Planet Gand, Pef Empire

Gandia

Holomovies premiere.

15 BBY, Next month

Can you imagine an amazingly beautiful Togruta, dressed in an evening dress made of diamonds? Every time she breathes, the dress sparkles and your own breath falters...

Now imagine two of them. Ahsoka has grown up, being in their twenties now, while Shaak...well, she looks fabulous, even though her mood isn't really pleased.

"This dress is too revealing and obscenely opulent!" she complained as we entered the lobby. Hmmm, I've seen it all, and the dress is not as revealing as I'd like...

Some famous holomovie director had begun a series of movies about the Clone Wars, with parts of it real footage and others holoprojections, with new image capture techniques and famous actors playing the roles of historic figures.

This first episode will end at Geonosis, and will hopefully not glorify lightsabers, instead showing the Jedi for the rushing fanatics they were.

Of course, the point of view will change, from place to place, from Coruscant, to Corellia then Naboo and Tatooine, then Serenno and Gand, even with short parts from Hutt perspective, or the Mandalorians.

The events are not perfectly historical, and more of a dramatization, because art.

And I learned not to oppose artists, it only leads to suffering.

"Shhhh, the holomovie is starting! Keep it quiet, my dear" I said in fake outrage. There were a few more minutes till the premier started, but why make a scene?

They were going to love it anyway, as fight scenes were very realistic, if not the Force, which was shown with a dark red contour when in use. People in the galaxy expected magic to be obvious, and their future perceptions will make the job of our Paladins easier.

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Malagarr system, Pef Empire

Meanwhile, I am building myself a new seat of government, modeled after the twined Lucrehulk, but ten times larger, and a lot more opulent, using materials so durable that time will not affect them even after billions of years.

The tech inside the new space station will have to be modular and somewhat accessible, as to not fall behind the times, too much.

Room for a billion droids and 100 million sentients, receptions halls, security corridors, and a Black Box skyscraper, which will house some of the Empire Intelligence. I have already began building 100 separate intelligence complexes in a fairly dispersed manner, around the galaxy, trying to reduce lag times between local commanders and operatives in the field.

Some of them visible and obvious, attached to military bases and large shipyards, others discrete and camouflaged, in star systems without life.

Taking over the vast network of intelligence agents from the former Galactic Empire will also take time, but having a united government and common enemies will help.

And dealing with Arkania and their quasi-independent status, based on diamond mines and genetic experimentation will be much simpler once the market for diamond crashes, in the next six months.

By next year, they will need my credits to continue their research. Which will in effect make them a branch of the Medical Division,

not that there weren't already doing some of that with their Military Research and Development Division .

Only this time, it won't be mad scientists experimenting on dozens of races for some obscure reasons, but directed efforts at integrating valuable genes into the majority of the humanoid populations.

Somehow, unlike my current Pef Empire, where even with massive immigration, the humans were barely at 50%, in the Core and colonies the ratio was 98% humans and near humans , since the humans were those who colonized the denser and more near planets with their colony ships.

The Outer Rim was larger in surface, but much less explored and colonized, especially as the Jedi prevented immigration to planets where even a single sentient tribe was present.

That will change now, as I prefer having more billions spread around and using the land and the resources, than keeping a whole planet as a 'reservation' just to prolong some neolithic tribe culture.

Just like on Mimban, there were a few savage tribes, but they were all moved to a single island, and then had a city and facilities build for them, as the rest of the planet becomes a thriving civilized world, with a thousand cities and factories and farms.

This is why planets like Mala were moved in systems with a majority of non-human inhabitants, like Toong'l or Baros and Charros. Immigration will cause a bit a friction for a generation, but after that, the cultures will mingle, the genes as well, and the result will be a hardier race, with less weak spots to make them extinct due to some disease.

For example, planet Vestar was interesting enough I moved it to Sanctuary. The native near-humans, the Icarii have a natural regeneration which borders on magic. Really, almost like Fay, and every single one.

Those Icarii boys will have a happy life, spreading their genes to a thousand girls each, and being paid for it. Their women too, but carrying one child at a time will take much longer.

And to think the Galactic Empire would have exterminated this marvelous race, instead of obtaining their gift for all humanity.

It will take a bit of experimentation, but I believe a million miraluka women will be happy to give birth to children that have eyes and heal scraped knees in seconds. And once the news spreads, even more.

Sadly, the immigration to the northern planets, like Lah'mu will have to wait, untill the Vong problem is solved. Just a few millions here and there, to establish a presence and work on spacestations and other installations.

An indepth defensive line is being established, with shields and defense stations and naval bases, while survey droids try to map the nearby stars, both with hyperdrives and sublight engines.

One way or another, the border of the galaxy has to be mapped completely, to prevent fleets and invasions from bypassing chokepoints and attacking populated worlds more in depth.

Won't be perfectly tight, but every stealth satellite and hyper route we get now, will mean less lives lost later.

And major worlds all are beginning to receive shields and hypervelocity planetary guns, along with ground to orbit lasers and naval bases on nearby moons.

So far, only 1000 such worlds, using the new Hammer IIIs as the main naval element. Once more dreadnaughts get produced, more such systems will receive their permanent defense fleets.

The Meteors and especially the Mountains are too rare and valuable to keep stationary, instead pushing forward on the western front, especially in the south, where the Ssi-ruu are enslaving and enteching. Entechment utilized the life energies of another sentient being as a source of energy for their mechanical technology.

Natasi Greyshade is commanding her own fleet there, using a Mountain for a flagship while her Manta, the 50 kilometer long battleship I confiscated from Palpatine is still being upgraded and refitted. Because, of course the stupid Sith didn't bother to

install anti-starfighter weapons or at least droid starfighters. Why would he?

There are thousands of planets under the Ssi-ruu Imperium, hundreds of them with human natives. I think we're going to have a fertile recruiting ground there, for our Navy.

The dinosaurs have a cultural thing where they would flee in the face of certain defeat, to avoid dying elsewhere than their homeworld, which make battles with them more like traps, offering them a small fleet as a bait, then surrounding them with interdictors and dismembering them.

It seems they tried to send ships northward, and encountered the Chiss somehow. But the Ssi-ruu got repulsed and turned eastward towards the Core.

In a year, they will have no more places to run.

Grayforge, Pef Empire

Gozanti III orbital shipyards

15 BBY

I decided that just doubling the carry capacity for my new Gozanti dropships wasn't enough as they came with 2 hyperdrives, one of them a backup one, and were quite slow, only managing 400kph while coming down to land.

A single 6.0 hyperdrive would be enough, and take 3 times less space, while being a new generation and thus more fuel efficient.

Also, since I had now access to the modern masers made by the Chiss, instead of simply upgrading the Crusades era masers, these were way more advanced, and took less power, that Chiss frigate was able to support 12 megamasers, which were twice as strong as my heavy masers and 12 medium masers, about 60% stronger than my own medium masers.

Goes to show what an inventive people can do with scraps of forgotten tech, if that was all they had. I can use an underside turret with 4 medium masers on each dropship, along with 4 gatling lasers and 4 missile launchers, to help clear the landing zone, or fend of mynocks or lugubrra or starfighters.

Thus, the new Gozanti III can now be 79 meters long and 33 meters wide and tall, able to carry 1000 droids into combat inside their light armored transports, or one Titan or two Baneblades or 10 Gauntlet medium tanks.

And since the Mountain's lower cargo bay is 16 kilometers long and one kilometer wide, each will be able to deploy 4000 Gozanti III dropships, with some room to spare for the slim Stinger gunships. That could be 4 million combat droids in a single drop, although I much rather land armor units along.

The Mountains and the Meteors also have hangars for starfighters, ten under each lateral fin, and each carrying 100 Biplanes.

Because one single hangar is kinda risky, should something unfriendly get inside.

The new Gauntlet tanks will dispense with the ion cannon on their glacis turret, and will receive instead a continuous beam infrared laser, which worked well against organic targets in the first live tests at Roon. And the new Chiss medium masers in the turret of course, because why lose 60% firepower?

Sure, we'll need to upgrade the factories, and retrain the workers and calibrate the new weapons to mesh with our targeting and power systems, which were 3 generations above what the Chiss build themselves. In fact, all their tech was lagging behind, no wonder they were so desperate for 'misplacing' the advanced tech we used.

But while this would be tolerable and now really problematic, retooling for the new megamasers will take work.

At least the new Meteors III were still at reactor and engines phase, so we should be on schedule to equip them with the new guns, since the other upgrades in missile technology and sensors and even the magnetically accelerated guns would need to benefit from the new technologies and materials.

But I needed ships more than better ships. After this next retooling, we'll just gear up for mass production, just like I was doing here at Greyforge, building 40000 brand new shipyards for the Gozanti III dropships.

Sure they were small shipyards, and I was mostly using iron and carbon, transmuting one shipyard skeleton in a minute, but it will take lots of time anyway. The nanobots and my telekinesis helped, as was being in zero g, and having thousands of transport ships and miner tugs bringing everything close.

The new strategic droids were doing the even harder work of actually transforming the floating skeletons into ship making factories, able to assemble a dropship in a single week. Using their own swarm of construction and assembly droids, each an individual tacnet, they became formen for each shipyard.

Core is also monitoring the operation, making sure everything arrives on time and where is needed. Like a synthetic Eisenhower, overseeing the preparations for D-day.

And while managing the logistics of the Gozanti shipyards, Core is also doing trillions of other things, in other star systems, like building Hammers or droids. Those upgrades really uplifted the old AI to a post-modern one, now being at least as good at multitasking as me, even without the Force.

If you wonder why I chose the Gozanti design for my dropship, it's simple. They were in use for 15 millenia, and most of the inherent design problems were fixed by thousands of genius spaceship engineers, over thousands of years.

Sure, my models will be larger and less vulnerable to enemy fire or mynocks chewing on the power cables, but what problems I found were mainly with space optimization and unlikely placement of engines and turrets.

It is said that the Imperial Navy Imperial-class star destroyer has over 1 billion design flaws. Well, they only built two this time, and both were blown up my yours truly, but I disassembled all the other star destroyer variants I could find, even a KDY Mandator, and each of them were very hard to put back.

So yes, very badly designed. Not just poor turret placement and a reactor partly outside the hull, but the horribly exposed bridge and the shield generators...

I am designing a new wedge shaped style of ships, since its a theme here, but they will resemble the Nebula-class Star Destroyer , and will come in three sizes, frigate at 300 meters, cruiser at 500 meters and destroyer at 800 meters.

But those will have to wait anyway, untill our navies are fully integrated and under my complete control, which is why I'm abusing the situation the get rid of incompetent or corrupt captains and officers with high risk missions in the west, since the first wave of loses wasn't enough.

Truth is, the wedge shape, if angled properly and the turrets are placed staggered and in superfiring positions, it can achieve 100% efficiency on forward firing, and 70% on broadsides. Which is better than my Meteors I by 20% and the Meteors II by 10%

It just isn't economical to try and build them large. For large sizes, the Hammers achieve the same efficiency, at 20% of cost and 2000% the durability. Yep. A Hammer is 20 times more resilient than a Mandator, even though they would be comparable in length and width, if not in thickness.

That thickness is a kilometer of melted and compressed iron-nickel, on each side. And all our ships' engines are only vulnerable to fire from a 85 percent to 90 percent angle, directly from the rear.

Except the Dart, whose engines are integrated into those pyramids somehow.

Still, one Force powered luxury yacht with 5 by 5 beds and jacuzzis and gyms and Force powered holotheater is one thing.

Abusing this might burn out our connection so we'll just use it to spread love around, crossing the galaxy in 3 days or reaching Coruscant in hours by taking the perelmian trade route.

I have an idea how to enlarge and smooth out other hyper routes, mostly by moving stars a little, but as I found with moving the black holes, hyperlanes curve and slow down somewhat, in other places.

The galaxy is a bit off center, with the Maw creating lenses of empty space like the Open Sea, or the Kathol rift in the south.

I might need to try to rebalance the mass distribution in the galaxy, once I figure out what to do about the west.

The whole place directly west from the Core is a mess, with eddies of space-time and vortexes of hypermatter and exotic particles, and even force distortions.

North and south is a bit clearer, though not exactly smooth sailing. Almost like someone detonated ten thousand Kathol Rifts, creating nebulas and other phenomena all over 1000 sectors, at all depths.

Who could have tried their hand at stellar and dimensional engineering?

The bumbling Bedlam foursome, perhaps. Or those five in the Deep Core...maybe the Celestials? Yep they could have done it too.

Those Five that ruled my Hell didn't seem that strong, or old enough. But who knows? Time alter made room for too many possibilities. I was here after all, a billion years in the past.

Was I really here, or was I just an Avatar as well, projected from a distant...

No, I think therefore I think. Existence was the domain of ontology and artificial mass and fully sapient holograms.

I will be humble and limit my exploration to sapience.

But all this rambling, it did raise a potential solution to my galaxy problem. Too few blackholes to balance the Maw.

Maybe because someone made a faulty prison using natural blackholes, collected from this galaxy.

I could try to create a pocket of artificial mass, somewhere to the north of Lwhekk , rebalancing the galaxy with new black holes. Sink a few dozen holograms into a few giant stars, and watch them collapse inward.

Perhaps later though. I still had much to learn. And shipyards to build. Hmmm. 500 already. Not many left then. Just 39 thousands and change.

At least I wasn't building them brick by brick. I might have gone a bit looney. If I wasn't already.

Kriff, I do hope those prophecies were not literal, with bringing balance and the son of suns.

It would be ironic if they worked like this...the galaxy is out of balance, quickly someone fix it!

Corellia, Corellian Diktat.

Green Jedi Temple

15 BBY

The temple looks less as a church, and more as a monastic campus, for religious ecologists.

In fact, plant life outnumbers the humans by a factor of a million. There's vines and flowers and trees and entire botanical gardens with rare plants from all over the galaxy. Makes a pretty sight and makes me feel right home, back in Zero garden.

There's even kids playing around, and hiding their training lightsabers as I walk around slowly, letting my escorts enjoy the view as well. Celeste and Halbret might seen this place before it was destroyed by the Old Sith Empire, and then rebuilt again.

"Have you been here, before?" I asked softly, while plucking a flower for each of them, and tucking their stem behind an ear.

"I did, yes. There's less sabers around, this time..." Celeste replied in a whisper.

Well, technically they are illegal, which is why I'm here.

And while body exercise is good for everyone, the mindset of wielding a plasma blade is a bit too counter to the survival and mental health of the users.

A few minutes later we reach the garden of the Grandmaster, now looking much better than the first time I've seen him on Ossuss. If he paces himself, Master Bnar could live 5000 more years, without even learning the extra abilities I have brought with me.

"Mister Bnar, we meet again." I said said politely, and gestured slightly towards my female companions.

"More relics from the past I see. Master Mourne, you seem changed, if still as pretty. And this young one...well, I haven't met her before..." the old neti Jedi rumbled with his shapeshifted vocal cords.

He looked smaller now, only a four meters tall tree with eyes and arms, instead of the 10 meters one I found on Ossuss, but that might have been his combat form.

"Master Bnar, I am Jedi Knight Halbret. I was part of the task force sent at Kathol, 36 centuries ago. We failed...and the Dark Jedi unleashed the Rift, killing billions and tearing the Force apart. I was trapped in stasis, untill the Emperor Pef found me." the slim brunette woman said with regret.

Yeah, you can say that again. Damn idiots meddling with dimensional engineering constructs.

"And yet, here you are, a maid to the Avatar. I wonder if I would have been a maid myself, should my body had pleased Mister Greyshade..." Master Bnar replied with a tinge of amusement.

Hmmm. Probably not. Except maybe once to test...

"Tell me old tree. How do Dark Jedi appear?" I asked instead, summoning a couch made of diamondoid for me and the girls.

Cause I was wearing power armor, and even this advanced variant still weighed two tons, too heavy for any normal couch.

The girls were wearing the agility light armor, which relied on shields and evasion to withstand heavy weapons. My armor could withstand capital ships weapons, although I would still need to reinforce it with the Force, and cover myself in a few force abilities.

And still not as impervious to damage as Master Bnar could be, with his own ability, some kind of force entropy barrier.

"Straight to the point then. They are former Jedi, falling to base emotions, like anger and hate. And how? I believe from too much conflict and suffering. Death and pain resonate in the Force, twisting the mind..." the Green Jedi replied after a minute of thought.

"Almost correct, Mister Bnar. You described most death-cults in the galaxy with a broad stroke. But the key word in my question was not the dark, but the Jedi part. Simply put, the Jedi themselves are unbalanced, even the Green Jedi. The only exceptions are the Jedi Shadows, which were trained to deal with infiltration and intelligence work, and thus they rarely fall to madness, if ever.

The Grey Paladin program is trying to do the same thing, with emphasis on counter-intelligence and threat prevention, while the Officio Assassinorum, is by design created to dispense death, to the greater enemies, like Sith Lords and various cult leaders. So far, our own failure rate has kept around 16 per million." I said with a stern tone, and glad none of the assassins managed to override their neural programming yet.

Those would be a bitch to put down, if they ever failed to return from a mission.

"Hmmmm. Indeed Jedi Shadows were...peculiar. And I never heard of one becoming a Dark Jedi...are you proposing I do the same for our Green Jedi Order? Turn them into spies and assassins?" The 5000 years old tree rumbled displeased.

"I'm saying just giving them a family is not enough. It helps keep them sane longer, as long as they keep out of conflict. But your training and teachings are flawed, creating brittle points and fracture lines, especially when dealing with self-induced force psychosis and other mind alter abilities.

For example, when losing a fight, a Jedi will begin demanding extra strength and speed from the Force, without considering the mechanism through which they will be implemented. Nerve surgery for better reflexes, increased dopamine, endorphins and adrenaline glands inside their own brains...all done with transmutation and alchemy, during high speed combat, by completely untrained neural surgeons.

Pain is not used by the Jedi as a training tool, and thus these very painful micro-surgeries drive the young Jedi towards madness. And their brains become mangled inside, with brand new connections made by amateur brain alchemists, and they even get yellow eyes, a result of demanding faster visual refresh rates. Do you see where I'm going, Mister Bnar?"

I explained patiently, while I gave the go ahead and the Dart teleported down a few coffers with holocrons.

Five holocrons classes, each restricted to someone who passed the class before. Like a highschool education in the Force in the first tier, and university courses in the next three holocrons, with a Master Degree for the last one. Just like I gave to Fay, if only she would learn. A Jedi Master was not enough of a competent or sane force user. In fact, they made the best Sith Lords. They knew just enough to drive themselves crazy, whenever they encountered failure.

I put a lot of work into these Master holocrons and had Solana create an stable interactive organic AI tasked with checking the progress and the retention of their students. The other holocrons, were just simple cubes, with basic protections and anti-tamper protocols and containing thousands of lessons from history to medicine, then neuro-surgery and energy abilities.

"I think I do now. You collected teachings and lessons from a thousand sects, and formed a more comprehensive doctrine about the Force, and how it can be used...Very ambitious, for someone so young." the Neti Master said with a tinge of regret and suspicion.

"Miss Halbret will remain in your care, Grandmaster Bnar. Call it, a favor for me. She is hurt and alone, and my job will not allow me to truly take care of her for at least 40 years. And, she doesn't like me, for some reason, thus denying me the cure I use for lonely Jedi, and sending her to Jedha would be even worse for her. Living the rest of her years as a penitent nun is not a life, but a punishment" I asked gently, but also sad. At least the Old Jedi tree was from the same era, and would more easily connect with miss Halbret.

Whatever happened to Miss Halbret during her adventure at Kathol has wounded her mind, and I wasn't a psychologist. Not that there were any trained professionals anywhere that learned in school how to deal with patients from another era, who felt the guilt of allowing thousands of stars and billions of lives to be extinguished.

Not that I blamed her, she was a just a young Jedi Knight, sent to do the work of a assault fleet with a lightsaber. Didn't work too well, for her and for the people she was supposed to protect.

"Well, I won't say no to someone from the old times. Also, I do not consider taking care of her as a burden, so no favor required. I was quite lonely as well, although a bit less, since Master T'ra Saa joined me here on Corellia, and you sent some of Master's Uro Koo saplings. Perhaps one day, the Neti species will be revived as well." Grandmaster Bnar said gently. Huh, so it worked then, the pretty female Neti made a home here, after all.

"Alright then. Now, the laws limiting force weapons and powers apply everywhere, so I think the Green Jedi should simply create a branch working officially for the government, along with the Corsec intelligence, and can thus help the citizens be protected from various terrorists and bioweapons. In exchange, I can send here a few dozen Jedi with their own families who took refuge on Ruul. I hope them being excommunicated by the Church of the Force and the New Jedi will not mean I have to feed them till they die of old age." I stated with a polite tone, although it wasn't exactly a request.

Can't have those refugees start another splinter Jedi group, can I?

"Oh, so you didn't force them to become Paladins? I must have heard wrong..." the tree said curious.

"The Paladin program is only for volunteers, and barely a dozen former jedi elected to join. They are also the worst operatives, which is why they mainly train the new people, in melee weapons and some few force abilities. The original Gray Paladin from Coruscant have all volunteered to join and are quite decent, especially in sniper and hostage rescue roles" I explained with a smile.

The Paladin Jedi simply had the worst tactical or timing sense, rushing in and disobeying orders and procedures, often causing dozens of droid paladins and civilian deaths.

Can't even wait for sleeping gas to take effect? Or nerve gas in a few cases, where terrorists acquired proton bombs or other unexploded ordnance from the vast supplies left behind after the Clone Wars.

The Mid Rim was especially filed with various insurgent groups, fighting anyone and everyone, with a plethora of agendas, from droid rights activists to eco-terrorists and thousands of sects and cults unhappy with losing political powers.

Cause yeah, theocracy was a well entrenched type of government, here in Corsca galaxy, and my empire didn't share power with religious groups. Where possible I tried to recruit and buy the leaders, or add them to the harem like on Atoa. But it simply wasn't possible everywhere.

I was flirting with Selestrine , the Icarii Queen, but that was for a dozen reasons, first her being pretty and having a flawless body, secondly because she was quite powerful in the Force, especially with precognition and psychic abilities. But she loved wearing jewelry and gems, and made the courting just a matter of regular visits and billions of credits worth of diamonds and other gems. Nothing different from my other wives, so she'll fit right in.

I even asked Selestrine if her children will have red or blonde hair, and she smiled mysteriously. Guess we'll find out, soon enough. She must have seen the new future then, as did I. Those kids will all have her mother's fiery red hair.

Courting between precognitives is an art, trying to instil some adventure and unknown into an otherwise already done deal.

Like changing a word or a gift with another, at the last second, to make her gasp in surprise. It was very fun, for both of us.

"Master Halcyon already proposed this Green Paladin group, Avatar. And the ruling families of Corellia are all invested into keeping at least some Force users close by, just in case another Sith or death-cult appears to enslave us"

"Well, that won't happen, as salvery will disappear entirely in the Empire with a decade. But mental coercion and various types of mind alter, do need to be guarded against. And these Green Paladins will do fine, once they learn the first four holocrons." I explained with a serene tone. So, they will do it by themselves, even better.

"And the fifth type, those grey spherical holocrons?" Master Bnar asked curious, as he couldn't read the one he took in his hand.

"Once the first four are learned, the fifth will be readable as well. But be warned, nobody will ever finish learning the fifth. Not unless they study it for a million years. But when they do learn a fifth of fifth, they'll be as learned as myself, Mister Bnar. Which is quite a good start." I said with a smile.

I wasn't even going to touch the higher class mathematics or dimensional engineering. Not with a living brain of my Avatar's.

"But, how can you have made it, if you don't already know everything on it?" he wondered, with a frown.

"I'm only human, and my brain can only contain a limited amount of information. The knowledge here was collected and compiled by a few AIs, then downloaded and organized by Voice Solana. I merely made the shells. Difficult, but not over my capacity." I said with a shrug.

"Voice Solana, the water maid? Why would a water creature have that much knowledge?" The old Master wondered, just like me.

"Because, she's the Voice of an ocean, spread over a dozen planets. A billion years old ocean, and much stronger in the Force than any living being. From Cygnus B to Mon Calamari, and soon to spread to every water world in the galaxy. I might be strong, as legged people measure things. But compared to a planet..." I explained in a defeated manner. Some beings were just too strong.

"She didn't seem that strong on Ossuss. Perhaps same strength in the Force like you..." Master Bnar said doubtful, as he did see Solana on Ossuss, when we awoke him.

"She's just 70 kilograms of water, esteemed Master, just like I am. But she is the Voice of Solanus, and of Emperor Pef. And both of them can move stars with their minds. And they will keep learning and growing and become stronger. They and the Core, our friendly AI shipbuilder, have read all manuals of every science department of the major universities, and in a thousand years they would have read every single book ever written, from every library in the galaxy. There are simply limits that organic minds cannot cross. Immortal beings are not bound by this rule. Solanus keeps expanding to new planets, Core keeps adding new datacores, and Pef...he's simply infinite inside, storing the information directly into the Force." I explained softly, since the knowledge would become public at some point, and presentation made half of the impact.

Better keep these Green Jedi firmly on my side.

"I see now. The Voice is a force bond, only stronger. You can communicate telepathically and get advice and knowledge from your ruler, and perhaps your ruler can see what you see?" the old tree deduced at once, possibly having a hint of these abilities from his own readings.

"Yes. All that and much more. Read the first holocrons, Green Jedi. The Cosmic Force abilities are reserved for the fifth. Just remember, Paladins serve as officials of the government. The Jedi or any other cult do not impose a state religion or laws or politics in our Empire. They do not dictate policy or lead armies or execute criminals. That's the job of the government, which is now and forever onward lead by Emperor Pef. We will respect Corellia's autonomy and cultural particularities, to this point. Or else." I said politely, while offering a hand to Celeste Mourne.

Two seconds later, we were teleported aboard the Dart, although I left Miss Halbret and the couch behind.

"You were very imposing and manly just now. Made my heart skip a beat!" Celeste said with a seductive smile.

Oh. That turns you on? Dart, set course to Fondor. And this trip will take some 9 hours.

"You want to wrestle with me, dear shadow? Perhaps without so much armor in the way?" I asked with a blinding smile, and a more aggressive tone.

"Sounds good. And who knows, if you win, you may get another kiss..." she replied with a coy look, while dropping her chest armor to the floor. Her generous airbags bounced up and down flaunting their freedom. Oh, that was playing dirty!