456, 29BBY
Time entered 29BBY, and time passed by in a flash. Three years have passed since Darth-Pregas died and Sheev-Palpatine became the Speaker.
During this period of time, too many things happened to both Dawn Star Planet and Galactic Republic, but in general, except for Dawn Star Planet having a real battle with Ayrou, most of them were the calm before the storm.
Palpatine has been working hard to consolidate his power. He first exposed his flaws, making Vice Chancellor Mas-Amedda think that he could influence himself as the speaker to a great extent. Mas-Amedda proposed several issues and all were passed by him.
Not only that, his easy-going attitude in the early days of his administration also made some people from other political factions think they had an opportunity and began to get closer to him.
But in fact, Palpatine is just letting all this happen. He does not care about the impact these people will have on Galactic Republic through the issues raised by him. All he cares about is constantly improving his secret strength.
He continued to establish good relations with those old and powerful industrial planets and used his rights to conduct transactions. He initially used the Clone Army project to throw out this bait, and tested large industrial enterprises such as Kuat Drive Yards, Rendili StarDrive, and Corellia Engineering Company.
The one who finally took the bait was Kuat Drive Yards, and Palpatine also generously gave them their first gift - a military order for a complete set of equipment required by the Clone Army, worth 7 billion credit points, and InterGalactic Banking Clan guaranteed it and paid the huge sum of money.
And what Palpatine got in exchange was the loyalty of Quat Planet.
These industrial planets are thirsty for power and yearn for war, because only war can bring them more benefits, so they hit it off with Palpatine's policies and became Palpatine's secret supporters.
After that, he secretly searched for their weaknesses in the process of constant contact with Mas-Amedda and other political factions.
Palpatine is very clear that in his first term, he cannot do too much. He is not the kind of person who wants the new official to take office. He wants more, higher, bigger...
What he is doing now is getting more support.
Whether it is Mas-Amedda or some other political factions, they regard him as a weak speaker. They think that they can achieve more of their own goals and seek more benefits through Palpatine. In fact, they have indeed achieved it, and all these black accounts have been recorded by Palpatine.
In contrast, Dawn Star Planet MPs Francis-Underwood appear to be aggressive. He has a strong aura, is eloquent, and has a powerful planet behind him to support him. Around him, many Outer Rim planets MPs are also united.
But it is precisely because of this that Palpatine knows that Francis will not become his real political opponent, and those vacillating wallflowers will not choose Francis.
At the beginning of the year 29BBY, Galactic Republic Senate became busy and noisy as always, all for the next year, the election of 28BBY.
The term of Chancellor of the Galactic Senate is 4 years, and Republic Constitution stipulates that the speaker can be re-elected once at most (I know this is a beautiful country, but after all, this is an IP over there, there is no way).
As Sheev-Palpatine who has reached the position of speaker halfway, he still has too many things to do, because without a complete election, it is difficult for him to know who his real supporters are, and everything is crossing the river by feeling the stones. There are indeed very few examples of speakers who have ascended to the throne midway through the generations and have been successfully re-elected.
But this is not a problem for political masters like Palpatine.
Francis-Underwood has also become a candidate, but his actions are very strange. He has indeed canvassed for votes and support, but he is more focused on the planets of Mid Rim and Outer Rim Territories, and does not want to win over the planet of Inner Rim. Of course, it is impossible for those Inner Rim nobles to take a serious look at such a small member of the emerging planet.
Compared to canvassing votes for the speakership, Francis's behavior is more like dividing his own sphere of influence.
Palpatine looked at this with cold eyes. If this kind of behavior is not stupid, it means that he is planning something more long-term.
Based on his understanding of Francis, Palpatine knew that it would definitely not be the former.
But something happened during this period. A Jedi Master named Jorus C'baoth began to lobby for a very grand plan - Outbound Flight (Outbound Flight).
This bill is a bill to explore, develop and colonize Unknown Regions of the Galaxy. Unknown Regions is a star field that occupies about one-third of the entire Milky Way. According to estimates, Unknown Regions contains 15% of the stellar mass of the Milky Way.
If the entire Milky Way is laid out flat as a map and viewed according to the traditional star map drawing coordinates of Galactic Republic, Unknown Regions is located on the west side of the Milky Way.
Of course, there is no such thing as southeast, northwest, or northwest in the Milky Way. The west side is just the west side of the flat star map. By the way, Dawn Star Planet, where Tang Xiao is located, is roughly in the southwest corner of the plane star map.
The area of Unknown Regions is very vast. In fact, the territory of Galactic Republic is equivalent to two-thirds of a circle. The large area of Inner Rim Territories in this direction on the west side is Unknown Regions.
Therefore, in fact, Mid Rim and Outer Rim of Galactic Republic are not really a ring, but are cut off at Unknown Regions.
Unknown Regions contains a large amount of resources, and according to scientists' judgment, there is likely to be countless dark matter energy disturbing here. In other words, if you want to study dark matter, you will get twice the result with half the effort in Unknown Regions.
This is different from Wild space. Wild space does not have many habitable planets and lacks resources, so basically no one pays attention to it.
But the reason why Galactic Republic's hegemony does not extend to Unknown Regions, and the reason why Unknown Regions is 'unknown', is because this space is full of abnormal gravity traps and dark energy fluctuations.
And hyperspace is a complete mess here. If you enter the hyperspace channel at the same place, the place you emerge from is completely different. Maybe it is a Blackhole, maybe it is a piece of Electromagnetic Nebula, or maybe it plunges directly into a star.
Explorers call the messy hyperspace channel of Unknown Regions the tangle, which means a mess that cannot be sorted out at all.
But now, Jedi Master Jolus Serbaos claims that he has the ability to conduct hyperspace navigation in Unknown Regions.