Chapter 75: Ripples in the Dark

Summary: Oh kriff! Look out, that butterfly has a sword!

Chapter 75: Ripples in the Dark

—Jedi High Council Chambers—

"Excuse my language, but what in the kriffing Corellian hells was that?"

It was the first time in a while that the entire High Council had all been present in a single meeting. The fracture lines which had developed in the group, ones that mimicked similar lines in the Jedi Order as a whole, had made such all-hands meetings increasingly acrimonious. Provided with the chaos of the ongoing situation both in and outside the Order as an excuse, the group had quietly, and without need for actual discussion, simply avoided a full meeting. Now, that script had flipped and the High Council chamber was fuller than ever. Unusually, it wasn't just the High Council present, but the current Council of First Knowledge as well. After all every Jedi in the Temple, including a considerable chunk of the initiates, had felt…something.

How each person described the phenomenon varied, but the general theme had been 'upheaval.' Somewhere in the galaxy, a massive upsurging of the Light Side had practically sung in victory as it burned away a chunk of Dark Side power none of them had even been aware of. It was far enough away that only the tide of rippling changes from that massive burst of the Light Side had made it so easily felt here on Coruscant. Those ripples had even been violent enough to outright rip holes in the parts of the Veil of the Dark Side which had increasingly hobbled the Order in recent years. Already, hours closer to the actual event, emergency orders had rapped out from the Temple's various Councils to Jedi all across the Republic.

Those orders, issued by a temporarily reunited-in-purpose High Council, had directed their forces to take advantage of bits and pieces glimpsed in the moment where the Veil had shuddered and spasmed. The Veil hadn't fallen, and the rips that had been torn in it were already closing, but several dozen problems had come to light all at once and the Order was scrambling to respond. Dark spots in the Force that had gone previously unnoticed were being investigated, crisises they had been blind to were being responded to.

Nor was all of the information immediate.

They were now all starkly aware just how badly they'd been blinded, and had a horrible inkling that it was for much longer than they'd realized. The Republic was in a much worse state than any of them had realized it was, and almost every Jedi with a lick of foresight ability had sensed a war far greater than what was going on in Hutt Space on the horizon. The leadership in particular was abruptly aware that they were riding a sinking ship in the Republic, and it might well be too late to patch enough of the holes to bail it out. They had to try, for the sake of the Republic's people, but not all of them were feeling particularly optimistic.

None of which led them to the knowledge of what the heck had actually happened. As had been so bluntly, if crudely, put to question by Master Saesee Tiin. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of those present had no information. Sadly for him, Mace Windu did, for he had received a report on the event from a source he'd only half-expected to actually hear from. One he was not particularly looking forward to explaining, given that it was going to up the stakes within the Order when it came to certain topics. The newly revealed external problems were helping soothe down the factions, but what he had to report was going to reignite more than one debate. Doubly so with First Knowledge now involved. There was no avoiding it, however, as he had no doubt others would eventually get their own reports from the Jedi involved. Sighing, he spoke into the silence that lingered after Master Tiin's dry but pointed question.

"Shaak Ti sent me a high-security personal message via an encrypted channel she set up before leaving. One-shot encryption, of which she has only a handful. Given their generally responsible natures, I gave them to both her and Master Eerin when they left."

His opening statement got the attention of the entire group, and he was thankful that both Master Eerin and Knight Ti were extremely well regarded. Most of those present, even the ones that had been set firmly against the Jedi that had left, were regarding his revelation that he'd given two of the departing Jedi such contact methods with approval. Doubtless, they thought he'd assigned them to spy on what was going on out there. Which wasn't entirely incorrect. Though it wasn't properly correct either. He, as Master of the Order, had simply hedged his bets and insured that if something major happened out there, a few of the more responsible Jedi that had gone would have a way to reach the Order securely. A way that would avoid ruffling any additional political feathers.

"She was involved with the situation that caused the…upheaval. It turns out that Beldorion the Hutt, who some of you may know went missing and was presumed dead several centuries ago, was not in fact dead. Instead, he'd fallen to the Dark Side and taken over a planet rich with some sort of Force amplifying crystal. He was discovered during the League's Campaign, and what we felt earlier today was the alliance of several different Light Side Force factions assaulting the world under his control."

There was dead silence as everyone took that in. Eventually, however, a querulous voice broke that silence. The voice came not from a member of the High Council, but from First Knowledge member Master T'un.

"The death of a single Darksider isn't nearly sufficient to be felt on such a level. Besides, what we felt wasn't the absence of Darkness, but the presence of a great burning Light."

Well, there went the easy, non-controversial option for getting out of this. Mace sighed and added more to the explanation, having held back the details in a doomed hope they would all take the information at face value.

"I'm aware. The source of Light was the method by which they assaulted Beldorion's stronghold. A Darkside-infused stronghold which had been prepared against their coming for centuries. Apparently, there are a significant number of Jedi-adjacent Force Users among the League. Included among these are the survivors of the Almas Academy disappearance and Master Altis' small flock."

Mace grimaced as someone hissed, pushing on before they could do more.

"According to Shaak Ti, virtually all of them have somehow been taught how to use the Force Light ability. What we felt was the result of a combination of Battle Meditation and a Force Gestalt that included over two dozen Force Users, more than half of whom were capable of summoning Force Light. All of them performing an Orbital Drop onto the planet of Tisht, to assail Beldorion the Hutt's stronghold there."

Dead silence returned to the Council Chambers as everyone involved chewed on that. Then, just as Mace had silently feared, chaos erupted…

... ...

Darth Sidious ground his teeth as he immersed himself in the Force, seeking to guide the Dark Side into repairing various minor rips in the Veil. The Veil had been his own Master's work, more than his, making it an aggravatingly slow process to repair. Sidious understood the Veil well enough to do so, having put considerable effort into studying it after he'd seized control of the working with Plagieus' death. That didn't mean he was so familiar with its underlying principles that he could have remade it if it failed, and that fact meant that even repairing rents in it was an exercise in time and patience.

The only good thing about that was that it didn't take his full concentration, allowing him to make use of the time he'd been forced to take off from his 'Palpatine' persona to do the job. Time he'd had to think on what had happened. His contacts in the Jedi Order had yet to produce anything meaningful about the event, the fools too busy making a nuisance of themselves with whatever tiny insights they'd managed while the Veil fluctuated. He had, with considerable effort that had incidentally helped him fake a poisoning attempt, been able to force those ripples away from the Core during the event itself.

That might not have been possible, had the disruption not occurred so far out into the Rim. A fact that was…concerning. Unlike the Jedi, he'd almost immediately been able to locate the source of the ripples, at least far enough to determine who they were aimed at. The Sith Order had known about Beldorion the Hutt for centuries. They'd even made a few trades with the fool of a fallen Jedi, providing him the secrets of the creation of Terentateks and other such tidbits in exchange for some of amplifying crystals of the planet. Which had, in turn, been used in the initial creation of the Veil by his own Master's Master. Such physical means were no longer needed to maintain the Veil, Plagieus' refinements and additions meaning it had long since absorbed enough Dark Side energy from the galaxy as a whole to maintain itself. But the crystals had been critical in early stages, when Darth Tenebrous had first initiated the experimental project that would later become the Veil.

Beldorion's death was of no consequence.

The Dark Jedi hadn't known Sidious or Plagueis' identities, and Maul's death on Naboo had already alerted the Jedi to the Sith's survival in general. Thus, nothing he'd known falling into the hands of others would matter, and the Force amplifying crystals of the planet were far too steeped in the Dark Side to survive being purified. No, the Jedi wouldn't gain anything directly from the fool's death. It was the indirect gains, as well as the manner in which they'd overcome him, that worried Sidious.

The largest concern was the Veil itself, of course.

If whatever had been done to attack Beldorion could be reproduced a dozen times over, in scattered places around the galaxy, it might actually manage to fully destabilize the Veil. It was unlikely. The tears had, in truth, been more his own doing than that of the ripples. By forcing the ripples away from the center of the Veil, he'd magnified the damage they did to other parts of the Veil. An acceptable loss to avoid being uncovered for even an instant here in the Jedi Order's backyard. Connected as he was to the Veil, those ripples would have momentarily disrupted his personal Force Cloak to the point that some, such as that irritating old frog Yoda, might have sensed his presence.

Obviously, that would have been a disaster.

Which meant he needed to find a way to prevent being discovered even if he was at ground zero of such a burst. The issue of how to either reinforce the Veil around him, or else otherwise distance his connection to it so he wasn't so affected by backlash, was something he could perhaps turn over to the Prophets of the Dark Side to research. That group, which he'd taken over once rediscovering them on Dromund Kaas, was a useful tool for esoteric Force research. Giving them access to the Veil was potentially problematic. But if he could position someone of his own to watch them, it would be an acceptable risk if they could produce a result.

Other, less critical issues mostly involved the League and their unfortunate ability to gather Force Users under their umbrella. Sidious had been mostly successful in his efforts to keep the Jedi Order from fracturing. He'd leaned on several prominent Jedi to push through the idea of allowing their own to recuse themselves temporarily from the Order. Then done the same to ease the outrage in the Senate against the Jedi 'getting involved.' Not entirely, of course. They deserved to suffer some backlash, and weakening their position with the Senate only aided his purposes. But he'd done enough to prevent the Senate from outright threatening to break with the Jedi.

Manipulating a few of the foolish 'Masters' among the Jedi and stirring up many of the Knights had been easy. Even if the idea of having to keep his idiot enemies from half destroying themselves was aggravating and rage inducing. If he didn't need as many of them as possible in one place for the Grand Plan to have the best effect, he'd have thoroughly enjoyed watching the idiots fall apart from internal conflicts. Given the number of times the same thing had brought down the Sith, watching the Jedi of all people fall that way would have been deliciously ironic. Unfortunately, the current stage of the plan didn't allow for it, and throwing away hundreds of years of planning just for that glorious irony would have been stupidity itself.

After this latest wrinkle, however, it was looking like at least some degree of dispersion among the Jedi was probably unavoidable. On the one hand that was immensely aggravating. The original plan would have had a much better chance of a clean sweep. That said, the last few days of thought as he'd repaired the Veil had caused Sidious to realize the dispersion wasn't as much of an issue as he'd originally thought. Specifically, analysis of the League of Free Worlds tactics was starting to come back from his various agents and experts and, annoyed as he was to admit it, it was looking like the League might have some staying power. That would have some problematic effects, and it would be best if he could limit their influence and growth. However, a few unanticipated boons were coming out of the conflict.

The most important of those boons was that the League was acting as a lodestone for the unaligned Force groups out there. Many, such as the Altisans and Iron Knights, might well have completely avoided the upcoming war and needed to be hunted down after he created his Empire. Concentrating those groups in one place, a place where he could subtly have many of them dealt with during the Hutt conflict if possible, or smashed all at once after his Empire was born if not? That was an interesting and unanticipated boon.

Less important, but still useful, was the way the Outer Rim was now frantically stirring to arm itself. That fact, once he properly brought it to the attention of his loyalists, would help him realign the factions in the Senate to where he needed them to be. All while providing a stronger pool of resources to pull from for his eventual puppet enemy in the Separatists. He wouldn't need to cripple them as much in the opening rounds, allowing them to create a far more credible threat to the Republic and slaughter potentially billions more. Something which would feed the Dark Side and fuel his ascension.

There were new risks to go with the opportunities, of course. But Sidious was a past master at manipulating even losses into gains. With the right pressures applied, he could and would tilt the changes to his favor. He was certain of that, now.

After all, he had foreseen it.

... ...

Count Dooku tapped his fingers on the hilt of his lightsaber, a rare half-unconscious gesture that he hadn't bothered to stamp out. It was something he only did when deep in thought, and never in public, hating to give away any sort of information across either the battlefield or the negotiating table. Here, in the privacy of his personal estate, reviewing a staggering amount of data as he stood at the center of a holotank projecting it all, the small tick helped him focus. He was, of course, looking over all the data he had available on the supposed 'Hutt Crusades' and its leaders.

Ironically, it was a rare case when his own sources were better than his Master's. Though he was only half aware of that fact. The Outer Rim Territories were where his efforts had been focused, rallying support for his part in the Grand Plan. Indeed, Raxus Secundus itself, the world he'd slated as the most suitable to be the capital of the Separatist movement he was organizing, wasn't all that far to the galactic North of Hutt Space. Moreover, virtually all of the mega corporations that he was in the process of bringing together to form the military power he needed had significant dealings with Hutt Space. As a result, he had both more up-to-date and in-depth information on the region than Sidious and he'd actually been aware of Izuku Midoriya and his business interests before the crusade was launched.

In fact, the young business mogul had been on his list of people to try and recruit.

The only reason Dooku hadn't approached him sooner was that he'd been half-convinced the young twenty-four-year-old was being backed by someone else. In just six impossible years, he'd gone from a nobody to a…not quite a 'major' player until this Crusade. But at least someone big enough to show up on the galactic board at all. Which was a deeply impressive achievement, even looking at purely his pre-crusade civilian portfolio. Dooku's own agents had managed to dig up the young man's ownership of multiple shipyards, the purchase of and development of Tythe, and an admittedly impressive trade network that encompassed a decent section of the galactic south and southwest.

Izuku Midoriya's holdings were, or at least had been, barely a tithe of what groups like the Commerce Guild, Trade Federation, and Techno Union could count as theirs. Yet, they'd been genuinely staggering in scope when set against the incredibly short period of time in which he'd been active. So far, Dooku had yet to figure out just how he'd gotten so far, so fast, and it had bothered him enough to hold off on making contact with someone who was otherwise a potentially promising lead.

Now, he wasn't entirely sure if he was glad he'd waited or annoyed at the potential missed opportunity. On the one hand, somehow the young man had built a Fleet and Army that were big enough to take a serious bite out of Hutt Space. Complete with brand new weapons technologies and dedicated warships classes that would have given his own forces an edge against the Republic. On the other hand, he still wasn't at all sure how 'Sovereign Midoriya' had pulled it off. Dooku could more or less figure out where he'd gotten the manpower required. He wouldn't have believed such a method could be quite so successful, but he could follow how it had been done. But the ships? Even accounting for the shipyards at Allanteen VI, Ryloth, and Tythe, the numbers were very much not adding up.

Of course, this 'League of Free Stars' had obviously been going to a major effort to hide their buildup. But even if they had as many again hidden shipyards…where the hell was he getting all the raw materials and complex parts? Some things, like hyperdrives, were difficult to manufacture. Of course, Dooku had tracked the detail that one of the man's early businesses had been trade in high quality hyperdrives. A trade which had abruptly stopped over a year before the Crusade was launched. So those in particular were probably explainable. But few shipyards were truly self-contained, and even fewer star systems produced enough components to build ships from scratch. Not even Corellia and Kuat did that. They could, if push came to shove, most likely. But it was generally more cost effective to buy certain parts in bulk from secondary manufacturers.

Which, aside from some such going toward the ES-23 and ES-24 variants built at Ryloth and Allanteen VI…just didn't seem to be the case for the League. It was as if they were somehow building the ships entirely on their own, without much in the way of input of outside parts. To Dooku's mind that still seemed suspicious as hell. As if the man had a backer of some kind. He'd have even suspected Sidious, given the chaos this was unleashing, if not for his Master seeming genuinely aggravated at the developments of the Crusade.

Well, whoever was backing 'Sovereign Midoriya' and his league, Dooku was certainly going to make use of him one way or another. Perhaps he could still be recruited in some fashion? Even if it couldn't, the waves he was making in the Outer Rim Territories were making quite a few people nervous. A number of systems that he'd expected to need to work much harder to convince into joining his faction were practically falling into his lap now. And, of course, the more upset the various corporations got at their applecart being overturned, the easier they were to manipulate.

Dismissing the League itself as Sidious's problem for the time being, Count Dooku set about taking advantage of the chaos to create the 'great enemy' he'd been tasked into crafting to shake up the Republic…

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

AN: The only thing I really feel the need to comment on for this chapter is Dooku. I haven't touched on him much yet since he's currently mostly running around in the background building up the Separatist movement at this point. However, given how close to Hutt Space his future capital is, there's no way he hasn't been paying attention. Ironically, the fact that he's been seeking out military assets for the CIS has also led him to be the only one who has so far noticed that something weird is going on with the League's ability to build ships. He's come to the wrong conclusion so far, since it's the IES yards that are messing with his numbers, not a hidden backer. But he's also the only one to event start connecting the dots even that something is 'off'...