A new Menace. As the war between the Coalition and the Empire enters a standstill, entire colonies at the edge of Wild Space start disappearing. When a new enemy will prove to be a threat to both sides in the conflict, enemies will have to join forc...
Despite the warnings, the imperial offensive had surprised the Coalition with the sheer brutality and numbers. Also, the tactics of the imperials had been much more advanced than in the pasts, and though they weren't enough to cause a collapse of the allied front, they made the situation difficult.
The Coalition had been already forced to pull out from Corsin and retreat toward a more defensible position up the Hydian Way, mostly around Taris.
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Still, the situation was far from desperate. Kota had brought his fleet over and he, with his long experience combined with the fact that he had learned to use the basics of Battle Meditation, was boosting the defenses of the Coalition.
With the situation relatively manageable, the Jedi Order was still focused on its primary objective: find and destroy whatever sorcery Palpatine was planning to become immortal.
For that, the Constantinople was monitoring the imperial main routes. By now they knew that the forces assigned to Palpatine's own projects mostly operated via secondary channels and acted like a shadow organization. It was mostly thanks to Ahsoka and her network if the Jedi managed sometimes to find a trail. Even the crew of the Millennium Falcon had joined the search, considering that Han and Leia operated on behalf of the ICO and had a lot of liberty. They couldn't count on the intelligence agencies of the UACT, however, as the ICO was focusing entirely on the Empire military and MI6 also had its hands full with the new war threatening the borders of the Federation.
Darvos was passing them any intel that he thought could help them, but nothing decisive ever came by out of thin air.
Speaking of whom, because of Darvos' recent arrest, with the whole galaxy knowing that it only happened because the Republic was trying to force the Jedi into its ranks, the other members of the UACT in Andromeda had become even more suspicious of their senior partner. Many were denying the requests for reinforcements coming from the Republic to fill the gap on the frontline while Lianna dispatched more ships.
The other nations justified this by saying that they had good reasons to believe that the Empire would soon launch a full-scale offensive all around the galaxy, despite everything pointed to the fact that the attack of this Admiral Rax had been prepared for months and the Empire was investing everything it had built since their campaign last year, the one that ended ruinously at Rhen Var.
Jaral was in the strategic room, reading a report on today's losses for the Republic. Ezra walked in and reached beside her. "You shouldn't read those, anymore. They're bad for your mood." he commented with all good intentions.
"On the contrary. It reminds me why we need to end this war as quickly as we can." she replied calmly.
"Be aware, sis. I learned at my expenses that a sense of justice can quickly turn into anger."
She couldn't deny that. "And anger leads to the Dark Side, I know. Don't worry, I know the limits of my patience...
"It's just...every time we seem to make a step toward finding Palpatine, we bump into a dead end. It's like we're trying to grasp air itself."
