[Third Person]
A dense, heavy silence filled the Theed strategy room. The leaders of Naboo and the Jedi General stared at the darkened holoprojectors, their minds still trying to grasp the scale of power they had just witnessed. War, as they knew it, seemed like a child's game.
It was Queen Jamillia who finally spoke, her voice a whisper of awe and dread. "They have the power to... end this. To shut down entire fleets, to spy on the Chancellor at will. What is the plan? A coordinated attack? An assault on Coruscant?"
Anakin nodded, his soldier's mind seeking a tangible strategy. "A lightning strike? We could neutralize Dooku and the Separatist leaders before they know what hit them."
Kaelen shook his head, a condescending smile playing on his lips. "Too noisy. Too... predictable." He approached the holoprojector. "Destroying droids only means they'll build more. Killing Dooku makes him a martyr, and another pawn will take his place. And a direct assault on Coruscant would only unite the galaxy against us. Palpatine would cast himself as the victim, and us as the tyrants."
"Then what do you propose?" Captain Typho asked, skeptical.
Kaelen looked at Rick, who had been observing everything with barely disguised amusement. "I propose we don't fight their war. We'll play a completely different game."
He addressed the room. "A while ago, I told you the story of my... genetic father. How he took down an oppressive Galactic Federation in his own dimension."
"He brought it down single-handedly," Padmé said, recalling the conversation in the bunker.
"Exactly," Kaelen said. "But he didn't do it with weapons. He didn't bomb it into submission. He killed it with the most powerful and elegant weapon of all: the economy."
Rick, hearing this, began to smile. A slow, wide, predatory grin. He was starting to see where Kaelen was going.
"This entire war," Kaelen continued, projecting a complex flowchart of galactic finances, "the Republic and the Separatists, it's all being funded and controlled by a handful of entities: the InterGalactic Banking Clan, the Trade Guild, the Techno Union... And all of them, ultimately, are secretly controlled by Palpatine."
"His power doesn't lie in his armies, but in his control of money. So we're not going to destroy their armies. We're going to destroy their money."
A murmur of confusion filled the room.
"We're going to pull off the greatest heist and the greatest scam in galactic history," Kaelen announced, his eyes gleaming with terrifying genius. "With my quantum echo virus, I already have access to the Banking Clan's central servers on Muunilinst. I'm not going to steal the credits. That would be crude."
His smile widened. "I'm going to insert a single line of code into their currency valuation system. A recursive algorithm that will recalculate the value of the Galactic Credit every nanosecond, basing it on a completely absurd and incalculable variable. Something like... the exact number of grains of sand on all of Tatooine."
"Within hours," he explained, "the algorithm will create a hyperinflationary spiral so massive that the Republic Credit, the basis of the entire galactic economy, will devalue to absolutely nothing. Palpatine's money, Dooku's money, both sides' war funds... they'll become worthless zeros on a screen."
"You can't pay weapon manufacturers if a single blaster rifle costs a trillion credits in the morning and ten trillion by afternoon," he concluded.
Padmé stared at him, horrified and fascinated in equal measure. It was a plan that could end the war without firing a single shot, but the resulting economic chaos would be... unimaginable.
"And the coup de grâce," Kaelen added, his voice a malicious whisper. "While the entire system collapses in panic, my virus will silently transfer all real assets—precious metals, planetary properties, natural resources, everything of tangible value—to a new secure trust account... under the custody of the sovereign government of Naboo, to be 'protected' until a new economic order can be restored."
The audacity of the plan was suffocating. They weren't just going to destroy the economy; they were going to keep the ashes.
Kaelen finished his exposition and looked at Rick. Rick stared back. Their minds, the original and the perfected echo, were in perfect, terrifying sync.
"Palpatine won't know what hit him," Kaelen said. "The war will end, not with a bang, but with a rounding error."
Rick let out a burst of laughter. It wasn't joyful laughter. It was a low, guttural sound, filled with pure, scientific malice.
Kaelen joined him.
Their laughter filled the strategy room, intertwining into a cacophony of genius and chaos. It was the sound of two beings who had decided that if they didn't like the game, they would simply break the board and keep all the pieces.
Queen Jamillia, Captain Typho, Sio Bibble, and Anakin Skywalker stared at them, and a fear far deeper than any army seized them. They had just allied themselves, not with saviors, but with a force of nature. And the Star Wars universe was about to learn why that was far, far more terrifying.