The chamber beneath the Senate rotunda was sealed, silent except for the slow hiss of air filtration.
Cassian Damaris stood alone before the Supreme Chancellor.
Palpatine's shadow stretched long across the floor, as if to remind the industrialist who truly controlled the light.
"I did not think you would come," Palpatine said, voice smooth as oil.
"I came," Cassian replied, "because your war is dragging the galaxy into stagnation. Either it ends—or we let the Confederacy overrun the stars and start fresh."
Palpatine leaned forward slightly. "And yet here you are, offering a deal."
Cassian's expression didn't flicker. "You want ships. Weapons. Strategic miracles. I want access to all the beskar reserves on Mandalore."
Palpatine blinked slowly. "The duchess will resist."
"I'm not negotiating with Satine Kryze."
"You understand what this means?" Palpatine asked. "The cultural soul of Mandalore—stripped. Their neutral stance shattered."
Cassian's voice dropped to ice. "Let the vote fall. I'll do the rest."
The Senate Vote
The Mandalore debate swept the chamber like a tidal wave.
Senators screamed about heritage, neutrality, and galactic ethics. Duchess Satine appeared via hologram, pleading for restraint. "Mandalore has stood independent for generations. You would desecrate our soil for ore? You turn us into a mine!"
But the war had changed everything. Systems that once stood behind Satine now buckled under fear.
The vote passed. Narrowly. Brutally.
Palpatine did not blink as he recorded the decision into law.
The Harvest of Mandalore
Within days, Corellian plunder machines fell from orbit.
Towering black harvest crawlers and atmospheric processing rigs rolled across the Mandalorian surface. Like great beasts, they tore into sacred mountains, peeled back ancient crust, and dredged up the silvery veins of beskar long buried by time.
Cassian's terraforming subroutines activated in parallel. Dead land flushed green. Lakes burst through bedrock. Rivers returned to their ancient paths.
The people of Mandalore watched in silence and grief—watching their planet be broken and healed in the same breath.
Duchess Satine was placed under protective exile. Resistance cells went underground.
The world had been saved.
And sold.
The Return of the Arsenal
Within weeks, Republic warships were rolling off the drydocks of Corellia and Fondor. Unlike Kuat's bloated designs, these ships were sharp, fast, laced with adaptive alloys and next-gen deflector matrices.
Clones marched in new armor: lighter, tougher, and lined with internal biosensors and adrenal regulators.
Reinforced legions struck back across the Mid Rim—recapturing worlds like Saleucami and Felucia, albeit at great cost.
For every system reclaimed, another bled.
Palpatine, however, saw only momentum.
He summoned the Senate again, this time under the guise of coordination and stability.
"Emergency powers," he declared, "are not tyranny. They are the tools we require to bring order and peace."
The Senate, weary and bloodied, granted them once more.
Padmé Amidala stood at her window, staring at the fleets rising into orbit.
Anakin stood behind her, silent.
"They've made him into a weapon," she whispered.
Anakin clenched his fists. "He was always a weapon. We just didn't see it in time."
Padmé turned. "He restored the Republic fleet. He helped us win battles we couldn't dream of winning. But…"
"But he's not one of us anymore," Anakin finished, voice hollow.
No one knew where Cassian slept, or if he still did. His communications came through synthetic voices. His eyes never blinked on screen. Some said he'd uploaded himself into his factories. Others believed he had simply erased the last fragments of his soul to become the architect of his vision.
In the darkened command sanctum on Zereth Prime, Serion observed holomaps of the war.
A new model of war droid—sleek, fast, brutal—moved into the prototype stage. Above him, a planetary-scale production facility bloomed in geosynchronous orbit.
Palpatine's voice came over encrypted frequency.
"Well done, Serion. Our goals are aligned once more."
Serion didn't reply at first. Then, flatly:
"For now."