Chapter 88
Serenno Approach, Serenno System
D’Astan Sector
“Stars aligned,” Ahsoka murmured, “Master Plo was right–we’re here.”
Here. Serenno. An idyllic garden world, fostered and grown by Count Dooku himself. Lush rainforests and mountain ranges visible from orbit, as well as savannas, which gave way to mighty rivers that spilled into vast oceans. The gleaming silver pearl of the Confederacy.
And the end of the war.
Obi-Wan sighed deeply. Oh how I wish that to be true.
Chancellor Palpatine, a Sith Lord? Not even that, the Sith Lord. On impulse, the Jedi Master could’ve immediately thought the idea utterly preposterous. The Chancellor was an old, fatherly man who championed the Jedi Order at every hurdle, even as he single-handedly kept the bickering Senate from falling apart at the seams, and holding on to the many pieces of the crumbling Galactic Republic.
But Obi-Wan Kenobi was also absent from Coruscant more often than not, fighting the Chancellor’s war on the frontlines. For every acclaim the Chancellor lauded on the Jedi Order in public, he disparaged their characters in private. For every Senate convention he prevented from devolving into the squabbling mess, the more corrupted caucuses he folded into his vast pockets. For every facet of the teetering Republic he kept from collapsing, there was another constitutional wall he eroded for his own means.
The Supreme Chancellor was the single most powerful man in the galaxy, having just completed his third four-year term in office–in an office that limits its chancellors to only two terms–and he had no intention of letting go.