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"Now you have me interested, young Vos," Dooku mused, nodding his head. "I will do so."
Then he looked back at Harry. "Did I tell you to stop?" he asked mildly. With the touch of a button on a remote control in his hand, Dooku caused the rocks underneath Harry to shake, rise, and twitch this way and that. "Excuse me a moment," Dooku said to Quinlan, before turning back to Harry, shouting instructions. "Reach out with the Force! Determine where the ground will be and place your feet in such a way that your feet are simply there. Do not allow the ground to dictate your movements, and do not try to use your limited physical perception to guide your movements. The Force can help you dictate the flow of the battle under the control of your mind."
"Ye, YEEEES, Master!" Harry shouted, his words nearly rising into a shout as the two stones he had been standing on suddenly flew in two different directions pulling his legs apart. Still, thanks to his ever-increasing training in Force Precognition, he was able to push off of one, then use the other to leap to a third.
Pulling off his Jedi robes, Quinlan tossed them to one side, activating his lightsaber. "Would you mind if I took over my padawan's training, Master Dooku? I need to work off some energy."
Dooku nodded, and moved over to watch Harry as Lily and Fay came out of the mansion, having been working on a project of their own.
"Work off some energy?" Aayla quipped, bringing up her twin lightsabers in a cross guard. "Is there any specific reason for that, Master?" she asked teasingly, watching for a reaction. Both her empathy and her feminine instincts were telling her something here…
Quinlan didn't rise to the bait, however, merely cocking an expressive eyebrow at her. "Are you just going to stand there all day, or are you going to actually attack, padawan?"
Her lips twitching, Aayla sighed and did so, and the training continued throughout the day.
That evening the Counts' Council met once more, gathered in their council room with their heirs and some Sorenno Security Fleet personnel who were involved in enlarging the starship fighter program. That project hadn't gone forward very far yet, but they had gathered a large cadre of dedicated starfighters from their existing fleet both to create the first few starfighter divisions and to create a cadre of trainers for further enlargement. Moreover the designers were already hard at work on a locally designed starfighter.
When everyone was seated, including the counts and their heirs/advisors, Komari and Quinlan moved around the table, nodding at them all. "Ladies and gentle beings, I am Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos, and this is Jedi Knight Komari Vosa. The two of us were placed in charge of an ongoing investigation into the pirate crisis infesting this sector and its neighbors, which included an attack on Sorenno itself a while back."
"We know that," count Luther grumped. "I've lost two more ships since our last discussion, or rather one of them had been lost before that, and only now has the report gotten back to me. But anyway, get to the point."
"I will do so, Count Luther," said Quinlan calmly. "I would first, however, like to make certain that credit goes where it is due. Once I ascertained their trustworthiness I was able to work with a few investigators on each planet. A few of them had already looked into much of what the two of us put together. They just didn't have enough of the pieces to see the whole jigsaw puzzle.
"What we have here is a very large if diffuse operation being run from multiple angles, but we think only one mind."
"Organized crime?" one of the other counts interrupted. "Black Sun returned in full force, then?"
"No, this operation isn't as subtle as they were, nor is it as large. I have dealt with Black Sun fragments and before that the Black Sun itself," Quinlan answered assertively, shaking his head, setting his lank, black hair to sway. "This operation has some of the earmarks of their work and is probably being run by another fragment, but we don't have enough information to point to a specific person or individual just yet."
After that Komari took up the tale. At her direction a holographic screen lit up from the table, growing in size until everyone in the room could see it.
As she did, Vos sent a nod to Dooku, who in turn nodded slightly to Fay. The two of them and the two padawans began to use the Force to search out any jumps in concern or fear in those around them, which they would continue to do throughout the discussion. In this manner they would be on the lookout for spies, since they already knew the opponents, whoever they were, had to have contacts in the systems they raided, including Sorenno.
"The first clue that something much larger than we had thought was going on, with, as Knight Vos said, multiple parts, was that ships without insurance from this system and its neighbors came under attack, while the ships with insurance purchased there, while attacked, were protected by either the defense forces of the sector, being with them already in convoy, or appearing suddenly to save them," Komari began, highlighting the systems involved on the galactic map. "So we looked for connections between the various insurance companies on those planets and came up with several of them. All of them are owned by private individuals whose pasts are completely blank. We can assume, therefore, that they are dummy companies."
"Protection rackets, really? How droll," Dooku murmured even as he leaned back thoughtfully in his chair.
"Yes, but it goes further than that, much further. Privateers from that sector do indeed protect the ships in that sector, but after a suggestion from Knight Vos some of the investigators on the planets they use as bases pulled their flight logs. When they were out on patrols unseen by any, they could have been involved in these attacks…"
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