Doomsday weapons = Geonosis!

Since they'd found this evil Dark Side doomsday weapon, the natural place to go was Geonosis--the planet renowned for whipping up most of the Emperor's destructive monstrosities.

The Geonosans were reluctant to talk. First, they pointed out that Jedi were not official representatives of the Republic. Ree pointed out Erin, who was not a Jedi, but a New Republic investigator. Then they tried to weasel out on a technicality--something about only being able to discuss a contract with the contractor. If the Empire had signed the contract, then the Republic would be considered the inheritor of the contract, but if the Emperor was the contractor, then... So the comeback was that if the Empire had signed the contract, then it'd be standard dealings with a military organization, but if the Emperor had signed it, then it'd be considered supplying arms to an individual, and thus the Geonosans would be up for complicity in war crimes...

Yeah, they turned over the information.

The Geonosans had helped build three of these gizmos, under the auspices of a fellow named Ezrek Dalt, who worked out of Kuat. Aha! A new lead. And even better...he was still there. According to the information.

The crew suspected that the Geonosans had called ahead to warn him, so they went as quickly as they could. But by the time they got there, he'd already split. Still, they were able to get a track on his personal ship--which was heading to Coruscant. Before they went after it, though, they decided to check out his place. They found a Dalt holocron which was quite willing to share a whole lot of information. It came with them as they launched back to Coruscant on the bastard's tail.

Talking to the holocron, they found out all sorts of things about Dalt. The Emperor had snagged him at a young age, about 15, and Dalt quickly showed an impressive ability with engineering. He'd grown up dreaming of becoming a Sith, but obviously the Emperor and Vader weren't really accepting applications. Once the Emperor bought the farm, Dalt was free to scrape together all the knowledge he could find and try to teach himself. He'd learned a lot about being an evil Force-user, but Sith lord he was not.

Dalt had worked on a lot of the Emperor's doomsday weapons, apparently brainstorming the likes of the Death Star and Sun Crusher. Of the three large Dark Side devices he'd helped build, one had been on the moon, one had been mounted on a Star Destroyer as a prototype for testing (Kedrihm'Val later found out that this was the Chimaera, Grand Admiral Thrawn's ship, and Vader had indeed tested it on his planet), and one...was missing.

But Dalt had also built a number of smaller versions for his own personal use--about ten--which, the holocron informed them, could be used rather like incubators. Plant a baby in there, drench it with the Dark Side...whee.

And one of those devices was installed on the Chancellor's new ship, which was currently on its maiden tour, cruising around the galaxy with her, her family, and a number of Senators and friends.

A momentary pause. "Isn't the Chancellor Luke Skywalker's sister?" asked Kedrihm'Val. "Oh shit!" said everyone. Ree placed a hasty call to the Jedi Council. "Oh shit!" said Kyp Durron, who ran off yelling for Luke to get his butt in gear and go save his sister.

They didn't even get to tell him about the rest of it.