32 BBY
Tan'ya found Serenno's current royal guard to be competent, but rather unimpressive as a whole. Numbering at around five hundred men, they were recruited mostly from Coruscant's various security services, many of whom had worked with her father before he left the order. To a man they were all past their physical prime, some with muscle turning to fat, but most of them had real combat experience, which was invaluable. Though they viewed their new role here on Serenno as something of a semi-retirement, they were steely eyed, quick on the draw and professional.
Around a hundred of them were stationed at the Palace, guarding the royal family, another hundred were in the capital protecting the Advisory, and the bulk were off-world at the New Temple, acting as guards for the fledgling branch of the Jedi Order.
They were armored with common plastoid plating that was cheap and would stop shrapnel or slugs, but wouldn't be very effective against a blaster. For weapons they just used DC-15S blaster carbines, an easily available model that even sold on the civilian markets of many worlds. To deal with the language barrier between them and the local population, the unit was issued a number of protocol droids, whom they could call on their wrist mounted communicators if the situation demanded.
The current head of the Serenno Royal Guard was an ex-soldier, one Colonel Gon Seith, who was in his fifties and a former officer in the Senate Guard. Sifo and Tan'ya went to meet him in the palace's barracks, positioned just underground. He even recognised Sifo when they met, firmly shaking his hand, before giving a friendly, if gratingly condescending smile to the small child that accompanied the Jedi Master.
"Princess." He tilted his head slightly, before looking back to Sifo. "She's awfully young to be a padawan, isn't she?"
"I'm not a padawan, yet." Tan'ya answered for herself. "But nevertheless they let me out of the Temple every now and then so that Mother won't harass my Father too much."
Gon let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Well, you know what they say? Happy wife, happy life. It's why you Jedi don't usually get married, just can't stand being happy."
"How's Margo doing these days?" Sifo asked him.
"Eh, she was worried about moving to the Outer Rim, but it's been peaceful since we arrived, and the pay's not as good as bloody Coruscant, but it helps that half of it doesn't have to be sunken into rent, either."
"And the children?"
"Well, they weren't happy about the move, either. You know how it goes, all their friends are on Coruscant, that's where the holovids get made and all the best bands are. How are they ever going to become big stars out here in the Rim?"
"Have they at least settled in?" Sifo asked.
"Well, the oldest wants to go back to university on Coruscant, which seems like a great way to spend the rest of her life in debt and for me to pay that bloody rent for the next half a decade or so, and the younger two are having some trouble fitting in at school. They're offworlders, with funny accents, you know?"
"There are universities here on Serenno." Tan'ya pointed out. "Ones that I'm sure would be easier for your daughter to get into."
"Not the point." Gon replied. "Coruscant's the center of the universe, don't you know? If you want to be a politician, a corporate leader, a lawyer, an actor, the contacts you'll make on that bloody planet will serve you better than any amount of education will. Teta might have a better history department, Mon Cal and Corellia might have better engineering and astrogation schools, and hell, I'm sure the Feds can give you a fine education in the Corporate Sector, but the ambitious will always gather on Coruscant."
Nodding along to the lecture with a sad expression on his face, Sifo added, "Even among the Jedi there are some who try to advance to the rank of Master without leaving the Temple on Coruscant. If someone wants a seat in one of the towers, their chances of getting it are better by being around and among the people who make those decisions, then by fulfilling their duties."
"Ambitious Jedi, who'd have thought it?" Gon laughed. "You lot always seemed so perfect and sexless to me." He considered Tan'ya. "But then I suppose I know your father. If ever there was an ambitious Jedi, it was him." He smiled fondly. "What about you, girl? Got any grand plans for the future?"
"Oh, I wouldn't call them grand." Tan'ya said. "My dream is to provide competent and stable leadership for my people, leading into a prosperous future." She smiled. "Speaking of which, we're here to reform my future royal guard."
"Yes, I've heard rumblings." He looked over to Sifo. "Ten thousand men, that's quite the expansion. That can be done easily enough, plenty of mercenaries in the Galaxy, but you want to draw from this world and this world alone? That gets a bit trickier."
"Well, the advantage is that they won't have divided loyalties, and hopefully won't be drawn away by a more promising paycheck." Sifo explained. "We're looking for men loyal to the Count, and the Count alone."
"I understand the importance of that, I do." Gon nodded. "But the language gap alone would make it a right pain in the ass to train them."
Sifo nodded. "We had planned for that. We'll have to include more protocol droids to work as tutors, and add Outer Rim Basic to the curriculum."
Gon blinked. "Basic? You're teaching them Basic, not Standard?"
"No, of course not." Tan'ya answered, smiling. "They will be required to pass an Outer Rim Basic test in order to be eligible for the Royal Guard. You and your men will be the ones who need the extra training."
Gon's expression changed as he thought that through. "Can be hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Some of my men are gonna drop out just from that."
"And I imagine more will drop out when they find out about the new fitness standard they'll have to meet." Her smile widening. "The new Royal Guard will be truly elite, professionals benefiting from the veterency you and your men have to share with them, but make no mistake. This is no longer going to be a nice, semi-retirement for Coruscant Security's veterans, but a prestigious post of honored warriors, earned through blood, sweat, and tears."
Gon held Tan'ya's gaze, looking at her directly and in a slightly mystified voice said, "What kind of a little girl are you?"
"An ambitious one, apparently."
Before it could grow again, the Royal Guard had to shrink. Most of the older security officers simply didn't have it in them to rise to the new fitness standards, and ended up retiring on a generous pension, or accepting a new role as a trainer rather than a soldier. Some of them went back to Coruscant, a few had some harsh words for Gon, but in the end Tan'ya was left with about two hundred and fifty royal guards, most of whom were in their mid to late thirties. A lot of them seemed to enjoy the training program, shedding pounds and getting, 'Back into the swing of things.'
After that it was time to fill out the ranks again.
The new Serenoan recruits Tan'ya brought in came from the rapidly expanding planetary militia. Anyone could apply for the Royal Guard, as long as they could pass a spoken test for Basic, and any who couldn't were offered the chance to take language courses to get them to that level.
After that they had to pass a grueling fitness and aptitude exam that Tan'ya personally designed based on her experiences from the Great War. Applicants had to hike through jungles and mountains while completing difficult stress tests, being deprived of sleep, and having their mental abilities pushed and prodded constantly by the older guards with a battery of questionnaires and psychological warfare techniques.
Those that passed this finally got a chance to really start training, which was when Tan'ya finally took the kid gloves off.
Of course she wanted these men to be loyal to her, so she led them through their training personally. Being force enhanced, she could easily keep pace with or just ahead of the young adults, and was glad to get a chance to really exercise her flabby princess body. With the aid of Gon, she and Sifo had devised a two year training course that would cover everything they might need to know, from marksmanship, equipment maintenance, explosive handling, coded communication, and combat exercises with a particular emphasis on urban warfare.
While training was ongoing, Sifo and Tan'ya began to look into ways to improve the arms and armor of the men.
As far as weapons went, blasters were powerful, common, and had defined infantry warfare for generations. A shot from a blaster would shred through wood, stone, duracrete and even most forms of durasteel, blasting apart any cover someone might try to hide behind. In addition to that, the projectile burned as hot as the surface of the sun. In terms of force it was comparable to being struck by a bolt of lightning, and typically could fire automatically or semi automatically. All of this in a round that traveled five times faster than the speed of sound. There was a very good reason that kinetic weapons had long since been replaced by blasters.
The ubiquity of the blaster meant that any armor was measured in relation to how it handled a blaster round, which was almost always not very well.
The sheer power of the blaster made most kinds of durasteel armor useless, the plasma reaction would just burn through all but the thickest armours in an instant like they weren't even there. Some forms of durasteel could reliably stop a blaster round, like cortosis or phrik, but they were extremely rare and expensive. Mandalorians were famed for wearing beskar steel into battle, effortlessly shrugging off blaster rounds, but placed a weird level of religious significance on the stuff. Tan'ya was forced to conclude that trying to buy enough blaster resistant durasteel to outfit ten thousand men would probably bankrupt the planet.
"That's why most people in our situation use plastoids." Sifo explained to her. "Laminated armor might not stop the kinetic energy of a blaster, but it will absorb much of the heat so someone who's shot doesn't also have their organs cooked. They'll be taken out of the fight, but they might survive. It's also a lot cheaper than any durasteel."
"What about other forms of kinetic energy? Like explosive shrapnel or heavy impacts from a bludgeon?"
"It's partially effective at stopping those." Sifo replied. "Not fantastic, but certainly better than nothing."
Tan'ya wasn't too impressed by his description of the stuff. "What about layered armor? Weave together multiple thin sheets of heat resistant ceramic or plastoid, and impact resistant durasteel, in multiple thin layers. Wouldn't that be more resilient?"
Sifo shook his head. "That's an old way of making armor, long outdated. Tibanna blasters might look like just a beam of light, but when viewed in a light resistant slow motion holo recording, you can see that the blast is actually a number of extremely small layers of hot plasma in close proximity. Don't think of it as a single bolt, but a tightly packed cluster of bolts. Collectively one layer just smashes through the too thin plastoid, then the next just burns through the too thin durasteel, and so on and so forth. Woven armor fails to protect against heat like plastoid, and the kinetic energy like durasteel, meaning the wearer gets the protection of neither."
In the end, Tan'ya had to concede defeat, choosing high quality plastoids for her guard's armor. Having settled on armor and weapons of Serenno's growing armies, she and Sifo began the search for ships that would transport them.
Which, much to her chagrin, became a saga in and of itself. The Trade Federation had a number of programs that would allow Serenno to rent light cruisers, at a fairly cheap rate at that, but principally Tan'ya rejected it. The whole goal was for Serenno to better manage its own defenses, not to become even more dependent on the Fed. The next obvious choice was the Corellian Engineering Corporation, who were both renowned manufacturers of ships with the largest shipyards in the Galaxy.
That was when the two of them bumped into a rather nasty discovery.
"I'm afraid none of our military ships are available for purchase." The CEC rep explained through the holocall. He was a managerial man in his late thirties with a smart set of formal robes and a smooth talking demeanor. "Though I would gladly recommend to you some light cruisers from our civilian range."
"I'm sorry, what?" Tan'ya interrupted. "What do you mean not available?"
"Serenno, according to what I'm reading, here has been officially recognised as a pirate hub, and under anti piracy sanctions, specifically Bill 307-NC, subsection 2, we are not allowed to sell any military ships to you either directly or through a licensed retailer."
Sifo sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I was worried this might be the case."
"We're not a pirate hub." Tan'ya bit out through grit teeth. "We're a pirate victim, if anything."
"According to what I'm reading here, your former head of state, Count Ramil, was put under sanctions about a decade ago for harboring abyssinian pirates."
"Ramil isn't in charge anymore, Count Dooku is." Sifo tried to explain. "The ships are to protect this world from pirates, not engage in it."
"Nevertheless the sanctions are still in place. If you want them removed, perhaps get into contact with your Senate representative? Until then, I'm sorry, but our civilian catalog is open to you."
Tan'ya hit the mute button then looked to Sifo. "Could we buy a civilian light cruiser and refit it for military purposes?"
"Technically we could, that's what most actual pirates do, but there's some problems with that. Firstly, it would still be illegal and if we get caught doing it the senate might come down on Serenno. Secondly, a civilian ship isn't exactly designed for battle, and there's only so much a refit can do. Thirdly, refitting a ship is almost as expensive as building a new one."
"So we'll be paying more, getting less for what we're paying, and face serious consequences if we're caught doing it?"
"I'm afraid so."
With a sigh, Tan'ya unmuted the holocall and thanked the rep for his time.
After that they got in contact with Kuati Driveyards and Moncal Starship Manufacturing, only to face the exact same problem with both of them. They spent hours reaching out to smaller and smaller starship sellers only to receive the same response again and again. It was when they got turned away by an absolutely tiny manufacturer called 'Theed Palace Space Vessel Engineering' that they gave up.
"Can we look on the Black Market?" Tan'ya looked at Sifo, only half joking.
"Before we resort to such desperate measures, let's at least try talking to your father first. He might be able to get Serenno off the sanctions list."
"That could take years." Tan'ya scoffed. "That's assuming Father even agrees to go to the senate, which he won't on sheer principle."
"If Serenno ever wants to truly control its own defenses, you're going to have to get those sanctions lifted, anyway." Sifo reasoned. "Until then let's see about getting our hands on some speeders for transport on world, and maybe start looking to see if some other planetary defense fleets would be willing to sell us some older, second hand ships. I can feel your frustration, don't worry there are other ways of doing this."
Tan'ya hoped he was right, but was still worried. This was her first major responsibility, and the last thing she wanted was to fail because of some out of date senate resolution.
With the task set before her, Tan'ya focussed everything on finding a work around. It took hours of trawling through senate regulations, but eventually she happened upon an idea. Surely other worlds had faced the same circumstances as Serenno's before? What did they do to get around it?
Eventually, Sifo left to take a meeting with her father, and Tan'ya was dismissed from the day. Even as she lay in bed that evening, the blue light of the compad screen reflected in her eyes, she kept working long into the night, as the pink rays of the dawn son began to poke through her curtains.
When struggling with something, Jedi were trained to meditate until they found a solution in the Force. Dooku found that his starship's bridge was as fine a place to mediate as any. His cape and chain were hung up by the door, and the curtains were drawn, only the flickering light of hyperspace illuminated the room.
He closed his eyes, and immediately something caught his attention. A voice was calling to Dooku through the force, one that could be heard in the Dark Side. The sith wanted to meet him again, but it was a meeting the Count wasn't sure he was ready to take.
He knew what it would be about. Sifo was a liability, he had to be removed. Dooku even agreed, the deed had to be done. Just… not then. At the time, Sifo was serving two roles for Dooku, one as Tan'ya's teacher and the other as military advisor to Serenno.
There were other people who could serve those roles, Dooku knew, but the issue was he actually trusted Sifo.
Or he did, until recently.
Trust didn't just mean you thought someone unlikely to betray you, it also meant you believed in their competence, which Dooku no longer did. To find his old friend rifling through a dustbin, desperately searching for his liquor had been a sobering moment for the Count.
This was it, then. Coruscant, the sucking hole at the center of everything, would claim one more life, and it would not be the last before this awful Galaxy was finally put to order.
The Sith Lord had chosen a slaughterhouse deep into the undercity for their meeting place. Dooku parked his speeder in an alley, and entered through a side door marked employees only.
The security droids that were supposed to patrol the building were parked in a power charging station in low power mode, possibly an oversight from the manager but more likely the outcome of a mind trick from the Sith. Dooku stepped past the night shift's office where a man was asleep in his chair, while all the security holos that someone was supposed to be watching were switched off and not recording.
The call in the Dark Side led him to a refrigerated room filled with rows of hundreds of animal carcasses, suspended in the air by dully humming hoverslings. Many different species represented, of varying sizes and with differing numbers of limbs, now unrecognizable to Dooku without their skin and claws. Some were suspiciously small, maybe someone's missing housepets, while others were smaller still, possibly unlucky rodents. Fog clouded Dooku's breath as he searched between the rows.
The Sith Lord emerged from between them, a dark black shape illimunated by the soft blue light that filled the room. "Count Dooku." The Sith murmured in his wet rumple. "This meeting is long overdue."
Dooku's first instinct was to make an excuse, but he suppressed it. He certainly didn't respect excuses, and Palpatine definitely wouldn't. "Yes, the time has come. Sifo has… served his purpose."
"Gooood." The golden irises of the man seemed to gleam more brightly. "I have dispatched my assassin to deal with him."
Already? Dooku frowned, his stomach turning. The smell of the room was getting to him. He resisted the shiver that ran up his spine and the urge to pull his cloak around him. "I've only just agreed."
"Yeeesss." Palpatine frowned. "You've seen true, but… our ambitions are too important for such a momentary weakness. Your sentiment for the man has risked everything."
Dooku grit his jaw, a frustrated defensiveness rising within him at the same time his stomach twisted unpleasantly. "I have had him under control."
"Have you?"
Dooku opened his mouth to reply, but paused. Anything he said would just be an excuse.
"Even to your… former order, such attachments are chains, slowing you down, holding you back. My friend, I'm liberating you. You know it to be true."
"Then this meeting?"
"A… formality, and a warning. To put this Galaxy to order will require sacrifice, Count. Search your feelings, you know it to be true."
He was right. Dooku knew it. This Galaxy was a place where the liar and the thief prospered, not the noble or the strong. Not just here in Coruscant, but the Outer Rim families would consume rodents and other filthier things to get by. It was fully possible that this very slaughterhouse was used to dispose of sentient bodies, their meat and bones disappearing into the soups and stomachs of the desperate, unquestioning masses.
Sifo was just one man. How could Dooku possibly have let his own weakness get in the way of their grand project?
The Sith's smile widened under his hood. "Next time, you will be the one who severs the bond. I will not help you."
"Very well." Dooku finally answered. Somehow he felt strangely reassured, though very cold. He turned to leave the refrigerated room, not bothering to offer the sith any parting words. They were not friends who chattered idly.
He returned to his ship, and considered spending another night on Coruscant, then thought of his bed in the palace and his wife Athemeene, before deciding against it. It would be nice to spend the night at home, but he didn't feel like he could quite return there yet. He didn't want to track the grime of the ecumenopolis through his front door, it would be better to have more of a buffer between those two parts of his life.
Thinking this, he went to lay in the starship's bed, when he received a call on his compad. When he saw the caller, he stared for a moment not sure how to respond.
Had Sifo somehow felt Dooku's intentions in the force? Well, it wasn't really his intention, it was the Sith's. Even if Dooku hadn't agreed to it, the Sith would have sent the assassin anyway. It wasn't like Dooku could possibly warn the man, now could he?
Hesitating, he answered, not sure if this would be the last conversation he would ever have with his old friend.
"I'm sorry to catch your right when you were about to sleep, but I didn't know where you were." Sifo explained.
"That's fine." Dooku answered. "Is this important?"
"It's about your military expansion. We've hit a little bit of a snag that I thought you should know about." He then explained that Serenno was being sanctioned as a hub of piracy.
"I see." Dooku scowled. "So until these sanctions are removed, we cannot proceed."
"Actually, I found a way." Tan'ya's voice came from the holocall, and her head and hand popped into view.
"Yes, your daughter found a brilliant little work around." Sifo continued, smiling fondly. "See, the sanctions apply to Serenno as a planet, which is a legally distinct entity from the extended Serenno dynasty."
"So we'll have some relatives make the purchase for us?"
Tan'ya shook her head. "No, the sanctions were aimed at the head of state for planet Serenno and his extended family, which includes us, unfortunately. The trick of it is that within the Serenno family, we're still allowed to move our goods and assets around. If a member of our family happened to own a military vessel and transfer it to us for our use, while not acting in his capacity as head of state or as a government representative, that would bypass the sanctions."
Dooku considered his daughter's proposal. "The main branch here on our home planet are the wealthiest of our extended family. I don't think any Serenno cadet branches possess a defense fleet."
"But we do own a good piece of Raxus Prime, which means-"
"It means that it's possible for you to restore ships that are already parked on Raxus Prime." Sifo explained for Tan'ya, who pouted at being interrupted. "We were able to find a business that specializes in restoring classic ship hulls with modern technology, and selling them to collectors."
"Vintage war ships?" Dooku couldn't help the cynicism in his voice. "Surely that would be impractically expensive, and hopelessly ineffective."
"Hammerheads!" Tan'ya answered. "They're a rugged, reliable, tough and easily modified light cruiser, that's out of patent but still in production! The earliest Hammerhead hulls were made thousands of years ago, and the insides have been updated but the shape remains the same. Plenty of defense fleets today still use them."
Sifo nodded in agreement. "Dooku, Hammerheads aren't exactly top of the line, but they're still a good ship. For your circumstances, even without the sanctions, I might have recommended them anyway because there's such an abundance of replacement parts available for them secondhand. They're very cheap to maintain."
Dooku considered the two for a moment, before nodding his head once, slowly. "Well done you two. Go ahead and make the purchase."
A wide, surprisingly sinister grin split his daughter's face and she ducked out the holocall.
After she left Sifo shook his head, fondly. "You have an incredible child, Dooku. I could never have imagined the force gifting someone with a mastery of bureaucracy, but it's amazing to behold."
A warm feeling of pride stirred Dooku's heart, and he promised himself he would get a gift for her before returning home. Then he remembered the Sith, and the meeting he'd just had. The cold air of Coruscant seemed to be invading his ship's cabin, and he felt bone tired at that moment.
Tan'ya really was going to be devastated by Sifo's passing.
"Is something wrong?" Sifo asked.
Dooku hesitated. "Old friend, have you… considered making a holocron?"
Sifo looked surprised. "What brings that up?"
"You're not in the best of health." Dooku spoke, slowly. "If you haven't prepared one yet, please do so now. It would be a great loss for the Order, and the Galaxy if you were to pass without sharing some of your knowledge first."
Sifo looked at Dooku's image in the holo receiver, before nodding once, slowly. "Okay, I'll begin the process."
After ending the call, Dooku sat at the end of his bed, and put his head in his hands. Eventually, unable to sleep and unwilling to return home, he got up and went for a walk in the cold air of the upper city.