Jedi Master Miko Dabrini
Senate Building, Coruscant, Milky Way Galaxy
The scene at the Senate Building was a bloodbath, at least figuratively speaking, with blaster marks crisscrossing the outside of the building not to mention the halls inside. Bodies littered the hallways, from the white-armoured clone troopers to the blue-armoured Senate Guards, and the totally unarmored victims in all of this; the Senators themselves. The stench of ozone filled the halls and sobs and cries could be heard al over the building from the main Senate Rotunda to the Avenue of the Core Founders. It was an utter mess, smoke rose into the skies which were buzzing with activity from additional GAR gunships to Coruscant Security Force response vehicles, not to mention anyone who was brave enough to try and get close enough to see what was going on. It had not been long since the devastating Separatist attack on the capital had caused a significant amount of damage, and now this. Coruscant had taken an absolute pounding in the past few weeks, and that was without considering the, thankfully relatively minor, incidents that had taken place since the beginning of the Clone Wars. It was an absolute mess and the Jewel of the Core was certainly looking tarnished to say the least.
It was into this mess and chaos that Jedi Master Miko Dabrini stepped out of a LAAT/i gunship onto the Avenue of the Core Founders, as the four Delta-7 Jedi Starfighters that had escorted him in broke off to assume an orbit of the Senate Building; the Jedi Order was taking no chances.
And who could blame them. Mere hours ago they had received intelligence that indicated that the Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine, was a Sith Lord, the one they had been looking for, the one who had started the war. Five Jedi Knights, including Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker, had been dispatched to take him into custody. Apparently getting wind of what was about to happen the Dark Lord had struck first, ordering the 501st Legion to assault the Jedi Temple and the Coruscant Guard to assault the Senate Building and kill any dissenting Senators, most notably all the signatories of the Delegation of 2,000, but as the Jedi had found out afterwards, had been confronted before he could issue what would have been a devastating directive; Order 66. The Jedi had taken significant casualties in the assault on the Temple, and not insignificant damage was done, but the 501st had been pushed back and the Temple secure. As this was happening the Jedi strike team had confronted the Sith Lord and engaged him in combat.
Details about the duel were limited to say the least, all anyone knew was the Palpatine had been defeated; but in his death throes he had let loose a massive Force Storm that had engulfed the entire Solar System, a sobering indication of just how powerful he had been, and when the storm had subsided, after causing a great deal of damage, Coruscant hadn’t been in the same place anymore, hell as far as anyone could tell, they weren’t even in their own galaxy anymore; clearly the Force Storm had moved the entire system to an entirely different part of space.
No one had really had any time to digest this however as matters had proceeded apace. With the Chancellor dead and the Coruscant Guard ripping through the Senate Building there was a lot of confusion; no one knew quite what was happening and there were conflicting orders. With no one having any idea what the current state of the Chancellor was, and given the last information received from the Jedi, the Republic’s Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) had decided that until he knew otherwise they could only assume that the Chancellor had been subverted and issued Order 65 (which declared the Chancellor a potential threat to the Republic, or otherwise subverted) and issued orders for the Coruscant Guard to stand down; which they had promptly refused as their orders came from the Supreme Chancellor, and as a result the CDS had ordered additional Clone units in to force them to stop, leading to a massive firefight across the Senate District. All over the planet garrisons of the Coruscant Guard refused to stand down and surrender, viewing the Supreme Chancellor’s authority as more important, and of the opinion that if he was out of contact then his last orders should still stand; whereas other Clone units who had not received orders from the Chancellor, resorted to the next highest military authority available, in this case the Chief of the Defence Staff. As the Jedi Order had pushed the 501st Legion back they had finally managed to get a handle on the situation, and had joined the CDS in taking control of the military, and their influence had helped calm the situation down; although according to available information the Coruscant Guard was destroyed to a man.
A few hours had now passed since the end of the fighting and the most senior surviving Senator had assumed the office of Acting Chancellor and summoned senior representatives from vital organisations and commands to meet with him in the Senate Building; and as the senior Jedi Master surviving the brutal attack on the Temple, Miko Dabrini had made his way to the Senate. The tension in the air was obvious; the Senate Guards, who had been decimated by the Coruscant Guard assault, were viewing the Clone Troopers who were now helping them to secure the area with a great deal of distrust, and who could blame them. It was taking every moment of Dabrini’s Jedi training to stop him from turning against the Clones for what the 501st Legion had done to the Jedi Temple, and even then he knew he’d never turn his back on them again.
“Master Dabrini.”
The familiar voice of a Clone Trooper caught Dabrini’s attention and he turned to watch as a Clone Trooper approached. Where once the voice would have inspired feelings of friendliness and camaraderie, it now brought up feelings of doubt and concern. But he pushed them aside and examined the Clone closer, noting the rank insignia of a Clone Marshal Commander.
“Commander,” Dabrini nodded. “You are in command here?”
“As much as I can be given that the Senate Guard is refusing to acknowledge my authority… but then given what the Coruscant Guard did to this place, and their Guardsmen, I can’t exactly blame them,” The Clone Commander sighed heavily, reaching up tor remove his helmet revealing his face which was so like, and yet unlike, those of his brother clones. “I am Commander Xavier, of the 82nd Sky Corps, my formation was the Chief of the Defence Staff’s response force on Coruscant, we received his authenticated Order 65 and helped prevent the Coruscant Guard from killing more Senators than they did.”
Master Dabrini nodded. A ‘Sky Corps’ was a formation of the Grand Army of the Republic that specialised in the use of jump packs for increased agility and, assault from the sky. It was perhaps hardly surprising that the Chief of the Defence Staff had elected to use the 82nd as his reaction force for the Capital, especially so soon after the Battle of Coruscant. The pair remained in silence for the rest of the sombre walk through the Senate Building, which looked like a warzone. Given their identities it wasn’t long before they reached the old office that the Supreme Chancellor had once used at the very pinnacle of the building, before Palpatine had removed himself to the newly built Executive Building. There were a group of men and women, human and aliens, waiting for them. Stood behind the desk at the centre of the room, resting heavily upon it with his arms was Jarik Tarwin, a Togrutan and the senior surviving Senator. and as such he was now serving as the Acting Chancellor until the Senate could assemble again to elect a new Chancellor, no doubt after many of the emergency powers that had been given to Palpatine over the past few years were repealed.
Master Dabrini recognised the two individuals easily enough, the other two were likely senior surviving Senators. The only other individual in military uniform was Fleet Admiral Kerrick Griffiths, the Chief of the Defence Staff, he looked tired and strained, and was armed with a blaster pistol on his belt, but he also stood with a certain degree of determination and an obvious command presence, which he would have needed over the past twenty four hours.
“Master Dabrini,” Chancellor Tarwin said heavily as he looked up. “It is agreeable to see that you are alive.”
“Likewise, Chancellor,” Dabrini replied with a genuine smile as the two shook hands. “I fear many of our mutual friends have not been so lucky.”
“Regretfully so,” Tarwin sighed. “I don’t think anyone was expecting this.”
“That’s safe to say, Sir,” Fleet Admiral Griffiths scowled. “The Chancellor of the Republic… a Sith Lord!”
“It’s almost inconceivable that we did not see it, yet given how strong Palpatine was, if that Force Storm was anything to go by, it is perhaps not surprising even the Jedi could not see it,” Dabrini commented with a sigh. “We knew that the Dark Side of the Force surrounded the Chancellor, but we presumed the Dark Lord of the Sith to be in his inner circle, not the Chancellor himself.”
“Let’s talk about that Force Storm,” Tarwin said firmly, bringing the topic of their meeting about. “Where the hell are we?”
“Short answer, Chancellor, is that we have no idea; the Stellar Cartography staff at Naval Headquarters has been working hard for the past hours to determine that answer, and they’ve turned up nothing,” Fleet Admiral Griffiths replied. “From what they’ve been able to determine we are no longer in our own galaxy anymore, beyond that we don’t know where we are, or how far we are away from home.”
“Fantastic,” Tarwin commented dryly. “Alright, we can’t afford to dwell on what our disappearance will have done back home, we must look to ourselves now… how do we stand?”
“Militarily we’re not in bad state, although the Coruscant Defence Fleet was gutted by the Battle of Coruscant, a significant portion of the Open Circle Fleet remained here after the battle’s end,” Fleet Admiral Griffiths replied. “And of course our ground and aerospace forces on Coruscant are significant to say the least; although we will need to recruit if we want to operate off-world without manpower issues.”
“Which we’re going to need to do,” Jessa Wynver, one of the two Senators present, commented. “To say that the system is scant on resources would be an understatement.”
“Yes, that is a fair point,” Tarwin sighed. “Alright, how does Coruscant stand, are we self-sufficient?”
“For Industry we shouldn’t have a problem; although the industrial districts are generally run-down and underused that was only because labour was cheaper off-world, I’m confident that we can bring them back online and once we get back up to capacity we’ll have all the industrial facilities we’ll ever need,” Dalo Argon, the other Senator replied. “Alot of the abandoned districts are overrun by pests and criminals, we might need to deploy military forces to clear them, but clearing those districts will be good for giving our new troops combat experiences; the Clones can handle the hardest bits but we can get the rest some experience without too much risk.”
“However, if we’re going to actually bring these industrial districts back online, which will take significant investment and government support by the way, we’re going to need resources and raw materials and that, is something that Coruscant, and it’s system, lack.” Jessa Wynver commented. “The simple fact of the matter is that, after millennia of being at the centre of the galaxy, Coruscant was very reliant on imports of raw materials, and even manufacturing; the latter we can resolve by investing in the industrial districts, the former will be more of an issue if we are true on our own.”
“How long can Coruscant survive on the resources we have available to us?” Tarwin asked grimly.
The two Senators glanced at each other; in the hours that had passed they had worked tirelessly to answer that exact question.
“We estimate no more than six months on the most essential resources, a year maybe two for everything else… but of course we’re more likely to find the essential resources in our immediate surroundings, given their general abundance, as for the rest…” Wynver replied. “Long story short, we’re going to need to send out exploratory missions almost immediately, and be prepared to setup mining and other resource extraction operations as quickly as possible, with the military considerations that is going to result in, otherwise we’re going to run out of the basics in a matter of months.”
Tarwin grimaced as he turned away from the group to look out the shattered window at the cityscape before him, noting more than a few plumes of smoke as evidence of what had befallen them in the past few hours; or at least what could be seen visually. Below the surface, Coruscant and its inhabitants had been ripped from everything they had known and deposited into a new great unknown, with who only knew what awaiting them beyond the borders of their own system.
“Well, we cannot simply sit here and wait for our supplies to run out, and I do not want us to be blind to everything around us as we try and pick up the pieces here, so although I’m ordering a complete stop on all space traffic out of the system, I’ve got something in mind,“ Tarwin said, turning back to the group. “Fleet Admiral, I want you to put a small exploratory squadron to go out there and start taking a look into each of the nearest systems, deploy probe droids as required, Master Dabrini, I want you to send a Jedi Knight along as the lead Republic representative.”
Dabrini smiled slightly.
“I’ve got just the person.”
Jedi Knight Jana Dawnsinger
RNS Fearless, Uncharted Star System, Milky Way Galaxy
Tensions were fraught as the Star Destroyer Fearless, flanked by two Arquitens-Class light cruisers, emerged from hyperspace into the first unknown star system on their list. Not only were they conducting an exploratory survey of a previously unknown system, with all the hazards that came with any hyperspace travel outside of previously mapped routes, but there was also the events of the day to be considered. Although the 2822nd Regiment, a part of the 282nd Legion, had played no part in the attacks on either the Senate Building or the Jedi Temple, and indeed had immediately accepted the orders of the Chief of the Defence Staff upon receipt of a verified Order 65, there was still a degree of mistrust between the non-clone naval crew and the over two thousand clones of the Star Destroyer’s resident regiment. It was particularly noticeable between the 2822nd and the Jedi Knight that had been dispatched with them; although the Jedi Code required them to put aside emotions as much as was possible, it would be difficult for even the best to be totally without emotions when working alongside clones who looked, sounded, and felt like the same ones who had stormed up the steps of the Jedi Temple and with whom every Jedi there had been compelled to fight… and to the blasters of which far too many fell as they were overwhelmed before an organised defence could be managed.
Jedi Knight Jana Dawnsinger, had been in the First Knowledge Quarter, assisting legendary Jedi Battlemaster Cin Drallig in training a handful of Padawans, being a formidable swordsman in her own right, when clones from the 501st Legion had reached them. Although she had been able to save the Padawans, and despite Master Drallig’s formidable skills, she had been forced to watch as her mentor was gunned down by the clones as he attempted to shield several Padawans from harm at the expense of his own defence. Although the Jedi Code forbid attachment, it was difficult to see a man that she had respected and who she viewed as a mentor for many years to be killed right in front of her, and it was difficult to look at any clone in the same way ever again. This alone was particularly painful, as Dawnsinger had spent much of the war on the frontlines alongside her own clones, and she had become close to many of them and had respected them greatly; it pained her to no small degree that when she looked at their faces, the same and yet different, she now only saw the faces of the men who had killed her mentor.
Of course, from the outside few would have been able to easily tell the internal conflict broiling within the Jedi, yet no one made it far in the Republic Navy by being stupid, and the tension was obvious in the Jedi’s shoulders, posture, and even the way her eyes watched every close closely and the way that she stood with her back facing away from the hatchway onto the bridge as she oversaw the operation. Even after three years of warfare, it was obvious that Dawnsinger was on edge and ready for a fight.
As the three Republic ships began to cruise forwards into the system they began to release swarms of probe droids; although their own sensors were reaching out into the area around them, they would only be effective out to a certain range, after which both the resolution and recency of the data would begin to drop off. Moreover, with the new Chancellor uneasy at pulling more ships out of the Coruscant system, the decision had been made that Fearless and her group would conduct the first wave of survey missions alone, which meant that time was not on their side, so anything that could speed up matters would be done, and that was precisely why probe droids existed, as otherwise a full survey of any given star system would take days, if not weeks, for a single ship to complete.
All that remained now was to see what was out there…
OOC Note: Obviously looking for someone else to be in the system my Star Destroyer has just dropped into. Would prefer if it were not a major system of yours, due to the proximity to the displaced Coruscant, but depending on what you had in mind we can discuss. Please only post if you are going to put the effort in! Feel free to TG to discuss your ideas/intentions!
