships under construction was very worrying. Nor could he realistically sabotage the whole shipyard. What he could and had done, which was granting him a certain amount of satisfaction, was modify the shipyard droids so they would bake hardwired programming into any of the new ships’ cores. From now on, any additional ships built here would give their positions away via extremely well-hidden transmissions, tiny binary files intended to be buried in their regular comms traffic. Something they wouldn’t be able to fix without completely replacing the ship’s cores, which might as well force them to rebuild the ship from scratch.

Given he was fairly sure both classes of ship were intended to be command vessels, he hoped it would do some good. As, he hoped, would several nasty surprises he left in the already-completed ships, which would only activate the first time they were engaged in active combat…

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A/N 1: A brief little snippet of what Anakin and Obi-wan are up to. Since people frequently request such :-p. Poor Obi-wan is very cold, while Anakin is actually something like productive and well-adjusted. An amazing feat, if I do say so myself...

A/N 2: Asajj get's raised to Knighthood. A much better outcome for her than canon...