With the sun hanging low over the horizon, Sturn decided to take a shower and go to bed early that night. After completing his evening ablutions, he paused for a moment, looking at himself in the mirror. He gazed at his grey receding hairline, along with his sad face full of wrinkles, and the pudge of his belly. He frowned at the weary old man staring back at himself, and thought of his home.
Corellia, the garden bed from which the flower of the Republic bloomed. The greatest planet in the Galaxy. All that, and many more things besides. The people of Corellia were happy, prosperous, and proud. Most of them barely knew anything about the wider Galaxy, and they didn't need to when their home was what the rest of the Galaxy aspired to be.
As a Green Jedi he was trained for combat. He'd handled investigations, made several arrests, and even been shot at a few times, but that boarding action was his first time seeing real combat. In all his long years of service, he'd never once stormed a pirate ship in an attempt to stop his beloved home from being bombed. Blaster bolts whizzing everywhere, his attention being pulled in a dozen different directions by potential threats, the pounding of his heart in his ears as adrenaline flooded his system, and the speed of everything. A second was such a long time, he'd learned. A single second of hesitation, and Gon wouldn't have pulled Sturn away from the door in time.
Never in his entire life had he ever seen anything like he had here on Serenno. In contrast to his home, this jungle world was poor, ruled over by an absolute monarch, and under near constant threat. During his time here he'd explored the Palace, and seen the tiny sunless cells where previous Counts had kept their political enemies. He'd felt the minds of the men and women who worked the Palace and the deep mistrust they had for him. Everywhere he went, there were eyes on him, suspicious, and always watching.
It wasn't that he was ungrateful for the time he had spent here, the Count had been a great host, but his tenure had been eye opening. It had been two years since his wife had passed, and it was only after coming here that Sturn had spent an entire day without thinking about her once.
Now he thought about her, and the wise gleam in her eyes when she would say to him, "The Galaxy is a vast, dark place, and Corellians should stay out of it."
He'd signed on to be a teacher for a wealthy lord on a far away world where he would not constantly be reminded of things he'd lost. The expectation had been for an easy job, training the wealthy count's gifted daughter in the ways of the Force. Now Sturn found himself in the midst of a world of intrigue, where the title of Jedi Lord wasn't just an old claim that the Green Jedi had never surrendered back to Coruscant even if they hadn't used it for a thousand years. Now Dooku was travelling in full battle armour, coordinating fleets, and building an empire in the Outer Rim.
Sturn had jumped face first into the deep dark whirlpool of Galactic Politics, and hadn't even considered how dangerous it would be.
With a final sigh, Sturn turned away from the mirror and pulled his pajamas on. His shirt was a dark green, with small highlights of black to give the impression of a rolling grassland.
He sat at the end of his bed and took out his holocom. He stared at it for a moment, before dialing his son. As it rang, he tried not to think about what time it must be on Corellia. Just after midnight, no doubt it would be a great annoyance, but at this time he just needed to hear his last surviving son's voice.
The holocom kept ringing, until it was finally answered. To Sturn's surprise, his son's face was glazed with sweat, and there was what looked like smoke in the background. "Dad? I can't talk now, there's been an emergency."
"What happened?" Sturn asked.
"Someone broke into the Green Temple, they set off explosives. I can't talk now, we're still trying to figure out what's missing." Then he hung up.
Sturn stared at the compad shocked, before typing up a message. Maybe Corellia wasn't as safe as he remembered. With a sigh, he took a few headache pills and washed them down with a glass of water, before laying down to sleep.
He didn't know how long he sat on his bed awake, browsing the holonet for news on what happened, until he was startled by the sound of ringing. Squinting at the flashing painfully bright light in the dark room, he reached out one handedly and blindly groped at the device until he finally managed to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger.
He didn't recognise the caller so he silenced it and let it ring out, but that same number immediately called him again. Sitting upright in his bed, he glared at the mystery caller's number, before sighing and answering.
"Yes? Who is this? It's late at night."
The mysterious caller didn't answer, keeping his face from view. He pushed something into the frame, revealing a young boy he held at blaster point.
It took Sturn's mind a second in its sleepy state to recognise his own grandson, but when he did, he leapt to his feet. "Yash!" He bellowed. "Who are you?"
"I got your attention now, scum?"
"What are you doing with him?!" Sturn yelled. "If you-"
"If what?" The man snarled. "If what, Jedi?" He dug his baster into the back of Yash's head, and the boy whimpered in fear. "You want him safe? Do what I say."
"Alright!" Sturn yelped. "Okay. Stop hurting him. Tell me what you want?"
"I want to do an exchange. You can have him back, but you gotta pick him up. I'm a few hours away from Corellia, but if you set out from Serenno now, you can meet me at Celanon. You hang up on me and I'll kill him. Understand Jedi?"
"I don't understand. What do you want?"
"I want you to get moving!" He snarled, and struck Yash with the bottom of his pistol. Blood poured out of the cut in the young boy's scalp, and he cried out. "Hear that? He'll get more if you don't do as you're told, Jedi. Keep the holocom on, so I can see what you're doing. Get on your ship, and chart a course for Celanon."
With the caller watching, and with his grandson's life on the line, Sturn had no choice. He hurried to the garage in his pajamas, running barefoot through the Palace halls to the landing pad.
...
The fleet crashed into the Phindar system with the overlapping crash of more than fifteen ships leaving hyper space within seconds of each other. At first the enemy fleet didn't seem to react at all, continuing to drift apart from one another in no discernible formation at all. Dooku's fleet was in system for three whole minutes before the enemy responded, and by that time they were receiving fire. Some of the blaster rounds fired by Dooku's Hammerheads not only struck the enemy barriers, but the hulls themselves!
Had the Black Sun engineers been so ill disciplined as to leave their shields off? If a crew wanted to rest and recuperate, it might be necessary to turn a shield off to reduce workload for the systems engineers, but it was absurd to think the enemy would be so comfortable in Phindar that they wouldn't even maintain that level of discipline.
Even stranger was their response to being fired at. The enemy fleet scattered in different directions, some forming smaller fleets and rounding to face Dooku, while others accelerated away. They outnumbered him two to one, but they seemed to be totally disorganised.
"Sir, the scouts are trying to get in contact. They say they have a report to make."
Both of Tanya's Coruscanti scouts appeared on the screen, looking excited. Both of them were wearing civilian outfits, and Dooku could see a mug of alcohol of some kind sitting on the table between them.
"Make it brief, Corporal." Dooku warned.
"Yes, sir." The man said in a lowered voice. "Much of the enemy's personnel aren't at their stations right now. We've done a count of all the bars we can find, and we're seeing dozens of Black Sun crew everywhere we go."
"Gotta be at least a fifth of the enemy personnel on shore, right now." The other man added.
"...Good work." Dooku finally said, blinking in shock at the information.
Just at that moment, Asajj's half of the fleet crashed into the Phindar system from the other side. Without hesitating, her ships found their targets and began opening fire.
...
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