Stars dance within the eyes of the Emperor, and roll in the palms of dark gods.

Chapter master Orion Phatris carefully controlled his expression, the words rising unbidden to the surface of his mind. The ancient man had heard such words before, and often they were followed by tales of ships arriving at destinations before ever leaving for them, stories about entire battle fleets traversing time, in both directions, at the apparent whims of the boiling warp. But even in the wildest void logs he had read, Orion had never, in his seven hundred years of Service to the Emperor, heard of anything quite like what was being described to him.

"Confirm these reports." He ordered. His tone was deep, yet soft, patient even.

In spite of this, his affectations could not hide the slight edge buried there, the master's mind percolating with theoreticals of every nature as his hackles rose. Orion was wary of daemonic deceptions and Alien illusions, but had listened carefully, breathing in the metallic tinged innards of his ship, the scent badly masked by the fiercely green smell of the incense censors positioned on the walls and by the door.

The large man kneeling before his throne seemed to wince at his master's reaction, raising his hands to plead and to speak to the enthroned form of the old warrior king. The blubbery mass of the crewman was sheathed in an officers uniform, which struggled mightily against the rolls of its wearer.

"We already have, my lord." Said the Astrogator, exasperation thick in every syllable that slid from his glossy, wet lips.

"Eight times before it was reported to me, and then I personally verified it ten times before bringing this report to the Captain. My peers verified it five additional times when it was decided to bring this to you! With respect, your beneficence, there isn't any more verification we can do with our current instruments and personnel."

"What, exactly, are you suggesting?" The ancient, half machine warrior king asked, his voice as cold and even as frigid steel.

"I-I…" His head astrogator sputtered, wide body trembling before the Chapter Master's dissecting stare.

He was a wide man, fat, and Orion had never had cause to speak with his current head astrogator personally. The man was known for being marginally more competent than he was copiously corpulent, and given that his anemic bulk required servo limbs to aid in carrying him around the ship, it was also the case that he was a fairly good astrogator.

"I think we need to get closer." He finally managed, mopping at his sweat laden brow with a red cloth.

"We must land within the nearest detectable system, preferably one with life, and...and verify what we are seeing with our own hands, if not our eyes."

The old warrior said nothing, leaving the man kneeling and sweating before the command throne for almost a minute. Gradually, he nodded. The man was no liar, and certainly no heretic. Orion drew in a deep, steadying breath, recognizing that the pressure he now placed on the mortal was unnecessary.

"Return to your station." He ordered, and the man before him wasted little time in obeying him, hoisting himself off the ground with his spiderlike assembly and shuffling from the metal antichamber that served as Orion's command center and bridge.

A scant second after the astrogator had removed himself from view, Company Captain Auralian Teks filled the vacuum, approaching the command throne and saluting smartly to his Master. He was the youngest captain by far, barely cresting over a hundred standard years of service, and he wore his youth plainly on his face, curiosity earnest, a slight hint of amusement there as well. Teks was a prodigy within the chapter, a genius with a sword and an equally proficient pilot and gunner. As was typical within their order, The Chapter Master had taken some pains to keep the young captain close, both to mentor the man, and to judge him fully.

"What do you make of it?" The marine captain asked.

Orion did not speak, did not answer at all for a moment as plans and probabilities boiled behind his yellow eyes. Theoreticals which stretched the capacity of his already well worn imagination tore the forefront of his mind, daring their contemplation, evden in the face of their plain absurdity. He broke from his meditation only to ask his own question.

"Is Keela still incapacitated?"

The Captain of the third Company shrugged his shoulders with a soft, mechanical sigh. His face took on a sour expression then as Teks was made to contemplate the words of that mutant woman again.

"The Navigator isn't in critical condition. Not any longer." He said, voice curt.

"But?" The Chapter Master pressed, sensing more behind his subordinates' clipped statement.

"But she hasn't stopped crying. She insists that the Emperor...the Emperor is… That he must be-"

"Don't." the Chapter Master warned softly.

The Captain nodded, and quickly changed the subject back to his original question.

"So...what do you make of it?" He asked again.

Orion rose from his command throne, carefully lifting the Sacred blade which had been resting across his legs, the mighty Serpentus Venandi shimmering in his hand as he strode over to one of the large, glowing, hololithic Emitters. This one displayed the galaxy, and indicated their current position several light years beyond its languidly turning borders.

"I cannot be certain...but my eyes are honed by vigilance, and often find the truth. And the truth that I perceive, the yield of that vigilance, appears to reveal that...either something has utterly remade the galaxy in a way that was previously unthinkable to us...Or, when we tried to breach that thin tendril of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the warp flung us to the border of an entirely different Galaxy... Perhaps even a different dimension entirely."

The captain looked at the same hololith, coming to stand beside his master. His brows furrowed, and Orion knew without looking at him that he disagreed, even before the younger demi-god spoke.

"Is there perhaps not another answer?" Teks asked.

"I can see that the eye of terror is not present...but does that really indicate that we are within a whole different galactic disk? Is it not possible that we were merely lost within the warp for a much longer time than expected, and that the Imperium conquered the warp while we were gone?"

Orion shook his head, eyes locked onto the screen before him, a weight holding him there.

"It is not the lack of the miserable eye of terror that I find unbelievable. It's the missing astronomicon that makes me think we can not be looking upon our home."

The captain shrugged at this, coming to stand closer as he did.

"Perhaps it is just blocked? Such things have happened on the far side of the Cicatrix Maledictum."

Orion laughed at that, a bitter, unamused sound.

"A fine theory, but blocked by what? The Eye is gone, the tear with it."

"Other things could -" the captain started to say.

"Crew," Orion interjected.

"Play the audio of the chief Navigator's words. The last words she spoke before we had to drag her out of her nest."

At this his captain balked and the crew hesitated, heads turning back, looking to be sure.

"My lord…are you certain?" Asked one of his bridge officers.

Orion nodded, face steely.

"Everyone present has heard it before. Your faith should not be so weak that you cannot bear to hear it again."

At this prompting, The officer complied, adjusting some of the controls upon the panel he sat before. In a short time, the voice of Keela Shastrava began to bleat over the vox casters on the bridge, her words wretched between bouts of sobbing and shuddering sorrow.

"By the weeping stars, I can see!. For the first time, I can see, and my sight blinds me! Woe to us, woe to the world, and the universe. For my eyes can see all, and yet the light of the Emperor has faded completely. Woe! Woe, for our lord in the stars shines no longer! Woe, for we are made orphans! Woe to us all, for our father has died!"

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Impossible. Stars danced at his command, rolled in the palms of his hands, and yet, somehow, those deceitful little specks had hidden something from him! Something enormous, something which could shift the carefully arranged balance he had spent the last four years cementing!

And the worst part about it was that he didn't even know, at least not yet, what precisely had been hidden from his sight. The Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, SheevPalpatine, had been informed of the unexpected gravitational disturbances by a mid level, hyperlane service report.

Hundreds of thousands of ancient Hyperlane buoys, most of which had been presumed to be underpowered and non-functional, had come alive nearly all at once. The report showed a cascading effect originating from a point in space a few hundred light years away from Pzob, a backwater world at the very edge of the outermost part of the outer rim. The fact that Pzob had no buoys around it only emphasized the unprecedented magnitude of the disturbance.

But even so, this was not something that would have normally drawn his attention. The Dark Lord of the sith was only marginally interested in such spatial anomalies and phenomenon, and not at all if they could not expand his knowledge of the force or be turned to function within his design. A curiosity, and nothing more, that is what his reading of this report would have concluded from it under more usual circumstance. But Darth Sidious had known about the disturbance well before the report had been delivered to his alter ego, for he had felt it through a different vector. The force.

Something...dark had just entered into the near boundaries of his soon to be claimed Galactic Dominion, something which screamed and howled in voices the dark lord had never heard before. Sidious felt this could only mean one thing. Rivals! Grim forces of a darker galaxy had arrived to stake a claim on what was already his, and the sense of these newcomers made Dark Lord of this Sith feel power which he had been loath to use before.

The intoxicating strength of fear added itself to his dark arsenal, for what he sensed was no mere chaff to be blown away, no jedi-like force to be abused and deceived. Crawling ever closer, the heir of Bane sensed a threat he had thought silenced forever when the crackling power of his own mastery had executed the drunk and foolhardy Sith Lord who'd once called himself Darth Plagueis. Darth Sidious now sensensed the threat of other masters of the darkside, and the plurality he felt approaching only heightened the sense of danger which now permeated his body, like infected veins through the pulsing flesh of a dirty wound.

But, even though he had already felt it, the report was important, vital, in fact. Because while Darth Sidious was a master of the Darkside, and deeply attuned to such things, Sheev Palpatine, kindly Supreme Chancellor of the embattled Republic, was most decidedly not. Initially he thought to wait until the Jedi brought the matter to him, thinking they too would sense the arrival of the oncoming threat.

But as days dragged by, Sidious found himself vexed by his own competence. Through the use of ritual, subversion, and the council's own arrogance, he had blinded the jedi. Even sitting within his chambers, speaking with him, surrounded by his dwarti statues, the jedi could not catch the slightest whiff of his true nature. While he was a great deal more subtle than these newcomers, he was also a great deal closer to the Jedi, and these outsiders had not even entered the Galaxy...yet. By the time the Jedi realized the threat, it would destroy them just as surely as Sidious himself would have, and that would not do.

Thus, the report before him, neatly placed onto his desk, still brightly depicting the data held within as bright, blue holograms. The Reptilian warrior opposite the Supreme chancellor stared at them, and then, through them.

"And you really think thiss dessservesss thissss kind of attensstion?" asked the Jedi knight, Renphi.

Palpatine smiled calmly and nodded, completely negating his desire to scrunch his nose at the hissing, slurring accent used by the trandoshan jedi. It was bad enough that it had to be a pathetic, parasitic reptile, warming itself on the power of the Republic...did it also need to be a Trandoshan as well?

"Most likely not, but I would like to be sure. These readings are quite unprecedented, and it stokes my anxiety to simply allow whatever is causing them to pass us by unobserved." The Secret Lord of the Sith said to him, fingers folded on the wide desk.

"Hmmm, I ssssuppossse." The Jedi said.

"But why clonesss? Why not ssssend a ssssurvey team inssstead?" He added.

Palpatine smiled warmly at the wary warrior. The impertinent fool. The Dark Lord could scarcely wait, sensing the time of his purge approaching rapidly, echoing out into time, in both directions. This Jedi would die soon, like all the others, he could...almost...taste it. Almost hear the echoes of his final cries.

"Oh, I shall send scientists and researchers with you as well." The Supreme Chancellor assured.

"But, it is unprecedented, so I wouldn't send them out there without protection. Besides, we can never underestimate the enemy we are currently facing. Even if the Separatists have nothing to do with what caused these readings, they have buoys of their own. I cannot rule out the possibility that they will also attempt their own investigation."

The Jedi Knight considered for a second before nodding his approval.

"I ssssee the wisssdom in thissss." He said.

Palpatine's smile reached his eyes fully then.

"Good, good!" He added.

"Then I'd be glad to send you on your way as quickly as possible! Like I said, we don't want this phenomenon to pass us by. I already have a science team picked out and ready to go. How many battalions do you command currently?"

"Currently? Two." Said the Knight.

"Make it four, I'll have you reinforced before you leave."

The jedi seemed shocked, blinking for a moment before giving a shallow bow of respect to the smiling old man.

"Thank you chancccccellor." He said.

"Please, do not mention it. Simply promise me you will take care to remain safe! Odd things are said to...linger near the edge of the galaxy. Our war is maybe a month from it's close, and I'd not have you miss it because of a tragedy out in the frontier. Keep your men close about you."

The knight nodded.

"I will chanccccellor...Do you truly believe it might end sssso fassst?"

Sheev leaned back in his seat and nodded knowingly.

"Trust me my Jedi friend, I am an expert in such sorry things as war and peace. These matters can move suddenly, and mark my words, it will be over before you know it."