The heavy blast door of the hangar screeched open, letting in the stale air of Raxus's industrial outskirts—thick with dampness and the smell of old machine oil. Twilight had already settled over the city, giving the upcoming meeting the atmosphere of a true "conspirators under cover of night" gathering. And in a way, that wasn't far from the truth.
Mina Bonteri waited for us deep inside the warehouse, surrounded by several armed individuals in unremarkable armor, their faces hidden in the shadows cast by dim ceiling lamps. She looked exhausted, but her eyes held a firm, unwavering resolve. When the light revealed the massive silhouette of the dashiid and the crumpled Baron, a nervous whisper rippled through her guards, and Mina involuntarily clenched her fists.
"As agreed, Senator, I've delivered our new… financial investor," I said, my voice deliberately dry and stripped of theatrics as I gestured for Kem to release the hostage. "Baron Aurelius now fully understands the necessity of a political realignment and is prepared to offer you all the support you require. Still, it would be wise to keep a minimal watch on his loyalty, though I believe I made the consequences of betrayal quite clear…"
I gave Aurelius a pointed look. He swallowed hard and nodded frantically. At my signal, two of Mina's escorts led him toward her transport.
Mina watched him go, then turned back to me and gave a solemn nod.
"We greatly appreciate your contribution to our cause, Mister Brute, though your methods continue to raise serious concerns," Bonteri said, trying to keep her voice steady, though I could feel the tremor beneath it. "Raxus will be explaining today's museum disaster for a long time… but the Baron is worth it."
I inclined my head slightly, unwilling to waste time on moral debates or political philosophy. My thoughts were already elsewhere. I needed to leave this planet as soon as possible. Something inside me was building—an almost physical pressure tightening my nerves like strings.
It wasn't simple anxiety. It was a premonition, pushing me toward immediate action, as if someone unseen stood behind me, pointing toward the exit. I couldn't tell whether it was the Force—its Dark Side granting me a glimpse of the future—or simply my own instinct for incoming trouble.
"Our cooperation has been fruitful, Mina, but for now our paths diverge," I said, stepping back to signal the end of the conversation and motioning for Kem to head toward our ship's ramp. "Still, our joint work is only beginning. The Confederacy has… much ahead of it. Good luck to all of us."
Oh yes, we would need it. If not Mina, then certainly I would. My plan for the "reformation" of the Confederacy was entering its active phase. Only a few key details remained before the senators supplied R.G.A. with the necessary equipment. And by then, I needed to meet with Dooku under some harmless pretext—bringing Kem along, because… well, leaving him alive was dangerous, but eliminating him wasn't profitable either. We'd see how our duel went—the Count was a master of lightsaber combat, while I was more of a "caster." But it was too early to dwell on that. The Confederacy side of the plan was nearly ready, but the Republic side… was proving far more difficult.
Yes, the Republic had plenty of dissatisfied worlds, so recruiting wasn't hard—especially in a galaxy without a "Cold War" and without the smear campaigns against socialist (and by extension communist) ideology. But Sidious… once I stepped onto the political stage, he would not be pleased. He might even unleash all his resources. That was precisely why I remained quiet and patient.
And even if the Jedi somehow defeated Sidious—what then? The Republic still had the clone army, mountains of war machinery, resentment over the Confederacy's secession, and the Senate's wealthy "moneybags" terrified for their assets. They would continue the war regardless. Without the invisible puppeteer, the outcome would be unpredictable. In short, if I acted too rashly, the galaxy was looking at decades of Clone Wars. And that did not appeal to me.
So… preparation continued. The active phase of part one was close, but not large enough to provoke Sidious or the Republic. The later stages, however…
I shook off the thought. By then, we had reached the sterile quiet of my cabin. I activated the comm system, tuning it to the encrypted channel leading directly to Serenno. I needed to give the Count a reasonable explanation for my next moves—so he wouldn't panic prematurely.
Soon, the bluish hologram of the Count appeared. He stood motionless, hands clasped behind his back, staring past me as if deep in thought. I straightened, adopting an expression of respectful confidence, and began my report before he could speak.
"My lord, the situation on Raxus required an immediate change of plans due to the… persistent interference of the Jedi—specifically Skywalker and Kenobi," I began, keeping my tone even and professional. "According to the information I obtained, their arrival at the museum was sanctioned by the Republic under the pretext of preventing a terrorist attack, but their true goal was the elimination of key Banking Clan figures. My presence there—and my ability to repel them—was pure luck."
Dooku narrowed his eyes slightly. I immediately understood that he understood the subtext—and that he found the Jedi's supposed "treachery" entirely plausible.
"You organized the defense on Raxus quite… competently. However, I suspect that is not the full extent of the matter. Do you have anything to add?" There was a hint of satisfaction in his tone.
I shook my head, allowing myself a faint, confident smile.
"Oh, certainly. As you know, the Banking Clan supports the Confederacy, but no one has ever found direct proof. Such evidence would devastate the business interests of our esteemed investors—and the Jedi's mission appears to have been exactly that. Fortunately, I have a long-standing score with that trio, so I managed to provoke them into pursuing me personally. I'll try to lead them away—or deal with them en route—but for that, I must leave this hospitable star system. I wished to inform you."
"So you've decided to play cat‑and‑mouse with young Skywalker?" Dooku allowed himself a thin smile—more a predator's grin than anything else. "A bold choice, provided you can keep him on a leash long enough."
I assured him everything was under control, that the Jedi had taken the bait, unaware that every step they took was already accounted for. The Count nodded, and his hologram flickered before dissolving into the air, leaving me alone with the hum of the engines.
The excuse had worked. And now I had official permission for "autonomous operations," which meant my hands were finally free for the truly important work ahead.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Interlude.
Anakin sat in the cramped pilot seat of his interceptor, feeling every tiny vibration of the engines and the hum of the life‑support systems through his spine. On the main sensor panel before him, a thin, ragged signal line flickered—periodically drowning in the background radiation of the subsector, yet always returning. That signal was his only thread leading to the masked man, and Skywalker had no intention of letting it go, even if he had to search every asteroid in this part of the galaxy.
"Still tracking him, Master?" Ahsoka's voice came through the helmet speakers—clear, slightly teasing, cutting through his grim thoughts.
Anakin glanced at the comm panel, where her fighter's icon hovered a few hundred meters off his port side.
"He keeps dropping in and out, but I've got the direction locked," he replied, forcing confidence into his voice. "This Sith clearly overestimated himself if he made such an amateur mistake… Sith seem to have overconfidence as a common trait."
"There's still a chance we're flying straight into a trap," Obi‑Wan's calm, steady voice joined the channel. "Don't forget—he's shown more than once that he has every chance of defeating any one of us."
Ahsoka snorted, and Anakin could practically see her rolling her eyes in her cockpit.
"Master Kenobi, he can't possibly plan for absolutely everything," she argued. "We saw him run. He used that explosion to cut us off—that looked more like desperation than strategy. I doubt he could take all three of us at once. By the way, Master, you promised to tell us more about your first encounter with a Sith on Naboo. Maybe understanding how you defeated one of his predecessors will help us figure out how to beat this one?"
For a moment, the channel fell silent except for the faint static of long‑range comms, while Obi‑Wan gathered his thoughts.
"The one I faced on Naboo—Darth Maul—was the complete opposite of our current acquaintance," he finally said, his tone growing even more serious. "He was pure aggression, highly skilled with a blade, relying on physical strength and speed. A fully contact‑oriented fighter. Brute, however… acts differently. From the combat recordings and my own impressions, he specializes in manipulation and Force lightning techniques. More importantly—he has some kind of advantage in directional attacks."
Anakin nodded sharply, recalling the details of their brief clash on the museum's lower level.
"Master's right," Skywalker confirmed, flipping a switch to stabilize the signal feed. "Something strange happened during our fight. Brute was right in front of me—I saw him clearly—but when he attacked, I got hit by a Force push directly under my right shoulder blade, from behind. It wasn't debris or anything like that; the impact came from the rear, even though there was nothing there but empty containers."
"Force vector distortion?" Ahsoka suggested. "Or maybe he can duplicate his attacks?"
"More likely it's that artifact he keeps in his left hand," Obi‑Wan replied. "You didn't see it because of the cane, but he usually holds some kind of amulet. Almost certainly a Sith relic that allows him to pull off tricks like that. It explains why he's so confident in enclosed spaces."
Anakin felt a familiar spark of technical curiosity mixed with battle excitement. He always enjoyed solving problems that required unconventional mechanical or tactical thinking.
"So his strategy is built around attacking from unexpected angles," he summarized, watching the green line on the screen sharpen. "He strikes from the front while you're bracing for a hit from behind—and vice versa. If we fight him separately, he'll just split us up and use the environment to his advantage."
"Which is why we need a counter‑strategy," Obi‑Wan continued. "Ahsoka, you'll take a support position. Your task is not to engage him directly, but to use your lightsabers to create a defensive perimeter around Anakin. If you fight back‑to‑back, his angle tricks lose their effectiveness. Anakin, you focus on his artifact. Don't try to break through his guard immediately—disable the tool he uses as a relay for his powers."
Skywalker listened intently, mentally running through possible combat scenarios inside a confined space like a station corridor.
"If he starts using lightning, I'll take it on the blade," Anakin decided. "But we need to be ready for him to use coolant or gas again to disorient us. We'll need helmets during the fight. And… if we corner him, we can't let him talk! The moment he starts talking, he starts buying time for another trick."
"Agreed. If that happens, we strike him together from different sides," Ahsoka added.
Anakin felt a flicker of satisfaction; the plan was taking shape, and that was something. The beacon signal on his panel suddenly stopped flickering and solidified into a steady, bright point—marking a specific sector ahead, where nothing should have been except stardust. The plan was good, but if they could catch and destroy the Sith in space, that would be ideal.
"I see him," Skywalker said, his hand gripping the control lever. "He's stopped… Prepare for combat."
"Be cautious," Obi‑Wan warned. "There may be allies of his hiding behind those asteroids."
"Copy that, Master," Anakin replied, feeling his chest tighten with anticipation of the final confrontation. "Ahsoka, on three. One… two—"
At that exact moment, just as they were about to strike, the enemy ship jumped to hyperspace—vanishing right in front of them without even considering a fight.
For several seconds, the Jedi stared at the empty space in stunned silence, until Anakin finally said:
"We lost him."
And then a voice crackled through the comm—one of the four commando clones assigned to the mission, the tech specialist known as Scorch.
"Sir, using the droids, we managed to plant a tracker on his ship. So when he drops out of hyperspace, we'll know where he is."
Anakin blinked, genuinely surprised. He hadn't seen any droid anywhere near the Sith's vessel. When had they planted the bug? On the planet? During the chaos?
Either way, it worked in their favor, so he didn't complain. He simply sighed and suggested:
"Let's head to the ship they assigned us and wait there. Sitting in a starfighter… not the best idea while we're still in this system."
End of interlude.
XXXXXXXXXXX
I sat in the ship's common room, the Navigator's Rod resting on the diagnostic table as I tried to scrape away centuries of oxidation from the spot where an interface port was barely visible beneath the grime. Every touch sent flakes of rust and some kind of gray dust drifting down onto the polished surface of the table and my knees. Elara, passing by with a set of calibration tools, stopped and surveyed the growing mess with obvious displeasure, lips pursed as if I had dragged a piece of sewer pipe aboard.
"If you're planning to keep gutting that prehistoric junk here, you'll be the one cleaning the ventilation system afterward," she said, pointing accusingly at a particularly large patch of rust that had fallen from the pommel. "This thing produces more trash than it's worth, and I'm seriously worried it's going to infect our data storage with some kind of corrosive fungus."
I didn't bother answering. Instead, I carefully pried at a small plate with the tip of a vibroblade. It turned out not to be a decorative element at all, but a protective cover for a port. Despite Elara's grumbling, the artifact gave me the persistent feeling that the museum on Raxus had valued it solely for its age and appearance, without the slightest understanding of its function. When the cover popped off with a sharp click, it revealed contacts made of a metal alloy that had barely suffered from time, still holding a faint golden sheen.
"This is definitely not just a key for opening some ancient Sith or Jedi tomb, Elara… I'd say we're looking at a fully functional portable terminal," I murmured, mostly to myself. But Elara was already leaning closer, drawn in by technical curiosity. After a moment of inspection, she snorted.
"You're right… Look at the pin configuration! These match the data‑transfer standards used in the old Sith Empire — if I'm remembering correctly. Sorry, history of technology isn't my specialty. I've only picked up bits and pieces."
I pulled out an adapter — one our R.G.A. techs had cobbled together for cracking old Imperial archives we'd found using the coordinates from my maps — and with some effort connected it to the Rod's port, linking the artifact to the ship's computer. Lines of code immediately began flashing across the holographic display. Judging by Elara's muttering, the script was written in such an archaic dialect that modern decoders treated it as random noise, spitting out error after error. But after a few minutes of chaotic flickering, the image stabilized, revealing a complex three‑dimensional coordinate grid that didn't match any current star charts.
"It's transmitting a signal, Elara — on a subspace frequency our scanners normally register as static or background noise," I said, staring in surprise as the computer struggled to overlay the data onto existing routes. "This thing is pointing toward a communications station hidden deep inside a 'dead zone' of hyperspace — a region no one has flown through for a couple thousand years because of gravitational anomalies."
Still wearing her skeptical expression, Elara shoved me aside with her shoulder and began tapping rapidly across the console, double‑checking my conclusions and initiating a deep scan of the incoming stream. Her eyebrows shot upward when she saw that the coordinates indeed led to a region marked on every nav‑chart as an impassable sector filled with wandering micro‑singularities and gas clouds.
"No way something that looks this primitive could store active flight data of this complexity," she muttered, enlarging the navigation grid. "If these numbers are real, there's a stable natural corridor in there — but it's so narrow that a single miscalculation would turn any pilot into a smear on the anomaly wall."
I asked her to try calculating a jump trajectory based on the Rod's data. Grumbling — mostly out of habit — she dove into the task, forcing the ship's computational cores to hum under the strain. While she wrestled with the ancient code, I walked to the viewport and stared into the blackness of space. Right then, at the edge of visibility, a familiar flash marked the exit of a ship from hyperspace. And not a small one. A Republic vessel — and judging by its vector, Skywalker had proven unusually persistent. Somehow, they had traced our first jump.
That was a problem.
"The Jedi are here. They've dropped out of hyperspace and they're closing fast — no time for long debates," I said, returning to the pilot's chair and initiating the pre‑launch sequence. "Elara, how's the 'black route'? Can we jump now, or do we have to fight in open space? Keep in mind, our ship is a third the size of theirs."
"Almost done. I overlaid the Rod's data onto our current position — but I'm warning you now: this is extremely risky." She pushed the final calculations to my main display. The plotted course ran straight through the densest cluster of gravitational distortions. "One wrong move and we'll become part of the dead zone's history — literally."
On the monitor, the Jedi ship began its approach maneuver, weapons already locked onto our engines. Static crackled over the comms as they attempted to hail us. I only smirked, watching them confidently move in for the intercept, convinced they had cornered us with no escape but direct confrontation. My fingers entered the ancient coordinates the Rod continued to broadcast, and the ship shuddered as excess energy flooded the hyperdrive.
"Let's see how far your vaunted Jedi luck takes you, Skywalker, when you're forced to fly where modern navigation doesn't apply," I murmured, pressing the jump control as the inertial compensators strained to keep up. Fear had long since burned away — only exhilaration remained. Why risk everything on a blind leap into the unknown? Simple.
The harder, the better. The more dangerous, the more… entertaining.
The stars stretched into long white threads as we were pulled into the narrow throat of the hyperspace corridor. In the final instant before the jump, I saw Anakin's interceptor begin its own acceleration burn, trying not to lose the trail — but now we were playing by the rules set by the ancient Sith Empire.
The ship shook violently, as if invisible giants were trying to tear it apart, but we pressed on through the void toward a sleeping giant that had waited three thousand years for someone to wake it.
I leaned back in my seat, listening to Elara hiss curses through her teeth as she fought to stabilize the course and ran additional calculations. My gaze drifted to the Rod on the table — no longer shedding rust, now glowing with a soft, pulsing light, confirming we had done everything correctly. All that remained was to hope the communications station we were racing toward was still capable of receiving visitors — and hadn't crumbled into dust over the millennia.
Hours later, Elara's voice finally cut through the rising engine roar:
"We're entering the anomaly zone — stabilizing shields!" she shouted. "Brace yourself. The exit will be rough. We're either hitting atmosphere or getting caught by the station's gravity… assuming it still works."
I nodded, eyes fixed on the indicators. Yes, this was insane — flying blind into the unknown based on data from a relic older than most civilizations. But in that moment, I felt truly alive. Ahead of us lay a legacy that could shift the balance of the entire war.
And I wasn't about to let that chance slip away.
XXXXXXXXXXX
T/N: Wass up Guys and Gals I have officially caught up to the latest released in this story. Let me know should i move away from star wars in my next translation or do another star was fanfic and as always please leave a review.