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 grandpa 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 grandpa 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
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BanzEye
Multiverse Theory Fanatic
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If the Shadows weren't shadowing the completely unsubtle Sith, I will eat my hat.
Seriously, they are so unsubtle it hurts.
Centergg
Versed in the lewd.
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I believe Shadows are stretched thin with suspicious adults like That mon kalamari Knight. Half of Shadows might themsleves be suspicious. So this couple of kids are pushed down on the list priorities. How bad a couple of padawans supervised by the OBI wan Himself and YODA can really be? Shadows have more immediate problems. And not enough sleep.
Also, if Voss (future Only One Sith) is example... And he is currently plays double agent IIRC
"Please," called Wrath. His tiny projections hovering sideways near tge holocron, "You're my only friend!"
Ahsoka felt her tears fall and furioisly viped them away. Then she pushed the holocron inside the tube that will launch it into the local star.
"It has to this way," whispered Wrath through the Force to Ahsoka as his tiny vessel was launched.
As a result Ahsoka might be suspected of being sith apprentice or become infamous for killing the Evil Holocron
Also, if Voss (future Only One Sith) is example... And he is currently plays double agent IIRC
Just imagined potetntial a final scene for the Tiny Wrath.
"Please," called Wrath. His tiny projections hovering sideways near tge holocron, "You're my only friend!"
Ahsoka felt her tears fall and furioisly viped them away. Then she pushed the holocron inside the tube that will launch it into the local star.
"It has to this way," whispered Wrath through the Force to Ahsoka as his tiny vessel was launched.
As a result Ahsoka might be suspected of being sith apprentice or become infamous for killing the Evil Holocron
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Chapter 52: Sky Fall
New
Mad King Kevin
Getting sticky.
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Chapter 52: Sky Fall
The high, vaulted ceilings of the Jedi Temple corridors usually gave me a sense of peaceful, grand architectural scale, but today they just felt like an oversized surveillance theater. I adjusted the strap of my standard-issue canvas satchel, shifting a heavy stack of ancient star-charts I had just borrowed from the archives. I was trying very hard to walk at a casual, perfectly unbothered pace, but my skin was practically prickling under my tunic.
He was behind me again.
I didn't even need the Force to tell me. I could hear the faint, distinct scrape of leather boots against the polished stone tiles, always exactly twelve paces back, stopping whenever I stopped. I took a sharp right turn past a towering bust of some long-dead Master, paused for a fraction of a second, and glanced backward through the reflection of a polished bronze column.
Sure enough, a thick, green head-tentacle hastily retreated behind a massive marble pillar.
Master Kit Fisto was actively, terribly stealth-stalking me. It had been going on since we got back from Vassek 3. The man had completely misplaced his usual easygoing, surfer-dude charm, replacing it with a grim, unblinking glare that felt entirely too personal. He was standing there in the shadows, his massive dark eyes burning a hole through my shoulder blades, completely devoid of his trademark smile.
He knew. He didn't have proof, but he knew those Magnaguards hadn't been dismantled by a standard Jedi defensive form. It was the work of a ruthless monster, and he was tracking me down like a hound that had caught the scent of a foreign predator in the backyard.
He was the kriffing Doakes to my Dexter.
I let out a slow, silent sigh, shifting the heavy satchel to my other shoulder. This was getting ridiculous. If I couldn't even walk to the archives without a Council member trying to look into my soul, running a secret Sith empire from my bedroom was going to become mathematically impossible. I needed to shake him, or better yet, find a way to make him look like a crazy person.
I rounded another corner, preparing to double back and confront him with my best, most obnoxious wide-eyed Padawan routine, when the air in front of me suddenly shifted.
A tiny, green, deeply entrenched presence materialized right out of the corridor fog. Grand Master Yoda was waddling slow and steady toward us, leaning heavily on his gimer stick, his large ears twitching as he took in the sudden spike of tension radiating through the hallway.
Before I could even open my mouth to greet him, Fisto stepped out from behind his pillar, catching himself a little too late. He was still locked into a fierce, aggressive stance, his hand practically hovering over his lightsaber hilt as he stared daggers at my head.
Yoda stopped, his stick clicking sharply against the tile. He looked at me, then slowly turned his wrinkled head to look up at Fisto, his large eyes narrowing into tiny, highly judgmental slits.
The silence stretched for three agonizing seconds.
"Master Yoda," Fisto said, his deep voice carrying a tense, rigid edge as he tried to flatten his expression into something resembling professional calm. "I was merely... inspecting the eastern corridors."
"Inspecting the corridors, you were? Or inspecting my Padawan, were you, Master Fisto?" Yoda rumbled, his voice dripping with a gentle but highly pointed disapproval. He tapped his stick twice, shaking his head. "Lurking in the shadows, I find you. Heavy, your presence is. Like a storm cloud over Mount Tamabor."
"I am simply exercising caution, Master," Fisto fired back, his webbed fingers clenching into a fist at his side as he refused to break eye contact with me. "The galaxy is changing. The threats we face are adapting, becoming more deceptive. We must be certain of what walks among us."
I immediately dropped my shoulders, rounded my eyes, and let out a soft, perfectly calibrated breath of nervous confusion. I looked at Yoda, then looked back at Fisto with a masterclass performance of sheer, vulnerable innocence. "Did I do something wrong, Master Fisto? If my archive reports were late, I can rewrite them. I didn't mean to cause any trouble."
Fisto's jaw tightened so hard I heard his teeth click. "Your reports are flawless, Padawan Kryze. Almost too flawless. Your combat assessments from Vassek were... remarkably detailed."
"Grateful for his detail, we should be," Yoda interrupted, his pointed ears flattening against his head as he stepped squarely between us, shielding me from Fisto's gaze. "Dark, the war has made your sight, Kit. See enemies in our own halls, you do. A dangerous path, suspicion is. To the dark side, it leads."
"Master, with all due respect, you didn't see the arena," Fisto pressed, taking a step forward, his voice dropping into a fierce whisper. "The precision. The efficiency. It wasn't the work of a child."
"A child, he is not. My Padawan, he is," Yoda countered, his voice rising with a rare, commanding weight that made the air itself feel heavier. "Taught him myself, I have. Strong in the Force, Ben is, but wild. To mistake his survival instinct for darkness, a mistake it is. Clouded, your judgment has become by the losses we suffer."
I stood in the background, carefully adjusting my satchel while internally cheering. Yoda was doing my job for me, completely misinterpreting Fisto's very accurate suspicion as standard wartime PTSD. It was beautiful.
"I only wish to protect the Order," Fisto said quietly, though his eyes were still tracking the slight movement of my hands.
"Then protect it by mastering yourself," Yoda said, his tone softening into a classic, lecturing drone. "Let go of your prejudices, you must. To heal your perspective, a change of scenery, you require. Yes."
Fisto blinked, his head-tentacles twitching slightly in confusion. "A change of scenery, Master?"
"Rezvous with General Secura, we must," Yoda announced, tapping his stick with an air of absolute finality. "An escort mission to a vital sector, the Council has ordered. Travel together, we shall. Myself, Padawan Kryze, and you, Master Fisto. Observe the galaxy together, we will. See the light in others, perhaps you will learn again."
My internal cheering instantly hit a brick wall. I froze, my innocent smile faltering for a fraction of a second before I forced it back into place. Travel together? With Fisto and Yoda?
"Master Yoda," I chimed in, trying to keep my voice smooth and compliant. "Are you sure that's wise? Master Obi-Wan mentioned he might need me for some diplomatic paperwork regarding Mandalore's clone citizenship initiative. I wouldn't want to neglect my duties here."
"Worry about paperwork, you should not," Yoda chuckled, a tiny, mischievous glint in his eye as he looked back at me. "Learn more on the fringes, you will. And a fresh perspective, Master Fisto requires. A unified front, we must show."
Fisto let out a slow, controlled breath, bowing his head in a stiff, rigid gesture of obedience. "If that is the will of the Council, I comply."
"Good, it is," Yoda rumbled, already turning his small frame around to waddle back down the corridor. "Prepare your gear, you both should. Leave at dawn, our transport does. A very enlightening trip, I foresee this being."
Fisto didn't move immediately. He waited until Yoda was a few paces ahead before he leaned in slightly, his dark eyes locking onto mine one last time. There was no warmth left in his presence, just a cold, stubborn determination.
"I'll be watching you, Kryze," Fisto murmured, his voice low enough that it didn't carry down the hall.
"I look forward to the learning experience, Master," I replied, flashing him an incredibly sweet, totally harmless smile.
He turned on his heel and strode away, his cloak billowing behind him. I watched him go, my hand instinctively dropping to touch the hidden seam of my belt where the Darksaber usually rested when I wasn't in public.
This was going to be an incredibly long trip. Having a hyper-suspicious Jedi Master and the literal Grand Master of the Order breathing down my neck was going to make checking in on Darth Nox and my secret fleet an absolute nightmare. If I made one wrong move, the whole house of cards was going to come crashing down.
I turned and followed Yoda, my boots clicking rhythmically against the stone. Good thing Jedi are so incredibly blind, I thought, trying to reassure myself as we approached the hangar bays. But kriff, I really need to do something about Kit Fisto.
…
The glowing blue topography of the Outer Rim sector flickered across the bridge holotable, illuminating the sharp features of General Aayla Secura as she outlined the defensive perimeter. Ahsoka Tano shifted her weight from one foot to the other, leaning her hip against the console. For once, she was actually enjoying a tactical briefing.
The main reason for her excellent mood was standing right across from her: Anakin Skywalker was entirely, beautifully distracted. He was leaning over the table, gesturing toward a secondary defensive line with his mechanical hand while offering an incredibly intense, slightly showing-off critique of the Separatist supply lines.
With her Master entirely occupied, Ahsoka was free to tilt her head and trade a series of deeply exasperated, highly communicative looks with Ben Kryze.
Ben was standing a few feet down from her, looking like the picture-perfect image of a polite, attentive Padawan, but his eyes were dancing with absolute mischief. He caught her gaze, giving a tiny, imperceptible roll of his eyes toward Anakin that screamed here he goes again. Ahsoka had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting out loud. It was a flawless system of silent communication they had perfected over a year of ridiculous missions.
The fun faded fast when she noticed the third party at the table.
Standing directly opposite Ben was Master Kit Fisto. The Nautolan wasn't looking at the holographic map. He wasn't looking at Aayla, and he definitely wasn't looking at Anakin. He was squinting his large, dark eyes into tiny, razor-sharp slits, staring at the side of Ben's head with a look of pure, unadulterated suspicion. It was the exact same hawk-like glare he had been sporting since they left Vassek. Fisto's presence in the Force wasn't its usual warm, rolling tide; it felt like a cold, stagnant puddle of intense scrutiny.
Ahsoka nudged Ben's boot with her own beneath the rim of the table, giving him a sharp, warning tilt of her montrals. He's doing the thing again, her expression said.
Ben didn't even blink, merely shifting his posture slightly to offer Fisto his most innocent, totally-not-a-secret-Sith profile. Idiot.
"Our primary concern remains the Quell sector," Aayla said, her gentle Rylothian accent drawing Anakin's gaze back to the center map. "If the droid forces secure the hyperlanes here, our supply lines to the mid-rim will be completely severed."
"They won't get the chance," Anakin said, his voice brimming with that classic, reckless confidence that usually meant a lot of things were about to blow up. "We'll drop the 501st right on top of their staging ground before they can even unpack their landing craft. Right, Snips?"
"As long as you don't crash our ship into the staging ground first, Master," Ahsoka replied smoothly, offering him a sharp, wicked grin.
Anakin let out a short, scoffing laugh, adjusting his glove. "Hey, that was one time, and the landing gear was technically sabotaged. Besides, a good landing is any landing you can walk away from."
"A lesson you should teach your mechanical arm, perhaps," Ben murmured, his voice laced with a perfectly respectful, dry wit that made Aayla hide a sudden smile behind her hand.
Before Anakin could mount a defense, the entire bridge erupted into a frantic chorus of blaring crimson alarms. The blue tactical map on the holotable vanished, replaced by a chaotic nest of flashing red hostile indicators.
"General! Multiple hyperspace signatures dropping directly out of the sun's glare!" a clone officer shouted from the lower crew pit, his fingers flying across his console. "It's a Separatist fleet! Three Munificent-class frigates and a dreadnought, right on top of us!"
The Venator-class Star Destroyer violently shuddered as the first barrage of heavy turbolaser fire slammed into their deflector shields. The deck buckled beneath Ahsoka's boots, sending a shower of loose datapads clattering across the floor.
"Shields down to sixty percent!" another voice yelled through the rising smoke. "They caught us with our main batteries cold!"
"Return fire! Get the starfighters into the air immediately!" Aayla commanded, her blue skin reflecting the harsh, pulsing emergency lights as she gripped the edge of the holotable.
Anakin's lightsaber was out and ignited in a fraction of a second, the brilliant blue blade humming to life as he spun toward the viewport. "They couldn't have known we were here. This was a coordinated trap."
Ahsoka reached for her own hilts, her green blades snapping into existence as a massive explosion rocked the starboard side of the bridge. The vacuum of space howled against the emergency blast shutters as they slammed shut over a ruptured window pane. Sparks cascaded from the ceiling grids like a waterfall of burning metal.
"We are losing the main stabilizers!" Kit Fisto roared over the din, his green blade active as he deflected a stray bolt from a short-circuiting console. "Master Yoda is in the secondary command center trying to stabilize the reactors, but the hull is buckling!"
"We need to evacuate the bridge!" Aayla shouted, gesturing toward the rear turbolifts. "Bly, get the crew to the escape shuttles!"
Before the clones could even move, a terrifying, screeching whistle echoed through the structural beams of the ship. A heavy proton torpedo from the Separatist dreadnought had bypassed the failing shields, punching directly into the bridge's upper superstructure.
"Get down!" Anakin screamed.
Ahsoka didn't even have time to breathe before her Master threw himself directly over her and a cluster of clone technicians. The world exploded into a deafening, white-hot flash of fire and tearing metal. The concussive wave slammed Ahsoka hard against the deck, the wind rushing out of her lungs in a painful gasp as black smoke choked the air.
As the ringing in her ears began to fade, Ahsoka scrambled to her knees, coughing violently through the thick, acrid haze. "Master! Anakin!"
Anakin was lying on his side a few feet away, his tunic torn to shreds and his face coated in gray ash. A massive piece of jagged, twisted durasteel shrapnel was embedded deeply into his right side, blood rapidly soaking through his dark robes. He let out a low, agonizing groan, his fingers clutching weakly at the deck as his eyes rolled back.
"Anakin!" Ahsoka cried, rushing to his side, her hands trembling as she hovered over the wound.
"He's alive, but his lung is collapsing," Ben said, appearing out of the smoke like a ghost. He knelt down beside them, his hands moving with a terrifying, absolute calm as he pressed two fingers against Anakin's neck to check his pulse. "We need to move him right now. This ship has less than four minutes before the main reactor goes."
Kit Fisto emerged from the debris, hauling a dazed clone trooper by the armor plating. His dark eyes flicked from the bleeding Anakin straight to Ben, his suspicion flaring even in the middle of a literal war zone. "Can he walk?"
"Does he look like he can walk, Master Fisto?" Ahsoka snapped, her usual respect completely dissolving under the sheer panic of seeing her Master broken.
"We can carry him," Ben said, his voice entirely steady as he hooked his arms under Anakin's shoulders. "Ahsoka, take his legs. Master Fisto, we need a clear path to the secondary hangar. The main lifts are completely dead."
"Follow me," Fisto ordered, his green blade carving open a jammed emergency door with a shower of sparks. "Aayla and Yoda are leading the main crew to the starboard pods. We take the emergency shuttle!"
The trek through the dying Star Destroyer was a waking nightmare. The corridors were tilting at a sickening angle, the floorboards groaning under the immense gravitational pull of the nearby planet Maridun. Ahsoka strained under Anakin's dead weight, her muscles burning as she and Ben carried him through collapsing corridors and escaping steam vents. Every time she looked up, Fisto was leading the way, but his head was constantly turning backward, his sharp gaze monitoring Ben's every movement, every footstep, like he expected the Padawan to drop Anakin into a pit.
They burst into the secondary hangar just as a massive internal explosion ripped through the deck below them. The emergency shuttle was sitting on the pad, its repulsors already whining as a handful of clone pilots tried to keep the systems online.
"Get him inside! Quick!" Ahsoka yelled, helping Ben guide Anakin's limp body onto the floor of the shuttle's small passenger compartment.
Commander Bly ran toward them from the far side of the hangar, his armor scorched black. "General Secura and Master Yoda's pods have launched! You need to go, sir! The hyperdrive on this shuttle is slaved to the main ship's failing matrix! If the Venator goes, it's going to trigger a blind jump!"
"Get in, Bly!" Fisto shouted, leaping into the cockpit.
"No time, sir! Go!" Bly screamed, hitting the manual override panel on the hangar wall to blow the magnetic shields.
The shuttle shot out of the exploding hangar bay like a stone from a sling, falling directly into the chaotic crossfire of the Separatist fleet. Ahsoka threw herself into the co-pilot seat next to Fisto, her fingers flying across the console as three vulture droids locked onto their tail.
"Shields are fluctuating!" Ahsoka reported, her voice tight. "Master Fisto, we can't shake them! They're locking missiles!"
Behind them, Ben was pressed against the floor, holding a steady, heavy hand against Anakin's chest, using a burst of Force energy to keep his lungs from collapsing entirely. At this rate, her master was going to need a respirator just to get around.
Ben looked up, his jaw set. "The hyperdrive is priming itself! It's drawing power from the Venator's exploding core!"
"I can't override the navigation computer!" Fisto yelled, his webbed hands wrestling with the shuddering steering yoke. "The coordinates are completely blank! We are jumping blind!"
A massive turbolaser blast clipped the shuttle's rear wing, sending the small vessel into a violent, sickening spin. The stars outside the viewport suddenly stretched into long, blinding lines of white light.
"Hold on!" Ahsoka screamed.
With a deafening, metallic shriek that shook the shuttle to its very rivets, the hyperdrive engaged prematurely. The reality of real space vanished, replaced by the spinning, turbulent blue vortex of an uncontrolled, catastrophic jump into the unknown.
…
Dropping out of hyperspace dead in the water was high on my list of ways I didn't want to die today. The spinning blue vortex of the hyperlane didn't just fade; it shattered like cheap glass, throwing the shuttle headfirst into the upper atmosphere of a completely random planet. The friction alone started cooking the hull, turning the viewports into a blinding sheet of orange fire.
"Controls are entirely unresponsive!" Master Fisto shouted over the screaming metal, his webbed hands tearing at the steering yoke as sparks sprayed across his chest. "The inertial dampeners are gone!"
"We're coming in too hot!" Ahsoka braced her boots against the base of the co-pilot seat, her teeth gritted as the ship violently pitched to the left. "The starboard thruster is completely melted!"
If we hit the ground at this speed, we weren't just going to crash; we were going to turn into a thin layer of organic paste on the floorboards. I scrambled out of the passenger bay, leaving Anakin's limp form for a second, and wedged myself between the two front seats. I didn't touch the physical controls.
Instead, I closed my eyes and reached out into the screaming vacuum of the Force, pulling on the deep, hidden reserves I usually kept locked away under lock and key. I grabbed the descending metal nose of the shuttle with a massive, invisible telekinetic grip, forcing the air currents beneath the wings to compress and lift. I could feel the structural beams groaning against my ribs, the sheer friction threatening to snap my concentration, but I pushed harder, subtly manipulating the manual flaps to drag against the wind.
"The nose is lifting," Fisto muttered, his dark eyes widening slightly as he felt the sudden, unnatural resistance in the steering column. He cast a sharp, incredibly piercing sideways glance straight at me. "How are you doing that, Padawan?"
"Just praying really hard, Master!" I yelled back, sweating through my tunic as I kept the telekinetic cushion underneath us perfectly balanced. "And leaning to the left!"
The ground rushed up to meet us in a violent blur of endless, golden-yellow grass. The belly of the shuttle clipped the crest of a massive hill, shearing off the remaining landing gear with a deafening screech that tore through my ears. We skidded through the dense savanna, digging a massive trench into the earth as the viewport shattered inward, showering us in a storm of dirt and shredded stalks. The ship spun three times, slammed into a massive seed-pod boulder, and finally came to a grinding, groaning halt.
For a long minute, the only sound was the ticking of a dying cooling manifold and the heavy, ragged breathing of four people who probably should have been dead.
I let go of the Force, coughing violently as a thick, gray cloud of electrical smoke filled the cockpit. I wiped a layer of grime from my forehead, checking my limbs to make sure everything was still attached. "Everyone still alive?"
"I think so," Ahsoka groaned, shaking a handful of broken safety glass out of her montrals. She didn't waste another second, immediately unbuckling her harness and dropping to her knees in the aisle. "Anakin! Master, can you hear me?"
Anakin didn't answer. He was slumped against the bulkhead where we had secured him, his skin deathly pale and burning up with a terrifying, sudden fever. The makeshift bandages around his torso were completely soaked through with fresh, crimson blood, and his breathing sounded like a wet, shallow rattle.
So… probably not doing great.
"The medical kits," Fisto ordered, kicking open the shattered cockpit door and stepping over the debris. He looked entirely unfazed by the crash, though his left hand was resting entirely too close to his lightsaber hilt as his eyes swept over me. "Find them, Kryze. Now."
I scrambled over to the emergency lockers, tearing off the dented metal panel with a hard pull. My heart sank the moment I looked inside. "The primary canisters ruptured during entry, Master. The bacta gel is completely fried, and the emergency hypos are melted into the casing."
"Kriff!" Ahsoka slammed her fist against the floor, her blue and white striped montrals twitching with pure panic. "We can't just sit here and watch him bleed out! There has to be something we can use!"
"Calm yourself, Padawan," Fisto said, his deep voice carrying a hard, rigid command that left zero room for argument. He stepped toward the open hatch, peering out into the vast, swaying fields of high grass. "We are on an uncharted world. Our communications are completely dead, and our supplies are gone. We must establish a perimeter before we do anything else."
"A perimeter won't save his life!" Ahsoka fired back, her voice cracking as she held a clean cloth against Anakin's bleeding side.
I leaned against the broken locker, my mind racing at a million miles an hour. I knew exactly where we were. The golden grass, the massive seed-pod trees, the absolute lack of Republic or Separatist presence—this was Maridun. And more importantly, I knew that a village of Lurmen was settled somewhere in the valley nearby. Wag Too and his father had the exact herbal medicine required to stop Anakin's fever and heal his punctured lung.
The problem wasn't finding them. The problem was explaining how a teenage Jedi Padawan from Mandalore suddenly possessed a complete map of an uncharted world's indigenous medical practices.
I couldn't exactly look Kit Fisto in the eye and say, "Hey, don't worry, I'm a self-insert from the future, in a galaxy, far, far away, who watched this specific episode on a screen." Fisto was already looking at me like I was a disguised Sith assassin waiting for the right moment to strike. If I suddenly pulled a perfect, prophetic mapping layout out of my sleeve, he'd probably draw his green blade and decapitate me on the spot.
Plus, I had already overused the classic "I saw it in a Force vision" card when we rescued Plo Koon and when I dealt with the Malevolence. If I used it again, it was going to sound incredibly suspicious, even to Ahsoka. I really needed to work on my standard, everyday lying skills.
"Master Fisto," I said, stepping forward while keeping my hands perfectly visible and relaxed. "When we were coming down, I noticed a unique migration pattern in the local bird-creatures through the upper atmosphere. They were all heading toward a specific cluster of large seed-pod trees in the south valley."
Fisto slowly turned his head, his large, unblinking dark eyes fixing onto mine with the intensity of a heavy turbolaser. "And why does a flock of birds concern us right now, Padawan?"
"Because birds usually gather near fresh water and established vegetation," I explained, forcing a bright, entirely earnest smile onto my face. "And where there's water in a valley like this, there's usually a higher chance of finding local life. Or at least some kind of root that can help bring down a fever. I read a lot about Outer Rim botany in the Temple archives before we left."
Fisto let out a low, rumbling hum in his throat, a sound that radiated pure, unadulterated skepticism. "A remarkable memory you have, Kryze. To recall specific Outer Rim botanical charts during a catastrophic crash landing."
"I just like plants, sir," I said, offering a helpless, innocent shrug.
"We don't have time to argue about biology!" Ahsoka shouted, looking back at us with tears welling in her eyes. "Ben is right. We need to look for water or anyone who can help us. I'll stay here with Anakin while you two search."
"No," Fisto said firmly, his hand dropping away from his hilt but his posture remaining incredibly tense. "We do not separate on an unknown world. The clone pilots didn't survive the impact, and we cannot leave the ship entirely unguarded. Padawan Tano, you will stay here and monitor Skywalker's vitals. Kryze and I will scout the southern valley to verify his... botanical theory."
I internally groaned. Spending a long, romantic walk through the tall grass with the one Jedi Master who wanted to put me in a cage sounded like absolute torture. But if it got us to the Lurmen before Anakin kicked the bucket, I didn't have a choice.
"I'll grab a couple of empty canteens," I said, keeping my tone perfectly light.
"Do that," Fisto replied, his voice dropping into a low, ominous purr as he stepped out into the bright sunlight of Maridun. "And move quickly. Let us see exactly what the Force reveals to you out there."
…
The golden-yellow stalks of the Maridun savanna scraped against my shins as we pressed deeper into the valley. Master Fisto walked half a pace behind me, his green hand resting loosely near his hip, keeping a heavy, suffocating blanket of scrutiny locked onto my presence in the Force. The silence between us was so thick you could have cut it with a vibroblade, but I kept my eyes scanning the horizon, playing the part of a dutiful, slightly clueless Padawan who just really, really liked looking at alien grass.
Before Fisto could start another round of passive-aggressive interrogation, a sudden ripple in the Force made us both halt. The tall grass ahead parted, and a very welcome, very wrinkly green face appeared through the stalks.
"Ah. Found you, we have," Yoda rumbled, leaning on his gimer stick as he stepped into the small clearing.
Behind him emerged General Aayla Secura, Commander Bly, and a handful of clone troopers from the 327th Star Corps. Their armor was heavily scorched, and Bly was carrying a dented tactical scanner, but they were remarkably intact. The relief that washed over me was entirely genuine—until I realized having more Jedi around just meant more people to watch me lie.
"Master Yoda! General Secura!" I said, letting out a heavy, perfectly acted sigh of relief. "You survived the atmospheric entry. We crashed just over the ridge. General Skywalker is in really bad shape."
"Aware of Skywalker's condition, we are," Yoda said, nodding gravely as a clone medic from Bly's squad immediately stepped forward, carrying a battered emergency field kit. "Sensed his pain, we did. Crash-landed nearby, our pod did. Found a settlement, we had, but... complicated, the situation is."
Aayla Secura sighed, crossing her arms as she looked over at Fisto. "We located a village of colonists down in the lower valley. A species called the Lurmen. They are extreme pacifists, Kit. The moment they saw Commander Bly and the men in armor, they completely shut down. They refused to offer us shelter, resources, or medical aid. They believe even looking upon soldiers compromises their values."
Fisto's brow furrowed, his dark eyes shifting smoothly from Aayla back to the top of my head. "An uncharted Outer Rim world, and the locals are hyper-pacifists who fear the military. A bitter irony."
"They have the exact medicinal roots needed to break a hemorrhagic fever," the clone medic checked in, tapping his wrist console. "I can patch the General's lung and stabilize his chest cavity with what I have in this kit, but without those local herbs, the infection will take him before nightfall. We need to get him into that village."
"But look at us, they will not, if war we bring to their doorstep," Yoda murmured, his large ears drooping slightly. "A delicate hand, this requires. An approach of peace, not of strength."
I knew this was my cue. I shifted my canvas archivist satchel, taking a soft step forward and looking up at the three Jedi Masters with a face full of wide-eyed, earnest determination. "Let me go. Me, Ahsoka, and the Masters. If we leave Commander Bly and the squad back at our shuttle to guard General Skywalker and start repairs, the Lurmen won't see an invading army. They'll just see... well, a couple of monks and a pair of kids who need help."
Fisto's eyes narrowed into absolute pinpricks. I could feel his internal gears grinding through the Force, desperately trying to figure out how a Padawan who had surgically slaughtered a squad of Magnaguards a week ago was suddenly volunteering to play a cuddly diplomat. "You seem remarkably eager to dictate the sociological strategy of this mission, Padawan Kryze."
"I just don't want General Skywalker to die, Master," I said, dropping my voice into a soft, slightly trembling tone that would have made Satine proud. "And... if the locals are afraid of soldiers, sending people who look harmless is just logical, right?"
Yoda tapped his stick against Fisto's boot, giving a low chuckle. "Listen to the boy, you should, Kit. Clear, his mind is. Clouded by suspicion, yours remains. Go to the shuttle, Bly shall, to treat Skywalker. To the village, we will walk. As travelers, not warriors."
Fisto closed his eyes for a brief second, his webbed fingers twitching, but he bowed his head. "As you wish, Master Yoda."
…
An hour later, the tall seed-pod huts of the Lurmen village came into view, nestled beautifully in the center of a wide, fertile basin. Ahsoka had joined us after handing Anakin over to the clone medic's temporary care, and she was currently walking next to me, her arms crossed and her montrals twitching with deep anxiety over her Master.
As we approached the perimeter, a dozen small, lemur-like creatures rolled toward us in tight, agile spheres, unfurling seamlessly into a defensive line. They were holding simple wooden staves, their large, golden eyes wide with profound fear and hostility. Standing at the front was Wag Too, his fur bristling as he pointed a carved stick toward Yoda and Aayla.
"We told you to leave!" Wag Too shouted, his voice high-pitched but filled with a desperate, trembling bravery. "We want no part in your galaxy's bloodshed! Your violent ways bring only death to Maridun!"
Ahsoka tensed, her hand instinctively twitching toward her hip where her lightsabers hung under her cloak. Fisto stood like a statue, his entire presence radiating a cold, rigid defensive aura that practically screamed try it.
I knew if anyone drew a weapon, Anakin was a dead man. And since he hasn't murdered that many children, yet, that was probably a bad thing. Right? Right. Definitely.
It was time to flip the switch.
I stepped directly in front of Fisto, completely breaking the rigid Jedi formation. I let my posture collapse, rounding my shoulders, lowering my center of gravity, and letting my arms hang loosely at my sides. I wiped every trace of Darth Sol, the First Order, and the Katana fleet entirely out of my mind, replacing them with the memory of being a tiny, defenseless crèche-ling at the Temple. I smiled softly, my eyes softening as I looked directly at Wag Too.
"Please, we aren't here to fight you," I said, my voice dropping an entire octave into a gentle, entirely non-threatening melody. I slowly held out my hands, palms up, showing them entirely empty. "We don't want any bloodshed. Our friend is hurt. He's really, really sick, and we're just scared for him."
Ahsoka's jaw literally dropped. She stared at the side of my face with a look of utter, deep bewilderment, her eyes darting between my sweet, gentle expression and the sky like she expected a practical joke to fall out of the clouds.
Wag Too blinked, his large golden eyes shifting from Fisto's stern, terrifying face down to mine. His ears twitched, the fur on his shoulders flattening just a fraction as he looked at my open palms. "You... you travel with the ones who bring the armored killers."
"They aren't killers, I promise," I murmured, taking one slow, deliberate step forward, keeping my movements perfectly fluid. "They're just trying to keep us safe. But we left them far away from here because we didn't want to frighten you. We heard your people are incredibly wise and peaceful. We just want to learn from you. If you have anything to help our friend's fever, please. We'll do whatever you ask."
Behind me, the Force practically curdled.
Master Kit Fisto was standing in the background, radiating pure, concentrated "I know what you did last summer" energy so loudly it was a miracle the Lurmen couldn't hear it. The sheer, unadulterated venom of his suspicion was pulsing through the ether like a beacon. He was staring at the back of my head with an expression that could have melted durasteel, internally screaming at the absolute absurdity of the theater I was putting on.
I had to actively suppress a massive surge of dark-side amusement, gripping my own mental shields with everything I had to stop myself from turning around and chucking a heavy seed-pod rock straight at his nose.
"You speak with kindness, young one," Wag Too said slowly, lowering his wooden staff by a few inches as he looked at my soft smile. "Unlike the tall ones, your spirit does not feel heavy with the weight of war."
"Thank you," I said, bowing my head in a deep, perfectly humble Mandalorian-style gesture of respect that I disguised as a simple monastic nod. "My name is Ben. We are entirely at your mercy."
Ahsoka let out a tiny, choked sound in the back of her throat, quickly turning it into a cough as she tried to process the fact that I had just entirely charmed a hostile alien species using nothing but pure, unadulterated fraud.
Wag Too turned toward the center of the village, gesturing for us to follow. "Come. If your friend is dying, my father must decide his fate. But leave your violent thoughts at our border."
"Of course," I said sweetly, stepping forward to walk beside him while trading a quick, wholesome thought about herbal roots.
As I walked past Fisto, I didn't look at him, but I let a tiny, microscopic smirk slip across the side of my face that only he could see. The Nautolan Master's jaw was set so tight it looked ready to fracture. Keep watching, squid-head, I thought, my innocent smile firmly back in place. You're going to love the rest of this show.
…
The heavy, sweet scent of crushed medicinal roots filled the shaded interior of the seed-pod hut. Ahsoka leaned against a wooden structural beam, watching Ben meticulously grind a pile of blue leaves into a smooth paste. The contrast between his current, hyper-focused herbalist routine and the terrifyingly smooth diplomat performance he had just put on outside was almost too much to handle.
"You know, it's actually a little disturbing how quickly you can turn that on," Ahsoka murmured, a wicked, playful smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "The soft voice, the big innocent eyes... I almost expected you to ask Wag Too if he had any cookies."
Ben didn't look up from his stone mortar, but his shoulders shook with a silent, amused chuckle. "It's called diplomacy, Snips. Some of us actually read the Temple archives instead of just practicing how to cut things in half with lasers."
"Hey, my diplomacy skills are excellent," Ahsoka shot back, stepping closer and giving his shoulder a light, teasing shove. She tilted her head, her bright blue eyes dancing with mischief. "I just prefer an approach that doesn't involve looking like a lost, adorable tooka-kitten. Although, I have to admit, the gentle monk act? Surprisingly charming. If the whole secret Sith Lord thing doesn't work out, you definitely have a future in local theater."
Ben finally paused, setting down the stone pestle. He turned his head, his green eyes locked onto hers with a lazy, effortless confidence that made her chest tighten just a fraction. He leaned back against the workstation, a slow, roguish grin spreading across his face. "Oh, really? So you found it charming, did you? Good to know my talents aren't completely wasted on you."
Ahsoka felt a sudden, warmth creep up her montrals. She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms to hide the slight flutter in her stomach. "Don't flatter yourself. I said the act was charming. You're still an obnoxious menace who relies entirely too much on his hair to look respectable."
"My hair is a tactical asset," Ben replied smoothly, his tone dropping into a playful, lower register as he stepped a fraction closer, his eyes locked onto hers. "It distracts the enemy. And apparently, it keeps my favorite Togruta paying attention."
Ahsoka opened her mouth to deliver a sharp, biting comeback, but the playful bubble they had built was instantly shattered.
A sudden, violent roar shook the very foundation of the valley. The stone mortar rattled against the wooden table, and the quiet, rhythmic sound of the wind rustling through the high grasslands was completely erased by a deafening mechanical shriek. Ahsoka's playful expression vanished, her hands dropping immediately to the twin lightsaber hilts at her waist as she and Ben exchanged a sudden, dead-serious look.
They burst out of the hut, ducking low behind a thick cluster of seed-pod stalks alongside Yoda, Aayla, and a deeply frowning Kit Fisto. A massive, data-paneled Separatist C-9979 landing craft tore through the pristine blue sky, its heavy repulsors kicking up a blinding hurricane of dust and shredded golden grass as it descended directly into the center of the Lurmen basin.
The massive front ramp hissed open, hitting the dirt with a heavy thud that made the surrounding village huts rattle.
A squad of standard B1 battle droids marched out in rigid, mechanical unison, forming a harsh perimeter around the village square. Following quickly behind them was a cartoonishly plump, pompous Neimoidian wearing an oversized, ornate chest piece and a towering goggle-apparatus over his cap. General Lok Durd strutted down the ramp, dusting off his heavy silken sleeves with a look of supreme, arrogant satisfaction.
Tee Watt Kaa stepped forward from the crowd of frightened Lurmen, his fragile, lemur-like frame trembling but defiant as he raised his wooden staff. "Who are you? We are a peaceful people! We have no part in your republic or your rebellion!"
"I am General Lok Durd," the Neimoidian announced, his nasal voice dripping with a condescending sneer as he looked down at the elder. "And you are now under the protection of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Please, do not resist. It would be... highly inconvenient for my scheduling."
"We do not want your protection!" Tee Watt Kaa countered fiercely. "We only wish to be left alone!"
"Oh, I'm afraid that is no longer an option," Lok Durd chuckled, turning back to the landing craft and snapping his thick fingers. "You see, the Separatist Alliance requires a live demonstration for our latest tactical advancement. Bring it forward!"
From the dark depths of the hangar bay, a monstrous, tracked tank rolled into the sunlight. It featured a terrifying, oversized cannon assembly cradled by a strange, glowing energy matrix that hummed with volatile power.
"Behold, the pinnacle of Separatist ingenuity!" Lok Durd's voice echoed across the quiet valley as he gestured grandly toward the weapon. "The Defoliator! A weapon designed to incinerate all organic life—leaves, roots, flesh—while leaving our expensive droid armies completely untouched. And this delightfully unprotected little valley will serve as our perfect testing ground. I would strongly reconsider accepting our protection."
Ahsoka gripped her hilts tighter, her breath catching in her throat as she peered through the brush. The stakes were costly, far higher than anything they had prepared for. If that tank fired, every single Lurmen in the village would be turned to ash in a matter of seconds.
Beside her, Master Yoda and General Secura remained perfectly still, their expressions grim but deeply controlled. Down in the square, Tee Watt Kaa shook with a mix of fear and absolute, stubborn conviction as he held his ground against the droids.
"We will not join you! We will not fight you, nor will we flee!" Tee Watt Kaa declared, his high-pitched voice carrying across the clearing. "If it is our fate to be destroyed by your war, then we will die in peace. But we will not compromise our ideals by meeting your violence with violence!"
Ahsoka's jaw tightened. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Dying in peace was a nice sentiment, but it wouldn't stop a turbolaser blast from erasing their entire culture. She shifted her gaze slightly, looking over at the two Masters, expecting them to start drawing up an emergency battle plan. Instead, she caught sight of Ben.
Ben was still kneeling in the dirt near the edge of the brush, playing the part of the helpless, frightened Padawan for any droids that might look his way. But from this angle, Ahsoka could see his face perfectly clear.
The innocent, sweet-tempered boy who had just been flirting with her inside the hut was entirely gone. In his place was a cold, terrifying mask of absolute, ruthless calculation. His eyes had narrowed into sharp, lethal pinpricks, devoid of any fear, panic, or Jedi anxiety. He wasn't looking at the massive Separatist army like a teenager facing a slaughter. He was looking at the Defoliator tank like a mechanic looking at a poorly designed toy he was about to violently disassemble piece by piece. For a single, fleeting second, the terrifying shadow of Darth Sol leaked through his perfect defenses, a freezing wave of pure, dark intent that made Ahsoka's skin prickle.
She swallowed hard, a sudden chill running down her spine. Master Fisto was still standing a few paces back, his dark eyes locked entirely on the side of Ben's head, his presence practically humming with a silent, intense I told you so.
Ben's fingers twitched against his robes, his gaze tracking the fuel lines running along the base of the tank's main generator. The peaceful vibe of Maridun was officially dead, and as Ahsoka watched her friend stare down the Separatist army, she realized the droids had absolutely no idea what they had just parked in front of.
...
I still don't love the name I came up with for this chapter, but I did not have the mental capacity to think of a better one, so... yeah.
Anyway, like always, I hope you all enjoyed. We'll be back next week with another chapter. Of course, you can always check me out on Patreon, and read ahead there. And I hope you do. The economy is not doing me any favors, right now. I could use all the help I can get.
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The high, vaulted ceilings of the Jedi Temple corridors usually gave me a sense of peaceful, grand architectural scale, but today they just felt like an oversized surveillance theater. I adjusted the strap of my standard-issue canvas satchel, shifting a heavy stack of ancient star-charts I had just borrowed from the archives. I was trying very hard to walk at a casual, perfectly unbothered pace, but my skin was practically prickling under my tunic.
He was behind me again.
I didn't even need the Force to tell me. I could hear the faint, distinct scrape of leather boots against the polished stone tiles, always exactly twelve paces back, stopping whenever I stopped. I took a sharp right turn past a towering bust of some long-dead Master, paused for a fraction of a second, and glanced backward through the reflection of a polished bronze column.
Sure enough, a thick, green head-tentacle hastily retreated behind a massive marble pillar.
Master Kit Fisto was actively, terribly stealth-stalking me. It had been going on since we got back from Vassek 3. The man had completely misplaced his usual easygoing, surfer-dude charm, replacing it with a grim, unblinking glare that felt entirely too personal. He was standing there in the shadows, his massive dark eyes burning a hole through my shoulder blades, completely devoid of his trademark smile.
He knew. He didn't have proof, but he knew those Magnaguards hadn't been dismantled by a standard Jedi defensive form. It was the work of a ruthless monster, and he was tracking me down like a hound that had caught the scent of a foreign predator in the backyard.
He was the kriffing Doakes to my Dexter.
I let out a slow, silent sigh, shifting the heavy satchel to my other shoulder. This was getting ridiculous. If I couldn't even walk to the archives without a Council member trying to look into my soul, running a secret Sith empire from my bedroom was going to become mathematically impossible. I needed to shake him, or better yet, find a way to make him look like a crazy person.
I rounded another corner, preparing to double back and confront him with my best, most obnoxious wide-eyed Padawan routine, when the air in front of me suddenly shifted.
A tiny, green, deeply entrenched presence materialized right out of the corridor fog. Grand Master Yoda was waddling slow and steady toward us, leaning heavily on his gimer stick, his large ears twitching as he took in the sudden spike of tension radiating through the hallway.
Before I could even open my mouth to greet him, Fisto stepped out from behind his pillar, catching himself a little too late. He was still locked into a fierce, aggressive stance, his hand practically hovering over his lightsaber hilt as he stared daggers at my head.
Yoda stopped, his stick clicking sharply against the tile. He looked at me, then slowly turned his wrinkled head to look up at Fisto, his large eyes narrowing into tiny, highly judgmental slits.
The silence stretched for three agonizing seconds.
"Master Yoda," Fisto said, his deep voice carrying a tense, rigid edge as he tried to flatten his expression into something resembling professional calm. "I was merely... inspecting the eastern corridors."
"Inspecting the corridors, you were? Or inspecting my Padawan, were you, Master Fisto?" Yoda rumbled, his voice dripping with a gentle but highly pointed disapproval. He tapped his stick twice, shaking his head. "Lurking in the shadows, I find you. Heavy, your presence is. Like a storm cloud over Mount Tamabor."
"I am simply exercising caution, Master," Fisto fired back, his webbed fingers clenching into a fist at his side as he refused to break eye contact with me. "The galaxy is changing. The threats we face are adapting, becoming more deceptive. We must be certain of what walks among us."
I immediately dropped my shoulders, rounded my eyes, and let out a soft, perfectly calibrated breath of nervous confusion. I looked at Yoda, then looked back at Fisto with a masterclass performance of sheer, vulnerable innocence. "Did I do something wrong, Master Fisto? If my archive reports were late, I can rewrite them. I didn't mean to cause any trouble."
Fisto's jaw tightened so hard I heard his teeth click. "Your reports are flawless, Padawan Kryze. Almost too flawless. Your combat assessments from Vassek were... remarkably detailed."
"Grateful for his detail, we should be," Yoda interrupted, his pointed ears flattening against his head as he stepped squarely between us, shielding me from Fisto's gaze. "Dark, the war has made your sight, Kit. See enemies in our own halls, you do. A dangerous path, suspicion is. To the dark side, it leads."
"Master, with all due respect, you didn't see the arena," Fisto pressed, taking a step forward, his voice dropping into a fierce whisper. "The precision. The efficiency. It wasn't the work of a child."
"A child, he is not. My Padawan, he is," Yoda countered, his voice rising with a rare, commanding weight that made the air itself feel heavier. "Taught him myself, I have. Strong in the Force, Ben is, but wild. To mistake his survival instinct for darkness, a mistake it is. Clouded, your judgment has become by the losses we suffer."
I stood in the background, carefully adjusting my satchel while internally cheering. Yoda was doing my job for me, completely misinterpreting Fisto's very accurate suspicion as standard wartime PTSD. It was beautiful.
"I only wish to protect the Order," Fisto said quietly, though his eyes were still tracking the slight movement of my hands.
"Then protect it by mastering yourself," Yoda said, his tone softening into a classic, lecturing drone. "Let go of your prejudices, you must. To heal your perspective, a change of scenery, you require. Yes."
Fisto blinked, his head-tentacles twitching slightly in confusion. "A change of scenery, Master?"
"Rezvous with General Secura, we must," Yoda announced, tapping his stick with an air of absolute finality. "An escort mission to a vital sector, the Council has ordered. Travel together, we shall. Myself, Padawan Kryze, and you, Master Fisto. Observe the galaxy together, we will. See the light in others, perhaps you will learn again."
My internal cheering instantly hit a brick wall. I froze, my innocent smile faltering for a fraction of a second before I forced it back into place. Travel together? With Fisto and Yoda?
"Master Yoda," I chimed in, trying to keep my voice smooth and compliant. "Are you sure that's wise? Master Obi-Wan mentioned he might need me for some diplomatic paperwork regarding Mandalore's clone citizenship initiative. I wouldn't want to neglect my duties here."
"Worry about paperwork, you should not," Yoda chuckled, a tiny, mischievous glint in his eye as he looked back at me. "Learn more on the fringes, you will. And a fresh perspective, Master Fisto requires. A unified front, we must show."
Fisto let out a slow, controlled breath, bowing his head in a stiff, rigid gesture of obedience. "If that is the will of the Council, I comply."
"Good, it is," Yoda rumbled, already turning his small frame around to waddle back down the corridor. "Prepare your gear, you both should. Leave at dawn, our transport does. A very enlightening trip, I foresee this being."
Fisto didn't move immediately. He waited until Yoda was a few paces ahead before he leaned in slightly, his dark eyes locking onto mine one last time. There was no warmth left in his presence, just a cold, stubborn determination.
"I'll be watching you, Kryze," Fisto murmured, his voice low enough that it didn't carry down the hall.
"I look forward to the learning experience, Master," I replied, flashing him an incredibly sweet, totally harmless smile.
He turned on his heel and strode away, his cloak billowing behind him. I watched him go, my hand instinctively dropping to touch the hidden seam of my belt where the Darksaber usually rested when I wasn't in public.
This was going to be an incredibly long trip. Having a hyper-suspicious Jedi Master and the literal Grand Master of the Order breathing down my neck was going to make checking in on Darth Nox and my secret fleet an absolute nightmare. If I made one wrong move, the whole house of cards was going to come crashing down.
I turned and followed Yoda, my boots clicking rhythmically against the stone. Good thing Jedi are so incredibly blind, I thought, trying to reassure myself as we approached the hangar bays. But kriff, I really need to do something about Kit Fisto.
…
The glowing blue topography of the Outer Rim sector flickered across the bridge holotable, illuminating the sharp features of General Aayla Secura as she outlined the defensive perimeter. Ahsoka Tano shifted her weight from one foot to the other, leaning her hip against the console. For once, she was actually enjoying a tactical briefing.
The main reason for her excellent mood was standing right across from her: Anakin Skywalker was entirely, beautifully distracted. He was leaning over the table, gesturing toward a secondary defensive line with his mechanical hand while offering an incredibly intense, slightly showing-off critique of the Separatist supply lines.
With her Master entirely occupied, Ahsoka was free to tilt her head and trade a series of deeply exasperated, highly communicative looks with Ben Kryze.
Ben was standing a few feet down from her, looking like the picture-perfect image of a polite, attentive Padawan, but his eyes were dancing with absolute mischief. He caught her gaze, giving a tiny, imperceptible roll of his eyes toward Anakin that screamed here he goes again. Ahsoka had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from snorting out loud. It was a flawless system of silent communication they had perfected over a year of ridiculous missions.
The fun faded fast when she noticed the third party at the table.
Standing directly opposite Ben was Master Kit Fisto. The Nautolan wasn't looking at the holographic map. He wasn't looking at Aayla, and he definitely wasn't looking at Anakin. He was squinting his large, dark eyes into tiny, razor-sharp slits, staring at the side of Ben's head with a look of pure, unadulterated suspicion. It was the exact same hawk-like glare he had been sporting since they left Vassek. Fisto's presence in the Force wasn't its usual warm, rolling tide; it felt like a cold, stagnant puddle of intense scrutiny.
Ahsoka nudged Ben's boot with her own beneath the rim of the table, giving him a sharp, warning tilt of her montrals. He's doing the thing again, her expression said.
Ben didn't even blink, merely shifting his posture slightly to offer Fisto his most innocent, totally-not-a-secret-Sith profile. Idiot.
"Our primary concern remains the Quell sector," Aayla said, her gentle Rylothian accent drawing Anakin's gaze back to the center map. "If the droid forces secure the hyperlanes here, our supply lines to the mid-rim will be completely severed."
"They won't get the chance," Anakin said, his voice brimming with that classic, reckless confidence that usually meant a lot of things were about to blow up. "We'll drop the 501st right on top of their staging ground before they can even unpack their landing craft. Right, Snips?"
"As long as you don't crash our ship into the staging ground first, Master," Ahsoka replied smoothly, offering him a sharp, wicked grin.
Anakin let out a short, scoffing laugh, adjusting his glove. "Hey, that was one time, and the landing gear was technically sabotaged. Besides, a good landing is any landing you can walk away from."
"A lesson you should teach your mechanical arm, perhaps," Ben murmured, his voice laced with a perfectly respectful, dry wit that made Aayla hide a sudden smile behind her hand.
Before Anakin could mount a defense, the entire bridge erupted into a frantic chorus of blaring crimson alarms. The blue tactical map on the holotable vanished, replaced by a chaotic nest of flashing red hostile indicators.
"General! Multiple hyperspace signatures dropping directly out of the sun's glare!" a clone officer shouted from the lower crew pit, his fingers flying across his console. "It's a Separatist fleet! Three Munificent-class frigates and a dreadnought, right on top of us!"
The Venator-class Star Destroyer violently shuddered as the first barrage of heavy turbolaser fire slammed into their deflector shields. The deck buckled beneath Ahsoka's boots, sending a shower of loose datapads clattering across the floor.
"Shields down to sixty percent!" another voice yelled through the rising smoke. "They caught us with our main batteries cold!"
"Return fire! Get the starfighters into the air immediately!" Aayla commanded, her blue skin reflecting the harsh, pulsing emergency lights as she gripped the edge of the holotable.
Anakin's lightsaber was out and ignited in a fraction of a second, the brilliant blue blade humming to life as he spun toward the viewport. "They couldn't have known we were here. This was a coordinated trap."
Ahsoka reached for her own hilts, her green blades snapping into existence as a massive explosion rocked the starboard side of the bridge. The vacuum of space howled against the emergency blast shutters as they slammed shut over a ruptured window pane. Sparks cascaded from the ceiling grids like a waterfall of burning metal.
"We are losing the main stabilizers!" Kit Fisto roared over the din, his green blade active as he deflected a stray bolt from a short-circuiting console. "Master Yoda is in the secondary command center trying to stabilize the reactors, but the hull is buckling!"
"We need to evacuate the bridge!" Aayla shouted, gesturing toward the rear turbolifts. "Bly, get the crew to the escape shuttles!"
Before the clones could even move, a terrifying, screeching whistle echoed through the structural beams of the ship. A heavy proton torpedo from the Separatist dreadnought had bypassed the failing shields, punching directly into the bridge's upper superstructure.
"Get down!" Anakin screamed.
Ahsoka didn't even have time to breathe before her Master threw himself directly over her and a cluster of clone technicians. The world exploded into a deafening, white-hot flash of fire and tearing metal. The concussive wave slammed Ahsoka hard against the deck, the wind rushing out of her lungs in a painful gasp as black smoke choked the air.
As the ringing in her ears began to fade, Ahsoka scrambled to her knees, coughing violently through the thick, acrid haze. "Master! Anakin!"
Anakin was lying on his side a few feet away, his tunic torn to shreds and his face coated in gray ash. A massive piece of jagged, twisted durasteel shrapnel was embedded deeply into his right side, blood rapidly soaking through his dark robes. He let out a low, agonizing groan, his fingers clutching weakly at the deck as his eyes rolled back.
"Anakin!" Ahsoka cried, rushing to his side, her hands trembling as she hovered over the wound.
"He's alive, but his lung is collapsing," Ben said, appearing out of the smoke like a ghost. He knelt down beside them, his hands moving with a terrifying, absolute calm as he pressed two fingers against Anakin's neck to check his pulse. "We need to move him right now. This ship has less than four minutes before the main reactor goes."
Kit Fisto emerged from the debris, hauling a dazed clone trooper by the armor plating. His dark eyes flicked from the bleeding Anakin straight to Ben, his suspicion flaring even in the middle of a literal war zone. "Can he walk?"
"Does he look like he can walk, Master Fisto?" Ahsoka snapped, her usual respect completely dissolving under the sheer panic of seeing her Master broken.
"We can carry him," Ben said, his voice entirely steady as he hooked his arms under Anakin's shoulders. "Ahsoka, take his legs. Master Fisto, we need a clear path to the secondary hangar. The main lifts are completely dead."
"Follow me," Fisto ordered, his green blade carving open a jammed emergency door with a shower of sparks. "Aayla and Yoda are leading the main crew to the starboard pods. We take the emergency shuttle!"
The trek through the dying Star Destroyer was a waking nightmare. The corridors were tilting at a sickening angle, the floorboards groaning under the immense gravitational pull of the nearby planet Maridun. Ahsoka strained under Anakin's dead weight, her muscles burning as she and Ben carried him through collapsing corridors and escaping steam vents. Every time she looked up, Fisto was leading the way, but his head was constantly turning backward, his sharp gaze monitoring Ben's every movement, every footstep, like he expected the Padawan to drop Anakin into a pit.
They burst into the secondary hangar just as a massive internal explosion ripped through the deck below them. The emergency shuttle was sitting on the pad, its repulsors already whining as a handful of clone pilots tried to keep the systems online.
"Get him inside! Quick!" Ahsoka yelled, helping Ben guide Anakin's limp body onto the floor of the shuttle's small passenger compartment.
Commander Bly ran toward them from the far side of the hangar, his armor scorched black. "General Secura and Master Yoda's pods have launched! You need to go, sir! The hyperdrive on this shuttle is slaved to the main ship's failing matrix! If the Venator goes, it's going to trigger a blind jump!"
"Get in, Bly!" Fisto shouted, leaping into the cockpit.
"No time, sir! Go!" Bly screamed, hitting the manual override panel on the hangar wall to blow the magnetic shields.
The shuttle shot out of the exploding hangar bay like a stone from a sling, falling directly into the chaotic crossfire of the Separatist fleet. Ahsoka threw herself into the co-pilot seat next to Fisto, her fingers flying across the console as three vulture droids locked onto their tail.
"Shields are fluctuating!" Ahsoka reported, her voice tight. "Master Fisto, we can't shake them! They're locking missiles!"
Behind them, Ben was pressed against the floor, holding a steady, heavy hand against Anakin's chest, using a burst of Force energy to keep his lungs from collapsing entirely. At this rate, her master was going to need a respirator just to get around.
Ben looked up, his jaw set. "The hyperdrive is priming itself! It's drawing power from the Venator's exploding core!"
"I can't override the navigation computer!" Fisto yelled, his webbed hands wrestling with the shuddering steering yoke. "The coordinates are completely blank! We are jumping blind!"
A massive turbolaser blast clipped the shuttle's rear wing, sending the small vessel into a violent, sickening spin. The stars outside the viewport suddenly stretched into long, blinding lines of white light.
"Hold on!" Ahsoka screamed.
With a deafening, metallic shriek that shook the shuttle to its very rivets, the hyperdrive engaged prematurely. The reality of real space vanished, replaced by the spinning, turbulent blue vortex of an uncontrolled, catastrophic jump into the unknown.
…
Dropping out of hyperspace dead in the water was high on my list of ways I didn't want to die today. The spinning blue vortex of the hyperlane didn't just fade; it shattered like cheap glass, throwing the shuttle headfirst into the upper atmosphere of a completely random planet. The friction alone started cooking the hull, turning the viewports into a blinding sheet of orange fire.
"Controls are entirely unresponsive!" Master Fisto shouted over the screaming metal, his webbed hands tearing at the steering yoke as sparks sprayed across his chest. "The inertial dampeners are gone!"
"We're coming in too hot!" Ahsoka braced her boots against the base of the co-pilot seat, her teeth gritted as the ship violently pitched to the left. "The starboard thruster is completely melted!"
If we hit the ground at this speed, we weren't just going to crash; we were going to turn into a thin layer of organic paste on the floorboards. I scrambled out of the passenger bay, leaving Anakin's limp form for a second, and wedged myself between the two front seats. I didn't touch the physical controls.
Instead, I closed my eyes and reached out into the screaming vacuum of the Force, pulling on the deep, hidden reserves I usually kept locked away under lock and key. I grabbed the descending metal nose of the shuttle with a massive, invisible telekinetic grip, forcing the air currents beneath the wings to compress and lift. I could feel the structural beams groaning against my ribs, the sheer friction threatening to snap my concentration, but I pushed harder, subtly manipulating the manual flaps to drag against the wind.
"The nose is lifting," Fisto muttered, his dark eyes widening slightly as he felt the sudden, unnatural resistance in the steering column. He cast a sharp, incredibly piercing sideways glance straight at me. "How are you doing that, Padawan?"
"Just praying really hard, Master!" I yelled back, sweating through my tunic as I kept the telekinetic cushion underneath us perfectly balanced. "And leaning to the left!"
The ground rushed up to meet us in a violent blur of endless, golden-yellow grass. The belly of the shuttle clipped the crest of a massive hill, shearing off the remaining landing gear with a deafening screech that tore through my ears. We skidded through the dense savanna, digging a massive trench into the earth as the viewport shattered inward, showering us in a storm of dirt and shredded stalks. The ship spun three times, slammed into a massive seed-pod boulder, and finally came to a grinding, groaning halt.
For a long minute, the only sound was the ticking of a dying cooling manifold and the heavy, ragged breathing of four people who probably should have been dead.
I let go of the Force, coughing violently as a thick, gray cloud of electrical smoke filled the cockpit. I wiped a layer of grime from my forehead, checking my limbs to make sure everything was still attached. "Everyone still alive?"
"I think so," Ahsoka groaned, shaking a handful of broken safety glass out of her montrals. She didn't waste another second, immediately unbuckling her harness and dropping to her knees in the aisle. "Anakin! Master, can you hear me?"
Anakin didn't answer. He was slumped against the bulkhead where we had secured him, his skin deathly pale and burning up with a terrifying, sudden fever. The makeshift bandages around his torso were completely soaked through with fresh, crimson blood, and his breathing sounded like a wet, shallow rattle.
So… probably not doing great.
"The medical kits," Fisto ordered, kicking open the shattered cockpit door and stepping over the debris. He looked entirely unfazed by the crash, though his left hand was resting entirely too close to his lightsaber hilt as his eyes swept over me. "Find them, Kryze. Now."
I scrambled over to the emergency lockers, tearing off the dented metal panel with a hard pull. My heart sank the moment I looked inside. "The primary canisters ruptured during entry, Master. The bacta gel is completely fried, and the emergency hypos are melted into the casing."
"Kriff!" Ahsoka slammed her fist against the floor, her blue and white striped montrals twitching with pure panic. "We can't just sit here and watch him bleed out! There has to be something we can use!"
"Calm yourself, Padawan," Fisto said, his deep voice carrying a hard, rigid command that left zero room for argument. He stepped toward the open hatch, peering out into the vast, swaying fields of high grass. "We are on an uncharted world. Our communications are completely dead, and our supplies are gone. We must establish a perimeter before we do anything else."
"A perimeter won't save his life!" Ahsoka fired back, her voice cracking as she held a clean cloth against Anakin's bleeding side.
I leaned against the broken locker, my mind racing at a million miles an hour. I knew exactly where we were. The golden grass, the massive seed-pod trees, the absolute lack of Republic or Separatist presence—this was Maridun. And more importantly, I knew that a village of Lurmen was settled somewhere in the valley nearby. Wag Too and his father had the exact herbal medicine required to stop Anakin's fever and heal his punctured lung.
The problem wasn't finding them. The problem was explaining how a teenage Jedi Padawan from Mandalore suddenly possessed a complete map of an uncharted world's indigenous medical practices.
I couldn't exactly look Kit Fisto in the eye and say, "Hey, don't worry, I'm a self-insert from the future, in a galaxy, far, far away, who watched this specific episode on a screen." Fisto was already looking at me like I was a disguised Sith assassin waiting for the right moment to strike. If I suddenly pulled a perfect, prophetic mapping layout out of my sleeve, he'd probably draw his green blade and decapitate me on the spot.
Plus, I had already overused the classic "I saw it in a Force vision" card when we rescued Plo Koon and when I dealt with the Malevolence. If I used it again, it was going to sound incredibly suspicious, even to Ahsoka. I really needed to work on my standard, everyday lying skills.
"Master Fisto," I said, stepping forward while keeping my hands perfectly visible and relaxed. "When we were coming down, I noticed a unique migration pattern in the local bird-creatures through the upper atmosphere. They were all heading toward a specific cluster of large seed-pod trees in the south valley."
Fisto slowly turned his head, his large, unblinking dark eyes fixing onto mine with the intensity of a heavy turbolaser. "And why does a flock of birds concern us right now, Padawan?"
"Because birds usually gather near fresh water and established vegetation," I explained, forcing a bright, entirely earnest smile onto my face. "And where there's water in a valley like this, there's usually a higher chance of finding local life. Or at least some kind of root that can help bring down a fever. I read a lot about Outer Rim botany in the Temple archives before we left."
Fisto let out a low, rumbling hum in his throat, a sound that radiated pure, unadulterated skepticism. "A remarkable memory you have, Kryze. To recall specific Outer Rim botanical charts during a catastrophic crash landing."
"I just like plants, sir," I said, offering a helpless, innocent shrug.
"We don't have time to argue about biology!" Ahsoka shouted, looking back at us with tears welling in her eyes. "Ben is right. We need to look for water or anyone who can help us. I'll stay here with Anakin while you two search."
"No," Fisto said firmly, his hand dropping away from his hilt but his posture remaining incredibly tense. "We do not separate on an unknown world. The clone pilots didn't survive the impact, and we cannot leave the ship entirely unguarded. Padawan Tano, you will stay here and monitor Skywalker's vitals. Kryze and I will scout the southern valley to verify his... botanical theory."
I internally groaned. Spending a long, romantic walk through the tall grass with the one Jedi Master who wanted to put me in a cage sounded like absolute torture. But if it got us to the Lurmen before Anakin kicked the bucket, I didn't have a choice.
"I'll grab a couple of empty canteens," I said, keeping my tone perfectly light.
"Do that," Fisto replied, his voice dropping into a low, ominous purr as he stepped out into the bright sunlight of Maridun. "And move quickly. Let us see exactly what the Force reveals to you out there."
…
The golden-yellow stalks of the Maridun savanna scraped against my shins as we pressed deeper into the valley. Master Fisto walked half a pace behind me, his green hand resting loosely near his hip, keeping a heavy, suffocating blanket of scrutiny locked onto my presence in the Force. The silence between us was so thick you could have cut it with a vibroblade, but I kept my eyes scanning the horizon, playing the part of a dutiful, slightly clueless Padawan who just really, really liked looking at alien grass.
Before Fisto could start another round of passive-aggressive interrogation, a sudden ripple in the Force made us both halt. The tall grass ahead parted, and a very welcome, very wrinkly green face appeared through the stalks.
"Ah. Found you, we have," Yoda rumbled, leaning on his gimer stick as he stepped into the small clearing.
Behind him emerged General Aayla Secura, Commander Bly, and a handful of clone troopers from the 327th Star Corps. Their armor was heavily scorched, and Bly was carrying a dented tactical scanner, but they were remarkably intact. The relief that washed over me was entirely genuine—until I realized having more Jedi around just meant more people to watch me lie.
"Master Yoda! General Secura!" I said, letting out a heavy, perfectly acted sigh of relief. "You survived the atmospheric entry. We crashed just over the ridge. General Skywalker is in really bad shape."
"Aware of Skywalker's condition, we are," Yoda said, nodding gravely as a clone medic from Bly's squad immediately stepped forward, carrying a battered emergency field kit. "Sensed his pain, we did. Crash-landed nearby, our pod did. Found a settlement, we had, but... complicated, the situation is."
Aayla Secura sighed, crossing her arms as she looked over at Fisto. "We located a village of colonists down in the lower valley. A species called the Lurmen. They are extreme pacifists, Kit. The moment they saw Commander Bly and the men in armor, they completely shut down. They refused to offer us shelter, resources, or medical aid. They believe even looking upon soldiers compromises their values."
Fisto's brow furrowed, his dark eyes shifting smoothly from Aayla back to the top of my head. "An uncharted Outer Rim world, and the locals are hyper-pacifists who fear the military. A bitter irony."
"They have the exact medicinal roots needed to break a hemorrhagic fever," the clone medic checked in, tapping his wrist console. "I can patch the General's lung and stabilize his chest cavity with what I have in this kit, but without those local herbs, the infection will take him before nightfall. We need to get him into that village."
"But look at us, they will not, if war we bring to their doorstep," Yoda murmured, his large ears drooping slightly. "A delicate hand, this requires. An approach of peace, not of strength."
I knew this was my cue. I shifted my canvas archivist satchel, taking a soft step forward and looking up at the three Jedi Masters with a face full of wide-eyed, earnest determination. "Let me go. Me, Ahsoka, and the Masters. If we leave Commander Bly and the squad back at our shuttle to guard General Skywalker and start repairs, the Lurmen won't see an invading army. They'll just see... well, a couple of monks and a pair of kids who need help."
Fisto's eyes narrowed into absolute pinpricks. I could feel his internal gears grinding through the Force, desperately trying to figure out how a Padawan who had surgically slaughtered a squad of Magnaguards a week ago was suddenly volunteering to play a cuddly diplomat. "You seem remarkably eager to dictate the sociological strategy of this mission, Padawan Kryze."
"I just don't want General Skywalker to die, Master," I said, dropping my voice into a soft, slightly trembling tone that would have made Satine proud. "And... if the locals are afraid of soldiers, sending people who look harmless is just logical, right?"
Yoda tapped his stick against Fisto's boot, giving a low chuckle. "Listen to the boy, you should, Kit. Clear, his mind is. Clouded by suspicion, yours remains. Go to the shuttle, Bly shall, to treat Skywalker. To the village, we will walk. As travelers, not warriors."
Fisto closed his eyes for a brief second, his webbed fingers twitching, but he bowed his head. "As you wish, Master Yoda."
…
An hour later, the tall seed-pod huts of the Lurmen village came into view, nestled beautifully in the center of a wide, fertile basin. Ahsoka had joined us after handing Anakin over to the clone medic's temporary care, and she was currently walking next to me, her arms crossed and her montrals twitching with deep anxiety over her Master.
As we approached the perimeter, a dozen small, lemur-like creatures rolled toward us in tight, agile spheres, unfurling seamlessly into a defensive line. They were holding simple wooden staves, their large, golden eyes wide with profound fear and hostility. Standing at the front was Wag Too, his fur bristling as he pointed a carved stick toward Yoda and Aayla.
"We told you to leave!" Wag Too shouted, his voice high-pitched but filled with a desperate, trembling bravery. "We want no part in your galaxy's bloodshed! Your violent ways bring only death to Maridun!"
Ahsoka tensed, her hand instinctively twitching toward her hip where her lightsabers hung under her cloak. Fisto stood like a statue, his entire presence radiating a cold, rigid defensive aura that practically screamed try it.
I knew if anyone drew a weapon, Anakin was a dead man. And since he hasn't murdered that many children, yet, that was probably a bad thing. Right? Right. Definitely.
It was time to flip the switch.
I stepped directly in front of Fisto, completely breaking the rigid Jedi formation. I let my posture collapse, rounding my shoulders, lowering my center of gravity, and letting my arms hang loosely at my sides. I wiped every trace of Darth Sol, the First Order, and the Katana fleet entirely out of my mind, replacing them with the memory of being a tiny, defenseless crèche-ling at the Temple. I smiled softly, my eyes softening as I looked directly at Wag Too.
"Please, we aren't here to fight you," I said, my voice dropping an entire octave into a gentle, entirely non-threatening melody. I slowly held out my hands, palms up, showing them entirely empty. "We don't want any bloodshed. Our friend is hurt. He's really, really sick, and we're just scared for him."
Ahsoka's jaw literally dropped. She stared at the side of my face with a look of utter, deep bewilderment, her eyes darting between my sweet, gentle expression and the sky like she expected a practical joke to fall out of the clouds.
Wag Too blinked, his large golden eyes shifting from Fisto's stern, terrifying face down to mine. His ears twitched, the fur on his shoulders flattening just a fraction as he looked at my open palms. "You... you travel with the ones who bring the armored killers."
"They aren't killers, I promise," I murmured, taking one slow, deliberate step forward, keeping my movements perfectly fluid. "They're just trying to keep us safe. But we left them far away from here because we didn't want to frighten you. We heard your people are incredibly wise and peaceful. We just want to learn from you. If you have anything to help our friend's fever, please. We'll do whatever you ask."
Behind me, the Force practically curdled.
Master Kit Fisto was standing in the background, radiating pure, concentrated "I know what you did last summer" energy so loudly it was a miracle the Lurmen couldn't hear it. The sheer, unadulterated venom of his suspicion was pulsing through the ether like a beacon. He was staring at the back of my head with an expression that could have melted durasteel, internally screaming at the absolute absurdity of the theater I was putting on.
I had to actively suppress a massive surge of dark-side amusement, gripping my own mental shields with everything I had to stop myself from turning around and chucking a heavy seed-pod rock straight at his nose.
"You speak with kindness, young one," Wag Too said slowly, lowering his wooden staff by a few inches as he looked at my soft smile. "Unlike the tall ones, your spirit does not feel heavy with the weight of war."
"Thank you," I said, bowing my head in a deep, perfectly humble Mandalorian-style gesture of respect that I disguised as a simple monastic nod. "My name is Ben. We are entirely at your mercy."
Ahsoka let out a tiny, choked sound in the back of her throat, quickly turning it into a cough as she tried to process the fact that I had just entirely charmed a hostile alien species using nothing but pure, unadulterated fraud.
Wag Too turned toward the center of the village, gesturing for us to follow. "Come. If your friend is dying, my father must decide his fate. But leave your violent thoughts at our border."
"Of course," I said sweetly, stepping forward to walk beside him while trading a quick, wholesome thought about herbal roots.
As I walked past Fisto, I didn't look at him, but I let a tiny, microscopic smirk slip across the side of my face that only he could see. The Nautolan Master's jaw was set so tight it looked ready to fracture. Keep watching, squid-head, I thought, my innocent smile firmly back in place. You're going to love the rest of this show.
…
The heavy, sweet scent of crushed medicinal roots filled the shaded interior of the seed-pod hut. Ahsoka leaned against a wooden structural beam, watching Ben meticulously grind a pile of blue leaves into a smooth paste. The contrast between his current, hyper-focused herbalist routine and the terrifyingly smooth diplomat performance he had just put on outside was almost too much to handle.
"You know, it's actually a little disturbing how quickly you can turn that on," Ahsoka murmured, a wicked, playful smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "The soft voice, the big innocent eyes... I almost expected you to ask Wag Too if he had any cookies."
Ben didn't look up from his stone mortar, but his shoulders shook with a silent, amused chuckle. "It's called diplomacy, Snips. Some of us actually read the Temple archives instead of just practicing how to cut things in half with lasers."
"Hey, my diplomacy skills are excellent," Ahsoka shot back, stepping closer and giving his shoulder a light, teasing shove. She tilted her head, her bright blue eyes dancing with mischief. "I just prefer an approach that doesn't involve looking like a lost, adorable tooka-kitten. Although, I have to admit, the gentle monk act? Surprisingly charming. If the whole secret Sith Lord thing doesn't work out, you definitely have a future in local theater."
Ben finally paused, setting down the stone pestle. He turned his head, his green eyes locked onto hers with a lazy, effortless confidence that made her chest tighten just a fraction. He leaned back against the workstation, a slow, roguish grin spreading across his face. "Oh, really? So you found it charming, did you? Good to know my talents aren't completely wasted on you."
Ahsoka felt a sudden, warmth creep up her montrals. She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms to hide the slight flutter in her stomach. "Don't flatter yourself. I said the act was charming. You're still an obnoxious menace who relies entirely too much on his hair to look respectable."
"My hair is a tactical asset," Ben replied smoothly, his tone dropping into a playful, lower register as he stepped a fraction closer, his eyes locked onto hers. "It distracts the enemy. And apparently, it keeps my favorite Togruta paying attention."
Ahsoka opened her mouth to deliver a sharp, biting comeback, but the playful bubble they had built was instantly shattered.
A sudden, violent roar shook the very foundation of the valley. The stone mortar rattled against the wooden table, and the quiet, rhythmic sound of the wind rustling through the high grasslands was completely erased by a deafening mechanical shriek. Ahsoka's playful expression vanished, her hands dropping immediately to the twin lightsaber hilts at her waist as she and Ben exchanged a sudden, dead-serious look.
They burst out of the hut, ducking low behind a thick cluster of seed-pod stalks alongside Yoda, Aayla, and a deeply frowning Kit Fisto. A massive, data-paneled Separatist C-9979 landing craft tore through the pristine blue sky, its heavy repulsors kicking up a blinding hurricane of dust and shredded golden grass as it descended directly into the center of the Lurmen basin.
The massive front ramp hissed open, hitting the dirt with a heavy thud that made the surrounding village huts rattle.
A squad of standard B1 battle droids marched out in rigid, mechanical unison, forming a harsh perimeter around the village square. Following quickly behind them was a cartoonishly plump, pompous Neimoidian wearing an oversized, ornate chest piece and a towering goggle-apparatus over his cap. General Lok Durd strutted down the ramp, dusting off his heavy silken sleeves with a look of supreme, arrogant satisfaction.
Tee Watt Kaa stepped forward from the crowd of frightened Lurmen, his fragile, lemur-like frame trembling but defiant as he raised his wooden staff. "Who are you? We are a peaceful people! We have no part in your republic or your rebellion!"
"I am General Lok Durd," the Neimoidian announced, his nasal voice dripping with a condescending sneer as he looked down at the elder. "And you are now under the protection of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Please, do not resist. It would be... highly inconvenient for my scheduling."
"We do not want your protection!" Tee Watt Kaa countered fiercely. "We only wish to be left alone!"
"Oh, I'm afraid that is no longer an option," Lok Durd chuckled, turning back to the landing craft and snapping his thick fingers. "You see, the Separatist Alliance requires a live demonstration for our latest tactical advancement. Bring it forward!"
From the dark depths of the hangar bay, a monstrous, tracked tank rolled into the sunlight. It featured a terrifying, oversized cannon assembly cradled by a strange, glowing energy matrix that hummed with volatile power.
"Behold, the pinnacle of Separatist ingenuity!" Lok Durd's voice echoed across the quiet valley as he gestured grandly toward the weapon. "The Defoliator! A weapon designed to incinerate all organic life—leaves, roots, flesh—while leaving our expensive droid armies completely untouched. And this delightfully unprotected little valley will serve as our perfect testing ground. I would strongly reconsider accepting our protection."
Ahsoka gripped her hilts tighter, her breath catching in her throat as she peered through the brush. The stakes were costly, far higher than anything they had prepared for. If that tank fired, every single Lurmen in the village would be turned to ash in a matter of seconds.
Beside her, Master Yoda and General Secura remained perfectly still, their expressions grim but deeply controlled. Down in the square, Tee Watt Kaa shook with a mix of fear and absolute, stubborn conviction as he held his ground against the droids.
"We will not join you! We will not fight you, nor will we flee!" Tee Watt Kaa declared, his high-pitched voice carrying across the clearing. "If it is our fate to be destroyed by your war, then we will die in peace. But we will not compromise our ideals by meeting your violence with violence!"
Ahsoka's jaw tightened. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Dying in peace was a nice sentiment, but it wouldn't stop a turbolaser blast from erasing their entire culture. She shifted her gaze slightly, looking over at the two Masters, expecting them to start drawing up an emergency battle plan. Instead, she caught sight of Ben.
Ben was still kneeling in the dirt near the edge of the brush, playing the part of the helpless, frightened Padawan for any droids that might look his way. But from this angle, Ahsoka could see his face perfectly clear.
The innocent, sweet-tempered boy who had just been flirting with her inside the hut was entirely gone. In his place was a cold, terrifying mask of absolute, ruthless calculation. His eyes had narrowed into sharp, lethal pinpricks, devoid of any fear, panic, or Jedi anxiety. He wasn't looking at the massive Separatist army like a teenager facing a slaughter. He was looking at the Defoliator tank like a mechanic looking at a poorly designed toy he was about to violently disassemble piece by piece. For a single, fleeting second, the terrifying shadow of Darth Sol leaked through his perfect defenses, a freezing wave of pure, dark intent that made Ahsoka's skin prickle.
She swallowed hard, a sudden chill running down her spine. Master Fisto was still standing a few paces back, his dark eyes locked entirely on the side of Ben's head, his presence practically humming with a silent, intense I told you so.
Ben's fingers twitched against his robes, his gaze tracking the fuel lines running along the base of the tank's main generator. The peaceful vibe of Maridun was officially dead, and as Ahsoka watched her friend stare down the Separatist army, she realized the droids had absolutely no idea what they had just parked in front of.
...
I still don't love the name I came up with for this chapter, but I did not have the mental capacity to think of a better one, so... yeah.
Anyway, like always, I hope you all enjoyed. We'll be back next week with another chapter. Of course, you can always check me out on Patreon, and read ahead there. And I hope you do. The economy is not doing me any favors, right now. I could use all the help I can get.
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That's how you go from "Lana Beniko" to "Cackling while throwing Sith lightning at some poor schmuck".
Chapter 53: Tanks a Lot
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Chapter 53: Tanks a Lot
The dust up on the ridge tasted like dry clay and burnt grass. I pressed my stomach into the dirt, ignoring the way a sharp rock dug right into my ribs, and kept the heavy macrobinoculars glued to my eyes. Down in the basin, the Separatist base looked like a giant, glowing scar on the face of Maridun. Spotlights swept across the perimeter, turning the golden savanna into harsh, stark white patches, while the mechanical clanking of battle droids echoed up the stone walls of the canyon.
"You see any movement on the eastern perimeter?" Ahsoka whispered, her voice barely carrying over the wind. She was lying less than a foot away from me, her blue and white striped montrals practically touching my shoulder as she peered through her own set of lenses. "The droids look like they're doubling the guards near the landing pad."
"Just standard patrols," I murmured, adjusting the focus dial with a slow, deliberate twist. "They've got three squads of B1s walking the perimeter, and two super battle droids stationed right by the main fuel lines. Lok Durd isn't taking any chances."
"He's a coward," she muttered, her jaw tightening as she watched a pair of droids push a crate of munitions toward the center of the camp. "He knows the Lurmen won't fight back. Tee Watt Kaa is probably still down there lecturing Master Yoda about the virtues of dying quietly while those tin cans prep a weapon meant to turn them all into kindling."
"Pacifism is a luxury you can only afford when your enemy has a conscience, Snips," I said quietly, keeping my voice flat and even. "Lok Durd doesn't have one. Neither does Dooku."
Or Pre Vizla, but try telling that to my mother.
"I know," she sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly. "I just... I hate sitting here doing nothing while Anakin is burning up. We should be doing something."
"We are doing something," a deep, rumbling voice chimed in from behind us. "We are observing, Padawan Tano. A vital element of any strategy."
I didn't even need to turn around to feel the freezing, suffocating weight of the presence standing exactly twelve paces back. Master Kit Fisto was a green, unblinking gargoyle under the moonlight. His large, dark eyes didn't look at the Separatist outpost. They didn't look at the high grasslands or the night sky. They were boring a hole straight through the back of my skull, his presence in the Force pulsing with a thick, heavy layer of unadulterated suspicion.
I am so sick of this guy. Of all the Jedi I've encountered, how was Kit Fisto the only one who could see me for what I truly am? Not even Mace Windu was this suspicious of me. And he had every right to be! I did very sinister things with his chair back in the day.
But no! Rather than the Master of the Order, I had to contend with hentai head over here. I could practically hear his internal monologue counting my breaths, waiting for the split second my perfect, wide-eyed Padawan act slipped.
The problem for Master Fisto was that I wasn't observing. I was robbing them blind.
Beneath the bulky plastic housing of my standard-issue Republic macrobinoculars, my left thumb was moving with tiny, hyper-precise twitches. I had spent the last ten minutes secretly deploying a slicing script through a hidden, short-range interface built straight into my gauntlet. Lok Durd's command deck was currently warming up its primary dish, preparing a massive, encrypted data burst to send the Defoliator's initial testing diagnostics straight back to Count Dooku's flagship.
I didn't want to just stop the tank. I wanted the blueprints. A weapon that could vaporize all organic material while leaving metallic structures completely untouched was far too valuable to leave in the hands of a bumbling Neimoidian general. The First Order could use a toy like that.
The Separatists weren't the only ones with a droid army, after all.
My slicing program hit the secondary firewall of the Separatist relay, throwing up a flashing red prompt on the tiny, inverted screen inside my lenses. I masked the intrusion by piggybacking on a standard droid maintenance ping, my thumb flicking a sub-frequency toggle to clone the transmission's encryption keys.
"Ben," Ahsoka murmured suddenly, her eyes still locked on the valley below. "Your hand is twitching. You've been hitting that side-dial for three minutes straight. Are you alright?"
"Just trying to clear up the atmospheric distortion," I lied smoothly, my voice never wavering as I manually bypassed the final security node. "The heat rising off the landing craft's repulsors is playing tricks with the thermal imaging. Don't worry, I'll fix it."
"Let me look," she said, shifting her weight to lean over and snatch my macrobinoculars.
I instinctively tightened my grip, blocking her arm with a quick, playful nudge of my elbow. "Get your own, Snips. This pair is perfectly calibrated to my specific, superior eyesight. Go count your own droids."
"Oh, please," she scoffed, a familiar, wicked smirk returning to her lips as she gave my shoulder a light, teasing shove. "Your superior eyesight? Is that why you nearly walked straight into a thorn-bush on the trek up here? Come on, share the view. Or are you just using the high-magnification lens to try and pick up HoloNet sports from the mid-rim?"
"Maybe I am," I shot back, flashing her a quick, roguish grin to keep the atmosphere light. "Mandalore is playing Concord Dawn in the thranta-ball finals tonight. A good Padawan stays informed about galactic culture."
"Right. Galactic culture," she rolled her eyes, crossing her arms as she leaned back onto her elbows. "You're ridiculous, you know that? If Master Yoda heard you talking about sports while we're on a stealth recon mission, he'd make you clean the temple grease-traps for a month."
"Then it's a good thing he's down in the valley trying to convince a lemur to pack his bags," I said, my thumb hitting the final execution command.
Frequency cloned. Data siphon active.
The hidden transmitter inside my gauntlet flared to life, sending a highly concentrated, tightly beamed priority command into the upper atmosphere, routing it through an independent neutral satellite I had purchased six months ago. The destination was clear: the PROXY droids running my secret Sith Empire back in the Outer Rim. The instruction was absolute: Intercept the upcoming Separatist data burst. Extract every single line of the Defoliator's schematics for the First Order.
The moment the transmission cleared my gauntlet, the air behind us went completely ice-cold.
The Force didn't just ripple; it curdled. Kit Fisto's suspicion spiked like a Geiger counter inside a reactor core. The Nautolan Master took a slow, deliberate step forward, the dry grass crunching softly beneath his heavy boot. He couldn't see the tiny screen inside my macrobinoculars from twelve paces away, but his instincts were screaming at him.
He knew I was doing something. He knew the kid standing in front of him wasn't a harmless, sports-obsessed Padawan from Mandalore. He could smell the ozone of a lie in the air, even if he couldn't prove where the lightning had struck.
I kept my breathing perfectly synchronized, letting out a slow, lazy yawn as I lowered the macrobinoculars and rubbed my eyes. "Well, the droids aren't moving any faster down there. I think we've seen everything we're going to see for the next hour."
"Patience, Padawan Kryze," Fisto said, his voice dropping into a low, smooth purr that carried absolutely zero of his usual warmth. He walked up to the edge of the ridge, his large, dark eyes reflecting the white spotlights of the camp below as he stared down at us. "A battlefield changes in a heartbeat. Sometimes, the most dangerous movements are the ones that happen entirely out of sight."
"I suppose so, Master," I replied, offering him an entirely innocent, slightly tired smile as I tucked the macrobinoculars back into my canvas satchel. "I'm just worried about the General. The longer we sit here counting tin cans, the worse his fever gets."
"Your concern for Skywalker is noted," Fisto murmured, his gaze dropping down to my left wrist, where the hidden slicing gauntlet was concealed beneath the heavy fabric of my tunic sleeve. "But the Force reveals all things in time, Ben. Deception can only last so long, before it's exposed to the truth."
"I'll keep that in mind, sir," I said sweetly.
Ahsoka looked between the two of us, her montrals twitching as she picked up on the sudden, razor-sharp tension radiating through the air. She didn't say anything, but her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, a lingering question mark forming in her mind.
I ignored the chill running down my spine and turned back toward the dark path leading down into the valley. My innocent smile stayed firmly glued to my face, but internally, the shadow of Darth Sol was already calculating the distance between my fingers and the Darksaber.
Kit Fisto was getting closer and closer to the edge of the truth, and if he didn't back off soon, the peaceful vibe of Maridun was going to take a very dark turn, long before the Separatists could take a swing at it.
…
The twilight over Maridun was a bruised purple, bleeding into a deep, heavy shadow along the edges of the valley. Down in the basin, the Separatist outpost burned like a malicious orange eye, its perimeter lights cutting through the tall, swaying stalks of golden savanna grass.
Aayla Secura walked slowly along the perimeter of the Lurmen village, her lekku twitching slightly as she absorbed the quiet, anxious hum of the colony. The tiny, lemur-like people had already retreated into their seed-pod huts, hiding from the shadow of the war they so stubbornly ignored.
Near a pile of gathered lumber, Ben Kryze was sitting on a hollowed-out log, methodically working a hunting knife along the edge of a thick wooden stake. He was supposed to be helping reinforce a perimeter fence, creating a barrier the pacifist village elders hadn't even asked for and would likely refuse to use.
But they will do what they must.
Aayla stepped closer, her soft boots making no sound against the packed dirt. As she approached, Ben looked up from his work, his eyes tracking her movement. He stopped mid-stroke, his gaze lingering for a fraction of a second too long on the bare skin of her midriff and the tight fit of her leather top before he suddenly jerked his attention back to the wood, a faint flush rising along his neck.
Aayla couldn't resist a small, knowing smile. Even in the middle of a war zone under the shadow of a Separatist superweapon, a teenage boy was still a teenage boy.
"Eyes up, Padawan," Aayla murmured, her voice carrying a gentle, amused purr as she crossed her arms. "The droids are out in the valley, not on my chest."
Ben cleared his throat roughly, his cheeks darkening further under the moonlight as he frantically scraped the knife down the side of the stake. "I was just... looking at the leather stitching, General. It looks custom-made. Very practical for... well, everything."
"Nice recovery," Aayla teased, letting out a soft laugh that rippled through the quiet evening air. "But be mindful of yourself, Ben. You are still a Jedi, and far too young to be looking at me like that."
"I mean, we're only like five years apart," Ben muttered, deflecting with a quick, defensive roll of his shoulders as he shaved off a long curl of wood.
Aayla shook her head, her smile softening into something more maternal.
Five years was a lifetime at his age. He was still a boy, barely a Padawan, regardless of how quickly he grew. She glanced down at her own exposed midriff and the asymmetric leather wrapping of her combat gear. She knew some of the more traditional Masters back at the Temple looked askance at her choice of clothing, but those critics spent their days lecturing in air-conditioned archives.
Traditional, heavy linen robes were a death sentence when your survival relied on blinding speed, acrobatics, and fluid Form IV gymnastics. If she wore three layers of heavy fabric, she would trip over her own hems during a mid-air flip. Frankly, she was constantly amazed that Masters like Kit Fisto and Anakin Skywalker managed to fight in as much heavy layering as they did.
It was a galactic war; every extra ounce of mobility was a distinct advantage.
She stepped up to the log, watching the tight, aggressive precision of his movements. He wasn't just sharpening a stake; he was punishing the wood. The Force around him was tight, vibrating with a coiled, unspent heat that felt dangerously heavy for a boy his age.
"You're carving that deep enough to pierce an armored transport," Aayla noted quietly, gesturing to the viciously sharp point he had created. "What is troubling you?"
"The sheer pointlessness of it," Ben said, his voice dropping into a hard, flat register that sounded entirely too mature for his face. He didn't look up, his knife digging viciously into the wood with a sharp scrape. "We're building a wooden fence to stop a tracked super-tank. We're waiting here for Lok Durd to finish his breakfast and decide when he feels like incinerating this entire valley. It's completely ridiculous."
"We are respecting the will of the elders," Aayla reminded him gently, her hand dropping to rest lightly against her hip. "Tee Watt Kaa has made his choice clear. We cannot force our protection on those who refuse it."
"Then his choice is going to get every single one of his people turned into a pile of ash," Ben fired back, finally halting the knife to look up at her. His eyes were incredibly sharp under the starlight, filled with a cold, calculating intensity that made her chest tighten. "The Republic has three entire battalions tied up in red tape three systems over, and we're sitting in the dirt waiting to get struck. If we just launched a pre-emptive strike on that landing craft right now, we could sabotage the Defoliator before it even fires a test round. We could end this before it starts."
Aayla listened, her heart aching with a deep, profound empathy for the boy.
She could feel the fierce, unyielding protective instinct radiating from him. He was a Kryze, born of Mandalorian blood, and the ancient warrior heritage of his people was clearly screaming at him to take up arms and strike down the threat before it could touch the innocent. It was a natural, beautiful instinct, but a dangerous one for a Jedi to hold in the middle of a meat-grinder like the Clone Wars.
She reached down, her blue fingers gently but firmly wrapping around his wrist, stopping the motion of his knife. The wood was cold beneath their hands.
"A pre-emptive strike is an act of aggression, Ben," Aayla said softly, her voice carrying the heavy, sorrowful weight of a veteran who had seen too many battlefields turn into slaughterhouses. "The moment we begin choosing who dies based on what they might do, we stop being peacekeepers. The battlefield is never clean, and you cannot control every variable."
Ben stared at her hand on his wrist, his jaw clenching so hard she could see the muscle leap in his cheek. He looked like he wanted to argue, like he had a thousand tactical scenarios mapped out in his head that proved her wrong.
"The moment you seek absolute certainty and total control over the future, Ben, is the moment you stop trusting the Force," Aayla warned him, her voice dropping into a quiet, haunting whisper as she let go of his hand and stepped back. "Certainty is the path to the dark side. We must have the courage to face the unknown without trying to conquer it first."
She offered him one last encouraging nod, even as he suddenly looked uncomfortable.
It was understandable. He was young. Passionate. That was common, even as it flew in the face of their Code. But in time, he would see reason. He would understand why there were certain lines that no one, especially not Jedi, should cross.
Ben remained perfectly still on the log, the knife balanced precariously in his hand.
"I understand, Master Secura," Ben said quietly, his voice smooth, respectful, and entirely empty of the anger he had shown a moment prior. "Thank you for the advice."
Aayla turned and walked back toward the center of the village, satisfied that she had helped soothe his troubled spirit. It felt right to offer advice to the next generation. Perhaps she was more ready to train a Padawan than she had assumed?
…
Leaving Aayla by the lumber pile, I navigated the dark, winding paths of the Lurmen village. The night air was thick with the scent of crushed wild herbs and the faint, dusty aroma of the seed-pod structures that served as the colonists' homes. Every door was sealed shut, the tiny pacifists hiding away from the reality of the giant microwave tank parked just over the horizon. I didn't blame them, but their stubborn refusal to defend themselves was making my life a logistical nightmare.
I stopped outside the largest pod-hut at the edge of the clearing, which the clones had hastily converted into a field medical station. The soft, ambient light from a glow-rod spilled through the circular doorway, casting long shadows across the dirt. Commander Bly was leaning against a stack of supply crates right outside the entrance, his armor gleaming under the moonlight, while a clone medic was meticulously wiping down a tray of surgical instruments.
"How is he holding up?" I asked, keeping my voice low so it wouldn't carry across the quiet square.
"He's still burning up, sir," Bly said, turning his head slightly as I approached. "The fever isn't breaking. The medic gave him a sedative to keep him from thrashing, but his breathing is still far too shallow for my liking."
"Is the medicine from the elders helping at all?" I asked, glancing past him into the dim interior of the hut where Anakin's large silhouette was stretched out on a makeshift cot.
"Slowly," the medic chimed in, tossing a blood-stained rag into a waste bin. "But at this rate, General Skywalker is going to be out of commission long before the Separatists decide to march on this place. If those droids attack by morning, he won't even be able to lift his lightsaber, let alone lead a counter-offensive."
I nodded slowly, crossing my arms as I looked back at Bly. The commander was staring out into the high grass, his fingers tapping a restless, rhythmic beat against the holster of his DC-17 blaster. There was a strange, heavy static in the Force around him, a turbulent wave of anxiety that had absolutely nothing to do with Lok Durd or the battle droids.
"You look like you have something on your mind, Commander," I noted quietly. "And I doubt it's the Separatist perimeter layout."
Bly stayed silent for a long moment, his shoulders tightening beneath his pauldrons. "It's the comm-chatter from the Core, Padawan Kryze. The encrypted frequencies have been lighting up all evening. The boys in the 327th are sharing data bursts from the outer rims."
"What about?"
"Our citizenship with Mandalore," he said, taking me by surprise. "It's being taken to the Senate. If the motion passes, we'll be full-blooded Republic citizens."
"That's excellent news!" I offered a large grin, hesitating when he didn't return it. "Isn't it?"
"We're not sure, sir," Bly admitted, his voice dropping to a harsh, strained whisper. "To have a culture, a name, and a choice that wasn't coded into our DNA before we were even born. It's more than we could've asked for. But if the Senate repeals it…"
"That's be suicide." I scoffed. "The clones are defending the Republic. The last thing they want to do is piss you guys off."
"Maybe, sir." Bly sounded less than convincing. "Mandalore and the Galactic Republic haven't always had the greatest history with each other. And the Republic... the Republic is already issuing strict warnings to the fleet commanders. They're calling it an illegal recruitment effort. They're terrified of a new Mandalorian Rebellion."
"And what do you think?" I asked, watching him closely.
"I think the Republic is terrified of losing their perfect, disposable army," Bly said, his jaw tightening behind his armor. "We were made to fight, sir. But some of the men are starting to wonder what we're actually fighting for if our own freedom is considered a security threat."
"Get some rest, Bly," I said gently, patting his armored shoulder. "Don't let the Core politics cloud your focus tonight. We have to survive Maridun first before we can worry about the rest of the galaxy. Let me check on the General."
Bly nodded, stepping aside to let me pass. I slipped through the threshold of the hut, the heavy curtain falling shut behind me to block out the cool night breeze. The interior smelled intensely of boiled roots and sour sweat. Anakin was laying flat on his back, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with perspiration, his chest heaving with weak, ragged gasps.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reaching deep into the reservoir of my power. It was time to speed things along… with some Force Healing. The Jedi version, mind you! Contrary to what certain Sith groomers might tell you, it is possible to learn this power from a Jedi.
I personally learned it from a Holocron.
Nice that I finally get to use it, it's been ages since I got it.
Back when Maris and I had pulled off our little heist to take over Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine, everyone assumed we only walked away with a mountain of peggats and spice credits. But Jabba's private vault had hidden far greater treasures—including a handful of ancient Jedi holocrons he had bought from underworld black markets over the decades.
One of those holocrons had detailed the precise, intricate mechanics of Force Healing. And I remind you, it wasn't a dark side corruption trick; it was an authentic, light-side discipline that used the user's own vitality to catalyze rapid cellular regeneration in another living being.
I hadn't used it since I learned of it. But right now, with a giant tank about to roll over us, I needed Anakin on his feet. So… let's hope I'm not too rusty.
I stepped up to the cot and hovered my hands over his sweat-slicked chest. Closing my eyes, I drew upon the living Force, channeling a warm, golden glow down through my palms. I directed the soothing energy straight into his inflamed lungs, binding the torn tissue and purging the toxic Maridun flora out of his system. I could feel his heart rate instantly steadying, the frantic drumming slowing down to a calm, athletic rhythm.
Anakin gasped, his blue eyes snapping wide open as he sat bolt upright on the cot. He blinked rapidly, rubbing his chest as he looked around the room, completely bewildered by the sudden wave of pristine health flowing through his veins.
"If you're here to give me more of that slimy root juice, Ben, I swear I'll—" Anakin stopped mid-sentence, staring down at his hands, then up at me. "Wait. The fever... it's completely gone. My chest doesn't even hurt anymore."
"Relax, Skyguy," I said, casually dropping my hands into my sleeves and offering him my best, lazy Padawan grin. "You were snoring loud enough to wake the dead, so I figured I'd help you out a bit."
Anakin squinted at me, his eyes narrowing as he put two and two together. "What did you just do? I felt a massive surge in the Force right before I woke up. You were glowing."
"Just a little trick I picked up," I shrugged, leaning back against the wooden support pillar of the hut. "You're welcome."
"You could have done this the whole time?!" Anakin shouted, his voice cracking slightly with pure disbelief as he threw his legs over the side of the cot.
"Um. Yeah? I guess I kinda forgot about it?" I lied smoothly, scratching the back of my neck with a perfectly executed look of mild embarrassment. "Force healing hasn't come up much in recent events. I haven't really had a need for it, you know?"
"No, I don't know!" Anakin yelled, throwing his hands in the air, his mechanical fingers clicking against his palm. "I've been in agony for more than twenty-four painful, waking hours, and you could have fixed me whenever?! Where did you even learn how to do this?!"
Bantha shit.
My mind raced through a dozen different cover stories before settling on the grandest tradition of the Jedi Order: institutional gaslighting.
"Everyone knows how to do it," I said, keeping my face completely straight.
"What? No, they don't!" Anakin barked, staring at me like I had lost my mind.
"Sure they do!" I insisted, waving a dismissive hand. "There's a whole Hall of Healing thing back at the Temple on Coruscant, and then there's just doing it instinctually if your connection to the Living Force is high enough. It's a standard textbook technique. It's even strong enough to heal deep lightsaber stabs if you catch it early enough."
Anakin's jaw dropped, his eyes bulging as he processed the information. "I don't believe this! Obi-Wan never taught me a single thing about this! Not once in ten years!"
"Maybe he just isn't very good at it, and didn't want to disappoint you?" I suggested, leaning forward and lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I mean, think about it, Anakin. If he could use it, he probably would have used it to save Master Qui-Gon on Naboo and everything, right? It makes sense that he'd just avoid the subject entirely out of guilt."
Anakin went completely stiff, his angry demeanor instantly evaporating as a heavy, somber shadow crossed his face. He looked down at the floorboards, his shoulders slumping. "Oh… I didn't even think about that. Naboo... Master Qui-Gon." He quieted down, rubbing his chin as he contemplated the absolute lie I had just spun out of thin air. "Should I say something to him? When we get back?"
"No. Definitely not," I said quickly, widening my eyes to emphasize the danger. "In fact, let's pretend this conversation never happened. It's a very sensitive topic for him, Anakin. Let's just keep this between us."
"Yeah," Anakin murmured, shaking his head as he stood up and stretched his arms, completely buying into the narrative. "Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Ben. I owe you one."
"Don't mention it," I said, turning back toward the exit with a quiet smirk dancing across my face. "Now grab your lightsaber. Lok Durd is about to start the show, and we have a tank to steal."
"Steal?"
"Hmmm?"
"You said we were going to steal a tank?"
"I never said that. You might be hearting things. Sorry, Anakin. Like I said, I'm not the most practiced healer." I apologized.
"Oh. Alright."
Saved it.
…
The vaulted ceilings of the Jedi Temple Archives were swallowed by a thick, velvety darkness, broken only by the cold, blue pools of light emanating from the terminal stacks below. Up in the highest rafters, far above the polished stone floors where the venerable masters walked, Maris Brood sat cross-legged on a narrow stone ledge.
Her pale skin looked almost ghostly under the dim illumination, her dark, heavy eyeliner casting deep shadows over her eyes. Her Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was currently trapped in yet another endless, mind-numbing High Council meeting, which left Maris with plenty of time to play the role of the brooding, slightly eccentric Padawan.
She tossed a small, glowing data-slug from her left hand to her right, watching the tiny blue light arc through the shadows. Below her, moving with a meticulous, almost painful precision, was Barriss Offee. The Mirialan Padawan was quietly organizing a massive stack of historical holocrons, her posture perfectly rigid, her dark robes pristine and without a single crease. She looked like a textbook illustration of a perfect Jedi initiate.
It was practically begging to be disrupted.
Maris caught the data-slug one last time, slipped it into her pocket, and dropped from the high ledge. She channeled the Force through her boots to absorb the impact, landing completely soundlessly on the stone floor exactly two inches behind Barriss.
"You know, if you stack those any higher, the historical weight might actually crush your soul," Maris whispered right into her ear.
Barriss spun around instantly, her breath hitching as her hands flew up in a defensive reflex, nearly knocking over a pillar of glowing blue cubes. Her wide, dark eyes darted from Maris's face down to her feet, her chest heaving slightly as she recovered from the shock. "Maris! By the Force, must you always do that? The Archives are a place for quiet reflection, not... ambush tactics."
"Oh, relax, Barriss," Maris chuckled, leaning her hip against the side of the archive terminal and crossing her arms. She offered a lazy, sharp-toothed grin that didn't reach her eyes. "I'm just helping you test your situational awareness. Right now? I give it a solid four out of ten. If I were a Separatist assassin, you'd be a neat little pile of robes on the floor."
Barriss smoothed down the front of her tunic, her expression quickly hardening back into a mask of serene discipline. "We are inside the heart of the Jedi Temple, Maris. There are no Separatist assassins here. And some of us actually take our duties seriously. Master Luminara asked me to catalog the expansion of the Outer Rim territories prior to the Ruusan Reformation."
"Sounds thrilling," Maris said, her voice dripping with unadulterated sarcasm as she picked up one of the ancient holocrons, turning the intricate, geometric cube over in her hands. "Truly. Nothing says peacekeepers of the galaxy like sorting out thousand-year-old tax documents while the Council sends thousands of living beings to get vaporized in the outer systems."
"We are defending the Republic," Barriss replied firmly, though she quickly reached out and snatched the holocron back from Maris's fingers, placing it precisely back onto the stack. "The Separatists are tearing the galaxy apart. The Council does what it must to preserve the peace. It is our duty to support them, not question their mandates."
Maris watched her closely, her golden eyes tracking the tiny, almost imperceptible twitch in Barriss's jaw. The Force between them didn't lie. Beneath that rigid, perfect outer shell of obedience, there was a faint, cold ripple of profound unrest.
She had it on good authority. Ben had told her in confidence after their return from the Outer Rim that Barriss was practically a walking powder keg of repressed resentment toward the Republic's systemic corruption.
Honestly, Ben really shouldn't have shared that with her. She just couldn't help herself when she saw a crack in someone's armor. It was too much fun to poke at.
"Right. The peace," Maris murmured, stepping closer, her heavy boots clicking softly against the floor as she circled the Mirialan. "Is that what we're preserving? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like the Council is just running a massive, glorified military operation. We're generals now, Barriss. We wear armor. We command legions. When did the Jedi Code start including planetary blockades and casualty quotas?"
"The Clone Wars were forced upon us!" Barriss hissed, her voice dropping into a fierce, hushed whisper as she glanced nervously toward the main archival rotunda. She stepped into Maris's path, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "If we do not fight, the dark side wins. The Chancellor and the Senate are trying to maintain order, and we are the vanguard of that order. To suggest otherwise is... it borders on treason."
"Treason to who? The politicians?" Maris scoffed, a dark, low chuckle escaping her throat as she leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a smooth, seductive purr. "The Senate is a den of vipers, Barriss, and you know it. They buy and sell worlds while we bleed for them. And the Council just bows and says yes, Chancellor, because they're terrified. They're afraid of losing their status, their temple, their precious little rules."
Barriss opened her mouth to deliver another fierce, textbook defense of the Order, but the words died in her throat. She stared at Maris, her lips parting slightly as a genuine, deep-seated conflict flared in her eyes. It was a beautiful sight. The absolute certainty of the model Padawan was fracturing right down the middle, exposing a bitter, burning anger at the hypocrisy of the war.
"They lock everything away, you know," Maris continued quietly, gesturing broadly to the massive, towering shelves of the restricted archives stretching up into the gloom. "Any piece of history, any ancient philosophy that doesn't perfectly align with their rigid little worldview gets tossed into a vault and labeled dangerous. They don't trust us to think for ourselves, Barriss. They're afraid of what they can't control."
Barriss looked up at the towering shelves, the blue light of the terminal casting long, sharp shadows across the geometric tattoos on her face. Her breathing had grown slightly heavier, her posture losing a fraction of its unnatural stiffness. "The archives are restricted for our own protection. The dark side is a disease, Maris. If we do not guard against it—"
"Is it a disease, or is it just something they don't want us to understand?" Maris interrupted smoothly, taking a slow step backward into the shadows of the aisle. She let her hand trail along her belt, her fingers casually brushing against the hilt of her lightsaber. The polished metal caught the stray beam of blue terminal light, reflecting a sharp, cold glint into the darkness. "They want us to be blind, obedient soldiers, Barriss. But a real peacekeeper needs to see the whole picture. Not just the script the Council hands us."
Barriss didn't answer. She stood completely frozen between the stacks, a single holocron clutched so tightly in her hands that her knuckles were turning white. The internal conflict radiating from her in the Force was staggering, a turbulent storm of doubt, frustration, and righteous anger that had been brewing for months, if not years.
Maris smiled, a genuine, wicked expression that stayed hidden in the deep shadows of her cowl. Darth Nox didn't need to brandish a red blade or pitch the ancient tenets of the Sith to do her work. A true master of deception knew that the best way to corrupt the faithful was to simply give them a mirror and let them look at the rot they were already serving.
"Think about it, Barriss," Maris murmured, her voice fading into the ambient hum of the archive ventilation as she turned and walked away. "Or don't. You can always just go back to your tax documents."
She walked down the long, silent corridor, her soft steps echoing faintly against the high stone walls. Behind her, Barriss remained entirely motionless in the blue light, staring down at the historical data cube in her hands like it was a foreign object. Maris internally smirks as she reached the exit doors. The Mirialan was a prime target for radicalization, a perfect little piece on the galactic board just waiting to be flipped, and Maris was more than happy to give her all the room she needed to fall.
...
I'm trying to wrack my brain for something clever to say, but... yeah. I got nothing.
I hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter, of course! And as always, I highly encourage you to read ahead on my Patreon. And... that's it? I think that's it. Okay. May the Force Be With You.
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The dust up on the ridge tasted like dry clay and burnt grass. I pressed my stomach into the dirt, ignoring the way a sharp rock dug right into my ribs, and kept the heavy macrobinoculars glued to my eyes. Down in the basin, the Separatist base looked like a giant, glowing scar on the face of Maridun. Spotlights swept across the perimeter, turning the golden savanna into harsh, stark white patches, while the mechanical clanking of battle droids echoed up the stone walls of the canyon.
"You see any movement on the eastern perimeter?" Ahsoka whispered, her voice barely carrying over the wind. She was lying less than a foot away from me, her blue and white striped montrals practically touching my shoulder as she peered through her own set of lenses. "The droids look like they're doubling the guards near the landing pad."
"Just standard patrols," I murmured, adjusting the focus dial with a slow, deliberate twist. "They've got three squads of B1s walking the perimeter, and two super battle droids stationed right by the main fuel lines. Lok Durd isn't taking any chances."
"He's a coward," she muttered, her jaw tightening as she watched a pair of droids push a crate of munitions toward the center of the camp. "He knows the Lurmen won't fight back. Tee Watt Kaa is probably still down there lecturing Master Yoda about the virtues of dying quietly while those tin cans prep a weapon meant to turn them all into kindling."
"Pacifism is a luxury you can only afford when your enemy has a conscience, Snips," I said quietly, keeping my voice flat and even. "Lok Durd doesn't have one. Neither does Dooku."
Or Pre Vizla, but try telling that to my mother.
"I know," she sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly. "I just... I hate sitting here doing nothing while Anakin is burning up. We should be doing something."
"We are doing something," a deep, rumbling voice chimed in from behind us. "We are observing, Padawan Tano. A vital element of any strategy."
I didn't even need to turn around to feel the freezing, suffocating weight of the presence standing exactly twelve paces back. Master Kit Fisto was a green, unblinking gargoyle under the moonlight. His large, dark eyes didn't look at the Separatist outpost. They didn't look at the high grasslands or the night sky. They were boring a hole straight through the back of my skull, his presence in the Force pulsing with a thick, heavy layer of unadulterated suspicion.
I am so sick of this guy. Of all the Jedi I've encountered, how was Kit Fisto the only one who could see me for what I truly am? Not even Mace Windu was this suspicious of me. And he had every right to be! I did very sinister things with his chair back in the day.
But no! Rather than the Master of the Order, I had to contend with hentai head over here. I could practically hear his internal monologue counting my breaths, waiting for the split second my perfect, wide-eyed Padawan act slipped.
The problem for Master Fisto was that I wasn't observing. I was robbing them blind.
Beneath the bulky plastic housing of my standard-issue Republic macrobinoculars, my left thumb was moving with tiny, hyper-precise twitches. I had spent the last ten minutes secretly deploying a slicing script through a hidden, short-range interface built straight into my gauntlet. Lok Durd's command deck was currently warming up its primary dish, preparing a massive, encrypted data burst to send the Defoliator's initial testing diagnostics straight back to Count Dooku's flagship.
I didn't want to just stop the tank. I wanted the blueprints. A weapon that could vaporize all organic material while leaving metallic structures completely untouched was far too valuable to leave in the hands of a bumbling Neimoidian general. The First Order could use a toy like that.
The Separatists weren't the only ones with a droid army, after all.
My slicing program hit the secondary firewall of the Separatist relay, throwing up a flashing red prompt on the tiny, inverted screen inside my lenses. I masked the intrusion by piggybacking on a standard droid maintenance ping, my thumb flicking a sub-frequency toggle to clone the transmission's encryption keys.
"Ben," Ahsoka murmured suddenly, her eyes still locked on the valley below. "Your hand is twitching. You've been hitting that side-dial for three minutes straight. Are you alright?"
"Just trying to clear up the atmospheric distortion," I lied smoothly, my voice never wavering as I manually bypassed the final security node. "The heat rising off the landing craft's repulsors is playing tricks with the thermal imaging. Don't worry, I'll fix it."
"Let me look," she said, shifting her weight to lean over and snatch my macrobinoculars.
I instinctively tightened my grip, blocking her arm with a quick, playful nudge of my elbow. "Get your own, Snips. This pair is perfectly calibrated to my specific, superior eyesight. Go count your own droids."
"Oh, please," she scoffed, a familiar, wicked smirk returning to her lips as she gave my shoulder a light, teasing shove. "Your superior eyesight? Is that why you nearly walked straight into a thorn-bush on the trek up here? Come on, share the view. Or are you just using the high-magnification lens to try and pick up HoloNet sports from the mid-rim?"
"Maybe I am," I shot back, flashing her a quick, roguish grin to keep the atmosphere light. "Mandalore is playing Concord Dawn in the thranta-ball finals tonight. A good Padawan stays informed about galactic culture."
"Right. Galactic culture," she rolled her eyes, crossing her arms as she leaned back onto her elbows. "You're ridiculous, you know that? If Master Yoda heard you talking about sports while we're on a stealth recon mission, he'd make you clean the temple grease-traps for a month."
"Then it's a good thing he's down in the valley trying to convince a lemur to pack his bags," I said, my thumb hitting the final execution command.
Frequency cloned. Data siphon active.
The hidden transmitter inside my gauntlet flared to life, sending a highly concentrated, tightly beamed priority command into the upper atmosphere, routing it through an independent neutral satellite I had purchased six months ago. The destination was clear: the PROXY droids running my secret Sith Empire back in the Outer Rim. The instruction was absolute: Intercept the upcoming Separatist data burst. Extract every single line of the Defoliator's schematics for the First Order.
The moment the transmission cleared my gauntlet, the air behind us went completely ice-cold.
The Force didn't just ripple; it curdled. Kit Fisto's suspicion spiked like a Geiger counter inside a reactor core. The Nautolan Master took a slow, deliberate step forward, the dry grass crunching softly beneath his heavy boot. He couldn't see the tiny screen inside my macrobinoculars from twelve paces away, but his instincts were screaming at him.
He knew I was doing something. He knew the kid standing in front of him wasn't a harmless, sports-obsessed Padawan from Mandalore. He could smell the ozone of a lie in the air, even if he couldn't prove where the lightning had struck.
I kept my breathing perfectly synchronized, letting out a slow, lazy yawn as I lowered the macrobinoculars and rubbed my eyes. "Well, the droids aren't moving any faster down there. I think we've seen everything we're going to see for the next hour."
"Patience, Padawan Kryze," Fisto said, his voice dropping into a low, smooth purr that carried absolutely zero of his usual warmth. He walked up to the edge of the ridge, his large, dark eyes reflecting the white spotlights of the camp below as he stared down at us. "A battlefield changes in a heartbeat. Sometimes, the most dangerous movements are the ones that happen entirely out of sight."
"I suppose so, Master," I replied, offering him an entirely innocent, slightly tired smile as I tucked the macrobinoculars back into my canvas satchel. "I'm just worried about the General. The longer we sit here counting tin cans, the worse his fever gets."
"Your concern for Skywalker is noted," Fisto murmured, his gaze dropping down to my left wrist, where the hidden slicing gauntlet was concealed beneath the heavy fabric of my tunic sleeve. "But the Force reveals all things in time, Ben. Deception can only last so long, before it's exposed to the truth."
"I'll keep that in mind, sir," I said sweetly.
Ahsoka looked between the two of us, her montrals twitching as she picked up on the sudden, razor-sharp tension radiating through the air. She didn't say anything, but her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, a lingering question mark forming in her mind.
I ignored the chill running down my spine and turned back toward the dark path leading down into the valley. My innocent smile stayed firmly glued to my face, but internally, the shadow of Darth Sol was already calculating the distance between my fingers and the Darksaber.
Kit Fisto was getting closer and closer to the edge of the truth, and if he didn't back off soon, the peaceful vibe of Maridun was going to take a very dark turn, long before the Separatists could take a swing at it.
…
The twilight over Maridun was a bruised purple, bleeding into a deep, heavy shadow along the edges of the valley. Down in the basin, the Separatist outpost burned like a malicious orange eye, its perimeter lights cutting through the tall, swaying stalks of golden savanna grass.
Aayla Secura walked slowly along the perimeter of the Lurmen village, her lekku twitching slightly as she absorbed the quiet, anxious hum of the colony. The tiny, lemur-like people had already retreated into their seed-pod huts, hiding from the shadow of the war they so stubbornly ignored.
Near a pile of gathered lumber, Ben Kryze was sitting on a hollowed-out log, methodically working a hunting knife along the edge of a thick wooden stake. He was supposed to be helping reinforce a perimeter fence, creating a barrier the pacifist village elders hadn't even asked for and would likely refuse to use.
But they will do what they must.
Aayla stepped closer, her soft boots making no sound against the packed dirt. As she approached, Ben looked up from his work, his eyes tracking her movement. He stopped mid-stroke, his gaze lingering for a fraction of a second too long on the bare skin of her midriff and the tight fit of her leather top before he suddenly jerked his attention back to the wood, a faint flush rising along his neck.
Aayla couldn't resist a small, knowing smile. Even in the middle of a war zone under the shadow of a Separatist superweapon, a teenage boy was still a teenage boy.
"Eyes up, Padawan," Aayla murmured, her voice carrying a gentle, amused purr as she crossed her arms. "The droids are out in the valley, not on my chest."
Ben cleared his throat roughly, his cheeks darkening further under the moonlight as he frantically scraped the knife down the side of the stake. "I was just... looking at the leather stitching, General. It looks custom-made. Very practical for... well, everything."
"Nice recovery," Aayla teased, letting out a soft laugh that rippled through the quiet evening air. "But be mindful of yourself, Ben. You are still a Jedi, and far too young to be looking at me like that."
"I mean, we're only like five years apart," Ben muttered, deflecting with a quick, defensive roll of his shoulders as he shaved off a long curl of wood.
Aayla shook her head, her smile softening into something more maternal.
Five years was a lifetime at his age. He was still a boy, barely a Padawan, regardless of how quickly he grew. She glanced down at her own exposed midriff and the asymmetric leather wrapping of her combat gear. She knew some of the more traditional Masters back at the Temple looked askance at her choice of clothing, but those critics spent their days lecturing in air-conditioned archives.
Traditional, heavy linen robes were a death sentence when your survival relied on blinding speed, acrobatics, and fluid Form IV gymnastics. If she wore three layers of heavy fabric, she would trip over her own hems during a mid-air flip. Frankly, she was constantly amazed that Masters like Kit Fisto and Anakin Skywalker managed to fight in as much heavy layering as they did.
It was a galactic war; every extra ounce of mobility was a distinct advantage.
She stepped up to the log, watching the tight, aggressive precision of his movements. He wasn't just sharpening a stake; he was punishing the wood. The Force around him was tight, vibrating with a coiled, unspent heat that felt dangerously heavy for a boy his age.
"You're carving that deep enough to pierce an armored transport," Aayla noted quietly, gesturing to the viciously sharp point he had created. "What is troubling you?"
"The sheer pointlessness of it," Ben said, his voice dropping into a hard, flat register that sounded entirely too mature for his face. He didn't look up, his knife digging viciously into the wood with a sharp scrape. "We're building a wooden fence to stop a tracked super-tank. We're waiting here for Lok Durd to finish his breakfast and decide when he feels like incinerating this entire valley. It's completely ridiculous."
"We are respecting the will of the elders," Aayla reminded him gently, her hand dropping to rest lightly against her hip. "Tee Watt Kaa has made his choice clear. We cannot force our protection on those who refuse it."
"Then his choice is going to get every single one of his people turned into a pile of ash," Ben fired back, finally halting the knife to look up at her. His eyes were incredibly sharp under the starlight, filled with a cold, calculating intensity that made her chest tighten. "The Republic has three entire battalions tied up in red tape three systems over, and we're sitting in the dirt waiting to get struck. If we just launched a pre-emptive strike on that landing craft right now, we could sabotage the Defoliator before it even fires a test round. We could end this before it starts."
Aayla listened, her heart aching with a deep, profound empathy for the boy.
She could feel the fierce, unyielding protective instinct radiating from him. He was a Kryze, born of Mandalorian blood, and the ancient warrior heritage of his people was clearly screaming at him to take up arms and strike down the threat before it could touch the innocent. It was a natural, beautiful instinct, but a dangerous one for a Jedi to hold in the middle of a meat-grinder like the Clone Wars.
She reached down, her blue fingers gently but firmly wrapping around his wrist, stopping the motion of his knife. The wood was cold beneath their hands.
"A pre-emptive strike is an act of aggression, Ben," Aayla said softly, her voice carrying the heavy, sorrowful weight of a veteran who had seen too many battlefields turn into slaughterhouses. "The moment we begin choosing who dies based on what they might do, we stop being peacekeepers. The battlefield is never clean, and you cannot control every variable."
Ben stared at her hand on his wrist, his jaw clenching so hard she could see the muscle leap in his cheek. He looked like he wanted to argue, like he had a thousand tactical scenarios mapped out in his head that proved her wrong.
"The moment you seek absolute certainty and total control over the future, Ben, is the moment you stop trusting the Force," Aayla warned him, her voice dropping into a quiet, haunting whisper as she let go of his hand and stepped back. "Certainty is the path to the dark side. We must have the courage to face the unknown without trying to conquer it first."
She offered him one last encouraging nod, even as he suddenly looked uncomfortable.
It was understandable. He was young. Passionate. That was common, even as it flew in the face of their Code. But in time, he would see reason. He would understand why there were certain lines that no one, especially not Jedi, should cross.
Ben remained perfectly still on the log, the knife balanced precariously in his hand.
"I understand, Master Secura," Ben said quietly, his voice smooth, respectful, and entirely empty of the anger he had shown a moment prior. "Thank you for the advice."
Aayla turned and walked back toward the center of the village, satisfied that she had helped soothe his troubled spirit. It felt right to offer advice to the next generation. Perhaps she was more ready to train a Padawan than she had assumed?
…
Leaving Aayla by the lumber pile, I navigated the dark, winding paths of the Lurmen village. The night air was thick with the scent of crushed wild herbs and the faint, dusty aroma of the seed-pod structures that served as the colonists' homes. Every door was sealed shut, the tiny pacifists hiding away from the reality of the giant microwave tank parked just over the horizon. I didn't blame them, but their stubborn refusal to defend themselves was making my life a logistical nightmare.
I stopped outside the largest pod-hut at the edge of the clearing, which the clones had hastily converted into a field medical station. The soft, ambient light from a glow-rod spilled through the circular doorway, casting long shadows across the dirt. Commander Bly was leaning against a stack of supply crates right outside the entrance, his armor gleaming under the moonlight, while a clone medic was meticulously wiping down a tray of surgical instruments.
"How is he holding up?" I asked, keeping my voice low so it wouldn't carry across the quiet square.
"He's still burning up, sir," Bly said, turning his head slightly as I approached. "The fever isn't breaking. The medic gave him a sedative to keep him from thrashing, but his breathing is still far too shallow for my liking."
"Is the medicine from the elders helping at all?" I asked, glancing past him into the dim interior of the hut where Anakin's large silhouette was stretched out on a makeshift cot.
"Slowly," the medic chimed in, tossing a blood-stained rag into a waste bin. "But at this rate, General Skywalker is going to be out of commission long before the Separatists decide to march on this place. If those droids attack by morning, he won't even be able to lift his lightsaber, let alone lead a counter-offensive."
I nodded slowly, crossing my arms as I looked back at Bly. The commander was staring out into the high grass, his fingers tapping a restless, rhythmic beat against the holster of his DC-17 blaster. There was a strange, heavy static in the Force around him, a turbulent wave of anxiety that had absolutely nothing to do with Lok Durd or the battle droids.
"You look like you have something on your mind, Commander," I noted quietly. "And I doubt it's the Separatist perimeter layout."
Bly stayed silent for a long moment, his shoulders tightening beneath his pauldrons. "It's the comm-chatter from the Core, Padawan Kryze. The encrypted frequencies have been lighting up all evening. The boys in the 327th are sharing data bursts from the outer rims."
"What about?"
"Our citizenship with Mandalore," he said, taking me by surprise. "It's being taken to the Senate. If the motion passes, we'll be full-blooded Republic citizens."
"That's excellent news!" I offered a large grin, hesitating when he didn't return it. "Isn't it?"
"We're not sure, sir," Bly admitted, his voice dropping to a harsh, strained whisper. "To have a culture, a name, and a choice that wasn't coded into our DNA before we were even born. It's more than we could've asked for. But if the Senate repeals it…"
"That's be suicide." I scoffed. "The clones are defending the Republic. The last thing they want to do is piss you guys off."
"Maybe, sir." Bly sounded less than convincing. "Mandalore and the Galactic Republic haven't always had the greatest history with each other. And the Republic... the Republic is already issuing strict warnings to the fleet commanders. They're calling it an illegal recruitment effort. They're terrified of a new Mandalorian Rebellion."
"And what do you think?" I asked, watching him closely.
"I think the Republic is terrified of losing their perfect, disposable army," Bly said, his jaw tightening behind his armor. "We were made to fight, sir. But some of the men are starting to wonder what we're actually fighting for if our own freedom is considered a security threat."
"Get some rest, Bly," I said gently, patting his armored shoulder. "Don't let the Core politics cloud your focus tonight. We have to survive Maridun first before we can worry about the rest of the galaxy. Let me check on the General."
Bly nodded, stepping aside to let me pass. I slipped through the threshold of the hut, the heavy curtain falling shut behind me to block out the cool night breeze. The interior smelled intensely of boiled roots and sour sweat. Anakin was laying flat on his back, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with perspiration, his chest heaving with weak, ragged gasps.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, reaching deep into the reservoir of my power. It was time to speed things along… with some Force Healing. The Jedi version, mind you! Contrary to what certain Sith groomers might tell you, it is possible to learn this power from a Jedi.
I personally learned it from a Holocron.
Nice that I finally get to use it, it's been ages since I got it.
Back when Maris and I had pulled off our little heist to take over Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine, everyone assumed we only walked away with a mountain of peggats and spice credits. But Jabba's private vault had hidden far greater treasures—including a handful of ancient Jedi holocrons he had bought from underworld black markets over the decades.
One of those holocrons had detailed the precise, intricate mechanics of Force Healing. And I remind you, it wasn't a dark side corruption trick; it was an authentic, light-side discipline that used the user's own vitality to catalyze rapid cellular regeneration in another living being.
I hadn't used it since I learned of it. But right now, with a giant tank about to roll over us, I needed Anakin on his feet. So… let's hope I'm not too rusty.
I stepped up to the cot and hovered my hands over his sweat-slicked chest. Closing my eyes, I drew upon the living Force, channeling a warm, golden glow down through my palms. I directed the soothing energy straight into his inflamed lungs, binding the torn tissue and purging the toxic Maridun flora out of his system. I could feel his heart rate instantly steadying, the frantic drumming slowing down to a calm, athletic rhythm.
Anakin gasped, his blue eyes snapping wide open as he sat bolt upright on the cot. He blinked rapidly, rubbing his chest as he looked around the room, completely bewildered by the sudden wave of pristine health flowing through his veins.
"If you're here to give me more of that slimy root juice, Ben, I swear I'll—" Anakin stopped mid-sentence, staring down at his hands, then up at me. "Wait. The fever... it's completely gone. My chest doesn't even hurt anymore."
"Relax, Skyguy," I said, casually dropping my hands into my sleeves and offering him my best, lazy Padawan grin. "You were snoring loud enough to wake the dead, so I figured I'd help you out a bit."
Anakin squinted at me, his eyes narrowing as he put two and two together. "What did you just do? I felt a massive surge in the Force right before I woke up. You were glowing."
"Just a little trick I picked up," I shrugged, leaning back against the wooden support pillar of the hut. "You're welcome."
"You could have done this the whole time?!" Anakin shouted, his voice cracking slightly with pure disbelief as he threw his legs over the side of the cot.
"Um. Yeah? I guess I kinda forgot about it?" I lied smoothly, scratching the back of my neck with a perfectly executed look of mild embarrassment. "Force healing hasn't come up much in recent events. I haven't really had a need for it, you know?"
"No, I don't know!" Anakin yelled, throwing his hands in the air, his mechanical fingers clicking against his palm. "I've been in agony for more than twenty-four painful, waking hours, and you could have fixed me whenever?! Where did you even learn how to do this?!"
Bantha shit.
My mind raced through a dozen different cover stories before settling on the grandest tradition of the Jedi Order: institutional gaslighting.
"Everyone knows how to do it," I said, keeping my face completely straight.
"What? No, they don't!" Anakin barked, staring at me like I had lost my mind.
"Sure they do!" I insisted, waving a dismissive hand. "There's a whole Hall of Healing thing back at the Temple on Coruscant, and then there's just doing it instinctually if your connection to the Living Force is high enough. It's a standard textbook technique. It's even strong enough to heal deep lightsaber stabs if you catch it early enough."
Anakin's jaw dropped, his eyes bulging as he processed the information. "I don't believe this! Obi-Wan never taught me a single thing about this! Not once in ten years!"
"Maybe he just isn't very good at it, and didn't want to disappoint you?" I suggested, leaning forward and lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I mean, think about it, Anakin. If he could use it, he probably would have used it to save Master Qui-Gon on Naboo and everything, right? It makes sense that he'd just avoid the subject entirely out of guilt."
Anakin went completely stiff, his angry demeanor instantly evaporating as a heavy, somber shadow crossed his face. He looked down at the floorboards, his shoulders slumping. "Oh… I didn't even think about that. Naboo... Master Qui-Gon." He quieted down, rubbing his chin as he contemplated the absolute lie I had just spun out of thin air. "Should I say something to him? When we get back?"
"No. Definitely not," I said quickly, widening my eyes to emphasize the danger. "In fact, let's pretend this conversation never happened. It's a very sensitive topic for him, Anakin. Let's just keep this between us."
"Yeah," Anakin murmured, shaking his head as he stood up and stretched his arms, completely buying into the narrative. "Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Ben. I owe you one."
"Don't mention it," I said, turning back toward the exit with a quiet smirk dancing across my face. "Now grab your lightsaber. Lok Durd is about to start the show, and we have a tank to steal."
"Steal?"
"Hmmm?"
"You said we were going to steal a tank?"
"I never said that. You might be hearting things. Sorry, Anakin. Like I said, I'm not the most practiced healer." I apologized.
"Oh. Alright."
Saved it.
…
The vaulted ceilings of the Jedi Temple Archives were swallowed by a thick, velvety darkness, broken only by the cold, blue pools of light emanating from the terminal stacks below. Up in the highest rafters, far above the polished stone floors where the venerable masters walked, Maris Brood sat cross-legged on a narrow stone ledge.
Her pale skin looked almost ghostly under the dim illumination, her dark, heavy eyeliner casting deep shadows over her eyes. Her Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, was currently trapped in yet another endless, mind-numbing High Council meeting, which left Maris with plenty of time to play the role of the brooding, slightly eccentric Padawan.
She tossed a small, glowing data-slug from her left hand to her right, watching the tiny blue light arc through the shadows. Below her, moving with a meticulous, almost painful precision, was Barriss Offee. The Mirialan Padawan was quietly organizing a massive stack of historical holocrons, her posture perfectly rigid, her dark robes pristine and without a single crease. She looked like a textbook illustration of a perfect Jedi initiate.
It was practically begging to be disrupted.
Maris caught the data-slug one last time, slipped it into her pocket, and dropped from the high ledge. She channeled the Force through her boots to absorb the impact, landing completely soundlessly on the stone floor exactly two inches behind Barriss.
"You know, if you stack those any higher, the historical weight might actually crush your soul," Maris whispered right into her ear.
Barriss spun around instantly, her breath hitching as her hands flew up in a defensive reflex, nearly knocking over a pillar of glowing blue cubes. Her wide, dark eyes darted from Maris's face down to her feet, her chest heaving slightly as she recovered from the shock. "Maris! By the Force, must you always do that? The Archives are a place for quiet reflection, not... ambush tactics."
"Oh, relax, Barriss," Maris chuckled, leaning her hip against the side of the archive terminal and crossing her arms. She offered a lazy, sharp-toothed grin that didn't reach her eyes. "I'm just helping you test your situational awareness. Right now? I give it a solid four out of ten. If I were a Separatist assassin, you'd be a neat little pile of robes on the floor."
Barriss smoothed down the front of her tunic, her expression quickly hardening back into a mask of serene discipline. "We are inside the heart of the Jedi Temple, Maris. There are no Separatist assassins here. And some of us actually take our duties seriously. Master Luminara asked me to catalog the expansion of the Outer Rim territories prior to the Ruusan Reformation."
"Sounds thrilling," Maris said, her voice dripping with unadulterated sarcasm as she picked up one of the ancient holocrons, turning the intricate, geometric cube over in her hands. "Truly. Nothing says peacekeepers of the galaxy like sorting out thousand-year-old tax documents while the Council sends thousands of living beings to get vaporized in the outer systems."
"We are defending the Republic," Barriss replied firmly, though she quickly reached out and snatched the holocron back from Maris's fingers, placing it precisely back onto the stack. "The Separatists are tearing the galaxy apart. The Council does what it must to preserve the peace. It is our duty to support them, not question their mandates."
Maris watched her closely, her golden eyes tracking the tiny, almost imperceptible twitch in Barriss's jaw. The Force between them didn't lie. Beneath that rigid, perfect outer shell of obedience, there was a faint, cold ripple of profound unrest.
She had it on good authority. Ben had told her in confidence after their return from the Outer Rim that Barriss was practically a walking powder keg of repressed resentment toward the Republic's systemic corruption.
Honestly, Ben really shouldn't have shared that with her. She just couldn't help herself when she saw a crack in someone's armor. It was too much fun to poke at.
"Right. The peace," Maris murmured, stepping closer, her heavy boots clicking softly against the floor as she circled the Mirialan. "Is that what we're preserving? Because from where I'm standing, it looks like the Council is just running a massive, glorified military operation. We're generals now, Barriss. We wear armor. We command legions. When did the Jedi Code start including planetary blockades and casualty quotas?"
"The Clone Wars were forced upon us!" Barriss hissed, her voice dropping into a fierce, hushed whisper as she glanced nervously toward the main archival rotunda. She stepped into Maris's path, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "If we do not fight, the dark side wins. The Chancellor and the Senate are trying to maintain order, and we are the vanguard of that order. To suggest otherwise is... it borders on treason."
"Treason to who? The politicians?" Maris scoffed, a dark, low chuckle escaping her throat as she leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a smooth, seductive purr. "The Senate is a den of vipers, Barriss, and you know it. They buy and sell worlds while we bleed for them. And the Council just bows and says yes, Chancellor, because they're terrified. They're afraid of losing their status, their temple, their precious little rules."
Barriss opened her mouth to deliver another fierce, textbook defense of the Order, but the words died in her throat. She stared at Maris, her lips parting slightly as a genuine, deep-seated conflict flared in her eyes. It was a beautiful sight. The absolute certainty of the model Padawan was fracturing right down the middle, exposing a bitter, burning anger at the hypocrisy of the war.
"They lock everything away, you know," Maris continued quietly, gesturing broadly to the massive, towering shelves of the restricted archives stretching up into the gloom. "Any piece of history, any ancient philosophy that doesn't perfectly align with their rigid little worldview gets tossed into a vault and labeled dangerous. They don't trust us to think for ourselves, Barriss. They're afraid of what they can't control."
Barriss looked up at the towering shelves, the blue light of the terminal casting long, sharp shadows across the geometric tattoos on her face. Her breathing had grown slightly heavier, her posture losing a fraction of its unnatural stiffness. "The archives are restricted for our own protection. The dark side is a disease, Maris. If we do not guard against it—"
"Is it a disease, or is it just something they don't want us to understand?" Maris interrupted smoothly, taking a slow step backward into the shadows of the aisle. She let her hand trail along her belt, her fingers casually brushing against the hilt of her lightsaber. The polished metal caught the stray beam of blue terminal light, reflecting a sharp, cold glint into the darkness. "They want us to be blind, obedient soldiers, Barriss. But a real peacekeeper needs to see the whole picture. Not just the script the Council hands us."
Barriss didn't answer. She stood completely frozen between the stacks, a single holocron clutched so tightly in her hands that her knuckles were turning white. The internal conflict radiating from her in the Force was staggering, a turbulent storm of doubt, frustration, and righteous anger that had been brewing for months, if not years.
Maris smiled, a genuine, wicked expression that stayed hidden in the deep shadows of her cowl. Darth Nox didn't need to brandish a red blade or pitch the ancient tenets of the Sith to do her work. A true master of deception knew that the best way to corrupt the faithful was to simply give them a mirror and let them look at the rot they were already serving.
"Think about it, Barriss," Maris murmured, her voice fading into the ambient hum of the archive ventilation as she turned and walked away. "Or don't. You can always just go back to your tax documents."
She walked down the long, silent corridor, her soft steps echoing faintly against the high stone walls. Behind her, Barriss remained entirely motionless in the blue light, staring down at the historical data cube in her hands like it was a foreign object. Maris internally smirks as she reached the exit doors. The Mirialan was a prime target for radicalization, a perfect little piece on the galactic board just waiting to be flipped, and Maris was more than happy to give her all the room she needed to fall.
...
I'm trying to wrack my brain for something clever to say, but... yeah. I got nothing.
I hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter, of course! And as always, I highly encourage you to read ahead on my Patreon. And... that's it? I think that's it. Okay. May the Force Be With You.
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HughJass
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The sheer irony when that's what the battle of Geonosis was all about.
Vadelent
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Huh? Togruta don't have tails… Oh, you mean their lekku. Which I suppose are technically called brain tails.
They also don't have ears persay, they have montrals, the hollow horns their lekku hang from. They hear from those.
I'm going to assume you meant lekku because montrals are horns and as such don't move.
So is it a notebook or a datapad?
Nitpicking over details aside I'm enjoying this. I especially liked how he's mocking the Jedi code. Because frankly? It's stupid and so are they for brainwashing themselves into believing emotions are detrimental.
Sure is a shame then that no one is following.
It is, it is, it most certainly is and what? The important part is the crystal, everything else it interchangeable. Crud, I bet someone could make a Kyber blaster if they wanted to and the crystal wouldn't give a fuck. XD
Assuming of course he gets chosen and doesn't wind up in the corp. Or you know, wanders off and finds one of the other force user groups out there that aren't the jedi. Like the ones who are basically monks and internalize their force use.
Sounds kinda dangerous but warming ones self with a blade made of barely contained plasma sounds like it may work. Especially if you can find a small well insulated room to do it.
Cheeky bastard is probably using a force technique to keep his body heat constant and the biting wind out.
I'm not sure I actually need to point out what's wrong here. ^_^'
The crystals themselves no, but as a lightsaber definitely. Even if no knight or above will ever admit to using theirs as a glorified glowstick on occasion.
Okay, it's small and beautiful but what color is it? XD
That's what I'd like to know! XD
A worthy goal if I've ever heard one. Making someone wholeheartedly laugh is almost always a good thing. Managing to get a several millenia old sassy droid who thinks they've seen it all to laugh is a challenge worth undertaking indeed.
Or songsteel or Cortosis or Phrik. All will handle the job of blocking lightsabers just fine. Some are better at it than others and others are more temperamental or harder to work with. All rare in modern era though. Even Cortosis.
One day she'll learn the advanced technique of ear twisting and pulling and one day she'll use it to embarrass him in front of the younglings. And it will likely be deserved. XD
Oh boy. I wonder who he could be facing. >: )
Not everyday the Jedi get to use their most problematic golden boy to brighten their day by stepping on a new upstart. XD
I mean, is it a coincidence he looks like Space Jesus?
Considering how tempting both sides of the force can be it's rather hard to walk a middle line especially when they're trying to indoctrinate you and have 4K+ years of history at being mostly successful at it.
Mmm… They'd probably do it well intentioned but they'd definitely do it if they thought it would drag him into line with everyone else. That said, in all likelihood it'd make him do something actually crazy and leave the order.
Rationing? On Corrussant? The planet that imports *everything*? Before the war really heats up? … Probably just a Jedi thing.
Hmmm… Pretty sure that's been deleted at this point. And probably has been longer than he's been alive. Which begs the question (for the Jedi) why does he know of it much less that it's wet?
I imagine the reason they don't is less because they don't want to and more that they don't know how.
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