Coruscant – The Chancellor's Office
The curtains were drawn, the skyline of Coruscant burning orange with late-day light. Within the grand, quiet chamber, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine stood in reflection. His robes were immaculate, his posture composed but his mind was sharper than ever.
It had been months since the end of the Naboo conflict. He had played his role well rescuer, representative, ruler. Now, as Chancellor, he held the galaxy's reins, even if the Senate didn't yet realize it.
But there were obstacles.
Some senators still whispered about Valorum's betrayal. Others spoke of overreach. And behind it all, the Trade Federation, now shamed and neutered, cried for reparations. They had secrets. Loose ends. Dangerous ones.
Palpatine would deal with them… just not in public.
Nute Gunray, held in Republic custody, was quietly freed under "diplomatic pressure." The files were sealed. Charges dropped. The Neimoidian Viceroy returned to Neimoidia under armed escort but not before swearing renewed loyalty to the Chancellor, whose agents had promised immunity… for a price.
Palpatine's true circle grew tighter.
The Corporate Alliance pledged allegiance under shadow contracts.
The Techno Union, though shaken by strange data leaks, received exclusive supply deals.
Opposition senators those who doubted his rise began suffering… accidents.
Some vanished without explanation.
Others retired early.
The Senate quieted.
The pieces were in place.
Coruscant – Jedi Temple
Within the towering halls of the Jedi Temple, Anakin Skywalker, now a youngling, sat cross-legged in meditation with other initiates.
His eyes flickered.
His mind wandered.
Unlike others, Anakin learned quickly too quickly. His understanding of the Force was raw and natural, but chaotic. He mastered basic levitation within days. Sparring drills? He absorbed them like instinct. Yet still… he was different.
He struggled with patience. With silence.
Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, now a Knight, visited often to observe.
"He's growing," Obi-Wan said to Yoda after a lesson. "But he's not like the others."
Yoda nodded slowly. "Gifted, he is. But shadow follows him."
Outer Rim – Overan System
In the cold metallic halls of Facility Zero, Shepard Kael paced before a suspended hologram of galactic financial networks.
Red streams marked failure. Green flows marked profit.
His lips curled.
"Funds dwindling. I need capital. War comes soon… and wars are not cheap."
Though his shipyards thrived and his Seraph forces trained in silence, his personal fortune siphoned from old rejuvenation clients and hidden trade was drying up. The construction of warships, deep-space array networks, and long-range stealth shuttles demanded more than he could fabricate.
He needed money. A lot of it.
So he took action the only way he knew how directly and ruthlessly.
Shepard's plan began with four key deaths.
The Trade Federation's Shadow Banking Division operated under the protection of secrecy and anonymity. But Shepard, having seeded informants and hacked encrypted correspondence months earlier, had identified four financial directors who held private codes to deep-network investment servers.
Each one was terminated by his Seraph Black Ops Cell:
One died during a rigged repulsor lift malfunction at a private casino on Aldra III.
Another's yacht exploded upon leaving orbit from Pantora.
The third was poisoned through a custom datapad delivered to her quarters on Mygeeto.
The last was lured into a diplomatic dinner never seen again after the shuttle's sudden "accident" en route to Thustra.
The moment they were dead, their access codes, biometric fail safes, and encryption tokens were lifted by the Seraphs using cloned tissue samples and replicated authentication devices.
With those credentials, Shepard infiltrated the Muunilinst Central Exchange a sprawling, bureaucratic nest of regional finance boards, trade ministry relay offices, and merchant guild servers. There was no central management security here. Just old code, outdated encryption, and overconfident greed.
Using physical relays, insider backdoors, and tapped comms, Shepard inserted custom-coded financial signals into the investment guidance feeds used by hundreds of Republic-aligned trade brokers.
He didn't crash the market directly.
He influenced it.
Dozens of carefully curated portfolios in stealth technology, exotic mineral extraction, and logistics stocks were subtly inflated over two weeks.
Shepard's network made massive short-term purchases across these sectors drawing attention and "validation" from smaller investors.
At the same time, fabricated trade rumours and leaked "exclusive contracts" were injected into inner rim data feeds via bribes and forgeries.
When the manipulation reached a critical point, Shepard triggered the dump.
All shares were offloaded within thirty standard minutes, just as a pre-timed wave of "market confidence alerts" were released through forged memos implicating bankruptcy, supply collapse, and unpaid state contracts.
The result was devastating:
Thousands of private accounts tied to Republic senators and corporate families lost over 70% of their value overnight.
The Trade Federation, Commerce Guild, and Banking Clans scrambled to cover exposed contracts creating liquidity crises across five sectors.
Eight rim-world investment banks collapsed due to failed margin calls and over-leveraged speculative trades.
But Shepard's hidden shell companies set up across systems like Sembla, Dorvalla, and Ixtlar had already sold and converted their gains into hard assets, starship-grade alloys, and bulk mineral contracts before the crash.
In total, he extracted over 4 trillion credits.
The money was laundered through:
23 proxy corporations
Hundreds of false front operations
Deep-space crypto-vaults
And a network of private vault accounts buried beneath planetary trust laws in the Corporate Sector
By the time the investigators found the leak, the trail was dust.
Coruscant – The Aftershock
The Republic woke to economic chaos.
Banks defaulted on core-world portfolios. The Banking Clan denied responsibility. The Trade Federation demanded compensation. Thousands of investors lost fortunes overnight.
It was dubbed:
"The Flash Collapse"
Faith in Palpatine was shaken.
Senators demanded an investigation. Committees formed.
Palpatine stood at the centre, hands clasped, a perfect image of concern.
"I assure you, we will find those responsible. No shadow network will escape the Republic's light."
But privately?
He was furious.
This wasn't one of his operations. Someone had moved through the underbelly of the galactic economy without his knowing.
That was dangerous.
His dark-side senses whispered of unseen movement. Calculated. Unnatural. Not Sith. Not Jedi.
Something else.
He summoned his shadow contacts.
"Find it," he said. "Whatever this is… find it and cut it out."