Anakin and Obi-Wan boarded the Separatist flagship during the battle. They fought through the corridors, reached the detention chamber, and freed the Chancellor. Their route to escape was cut off by Count Dooku. The duel proceeded as it had before: Obi-Wan was disabled early in the fight, leaving Anakin to face Dooku alone. Anakin disarmed and killed Dooku. The Chancellor showed no sign of distress at the act and instructed Anakin to leave Obi-Wan behind due to weight and structural instability, but Anakin refused. He carried Obi-Wan until they reached a controlled landing sequence.
The flagship broke apart and crashed into the surface of Coruscant. Anakin landed it with minimal further damage. Emergency crews arrived, the Chancellor was recovered alive, and the public narrative became one of heroic rescue in the midst of a Separatist attack. Dooku was declared dead, eliminating the Separatists' political frontman and shifting the war toward total militarization.
Inside the Jedi Temple, fire suppression units and emergency healers worked through the damaged halls. Structural engineers sealed off collapsed sectors. Master Shaak Ti and Temple security began investigating the bombing while medical teams moved injured initiates and archivists to safe wings.
The robbery was not discovered immediately. The first sign came from the Archives. Archivists attempting to access restricted files found entire sealed records missing or corrupted. At first this was assumed to be bomb damage. Then Masters assigned to the High Security Vaults confirmed that the vault corridors had been accessed. When the vault doors were inspected, there were no explosive scars and no forced-latch alarms. The doors had been cut with clean, uniform thermal precision. Every major artifact holocrons, relics, rare materials, historical items was gone.
The Jedi Council convened within the damaged Temple. Master Windu, Master Yoda, Master Shaak Ti, and others reviewed the situation. There were three key conclusions:
The bombing created intentional distraction.The precision of the vault breach did not match ventress' crude demolition pattern.
The infiltrators possessed detailed knowledge of Temple layout and vault locations.No non-Jedi should know how to reach the lower vaults without guidance.
The motive was extraction, not destruction.Nothing was vandalized, only removed.
Speculation followed. Some Masters suspected a Sith agent exploiting the chaos. Others argued that Separatists lacked the skill to breach without leaving signs. The Chancellor publicly expressed outrage at the bombing but was not informed of the vault robbery in full detail. The Council restricted that information to avoid panic and to prevent knowledge of the stolen relics spreading through the Republic.
Efforts to retrieve forensic evidence failed. Temple sensors had gone offline after the bombing, physical traces were minimal, and there were no witnesses. No one connected the operation to any known Separatist asset. The High Council classified the event internally as the "Vault Breach Incident," sealing all mention until further notice. Investigators were dispatched, but without leads, the case became stagnant within days.
Externally, the public only saw:
a bold Separatist strike on Coruscant,
the kidnapping and rescue of the Chancellor,
the death of Dooku,
and the continuation of the war.
Internally, the Jedi understood that they had been robbed during their moment of greatest vulnerability, and they had no way to determine who had done it or where the stolen knowledge and artifacts had gone.