Chapter 38: Dooku’s Dilemma

Dooku, Count of Serreno and the leader of the Separatist Alliance, was troubled. Troubled by two people in particular; the apparent travellers through time, Vancil the Sith, and Kandria, the Jedi. He had read over the reports his master, Palpatine had sent him, and even used his own spy network to find out some of the stuff Palpatine had failed to mention. The reason these two individuals troubled him so was because they were quite possibly the most dangerous things to both Palpatine and Dooku's plans.

The Jedi Padawan may have simply been a strange anomaly and nothing more in the best-case scenario, but now that she had allegedly fled the Jedi Order there was no telling what someone with both knowledge of the internal workings of the Jedi Order and the force training to utilise could do. Dooku himself was once a Jedi Master after all, and he had used his position to steal both knowledge and run secret interference in the Jedi Order via his access to the Jedi Archives. Now, while Kandria did not have the rank, there was always the possibility that she knew stuff about the Jedi Temple even the masters did not know thanks to her knowledge of the temple from millennia ago. Ultimately though, there was really no concrete way of predicting what sort of damage she could do after her departure from the Order.Vancil, however, was an absolute concrete threat no matter which way you looked at it. The Sith had followed the tradition of the Rule of Two, started by Darth Bane millennia ago following the fall of the last Sith Empire. The rule stated that only two Sith could exist in the galaxy at a time, a master and an apprentice. The main reasoning behind the extremely small numbers was to halt the infighting that the Sith Empires of old had always been plagued by. The rule itself had worked wonders too, culminating in the stagnation of the Republic and setting the Jedi Order on a path towards its ultimate destruction. Vancil, was not a follower of this rule, originating, like Kandria, several millennia before its conception. The greatest threat a Sith faced was other Sith, and with the breaking of the Rule of Two, their own plans were being set onto the path of destruction, a path which they couldn't predict or see. While Dooku and Palpatine were confident in their abilities to hide their Sith nature from the fools in the Jedi Order, Vancil was not a Jedi, and had experienced being around many Sith. If he even got into the same vicinity as either of them, chances are he would sniff them out in under an hour, and the secrecy of their identities was the most paramount part of their plans.Dooku scowled as he silently scrolled through the holo-report he had received from one of his moles in Deathwatch. And, whether unintentionally or not, the pair of them were now directly interfering in their plans for the war. Vizsla may have been a prideful fool, but he was the greatest tool Dooku and Palpatine had to break Mandalore's neutrality. With his defeat and capture by Vancil and Kandria, Deathwatch was now fracturing at a rate that surprised even Dooku, with many beginning to form bounty hunter groups or just outright becoming pirates preying on the Outer Rim. Now, the only way that Mandalore would ever break its neutrality was if either side invaded it, and the Republic was certainly not going to be doing that anytime soon.The Count took a deep breath to control his temper as he set down the report of his operations on Mandalore. His gaze flicked to the second report, one provided by Palpatine and padded out by his own operatives. The feeling of trouble grew exponentially as he picked that report up for the third time this evening. Really though, in the greater consequence of things, Mandalore was not a make-or-break deal for the fall of the Republic, and that particular case was not the primary cause of Dooku's troubles. His eyes flicked over the report of the results and details of Obi-Wans investigation into where exactly Vancil and Kandria had gone.Apparently, the pair had managed to secure the access codes to the ST-70 they had taken from the bounty hunter group on Krant and simply left without any word or notice. The purpose of Obi-Wans investigation was to look for possible places they could have gone. One particular part of the report bothered Dooku. Obi-Wans theory about the pair going to Kavir, and his prompt investigation of the matter.The Jedi shouldn't even know of Kavir's existence, let alone where it was located in the galaxy. The further he had read into the report however, his mistake was revealed in the form of an oversight to a god forsaken flower that was unique to the planet. A flower which was then identified by a source outside the Jedi Order that wasn't reliant on the tampered Jedi Archives. The rediscovery of Kavir by the Jedi Order was bad, very bad, especially for Dooku's plans. Because if the Jedi knew about Kavir, his master would almost certainly not be far behind. Thankfully in his report Palpatine had dismissed it as some 'backwater' planet. This view wouldn't last the more the Jedi looked into the planet, and the more they did the more Dooku was forced to push his plans forward.Kavir was a unique planet; in that it was alive. Well, the planet itself was not actually alive, rather the eternal storm that surrounded it was. It was a feat that was unmatched by anything else in the galaxy, in both power and spectacle. The Jedi and Sith of old had both been interested in it, and fighting over the nearby planet of Aaloth was almost always to secure a safe passage to Kavir. Both sides eventually separately stopped with their obsession of the planet, fear being the reason for the Jedi, and inability for the Sith. The last two great masters of both sides who held an interest in the planet had either been killed or disappeared during the Great Galactic War.After their demises, it became clear to both sides that they lacked the ability to control the Storm, and over millennia both orders forgot about it. When Dooku first learned of it however, he did not come to the same conclusion. Time had advanced, as well as technology and what it was capable of. He had researched everything he could about Kavir, delving into both the Jedi Archives as well as lost Sith texts from Korriban, and Dooku was confident that soon he would be able to harness the Storm for his own plans and not make the mistakes of his predecessors. Everything he had done was a slow and gradual build up to this, so as to not garner the notice of either his master or the Jedi Order. Every single piece of information he found which related to Kavir he had either secured or destroyed to minimise his risks of discoveryIt was why the planet was no longer in the Jedi Archives, and while the Jedi undoubtedly already knew someone had tampered with the Archives after their discovery of Kamino and the Clone Army, the exact extent would never be found. Only he and Palpatine knew exactly what entries had been removed, primarily planets of importance to either their plans or as a backup hideout location in case their plans failed, Dagobah being one such example. The only one Palpatine didn't know about was Kavir, which Dooku had quietly removed.Dooku had no delusions about continuing to serve Palpatine after all. The man was dangerous, and his ambitions did not line up with Dooku's. He was also suspicious on Palpatine's true intentions with Anakin Skywalker, but that was a topic for another time, and if worst came to worse Dooku was confident he could defeat Skywalker again.He clenched his teeth in frustration as he placed the report back on his desk with the others. While he had a good grip on his situation and the steps, he would need to take in order to ensure that his plans remained at least somewhat hidden and stable, there was one particular part he just couldn't pin down. Kandria and Vancil. For some reason, the two or their actions were related enough to Kavir to warrant the Jedi believing that they would have gone there. This meant that either one or both of them had some sort of connection to Kavir, a connection which could possibly bring the planet and his plans into the limelight of the Jedi.Dooku tapped the transmit button on his desk, scrolling through his contact list until finding the one he needed. After a few seconds a blue hologram fizzled into life, showing a tall and completely bald woman."Ventress, I have a task for you. There are two force users I need dealt with. You may use whatever resources and methods you have at your disposal, but don't make too much noise so that either the Confederacy or Republic take notice. I will send you their last known coordinates now."The Dathomirian bowed her head, a sinister and menacing smile crossing her sharp features, "Of course, master. I will serve you their heads on a silver platter."As the transmission fizzled out a grim frown of rarely seen anxiety made it onto Dooku's aged expression. Loose ends had to be tied up, if he was ever to usurp Palpatine.