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First, there was the Hapes situation. Tenel Ka did not immediately turn over her fleets to his control. Instead she withdrew them to Hapes Consortium space and cut off all communication with the Galactic Alliance…and with the Confederation, with the world of Kashyyyk, and, as far as anyone could tell, with the Jedi. Caedus did not know quite what to make of this maneuver. Tenel Ka could have been killed by the explosion that allowed Caedus to escape her palace, or subsequently deposed, her successor choosing to return the Consortium to a neutral position. Or Tenel Ka could be taking what she must see as a terrible chance with the life of her daughter. Either way, Caedus had still been able to turn the situation into a victory. By using his Intelligence resources to suggest to Confederation analysts that Tenel Ka’s nonaggression treaty with them was now void, Caedus ensured that the Confederation maintained resources to monitor and safeguard against possible Hapan attack, and that gave Caedus some breathing room. Soon enough, he could determine whether Tenel Ka still ruled the Consortium, get in touch with her…and persuade her that Allana’s life was forfeit if she did not cooperate fully.

While waiting to reach Tenel Ka, Caedus concentrated on other things.

Such as the Jedi. They had been quite successful at going underground after the battle at Kuat, so much so that the only sign he had seen of their activity had been the futile attack on him a few days before. He dispatched Tahiri in her StealthX to run down her own leads and sources, to find out where the Jedi had headquartered themselves. He had thought she could simply use her association with other Jedi to find out the information, but no, it appeared that Tenel Ka had managed to communicate her suspicions of Tahiri to the other Jedi at Kuat. Tahiri still had no answer for Caedus; it was a big galaxy and she was, in his eyes, a stupid girl—and a needy one, constantly importuning him for new chances to flow-walk into the past and reexperience the wonders of Anakin Solo in the days and hours before his death.

Caedus shook his head over that. He had seen so much of Anakin in recent months that he had come to despise the brat. The reasons why he had ever held the boy in any regard, why he had chosen to name his Star Destroyer for him, were now lost to Caedus.

Meanwhile, the war raged on. With the Hapans back in play, the Alliance no longer had to worry about staging a fighting retreat. The balance of power was now once again slightly in the Alliance’s favor. Caedus personally led new fleet operations at Kuat and on the outskirts of the Corellian system, commanding elements of the Fifth and Second fleets, respectively, and his Sith battle meditation ability helped his forces inflict heavy losses in both theaters of operation.

Commenor retaliated for the asteroid bombardment, and in savage fashion. The first sign of it was a statistical spike in the number of head colds among humans who had recently passed through Galactic City Spaceport—civilians and military personnel alike. Within days those head colds developed into raging fevers and dangerous dehydration, and the infection spread like Kashyyyk’s forest fires through the ranks of the armed forces and lower social classes. Left untreated, the illness could kill. It was affliceria, caused by an airborne bacterium, the cure for which had been discovered a century before, with the illness pronounced extinct not long after.

There were no stores of affliceria-specific antibiotics; there had been none needed in a hundred years. Quantities were cultured and rapidly distributed…to the military. There was not enough to protect the civilian population, and, by the third week of the outbreak, when the first doses began to filter into the civilian distribution network, the illness had reached epidemic proportions, causing massive personnel shortages in critical fabrication industries.

Spies captured and interrogated by the Guard confessed