( 31 BBY )
It had been almost a month since Dooku had defeated the Trade Federation in battle, firing the first salvo in the war between him and Sidious, but he had yet to receive any retaliation.
He still held onto the Trade Federation's frigates, but only as a bargaining chip for the upcoming court battle, which a date still hadn't even been set for. He knew the Republic's Courts were hopelessly bogged down and convoluted, but even so this level of sluggishness surpassed Dooku's expectations. It seemed the same forces that paralyzed the response to the Trade Federation's aggression were equally deaf to its pleas.
It gave him little comfort. Dooku knew it was only a matter of time until the Trade Federation tried to make an example of him using extra legal means. As of right now he was far from being in a position to outlast them in a cold war, much less win a hot one.
Fueling his concerns, he hadn't heard from Jango in weeks. The man was the best bounty hunter money could buy, having defeated Dooku's fallen padawan Komari Vosa in personal combat. Yet despite the Mandalorian's skill and reputation Dooku was getting worried. If he didn't hear from him soon, Dooku would have to assume the swamps of Dathomir had claimed another.
At least with credits from Hego Damask, Serenno's future was really starting to take shape. Power plants were under construction, fueled by plasma imported from Naboo, and expert geologists and engineers had been brought in from Mandalore.
Perhaps unsurprisingly with their fanatical obsession for beskar, the Mandalorians had a remarkable degree of expertise in extracting rare minerals, and they'd already begun planning Serenno's largest ever mine. Soon the sacanium ore would start to flow to sites where steelworks were being planned with expert help from Raxus Prime. In just a few short years, Serenno would be the Galaxy's largest supplier of sacanium durasteel.
Of course, that would only be the beginning. Too much of Serenno's industry was dependent on logging, an industry that had dominated this world for the last hundred years, the lasting legacy of his father, Count Gora, who had ended thousands of years of feudal agricultural tradition with armies of imported droids. Of course the goal wasn't to suddenly end the industry, but to diversify.
Dooku didn't have the deepest understanding of economics, but knew two basic facts: Starving people couldn't work, and neither could unpowered machines. His planet produced plenty of food, and soon it would have a great deal of energy. With those two things in place, everything would rapidly begin to improve as the population discovered new avenues for creating their own wealth.
A large middle class would be able to pay taxes, where villages full of starving wretches couldn't offer Dooku a damn thing.
Of course, the investments Hego had made into Serenno were dwarfed by those he made into Raxus. It would be great for Serenno to be able to make its own ships, but it simply didn't have the shipyards necessary, and to construct them would take decades. Raxus Prime already had those shipyards since ancient times, they'd just long been in disuse. With the help of Damask's generous loans, it would take a fraction of the time to get them cleaned out and updated with modern technology.
In just a few years, his Outer Rim Alliance would be constructing its own ships, and Dooku's empire building could at last begin in earnest.
Dooku's optimism vanished as the emergency com line rang. He had a feeling things had been going far too well for far too long. It couldn't be Jango calling, he would have used the holocom on Dooku's ship. This line was for official emergencies. Dooku reached across his desk and answered, facing the projection of a man that he didn't recognise at all.
"Your Majesty." The man bowed so low he almost looked like his nose might brush against his knees. He spoke with a local accent, so presumably he was a native Serennoan even if he looked quite educated and gentlemanly. "I'm sorry, but I got this number from the Advisory. I didn't know who else to call, but-"
"Is this an emergency?" Dooku asked him.
"Uh, yes Your Majesty, definitely."
"Explain it to me."
"Uh… yes, Your Majesty, right away." He replied, though he sounded less sure of himself, and Dooku's compad pinged with several incoming files. "I'm Sel Lur, and I'm supervising the Mandalorian survey team that's mapping out our sacanium veins. The trouble is they found something. While surveying. Uh, a facility Your Majesty, a secure one that stayed intact when it was buried. From the time of the New Sith occupation, I believe."
"Will it block our excavation?"
"I don't think so, Your Majesty, no. But we did send in a survey droid, and it confirmed that there was what seemed like a stasis chamber, sir. That's why I insisted you had to be called, being a Jedi as well as our Count."
Dooku ordered the man, and soon was watching the footage on his compad. "Is it dangerous?"
"Well, I don't know Your Majesty. This facility falls outside my area of expertise."
Dooku barely heard him, focusing on the footage. Through the grainy lens of the hovering droid's single eye, it floated through ancient dust filled corridors and halls, bent out of shape and with cracked walls and floors that bent and twisted to reveal earth and boulders outside. The droid paused, paying particular attention to a detached skeletal hand, clutching what looked like a crushed blaster, with the rest of the body nowhere in sight.
Finally the droid's video feed picked up something, at the far end of what was likely an elevator shaft that had fallen flat. Amidst broken vials and smashed desktops, was what looked like the remains of an ancient battle. A skeleton, trapped in the teeth of a massive beast's horned skull, even as the dead man clutched a lightsaber. There was what looked like plasma scoring on the creature's neck vertebrae where the dying warrior had plunged his weapon into the beast's throat even as it crushed him between its jaws.
Dooku recognised the beast as a Tirra'Taka. Likely a juvenile. The living one he had used to defeat his brother Ramil was much bigger than this one, but the shape of its head was much the same. The adult was able to create earthquakes and carve through the earth using a mixture of the force and its natural strength, so perhaps this juvenile had buried this facility. Dooku knew the Sith had used them as warbeasts in the past.
"That lightsaber is why I thought the facility might be Sith." Sel said in a pleading tone after a long silence. "If I was wrong though-"
Dooku held up a hand to silence him, and continued to watch the footage.
At the very end of the recording, the droid found a sealed room, the door coated in a glossy sheen of carbonite. There was a keypad right next to it, its interface dull, its buttons bearing old numbers in Outer Rim Standard.
"That's the stasis chamber. Much like in our time, carbonite was mainly used for long term storage. Uh, I didn't want to risk opening it. They might have kept prisoners inside. But, er, it also might just be long food storage."
Dooku considered, before putting the device down. "Send the coordinates."
He didn't know if this really was an emergency, but it was definitely an opportunity. A living Sith could be very useful in his coming war against Sidious, and if not, then nothing was really lost in being cautious. Whatever was being kept down there, the last thing Dooku wanted was for someone else to claim it.
...
Volume Four of a Complete History of the Galactic Republic was essentially complete. The first book Tan'ya had written in any of her lives was a completed file on her personal device, waiting to be published. All it would take for her to release it was to get in contact with Sifo's old publisher, and see if he was still interested in the latest work of Doctor Difo Syas.
Tan'ya still hadn't sent that email, though. And it wasn't because she was nervous about the quality of her writing. Obviously, she couldn't perfectly replicate her former teacher's style, but two lifetimes of report writing and the reassurance of Master Sturn had convinced her that it was an engaging read, one that concisely summarized the Great Hyperspace War. Or at least, it summarized what little could really be proven about the war.
So much of it just didn't seem to make sense to Tan'ya, to the point where she just wasn't sure if what was recorded really was true.
...
Apparently, chapters write themselves faster when Power Stones are involved. Who knew? Feel free to test the theory go ahead, toss a few my way.
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