Invincible_God
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I gotta ask my why is there so much quiping in the conversations? Every other line is a quip or someone saying something sarcastic?
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- Thread starter Mad King Kevin
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Chapter 50: The Day You Almost Caught…
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Mad King Kevin
Getting sticky.
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- Jul 2, 2021
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Chapter 50: The Day You Almost Caught…
Ahsoka Tano leaned her back against a stack of oversized plush Bantha cushions, crossing her arms with a look of supreme, unbothered satisfaction. The past forty-eight hours had been an absolute revelation.
When Ben had shamelessly thrown her under the bus just to escape daycare duty, he had assumed she would sit here wallowing in misery, drowning in sticky plastic blocks and spilled star-fruit juice. Like he did. But he completely underestimated her ability to adapt, survive, and turn a minor administrative punishment into a highly lucrative, entirely unauthorized underworld operation.
Sitting in a tight circle on the central play mat before her were five toddling Force-sensitive initiates, their eyes wide and entirely devoted to their new, benevolent syndicate leader. Between them lay the morning's accumulated plunder, neatly organized by category.
There were four standard training remotes, two encrypted historical archive datapads swiped from an unattended library cart, Master Windu's absolute favorite silver tea infuser, and three premium, individually wrapped nerf-meat sandwiches that had mysteriously vanished from the executive commissary kitchen right before lunch.
Aren't children a blessing?
"Excellent work, squad," Ahsoka said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper as she offered a slow, approving nod to a tiny Twi'lek girl who was currently chewing on a stolen stylus. "The Temple Masters think we're just sitting here developing our cognitive motor skills. They don't understand that 'Finders Keepers' is a highly rigorous exercise in stealth, misdirection, and breaking the traditional Jedi cycle of hoarding all the best snacks."
Which in her opinion, is even worse than stealing them.
"Remember, if anyone asks about the sandwiches, we know absolutely nothing." She warned the younglings. "It was a mysterious, and unexplainable disturbance in the Force."
The younglings offered a chorus of silent, exceptionally serious nods. They were learning from the best. If Anakin Skywalker could constantly flout the rules of the Jedi Code for personal amusement, then his Padawan was more than entitled to weaponize the crèche for a bit of petty vengeance against the High Council.
The heavy pneumatic blast doors at the rear of the nursery hissed open, and Ahsoka didn't even have to look up to know who it was. The distinctive, rhythmic waddle of tiny, three-toed feet padded softly across the polished floor plates.
"Coeee," a small, high-pitched voice gurgled.
Ahsoka turned her head, expecting to see Grogu dragging another stray hydrospanner or perhaps a half-eaten ration bar he'd scavenged from a maintenance locker. Instead, her breath caught squarely in her throat, her montrals twitching with a sudden, violent jolt of pure shock.
The small, green, large-eared toddler was moving at a remarkably determined pace, his tiny hands gripped firmly around the corners of a heavy, brilliantly glowing object. It was a perfect, pristine obsidian pyramid, its sharp edges laced with intricate, pulsing crimson lines that thrummed with a heavy, deeply ancient resonance.
Grogu dragged the artifact across the floor tiles with a happy, completely oblivious coo, entirely unaware that he was casually hauling a piece of concentrated dark side heresy through the heart of the Jedi Temple.
Ahsoka scrambled forward onto her hands and knees, her heart hammering against her ribs as she instantly recognized the terrifying geometry of a literal Sith Holocron. Specifically, the dormant Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath. The one Ben told her not to worry about.
Well, guess what Ben? She's worrying about it!
"Grogu, where in the name of the Force did you find that?" Ahsoka hissed, her hands darting out to scoop the toddler into her lap while her eyes remained locked on the pulsing red relic. She looked toward the open doorway, half-expecting Master Yoda to march in with his gimer stick raised, ready to exile her to the Spice Mines of Kessel on the spot.
Grogu merely blinked his massive, innocent black eyes, pointing a tiny clawed finger back toward the secondary corridor that led directly to the Padawan residential wing. He let out a soft, satisfied burp, reaching down to pat the smooth face of the pyramid like it was a shiny new toy.
He clearly didn't just find it in the halls. At least, she hoped he didn't. So… what? Did he find it lying around in Ben's room? Come on. Even he's not dumb enough to do that. Right?
Right?!
Ahsoka's mind raced through the layout of the dorms, remembering the exact location of the hidden floorboard compartment Ben had spent three hours meticulously reinforcing after his return from Mandalore. Is that what he was using it for?!
And how did Grogu find it?
Oh, who was she kidding. Ben was babysitting him, Grogu probably saw the hidey hole. The little green menace must have bypassed Ben's security protocols just to look for a glowing teething ring.
A slow, brilliant, distinctly dangerous smile began to spread across Ahsoka's face as the sheer magnitude of the situation settled into her core. She looked down at the dark, humming artifact, then back toward the distant hangar where Ben had flown off to deal with space pirates.
That Mandalorian royal bastard had been forced to sign her a blank check.
An unrestricted, open-ended favor to be used whenever and against whomever she wished, fully believing the price wouldn't be too high. And now, thanks to a toddler with an exceptional talent for grand larceny, she didn't just have a blank check.
She had the entire vault keys.
She had an idea on exactly how she was going to cash that favor in, and Ben Kryze wasn't going to see it coming until it was entirely too late.
"Grogu, my brilliant little friend," Ahsoka whispered, reaching out to gently boop the toddler's wrinkled nose as she tucked the Sith Holocron securely beneath her Bantha cushions. "You just earned yourself a double ration of premium nerf-meat."
In hindsight, she's not sure why she was so upset to look after them.
Motherhood was so rewarding.
…
Maris Brood sliced through a heavily modified blast door with a slow, deliberate twist of her wrist, her blue plasma blade humming a low, irritated tune against the melting durasteel. This entire planet was a test of her sanity.
It wasn't enough that they were hiding out in a sulfur-choked pirate junk heap, but now she was actively playing the role of a dutiful, rule-abiding Jedi Padawan while the two supposed masters of the Order were locked in a cage like prized banthas.
"You know, if we just flattened the upper levels, the structural collapse would clear out seventy percent of the perimeter guards in under four seconds," Maris muttered, her pale features illuminated by the harsh blue glow of her weapon. She didn't bother turning around to face her partner, her dark, yellow eyes tracking a pair of frantic Weequays moving through the adjacent corridor.
"And it would also flatten my father and your master, which would make dinner at the Temple incredibly awkward next week," Ben countered, his own green lightsaber ignited as he pulled security behind her. "We are being surgical. Subtle. We are humble, bumbling Padawans who happened to escape the hospitality room through sheer, clumsy luck."
"I hate being surgical without scalpels being involved." Maris spat, kicking the ruined, glowing slab of metal inward with her boot. It hit the floor tiles with a heavy, clattering thud, releasing a plume of greasy smoke into the detention block. "And I especially hate fighting with a restriction array clamped onto my skull. If I could use just a single burst of lightning, we'd already be back on the shuttle eating ration bars."
"Well, you can't," Ben said, stepping past her into the flickering, dim light of the primary cell wing. "Anakin's basically a bloodhound for the dark side, and Obi-Wan loves overanalyzing me almost as much as he loves plucking his beard hairs. You act out on any Sith-y behavior right now, and we are spending the next six months in a meditative isolation chamber."
Maris let out a sharp, mocking hiss through her teeth, her blue blade snapping off as she scanned the row of reinforced containment fields. "A truly horrifying prospect. I might actually have to read the Jedi archives instead of using them for target practice."
"Ah! Look who decided to rejoin the party!" a loud, entirely unbothered voice boomed from the end of the corridor.
Anakin Skywalker was currently hanging upside down from a specialized magnetic gravity array, his organic hand dangling loosely toward the floor while his mechanical hand remained firmly locked into a heavy pair of energy binders. Despite the complete lack of blood flow to his brain, he looked entirely more annoyed by the quality of his prison cell than the fact that he'd been out-drank by a space pirate.
"Took you long enough, Ben," Anakin grunted, his eyes shifting toward the entry archway. "I was beginning to think you two got lost looking for the kitchens. Did you at least bring my lightsaber, or am I going to have to dismantle these droids with my bare teeth?"
"We had a brief disagreement with the welcoming committee, Master Skywalker," Ben said, stepping up to the control console and typing in a quick, unauthorized bypass code he'd swiped from an outlaw's datapad. "And for the record, I tripped over a table to give us an out. You two were the ones who actually drank the blue vintage after Hondo practically announced it was spiked."
"It was a diplomatic necessity," Obi-Wan Kenobi sighed from the adjacent cell, his posture remarkably straight despite being wedged into a small, damp corner of the energy cage. He rubbed his temples, a look of profound, bone-deep embarrassment crossing his face as the blue containment field finally hissed out of existence. "Hondo's hospitality is... aggressive. We needed to maintain the illusion of compliance until the Republic escort arrived."
"Right. The illusion," Maris scoffed, tossing Obi-Wan's hilt through the air with a careless flick of her wrist. "You looked very compliant while the serving maid was dragging you down the service chute by your boots, Master."
Obi-Wan caught his weapon with a practiced, elegant motion, immediately hooking it to his belt while he smoothed down his wrinkled tunics. "Your concern for my dignity is noted, Maris. Now, if we could perhaps focus on the thirty heavily armed outlaws currently organizing a blockade at the secondary hangar?"
"Way ahead of you," Anakin said, dropping down from the ceiling with a heavy, perfectly absorbed thud the moment Ben fried his binders. He snatched his own lightsaber out of Ben's hand, the brilliant blue blade igniting with a sharp, aggressive snap that instantly cut through the dimness of the cell block. "I owe Hondo a very personal, very expensive lesson in Republic contract law."
"We are not destroying the base, Anakin," Obi-Wan warned, his own blade humming to life as he moved toward the exit corridor. "We secure the Count, we reach the shuttle, and we let the Senate handle the diplomatic fallout."
"The Count is right over here," Maris called out, her voice dropping into a flat, icy register as she gestured toward the heavily reinforced, double-shielded isolation unit at the very rear of the bay.
The containment field flickered, revealing the solitary, disheveled figure of Count Dooku.
The leader of the Confederacy was floating between two independent stasis rays, his white beard slightly tangled, his elegant hands bound securely by heavy, high-output industrial energy clamps. He still looked utterly miserable, his aristocratic poise shattered by the reality of a damp pirate bunker, but the moment his eyes locked onto the four Jedi, a wave of cold, calculating malice rolled off him like a physical weight.
Maris felt her inner Sith identity—Darth Nox—practically sneer at the sight. It was a struggle not to open her mouth and tell the Count exactly how pathetic he looked hanging there like a piece of salted meat. A literal Sith Lord, outmaneuvered by a spiked beverage and a pack of illiterate Weequays.
No matter how much time she gave herself to process, this would forever infuriate her.
"So," Maris said, walking right up to the edge of the energy bars, her blue blade resting loosely near her hip. "How's it hanging?" Ordinarily, she despised puns. But sometimes, you just can't help yourself.
Just like the Count, who was completely incapable of helping himself.
Dooku's head snapped up, his icy gray eyes narrowing into razor-sharp slits as he glared through the shimmering blue energy field. "You are an insolent, poorly trained creature, child. If your masters had even a shred of wisdom, they would leave me to my devices before this world becomes your burial mound."
"Fascinating projection," Ben said, stepping up right beside Maris, his arms crossed over his chest with an expression of pure, unbothered theatrical pity. "But given that you're currently working as a million-credit bargaining chip for a guy who wears a coat made of salvaged starship insulation, I think your expert opinion on tactical positioning has suffered a slight drop in value."
"Silence, Ben," Obi-Wan commanded lightly, though his focus was already drifting toward the heavy, metallic thudding of approaching pirate reinforcements down the northern corridor. "Anakin, check the primary security grid. We need to ensure Hondo hasn't locked down the lower hangar access before we move the prisoner."
"I'm on it," Anakin said, already moving toward the doorway, his boots clicking sharply against the floor tiles as his blue blade swept through the darkness. "Obi-Wan, look out for the western corridor. I can hear their sky-hoppers warming up on the surface plates."
"Maris, Ben, secure the Count's primary binders," Obi-Wan instructed, his back already turned as he took up a defensive stance near the main entrance archway. "Ensure the energy dampeners are functioning at maximum capacity. We cannot risk him drawing on his abilities while we navigate the upper corridors."
"Understood, Master," Maris said, her voice dripping with a completely false, dutiful obedience that made Ben's lips twitch into a hidden grin.
The moment Obi-Wan and Anakin stepped through the main archway to engage the vanguard of the pirate assault, the ambient noise of the room shifted. The distant, rhythmic crackle of blaster fire and the deep, heavy thrum of lightsabers deflecting plasma bolts began to echo through the stone corridors, creating the perfect, unmonitored pocket of silence within the central cell block.
Maris and Ben exchanged a single, instantaneous look. There was no need for words; their shared training under the Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath had forged an instinctive, lethal synchronization that didn't require a single ripple in the Force.
"You think he's going to try a mental compliance wave the second we drop the stasis field?" Maris murmured, her fingers dancing across the primary release console.
"One hundred percent," Ben whispered back, his body language completely relaxed, masking the sudden, predatory tension coiling in his muscles. "He's a politician at heart. He'll try to talk, or he'll try to plant a suggestion in Anakin's head to create an opening. We are skipping the dialogue entirely."
Dooku watched them approach, his eyes widening slightly as he detected the sudden, complete erasure of their presence in the Force. They weren't radiating fear, or excitement, or standard Jedi caution. They had simply gone dark.
Dead zones in the web.
"What are you—" Dooku began, his aristocratic voice tight with a sudden, uncharacteristic spark of genuine alarm.
The stasis rays hissed out of existence. Before the Count's boots could even touch the damp stone floor, Ben's hand shot forward like a striking viper, his fingers curling into a rigid, clawed gesture. Simultaneously, Maris raised her left hand, her mind locking onto the precise, delicate geometry of the Count's carotid arteries with an icy, uncompromising grip.
It wasn't a loud, destructive display of dark side fury. It was a silent, suffocating vice.
Dooku's voice caught squarely in his throat, a sharp, choked gasp escaping his lips as his boots hovered three inches off the floor plates. His remaining hand clawed fruitlessly against the invisible weight pressing into his windpipe, his eyes bulging as he stared down at the two Padawans with a sudden, horrifying realization.
He tried to draw on his own lightning, to summon the rage of Serenno, but the combined, crushing focus of Darth Sol and Darth Nox completely severed his connection before the energy could even reach his fingertips.
"Sweet dreams, Count," Maris whispered, her dark eyes glinting with a cold, chaotic satisfaction as she tightened the invisible knot.
Dooku's head rolled forward, his limbs going entirely limp as the lack of oxygen instantly overrode his formidable willpower. He dropped to the floor with a soft, heavy thud, completely unconscious, his pristine white beard resting against the dirt.
Ben immediately bent down, grabbing the Count by the collar of his tunic and hoisting the dead-weight body over his shoulder with a grunt. He looked toward the entry archway just as Anakin strode back into the room, his blue blade dripping with superheated plasma residue from a disassembled pirate droid.
"Alright, I cleared the terminal, but the elevator is completely fried," Anakin said, stopping in his tracks as he stared at the limp, dangling form of the Separatist leader. He blinked, looking from Ben's sweating face directly to Maris, who was casually wiping an imaginary speck of dust off her combat webbing. "What happened to him? Did he try to fight back?"
"He suffered a sudden, completely unpredictable drop in blood pressure, Master Skywalker," Maris said smoothly, her face a flawless mask of innocent, helpful concern. "The excitement of the rescue must have been entirely too much for his advanced age. He fainted the exact moment the stasis rays shut down."
Anakin stared at her for a long, silent second, his analytical mind clearly trying to process the sheer, absurd convenience of a Sith Lord passing out like a fragile senator. He let out a short, amused snort, shaking his head as he reached out and snatched the Count's body off Ben's shoulder, tossing the old man over his own massive pauldrons like a sack of grain.
"Convenient," Anakin muttered, turning back toward the corridor where Obi-Wan was already yelling for them to hurry. "Saves us the trouble of listening to his lectures on the way to the ship. Come on, kids. Let's go show Hondo what happens when you try to shortchange the Republic."
…
Captain Rex adjusted his grip on his DC-17 blasters, his armored shoulders tight with a frustration that no amount of Kaminoan stress-tolerance training could have prepared him for. The sulfur plains of Florrum were already an unmitigated nightmare of yellow dust and jagged rock formations, but the real hazard wasn't the terrain, nor was it the pirate elements currently tracking their perimeter.
It was the tall, lanky Gungan currently tangled in the straps of the spice ransom container directly ahead of him.
"Meesa thinks the sun is shiny-shining too bright, Captain Rex!" Jar Jar Binks proclaimed, his long ears flapping as he took a dramatic, entirely uncoordinated stumble over a perfectly flat piece of bedrock. "Ouchie! Meesa torso is having a great big rumblies from the dust!"
"Keep moving, Representative," Rex ordered, his voice flat beneath his bucket as he stepped around the flailing politician. He gestured for the rest of the detachment to tighten their perimeter. "We are in an un-scouted sector with zero orbital cover. The General expects us at the stronghold coordinates fifteen minutes ago."
"Sir, with all due respect, if he trips over his own tongue one more time, I might accidentally leave him behind," Sergeant Thire muttered over the squad channel, his armor coated in a fine layer of gritty yellow grime. "The Separatists didn't need a droid army to break us. They just needed to attach this guy to our diplomatic envoy."
"Cut the chatter, Thire," Rex snapped, though every logical fiber of his being was in complete, agonizing agreement. Dealing with the legal fallout of the whole Mandalorian citizenship mess had been a headache, but it was nothing compared to babysitting a living, breathing structural hazard through an outlaw territory. "We have an exchange to finalize. Watch those ridges."
"Ridges lookin' a bit too quiet, Captain," Jek remarked, his rifle raised as he scanned the upper shelves of the ravine. "Almost like the scum are waiting for us to enter the choke point."
"Ooh! Lookie lookie!" Jar Jar squealed, pointing an incredibly long finger toward a high canyon wall. "Dem bitty birds are flying so fastly! Like a whole bunch of metal insects!"
"Those aren't birds, Representative," Rex barked, his tactical display instantly updating with six fast-moving hostile signatures. "Those are Flarestar-class attack skiffs! Squad, defensive formation! Secure the ransom!"
"Weesa gonna die!" Jar Jar yelled, waving his arms in a frantic circle that nearly knocked Jek off his feet. "Help me! Help me!"
"Get down, Binks!" Rex shouted, pulling the Gungan backward by his silks as a heavy green plasma bolt melted the rock right where his webbed foot had been standing. The ravine suddenly erupted into a chaotic echo of blaster fire, the outlaws screaming down from their speeders as they circled the small Republic detachment like starved tookas.
"They're boxing us in, Captain!" Thire yelled, firing a concentrated burst up at a low-flying sky-hopper. "We don't have the angle to clear those turrets!"
"Hold your ground!" Rex ordered, his twin pistols barking in rapid succession as he scorched the repulsor-plate of an oncoming speeder bike. The vehicle veered wildly, slamming into the canyon wall, but two more took its place immediately. The tactical math was deteriorating by the second.
"Yee-haw! Look at the shiny lights!" Jar Jar cheered, entirely misinterpreting a mortar strike as a fireworks display as he hopped backward, his heel catching on a jagged root. He went down hard, his long legs flailing into the air like a flipped repulsor-sled. "Whoa-da!"
Rex opened his mouth to order a full tactical retreat into the secondary caves, but the words died instantly in his throat. The air pressure in the ravine plummeted with a terrifying, unnatural jolt. It wasn't the standard atmospheric shift of a coming sulfur storm; it felt like the very fabric of the canyon was being twisted by an invisible, colossal fist. The hairs on the back of Rex's neck stood completely on end as a deep, vibrating hum thrummed right through the soles of his boots.
"What the blast is that?" Jek gasped, his weapon dropping an inch as the sky above them darkened.
From the direction of the main pirate stronghold, a massive, multi-ton slab of solid bedrock—easily the size of a Republic dropship—came hurtling through the upper atmosphere. It wasn't falling; it had been violently, aggressively catapulted across the sky with a terrifying velocity that screamed through the air like a detonating proton torpedo.
"Take cover!" Rex screamed, his voice cracking through the comms as he lunged forward, throwing his entire armored weight directly on top of the sprawling Gungan. "Down! Down!"
"Meesa face is in the dirt!" Jar Jar muffled, his protest cut short by a sound that defied all military logic.
The massive boulder tore through the upper lip of the ravine with a deafening, grinding screech that showered the entire squad in superheated pebbles and ancient dust. It missed Jar Jar's protruding ears by a matter of mere inches, the wind shear alone ripping a silver decorative medallion clean off the politician's formal robes. The sheer kinetic energy of the near-miss bounced Rex's armored chest plate right off the ground.
Instead of crushing the Republic envoy, the gargantuan rock skipped off the angled ravine wall with a horrific crunch, preserving its forward momentum perfectly. It plowed directly into the center of the pursuing pirate squadron with absolute, devastating precision.
The lead sky-hopper was erased instantly, flattened into a two-dimensional sheet of burning durasteel before the pilot could even register the shadow. The secondary speeder bikes were swatted out of the air like annoying insects, their fuel cells detonating in a synchronized chain of orange fireballs that lit up the entire canyon floor. The remaining outlaws on the high ledge were showered in structural debris, their heavy turret emplacements entirely buried under twenty tons of displaced limestone.
Within three seconds, the entire hostile vanguard had been completely, utterly neutralized.
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the ravine, broken only by the rhythmic, ticking sound of cooling starship wreckage and the soft hiss of burning repulsor fluid. Rex slowly pushed himself up from the dirt, his helmet sensors whirring frantically as they tried to catalog the sudden, impossible shift in the local threat matrix. He blinked through his visor, staring at the smoking crater where an entire outlaw company had been standing just moments prior.
"Uh... Captain?" Thire whispered, his rifle still pointing at the empty sky. "Did our intel mention the Republic bringing an orbital artillery battery to this theater?"
"Negative, Thire," Rex said, his voice entirely hollow as he checked his tactical map. There wasn't a single friendly vessel within three systems capable of that kind of kinetic bombardment. "Nothing on the scans."
"Then... what was that?" Jek asked, wiping a thick layer of white rock dust off his visor. "A geological anomaly?"
"Meesa told you!" Jar Jar exclaimed, popping his head out from under Rex's arm with a bright, completely unbothered grin as he began picking pieces of gravel out of his teeth. "The big sky-rocks are very friendly-friendly to the Gungans! Theysa knowing exactly where to squish the bad guys!"
Rex stared down at the long-eared politician, then back at the massive, smoking boulder that had just defied every known law of planetary ballistics to save their lives by a fraction of an inch. He felt a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.
He had served under General Skywalker long enough to recognize the erratic, terrifying hallmarks of a high-level Force user doing something reckless, but this felt entirely different. This wasn't a defensive shield or a standard push. This was someone using a mountain as a personal throwing weapon.
"Sir," Thire said, stepping over a piece of a shattered pirate engine block. "Are we still advancing to the stronghold?"
"We are," Rex said, snapping his blasters back into his holsters with a sharp, decisive click. He didn't know what kind of madness General Skywalker and the rest had stirred up inside that bunker, but he wasn't about to stay out in the open long enough to see if the sky decided to throw a second mountain at them. "Pick up the ransom. Move out before whatever threw that looks our way."
…
I was absolutely, profoundly furious.
Damn it to all nine Corellian Hells, I missed. I had spent a massive amount of internal energy focusing through the stone foundations of the stronghold, locking onto the precise trajectory of that pathetic, bumbling Gungan, and I had still managed to miss him by mere inches.
The reality-warping plot armor of Jar Jar Binks was a blight upon the galaxy, a statistical anomaly that defied even the dark side itself. Instead of flattening the absolute worst diplomat in galactic history, my multi-ton kinetic projectile had entirely wiped out the pursuing pirate vanguard.
On the bright side, Captain Rex was still alive. He had plot armor too, but at least I liked him.
"Ben, what was that?" Obi-Wan asked, his green lightsaber deflecting a stray blaster bolt into the ceiling as we sprinted out onto the overlooking command balcony. He was staring out the panoramic viewport at the smoking ruin of the ravine, his eyes wide with a mix of utter bewilderment and deep concern. "Did you just catapult a piece of the mountain across the plains?"
I love how he can say that with a straight tone.
"It was a tactical miracle, Master Kenobi," I lied smoothly, keeping my breathing completely rhythmic as I deactivated my green lightsaber and clipped it back to my belt. I needed to project the image of an exhausted, dutiful Padawan who had simply gotten lucky under extreme duress. "While we were navigating the cells, I sensed a pathetic—sorry, I meant I sensed a presence in the Force, coming from the plains. It was familiar to me, our people. So, I simply took a blind shot into the darkness to clear our vanguard's path, and it seems the Force willed it to find a proper target."
Which was not Jar Jar.
The Force had its favorites. And truly terrible taste.
"A blind shot?" Anakin laughed, his blue blade flashing in a blinding arc as he sheared the barrel clean off a heavy automated defense turret blocking the hangar doors. He tossed the smoking scrap metal over his shoulder, giving me a massive, approving grin. "Kid, that was the most aggressive piece of blind luck I've ever seen. Remind me never to bet against you during target practice."
"We can overanalyze Ben's terrifyingly precise intuition later," Maris muttered, her blue blade snapping off as she stepped over the sparking remains of a pirate console.
Traitor.
Maris glanced at me, her dark eyes flashing with a wicked, entirely knowing amusement. She knew exactly who I had been aiming for. "Right now, we have a minor cleanup operation to finish."
The four of us moved like a synchronized machine, aggressively clearing out the remaining pocket of heavy pirate resistance within the hangar. Without Dooku to organize a proper counter-strategy, the Weequay outlaws were entirely outmatched. Within ninety seconds, we had pinned Hondo Ohnaka and his remaining inner circle directly against the massive, reinforced hangar blast doors.
"Alright, Ohnaka, it's over!" Anakin shouted, his mechanical hand resting firmly on his hip while his blue lightsaber hummed dangerously close to Hondo's elaborate, salvaged leather coat. "Tell your men to drop their blasters, or I'm going to personally start dismantling your fleet one engine block at a time."
"Ah, General Skywalker! General Kenobi! And the lovely young Padawans!" Hondo proclaimed, raising his hands in a grand, theatrical gesture of complete innocence despite being entirely cornered. "Can we not discuss this like civilized businessmen? A minor misunderstanding over the vintage of the drinks, that is all it was! A hospitality error!"
"You kidnapped two Jedi Masters and a Separatist Head of State, Hondo," Obi-Wan said, his voice dropping into that classic, disappointed lecturer tone as he stepped forward to secure the perimeter. "The Republic Senate tends to view hospitality errors of that magnitude as an act of open warfare."
Really?
That's all it takes?
"Anakin, help me secure the primary terminal," Obi-Wan instructed, already turning his back to examine the main control console near the transport vessels. "We need to ensure their comm-array hasn't alerted any secondary pirate cells in the outer rim."
"On it," Anakin said, stepping away from Hondo to join Obi-Wan, his boots clicking loudly against the grated floor plates as the two of us finally found a moment of separation.
While the two Jedi Masters were completely occupied with the perimeter security, Hondo stepped back into the deep shadows cast by the hull of a battered Corona-class frigate. He was frantically typing a sequence into his personal wrist-comm, his yellow eyes darting around the room like a trapped animal looking for a secondary ventilation shaft.
I stepped into the shadows right beside him, my physical presence completely cutting off his only avenue of escape. The helpful, slightly fatigued Padawan act vanished in a fraction of a second.
I let my posture shift, my shoulders dropping into the cold, monolithic stance of Darth Sol, letting a microscopic fracture of my true presence bleed out into the immediate air around us. The temperature in the shadow of the hull dropped instantly, a heavy, suffocating pressure settling over Hondo's chest that made his breath hitch.
"You're looking for a back door, Hondo," I said, my voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm register that didn't carry past the ship's landing gear. "There isn't one. My associate and I have already mapped every single crawlspace in this sector."
Hondo froze, his eyes widening to the size of data-disks as he stared up at me, his fingers trembling against his wrist-comm. He tried to swallow, but the sheer pressure of my presence was actively constricting his throat. "You... what are you?"
"I am the person currently giving you a choice between continued financial prosperity and immediate, planetary erasure," I interrupted, stepping an inch closer until the shadow completely engulfed his face. "You've heard rumors about a new power rising in Hutt Space. A pair of Sith Lords who freed the slaves of Mos Eisley, dismantled Jabba's court, and currently command a fleet of over two hundred dreadnoughts."
A fleet he's seen himself, mind you.
Hondo's breath came in a short, ragged gasp, his aristocratic swagger completely evaporating. "You're with the First Order..."
"No. I am the First Order." I said, offering a cold, mirthless smile. "Here is the deal, Hondo. I can tap my private channel right now, and within six minutes, my vanguard will drop out of hyperspace and glass this entire sulfur rock from orbit until there's nothing left but radioactive slag. Or, you can stand down immediately, surrender gracefully to the Republic, and become an official, third-party smuggler for my secret empire."
Hondo blinked, his terror suddenly short-circuiting as the raw, unadulterated greed inherent to his species began to battle with his survival instinct. "A... a third-party smuggler? For the Sith?"
"You keep your operation here on Florrum intact," I whispered, leaning in closer. "You run logistics, spice distribution, and underworld intelligence for me through the mid-rim. In return, you receive a highly generous, fifteen percent cut of all profits, complete immunity from my fleet, and the terrifying knowledge that if anyone tries to usurp your position, I will personally throw a mountain at them. Do we have an understanding, or do I need to call in the dreadnoughts?"
Hondo stared at me for a long, breathless second, a slow, absolutely ecstatic grin beginning to spread across his whiskered face. The sheer, magnificent absurdity of being threatened by a teenager who turned out to be a secret galactic emperor was exactly the kind of chaotic business venture he lived for. He loved it. He absolutely fell in love with the idea of having a literal Sith Lord as a silent, terrifying business partner.
"Fifteen percent?" Hondo whispered back, his voice trembling with genuine professional admiration. "Ah, my Lord, you are a monster after my own heart! A true visionary! A deal like this is... it is practically a romantic gesture!"
"Then start acting like a cooperative prisoner," I said, stepping back into the light as the suffocating pressure vanished from the air, returning my expression to that of a polite, slightly tired Jedi Padawan.
Hondo instantly exploded out of the shadows, waving his arms frantically as he screamed at the top of his lungs toward the remaining outlaws on the hangar floor. "Stand down! Stand down, you beautiful, illiterate idiots! Drop the blasters! Can you not see we are entirely outmatched by the supreme majesty of the Galactic Republic?"
The pirates looked at each other in utter confusion, but they quickly tossed their weapons onto the floor grids in a clattering chorus of surrenders.
Obi-Wan turned around from the terminal, his eyebrows raised in profound suspicion at Hondo's sudden, dramatic shift in cooperation. "Well. That was remarkably sudden, Hondo. I suppose the reality of your situation has finally set in?"
"Oh, absolutely, General Kenobi!" Hondo cheered, stepping forward with his hands open, completely ignoring the fact that Anakin was still glaring at him with a murderous intensity. "I am a changed man! A cooperative citizen! In fact, to show my complete and utter good faith, I realize the Republic has foolishly arrived in a tiny diplomatic shuttle entirely unsuitable for transporting a dangerous war criminal like Count Dooku!"
"He's not wrong," Anakin grunted, glancing over at the limp, unconscious body of Dooku still slung over his shoulder. "Our shuttle's containment cells are practically built out of reinforced plexiglass. If the old man wakes up, he'll blow the cargo doors in ten seconds."
"Exactly! Exactly!" Hondo proclaimed, snapping his fingers toward a group of his mechanics. "Which is why I am generously providing you with a specialized, high-security prisoner transport ship! Completely free of charge! It has automated energy baffles, reinforced durasteel plating, and a lovely interior! Consider it a gift from the Ohnaka Alliance to the Jedi Order!"
"A gift," Obi-Wan repeated, his voice dripping with an immense amount of skepticism as he crossed his arms. "And what, precisely, do you expect in return for this sudden burst of generosity, Hondo?"
"Only your wonderful, continued friendship, General!" Hondo lied beautifully, offering a sweeping, courtly bow that nearly caused his hat to slip off his head. He caught my eye for a fraction of a microsecond through the glare of the hangar lights, a faint, conspiratorial wink passing across his features. "And perhaps a highly favorable mention in your final report to the Senate regarding my complete and total cooperation during this... unfortunate misunderstanding."
"We'll see about the report, Ohnaka," Anakin said, already marching toward the newly designated transport ship with Dooku's dead weight. "Maris, Ben, get the systems online. Let's get off this dust bucket before the local hospitality changes its mind again."
"Right behind you, Master Skywalker," I said, offering a dutiful nod as Maris and I followed him up the boarding ramp. The plan was tracking perfectly. I had missed the Gungan, which was an absolute tragedy, but I had just secured the finest logistics asset in the outer rim. Hondo Ohnaka was officially on the payroll.
…
Consciousness returned to Count Dooku not as a gradual awakening, but as a sharp, agonizing throb centered directly behind his eyes. His neck was incredibly sore, the muscles tightly knotted from what felt like an unprincipled, brutal compression of his carotid arteries. It was an entirely unrefined, savage method of subdual, completely lacking the elegant precision one would expect from a practitioner of the Force.
His dignity, already battered by the atrocious hospitality of Hondo Ohnaka, was now thoroughly shattered. He was being dragged.
His boots scraped uselessly against the cold durasteel floor plates of a starship cargo bay, his arms held pinned by two robust, armored forms. Through the heavy, rhythmic thudding in his ears, Dooku identified the distinctive, identical vocal patterns of Republic clone troopers.
"Keep a tight grip on his shoulders," the guard on the right commanded, his voice muffled by the standard-issue helmet filter. "The General said he's a prime runner. We don't want him waking up before we clear the upper atmosphere."
"He looks completely out to me," the guard on the left replied, shifting his weight to get a better leverage on Dooku's expensive, dirt-stained cape. "The Padawans really did a number on him. I didn't think an old timer like this would just fold."
"Don't underestimate him," the first trooper grunted, dragging Dooku toward a heavy, reinforced containment bench at the rear of the hold. "He's a Sith Lord. They've got tricks we haven't even seen yet."
Dooku kept his eyes closed, letting his head loll forward to maintain the illusion of total unconsciousness while his analytical mind raced. Tricks, indeed. The absolute audacity of these engineered meat-droids.
He carefully evaluated his internal reserves.
The restrictive energy arrays that the pirates had clamped onto his wrists were gone, replaced by standard, military-grade Republic binders. A foolish error on Skywalker's part. The heavy, metallic thrum of the ship's sublight engines vibrated through the floor plates, indicating they were already in the skies over Florrum, rising quickly toward the upper atmosphere.
"Is the primary security field active?" the second clone asked, his armor clattering as he prepared to hoist Dooku onto the bench.
"Not yet," the pilot's voice crackled through the open cockpit partition ahead. "I'm still calibrating the dampeners. Give me two minutes to clear the local dust storms before you lock him down."
"Copy that, pilot," the first trooper said. "Let's just get him chained to the deck plates manually first."
Dooku didn't waste a single breath. The moment their hands shifted to secure his wrists to the floor rings, he opened his eyes, the cold, piercing gray of his gaze locking directly onto the visors of the two guards.
He didn't have his lightsaber, nor did he possess the physical leverage to overpower them, but he still possessed his aristocratic will. He reached out into the ambient currents of the Force, weaving a powerful, incredibly subtle wave of Force Persuasion, projecting it directly into the neural pathways of their identical brains.
"Your companion is a traitor," Dooku murmured, his voice a low, hypnotic purr that cut through the engine hum. "He is drawing his weapon. He intends to execute you."
The first clone froze, his hands dropping away from the binders as his helmeted head snapped toward his partner. "Wait... what did you just say?"
"He's compromised," Dooku continued, his eyes widening slightly as he pushed the suggestion deeper into their panicked minds. "Look at his hand. He is reaching for his sidearm. Eliminate him before he destroys the ship."
"Thire? What are you doing with your holster?" the second clone demanded, his voice suddenly spiking with a profound, unearned paranoia. He took a sharp step backward, his hand dropping directly to his own DC-17 blaster.
"Me? You're the one acting strange!" the first trooper shouted, entirely consumed by the phantom illusion twisting his thoughts. "Get away from the console! He's a Separatist agent!"
"Drop your weapon!" the second clone yelled, drawing his pistol with a frantic, uncoordinated jerk.
"Traitor!" the first clone screamed.
The cargo hold instantly erupted into a brief, chaotic firefight. The two clones, who had spent their entire engineered lives training for flawless tactical coordination, turned on one another with a terrifying, mindless ferocity. Blaster bolts flashed wildly across the cramped interior, scorching the bulkheads and reflecting off the reinforced plating.
"Hey! What the blast is going on back there?" the pilot shouted from the cockpit, his head spinning around just in time to see the two guards exchange fatal, point-blank plasma bursts to their respective chest plates.
Both clones collapsed to the floor in a synchronized, smoking heap, their armor sizzling against the deck.
Dooku slowly rose to his feet, smoothing down the front of his tunic with a deliberate, elegant motion despite the heavy binders still dangling from his wrists. He stepped over the twitching remains of the guards, his eyes fixed on the frantic pilot who was currently struggling to untangle himself from his flight restraints.
"Sir! Stay back! I'll blow the cabin pressure!" the pilot warned, reaching wildly for the emergency venting lever on the main console.
Dooku merely raised his bound hands, his fingers curling into a rigid, uncompromising gesture. The pilot's voice caught squarely in his throat as an invisible, suffocating vice clamped tightly around his windpipe. He was hoisted entirely out of his flight seat, his boots kicking uselessly against the instrument panel as Dooku maintained a cold, detached focus.
"Your compliance is no longer required," Dooku said smoothly, watching with mild amusement as the pilot's eyes rolled back into his head.
With a careless flick of his wrist, Dooku tossed the unconscious pilot into the rear corner of the cockpit. He stepped into the primary pilot's seat, his bound hands manipulating the controls with an practiced efficiency that completely bypassed the vessel's standard autopilot protocols.
He wiped the navigation computer, overriding the Republic destination vector, and punched in a highly classified set of secure coordinates for deep Separatist space.
The transport ship groaned, its sublight thrusters flaring with a sudden, aggressive burst of speed as it rocketed through the thinning atmosphere of Florrum, leaving the sulfur plains behind.
Dooku settled back into the pilot's chair, raising a single, elegant hand to gently rub his aching throat. The soreness was persistent, a physical testament to how brutally he had been handled back in that cell block. Yet, as the stars began to elongate into the familiar, brilliant streaks of hyperspace, a slow, entirely unexpected expression of intellectual curiosity crossed his aristocratic features.
He found himself thoroughly, genuinely impressed. The memory of the two Padawans—the boy from Mandalore and that pale, snarky Zabrak girl—replayed in his mind. They hadn't acted like typical Jedi.
They hadn't hesitated, they hadn't offered a tedious lecture on the morality of the light side, and they certainly hadn't shown the fragile hesitation that typically plagued Obi-Wan's students. They had moved with a ruthless, calculated efficiency that was distinctly... dark. They had erased their presence entirely, struck with suffocating force, and passed the act off to their masters as a mere medical anomaly.
It seems there is still some genuine, cutthroat wisdom left in the galaxy's youth after all, Dooku mused, his eyes narrowing as the hyperspace tunnel enveloped the vessel. Those two children were far more than they appeared to be. He would have to look very deeply into who those two Padawans really were.
...
I am so tired right now.
Word to the wise, boys and girls, if you ever look at the time and wonder if you should probably go to bed, the answer is yes. Otherwise you'll be up half the night, and only get somewhere around three or four hours of precious, precious sleep. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed. Next week we'll be back with an exciting new chapter, but if you want to read it now, you can always check it out my Patreon.
I'm going to take a quick cat nap now. Goodbye!
My Patreon
Ahsoka Tano leaned her back against a stack of oversized plush Bantha cushions, crossing her arms with a look of supreme, unbothered satisfaction. The past forty-eight hours had been an absolute revelation.
When Ben had shamelessly thrown her under the bus just to escape daycare duty, he had assumed she would sit here wallowing in misery, drowning in sticky plastic blocks and spilled star-fruit juice. Like he did. But he completely underestimated her ability to adapt, survive, and turn a minor administrative punishment into a highly lucrative, entirely unauthorized underworld operation.
Sitting in a tight circle on the central play mat before her were five toddling Force-sensitive initiates, their eyes wide and entirely devoted to their new, benevolent syndicate leader. Between them lay the morning's accumulated plunder, neatly organized by category.
There were four standard training remotes, two encrypted historical archive datapads swiped from an unattended library cart, Master Windu's absolute favorite silver tea infuser, and three premium, individually wrapped nerf-meat sandwiches that had mysteriously vanished from the executive commissary kitchen right before lunch.
Aren't children a blessing?
"Excellent work, squad," Ahsoka said, her voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper as she offered a slow, approving nod to a tiny Twi'lek girl who was currently chewing on a stolen stylus. "The Temple Masters think we're just sitting here developing our cognitive motor skills. They don't understand that 'Finders Keepers' is a highly rigorous exercise in stealth, misdirection, and breaking the traditional Jedi cycle of hoarding all the best snacks."
Which in her opinion, is even worse than stealing them.
"Remember, if anyone asks about the sandwiches, we know absolutely nothing." She warned the younglings. "It was a mysterious, and unexplainable disturbance in the Force."
The younglings offered a chorus of silent, exceptionally serious nods. They were learning from the best. If Anakin Skywalker could constantly flout the rules of the Jedi Code for personal amusement, then his Padawan was more than entitled to weaponize the crèche for a bit of petty vengeance against the High Council.
The heavy pneumatic blast doors at the rear of the nursery hissed open, and Ahsoka didn't even have to look up to know who it was. The distinctive, rhythmic waddle of tiny, three-toed feet padded softly across the polished floor plates.
"Coeee," a small, high-pitched voice gurgled.
Ahsoka turned her head, expecting to see Grogu dragging another stray hydrospanner or perhaps a half-eaten ration bar he'd scavenged from a maintenance locker. Instead, her breath caught squarely in her throat, her montrals twitching with a sudden, violent jolt of pure shock.
The small, green, large-eared toddler was moving at a remarkably determined pace, his tiny hands gripped firmly around the corners of a heavy, brilliantly glowing object. It was a perfect, pristine obsidian pyramid, its sharp edges laced with intricate, pulsing crimson lines that thrummed with a heavy, deeply ancient resonance.
Grogu dragged the artifact across the floor tiles with a happy, completely oblivious coo, entirely unaware that he was casually hauling a piece of concentrated dark side heresy through the heart of the Jedi Temple.
Ahsoka scrambled forward onto her hands and knees, her heart hammering against her ribs as she instantly recognized the terrifying geometry of a literal Sith Holocron. Specifically, the dormant Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath. The one Ben told her not to worry about.
Well, guess what Ben? She's worrying about it!
"Grogu, where in the name of the Force did you find that?" Ahsoka hissed, her hands darting out to scoop the toddler into her lap while her eyes remained locked on the pulsing red relic. She looked toward the open doorway, half-expecting Master Yoda to march in with his gimer stick raised, ready to exile her to the Spice Mines of Kessel on the spot.
Grogu merely blinked his massive, innocent black eyes, pointing a tiny clawed finger back toward the secondary corridor that led directly to the Padawan residential wing. He let out a soft, satisfied burp, reaching down to pat the smooth face of the pyramid like it was a shiny new toy.
He clearly didn't just find it in the halls. At least, she hoped he didn't. So… what? Did he find it lying around in Ben's room? Come on. Even he's not dumb enough to do that. Right?
Right?!
Ahsoka's mind raced through the layout of the dorms, remembering the exact location of the hidden floorboard compartment Ben had spent three hours meticulously reinforcing after his return from Mandalore. Is that what he was using it for?!
And how did Grogu find it?
Oh, who was she kidding. Ben was babysitting him, Grogu probably saw the hidey hole. The little green menace must have bypassed Ben's security protocols just to look for a glowing teething ring.
A slow, brilliant, distinctly dangerous smile began to spread across Ahsoka's face as the sheer magnitude of the situation settled into her core. She looked down at the dark, humming artifact, then back toward the distant hangar where Ben had flown off to deal with space pirates.
That Mandalorian royal bastard had been forced to sign her a blank check.
An unrestricted, open-ended favor to be used whenever and against whomever she wished, fully believing the price wouldn't be too high. And now, thanks to a toddler with an exceptional talent for grand larceny, she didn't just have a blank check.
She had the entire vault keys.
She had an idea on exactly how she was going to cash that favor in, and Ben Kryze wasn't going to see it coming until it was entirely too late.
"Grogu, my brilliant little friend," Ahsoka whispered, reaching out to gently boop the toddler's wrinkled nose as she tucked the Sith Holocron securely beneath her Bantha cushions. "You just earned yourself a double ration of premium nerf-meat."
In hindsight, she's not sure why she was so upset to look after them.
Motherhood was so rewarding.
…
Maris Brood sliced through a heavily modified blast door with a slow, deliberate twist of her wrist, her blue plasma blade humming a low, irritated tune against the melting durasteel. This entire planet was a test of her sanity.
It wasn't enough that they were hiding out in a sulfur-choked pirate junk heap, but now she was actively playing the role of a dutiful, rule-abiding Jedi Padawan while the two supposed masters of the Order were locked in a cage like prized banthas.
"You know, if we just flattened the upper levels, the structural collapse would clear out seventy percent of the perimeter guards in under four seconds," Maris muttered, her pale features illuminated by the harsh blue glow of her weapon. She didn't bother turning around to face her partner, her dark, yellow eyes tracking a pair of frantic Weequays moving through the adjacent corridor.
"And it would also flatten my father and your master, which would make dinner at the Temple incredibly awkward next week," Ben countered, his own green lightsaber ignited as he pulled security behind her. "We are being surgical. Subtle. We are humble, bumbling Padawans who happened to escape the hospitality room through sheer, clumsy luck."
"I hate being surgical without scalpels being involved." Maris spat, kicking the ruined, glowing slab of metal inward with her boot. It hit the floor tiles with a heavy, clattering thud, releasing a plume of greasy smoke into the detention block. "And I especially hate fighting with a restriction array clamped onto my skull. If I could use just a single burst of lightning, we'd already be back on the shuttle eating ration bars."
"Well, you can't," Ben said, stepping past her into the flickering, dim light of the primary cell wing. "Anakin's basically a bloodhound for the dark side, and Obi-Wan loves overanalyzing me almost as much as he loves plucking his beard hairs. You act out on any Sith-y behavior right now, and we are spending the next six months in a meditative isolation chamber."
Maris let out a sharp, mocking hiss through her teeth, her blue blade snapping off as she scanned the row of reinforced containment fields. "A truly horrifying prospect. I might actually have to read the Jedi archives instead of using them for target practice."
"Ah! Look who decided to rejoin the party!" a loud, entirely unbothered voice boomed from the end of the corridor.
Anakin Skywalker was currently hanging upside down from a specialized magnetic gravity array, his organic hand dangling loosely toward the floor while his mechanical hand remained firmly locked into a heavy pair of energy binders. Despite the complete lack of blood flow to his brain, he looked entirely more annoyed by the quality of his prison cell than the fact that he'd been out-drank by a space pirate.
"Took you long enough, Ben," Anakin grunted, his eyes shifting toward the entry archway. "I was beginning to think you two got lost looking for the kitchens. Did you at least bring my lightsaber, or am I going to have to dismantle these droids with my bare teeth?"
"We had a brief disagreement with the welcoming committee, Master Skywalker," Ben said, stepping up to the control console and typing in a quick, unauthorized bypass code he'd swiped from an outlaw's datapad. "And for the record, I tripped over a table to give us an out. You two were the ones who actually drank the blue vintage after Hondo practically announced it was spiked."
"It was a diplomatic necessity," Obi-Wan Kenobi sighed from the adjacent cell, his posture remarkably straight despite being wedged into a small, damp corner of the energy cage. He rubbed his temples, a look of profound, bone-deep embarrassment crossing his face as the blue containment field finally hissed out of existence. "Hondo's hospitality is... aggressive. We needed to maintain the illusion of compliance until the Republic escort arrived."
"Right. The illusion," Maris scoffed, tossing Obi-Wan's hilt through the air with a careless flick of her wrist. "You looked very compliant while the serving maid was dragging you down the service chute by your boots, Master."
Obi-Wan caught his weapon with a practiced, elegant motion, immediately hooking it to his belt while he smoothed down his wrinkled tunics. "Your concern for my dignity is noted, Maris. Now, if we could perhaps focus on the thirty heavily armed outlaws currently organizing a blockade at the secondary hangar?"
"Way ahead of you," Anakin said, dropping down from the ceiling with a heavy, perfectly absorbed thud the moment Ben fried his binders. He snatched his own lightsaber out of Ben's hand, the brilliant blue blade igniting with a sharp, aggressive snap that instantly cut through the dimness of the cell block. "I owe Hondo a very personal, very expensive lesson in Republic contract law."
"We are not destroying the base, Anakin," Obi-Wan warned, his own blade humming to life as he moved toward the exit corridor. "We secure the Count, we reach the shuttle, and we let the Senate handle the diplomatic fallout."
"The Count is right over here," Maris called out, her voice dropping into a flat, icy register as she gestured toward the heavily reinforced, double-shielded isolation unit at the very rear of the bay.
The containment field flickered, revealing the solitary, disheveled figure of Count Dooku.
The leader of the Confederacy was floating between two independent stasis rays, his white beard slightly tangled, his elegant hands bound securely by heavy, high-output industrial energy clamps. He still looked utterly miserable, his aristocratic poise shattered by the reality of a damp pirate bunker, but the moment his eyes locked onto the four Jedi, a wave of cold, calculating malice rolled off him like a physical weight.
Maris felt her inner Sith identity—Darth Nox—practically sneer at the sight. It was a struggle not to open her mouth and tell the Count exactly how pathetic he looked hanging there like a piece of salted meat. A literal Sith Lord, outmaneuvered by a spiked beverage and a pack of illiterate Weequays.
No matter how much time she gave herself to process, this would forever infuriate her.
"So," Maris said, walking right up to the edge of the energy bars, her blue blade resting loosely near her hip. "How's it hanging?" Ordinarily, she despised puns. But sometimes, you just can't help yourself.
Just like the Count, who was completely incapable of helping himself.
Dooku's head snapped up, his icy gray eyes narrowing into razor-sharp slits as he glared through the shimmering blue energy field. "You are an insolent, poorly trained creature, child. If your masters had even a shred of wisdom, they would leave me to my devices before this world becomes your burial mound."
"Fascinating projection," Ben said, stepping up right beside Maris, his arms crossed over his chest with an expression of pure, unbothered theatrical pity. "But given that you're currently working as a million-credit bargaining chip for a guy who wears a coat made of salvaged starship insulation, I think your expert opinion on tactical positioning has suffered a slight drop in value."
"Silence, Ben," Obi-Wan commanded lightly, though his focus was already drifting toward the heavy, metallic thudding of approaching pirate reinforcements down the northern corridor. "Anakin, check the primary security grid. We need to ensure Hondo hasn't locked down the lower hangar access before we move the prisoner."
"I'm on it," Anakin said, already moving toward the doorway, his boots clicking sharply against the floor tiles as his blue blade swept through the darkness. "Obi-Wan, look out for the western corridor. I can hear their sky-hoppers warming up on the surface plates."
"Maris, Ben, secure the Count's primary binders," Obi-Wan instructed, his back already turned as he took up a defensive stance near the main entrance archway. "Ensure the energy dampeners are functioning at maximum capacity. We cannot risk him drawing on his abilities while we navigate the upper corridors."
"Understood, Master," Maris said, her voice dripping with a completely false, dutiful obedience that made Ben's lips twitch into a hidden grin.
The moment Obi-Wan and Anakin stepped through the main archway to engage the vanguard of the pirate assault, the ambient noise of the room shifted. The distant, rhythmic crackle of blaster fire and the deep, heavy thrum of lightsabers deflecting plasma bolts began to echo through the stone corridors, creating the perfect, unmonitored pocket of silence within the central cell block.
Maris and Ben exchanged a single, instantaneous look. There was no need for words; their shared training under the Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath had forged an instinctive, lethal synchronization that didn't require a single ripple in the Force.
"You think he's going to try a mental compliance wave the second we drop the stasis field?" Maris murmured, her fingers dancing across the primary release console.
"One hundred percent," Ben whispered back, his body language completely relaxed, masking the sudden, predatory tension coiling in his muscles. "He's a politician at heart. He'll try to talk, or he'll try to plant a suggestion in Anakin's head to create an opening. We are skipping the dialogue entirely."
Dooku watched them approach, his eyes widening slightly as he detected the sudden, complete erasure of their presence in the Force. They weren't radiating fear, or excitement, or standard Jedi caution. They had simply gone dark.
Dead zones in the web.
"What are you—" Dooku began, his aristocratic voice tight with a sudden, uncharacteristic spark of genuine alarm.
The stasis rays hissed out of existence. Before the Count's boots could even touch the damp stone floor, Ben's hand shot forward like a striking viper, his fingers curling into a rigid, clawed gesture. Simultaneously, Maris raised her left hand, her mind locking onto the precise, delicate geometry of the Count's carotid arteries with an icy, uncompromising grip.
It wasn't a loud, destructive display of dark side fury. It was a silent, suffocating vice.
Dooku's voice caught squarely in his throat, a sharp, choked gasp escaping his lips as his boots hovered three inches off the floor plates. His remaining hand clawed fruitlessly against the invisible weight pressing into his windpipe, his eyes bulging as he stared down at the two Padawans with a sudden, horrifying realization.
He tried to draw on his own lightning, to summon the rage of Serenno, but the combined, crushing focus of Darth Sol and Darth Nox completely severed his connection before the energy could even reach his fingertips.
"Sweet dreams, Count," Maris whispered, her dark eyes glinting with a cold, chaotic satisfaction as she tightened the invisible knot.
Dooku's head rolled forward, his limbs going entirely limp as the lack of oxygen instantly overrode his formidable willpower. He dropped to the floor with a soft, heavy thud, completely unconscious, his pristine white beard resting against the dirt.
Ben immediately bent down, grabbing the Count by the collar of his tunic and hoisting the dead-weight body over his shoulder with a grunt. He looked toward the entry archway just as Anakin strode back into the room, his blue blade dripping with superheated plasma residue from a disassembled pirate droid.
"Alright, I cleared the terminal, but the elevator is completely fried," Anakin said, stopping in his tracks as he stared at the limp, dangling form of the Separatist leader. He blinked, looking from Ben's sweating face directly to Maris, who was casually wiping an imaginary speck of dust off her combat webbing. "What happened to him? Did he try to fight back?"
"He suffered a sudden, completely unpredictable drop in blood pressure, Master Skywalker," Maris said smoothly, her face a flawless mask of innocent, helpful concern. "The excitement of the rescue must have been entirely too much for his advanced age. He fainted the exact moment the stasis rays shut down."
Anakin stared at her for a long, silent second, his analytical mind clearly trying to process the sheer, absurd convenience of a Sith Lord passing out like a fragile senator. He let out a short, amused snort, shaking his head as he reached out and snatched the Count's body off Ben's shoulder, tossing the old man over his own massive pauldrons like a sack of grain.
"Convenient," Anakin muttered, turning back toward the corridor where Obi-Wan was already yelling for them to hurry. "Saves us the trouble of listening to his lectures on the way to the ship. Come on, kids. Let's go show Hondo what happens when you try to shortchange the Republic."
…
Captain Rex adjusted his grip on his DC-17 blasters, his armored shoulders tight with a frustration that no amount of Kaminoan stress-tolerance training could have prepared him for. The sulfur plains of Florrum were already an unmitigated nightmare of yellow dust and jagged rock formations, but the real hazard wasn't the terrain, nor was it the pirate elements currently tracking their perimeter.
It was the tall, lanky Gungan currently tangled in the straps of the spice ransom container directly ahead of him.
"Meesa thinks the sun is shiny-shining too bright, Captain Rex!" Jar Jar Binks proclaimed, his long ears flapping as he took a dramatic, entirely uncoordinated stumble over a perfectly flat piece of bedrock. "Ouchie! Meesa torso is having a great big rumblies from the dust!"
"Keep moving, Representative," Rex ordered, his voice flat beneath his bucket as he stepped around the flailing politician. He gestured for the rest of the detachment to tighten their perimeter. "We are in an un-scouted sector with zero orbital cover. The General expects us at the stronghold coordinates fifteen minutes ago."
"Sir, with all due respect, if he trips over his own tongue one more time, I might accidentally leave him behind," Sergeant Thire muttered over the squad channel, his armor coated in a fine layer of gritty yellow grime. "The Separatists didn't need a droid army to break us. They just needed to attach this guy to our diplomatic envoy."
"Cut the chatter, Thire," Rex snapped, though every logical fiber of his being was in complete, agonizing agreement. Dealing with the legal fallout of the whole Mandalorian citizenship mess had been a headache, but it was nothing compared to babysitting a living, breathing structural hazard through an outlaw territory. "We have an exchange to finalize. Watch those ridges."
"Ridges lookin' a bit too quiet, Captain," Jek remarked, his rifle raised as he scanned the upper shelves of the ravine. "Almost like the scum are waiting for us to enter the choke point."
"Ooh! Lookie lookie!" Jar Jar squealed, pointing an incredibly long finger toward a high canyon wall. "Dem bitty birds are flying so fastly! Like a whole bunch of metal insects!"
"Those aren't birds, Representative," Rex barked, his tactical display instantly updating with six fast-moving hostile signatures. "Those are Flarestar-class attack skiffs! Squad, defensive formation! Secure the ransom!"
"Weesa gonna die!" Jar Jar yelled, waving his arms in a frantic circle that nearly knocked Jek off his feet. "Help me! Help me!"
"Get down, Binks!" Rex shouted, pulling the Gungan backward by his silks as a heavy green plasma bolt melted the rock right where his webbed foot had been standing. The ravine suddenly erupted into a chaotic echo of blaster fire, the outlaws screaming down from their speeders as they circled the small Republic detachment like starved tookas.
"They're boxing us in, Captain!" Thire yelled, firing a concentrated burst up at a low-flying sky-hopper. "We don't have the angle to clear those turrets!"
"Hold your ground!" Rex ordered, his twin pistols barking in rapid succession as he scorched the repulsor-plate of an oncoming speeder bike. The vehicle veered wildly, slamming into the canyon wall, but two more took its place immediately. The tactical math was deteriorating by the second.
"Yee-haw! Look at the shiny lights!" Jar Jar cheered, entirely misinterpreting a mortar strike as a fireworks display as he hopped backward, his heel catching on a jagged root. He went down hard, his long legs flailing into the air like a flipped repulsor-sled. "Whoa-da!"
Rex opened his mouth to order a full tactical retreat into the secondary caves, but the words died instantly in his throat. The air pressure in the ravine plummeted with a terrifying, unnatural jolt. It wasn't the standard atmospheric shift of a coming sulfur storm; it felt like the very fabric of the canyon was being twisted by an invisible, colossal fist. The hairs on the back of Rex's neck stood completely on end as a deep, vibrating hum thrummed right through the soles of his boots.
"What the blast is that?" Jek gasped, his weapon dropping an inch as the sky above them darkened.
From the direction of the main pirate stronghold, a massive, multi-ton slab of solid bedrock—easily the size of a Republic dropship—came hurtling through the upper atmosphere. It wasn't falling; it had been violently, aggressively catapulted across the sky with a terrifying velocity that screamed through the air like a detonating proton torpedo.
"Take cover!" Rex screamed, his voice cracking through the comms as he lunged forward, throwing his entire armored weight directly on top of the sprawling Gungan. "Down! Down!"
"Meesa face is in the dirt!" Jar Jar muffled, his protest cut short by a sound that defied all military logic.
The massive boulder tore through the upper lip of the ravine with a deafening, grinding screech that showered the entire squad in superheated pebbles and ancient dust. It missed Jar Jar's protruding ears by a matter of mere inches, the wind shear alone ripping a silver decorative medallion clean off the politician's formal robes. The sheer kinetic energy of the near-miss bounced Rex's armored chest plate right off the ground.
Instead of crushing the Republic envoy, the gargantuan rock skipped off the angled ravine wall with a horrific crunch, preserving its forward momentum perfectly. It plowed directly into the center of the pursuing pirate squadron with absolute, devastating precision.
The lead sky-hopper was erased instantly, flattened into a two-dimensional sheet of burning durasteel before the pilot could even register the shadow. The secondary speeder bikes were swatted out of the air like annoying insects, their fuel cells detonating in a synchronized chain of orange fireballs that lit up the entire canyon floor. The remaining outlaws on the high ledge were showered in structural debris, their heavy turret emplacements entirely buried under twenty tons of displaced limestone.
Within three seconds, the entire hostile vanguard had been completely, utterly neutralized.
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the ravine, broken only by the rhythmic, ticking sound of cooling starship wreckage and the soft hiss of burning repulsor fluid. Rex slowly pushed himself up from the dirt, his helmet sensors whirring frantically as they tried to catalog the sudden, impossible shift in the local threat matrix. He blinked through his visor, staring at the smoking crater where an entire outlaw company had been standing just moments prior.
"Uh... Captain?" Thire whispered, his rifle still pointing at the empty sky. "Did our intel mention the Republic bringing an orbital artillery battery to this theater?"
"Negative, Thire," Rex said, his voice entirely hollow as he checked his tactical map. There wasn't a single friendly vessel within three systems capable of that kind of kinetic bombardment. "Nothing on the scans."
"Then... what was that?" Jek asked, wiping a thick layer of white rock dust off his visor. "A geological anomaly?"
"Meesa told you!" Jar Jar exclaimed, popping his head out from under Rex's arm with a bright, completely unbothered grin as he began picking pieces of gravel out of his teeth. "The big sky-rocks are very friendly-friendly to the Gungans! Theysa knowing exactly where to squish the bad guys!"
Rex stared down at the long-eared politician, then back at the massive, smoking boulder that had just defied every known law of planetary ballistics to save their lives by a fraction of an inch. He felt a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.
He had served under General Skywalker long enough to recognize the erratic, terrifying hallmarks of a high-level Force user doing something reckless, but this felt entirely different. This wasn't a defensive shield or a standard push. This was someone using a mountain as a personal throwing weapon.
"Sir," Thire said, stepping over a piece of a shattered pirate engine block. "Are we still advancing to the stronghold?"
"We are," Rex said, snapping his blasters back into his holsters with a sharp, decisive click. He didn't know what kind of madness General Skywalker and the rest had stirred up inside that bunker, but he wasn't about to stay out in the open long enough to see if the sky decided to throw a second mountain at them. "Pick up the ransom. Move out before whatever threw that looks our way."
…
I was absolutely, profoundly furious.
Damn it to all nine Corellian Hells, I missed. I had spent a massive amount of internal energy focusing through the stone foundations of the stronghold, locking onto the precise trajectory of that pathetic, bumbling Gungan, and I had still managed to miss him by mere inches.
The reality-warping plot armor of Jar Jar Binks was a blight upon the galaxy, a statistical anomaly that defied even the dark side itself. Instead of flattening the absolute worst diplomat in galactic history, my multi-ton kinetic projectile had entirely wiped out the pursuing pirate vanguard.
On the bright side, Captain Rex was still alive. He had plot armor too, but at least I liked him.
"Ben, what was that?" Obi-Wan asked, his green lightsaber deflecting a stray blaster bolt into the ceiling as we sprinted out onto the overlooking command balcony. He was staring out the panoramic viewport at the smoking ruin of the ravine, his eyes wide with a mix of utter bewilderment and deep concern. "Did you just catapult a piece of the mountain across the plains?"
I love how he can say that with a straight tone.
"It was a tactical miracle, Master Kenobi," I lied smoothly, keeping my breathing completely rhythmic as I deactivated my green lightsaber and clipped it back to my belt. I needed to project the image of an exhausted, dutiful Padawan who had simply gotten lucky under extreme duress. "While we were navigating the cells, I sensed a pathetic—sorry, I meant I sensed a presence in the Force, coming from the plains. It was familiar to me, our people. So, I simply took a blind shot into the darkness to clear our vanguard's path, and it seems the Force willed it to find a proper target."
Which was not Jar Jar.
The Force had its favorites. And truly terrible taste.
"A blind shot?" Anakin laughed, his blue blade flashing in a blinding arc as he sheared the barrel clean off a heavy automated defense turret blocking the hangar doors. He tossed the smoking scrap metal over his shoulder, giving me a massive, approving grin. "Kid, that was the most aggressive piece of blind luck I've ever seen. Remind me never to bet against you during target practice."
"We can overanalyze Ben's terrifyingly precise intuition later," Maris muttered, her blue blade snapping off as she stepped over the sparking remains of a pirate console.
Traitor.
Maris glanced at me, her dark eyes flashing with a wicked, entirely knowing amusement. She knew exactly who I had been aiming for. "Right now, we have a minor cleanup operation to finish."
The four of us moved like a synchronized machine, aggressively clearing out the remaining pocket of heavy pirate resistance within the hangar. Without Dooku to organize a proper counter-strategy, the Weequay outlaws were entirely outmatched. Within ninety seconds, we had pinned Hondo Ohnaka and his remaining inner circle directly against the massive, reinforced hangar blast doors.
"Alright, Ohnaka, it's over!" Anakin shouted, his mechanical hand resting firmly on his hip while his blue lightsaber hummed dangerously close to Hondo's elaborate, salvaged leather coat. "Tell your men to drop their blasters, or I'm going to personally start dismantling your fleet one engine block at a time."
"Ah, General Skywalker! General Kenobi! And the lovely young Padawans!" Hondo proclaimed, raising his hands in a grand, theatrical gesture of complete innocence despite being entirely cornered. "Can we not discuss this like civilized businessmen? A minor misunderstanding over the vintage of the drinks, that is all it was! A hospitality error!"
"You kidnapped two Jedi Masters and a Separatist Head of State, Hondo," Obi-Wan said, his voice dropping into that classic, disappointed lecturer tone as he stepped forward to secure the perimeter. "The Republic Senate tends to view hospitality errors of that magnitude as an act of open warfare."
Really?
That's all it takes?
"Anakin, help me secure the primary terminal," Obi-Wan instructed, already turning his back to examine the main control console near the transport vessels. "We need to ensure their comm-array hasn't alerted any secondary pirate cells in the outer rim."
"On it," Anakin said, stepping away from Hondo to join Obi-Wan, his boots clicking loudly against the grated floor plates as the two of us finally found a moment of separation.
While the two Jedi Masters were completely occupied with the perimeter security, Hondo stepped back into the deep shadows cast by the hull of a battered Corona-class frigate. He was frantically typing a sequence into his personal wrist-comm, his yellow eyes darting around the room like a trapped animal looking for a secondary ventilation shaft.
I stepped into the shadows right beside him, my physical presence completely cutting off his only avenue of escape. The helpful, slightly fatigued Padawan act vanished in a fraction of a second.
I let my posture shift, my shoulders dropping into the cold, monolithic stance of Darth Sol, letting a microscopic fracture of my true presence bleed out into the immediate air around us. The temperature in the shadow of the hull dropped instantly, a heavy, suffocating pressure settling over Hondo's chest that made his breath hitch.
"You're looking for a back door, Hondo," I said, my voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm register that didn't carry past the ship's landing gear. "There isn't one. My associate and I have already mapped every single crawlspace in this sector."
Hondo froze, his eyes widening to the size of data-disks as he stared up at me, his fingers trembling against his wrist-comm. He tried to swallow, but the sheer pressure of my presence was actively constricting his throat. "You... what are you?"
"I am the person currently giving you a choice between continued financial prosperity and immediate, planetary erasure," I interrupted, stepping an inch closer until the shadow completely engulfed his face. "You've heard rumors about a new power rising in Hutt Space. A pair of Sith Lords who freed the slaves of Mos Eisley, dismantled Jabba's court, and currently command a fleet of over two hundred dreadnoughts."
A fleet he's seen himself, mind you.
Hondo's breath came in a short, ragged gasp, his aristocratic swagger completely evaporating. "You're with the First Order..."
"No. I am the First Order." I said, offering a cold, mirthless smile. "Here is the deal, Hondo. I can tap my private channel right now, and within six minutes, my vanguard will drop out of hyperspace and glass this entire sulfur rock from orbit until there's nothing left but radioactive slag. Or, you can stand down immediately, surrender gracefully to the Republic, and become an official, third-party smuggler for my secret empire."
Hondo blinked, his terror suddenly short-circuiting as the raw, unadulterated greed inherent to his species began to battle with his survival instinct. "A... a third-party smuggler? For the Sith?"
"You keep your operation here on Florrum intact," I whispered, leaning in closer. "You run logistics, spice distribution, and underworld intelligence for me through the mid-rim. In return, you receive a highly generous, fifteen percent cut of all profits, complete immunity from my fleet, and the terrifying knowledge that if anyone tries to usurp your position, I will personally throw a mountain at them. Do we have an understanding, or do I need to call in the dreadnoughts?"
Hondo stared at me for a long, breathless second, a slow, absolutely ecstatic grin beginning to spread across his whiskered face. The sheer, magnificent absurdity of being threatened by a teenager who turned out to be a secret galactic emperor was exactly the kind of chaotic business venture he lived for. He loved it. He absolutely fell in love with the idea of having a literal Sith Lord as a silent, terrifying business partner.
"Fifteen percent?" Hondo whispered back, his voice trembling with genuine professional admiration. "Ah, my Lord, you are a monster after my own heart! A true visionary! A deal like this is... it is practically a romantic gesture!"
"Then start acting like a cooperative prisoner," I said, stepping back into the light as the suffocating pressure vanished from the air, returning my expression to that of a polite, slightly tired Jedi Padawan.
Hondo instantly exploded out of the shadows, waving his arms frantically as he screamed at the top of his lungs toward the remaining outlaws on the hangar floor. "Stand down! Stand down, you beautiful, illiterate idiots! Drop the blasters! Can you not see we are entirely outmatched by the supreme majesty of the Galactic Republic?"
The pirates looked at each other in utter confusion, but they quickly tossed their weapons onto the floor grids in a clattering chorus of surrenders.
Obi-Wan turned around from the terminal, his eyebrows raised in profound suspicion at Hondo's sudden, dramatic shift in cooperation. "Well. That was remarkably sudden, Hondo. I suppose the reality of your situation has finally set in?"
"Oh, absolutely, General Kenobi!" Hondo cheered, stepping forward with his hands open, completely ignoring the fact that Anakin was still glaring at him with a murderous intensity. "I am a changed man! A cooperative citizen! In fact, to show my complete and utter good faith, I realize the Republic has foolishly arrived in a tiny diplomatic shuttle entirely unsuitable for transporting a dangerous war criminal like Count Dooku!"
"He's not wrong," Anakin grunted, glancing over at the limp, unconscious body of Dooku still slung over his shoulder. "Our shuttle's containment cells are practically built out of reinforced plexiglass. If the old man wakes up, he'll blow the cargo doors in ten seconds."
"Exactly! Exactly!" Hondo proclaimed, snapping his fingers toward a group of his mechanics. "Which is why I am generously providing you with a specialized, high-security prisoner transport ship! Completely free of charge! It has automated energy baffles, reinforced durasteel plating, and a lovely interior! Consider it a gift from the Ohnaka Alliance to the Jedi Order!"
"A gift," Obi-Wan repeated, his voice dripping with an immense amount of skepticism as he crossed his arms. "And what, precisely, do you expect in return for this sudden burst of generosity, Hondo?"
"Only your wonderful, continued friendship, General!" Hondo lied beautifully, offering a sweeping, courtly bow that nearly caused his hat to slip off his head. He caught my eye for a fraction of a microsecond through the glare of the hangar lights, a faint, conspiratorial wink passing across his features. "And perhaps a highly favorable mention in your final report to the Senate regarding my complete and total cooperation during this... unfortunate misunderstanding."
"We'll see about the report, Ohnaka," Anakin said, already marching toward the newly designated transport ship with Dooku's dead weight. "Maris, Ben, get the systems online. Let's get off this dust bucket before the local hospitality changes its mind again."
"Right behind you, Master Skywalker," I said, offering a dutiful nod as Maris and I followed him up the boarding ramp. The plan was tracking perfectly. I had missed the Gungan, which was an absolute tragedy, but I had just secured the finest logistics asset in the outer rim. Hondo Ohnaka was officially on the payroll.
…
Consciousness returned to Count Dooku not as a gradual awakening, but as a sharp, agonizing throb centered directly behind his eyes. His neck was incredibly sore, the muscles tightly knotted from what felt like an unprincipled, brutal compression of his carotid arteries. It was an entirely unrefined, savage method of subdual, completely lacking the elegant precision one would expect from a practitioner of the Force.
His dignity, already battered by the atrocious hospitality of Hondo Ohnaka, was now thoroughly shattered. He was being dragged.
His boots scraped uselessly against the cold durasteel floor plates of a starship cargo bay, his arms held pinned by two robust, armored forms. Through the heavy, rhythmic thudding in his ears, Dooku identified the distinctive, identical vocal patterns of Republic clone troopers.
"Keep a tight grip on his shoulders," the guard on the right commanded, his voice muffled by the standard-issue helmet filter. "The General said he's a prime runner. We don't want him waking up before we clear the upper atmosphere."
"He looks completely out to me," the guard on the left replied, shifting his weight to get a better leverage on Dooku's expensive, dirt-stained cape. "The Padawans really did a number on him. I didn't think an old timer like this would just fold."
"Don't underestimate him," the first trooper grunted, dragging Dooku toward a heavy, reinforced containment bench at the rear of the hold. "He's a Sith Lord. They've got tricks we haven't even seen yet."
Dooku kept his eyes closed, letting his head loll forward to maintain the illusion of total unconsciousness while his analytical mind raced. Tricks, indeed. The absolute audacity of these engineered meat-droids.
He carefully evaluated his internal reserves.
The restrictive energy arrays that the pirates had clamped onto his wrists were gone, replaced by standard, military-grade Republic binders. A foolish error on Skywalker's part. The heavy, metallic thrum of the ship's sublight engines vibrated through the floor plates, indicating they were already in the skies over Florrum, rising quickly toward the upper atmosphere.
"Is the primary security field active?" the second clone asked, his armor clattering as he prepared to hoist Dooku onto the bench.
"Not yet," the pilot's voice crackled through the open cockpit partition ahead. "I'm still calibrating the dampeners. Give me two minutes to clear the local dust storms before you lock him down."
"Copy that, pilot," the first trooper said. "Let's just get him chained to the deck plates manually first."
Dooku didn't waste a single breath. The moment their hands shifted to secure his wrists to the floor rings, he opened his eyes, the cold, piercing gray of his gaze locking directly onto the visors of the two guards.
He didn't have his lightsaber, nor did he possess the physical leverage to overpower them, but he still possessed his aristocratic will. He reached out into the ambient currents of the Force, weaving a powerful, incredibly subtle wave of Force Persuasion, projecting it directly into the neural pathways of their identical brains.
"Your companion is a traitor," Dooku murmured, his voice a low, hypnotic purr that cut through the engine hum. "He is drawing his weapon. He intends to execute you."
The first clone froze, his hands dropping away from the binders as his helmeted head snapped toward his partner. "Wait... what did you just say?"
"He's compromised," Dooku continued, his eyes widening slightly as he pushed the suggestion deeper into their panicked minds. "Look at his hand. He is reaching for his sidearm. Eliminate him before he destroys the ship."
"Thire? What are you doing with your holster?" the second clone demanded, his voice suddenly spiking with a profound, unearned paranoia. He took a sharp step backward, his hand dropping directly to his own DC-17 blaster.
"Me? You're the one acting strange!" the first trooper shouted, entirely consumed by the phantom illusion twisting his thoughts. "Get away from the console! He's a Separatist agent!"
"Drop your weapon!" the second clone yelled, drawing his pistol with a frantic, uncoordinated jerk.
"Traitor!" the first clone screamed.
The cargo hold instantly erupted into a brief, chaotic firefight. The two clones, who had spent their entire engineered lives training for flawless tactical coordination, turned on one another with a terrifying, mindless ferocity. Blaster bolts flashed wildly across the cramped interior, scorching the bulkheads and reflecting off the reinforced plating.
"Hey! What the blast is going on back there?" the pilot shouted from the cockpit, his head spinning around just in time to see the two guards exchange fatal, point-blank plasma bursts to their respective chest plates.
Both clones collapsed to the floor in a synchronized, smoking heap, their armor sizzling against the deck.
Dooku slowly rose to his feet, smoothing down the front of his tunic with a deliberate, elegant motion despite the heavy binders still dangling from his wrists. He stepped over the twitching remains of the guards, his eyes fixed on the frantic pilot who was currently struggling to untangle himself from his flight restraints.
"Sir! Stay back! I'll blow the cabin pressure!" the pilot warned, reaching wildly for the emergency venting lever on the main console.
Dooku merely raised his bound hands, his fingers curling into a rigid, uncompromising gesture. The pilot's voice caught squarely in his throat as an invisible, suffocating vice clamped tightly around his windpipe. He was hoisted entirely out of his flight seat, his boots kicking uselessly against the instrument panel as Dooku maintained a cold, detached focus.
"Your compliance is no longer required," Dooku said smoothly, watching with mild amusement as the pilot's eyes rolled back into his head.
With a careless flick of his wrist, Dooku tossed the unconscious pilot into the rear corner of the cockpit. He stepped into the primary pilot's seat, his bound hands manipulating the controls with an practiced efficiency that completely bypassed the vessel's standard autopilot protocols.
He wiped the navigation computer, overriding the Republic destination vector, and punched in a highly classified set of secure coordinates for deep Separatist space.
The transport ship groaned, its sublight thrusters flaring with a sudden, aggressive burst of speed as it rocketed through the thinning atmosphere of Florrum, leaving the sulfur plains behind.
Dooku settled back into the pilot's chair, raising a single, elegant hand to gently rub his aching throat. The soreness was persistent, a physical testament to how brutally he had been handled back in that cell block. Yet, as the stars began to elongate into the familiar, brilliant streaks of hyperspace, a slow, entirely unexpected expression of intellectual curiosity crossed his aristocratic features.
He found himself thoroughly, genuinely impressed. The memory of the two Padawans—the boy from Mandalore and that pale, snarky Zabrak girl—replayed in his mind. They hadn't acted like typical Jedi.
They hadn't hesitated, they hadn't offered a tedious lecture on the morality of the light side, and they certainly hadn't shown the fragile hesitation that typically plagued Obi-Wan's students. They had moved with a ruthless, calculated efficiency that was distinctly... dark. They had erased their presence entirely, struck with suffocating force, and passed the act off to their masters as a mere medical anomaly.
It seems there is still some genuine, cutthroat wisdom left in the galaxy's youth after all, Dooku mused, his eyes narrowing as the hyperspace tunnel enveloped the vessel. Those two children were far more than they appeared to be. He would have to look very deeply into who those two Padawans really were.
...
I am so tired right now.
Word to the wise, boys and girls, if you ever look at the time and wonder if you should probably go to bed, the answer is yes. Otherwise you'll be up half the night, and only get somewhere around three or four hours of precious, precious sleep. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed. Next week we'll be back with an exciting new chapter, but if you want to read it now, you can always check it out my Patreon.
I'm going to take a quick cat nap now. Goodbye!
My Patreon
Hilight
Versed in the lewd.
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If you write him that dumb, I guess he must be.
Yep, written particularly dumb and unobservant. Even Nute Gunray get's a jedi escort when he's captured, but I guess we can put Dooku on the honor system with the meat droids.
Chapter 51: The Lair of the Butcher
New
Mad King Kevin
Getting sticky.
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Chapter 51: The Lair of the Butcher
The sulfur-crusted stench of Florrum was still practically glued to the inside of my nostrils, and my back felt like a herd of banthas had used it for a trampling ground. All I wanted—the single, solitary goal of my entire existence in that moment—was to collapse face-first onto my standard-issue, unforgiving Jedi Temple mattress and sleep until the next galactic century.
Instead, I palmed open the door to my Padawan quarters and froze.
Ahsoka was sitting right in the middle of my room. She had her back propped against a tower of oversized, plush Bantha cushions she'd clearly dragged down from the crèche, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. One of her feet was tapping a slow, menacing rhythm against the floor tiles. The unbothered, smug satisfaction radiating off her in the Force was so thick I could have sliced it with my lightsaber.
I closed the door behind me with a slow, sinking feeling. "If this is about the daycare duty, I can explain: I'm not sorry. It was you or me. Plus, I gave you an open-ended favor, so..."
"Yeah," Ahsoka said. "About that…" She reached behind her back, pulled her hand out from behind the cushions, and casually tossed a sharp, heavy object across the room.
It skittered across my metal desk, coming to a dead stop right next to my favorite hydrospanner. It was a perfect, pristine pyramid of polished obsidian, its razor-sharp edges pulsing with faint, spiderweb lines of crimson light. The ambient temperature in the room instantly plummeted by about ten degrees, a heavy, ancient, deeply unholy thrum rattling the loose screws in my desk drawers.
My heart skipped a beat, my eyes darting from the literal piece of concentrated dark side heresy to Ahsoka's unblinking stare. I felt a cold sweat instantly break out under my tunic.
"Where did you get that?" I managed, trying to keep my voice even, though my brain was currently screaming in a very high pitch.
"Grogu," Ahsoka replied flatly, her foot continuing to tap. "He was dragging it through the residential hallways like a glowing teething ring. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain a Sith Holocron to a roaming pack of Temple guards, Ben? Because I do. I had to tell them it was a highly advanced Corellian geometry puzzle."
I winced, rubbing the back of my neck. I had spent three hours meticulously reinforcing that hidden floorboard compartment under my bunk after we got back from Mandalore. I even added a lock! Not a great one, but still.
Apparently, a toddlers' sheer, unadulterated desire for shiny objects completely bypassed high-level Sith security protocols. I must inform the Sith Council at once… oh, right. There's only three of us. And aside from me, one of the other two is outside my door, eavesdropping, so that only leaves one person out of the loop.
I really need to expand my Order, at some point… I wonder if I can convert Barriss? Nah, Maris will get jealous. Huh? Did their names always sound that much alike? Weird. Uh oh. Ahsoka's giving me the look.
What?! It's not even my fault!
"Look, the floorboards are old," I mumbled, shuffling my feet. "The wood expands in the humidity. It's a structural flaw."
"You owe me a blank check, Ben Kryze. An unrestricted, open-ended favor, to be used whenever and against whomever I wished," Ahsoka reminded, leaning forward, her blue eyes narrowing into razor-sharp slits. "I am cashing it in right now. I want you to destroy this."
My jaw dropped.
Destroy it? The Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath? The literal repository of a legendary Sith Warrior's entire life's work, combat forms, and beautifully unhinged historical rants? The thing that had turned me into Darth Sol and Maris into Darth Nox?
"But… He's so cool!" I protested, throwing my hands out defensively.
"Ben. You never use him. He's taking up space, and collecting dust. You have a hoarding problem. You need to help yourself, and every impressionable Jedi here, and get rid of him," Ahsoka said, her voice dropping into that stern, lecturing tone she usually reserved for when Anakin did something exceptionally reckless.
I looked at the pulsing red pyramid, then back to Ahsoka. I was a self-insert with a secret Sith empire, a battalion of HK droids, and a fleet of two hundred dreadnoughts, but somehow, I was currently being thoroughly bullied by a teenage Togruta over my organizational habits. The sheer absurdity of my life was staggering.
"Can't we at least ask his opinion, first?" I tried to buy time, stepping closer to the desk and tapping the tip of the pyramid to activate the primary gate.
The crimson lines flared, hissing softly as a cloud of dark, localized smoke coalesced above the obsidian face. From the mist emerged the miniature, glowing red holographic avatar of the Emperor's Wrath. He was clad in full, imposing Sith Eradicator armor, his featureless mask staring out into my modest Padawan quarters with a heavy, monolithic presence.
The ancient, terrifying dark lord of the Sith sighed deeply, his armored shoulders slumping as he deadpanned, "I want to die."
I threw my hands up in utter betrayal. "Gah, damnit! Fine. I'll get rid of him. But I get to decide how. It's going to be epic, and cinematic, and it's going to be far, far away from here."
"Whatever. But you can't keep him in the Temple. Seriously. How have you not gotten caught, yet?" Ahsoka asked, shaking her head as she leaned back against her mountain of stolen cushions.
The door to my room slid open with a sudden hiss, and Maris Brood casually strolled inside, a half-eaten star-fruit in one hand and her fingers coated in sticky juice. She didn't even look at the ancient Sith artifact huming on my desk; she just leaned her hip against the doorframe, her dark, pale features twisting into a wicked, chaotic grin.
"Oh! I can answer that," Maris chimed in, taking a loud, wet bite of her fruit. "Most Jedi are dumb."
I leaned back against the wall, crossing my arms as the tension finally drained out of my shoulders, replaced by my usual level of pure, unbothered theatrical pity for the Order we were currently infiltrating. "Very true. Most Jedi wouldn't even recognize a Sith Lord if he was sitting in the Supreme Chancellor's Office, dressed in blood red robes."
Ahsoka blinked, her montrals twitching as she completely missed the literal, absolute truth of what I had just said. "What?"
"What?" I said immediately, wiping all expression from my face.
Maris let out a sharp, mocking snort through her teeth, choking slightly on a seed. The Wrath's holographic avatar just stood there on my desk, his tiny, masked head resting in his hands, radiating a deep, cosmic sense of regret for ever choosing us as his successors.
No take-backs!
…
Maris Brood leaned against the cold terminal console in the Temple Comm Center, swirling the last piece of sticky star-fruit around her mouth. The blue glow of the primary holonet feed washed over her pale features, illuminating the sharp, dark lines of her makeup. The news coming live from the core systems was an absolute disaster for the Republic, which naturally meant it was highly amusing to her.
Nute Gunray had broken custody.
As it turned out, leaving a high-ranking Separatist leader guarded by standard senate commandos when Asajj Ventress was on the loose was a brilliant tactical decision… Not. Even without Ben's force visions literally telling them those guys were going to betray them, she could still smell the treachery over a parsec away.
If only they listened to her… meh. Just as well. It serves the First Order rather nicely to have someone so high-ranking in the Confederacy secretly brainwashed into their thrall. And she does love her secrets.
A shimmering blue transmission flickered into life on the main terminal, broadcasting an encoded signal intercepted from the outer rim. Jedi Master Kit Fisto and his former Padawan, a painfully eager Mon Calamari named Nahdar Vebb, had tracked Gunray's stolen homing beacon to a remote world in the Vassek system.
Interesting. Incredibly, stupidly suspicious, and only a fool would go there after the latest in a long line of ambushes and betrayals. But if there was one thing that Maris Brood would never accuse the Jedi of: it was being smart.
Ben Kryze appeared at her side out of nowhere, his eyes wide and fixed on the planetary data rolling across the side screens. He had that specific, intense look he always got when his bizarre timeline-prediction sense went off. It was the face he made right before he completely derailed a historical event.
"Vebb is going to die," Ben murmured, his voice barely carrying over the hum of the cooling fans. "They're walking into a trap."
Wow? Really? She's so shocked.
"What kind of trap?" She couldn't resist her curiosity, or her appetite, as she continued eating. "Ransom? Ambush? Prisoners?"
"Slaughter." Ben replied, seriously. "That's not Nute Gunray's hideaway. That's General Grevious' lair. Count Dooku isn't exactly pleased after his many, many failures."
Could you blame him?
"So, this is… what? A test?"
"Nailed it in one." He sighed. "And it's going to cost a Padawan his life, and Grievous an inconvenient day… and maybe a lair, I guess. I imagine the next time we go back there, it'll be in force. Not that it'll save Vebb. I have to do something…"
"Do you? Let me guess." Maris swallowed her fruit, leaning her elbows back against the console. "You're going to go save him."
"I'm going to provide essential Council oversight," Ben corrected smoothly, a sharp, deeply un-Jedi grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Grand Master Yoda's direct orders. Officially, of course."
Maris raised an eyebrow. "Does Yoda know he gave those orders?"
"He will. Eventually. In spirit," Ben said. He turned on his heel, catching a passing Ahsoka Tano by the shoulder and dragging her into his sudden, chaotic orbit. "Ahsoka, great news! We've been reassigned to a high-priority observation mission in the Vassek system. Grab your gear, we leave in three minutes."
Ahsoka blinked, looking completely bewildered but instantly falling into step out of sheer reflex. "Wait, what about Master Anakin? Does he know?"
"Anakin is busy brooding about Padmé or sanding his mechanical arm. Don't worry about it, I've got the paperwork covered!" Ben's voice echoed down the corridor as the two of them sprinted toward the hangar bay, leaving Maris standing alone in the blinking blue light of the comm station.
Classic Ben. The guy possessed his own personal armada, yet his preferred method of galactic travel was running away from his responsibilities at top speed. Maris sighed, dusting the crumbs from her dark robes. She supposed she should go back to her own quarters before anyone noticed she was missing.
"Looking for your partner, are you? Hmm?"
Maris froze, her shoulders stiffening as a tiny, green, deeply aggravating presence manifested directly behind her. She slowly turned around to find Grand Master Yoda leaning heavily on his gimer stick, his large ears twitching as his massive, ancient eyes locked onto her with total, unblinking suspicion.
The Force flared between them, thick with a very specific, deeply entrenched animosity. They had beef. It wasn't about the dark side, or the Clone Wars, or the fate of the Republic. It was about the frogs.
Yoda loved to snack on the rare, juicy swamp frogs imported from the outer rim for the Temple gardens. Maris, possessing the black-clad soul of a chaotic goth, had spent the last six months systematically finding every single one of those frogs, capturing them, and hiding them in places Yoda's short arms could never reach. It was a flawless campaign of pure psychological warfare.
"Master Yoda," Maris said, her voice dropping into a flat, innocent monotone. "Ben and Ahsoka just left. They mentioned something about an emergency mandate. Very official."
"An emergency mandate, yes. Heard about this, I have not," Yoda rumbled, his eyes narrowing into tiny, judgmental slits as he tapped his stick against the floor. "Looked for Padawan Kryze, I did. Found only you, I have. Strong, the stench of star-fruit is. Almost as strong as the absence of my favorite garden inhabitants, it is."
Maris didn't blink. "The ecosystem is changing, Master. Perhaps the frogs migrated. Or grew wings. Nature is beautiful that way."
Yoda let out a sharp, irritated grunt, his pointed ears flattening against his head. He looked down the empty corridor where Ben and Ahsoka had disappeared, then looked back at Maris, a small, vindictive smile spreading across his wrinkly green face. He knew exactly what Ben had done, and since his actual Padawan was already out of reach in hyperspace, the cosmic hammer of justice was about to fall squarely on the person left behind.
"Gaining field experience, Padawan Kryze is. Yes. Very busy, he will be," Yoda said, his voice dripping with a tiny, green triumph. "Left behind, you are. And a vacancy in the Temple nursery, there is. Watch over the younglings for the next week, you will. Absolute supervision, they require."
Maris's jaw tightened, horror instantly piercing through her cool, detached exterior. The nursery. The absolute lowest, most miserable circle of Jedi hell. A room filled with thirty screaming, drooling toddlers who regularly used the Force to throw dirty diapers and float heavy toys at people's heads.
"Master Yoda, with all due respect, I am a Padawan under Obi-Wan Kenobi," Maris protested, her hands clenching into fists inside her sleeves. "My combat training requires—"
"To patience, younglings will teach you," Yoda interrupted, turning around and slowly waddling back down the hallway, his stick clicking rhythmically against the stone. "No dark side threats there are in the nursery. Only diapers. Many, many diapers. Grounded, you are, Padawan Brood. Enjoy your assignment, you should."
Maris stood perfectly still, watching the Grand Master disappear around the corner. The realization washed over her like ice water. Ben hadn't just fabricated a mission; he had used her as a meat shield to absorb the inevitable blowback from the Council. He was currently in hyperspace, laughing his head off, while she was about to spend the next seven days getting covered in toddler spit.
Darth Nox, Lord of the Sith, conqueror of Tatooine, had just been thoroughly out-played by a green gremlin and her own idiot partner.
"I'm going to kill him," Maris whispered fiercely to the empty room, her blue lightsaber crystal pulsing with sudden, furious energy against her belt. "I am going to absolute-murder him the second he gets back."
Assuming Grevious doesn't kill him first.
…
The acid rain of Vassek 3 hissed angrily against the metal hull of the Republic shuttle, sizzling as it pooled in the scorched grooves of the landing pad. Ahsoka pulled her hood lower, shielding her eyes from the stinging, sulfuric mist that rolled across the desolate landscape. The entire planet felt like a graveyard, choked by heavy fog and jagged rock formations that looked entirely too much like broken teeth.
Ahead of them, two sleek Delta-7 interceptors sat parked near the massive, imposing blast doors of a castle built directly into the side of a cliff face. Standing near the entrance were Jedi Master Kit Fisto and his former Padawan, Nahdar Vebb.
Ahsoka hurried to keep pace with Ben, whose boots clicked against the slick stone with an aggravating amount of casual confidence. She still wasn't entirely sure how she had let him drag her into this. One minute she was confronting him about a stolen Sith artifact in his room, and the next, she was on a stolen shuttle flying into the Outer Rim under the guise of an unrecorded, highly fictional Council mandate.
He had a way with words, she'd give him that.
Master Fisto turned at the sound of their approaching footsteps, his large, dark eyes blinking in surprise. His usual warm, easygoing smile cut through the gloomy fog, his head-tentacles twitching as he sensed them. "Ah, Padawan Kryze. And Padawan Tano. I was not informed the Council was sending reinforcements to assist us with Viceroy Gunray."
"An emergency oversight and observation initiative, Master Fisto," Ben lied smoothly, not even a single ripple of hesitation disturbing his presence in the Force. "Grand Master Yoda felt that tracking a high-profile Separatist fugitive required a broader tactical perspective. We are strictly here to learn and assist."
Ahsoka felt a faint blush warm her cheeks under her markings. She kept her mouth shut, silently praying that Master Fisto wouldn't ask for a verified transmission log. If Anakin ever found out she was skipping across the galaxy on Ben's fabricated field trips, she would be cleaning astromech droids until the end of the war.
Nahdar Vebb let out a sharp, dismissive scoff, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.
The young Mon Calamari Knight practically radiated an aggressive, restless heat in the Force. His webbed fingers hovered entirely too close to the lightsaber hilt hanging at his waist. "Oversight? From two Padawans? We are tracking the leader of the Trade Federation, not conducting a crèche field trip. The Republic is paralyzed by caution, Master. That is why Gunray escaped in the first place."
Ahsoka frowned, her grip tightening on her own lightsaber hilt. She didn't like his tone, and she definitely didn't like the cold, hard edge bleeding into the Mon Calamari's presence. It felt reckless. Dangerous.
"Caution keeps people alive, Knight Vebb," Ahsoka said, stepping forward, her eyes narrowing slightly beneath her hood. "Viceroy Gunray doesn't move without a guard. If his beacon is here, it's because he wants us to see it."
"Then let him see us!" Nahdar fired back, his large, bulbous eyes flashing with an unsettling eagerness. "The Jedi Order has spent too long showing restraint. We are at war. If we catch the Viceroy, we shouldn't just bring him in for another escape. We need to start executing these Separatist high commanders. Clear the galaxy of their filth, once and for all."
The sheer venom in Nahdar's voice made the hairs on the back of Ahsoka's neck stand up. She looked over at Ben, expecting him to make a witty remark or shut the Knight down. Instead, Ben was perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Nahdar with a chilling, calculating intensity.
Through their bond, Ahsoka could feel Ben's mind working at a terrifying speed, tracking the fluctuating, dark-side-adjacent waves coming off the Mon Calamari. It was like Ben was staring at a math problem he was determined to stomp out before it could ruin the equation.
Master Fisto's smile faded, replaced by a gentle but firm look of disapproval. "To fight a war is one thing, Nahdar. To lose ourselves to anger is another. We are keepers of the peace, not executioners."
Nahdar didn't look convinced, but he bowed his head in a tense, rigid gesture of obedience. "Yes, Master. Of course."
The massive blast doors groaned, slowly grinding upward to reveal a dark, cavernous hallway lit by flickering, low-power green luminescence. The air that drifted out of the interior was cold, heavy, and smelled distinctly of ozone, old grease, and dried blood. Ahsoka shivered, her instincts screaming at her that something was horribly wrong. This wasn't a temporary safehouse for a wealthy Neimoidian viceroy. It was a fortress built for butchery.
As soon as all four of them stepped across the threshold, a loud, metallic clanging echoed through the corridor. The massive blast doors slammed down behind them with a deafening crash, the heavy locking bolts sliding into place with absolute finality.
They were trapped.
A static-heavy hiss crackled through the environmental intercoms mounted on the ceiling. A deep, mechanical voice, layered with a hollow, metallic resonance, echoed through the darkness, dripping with arrogant satisfaction. "Welcome, Jedi fools, to your final resting place! You thought you were hunting a cowardly Viceroy, but you have walked directly into the jaws of—"
The voice abruptly stopped.
There was a long, agonizing pause over the intercom, followed by the distinct sound of a sharp intake of breath, a metallic rattle, and then a sudden, panicked, violent fit of wet coughing.
"Cough... hack... wheeze... You?!" Grievous's voice returned, the previous theatrical grandeur completely evaporating into pure, unadulterated robotic terror. "What are YOU doing here?!"
Ahsoka blinked, looking from the ceiling speaker over to Ben, who casually raised a hand and gave a little wave to the security camera mounted in the corner. She let out a slow breath, her irritation returning. Leave it to Ben to turn a terrifying Separatist trap into an awkward family reunion.
…
General Grievous gripped the edges of the metal medical slab, his repulsor-driven repair droids buzzing around his exposed chest cavity like annoying mechanical insects. A fresh spike of white-hot agony flared through his remaining organic lungs as a laser welder sparked too close to his synthetic sac. He hacked violently, a spray of dark fluid and loose sparks erupting from his vocal synthesizer.
Those miserable, unlicked Jedi whelps.
First the Kryze brat on the Malevolence, then the Togruta girl at Skytop listening station. They were systematically crushing his chest plating into scrap metal with every single encounter. At this miserable rate, he was going to have to rip out his lungs entirely and replace them with a full mechanical respirator.
On the one hand, a total cybernetic replacement meant an end to this pathetic, hacking wheeze. On the other hand, that constant, miserable coughing was the only thing left that reminded him he wasn't just another mindless battle droid under the Confederacy's payroll.
Screw this.
He was the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies, not a target for Padawan target practice.
With a furious, metallic sweep of his lower left arm, Grievous batted away a medical droid that was trying to calibrate his neck joints. He lurched off the table, his heavy, clawed feet clanging against the grated floor of his trophy sanctuary. He marched toward the central terminal, punching a massive, webbed fist into the console to activate an emergency, heavily encrypted long-distance holographic transmission channel straight to Count Dooku.
He needed a full legion of Magnaguards and a blockade of Munificent-class frigates in orbit immediately to stomp out this incoming Jedi infestation. What a waste of troops. On the bright side, he would have some lovely new trophies to show for it.
He's had his eyes in the Darksaber in particular for quite some time.
The blue light of the holo-projector flickered into life, revealing the towering, crisp image of Count Dooku. The Sith Lord was leaning back quite comfortably in a plush seat inside his newly stolen Republic transport, casually smoothing down his fine cape. He looked completely unbothered, radiating a smooth, aristocratic disgust that instantly set Grievous's internal processors on fire.
"General Grievous," Dooku said, his deep voice carrying a patronizing, ice-cold weight. "I trust there is a grand tactical reason you are disrupting my travel."
"The Jedi have breached the outer perimeter of Vassek!" Grievous roared, his mechanical voice modulator cracking under the strain of his fury. "Master Fisto is here, along with his apprentice! And the Kryze boy! And the Togruta girl! They are attempting to surround my stronghold. I require immediate reinforcements from the nearest sector fleet!"
"No."
Grievous growled. "My Lord?"
"I will not be aiding you in this matter, General." The Sith replied. "I was the one who sent them to your doorstep in the first place."
"You WHAT?!"
The Supreme Commander of the Confederacy's Droid Armies would have loved to rip the Count of Serenno a new one, both verbally and physically. But his outburst brought forth a fresh wave of hacking, and coughing.
Another point against keeping these failing lungs of his.
Count Dooku merely sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is exactly the kind of behavior that landed you here in the first place. Your experience is impressive, I will grant you. But it does not absolve you of this parade of failures. Time and again, you have been tried, and tested. No more."
"A momentary setback." Grevious picked himself off the floor with a scowl. It could only be shown with his eyes, of course. But trust him. It was more than enough. "When have I ever fallen to the enemy? How many Jedi have I slain for you already, my Lord?"
"Not nearly enough." Dooku didn't even lean forward as he dismissed him. He simply looked down at his own manicured hands, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to complete, unadulterated disdain. "You have allowed yourself to be thrashed apart by mere children, General. This is your last chance. Prove your worth to the Separatists Alliance, or perish."
Grievous's throat split into an aggressive, rattling cough, his mechanical jaw snapping shut as sparks actually shot out from his metal teeth. The sheer hypocrisy of the old man was staggering. He leaned his skull-like mask directly into the holo-feed, his yellow eyes burning with absolute malice as he threw the Count's own recent failures right back into his bearded face. "You got captured by pirates! Illiterate, spice-addled Weequays!"
Dooku didn't even blink. His face remained a mask of flawless, detached nobility. He slowly reached up, adjusted the silver clasp of his cape, and looked completely away from the projector beam as if he were suddenly reading an incredibly boring datapad. "I am experiencing a highly unstable connection in this sector, General. Goodbye."
The holographic feed cut instantly to black, leaving the room in a cold, dead silence.
Grievous stood frozen for a fraction of a second before a deafening, metallic roar tore from his vocal processor. He spun around and brought his massive, metal heel down directly on top of the nearest medical droid, crushing its chassis into a flat, sparking pancake of twisted steel. He smashed his fists into the console, ripping a handful of wires out of the wall and throwing them across the room. The old Count was leaving him out here to rot, testing him like some common gladiator in a Geonosian arena.
Very well. If the Separatist Alliance wouldn't aid him, he would deal with these arrogant Jedi invaders himself. They thought they could breach his sanctuary and walk away with their heads still attached to their shoulders. They had no idea what kind of horrors this fortress truly held.
Grievous paused, his mechanical ears twitching as a low, rumbling growl echoed from the deep, reinforced iron pens beneath his feet. A cruel, synthetic clicking sound started up in his throat—the closest thing he could truly manage to a genuine laugh.
Where was his pet? He had an absolute masterpiece of an idea.
…
The metallic groan of a shifting blast wall cut off my view of Master Fisto's green tentcled head, separating us in an instant. Right on cue, a section of the floor beneath Ahsoka and me gave way, dumping us down a steep, smooth chute that deposited us right into the lower bowels of Grievous's playground.
The heat hit me first. We had landed on a rusted catwalk suspended directly over a series of bubbling, molten incinerator pits. Red light bathed the chamber, reflecting off massive iron beast pens that lined the far walls. This place was a customized slaughterhouse, and Grievous was pulling out all the stops for his uninvited guests.
Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the distinct hum of Fisto's lightsaber and the heavy clanging of electrostaffs. He was dealing with a wave of Magnaguards. But right below our current vantage point, a much louder, much angrier sound echoed through the chamber.
Nahdar Vebb had found the main beast pen, or rather, it had found him.
The heavy blast gate had been raised, and charging out from the darkness was the Gor. The thing was a multi-ton nightmare—a massive, cybernetic abomination with rancor-like claws, thick plating, and a roaring maw of jagged teeth. Nahdar, completely blinding himself with that classic, arrogant Mon Calamari need to prove his worth, wasn't retreating. He didn't even try to look for high ground. He just stood his ground in the center of the lower arena, screaming a battle cry and swinging his blue lightsaber in aggressive, wide arcs.
He tried to use pure brute force against a creature designed to crush starfighters. The Gor swept a massive, armored arm, shattering Nahdar's guard and sending the young Knight flying across the stone floor. His lightsaber skittered away, and the beast reared back, ready to turn him into a thin paste.
"Ahsoka, legs! I'll handle the hardware!" I yelled, already diving through the nearest ceiling ventilation grid.
We dropped through the air like twin green streaks. Ahsoka ignited both of her lightsabers, her small frame twisting mid-air as she aimed straight for the monster's lower joints.
I didn't bother drawing my weapon just yet. The Emperor's Wrath hadn't just taught me how to swing a plasma blade; he'd taught me that the battlefield is a machine, and a true Sith always looks for the controls. As I neared the ground, I extended both hands, channeling a tight, precise burst of telekinetic force straight at the glowing cybernetic restraint collar bolted to the Gor's thick neck.
I didn't try to rip it off. I just smashed the internal wiring, crossing the main power leads and forcing the dampener matrix to overload.
The collar erupted in a shower of violent purple sparks. The Gor shrieked, its tiny, augmented eyes rolling back as the agonizing feedback drove it into a blind, unbridled frenzy. It completely forgot about Nahdar. Instead, it spun around and slammed its massive head into the wall, tearing down a whole row of Grievous's automated laser turrets and crushing three Magnaguards that had been waiting in the wings to ambush us. The entire tactical landscape flipped in a fraction of a second.
Ahsoka hit the deck seamlessly, her green blades flashing in a vicious, sweeping cross-cut that cleanly sliced through the tendons of the distracted beast's rear legs. The massive creature roared, toppling heavily onto its side into a cloud of dust and shattered stone.
Before the remaining Magnaguards could adjust to their own pet turning on them, I slid into the fray. My hands finally dropped to my belt, but I didn't pull my old initiate weapon. I pulled the heavy, rectangular hilt of the Darksaber.
The blade ignited with a sharp, flat snap, a beam of pure black plasma ringed in crackling white lightning cutting through the crimson glare of the room. I didn't use the standard, defensive flourishes of Form III that Obi-Wan kept trying to drill into my head. I slipped instantly into a brutal, highly compressed variant of Form VII. It was pure, unadulterated Juyo, stripped of any theatrical waste and infused with a calculated, dark-side efficiency.
One step forward, a heavy diagonal cleave through the first droid's staff and neck. A fluid pivot, a reverse-grip thrust straight through the chest power-core of the second. A final, snapping backhand that severed the legs of the third. Three elite, electrostaff-wielding bodyguards turned into cleanly melted, silent scrap metal in under three seconds.
"Nahdar, get up!" Ahsoka yelled, rushing to help the dazed Mon Calamari to his feet.
But Nahdar wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the massive, twitching heap of the Gor, his webbed fingers trembling as he scrambled to call his dropped lightsaber back to his hand. The absolute certainty he'd carried into the fortress had completely evaporated, replaced by the cold, hard realization that his aggression almost got him slaughtered. "I... I had it. I could have taken it."
"Yeah, sure you did, buddy," I muttered, deactivating the black blade but keeping my thumb hovering right over the activation switch.
My danger sense didn't just tingle; it practically screamed, a sudden, heavy weight dropping into the Force directly above us.
"Move!" I roared, reaching out and grabbing Nahdar by the front of his tunic, throwing all my weight into a massive, desperate Force-pull that yanked him backward across the stone floor.
A split second later, a spinning whirlwind of metal and plasma crashed down from the ceiling, landing exactly where Nahdar had been standing. General Grievous hit the ground with all four of his mechanical arms extended, four stolen lightsabers ignited in a blinding, multi-colored cage of death. The impact rattled the floorboards, the heavy cyborg growling in frustration as his ambush missed its mark.
Before he could reset his stance, I lunged forward, bringing the Darksaber up in a two-handed parry.
The black plasma clashed against his two primary blades with a deafening, static-heavy roar. The white lightning ringed around the Darksaber hissed furiously, biting into the energy fields of the stolen Jedi weapons. Grievous leaned his full, heavy weight into the block, his skull-like mask inches from mine, his yellow eyes widening as he recognized the unique, dark weapon.
"I've been waiting for this moment, boy!" Grievous snarled, his vocal synthesizers straining as he tried to push me down into the dirt. "I will repay the suffering you've inflicted on me ten-fold before I destroy you! Soon, the sword of your people will be just another trophy to my collection!"
"Maybe I'll start my own collection, with your limbs, General," I grunted, my boots skidding slightly on the slick stone as I held the lock. "It looks like you can spare a few!"
For now.
Ahsoka didn't hesitate. She vaulted over my shoulder, her green blades carving a rapid, downward arc aimed right at Grievous's lower elbows. The General hissed, a mechanical reflex forcing him to disengage from our lock and skip backward on his clawed feet to avoid getting his arms shorn off—again.
He was already heavily damaged from our previous encounters, his metal chest plating rattling with every breath, and the sheer sight of the two of us together was clearly making his internal flight-or-fight processors short-circuit.
The heavy blast doors at the far end of the chamber exploded inward, and Kit Fisto bounded into the room, his green blade active and a look of absolute, focused grimness on his face.
Grievous took one look at the reinforcing Jedi Master, looked at his dead pet, and then looked at the black blade still crackling in my hand. "Cough... hack... This is not over!" he screamed, before hitting a manual override button on his wrist console. A hidden trapdoor slid open beneath his clawed feet, and the cyborg general dropped straight into his escape hatches, disappearing into the lower levels of the fortress before any of us could stop him.
Silence fell over the molten incinerator room, broken only by the bubbling of the pits below and the heavy, ragged breathing of Nahdar Vebb. The Mon Calamari was alive, but he was trembling, staring at the floor with a wide-eyed, fundamentally shaken expression. The reality of war had just given him a very thorough, very terrifying lesson.
I let out a slow breath, smoothly sliding the Darksaber back onto my belt and adjusting my tunic to look as innocent and Padawan-like as humanly possible.
Master Fisto walked over to us, his lightsaber humming softly before he deactivated it with a quiet click. He didn't immediately praise us for the rescue, and he didn't check on his former student. Instead, his large, dark eyes drifted slowly across the floor of the arena.
He walked past the fallen Gor, stopping right in front of the three ruined Magnaguards I had dispatched. He knelt down, his webbed fingers hovering just inches above the perfectly clean, melted, ultra-precise slashes through their heavy durasteel chassis.
There were no jagged edges. No signs of the frantic, defensive parries or the wide, sweeping blocks taught in Form I, III, or even Form V. These were the marks of an absolute, cold-blooded execution. Every single cut was a lethal, hyper-aggressive strike designed to bypass a guard and end a life in a fraction of a second. It was the work of a butcher.
Fisto slowly stood up, turning his head to look back at me. The warm, easygoing smile that usually defined the nautolan Master was completely gone, replaced by a deep, silent expression of profound, chilling suspicion. He didn't say a word, but the weight of his gaze felt heavier than the blast doors.
Whoops... I thought, offering him a small, incredibly meek, totally-just-a-harmless-Padawan shrug. This might be a bit of a problem.
Good thing Jedi are so incredibly dumb, right?
Right?
...
Yeah, right.
That TOTALLY won't be a long-running gag for the foreseeable future... see you all next week. As always, if you want to read ahead, check out my Patreon.
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The sulfur-crusted stench of Florrum was still practically glued to the inside of my nostrils, and my back felt like a herd of banthas had used it for a trampling ground. All I wanted—the single, solitary goal of my entire existence in that moment—was to collapse face-first onto my standard-issue, unforgiving Jedi Temple mattress and sleep until the next galactic century.
Instead, I palmed open the door to my Padawan quarters and froze.
Ahsoka was sitting right in the middle of my room. She had her back propped against a tower of oversized, plush Bantha cushions she'd clearly dragged down from the crèche, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. One of her feet was tapping a slow, menacing rhythm against the floor tiles. The unbothered, smug satisfaction radiating off her in the Force was so thick I could have sliced it with my lightsaber.
I closed the door behind me with a slow, sinking feeling. "If this is about the daycare duty, I can explain: I'm not sorry. It was you or me. Plus, I gave you an open-ended favor, so..."
"Yeah," Ahsoka said. "About that…" She reached behind her back, pulled her hand out from behind the cushions, and casually tossed a sharp, heavy object across the room.
It skittered across my metal desk, coming to a dead stop right next to my favorite hydrospanner. It was a perfect, pristine pyramid of polished obsidian, its razor-sharp edges pulsing with faint, spiderweb lines of crimson light. The ambient temperature in the room instantly plummeted by about ten degrees, a heavy, ancient, deeply unholy thrum rattling the loose screws in my desk drawers.
My heart skipped a beat, my eyes darting from the literal piece of concentrated dark side heresy to Ahsoka's unblinking stare. I felt a cold sweat instantly break out under my tunic.
"Where did you get that?" I managed, trying to keep my voice even, though my brain was currently screaming in a very high pitch.
"Grogu," Ahsoka replied flatly, her foot continuing to tap. "He was dragging it through the residential hallways like a glowing teething ring. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain a Sith Holocron to a roaming pack of Temple guards, Ben? Because I do. I had to tell them it was a highly advanced Corellian geometry puzzle."
I winced, rubbing the back of my neck. I had spent three hours meticulously reinforcing that hidden floorboard compartment under my bunk after we got back from Mandalore. I even added a lock! Not a great one, but still.
Apparently, a toddlers' sheer, unadulterated desire for shiny objects completely bypassed high-level Sith security protocols. I must inform the Sith Council at once… oh, right. There's only three of us. And aside from me, one of the other two is outside my door, eavesdropping, so that only leaves one person out of the loop.
I really need to expand my Order, at some point… I wonder if I can convert Barriss? Nah, Maris will get jealous. Huh? Did their names always sound that much alike? Weird. Uh oh. Ahsoka's giving me the look.
What?! It's not even my fault!
"Look, the floorboards are old," I mumbled, shuffling my feet. "The wood expands in the humidity. It's a structural flaw."
"You owe me a blank check, Ben Kryze. An unrestricted, open-ended favor, to be used whenever and against whomever I wished," Ahsoka reminded, leaning forward, her blue eyes narrowing into razor-sharp slits. "I am cashing it in right now. I want you to destroy this."
My jaw dropped.
Destroy it? The Holocron of the Emperor's Wrath? The literal repository of a legendary Sith Warrior's entire life's work, combat forms, and beautifully unhinged historical rants? The thing that had turned me into Darth Sol and Maris into Darth Nox?
"But… He's so cool!" I protested, throwing my hands out defensively.
"Ben. You never use him. He's taking up space, and collecting dust. You have a hoarding problem. You need to help yourself, and every impressionable Jedi here, and get rid of him," Ahsoka said, her voice dropping into that stern, lecturing tone she usually reserved for when Anakin did something exceptionally reckless.
I looked at the pulsing red pyramid, then back to Ahsoka. I was a self-insert with a secret Sith empire, a battalion of HK droids, and a fleet of two hundred dreadnoughts, but somehow, I was currently being thoroughly bullied by a teenage Togruta over my organizational habits. The sheer absurdity of my life was staggering.
"Can't we at least ask his opinion, first?" I tried to buy time, stepping closer to the desk and tapping the tip of the pyramid to activate the primary gate.
The crimson lines flared, hissing softly as a cloud of dark, localized smoke coalesced above the obsidian face. From the mist emerged the miniature, glowing red holographic avatar of the Emperor's Wrath. He was clad in full, imposing Sith Eradicator armor, his featureless mask staring out into my modest Padawan quarters with a heavy, monolithic presence.
The ancient, terrifying dark lord of the Sith sighed deeply, his armored shoulders slumping as he deadpanned, "I want to die."
I threw my hands up in utter betrayal. "Gah, damnit! Fine. I'll get rid of him. But I get to decide how. It's going to be epic, and cinematic, and it's going to be far, far away from here."
"Whatever. But you can't keep him in the Temple. Seriously. How have you not gotten caught, yet?" Ahsoka asked, shaking her head as she leaned back against her mountain of stolen cushions.
The door to my room slid open with a sudden hiss, and Maris Brood casually strolled inside, a half-eaten star-fruit in one hand and her fingers coated in sticky juice. She didn't even look at the ancient Sith artifact huming on my desk; she just leaned her hip against the doorframe, her dark, pale features twisting into a wicked, chaotic grin.
"Oh! I can answer that," Maris chimed in, taking a loud, wet bite of her fruit. "Most Jedi are dumb."
I leaned back against the wall, crossing my arms as the tension finally drained out of my shoulders, replaced by my usual level of pure, unbothered theatrical pity for the Order we were currently infiltrating. "Very true. Most Jedi wouldn't even recognize a Sith Lord if he was sitting in the Supreme Chancellor's Office, dressed in blood red robes."
Ahsoka blinked, her montrals twitching as she completely missed the literal, absolute truth of what I had just said. "What?"
"What?" I said immediately, wiping all expression from my face.
Maris let out a sharp, mocking snort through her teeth, choking slightly on a seed. The Wrath's holographic avatar just stood there on my desk, his tiny, masked head resting in his hands, radiating a deep, cosmic sense of regret for ever choosing us as his successors.
No take-backs!
…
Maris Brood leaned against the cold terminal console in the Temple Comm Center, swirling the last piece of sticky star-fruit around her mouth. The blue glow of the primary holonet feed washed over her pale features, illuminating the sharp, dark lines of her makeup. The news coming live from the core systems was an absolute disaster for the Republic, which naturally meant it was highly amusing to her.
Nute Gunray had broken custody.
As it turned out, leaving a high-ranking Separatist leader guarded by standard senate commandos when Asajj Ventress was on the loose was a brilliant tactical decision… Not. Even without Ben's force visions literally telling them those guys were going to betray them, she could still smell the treachery over a parsec away.
If only they listened to her… meh. Just as well. It serves the First Order rather nicely to have someone so high-ranking in the Confederacy secretly brainwashed into their thrall. And she does love her secrets.
A shimmering blue transmission flickered into life on the main terminal, broadcasting an encoded signal intercepted from the outer rim. Jedi Master Kit Fisto and his former Padawan, a painfully eager Mon Calamari named Nahdar Vebb, had tracked Gunray's stolen homing beacon to a remote world in the Vassek system.
Interesting. Incredibly, stupidly suspicious, and only a fool would go there after the latest in a long line of ambushes and betrayals. But if there was one thing that Maris Brood would never accuse the Jedi of: it was being smart.
Ben Kryze appeared at her side out of nowhere, his eyes wide and fixed on the planetary data rolling across the side screens. He had that specific, intense look he always got when his bizarre timeline-prediction sense went off. It was the face he made right before he completely derailed a historical event.
"Vebb is going to die," Ben murmured, his voice barely carrying over the hum of the cooling fans. "They're walking into a trap."
Wow? Really? She's so shocked.
"What kind of trap?" She couldn't resist her curiosity, or her appetite, as she continued eating. "Ransom? Ambush? Prisoners?"
"Slaughter." Ben replied, seriously. "That's not Nute Gunray's hideaway. That's General Grevious' lair. Count Dooku isn't exactly pleased after his many, many failures."
Could you blame him?
"So, this is… what? A test?"
"Nailed it in one." He sighed. "And it's going to cost a Padawan his life, and Grievous an inconvenient day… and maybe a lair, I guess. I imagine the next time we go back there, it'll be in force. Not that it'll save Vebb. I have to do something…"
"Do you? Let me guess." Maris swallowed her fruit, leaning her elbows back against the console. "You're going to go save him."
"I'm going to provide essential Council oversight," Ben corrected smoothly, a sharp, deeply un-Jedi grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Grand Master Yoda's direct orders. Officially, of course."
Maris raised an eyebrow. "Does Yoda know he gave those orders?"
"He will. Eventually. In spirit," Ben said. He turned on his heel, catching a passing Ahsoka Tano by the shoulder and dragging her into his sudden, chaotic orbit. "Ahsoka, great news! We've been reassigned to a high-priority observation mission in the Vassek system. Grab your gear, we leave in three minutes."
Ahsoka blinked, looking completely bewildered but instantly falling into step out of sheer reflex. "Wait, what about Master Anakin? Does he know?"
"Anakin is busy brooding about Padmé or sanding his mechanical arm. Don't worry about it, I've got the paperwork covered!" Ben's voice echoed down the corridor as the two of them sprinted toward the hangar bay, leaving Maris standing alone in the blinking blue light of the comm station.
Classic Ben. The guy possessed his own personal armada, yet his preferred method of galactic travel was running away from his responsibilities at top speed. Maris sighed, dusting the crumbs from her dark robes. She supposed she should go back to her own quarters before anyone noticed she was missing.
"Looking for your partner, are you? Hmm?"
Maris froze, her shoulders stiffening as a tiny, green, deeply aggravating presence manifested directly behind her. She slowly turned around to find Grand Master Yoda leaning heavily on his gimer stick, his large ears twitching as his massive, ancient eyes locked onto her with total, unblinking suspicion.
The Force flared between them, thick with a very specific, deeply entrenched animosity. They had beef. It wasn't about the dark side, or the Clone Wars, or the fate of the Republic. It was about the frogs.
Yoda loved to snack on the rare, juicy swamp frogs imported from the outer rim for the Temple gardens. Maris, possessing the black-clad soul of a chaotic goth, had spent the last six months systematically finding every single one of those frogs, capturing them, and hiding them in places Yoda's short arms could never reach. It was a flawless campaign of pure psychological warfare.
"Master Yoda," Maris said, her voice dropping into a flat, innocent monotone. "Ben and Ahsoka just left. They mentioned something about an emergency mandate. Very official."
"An emergency mandate, yes. Heard about this, I have not," Yoda rumbled, his eyes narrowing into tiny, judgmental slits as he tapped his stick against the floor. "Looked for Padawan Kryze, I did. Found only you, I have. Strong, the stench of star-fruit is. Almost as strong as the absence of my favorite garden inhabitants, it is."
Maris didn't blink. "The ecosystem is changing, Master. Perhaps the frogs migrated. Or grew wings. Nature is beautiful that way."
Yoda let out a sharp, irritated grunt, his pointed ears flattening against his head. He looked down the empty corridor where Ben and Ahsoka had disappeared, then looked back at Maris, a small, vindictive smile spreading across his wrinkly green face. He knew exactly what Ben had done, and since his actual Padawan was already out of reach in hyperspace, the cosmic hammer of justice was about to fall squarely on the person left behind.
"Gaining field experience, Padawan Kryze is. Yes. Very busy, he will be," Yoda said, his voice dripping with a tiny, green triumph. "Left behind, you are. And a vacancy in the Temple nursery, there is. Watch over the younglings for the next week, you will. Absolute supervision, they require."
Maris's jaw tightened, horror instantly piercing through her cool, detached exterior. The nursery. The absolute lowest, most miserable circle of Jedi hell. A room filled with thirty screaming, drooling toddlers who regularly used the Force to throw dirty diapers and float heavy toys at people's heads.
"Master Yoda, with all due respect, I am a Padawan under Obi-Wan Kenobi," Maris protested, her hands clenching into fists inside her sleeves. "My combat training requires—"
"To patience, younglings will teach you," Yoda interrupted, turning around and slowly waddling back down the hallway, his stick clicking rhythmically against the stone. "No dark side threats there are in the nursery. Only diapers. Many, many diapers. Grounded, you are, Padawan Brood. Enjoy your assignment, you should."
Maris stood perfectly still, watching the Grand Master disappear around the corner. The realization washed over her like ice water. Ben hadn't just fabricated a mission; he had used her as a meat shield to absorb the inevitable blowback from the Council. He was currently in hyperspace, laughing his head off, while she was about to spend the next seven days getting covered in toddler spit.
Darth Nox, Lord of the Sith, conqueror of Tatooine, had just been thoroughly out-played by a green gremlin and her own idiot partner.
"I'm going to kill him," Maris whispered fiercely to the empty room, her blue lightsaber crystal pulsing with sudden, furious energy against her belt. "I am going to absolute-murder him the second he gets back."
Assuming Grevious doesn't kill him first.
…
The acid rain of Vassek 3 hissed angrily against the metal hull of the Republic shuttle, sizzling as it pooled in the scorched grooves of the landing pad. Ahsoka pulled her hood lower, shielding her eyes from the stinging, sulfuric mist that rolled across the desolate landscape. The entire planet felt like a graveyard, choked by heavy fog and jagged rock formations that looked entirely too much like broken teeth.
Ahead of them, two sleek Delta-7 interceptors sat parked near the massive, imposing blast doors of a castle built directly into the side of a cliff face. Standing near the entrance were Jedi Master Kit Fisto and his former Padawan, Nahdar Vebb.
Ahsoka hurried to keep pace with Ben, whose boots clicked against the slick stone with an aggravating amount of casual confidence. She still wasn't entirely sure how she had let him drag her into this. One minute she was confronting him about a stolen Sith artifact in his room, and the next, she was on a stolen shuttle flying into the Outer Rim under the guise of an unrecorded, highly fictional Council mandate.
He had a way with words, she'd give him that.
Master Fisto turned at the sound of their approaching footsteps, his large, dark eyes blinking in surprise. His usual warm, easygoing smile cut through the gloomy fog, his head-tentacles twitching as he sensed them. "Ah, Padawan Kryze. And Padawan Tano. I was not informed the Council was sending reinforcements to assist us with Viceroy Gunray."
"An emergency oversight and observation initiative, Master Fisto," Ben lied smoothly, not even a single ripple of hesitation disturbing his presence in the Force. "Grand Master Yoda felt that tracking a high-profile Separatist fugitive required a broader tactical perspective. We are strictly here to learn and assist."
Ahsoka felt a faint blush warm her cheeks under her markings. She kept her mouth shut, silently praying that Master Fisto wouldn't ask for a verified transmission log. If Anakin ever found out she was skipping across the galaxy on Ben's fabricated field trips, she would be cleaning astromech droids until the end of the war.
Nahdar Vebb let out a sharp, dismissive scoff, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.
The young Mon Calamari Knight practically radiated an aggressive, restless heat in the Force. His webbed fingers hovered entirely too close to the lightsaber hilt hanging at his waist. "Oversight? From two Padawans? We are tracking the leader of the Trade Federation, not conducting a crèche field trip. The Republic is paralyzed by caution, Master. That is why Gunray escaped in the first place."
Ahsoka frowned, her grip tightening on her own lightsaber hilt. She didn't like his tone, and she definitely didn't like the cold, hard edge bleeding into the Mon Calamari's presence. It felt reckless. Dangerous.
"Caution keeps people alive, Knight Vebb," Ahsoka said, stepping forward, her eyes narrowing slightly beneath her hood. "Viceroy Gunray doesn't move without a guard. If his beacon is here, it's because he wants us to see it."
"Then let him see us!" Nahdar fired back, his large, bulbous eyes flashing with an unsettling eagerness. "The Jedi Order has spent too long showing restraint. We are at war. If we catch the Viceroy, we shouldn't just bring him in for another escape. We need to start executing these Separatist high commanders. Clear the galaxy of their filth, once and for all."
The sheer venom in Nahdar's voice made the hairs on the back of Ahsoka's neck stand up. She looked over at Ben, expecting him to make a witty remark or shut the Knight down. Instead, Ben was perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Nahdar with a chilling, calculating intensity.
Through their bond, Ahsoka could feel Ben's mind working at a terrifying speed, tracking the fluctuating, dark-side-adjacent waves coming off the Mon Calamari. It was like Ben was staring at a math problem he was determined to stomp out before it could ruin the equation.
Master Fisto's smile faded, replaced by a gentle but firm look of disapproval. "To fight a war is one thing, Nahdar. To lose ourselves to anger is another. We are keepers of the peace, not executioners."
Nahdar didn't look convinced, but he bowed his head in a tense, rigid gesture of obedience. "Yes, Master. Of course."
The massive blast doors groaned, slowly grinding upward to reveal a dark, cavernous hallway lit by flickering, low-power green luminescence. The air that drifted out of the interior was cold, heavy, and smelled distinctly of ozone, old grease, and dried blood. Ahsoka shivered, her instincts screaming at her that something was horribly wrong. This wasn't a temporary safehouse for a wealthy Neimoidian viceroy. It was a fortress built for butchery.
As soon as all four of them stepped across the threshold, a loud, metallic clanging echoed through the corridor. The massive blast doors slammed down behind them with a deafening crash, the heavy locking bolts sliding into place with absolute finality.
They were trapped.
A static-heavy hiss crackled through the environmental intercoms mounted on the ceiling. A deep, mechanical voice, layered with a hollow, metallic resonance, echoed through the darkness, dripping with arrogant satisfaction. "Welcome, Jedi fools, to your final resting place! You thought you were hunting a cowardly Viceroy, but you have walked directly into the jaws of—"
The voice abruptly stopped.
There was a long, agonizing pause over the intercom, followed by the distinct sound of a sharp intake of breath, a metallic rattle, and then a sudden, panicked, violent fit of wet coughing.
"Cough... hack... wheeze... You?!" Grievous's voice returned, the previous theatrical grandeur completely evaporating into pure, unadulterated robotic terror. "What are YOU doing here?!"
Ahsoka blinked, looking from the ceiling speaker over to Ben, who casually raised a hand and gave a little wave to the security camera mounted in the corner. She let out a slow breath, her irritation returning. Leave it to Ben to turn a terrifying Separatist trap into an awkward family reunion.
…
General Grievous gripped the edges of the metal medical slab, his repulsor-driven repair droids buzzing around his exposed chest cavity like annoying mechanical insects. A fresh spike of white-hot agony flared through his remaining organic lungs as a laser welder sparked too close to his synthetic sac. He hacked violently, a spray of dark fluid and loose sparks erupting from his vocal synthesizer.
Those miserable, unlicked Jedi whelps.
First the Kryze brat on the Malevolence, then the Togruta girl at Skytop listening station. They were systematically crushing his chest plating into scrap metal with every single encounter. At this miserable rate, he was going to have to rip out his lungs entirely and replace them with a full mechanical respirator.
On the one hand, a total cybernetic replacement meant an end to this pathetic, hacking wheeze. On the other hand, that constant, miserable coughing was the only thing left that reminded him he wasn't just another mindless battle droid under the Confederacy's payroll.
Screw this.
He was the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies, not a target for Padawan target practice.
With a furious, metallic sweep of his lower left arm, Grievous batted away a medical droid that was trying to calibrate his neck joints. He lurched off the table, his heavy, clawed feet clanging against the grated floor of his trophy sanctuary. He marched toward the central terminal, punching a massive, webbed fist into the console to activate an emergency, heavily encrypted long-distance holographic transmission channel straight to Count Dooku.
He needed a full legion of Magnaguards and a blockade of Munificent-class frigates in orbit immediately to stomp out this incoming Jedi infestation. What a waste of troops. On the bright side, he would have some lovely new trophies to show for it.
He's had his eyes in the Darksaber in particular for quite some time.
The blue light of the holo-projector flickered into life, revealing the towering, crisp image of Count Dooku. The Sith Lord was leaning back quite comfortably in a plush seat inside his newly stolen Republic transport, casually smoothing down his fine cape. He looked completely unbothered, radiating a smooth, aristocratic disgust that instantly set Grievous's internal processors on fire.
"General Grievous," Dooku said, his deep voice carrying a patronizing, ice-cold weight. "I trust there is a grand tactical reason you are disrupting my travel."
"The Jedi have breached the outer perimeter of Vassek!" Grievous roared, his mechanical voice modulator cracking under the strain of his fury. "Master Fisto is here, along with his apprentice! And the Kryze boy! And the Togruta girl! They are attempting to surround my stronghold. I require immediate reinforcements from the nearest sector fleet!"
"No."
Grievous growled. "My Lord?"
"I will not be aiding you in this matter, General." The Sith replied. "I was the one who sent them to your doorstep in the first place."
"You WHAT?!"
The Supreme Commander of the Confederacy's Droid Armies would have loved to rip the Count of Serenno a new one, both verbally and physically. But his outburst brought forth a fresh wave of hacking, and coughing.
Another point against keeping these failing lungs of his.
Count Dooku merely sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "This is exactly the kind of behavior that landed you here in the first place. Your experience is impressive, I will grant you. But it does not absolve you of this parade of failures. Time and again, you have been tried, and tested. No more."
"A momentary setback." Grevious picked himself off the floor with a scowl. It could only be shown with his eyes, of course. But trust him. It was more than enough. "When have I ever fallen to the enemy? How many Jedi have I slain for you already, my Lord?"
"Not nearly enough." Dooku didn't even lean forward as he dismissed him. He simply looked down at his own manicured hands, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to complete, unadulterated disdain. "You have allowed yourself to be thrashed apart by mere children, General. This is your last chance. Prove your worth to the Separatists Alliance, or perish."
Grievous's throat split into an aggressive, rattling cough, his mechanical jaw snapping shut as sparks actually shot out from his metal teeth. The sheer hypocrisy of the old man was staggering. He leaned his skull-like mask directly into the holo-feed, his yellow eyes burning with absolute malice as he threw the Count's own recent failures right back into his bearded face. "You got captured by pirates! Illiterate, spice-addled Weequays!"
Dooku didn't even blink. His face remained a mask of flawless, detached nobility. He slowly reached up, adjusted the silver clasp of his cape, and looked completely away from the projector beam as if he were suddenly reading an incredibly boring datapad. "I am experiencing a highly unstable connection in this sector, General. Goodbye."
The holographic feed cut instantly to black, leaving the room in a cold, dead silence.
Grievous stood frozen for a fraction of a second before a deafening, metallic roar tore from his vocal processor. He spun around and brought his massive, metal heel down directly on top of the nearest medical droid, crushing its chassis into a flat, sparking pancake of twisted steel. He smashed his fists into the console, ripping a handful of wires out of the wall and throwing them across the room. The old Count was leaving him out here to rot, testing him like some common gladiator in a Geonosian arena.
Very well. If the Separatist Alliance wouldn't aid him, he would deal with these arrogant Jedi invaders himself. They thought they could breach his sanctuary and walk away with their heads still attached to their shoulders. They had no idea what kind of horrors this fortress truly held.
Grievous paused, his mechanical ears twitching as a low, rumbling growl echoed from the deep, reinforced iron pens beneath his feet. A cruel, synthetic clicking sound started up in his throat—the closest thing he could truly manage to a genuine laugh.
Where was his pet? He had an absolute masterpiece of an idea.
…
The metallic groan of a shifting blast wall cut off my view of Master Fisto's green tentcled head, separating us in an instant. Right on cue, a section of the floor beneath Ahsoka and me gave way, dumping us down a steep, smooth chute that deposited us right into the lower bowels of Grievous's playground.
The heat hit me first. We had landed on a rusted catwalk suspended directly over a series of bubbling, molten incinerator pits. Red light bathed the chamber, reflecting off massive iron beast pens that lined the far walls. This place was a customized slaughterhouse, and Grievous was pulling out all the stops for his uninvited guests.
Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the distinct hum of Fisto's lightsaber and the heavy clanging of electrostaffs. He was dealing with a wave of Magnaguards. But right below our current vantage point, a much louder, much angrier sound echoed through the chamber.
Nahdar Vebb had found the main beast pen, or rather, it had found him.
The heavy blast gate had been raised, and charging out from the darkness was the Gor. The thing was a multi-ton nightmare—a massive, cybernetic abomination with rancor-like claws, thick plating, and a roaring maw of jagged teeth. Nahdar, completely blinding himself with that classic, arrogant Mon Calamari need to prove his worth, wasn't retreating. He didn't even try to look for high ground. He just stood his ground in the center of the lower arena, screaming a battle cry and swinging his blue lightsaber in aggressive, wide arcs.
He tried to use pure brute force against a creature designed to crush starfighters. The Gor swept a massive, armored arm, shattering Nahdar's guard and sending the young Knight flying across the stone floor. His lightsaber skittered away, and the beast reared back, ready to turn him into a thin paste.
"Ahsoka, legs! I'll handle the hardware!" I yelled, already diving through the nearest ceiling ventilation grid.
We dropped through the air like twin green streaks. Ahsoka ignited both of her lightsabers, her small frame twisting mid-air as she aimed straight for the monster's lower joints.
I didn't bother drawing my weapon just yet. The Emperor's Wrath hadn't just taught me how to swing a plasma blade; he'd taught me that the battlefield is a machine, and a true Sith always looks for the controls. As I neared the ground, I extended both hands, channeling a tight, precise burst of telekinetic force straight at the glowing cybernetic restraint collar bolted to the Gor's thick neck.
I didn't try to rip it off. I just smashed the internal wiring, crossing the main power leads and forcing the dampener matrix to overload.
The collar erupted in a shower of violent purple sparks. The Gor shrieked, its tiny, augmented eyes rolling back as the agonizing feedback drove it into a blind, unbridled frenzy. It completely forgot about Nahdar. Instead, it spun around and slammed its massive head into the wall, tearing down a whole row of Grievous's automated laser turrets and crushing three Magnaguards that had been waiting in the wings to ambush us. The entire tactical landscape flipped in a fraction of a second.
Ahsoka hit the deck seamlessly, her green blades flashing in a vicious, sweeping cross-cut that cleanly sliced through the tendons of the distracted beast's rear legs. The massive creature roared, toppling heavily onto its side into a cloud of dust and shattered stone.
Before the remaining Magnaguards could adjust to their own pet turning on them, I slid into the fray. My hands finally dropped to my belt, but I didn't pull my old initiate weapon. I pulled the heavy, rectangular hilt of the Darksaber.
The blade ignited with a sharp, flat snap, a beam of pure black plasma ringed in crackling white lightning cutting through the crimson glare of the room. I didn't use the standard, defensive flourishes of Form III that Obi-Wan kept trying to drill into my head. I slipped instantly into a brutal, highly compressed variant of Form VII. It was pure, unadulterated Juyo, stripped of any theatrical waste and infused with a calculated, dark-side efficiency.
One step forward, a heavy diagonal cleave through the first droid's staff and neck. A fluid pivot, a reverse-grip thrust straight through the chest power-core of the second. A final, snapping backhand that severed the legs of the third. Three elite, electrostaff-wielding bodyguards turned into cleanly melted, silent scrap metal in under three seconds.
"Nahdar, get up!" Ahsoka yelled, rushing to help the dazed Mon Calamari to his feet.
But Nahdar wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the massive, twitching heap of the Gor, his webbed fingers trembling as he scrambled to call his dropped lightsaber back to his hand. The absolute certainty he'd carried into the fortress had completely evaporated, replaced by the cold, hard realization that his aggression almost got him slaughtered. "I... I had it. I could have taken it."
"Yeah, sure you did, buddy," I muttered, deactivating the black blade but keeping my thumb hovering right over the activation switch.
My danger sense didn't just tingle; it practically screamed, a sudden, heavy weight dropping into the Force directly above us.
"Move!" I roared, reaching out and grabbing Nahdar by the front of his tunic, throwing all my weight into a massive, desperate Force-pull that yanked him backward across the stone floor.
A split second later, a spinning whirlwind of metal and plasma crashed down from the ceiling, landing exactly where Nahdar had been standing. General Grievous hit the ground with all four of his mechanical arms extended, four stolen lightsabers ignited in a blinding, multi-colored cage of death. The impact rattled the floorboards, the heavy cyborg growling in frustration as his ambush missed its mark.
Before he could reset his stance, I lunged forward, bringing the Darksaber up in a two-handed parry.
The black plasma clashed against his two primary blades with a deafening, static-heavy roar. The white lightning ringed around the Darksaber hissed furiously, biting into the energy fields of the stolen Jedi weapons. Grievous leaned his full, heavy weight into the block, his skull-like mask inches from mine, his yellow eyes widening as he recognized the unique, dark weapon.
"I've been waiting for this moment, boy!" Grievous snarled, his vocal synthesizers straining as he tried to push me down into the dirt. "I will repay the suffering you've inflicted on me ten-fold before I destroy you! Soon, the sword of your people will be just another trophy to my collection!"
"Maybe I'll start my own collection, with your limbs, General," I grunted, my boots skidding slightly on the slick stone as I held the lock. "It looks like you can spare a few!"
For now.
Ahsoka didn't hesitate. She vaulted over my shoulder, her green blades carving a rapid, downward arc aimed right at Grievous's lower elbows. The General hissed, a mechanical reflex forcing him to disengage from our lock and skip backward on his clawed feet to avoid getting his arms shorn off—again.
He was already heavily damaged from our previous encounters, his metal chest plating rattling with every breath, and the sheer sight of the two of us together was clearly making his internal flight-or-fight processors short-circuit.
The heavy blast doors at the far end of the chamber exploded inward, and Kit Fisto bounded into the room, his green blade active and a look of absolute, focused grimness on his face.
Grievous took one look at the reinforcing Jedi Master, looked at his dead pet, and then looked at the black blade still crackling in my hand. "Cough... hack... This is not over!" he screamed, before hitting a manual override button on his wrist console. A hidden trapdoor slid open beneath his clawed feet, and the cyborg general dropped straight into his escape hatches, disappearing into the lower levels of the fortress before any of us could stop him.
Silence fell over the molten incinerator room, broken only by the bubbling of the pits below and the heavy, ragged breathing of Nahdar Vebb. The Mon Calamari was alive, but he was trembling, staring at the floor with a wide-eyed, fundamentally shaken expression. The reality of war had just given him a very thorough, very terrifying lesson.
I let out a slow breath, smoothly sliding the Darksaber back onto my belt and adjusting my tunic to look as innocent and Padawan-like as humanly possible.
Master Fisto walked over to us, his lightsaber humming softly before he deactivated it with a quiet click. He didn't immediately praise us for the rescue, and he didn't check on his former student. Instead, his large, dark eyes drifted slowly across the floor of the arena.
He walked past the fallen Gor, stopping right in front of the three ruined Magnaguards I had dispatched. He knelt down, his webbed fingers hovering just inches above the perfectly clean, melted, ultra-precise slashes through their heavy durasteel chassis.
There were no jagged edges. No signs of the frantic, defensive parries or the wide, sweeping blocks taught in Form I, III, or even Form V. These were the marks of an absolute, cold-blooded execution. Every single cut was a lethal, hyper-aggressive strike designed to bypass a guard and end a life in a fraction of a second. It was the work of a butcher.
Fisto slowly stood up, turning his head to look back at me. The warm, easygoing smile that usually defined the nautolan Master was completely gone, replaced by a deep, silent expression of profound, chilling suspicion. He didn't say a word, but the weight of his gaze felt heavier than the blast doors.
Whoops... I thought, offering him a small, incredibly meek, totally-just-a-harmless-Padawan shrug. This might be a bit of a problem.
Good thing Jedi are so incredibly dumb, right?
Right?
...
Yeah, right.
That TOTALLY won't be a long-running gag for the foreseeable future... see you all next week. As always, if you want to read ahead, check out my Patreon.
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Centergg
Versed in the lewd.
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To QUOTE Darth Treya: Betrayal Is the way of the sith.
Emperor' Wrath: "I Want to die." reminds me about episode of South Park where old gtandpa stalked Death.
What is the chance of Plan to provide to provide Wrath with whta he wishes most to fail?
I expect Ahsoka have some unexpected wholesome conversation with Tiny Wrath while trying to hAlp him to die
Emperor' Wrath: "I Want to die." reminds me about episode of South Park where old gtandpa stalked Death.
What is the chance of Plan to provide to provide Wrath with whta he wishes most to fail?
I expect Ahsoka have some unexpected wholesome conversation with Tiny Wrath while trying to hAlp him to die