Star Wars: Order One (Special Edition)

CHAPTER ONE​

Officially there never was a Clone Rebellion on Kamino. Unofficially...​

It was always raining on Kamino. The short miserable walk from the off ramp of the lambda shuttle to the entrance of the administrative facility left newly appointed Moff Ortasil drenched by the time he made it inside the building. Struggling to ignore the tight wet uniform clinging to his skin, Ortasil eyed his surroundings; overly bright and overly sterile, it seemed obvious it was designed for outworlders by a race unaccustomed to prolonged visitation.

A door slid open. Of all the alien species Ortasil had been forced to encounter during the war, Kaminoans were by far the most unnerving. More than one culture still told stories of spindly beings with bulbous heads abducting men for the purposes of an unknown science. The frail yet towering physiques of these creatures seemed unreal to Ortasil, as if the creators of the clones were themselves the result of some unseen artificial conception. Or perhaps the cunning hidden behind their large calculating eyes hinted at the all too natural predatory origins of their race.

The thing that really bothered Ortasil was the Kaminoan sense of politeness.

"The Prime Minister will see you now" a female voice said in a sing song way, slightly bowing her long neck with a formality that only drew more attention to how she loomed over her guest. They walked together silently, the Kaminoan lanking forward with the poise of a spectre, Ortasil with his arms wrapped around his chest and squinting into winding corridors bathed in much more light than what he had had become accustomed to while serving in the relatively dimly lit confines of venator command decks.

Ortasil and the Kaminian reached the Prime Minister's office. Straightening himself, Ortasil strode past her and into the room.

"Minister Lama Su, Regional Moff Ortasil is here to see you," the female Kaminoan said.

"Thank you, Taun We," said the Prime Minister.

The Moff made no attempt to acknowledge her dismissal as he tried to settle into the pod shaped seating provided to him. Unmoved by Ortasil's discourtesy, Taun We bowed again and departed.

"Welcome, Governor, we are honored by your visit."

The room was quiet. Ortasil looked at Lama Su, who smiled back, politely waiting for him to be the first to speak. Blasted alien, Ortasil thought. The Kaminoan wasn’t the first person that day to use old titles, and by extension fail to acknowledge the great changes that had just swept through the galaxy. This was part of the reason why Ortasil had decided to make this appointment personally before upstarts like Tarkin could insert themselves into what was rightly his sector. What he'd give to do away with the subtle duplicities that hid behind the cordiality of statesmen. Their formalities frustrated him. The Prime Minister for example was making a point of being on his best behavior, but not once had the stupid amphibian offered Ortasil a towel. The Moff sullenly came to terms with the puddles of cold water sloshing in his boots.

Ortasil took a deep breath and looked up at the strange creature he was stuck ruling in the name of the Empire.

“I trust that you are monitoring the progress of Operation Knightfall,” he said while trying to ignore the water dripping from him onto the seat. A hint of increased pride seemed to show in the Kaminoan’s demeanor.

“Kill ratios currently exceed projections, Order 66 proceeds with no discernible deviation.”

Ortasil leaned forward in his chair.

“Discernible?”

Lama Su contemplated whether he should call for refreshments. The discussion of statistics was a common pastime that had won him his position.

“There is always a margin for error in these things unfortunately, but as things stand the confidence interval of compliant units remains more than or equal to 95%.“

"Fortune is as nebulous as the will of the Force, Kaminoan." Ortasil scoffed, "I am interested in success, not mathematics.”

Lama Su smiled, which was his way of projecting a sense of approachability humans seemed to need in order to finish a transaction.

"I see that you are a busy man, we will make sure aggregated demand forecasts are- “

“Enough!”

Ortasil stood and began to pace in front of the confused Kaminoan, a habit that both men had seen used for the purposes of intimidating raw subordinates.

“Do you think I am here for a sales pitch, minister?" Ozy asked dryly.

Lama Su tilted his head quizzically.

"I was told you wished to review our contracts." Hesitation had crept into the minister's voice. He had expected hard bargaining and a chance for Kamino to prove its value This crack in the Kaminoan's facade made Ortasil smile. Ortasil cut him off with a gesture.

" I am here, cloner, because your blatant war profiteering has drawn my attention. I am here because the institutions of the galaxy, including your precious military industrial complex, have grown too compartmentalized and self-serving to root out graft and sedition without firm guidance. Recent events prove that operational autonomy is a liability. Experts will audit your methods while I judge how they might best be replicated.”

Lama Su's smile disappeared. "That hardly seems necessary, Moff Ortasil. If my people had done something to displease you, I am sure the Supreme Chancellor would have brought this to my attention directly."

"The Emperor," Ortasill said pointedly, “does not have time to micromanage every system in the outer rim. That is why he has appointed men like me to govern the edges of the universe in his stead. In all honesty, minister, limiting our source of manpower to one location has never seemed wise to me, You are lucky that I don’t take every last credit you have to offer in payment for the defense platforms hovering above your head. I haven't forgotten how your planet had the gall to increase its fees when the war efforts seemed at its most bleak.”

Ortasil straightened his uniform.

"It is time you give back out of loyalty, not profit motive. As long as you obey the Empire and follow my directives to the letter your services will be fairly rewarded." Pleased with himself, Ortasil left the room before the Kaminoan could react. The alien didn’t need to be told that by promising Kaminoan secrets to other contractors, Ortasil had secured for himself a hefty kickback. Clone intelligence would report that to their handlers shortly.

~~~~~

"Can a Moff do this?"

An emergency meeting had been called as soon as Ortasil returned to his ship. Granting Spaarti Creations free reign over the cloning facility was unacceptable. They were Kamino's chief industrial competitor and were soon going to be given direct access to secrets the kaminoans had carefully guarded for centuries. They had also suddenly and unexpectedly risen from the dead after the battle of Coruscant, providing the republic with fresh reinforcements. Everyone knew the rigid conformity beaten into each clone trooper at a genetic level would be the ideal template for Spaarti's flash memory process. Few were aware that unless Palpatine had a third secret army at his disposal, their current numbers were being exaggerated. This fact should have maintained Kamino's bargaining power.

"In a word, yes."

Halle Burtoni, chief ambassador and first ever Kaminoan member of the Senate was holding herself up with a cane. A muted holorecording of Palpatine's Declaration of A New Order issued a few standard hours prior played on a loop at her side.


“Moffs were granted extraordinary powers over their sectors well before today. After reviewing the new Imperial Charter, I have determined their authority to be near absolute."

The Prime Minister slumped in his pod. "We are still in good standing with Palpatine. Why not petition him directly?"

"Our new Emperor likely approves of Ortasil's plan, if it has even been deemed worthy of his attention. Reliance on speciest leadership now seems to be state policy. The Verpine already obey a cadre of human 'advisors'. Cransaoc influence over Sparti Creations has apparently all but disappeared if the reports given to us about the facilities on Centax-2 are to be believed."

Lama Su began to become lost in his own thoughts. Kamino was too far from the galactic core to truly know of its ways, but it shouldn't have been possible to have built a clone facility so close to the Republic's capital without at least someone noticing. Learning of its existence after the long slog of the outer rim sieges hadn't made any sense at the time, but using Spaarti as a backup would more than make up for how dangerously thin the grand army had been stretched. The question now was whether they would remain satisfied with operating from Coruscant's moon or if they would simply skip the costs of repairing the damage sustained during Grievous' raid and relocate to operate from Kamino's own facilities instead.


Burtoni rapped her cane to regain his attention. "There's more, my lord. Before liquidation, Advanced Recon Commando Eight Four Seven Niner Five returned to us with information that can only be described as startling.”

Burtoni's withered hands motioned to Taun We. The graceful Kaminoan handed Lama Su a datapad filled with a stream of energy readings centered on a massive object of unknown spheroid design. The Prime Minister perked up.

"The asset had been conducting unsanctioned flight training exercises in and around Geonosis before stumbling onto radio silent v wing patrols in the nearby asteroid fields. From there 8-4-7-9-5 monitored their movements until they arrived at what he believed to be a massive Separatist installation."

"Impossible. Our Occupation Forces would have noticed if the foundries were being repurposed for such an undertaking."

"Scans showed no major droid presence in the installation."

Lama Su was stunned. "Something of this scale is impossible; Palpatine doesn't have the manpower necessary to even consider committing to such an undertaking without our expertise. Unless..."

Ambassador Burtoni finished the thought. "Unless the Empire is using Spaarti to quick-clone expendable laborers."

The Empire wasn’t even pretending that Kamino was still needed. More was at stake than intellectual property. A superweapon threatened to make the very idea of conventional armies obsolete. On rare occasions such as these Lama Su would have turned to Lord Tyranus for guidance but he had gone radio silent, possibly a victim of the purge he had helped design.

"This is an outrage! Our armies may have been bred to be the Chancellor's slaves, but he is a fool if he thinks this army will be the last we can produce."

“Excuse me milord” Taun We interjected.

Taun We had spoken out of turn. Luckily no one in the room was in the mood to chastise her. Lama Su simply turned in her direction and sagged his long neck, the Kaminoan equivalent of an annoyed sigh.

"Excuse me, milord, but our armies were bred to serve the office of the Chancellor. Palpatine abolished that position when he declared himself Emperor.”


Lama Su pursed his lips. “An interesting thought, but irrelevant unless Palpatine has violated his constitution."

Burtoni’s eyes widened. “That constitution has been replaced by the Charter.”

Lama Su looked at both of them coldly then understood. "If Palpatine has abandoned his own commitments…”

"He is no longer protected by them."

The three Kaminoans looked down at the holorecording still playing on a loop below them. The cackling old man who had fashioned himself master of all now seemed so foolish. His deformed image sputtered out, replaced by a face shared by billions of identical soldiers stationed across the galaxy. Their loyalty was unquestionable, and now to be forever uprooted by the utterance of a simple phrase.

"Execute Order One"

****************************


Master Shaak Ti fell dead. Remaining calm while other Jedi gave into panic, her majestic day long running battle with the 501st had spiraled away from the Temple and deep into the lower levels of Coruscant. Lord Vader had found her playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the outclassed squads sent to execute her. The narrow pathways and densely packed squalor she sped through gave Shaakti ample means to sidestep the brute force being thrown her way. Lord Vader had sensed the perfect precision guiding her attacks. He could also sense the compassion for nearby civilians that barred Shaakti from wreaking total havok on her pursuers.

Vader knew that compassion could lead to unexpected compromises. Shakti’s spirited defense of the temple had inspired many who would have made the far wiser choice of abandoning it, their joint efforts at one point almost driving the clones back to the temple entrance steps. A green twilek wielding dual blasters held the main door for some time until Vader doubled back to cut her down, the bottom half of her dismembered lekku squirming at his feet as he cut through her shoulder blade and left breast. Jedi Knight Jax Pavon had been accompanying her and died cleaner, his guard dropping after being overwhelmed by the confusion brought about from the sight of his former friend decimating their rear guard. The little tinkerer Kazdan Paratus summoned up his remaining courage and raised himself tall via his spindly mechanical appendages then launched forward to avenge them like a verpine jumping spider, only to twist midair and land back first as his mechanical limbs were forced to jerk and stab into his exposed torso.

Only then did Shaakti realize that her example was doing more harm than good, causing her to flee at lightning speed through the second wave of soldiers pouring back into the temple, her hope being that the others would also flee to safety. By that point most had been boxed in, denying them the ability to escape. Shaakti's compassion was an easy thing to exploit. Ripping congested platforms from their foundations and firing randomly into crowds whenever the Jedi Master temporarily slipped away was enough to eventually make Shaakti turn and face the newest member of the Sith head on. Their duel was vicious despite both knowing that the outcome was inevitable. She fought valiantly but was eventually slaughtered like all the rest.

Shaakti hadn't been the most difficult adversary to put down during the long violence filled hours since Vader's new master issued Order 66. That distinction had gone to the red headed Jedi Knight trying to herd young padawans onto a starship operated by the Agriculture Corps. Gira pled for mercy when Vader approached him with his weapon drawn. If Vader let the children go Gira swore he'd submit to Sith rule.

Vader gave no response. The desperation that then swelled in Gira's eyes reminded Vader of how he felt when he first foresaw Padme's death. It was obvious both men were capable of doing terrible things for the sake of those they loved. Gira swung wildly at Vader. Unfortunately for Gira, his ferocity burned out when the clones shot down the escaping starship. With the Padawans dead Gira had no reason to defend himself.

Shaakti had been the final straggler. Though galvanizing, her participation in the Temple’s last stand had only delayed the inevitable. Lord Vader had obeyed his master: The Jedi been slain without mercy or hesitation. Palpatine would no doubt want to bask in Vader's success, but that could wait for a later time. There was something far more important Vader needed to attend to.

A LAAT circled overhead. It touched down, offloading a group of clones wearing the distinctive blue striped armor of Vader's fist, the 501st. Their captain stood at attention, his experience allowing him to ignore the smoke that filled the air and the sound of moaning wounded too far gone to be saved.

. "New orders, General Skywalker."

"Not now, Rex." Vader punched a few numbers into his wrist comms. "Take me to these coordinates."


"Negatory, sir, that district is on lock down. You've been ordered to report to Captain Pellaeon on the double."

Vader resisted the urge to snap at his subordinate. Their relationship had slowly begun to fade in these last few days of the war, especially after the former Jedi acquiesced to regimen and forced his commander to submit the 501^st to regular inhibitor chip inspections. Like many other clones who had gained a greater sense of individuality during the war, Rex's mind was hazy, victim to the strange stupor that was a byproduct Order 66, as though his personality had been sapped alongside his free will. It seemed Captain Rex had reverted to the rigid military discipline Skywalker had taught him to skirt during the past three years of conflict. For now he was just a number, one of countless expendable soldiers barely above the clankers.

"Disregard standard procedure, CT-7567. I operate under Palpatine’s direct orders, not yours.”

Rex exchanged looks with his fellow clones. "General, per contingency orders 1, 5, and 65, Former Chancellor Palpatine has been removed from office."

"What?!"

The Dark Side can be like a sickness. Like a fever, it could in one moment dull the senses and in the next make them painfully hypersensitive. Vader spread his awareness beyond the vindictive fury he had unleashed upon the world city. To his surprise, the entire ecumenopolis had entered a state of bedlam. The clones noticed none of this.

"You and other vetted members of high command are to convene with Captain Palle- Ack!"

Rex and the others were hoisted into the air by a force choke.

Vader was fuming. "You will take me to the coordinates I gave you, trooper."

Delirious, Rex barely struggled to breath.

"Good Soldiers... follow orders"

His neck snapped. So too did the neck of the LAAT's pilot. Vader left the bodies with those of their brothers he left dismembered in his wake.

More treachery? Vader turned on the Transport's holonet receiver. The channels were jammed, now filled with static or playing on loop the emergency broadcast that had blared during Grievious’ attack. He had been preoccupied on Nelvaan during most of the raid so seeing the planet like his was new to him. The planet once again looked like a warzone. Fire could be seen rising from the Chancellor’s chambers, and worse, from the Senate Building.

In minutes he arrived at his destination. More blue and red striped clones stood in his way.

"The Senate Residences are a restricted area, milord." After cutting the soldiers down, Vader entered the Residences.

His heart dropped. The bodies of clones and Naboo Security Forces were everywhere. Captain Panaka had died in the hallway, as had quite a few police droids judging by the scrap littering the floor. Padme's apartment was in shambles; it was obvious from the scorch marks on the walls that a firefight had taken place here as well. Mixed in with the dead were the blue cloaks of the Senate Guard and the ceremonial red of those honored to serve the leader of the galaxy.

All the pain and hate that had been giving Vader strength was now tearing into him, making it hard to breath.

"Where is she?" he asked the familiar figure lurking in the shadows.

The Emperor stepped forward. The disfigurement that he had endured in his battle against Mace Windu had only revealed the malign form he no longer kept hidden.

"She is under my protection."

"Can I see her?"

Darth Sidious spelled out his words carefully. "Not yet."

A wave of frustration collapsed one of the apartment’s walls. Annoyed by the outburst, Darth Sidious ground his teeth. The new order Sith had been carefully preparing for almost two thousand years hadn't lasted a day. His enforcer was equally unstable.

Vader’s aura reeked of rage and petulance, those vices being all that was keeping the new apprentice’s psyche from total collapse.

"Nothing makes sense anymore!” Vader fumed. “Everyone's betrayed me: the Clones, the Jedi...you."

The Dark Lord of the Sith warily eyed his new apprentice.

"You betrayed my trust from the start. You used me!"

What was left of Anakin Skywalker strode forward in seething rage. His blind fury was no match for the force lightning that threw him against the blasterbolt pocked wall.

"It is your emotions that betray you, my apprentice" Sidious hissed. Gone was the aura of triumph that had filled the Sith Lord after Master Windu was struck down. Now his emotions were as tumultuous as the gullible fool convulsing beneath him. "I have commanded all remaining Separatist forces to converge on the source of this rebellion."

Anakin wailed, the full impact of his mentor’s double dealings finally crushing his spirit. He was hit by another volley of lightning.

"You and I shall personally see to the success of this final task, Lord Vader, to save our empire...and your wife.

 

CHAPTER 2

"To Kamino we must go."
-Jedi Master Yoda to the crew of the Sundered Heart​

The Separatist Navy was committing suicide. Its fleets recklessly engaged the Republic’s armada, quickly creating a vast ring of twisted metal around Kamino. Countless T–series tactical droids deactivated themselves rather than contribute to the folly. The planet boasted the best air defense system in the galaxy and even with the element of surprise what remained of the CIS had no hope of conquering it.

With all the burning Dreadnoughts and round Core ships repurposed for kamikaze runs pouring down into the planet’s orbit orbit, a few smaller vessels were bound to slip through the strained defenses. Magnadroids and B2s soon aimlessly swarmed pockets of Tipoca City, albeit without making any significant advances. Other cities fared worse, most due to chance collisions with debris. Despite their numbers the Separatists were not trying to win. They were nothing more than a diversion for one downward careening shuttle craft.

Lama Su impatiently listened to the military chatter being spewed around him. He was no soldier, but as Prime Minister Lama Su was obligated to stay on the surface and observe first-hand how the clones conducted the battle without Jedi or detained officers like Ortasil giving them orders. How little they needed others telling them what to do made Lama Su proud of his craftsmanship, but also uneased. They had been created to be the greatest armed force in the galaxy, and they did not disappoint. Lama Su looked out the window of the shuttle bay he had chosen to inspect rather than expose his generals to the fact that he did not truly know what they were doing. Above him the rain clouds were burning. Below him was a near totally emptied hanger. Beyond the hanger's blast shields was a blanket of rain that totally obscured the battle above. More Republic Cruisers were on their way; until they arrived there was still a possibility that this reckless frontal assault might actually achieve something.

Clones began to comment on the flight path vector of the shuttle on approach. The Republic Identification Codes it broadcasted were up to date and indicated clearance but the descent velocity indicated that it should probably circle back around to lose airspeed. Ground control turned away from tracking the larger battle to warn the mystery pilot that blast shields would be raised if his ship continued to defy their warnings. Fire safety and hard impact teams waiting behind blast doors were sure this was about to happen, the hard landings they had seen over the course of the war rarely ended well. The shuttle’s descent did not meet their expectations, its wings instead twitching to its port then swinging up hard on its starboard side . The ship’s engines revved then died as something the landing bay’s sensors could not interpret altered its inertia just enough to turn what should have soon been a fireball into a brief but impressive grating skid safely to the ground. Expecting only mild injuries, a security detail hustled forward to escort its passengers to safety. Whichever clone had inexplicably decided to trust the pilot’s skill and deactivate the blast shields at the last possible moment probably needed to be thrown to the waves after the battle was over for breaking protocol and common sense.

Lama Su could more easily notice the howling winds and rain without the hum of the blast shields to block it. Something about the storm seemed unnatural. The shuttle's doors took a few moments to open. Two hooded figures slowly emerged from it. Lama Su body stiffened. They looked like Jedi.

The hoods were removed. The younger man seemed to be wracked by fever. The haggard old fiend with him was like no Jedi Lama Su had ever encountered. A taunting smile flashed across his wrinkled face when he and Lama Su locked eyes. Was that Palpatine? Impossible.

Suddenly the two figures were slashing at the clones in the hanger. They moved with preternatural speed as though propelled by a vortex of rage. Lama Su turned away from the carnage. He motioned to one of the newly arrived clones.

"Do you have Fett's genetic sample?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Give it to me. Send the cadets to defend the DNA room if you have to but make sure the contingency is secured. That will buy us some time. If our position is overrun before reinforcements arrive I order you to initiate the auto destruct sequence."

"It will be done my lord."

"Good. Taun We, come with me." Blast doors began to seal themselves. The crisscrossing corridors the Kaminoans hurried down were bathed in grey emergency lights. "Is the bunker ready to detach?" The muffle explosions outside sounded closer now. Taun We wondered if they were being caused by missile bombardments or the arrival of more force users.

"I am speaking to you, Taun We."

"Forgive me, the bunker will detach in-"

Taun We lost her footing, then shrieking she skitted backwards as though something unseen had seized her with its teeth. Lama Su quickly dived behind the nearest blast door, abandoning her so that he could use all the torque had could muster to slam it shut.

Not far behind, Darth Sidious enjoyed lopping off Taun We's head. He cackled when he realized that her long neck plus her frightened gasp at the sight of his withered visage had given her brain too much oxygen to permit her a quick death. “Vader” looked away appalled. Knowing that Palpatine could take away his beloved at a whim had caused him to second guess himself and the strength of will that had allowed him to stomach such atrocities. Without will-power Vader was no Sith; Sidious fortunately knew that Vader had already sired a potential replacement.

Sidious' apprentice got to work carving the blast doors open with his lightsaber. After an obstacle or two they reached a large rotunda. In one direction Sidious could sense Lama Su fleeing for his life. In the other...a presence the Dark Lord had not expected.

Sidious stopped his pursuit. Lama Su would escape, and with him the genetic sample would sink past Sidious' reach. No genetic sample meant no biological weapon to eliminate the clone threat once and for all . Sidious let himself feel frustrated. He would need all his anger to tap deep enough into the Dark Side to overshadow the light.

"I had not expected you to come here, Master Yoda" Sidious jeered, "especially not to defend those who helped me burn your temple to the ground."

"Pawns they were. Pawns we all were." Yoda looked disappointingly at Anakin. The fallen Jedi shrunk from his gaze.

"Ah, have you noticed my new apprentice, Yoda? He is nothing like our last pupil.”

Dooku had been Yoda’s apprentice before he was recruited by Sidious. Sidious hoped that reminding him of this would unbalance him. Yoda forced himself to remain stoic, knowing that the Sith would have an advantage if this long awaited confrontation became personal. The Dark Side fed on resentment, something Yoda had tried to avoid by disassociating the villain his former padawan had become from the eager boy he had once been. Yoda himself had failed to live by his own teachings multiple times during the war, allowing Dooku to survive long enough to lay the groundwork for the Order’s demise. Had Yoda had really wanted to kill Dooku on Geonosis, so much suffering might have been prevented. A mistake repeated, this must not be.



A simple hmm was Yoda’s only reply. Anakin refused to make eye contact with the diminutive Jedi. There was great self loathing in the boy's heart but as of yet no seeds of redemption.

"Such terrible pain I see in you, Skywalker. At fault for this. partly I am. You to be trained, allowed I should not have."

Sidious laughed. Insecurity had been the first seed of hate that Sidious had fostered in Skywalker. It fueled his dependence on the Dark Side’s gifts. Yoda's expression of pity had been twisted into a insult. Yoda realized this sadly and cast aside his cane.

This at least Sidious respected. The need for violence underpinned all fleeting value systems, the truest way to cut through such pointlessness.

“You were right to fear him. In time Lord Vader will be stronger than the both of us."

Yoda ignored this prediction, knowing in his heart that he could not let it come to pass. "Another opponent he shall face. Delay no more, Emperor. No-one left to fight for you there is."

Yoda was right. Vader was fading; in his place was a cowed child. An apprentice like that would only be a means to an end. Sidious scowled at Anakin, then at Yoda. "So be it...Jedi."

The leaders of their respective orders leapt at each other. Blurring green met with lunging red as the embodiments of light and dark tapped into reserves of speed they had not used since their youth. Yoda had the initial advantage. "Misjudged you have, the nature of the Dark Side. Suffering, not power it bestows." Darth Sidious responded with a howl. Sparks flew as their fury -one righteous, one perverse- quickly drove them deeper into the facility.


Anakin didn't watch them go. His eyes remained glued to the floor. He didn't want to look at the other man who'd come to kill him.

“Obi Wan”

"Oh, Anakin, What have you done?" Obi Wan stepped into view. His face was resolute but also wearied and grief stricken. He looked like he had aged more in a day than most humans would in half a lifetime.

"What I had to, master." Anakin cast his cloak to the floor.

"Betray the Republic? Join the Sith? Look around you, Anakin. Palpatine has lost control. There’s no reason to follow him anymore!"

"I need him, Obi Wan!"

"Why Anakin? Why?! You were like my brother!"

Anakin glared at his former master. A shiver ran through Obi Wan's spine when he saw the sickly yellow hue of Anakin's irises.

"Stop Anakin! It’s not too late. I can sense your suffering. You don’t want this."

"I don’t have a choice."

"Then I will do what I must!"

Anakin charged at Obiwan with everything he had. Their blue blades met again and again, sometimes with finesse, but mainly with an intensity meant to shatter rather than cut through their opponent. Obiwan spun to the side, and assumed Form III. A defensive stance would be needed while Anakin's pent up rage burned itself out.

Meanwhile Yoda pressed his attack. "At an end your rule is, and not short enough it was." Sidious leered at Yoda, knowing full well that he was on the backfoot and being driven away from interfering with Obi Wan’s reluctant duty.

"I am not defeated yet." He drank in the fumes of Anakin's unspent fury. Perhaps his apprentice would be a worthy asset after all. "Your arrogance blinds you, master Yoda." Sidious chuckled. "As does your compassion."

Cadets ran up firing at them both. Sidious deflected the bolts in their direction while Yoda dodged. Yoda had a decision to make. He could either retreat and allow Sidious to escape, or he could battle his way through a throng of indoctrinated children, mirroring the horrors that had befallen the younglings and padawans once under his tutelage. Yoda chose neither. He made himself calm, then levitated the candidates off the ground and lobbed them into a nearby closet. Using the force Yoda sealed the door. This allowed Sidious an opening to disappear.

Compromise had once again cost Yoda precious time. Palpatine was a master of masking his in the Force, something the Jedi had realized only until it was too late. Yoda would have to sense every speck of energy on Kamino if he was to find him and prevent his escape. The corridor Yoda sprinted through was quiet aside from the sideways rain pouring through gaps in falling glass. On the other side was a great chamber cloaked in darkness. Yoda sensed a malevolent aura somewhere within. Then without warning the place was illuminated by lightning. They were in the central clone hatchery, surrounded by millions of embryos.

Sidious loomed over the central collection of incubation pods. "Behold power, Yoda." Sidious lowered his gnarled fingers and in an instant thousands upon thousands of innocents began to boil.

Yoda reeled as Palpatine reveled in his revenge. "POWER!!!" A wound had just been carved into the living force and Darth Sidious was growing intoxicated on it. One clone tank shattered, then another and another. Disorientated, Yoda reached out and made a panel explode by Sidious' ear, throwing him too off balance and sending him hurtling towards the ground.

Then there were sirens. Whether due to auto destruct or stray missiles finally hitting their target, the Kaminoan structures were finally succumbing to the tempest. Obi Wan and Anakin scrambled to the roof, exchanging blows as they jumped up broken pillars. Sidious fired bursts of energy that broke through ceilings and walls that Yoda parried with an outstretched arm. Before long Anakin and Obi Wan were dueling outside. For once the rain had stopped. The blanket of clouds over the planet had dissipated, revealing the great battle still raging in the sky.

Yet again Anakin struggled to breath. The stench of murder on Sidious staggered him, reminding him of what he had made himself do to the temple younglings. It was dawning on him that with the clones in revolt and Kenobi at his neck, their deaths might have been for nothing. Anakin stopped pressing his attack, utterly unsure of himself. Kenobi stepped back, grateful for the respite. Anakin realized that he had never consciously wanted to destroy the Jedi, even if an inner devil had made him subconsciously hunger to do it since the death of his mother. He had convinced himself that he just wanted to save his wife, but looking at what Palpatine had become made Anakin realize he could not rely on help from such a monster.

Anakin had become unfocused, and sensing a non-lethal means to end their duel Obi Wan quickly sliced off Anakin's organic hand. The Chosen One collapsed. Anakin could have fought through the agony and gotten up, but he didn't. Instead he watched his friend be gripped by the force and slammed face first onto the durasteel landing pad. Sidious stalked towards them as the world seemed to fall silent. He bent his upper body lower so his failed apprentice could hear him. They had one chance to stand together and kill before Yoda arrived to tip the balance. Haste made him default to threats, his mother tongue.

“You are a failure, Skywalker. You are nothing. Get up! Get up or I will crush your children in the womb while your worthless wife dies before my eyes.

Anakin obeyed, his despair overriding his pain. No amount of obedience would ever be enough, no reward ever worth the sacrifices. This was the suffering he had once been warned of. This was the cruel truth underpinning Sidious’ promises. Padme was no longer his, she belonged to Palpatine. She would be a hostage for the rest of her life, a slave like his mother.

Yoda limped into view, still not recovered from the massacre that had overwhelmed his senses. The cane that he steadied himself with had grown worn down over the centuries, centuries of holding back degeneration that the Sith had thrown against him without his knowing. Without it, he looked like just another elder who had lost the people that in old age should have supported him. Despite this, he once again ignited his lightsaber and caught the killing blow aimed at Obi Wan. Obi Wan, thinking himself a failure to both his dead master and his corrupted student pushed himself upwards and swung his own lightsaber at Sidious thigh. The Sith Lord laughed manaically and threw force lightning at them both, flinging them to opposite sides of the landing pad.

Anakin remembered what it was like to be a slave. A new premonition washed over him. His children would also be slaves if Palpatine lived. Palpatine would own them and twist them to serve his own purposes, fashioning them into weapons ready to be unsheathed on everything they would come to love as soon as their father outlived his usefulness. Death was preferable to such a life. Anything was preferable to what they would become under Palpatine’s thrall. Anakin accepted that if he were to save them, he would have to accept that their future was beyond his control. Submitting to the will of the Force, Skywalker tangled his life energy with that of Palpatine’s own and began to crush it with all his might. Sidious howled at this sudden defiant betrayal and redirected all of his force lightning onto him,


The world was loud again, filled with deafening explosions and rippling terror.

I HATE YOU! Anakin screamed inwardly, mostly at the ghost of Vader being burned from him. He was no longer a pawn or a chosen one, just a mortally wounded Jedi Knight maintaining the Force grip keeping Sidious’ attention just long enough for Obi Wan and Yoda to swiftly pierce Sidious’ back and chest, ending his menace once and for all. The death grip that kept master and apprentice locked in place snapped, allowing both to crumple to the ground. In a final act of malice, Sidious attempted to crawl towards Skywalker, only to realize that his limbs had already become cold and stiff. With his final breath, Palpatine prepared to promise that due to Anakin’s weakness, all the Skywalkers would die. Obi Wan silenced the Sith Lord before he could make matters worse. Yoda closed his eyes grateful.

Obiwan looked down at his former padawan. He tried to remember him as he once was. What Anakin had just done could not absolve him of his crimes, but in the end he had at least tried to return to the light. “I didn’t know they were in danger. I’m so sorry.”

Numerous Star Destroyers entered the atmosphere. The somberness in the air let Obi Wan know why they had come.

"What now, Master Yoda?"

"The Sith are no more. Accomplished our mission we have. " Yoda exuded a sense of relief. "There is no death-"

Filled with serenity by Yoda's example, Obi Wan deactivated his lightsaber and held Anakin close. To reassure him, Obi Wan finished the mantra.

"-Only The Force."

Jedi and Sith alike disappeared in a blaze of laser fire.

 

Ch 3

Order One: In victory or defeat, in times of calamity, insolvency or triumph, the Grand Army exists to serve the Republic​

Fire spread through the Coruscanti night. People in the true undercity rarely used the word sky; they lived in the forgotten corridors of an endless city that stretched far higher than what most beings could see with the naked eye. Almost everyone in the lower levels believed an asteroid could slam into the top districts without changing their day to day lives. Yet the chaos above was spreading downwards as the bottom levels exploded into even greater chaos, leaving desperate throngs racing for the false promise of safety in the center levels. Conflagration chased after them far faster than the fire crews and security teams could contain.

In the lowest levels of squalor, no help was expected. The industrial scale rebreathers needed to filter clean oxygen to the sprawling squalor were especially flammable, leading many to nearly suffocate even before smoke overcame all light. Other areas above the 1500 mark fared better, but only because there was a need to ease the minds of the middle class a few dozen meters above. Firefighters had turned their sonic hoses on the masses a few times throughout history, but usually only in times of famine and hysteria. When needed, the machines that automated this work were usually welcomed, or at the very least unmolested. This time the people welcomed the destruction of their own communities, seizing the machines and tossing them over hastily constructed barricaded and down into abyss. A Twilek desperate to save his last possessions from the inferno was hurled with them. For the honor of Palpatine, everything had to be reduced to cinders.

The mobs cheer as some clones appear to defect to their side. They are unaware that what they think to be dissention in the ranks is in fact the byproduct of quasi tribal fratricide. Groups in which Kamino bred clones are in the majority utilize shibboleths and verbal cues to identify and by and large eliminate Spaarti clones amongst them. The Spaarti clones in contrast are slow to organize and are usually scattered because of it, sharing the same memories proving to be less effective than sharing a well honed battle culture. They are at their best when swept up in the group think of others, whether those beings are panicked imperial officers, riotous throngs or baseline clones who choose to not out them as inferiors so long as they seem ignorant of their true nature.
…

Two days passed. Exhaustion paired with pain killers had finally let Padme Amidala rest alongside the two babes suckling at her breasts. The delivery had been hard on Padme. She had wanted to wait for the father to arrive, but Anakin never did. It was time to stop worrying. In her heart of hearts she knew her husband was dead.

Padme and the remnants of her security detail had been spirited away by Palpatine's personal guards to some forgotten industrial district after the clones attacked. The warehouse they were hidden in was mostly empty except for the offices they had secluded her in. To Padme her crimson protectors’ cold professionalism made them look hard and cruel when Luke and Leia came into the world. During childbirth she deliriously wondered if under their robes they were actually droids. When Padme was no longer in excruciating pain she recognized how ridiculous that thought was.

They too were feeling. They too worried over the missing and Palpatine had been missing for a disconcerting amount of time. The body language of the imperial guard increasingly became more anxious, more agitated. They'd stand in huddled groups and whisper amongst themselves, sometimes stopping to turn their covered heads towards the crying infants. Gregar Typho made sure he was near Padme at all times.

So much had happened. The Jedi Order was gone, as was the Empire that had destroyed it. Padme had simultaneously become a widow and a mother. She saw so much of Annie in Luke and Leia. She loved them, but in their eyes all she could see was what she had lost. For the rest of her life she would struggle to not succumb to the pain weighing on her, for their sake.

The sound of stomping boots awoke Padme from her slumber. It was early morning. The babies were asleep on her bosom. Typho was hunched in the chair next to her bedside. His one eye was closed, but Padme noticed that his posture was too stiff for him to be really asleep.

She could hear the tell tale hum of some antigravity engine outside. The drugs hadn't yet worn off, so Padme wasn't lucid enough to pinpoint exactly why that particular noise sounded so familiar. For whatever reason it had put the guards on edge; a few passed Padme's room on their way to cover the entryways to the warehouse they were hiding in. Padme wondered why she didn't see any Naboo security moving with them.

Their leader stepped into the room. His cloak was more faded than the others, and blotted by a patchwork of discolored stains. It reminded Padme of a burial shroud. He slowly moved to her bedside. He seemed to hesitate then in one terrifying moment raised his rife towards Leia. Padme gasped before blaster shots rang out. If it wasn't for Typho's quick draw, Leia and her mother would be dead.

The twins began to wail. Sudden explosions outside were coupled with a very short firefight. Clones were storming the warehouse, Padme thought, but if Palpatine’s elite were trying to protect Senator Amidala from them, why had this Elite just tried to execute her? Typho pointed his blaster at the doorway. Padme touched his hip and mumbled "No."

Typho dropped the blaster and raised his hands in surrender. Arc Troopers and Task Force 99 burst into the room, one forcing Typho to his knees while the rest cleared corners or encircled Padme. She hugged her children close. Her eyes burned with defiance, almost daring a clone to take the howling children from her.

Padme saw a tall body stoop itself into the room. Senator Burtoni tapped a clone's helmet with her cane. He and the others stood at attention and filed out of the room. Burtoni smiled, bemused that her political foe now owed her a favor.
****


An endless cacophony of sirens and horns filled the air as air traffic ground to a halt. Marble pavement worth more than a decade’s wage now served as projectiles. The Senate District was likely the most iconic location in all the galaxy. As the center of galactic governance, it drew in influential beings from every system capable of hyperspace travel. As the area of Coruscant with the most direct access to sunlight, it was the most privileged and contented place in the Republic’s capital. Even here there was disorder.

The COMPNOR riots were escalating. When its inaugural march had been ordered to disperse halfway through the scheduled route, most of the Palpatine loyalists in attendance begrudgingly obeyed. Most had just emerged from shelters defended by the Clones during the battle of Coruscant after all, and who knew what other dastardly acts the treacherous Jedi still had under their sleeves. The respect they held for the shocktroopers marching beside themselves was unshakable, that is until vids of those same clones assaulting the Executive Building leaked onto the holonet.

Shocked and betrayed, billions of beings rushed back into the streets to defend their emperor. Weapon staches filled with firearms stripped from destroyed separatist B-1s flooded into their hands, the contribution of cartels and smugglers all too eager to profit off exacerbating the violence. The local transit authority went on strike, security forces stayed in their homes and lower levels like 1616 descended into total eternal anarchy. Barricades sprang up in even the wealthiest of districts, while death stick addicts sniffed around the edges of these goings on unmolested, stealing anything that could be traded for their next fix.

The clone battalion on Coruscant was overstretched. Not wanting the situation to escalate, its Kaminoan masters had initially ordered that only nonlethal rounds be used to disperse the mobs, and in so doing callously allowed many riot troops to be wounded or outright killed. The worst violence however was perpetrated by the masses on their fellow demonstrators. Circumstances had only briefly brought together those had been eager to see the imperial system be imposed on separatist scum and the pacifist fools who had not stayed silent even as Greivous’ flagship fell from orbit onto their heads less than two weeks prior. Many of these idealists misread the situation and openly advocated for a return to rule of law rather than imperialism, which was not appreciated by the roving zealots still mourning a charismatic leader who had guided them through over a decade of danger and sedition.

Hardline and other clones had held these streets in the face of the separatist onslaught. He had done so under the authority of the chancellor and the Jedi, which had become a deeply uncomfortable truth thanks to current events. True Arc Troopers, like Commandos and other specialists had been designed with critical thinking and autonomy in mind. He had not been overwhelmed by the fugue state caused by the inhibitor chips in lesser clones, and he understood why the crowds below him were so confused and enraged. Still, they pointed tens of thousands of laser pointers at his pilots in order to force them down. They had adopted the symbols of the antiwar movement, mainly holoplacards showing a red line crossing through a phase 2 helmet. They were enemies of the Republic because they were enemies of his brothers, and worst of all they were weak civilian enemies that had to be squeezed with a velvet glove.

Chatter on the coms picked up. A disgruntled security chief had sliced into half the city-planet's legion of police droids, allowing high security penitentiaries to be emptied by their droid jailers. Organic officers that resisted were thrown into cells once reserved for murderers. This was too much; lethal measures were greenlit.

Hardline, a soldier, was now expected to handle a hostage situation with one hand tied behind his back. Frak that,he thought, and repelled alone from the Laat rather than ordering it to land, which was a textbook intimidation tactic. Prisoners in this wing of the prison were just starting to escape. “Halt!” he ordered, using his helmet to magnify his voice over the sounds of tumult and disorder. The prisoners had made clear that the police droids now under their control would execute the warden if they were confronted. Hardline didn’t care. He motioned for his heavy gunner to go weapons hot, and after giving the prisoners three more seconds to comply, gave the order to open fire.

Coruscant was now a warzone. The nobler prisoners that weren’t mowed down scrambled to collect their wounded. One of them, a Mirialan girl barely into adulthood darted forward with her hands outstretched, and as if by magic the heavy gun's muzzle smacked upward, taking out the gunship that had dropped the troopers off. Hardline could not hold off the ensuing onslaught. Bystanders cheered as he was torn apart by the mob. his spaarti subordinates too ill prepared and unexperienced to put up much resistance without him. With nowhere else to go, the remaining soldiers and the convicts they hunted both fled deep into a hundred thousand different alleyways, all leading into a endless catacomb of vice.
***

An emergency congressional session had to be called. 500 Republica, the Residencies and myriad embassies were emptied of their senators. They were ushered safely to the gathering by the clones who had previously locked them in their homes. Conspicuously absent was the blue Senatorial guard, a reminder that the monopoly on violence was to now be wielded by the clones alone. Also absent was the central floating platform usually occupied by Mas Amedda, Palpatine’s vizier.

The first thing the senators and half of the holonet saw was an overhead shot of their beloved leader belly down, callously impaled by Jedi General Obi Wan Kenobi. It could not be: The Jedi had succeeded in executing the emperor! Watching the perpetrators being blasted from orbit lulled a few sycophants into once again worshipping their war machine, but the senators most in tune with military chatter knew that the timeline being presented to them was wrong. The clones had enacted martial law before the final attack on Kamino. Yet the new narrative being spun to them stated that Palpatine had come to Kamino to help the cloners reestablish order, only to be murdered somehow in battle. How a politician could fend off even briefly two Jedi Masters was unbelievable, as was the blatant lie by that the Supreme Chancellor and the clones had been working in tandem, only for extremists to take advantage of his absence by unleashing chaos in a failed bid to seize the mantle of leadership that the Republic had allowed to become too enticing, too all encompassing. Many felt that using the old title was in itself treasonous.

The hologram morphed into one of a mother in shock being shepherded to safety by clones. Greyed out images of peers like the Grebleips delegation, the Ithorian senator Tendau Bendon and the long bearded Tendau Bendon then flashed in quick succession, an in memorandum for those who had not been reached in time. A holoprojection of Lama Su’s face hovered over Palpatine’s old podium.

"The madness could not go on. The Grand Army had to step in to prevent the Republic's disintegration. Rest assured it shall step aside as soon as the time is right for a free, fair and orderly transition."

Insults, curses and accusations began to be exchanged, a cacophony of suspicion and disbelief. Videos could be fabricated after all, it was better to believe that then to believe that Palpatine had travelled half way across the galaxy to speak to Kaminoans who should have been at his beck and call, not the other way around. If they could not believe what they were being shown, then what had really happened to the emperor? What had the Kaminoans done to him?

"Calm yourselves! Please! Calm yourselves! The war is almost over. As long as the Republic stays united"

"There's blood in the streets! The Clones turned on the Jedi and now they're turning on-"

“The Jedi were right to-“

"The Jedi are dead! The Republic is dead! Glory to the Empire!"

A Chorus of babble silenced Lama Su. The sound of tens of thousands of squabbling politicians was deafening. Safe in his underwater bunker lightyears away, the Kaminoan Prime Minister turned off the projector he was using to make his address. He sighed and turned on another hologram.

"Commander CC-1010"

"Yes, milord?"

"Usher the Senators back to their quarters. Use stun bolts if you have to."

 

Ch 4
I find their tactics ineffective. The Jedi Code prevents them from going
far enough to achieve victory, to do whatever it takes to win. The very
reason why peacekeepers should not be leading a war.
-Tarkin

Meanwhile in the shadow lands of Kashykk, a group of Jedi licked their wounds in relative safety. In one way or another Order 66 had failed on the forest planet. Nature and life debts had kept them all safe and their presence in the force had attracted other survivors. Kento Marek minded the campfire, carefully stripping only the bark he needed from the roots of the ancient wroshyr trees around him.​

Dusk was beginning to fall over the shadow lands. An inquisitive small species called tach skittered around Luminara Unduli, perhaps attracted by her calmness or perhaps attracted to the faint smell of rations on her breath. Transhodan VBeegor Sadet and Whiphid K'Kruhk kept watch, the only two aliens in the group that came close to matching the native Wookies’ strength and stature. A few padawn stragglers said nothing, putting all their trust in their elders and distracting themselves by interacting with the local guides who now slept or foraged for herbs. They had been down there for about a standard week, and it was becoming clear that they had not been followed.


Kento's life partner Mallie returned from patrol with a rough looking tracker named Quinlan Vos. Marek could have eavesdropped had he wanted to even if the living force on this world was too wild to be filtered out. Still, he could tell something had been left unsaid by the way she tepidly poked at the fire.

"What was that about?" Marek asked, pretending to sound suspicious. Jealousy of course wasn't the Jedi way, but then again neither was romance.

Mallie smiled at Marek's discomfort and sat down next to him to rest her head on his shoulder. Discovery of their relationship and official expulsion from the Order meant nothing now that it no longer functionally existed. Marek could tell that Vos was also respectfully yet awkwardly attempting not to listen.



"He’s lost faith in the plan." Mallie shrugged. “By the time this is all over I sense we’ll lose faith in a lot of things.”

Mallie could tell that hadn’t really answered Marrek’s question.

"Vos and I were close before the war. He needed someone to keep him from teetering into an abyss and when he pretended to do so while undercover, I resented him for it.” She sighed and nestled closer. “I don’t know, everything that’s happened during the war seems so small now.”

Marrek had been aware of the shifting rumors surrounding Vos’ run ins with the dark side. The two men respected each other even though they both saw each other as bad influences.

“I still say you’re making a mistake.”

Vos had approached the campfire. His hair was singed and his war paint discolored by fading burns, but that only added to the enigmatic mystique of danger that hung about him. Marek waved him off, tired of having this debate.


Mahogani brown, black and chestnut furred wookies dropped down into the Jedi camp. Their leader Tarrful wore a bandolier and armored shoulder pads. The tach scampered off after hearing his speech growls. Vbeegor and Tarrful hissed and snarled at each other. The animosity between their races wasn't going away just because the Transhodan was a Jedi.

“If the Sith are really gone, now is the time to free ourselves from their machinations.” Marek said. “The Wookies are still in good standing with the republic, someone has to plead their case for their sake.”

“None of you kept focus on the Sith like I did.” Vos said. Some wounds on Quinlin’s arms had yet to scab, despite the accelerated healing techniques he had learned in the temple.

“I know why they won. One thing I learned during the war is that that the galaxy had already fallen to the Dark Side well before they made their move. Things won’t get easier now that there’s even more up for grabs.”

Luminara lifted herself from lotus position and motioned for V’beegor to compose himself. Despite the jungle heat, she still wore her long garments. She would go along with the plan for now, but she wasn’t blind to its flaws.

"We have to try.” Luminara said resignedly. “The separatist blockade is gone. If we fail the clones will minimize their losses and bombard separatist positions from orbit. This is our last chance to rein them in and stop another war before it starts."

"It won't work.” Vos grunted. “We need to stay hidden for now. Not even an inferno could reach us down here."
It was clear that Vos desperately hoped to change their mind. Unduli gave him a sad smile, her way of saying that she agreed but could not change course. Marek took the lead hand in hand with Mallie. After everything that happened, he no longer saw the need to hide their relationship. His attachment to her wasn't a weakness, it was something that strengthened their resolve.


“I refuse to hide again, as should you.” This was the first time Merrick had even indirectly acknowledged that he and his lover had been masquerading as medics away from the front when Order 66 was issued. His guilt over not being there when the clones turned was obvious.

“ Master Kenobi instructed us to await a new hope. We all felt that hope when Yoda reached out to us.”

“Before Yoda died you mean,” Vos said, the blatant disrespect angering Mallie as much as the Wookies who responded in their language with defamatory roars directed at the iconoclast. Still, Vos finished his thought. “If you knew half the things he let me do, you would learn to stop trusting the wisdom of that old toad.”

Unduli frowned upon hearing this desperate provocation. She knew that what they were about to do veered on acting on impulse, but they had to do it.
“ Master Yoda died for the Republic. I’m not about to give up on it.”

Merrick nodded and with a small force push put out the campfire.

Vos stopped looking at the others. His gaze was solely fixed on Mallie. He spoke with as much emphasis as his nagging despair would allow.

"This is a bad move. Stay."

Marek instinctively put his hand around Mallie's side. His attachment to her wasn't a weakness, it was something that strengthened their resolve.

Mallie looked to Marek then back at Vos. Her voice was determined yet also resigned.

"I can't hide from who I am, Quinlan Vos. "We have to do the right thing. We’re Jedi.”



Vos shook his head instead of saying more and glumly watched the others march into the twilight.




...

Emptied glades and hollowed trees bore witness to the ongoing Battle of Kashykk. Faceless armies and hordes of skeletal machines clashed all across the primal world, wreaking havok for no other reason than to fulfill the violent tasks for which they were designed. The Clone Armies were temporarily on the back foot. Ignorant of the mystic energies that had given their generals the edge against cold computational logic, this legion had themselves begun to strategize like the droids and were destroying the places they had come to defend because of it. The Wookies could only watch as wave after wave of obedient troopers charged towards needless destruction. With indigenous help the Republic could still win in this theater conventionally, but the Wookies sense of honor prohibited them from assisting a force that could so easily betray those they fought beside.



The Great Walkway leading to Rwookrrorro was old. Very old. The repulsor lifts entwined into the aerial roots it was made of didn't bring much comfort to Scout Trooper Bushwack. One wrong patch of rotten wood could easily snap, sending him and his podmate Clearcut tumbling hundreds of feet.





A group of Wookies were hanging out in the canopies above them. Bushwack shook his blaster at them. "Move along. Hey, move along!" One named Chewbacka had been a trusted liason during the initial intervention. Bushwack could tell that he had come back for a reason.

"Come on, Bushwack" Clearcut was anxious to finish his rounds, but Bushwack was holding up their patrol.

"The locals are getting restless again." Bushwack said half heartedly, his attention suddenly elsewhere.

"So what? If those walking carpets learned to cooperate we wouldn't still be...here". Clearcut stopped talking as he also noticed the source of Bushwack’s distraction. A man and a woman in familiar robes were walking up the path. They looked like Jedi.
Jedi

The haze brought on by Order 66 re-enveloped their minds. Clearcut and Bushwack prepared to fire but the wookies were on them before they could. Sirens began to blare. Across the tree city Republic scouts and sentries were restrained. The Jedi were escorted to their objective without lifting a finger.





Like most everything on Kashykk, the primitive looking hut that housed Governor Heno Soflawn was more than it appeared. . A man with a gamorrean gut that his human origins should not have naturally allowed, Soflawn had been appointed by the emperor himself while Palpatine still held the title of supreme chancellor. The Wookies holding him hostage could not have known that his current authority was now in name only. Shields covered the hut’s exterior and the grand branch it rested on had been slightly hallowed to give its occupant sufficient living space.Regardless, Soflan cowered in a corner of the room, his crouching fat appearing to almost melt into its crevices. The large antenna on the roof was what the Jedi were after, but if the plan was to work certain formalities had to be entertained.

Marrek and Mallie entered the room with a massive wookie behind them. They spoke quickly with no introductions.

“Be calm, sir, we wouldn’t dare harm a former senator.”

They needed to speed things along. Wookie defence turrets were already buzzing to life on the village outskirts and scanning the treelines. Weapon stockpiles were being distributed to every able bodied villager. This particular politician had always had a soft spot for anti jedi conspiracies, but an unspoken mind trick was enough to make him trust the pair.
“You are in charge of this sector. We will speak to the senate to stop this attack.”

Wookie sentries emerged from the trees growling warnings to their compatriots. "We will speak to them now."

Soflawn didn’t understand why senators mattered during the ongoing state of emergency, but for some reason he completely agreed with what the Jedi said.

“We will speak with them now,” he repeated and activated the nearby communication panel. Three blue holo images sprung to life, all member’s of the Republic’s current Loyalist committee. A Mon Calamari ,the head of the Duros interim government and Kaminoan Halle Burtoni looked at them in surprise. The Coruscant side of the transmission was muted but Marrek could tell the Mon Calamari was asking questions.

Merreck cleared his throat and lowered his hood.
"Good morning, Senators. I'll cut to the chase. Forget what they've been telling you. The Jedi were framed by Palpatine. We still serve the-“
the chaos outside was getting louder. Something had made the wookies agitated. Marek stopped himself, remembering the mission.
"Forgive me, our innocence is a matter for another time. The Wookies are still loyal to the Republic. They only wish to defend their planet on their own terms.” It was clear that the senators did not know what he meant by that. The war only mattered to them when it affected their own personal luxury or riled up their own constituents. If they did have a responsibility to monitor the situation unfolding on a obscure mid rim world like Kashykk, they had been shirking it. Merreck’s heart dropped when he realized that they could do nothing.




The benefit of a blaster over a slug, beyond the intensity of the strike and shock to an organism’s nervous system lay in the fact that even during concentrated fire, experienced fire teams could course correct in real time without the need for a spotter. This fact was usually lost on adrenaline ridden regulars and the inexperienced jedi generals that led them into the massive head on engagements that characterized much of the clone wars, but the refinement that came with experience allowed expert commandoes and task forces to shift their aim in ways that rivaled any droid squads’ targeting modulators. Most jedi were well trained on how to deflect blaster blasts while dashing out of a kill box, few could do so while having to contend with a commando unit that could turn the idea of saturation fire on its head by purposefully firing slightly out of sync with the rest of his team and firing at just the wrong positions to throw off a Jedi’s foresense and mislead them right into a bullseye. A master or seasoned knight like V’beegor could recognize this ploy as a feint no different than overly choreographing an overhead strike before landing the killing blow, but the padawan ronin that were downed while rushing to his aid had spent their formative years expecting one note clanker attack patterns.
Boss smiled behind his helmet while motioning for Fixer to finish splicing the auto defenses and turn them on the unsuspecting Transdoshan. Commander Faie was by the books as they came but he knew when to let his operators do their job. Another confirmed hit, Boss thought to himself. Another confirmed kill for Sev.
Gone was the creep of second guessing that had been bubbling in the squad just days prior. The clones were running the show now and results spoke for themselves. . Scorch had been the funny man of the group before one out of touch Jedi master had forced them to leave their brother behind.. Now his few attempts at jokes were bitterly acerbic. Scorch finally authentically laughed as Vbeegor rushed straight toward him. Delta squad had expected their next target to force push an incoming incendiary grenade out of the way, giving them a pinpoint opening to pepper him with blaster shots. They didn’t think he’d try to use his blue lightsaber to bat it aside, or that contact with the grenade would take the lizard out in one quick explosion. “That’s going in my highlight reel” Scorch said as Boss finished off the downed target.

As soon as that was said, the spliced auto turrets started to fire in all directions. Rruhk was hit and flung out of sight like a rag doll. The canopies had caught fire. Jet catalans swooped over the battlefield. ATRT walkers sprinted forward to shoot them down then turned their sights on anything that moved.. Unduli and the other Jedi tried to hold the line but clone captives rewarded the mercy shown to them by snatching at any weapon on hand only to be gunned down via bowcaster. Wookies scrambled from tree to tree, ancient branches snapping as they retreated. Whatever had made the Jedi think they could negotiate their way out of this faltered as Delta Squad and Commander Faie’s forces advanced.

Mallie tapped Marek on the shoulder.

"We tried. It's time to go."

"Fierfeck. Senators please, we’re on the same side."

Marek couldn't hear him, but he could see the Mon Calamari screaming at the Kaminoan. The Duros senator in exile looked indifferent to their argument. News of the massacre would spread quickly, faith in the Republic as they knew it had been squashed.

Luminara sprang at the walkers, slashing at their legs while the commandos fell back. Squads of regs covered their escape. The branch on which Unduli was standing inexplicably snapped before she could be gunned down. If Quinlan had caused this to happen as Merrick expected, he’d likely be able to catch her and drag her to safety whether she wanted to go or not.

To their credit, the most battle hardened defenders tried to hold the communication center for as long as possible. Tarfull’s body was carried away by a bleeding Chewbacca. No one knew if he escaped the snipers. Round canisters penetrated the faltering shields, causing Soflawn to flee the room and run straight into the laser fire of landing LAAT gunships. Marek's eyes widened but steadied after realizing they were only releasing cough gas.

Mallie held her breath and force pushed the gas out through the window shield. Scorch laughed once again, this time more unhinged than before. The Jedi had taken the bait. He fired a incendiary round at the gas cloud and watched it burst into flames.

********************************************************

Marek slowly came to. He was in a white medlab. He tried to move but was stopped by searing pain. He tried to breath and realized something had scorched his lungs. All he could do was turn his eyes. He watched Mallie's lifeless hand be tucked beneath a tarp.


"My hypothesis seems valid. While the Inhibitor chips rarely if ever malfunction, they do progressively dull the reflexes and overall combat readiness once triggered. Chemical imbalances found in the cerebellums of live subjects suggest that hardcoded contingency orders exacerbate latent neural degradation. After carefully examining these findings and factoring in the advanced aging process, I must deem current clone batches to be unsuited for long term peacekeeping efforts. Production must intensify.”

Some of Merrick’s strength had returned. He was just barely able to turn his head in the lead doctor’s direction. Based on the scalpel in her hand, it was likely that she was taking samples. The woman being dissected was likely Mallie. The scientist noticed his movement and moved closer, still holding the sharp instrument. Merrick felt the terror all clones at some point experienced after incubation. The long and thin creature was inhumanly clinical even in butchery.
"Sample harvesting in process. In vitro tests negative, in vivo promising.”

Merrick couldn’t rasp out Mallie’s name. His voice box was likely gone, too charred to allow him to ask why he was still alive.The Kaminoan gently made him reface the ceiling and with obtrusive tubes forced him to breath.. She administered to him efficiently, without any pretense of pity.

"Preliminary results however suggest midicholarian injections into telomere chains can delay or even reverse this process if genomically patterned effectively.”

Merrek now remembered what she had started to do while he slipped in and out of consciousness on her operating table. He felt no anger at this, a sign that she had already cut out the lobes that allowed him to care. He didn’t feel a thing. Scalpels emerged from the bed. They began to cut.

 

Chapter Five

A challenge life long it is, not to bend fear into anger​

3, 9, 1, 7: match. 8, 2, 10: match. 8, 4, +5 from the side deck and stand on 17: game.

Small digit numbers projected up from the gaming table’s flickering projectors and smudged screen. A floating score by each competitor made their opponent turned on and off with each win. No serious gambler played pazaak anymore, especially not against the house. Adding and subtracting one’s way to 20 or bust wasn’t particularly complicated, but the high cost of side decks and the higher likelihood of number sequence rigging made most people stick to sabaac. There were valid reasons to distrust a player who actually chose to play and had a hot hand.

The Twitching Bendack Cantina attracted all types. Compnor gangs licking their wounds, Death Stick dealers making their pitch to anyone alone or sad, even a clone or two had entered and exited through its dingy metal door. The one thing these unfortunates typically did not possess was luck. The only way someone could consistently leave with more credits in their pocket after a bit of gambling than when they came was if they cheated.

Ahsoka Tano was about to win her 7^th game in a row. Technically Ahsoka hadn’t broken any rules; trusting in the Force was far more effective than counting cards. It allowed her to intuitively know when to hold and when to fold, as well as how to sense a card shark’s hidden excitement. It also let her sense danger. Good, Ahsoka thought. It was finally time to make things worse.

“Paazak!” Ahsoka almost shouted after winning one last game, than sloppily arose from the table. A convincing attempt to act drunk was almost as hard as a drunkard’s attempt to appear sober, but Ahsoka pulled it off, making her gait slightly unpoised and uncentered. Having basically stumbled to the chips exchange, she bent her wrist and smacked three fingers onto the desk, a cocky and common sign that she wanted to collect her winnings. The rodian teller rolled its eyes and handed her a medium sized sack. Ahsoka weighed the sack in her hands then scoffed.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

The Rodian looked at her annoyed. He had just pulled a common trick that could get people shot on many worlds, which was exactly why Ahsoka knew he’d not respond well to being challenged on it. The Hutts, and the criminal underworld they helped fester used a base 8 unit of measurement rather than the base 10 of galactic basic. Many scoundrels had been swindled by this then robbed of all their money after demanding local criminals count only in ways in which polite Core World society were accustomed.

“That four thousand, goodbye” it sputtered in its language.

“No goodbye!” Ahsoka protested, making sure to slur her words just a bit sloppier than she had before. “No-ba-ta boska” she said, stretching out her pronunciation of Huttese to make it seem that she was either mocking his relatively similar Rodian dialect or barely able to use the language.

“Boska!”

“Nobata boska! Pay price! Wamma che copah!”

Right on cue, bouncers moved in disrupt their argument, which had devolved into a pidgeoned shouting contest. They wore a simplified grungy variant of the form concealing uniforms of Coruscant security forces despite having no real authority beyond. Once outside the security guards would likely try to beat then rob the girl, or worse. They weren’t expecting to be jumped by Ahsoka’s friends, who were waiting to ambush them in the nearby alley.

A quick leg sweep knee strike combo dropped the first bouncer onto his back unconscious while the other was swiftly punched in the gut by one attacker and brought down to the dirty floor and choked out by the other. Ahsoka smiled, impressed by how far her friends had progressed since being trained to fight clankers in the jungles of Onderon.

“You move pretty well for a senator,” she said to Lux Bonteri, helping him to his feet after they were both sure the second bouncer had passed out. Like her, he had become a bit taller and more toned, but was otherwise identical to how he looked when they first met in the Separatist capital. Saul Guerrera on the hand still exuded bravado, but it was now weighed down by extremely personal loss, something he now shared with Bonteri, whose parents had both died during the war.

It didn’t take long for the bouncers to be stripped, hog tied and stashed where they wouldn’t be discovered. Lux, ever the gentleman, had changed out of sight while Saul removed his outer garments in full view and donned his disguise. Once their comlinks were attuned, he sauntered back into the Twitching Bendak. This kind of cantina wasn’t the type that took much notice of patrons being thrown out. No-one looked at Saul as he walked past crowded tables and stepped over puddles of ale on his way to the employee only rooms. Saul strode past the Cathar felines loitering by the stairs. They stunk of glitterstim and distrust but let him pass without incident. The overweight human watching the security feed wasn’t so oblivious, but the music in the cantina was loud and muffled the sound of the stun bolt that took him out.

The nearby computer let him lock down most exits and do a quick scan of the clientele. Those who had been allowed to come in with weapons were marked with green. Saul marked them and the people on Ahsoka’s list, then sent the data to the smart contacts all three had been wearing to get around iris scans. Most of the targets carried hefty bounties that would add a hefty sum to their off the books war chest.

“You know Lux could have just lent you some credits if you needed it, when has a senator not given away money that isn’t his?” Saul was visibly excited to be getting back into the action. He had expected that being assigned to Lux’s security detail would only entail standing guard by the doorways of spoiled politicians.

“Please,” Ahsoka replied, happy that Saul was still capable of lightening the mood.

“I know way richer politicians who owe me a favor.” She said.

Lux smiled at Ahsoka as he approached her, the head covering of the gagged bouncer in his right hand. Based on the way he looked at her she was sure Lux was ultimately loyal to her and Saul, not any government. This was one of the reasons why she did not reach out to him when he came to Coruscant as part of the team negotiating Onderon’s reentry into the Republic. She was not wholly comfortable with the fact that he had single handedly stalled talks after her framing and spent up much of his political capital searching the planet to make sure she was alright. When he found her working as a lowly mechanic, Bonteri burned through credits buying ships and machines in need of repair as an excuse to see her. Attachments like that could lead to problems. They both knew that her leaving the order threatened to simplify or complicate their relationship, which was something she did not want to rush into so soon after being abandoned by so many Jedi she once cared about.

All these concerns were washed away by the purge: when it became apparent that the hunt for imperials had superseded the hunt for Jedi, Ahsoka realized that there were more than personal reasons to accept being swept up in his orbit. The Republic junta needed reasons to feed its war machine and Onderon was a tempting target. Onderoni men like Lux’s father died fighting clones during the war, a crime in the eyes of the Grand Army now almost completely running the show. To stabilize the government’s budget, Republic leaders expected heavy reparations neither Lux or Saul were willing to make their people pay. This made them potential targets in need of protection. It also made their people susceptible to being swept up in the imperial counter currents that threatened to bring down Republic reprisals that they were not ready to deal with. Small missions like this paved the way for the fight that was sure to come.


“This planet is a powder keg, I don’t want these guys in play when it really goes off.” Ahsoka said, having now grown comfortable easing herself back into the role of a commander.
She allowed herself to be a bit less serious. “The bounties on them are just a nice bonus.”
Lux pretended to look suspicious.

“You never mentioned our cut.”

Ahsoka shrugged as they walked back inside. “You already spent it on the down payment for my speeder.”

Saul interrupted their banter with a slight whistle as they made their way back to the crowd.

“Racketeering, weapons smuggling, more batteries on an officer than I can count: you’re right, I could be tempted to use these guys if they hadn’t raided our supplies.” Saul whispered. “Some of these guys are the real deal, I’m not sure we can take them all by ourselves.”

“I’ve already got that covered.” Ahsoka motioned for Lux to take up position at the last working exit. Setting his blaster to stun, he’d make sure no one on the list slipped out with the crowd. She then walked up to the ugliest human at the bar, let out a sudden shout and twisted her upper body out his reach. “Let go of my Lekku!” she screamed, well aware that her sensitive braid like head tendrils were fetishized by humans and culturally significant to the Twileks and the Togruta drinking three tables over. The three Ryloth eyeing her all night predictably rushed to avenge the insult, and one misunderstanding later there was a full blown bar brawl. Thrown punches and smashed chairs were enough to handle most of the lesser thugs, giving Ahsoka plenty of breathing to rush and incapacitate the ones that actually posed a threat.

In no time at all that side of the cantina was nothing but a collection of flipped tables, broken bottles and moaning bodies. Ahsoka looked to the entrance to the private room behind the bar and took a deep breath, readying herself. Ahsoka hadn’t told the others the real reason she had decided to get involved after Lux showed her the list of suspects who had broken into the Onderanian embassy’s docking bay. One person on the list did not match the profile of the thugs and contrabandists who had been targeting senators like Lux for weeks.

“Wait here,” she said, and closed the door behind her.. A sullen and slightly drunk young Mirialan was there hunched over the counter, waiting for her next refill. A tatted server strangely oblivious to the commotion around him stiffly approached with two full glasses in hand. The Mirilian waved her hand, and as if by magic he understood her unspoken request and came back with a full bottle.

“If it’s any consolation, I never expected that the council would turn you over.” The Mirilian drank half of the contents of the first glass without looking at her visitor.

“It’s not.” Ahsoka contemplated getting close enough to grab the second glass but thought better of it.

A strained calm hung in the air between Ahsoka and Bariss Offee, something that both padawans knew could change in an instant.

“After all that’s happened, you have to see that I was right.” Bariss eyed the rest of the drink in her hand before dumping most of its contents on the floor.

“If the masters had just stopped and listened, maybe none of this would have happened.” On the holoscreen in front of her a steady stream of images celebrated the bombing campaigns that had initiated the reconquest of the rim, as well the new construction that had begun to defile what was left of the Temple.

There is no emotion, there is peace, ran over and over in the two former padawans’ minds. Smoldering resentment hung in the air for a myriad of reasons. Ahsoka had been set up by someone she had been willing to give her life for. Bariss had been stopped before she could shock the Jedi into questioning how easily they had been roped into a galactic conflict. Both cursed themselves for their own naiveté.

“You killed people, Barriss.”

Barriss scoffed and used a mind trick to call for another free glass of brandy.

“We’ve all killed people, or do Geonosians and pirates not count?” Bariss drank quickly, ignoring the burn. “Some things need to happen for the greater good.”

Bariss had done terrible things in her bid to make a statement about the evils of the Clone War, things she didn't yet fully regret. She was right in a way; the war had been pointless and it had led the Jedi to doom themselves. Her self-righteousness hadn't yet been shattered by knowledge of Palpatine's true nature.

“Says the terrorist.” Ahsoka’s hands were on her hips, carefully placed just away from the blaster on her hip. Barriss finally made eye contact with her former friend, glaring at her.

“Why are you here, Ahsoka Tano? Revenge?” Bariss was also carrying a blaster.

"I thought about it, Bariss-" Ahsoka forced herself to make herself vulnerable by sitting down. It was clear that Offee's inebriation hadn’t progressed enough to stop her from also steadily inching her fingers towards a concealed blaster.

"-But no." She poured a drink of her own. “I come with a message. The war isn’t over. When it comes back to Coruscant, you need to decide which side of it you’re on.”

She slid the drink to the end of the counter. An unexpected hand intercepted as it slid and raised the cup to purple lips. Assaj Ventriss materialized before them, almost naked without the distinctive curved red lightsabers Bariss had cost her. The bounties spewn about the twitching bendack had also attracted her attention, this one in particular. Ahsoka wasn’t the only person Bariss had attempted to frame. The conflict between the three of them was long running and personal.

“Remember what I said.” Ahsoka said as she slowly withdrew. Ahsoka left them to their stand-off, which descended into a hail of blaster fire and clawing hand to hand conflict as the door closed. Saul had already been chosen to turn the bounties in, and was preparing to meet the clones that had been called to take them into custody. Lux followed Ahsoka through the back door to avoid notice. He wanted to ask who exactly was causing the tumult in the private room but correctly assumed Ahsoka let it go on because it would be broken up by the arrival of Republic troops.

He also knew that the thing suddenly buzzing in her hand was extremely important.

“Is it time?” he asked, careful not to pry too much into Jedi business. With a mixture of both trepidation and joy in her heart, Ahsoka nodded yes.

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Ahsoka carefully landed the starship Lux had loaned to her. He could have given it to her had he wanted to, but this was his way to make her promise to come back to him and return it. Kessel was the last place one would look for a Jedi. The planet was known for the accrid smell of industrial waste and slave sweat that drifted through the blown out corriders of its notorious spice mines. No one aside from smugglers and the vile willing visited Kessel. The scum who did were left to their vices so long as they looked threatening and payed the proper bribes.

Picking Kessel as the site of a Jedi Conclave was distasteful yet necessary. A den of villainy well away from the Order's sacred haunts was a good meeting point for two reasons. One: it wasn’t a location being watched. The other: the organizers felt surviving Jedi needed a conscious reminder of what they had been reduced to. Ahsoka walked slowly into the claustrophobic tunnels, ready for an ambush. But no Sith meant no need for such a usage. Flashbacks to the fight in the Geonosian weapons factory rushed to her mind when she heard the clicking at the opposite end of the corridor. She didn’t expect the large number of people gathered like a hive into what was essentially a storage garage for mining equipment.

Ahsoka stood to the side as an incredibly old and long white bearded snake like being slithered past her out of the mine. Oppo Rancisis had been rumored to be a wizened master of battle meditation who despite his abilities had mostly chosen to spend the war engrossed in his own personal meditations. He had been seen less and less during the course of the war, choosing instead to withdraw to places strong in the light side. As those places faded, he became harder and harder to find, likely attributing to his survival. In other organizations his advanced age would have earned him an honored retirement; by the customs of the Jedi, he had instead been afforded a seat on the council and granted a decision making role over knights over a century younger. Ahsoka had always suspected that the math didn’t add up during her trial. Plo Kloon, Yoda and Master Kenobi would have never found her guilty despite the evidence laid before them. Anakin had been right to label her sentencing a formality: based on the verdict, Master Rancisis probably condemned her without even attending the trial.

Like all the other Jedi at the proceeding, Ahsoka could sense his feelings of shock, loss and confusion. However unlike most who beamed with hope upon finding others of the order who had survived, he emanated an surprising emotion: frustration. If this Jedi Master, possibly the last of the Council left alive had chosen to leave in a huff, it was obvious that the regular hierarchy was no longer relevant. Attendees whispered reclusal as he and a few others past, meaning that rather than accepting his apparent demotion, they had chosen exhibit their self righteousness through self exile. The shock of this development pushed Ahsoka to move deeper into the crowd.

Master Sahdett’s species resembled a lanky green grasshopper. As sentry, the alien nature of his eyes and head movements were likely to scare off any random passerby. The non-mammalian way it scrutinized her helped see why this Jedi was the few that had survived. She surmised that if eating her alive was the only it could survive, it would do so in a heartbeat in according with the law of nature, and without any care that such an act would lead to the dark side.

Dozens of Jedi were in attendance. Some like Rahm Kota sprawled out on mounds of long forgotten gravel near rusting equipment and well away from the exposed spice deposits stacked haphazardly throughout the facility. Relying on his own militia in lieu of clones had meant that he was never in any real danger when the clones turned on their generals. He had to bear the burden of being right. Ahsoka examined those grouped closest together: Bultar Swan exemplified what it meant to be a Jedi Knight, and the horror of loss had done nothing to sap the liveliness from her beautiful almond shaped eyes. Sia-Lan Wezz was a female Jedi Guardian par excellence who had come expecting a fight but had settled for a reunion.

Ahsoka mentally noted to avoid a few. Koffi Arana's shaved tuft of hair gave him a distinctive look when compared to the other humans, but it was his open aura of hostility that truly set him apart. The battle honed Roblio Darte was the closest to Arana's state of mind, but his fury burned coldly within his heart and was being harbored only for the enemy. Blue Furred Jastus Farr looked troubled, the former Tusken named A’sharad Hett wore an expression that was as austere and wild as the desert and masters Tsui Choi and Ma'kis'shaalas ignored her completely while engrossed in detailing their escapes from Order 66. Padawans like Caleb Dune made themselves small and avoided any reason to tell their stories out of shame. Master Luminara Unduli was even there too, visibly uncomfortable but forcing herself to sit upright on the medical cot Quinlan Vos had dragged out for her. Unduli didn’t have the energy to keep the hijaab she usually wore on her head, uncharacteristically allowing it crumple beneath the cot as she struggle to ignore the aching pain emanating from her cracked ribs .Ahsoka kept moving so as to avoid having to explain her recent run in with Unduli’s former apprentice.

Two Jedi in particular drew the most of the attention from their peers. Master Tiplee would have stood out under any circumstances due to the beautiful contrast of her rosey skin and blue lips, eyeliner and reverse s forehead tattoo. The red with blue tipped plumage stretching up and behind her eyes almost floated in the air like palm fronds caught in the breeze or long flat strips of parchment paper. Later, Ahsoka would learn the circumstances behind the death of Tiplee’s sister. An act of fate or perhaps the will of the force had given the Jedi a in person sneak peak at the doom that would soon befall them, and to Ahsoka’s shock, the order at large seemed to have utterly ignored it to the point of suppressing details about the event. Tiplee however had held her sister’s lifeless body in her arms and because of that had never let her guard down around clones again. As order 66 was issued, Tiplee could read the signs and struck first, the only reason why she was still alive.

The other Jedi of note was a human female named Shadaay Potkin who exuded the type of self confidence that the old Jedi council had made a pastime of condemning. She had been the one to tell Rancissis that the time for waiting and meditation was over. When he had tried to pull rank, she had told him that the time of blind obedience was done too. People listened to her because her message was simple: they were alive, they were Jedi and they needed to act.

Ahsoka’s eyes scanned the room one last time: more padawans mostly without masters, a few stoic recluses who had grown so accustomed to meditative solitude that their tongues seemed welded to the roofs of their mouths and a few dozen other miscellaneous survivors. Yoda, Plo Koon, Obi Wan and most soul crushing of all even her own master: all absent, all killed. The only truly familiar face was master Luminara’s, but it was covered in bruises and minor cuts, her thick robes concealing the damage she had sustained tumbling down the mighty trees of Kashykk, Quinlan Vos’ hesitation to participate in her attempt to make peace with the republic ironically being the only reason she had survived.

Ahsoka didn’t know her but she could tell that Shaaday shone in comparison to the others. Her upward tilted chin and twinkling eyes showed her pride, not just in herself but in the conclave she had successfully organized. Her shoulders had become loose, relieved that so few had left upon realizing that they could not usurp her unexpected authority. She was as sure of that as she was in herself, a charismatic arrogance that wizened old Yoda had seen in many knights and learners, even in Ahsoka on occasion. To most sentients Shadaay’s confidence in the wake of so many losses would be construed as a insult to the fallen, but now that the remaining Jedi were recovering from the deafening wound in the force that was order 66, they too could sense that the worst was now over.

Shaaday Potkin watched Ahsoka try to slip unnoticed into the assembly. "Hello, padawan," Shaaday said, bringing everyone else to a temporary silence. Ahsoka flinched for a moment then reluctantly pulled back her hood. It was obvious that not everyone agreed on the openness of the conclave’s invitations. Jedi had a power to almost read each other’s thoughts which was why Ahsoka had not wanted to be noticed. You ran away when we needed you rang out from more than one mind. You too chose poorly, you too trusted and actedly rashly, yet you still think yourself better than us. Shaday’s eyes seemed to say something else. Had the council let her take the fall for something she didn’t do, she would have left too.

Shaaday had been in the middle of a speech when Ahsoka entered. She recited stories about how the Order had been decimated before in its long history and how it had always recovered. Now would be no different. How it survived would need to change though which was why Ahsoka had been summoned.

"The Order nears the brink of extinction because of our blind loyalty to the Republic.” Shaaday said loudly so as to be heard over the din of the crowd, but making her voice sound calm so as to present the information as a matter of fact rather than an admission of defeat. “We betrayed our ideals and our people to fight for it, and in return it has brought upon us almost total destruction.”

The gathering’s mood was bitter and downtrodden. Some wanted to focus all blame on the Sith, but they knew of all the pawns so eager to be manipulated. Palpatine was gone, but the soldiers he had created still hunted their peers. His follower’s coveted the glory promised to them, his civil servants still clung to their bureaucracies. By looking so intently on Ahsoka, Shadaay was reminding those in attendance that they in part had also been complicit in letting this happen.

"The Senate we upheld applauded our annihilation. The people we served demanded it. By now we've all come to terms with what Palpatine really was. How he hid his true nature from us and why the clones turned on him is irrelevant. If not for Master Kenobi and Master Yoda's heroic actions the Sith would have won regardless of the complications they faced. Thankfully the latest ripples in the force can only mean one thing: The Sith succumbed to their own treachery, as they always do. All that matters now is that his minions are vulnerable.

"We mustn't let this opportunity slip from our grasp. No reflection. No exile. We must follow Yoda's example and do what must be done. We must act."

Tsui Choi chittered together his small jagged teeth in approval. Shadaay motioned Ahsoka to come forward.

“The council should have built upon the successes you had on Onderon.” She said quietly, placing her hand on Ahsoka’s shoulders and a shoto lightsaber in her hand. “I suspect that is why Palpatine wanted your head.” Ahsoka knew that this was part of the apology she had so badly wanted, but the part that was about to come with it gave her grave misgivings. Shadaay had reached out to her personally a week prior to share her plan. Ahsoka objectively agreed to it, which is what worried her.


Sian Wezz raised her voice to lend the plan her support, her metal breastplate and lavender dress helping her to stand out from the other Jedi in their non descript robes.

"Civilizations rise and fall,"Wezz said, "and fighting that would be like fighting the tide. We can’t save what we’ve already lost. If the Republic succumbed so easily to the Dark Side, we should not support it. We should end it."

Master Darrin Arkanian's ears waggled, his species way of showing agitation. "What you're proposing here is as irresponsible as it is impossible. If we couldn't hold one coliseum without the clones, how do you propose we fight their armies?"

Khota entered the conversation. "By doing the same thing they did to us. Lure them into a quagmire. We spread them out so thin they snap."

Shaaday looked to Ahsoka. They had rehearsed this on the condition that Ahsoka could air her own misgivings.

Ahsoka straightened herself. "In my experience, even small rebellions under the right guidance can take down whole armies."

Now was the time to state the obvious that she was not sure Shadaay wanted to see.

“But on Onderon people were fighting for their homes. We don’t have the right to drag them back into war if they think the Republic has won them peace.”

"This peace is a lie.”

Ahsoka hadn’t expected Luminara to limp up next to her and say that. The sophisticated refinement in Unduli’s voice had briefly slipped, replaced by resentful acceptance that pretending to believe otherwise had cost lives. It was a lie that could be broken by exploiting the passions of a galaxy that had become all too used to war. These passions with the right level of retaliatory oppression would lead to a struggle for power across the galaxy. Helping power fall into the right hands could lead to victory if done right, but capitalizing on chaos went against the fostering of harmony required by the Jedi code. When spoken allowed, it sounded like a subversion of the ways of the sith.


Beware attachments, padawan. Anakin had on occasion hinted that attachment to rules and values could interfere in one’s duties. Was she placing her feelings for those who didn’t have to experience necessary hardships over the need for them to step up and rise to the occasion? Master Skywalker would have leapt at the opportunities Shadaay’s plan presented. Ahsoka didn’t want to admit that this was one of the reasons her heart told her that she was right to leave him.

Master Shaaday exuded self confidence as she talked to the people around her about which worlds were most ripe for disruption and which would be too dangerous to be assisted. Ahsoka thought back to Steela who had died to make her home planet free but under the right circumstances would have lived contentedly under rulers more than willing to do the bidding of the likes of Nute Gunray and Count Dooku.


As a sign of their agreement, most now carried a yellow saber which they touched ceremoniously in a large circle. Shaaday watched approvingly despite her own weapon remaining on her hip. Unlike the others she carried a cortosis blade, a physical sword with unique properties that could cut through even the energy beam of a lightsaber.

"We are the swords of the Jedi, a sacred covenant. The Force is with us,” Shadaay said with conviction.


Ahsoka's fingers inched towards the yellow shoto blade given to her.. It was like the one she had dropped when clones fired rockets at her feet but somehow heavier, an echo of their use in the defense of the temple. Koffi Arana gripped it tightly as though he wanted to squeeze his rage into it. Rahm Kota ignited it briefly then clipped it to his belt like it were any other tool.

In that moment Ahsoka understood why even the most dovish of Jedi were brandishing their new weapons. She had only been subjected to a mockery of justice; to prove her innocence Ahsoka had thrown herself into the lowest depths of Coruscant relying only on desperation to keep her alive. The others had faced something much worse. They had watched justice be turned on its head, and what they fought for annihilate them. The time had come for retribution

Shaaday nodded to Ahsoka, waiting for her to join the circle like the others. Ahsoka did not move. This was an opportunity to rejoin her family and restore the Jedi to their rightful place in the galaxy. Ahsoka fought back tears. She would help them when appropriate, but her place was with her friends and loved ones. “May the Force be with you," she said, unable to out and out reject the invitation.

Engrossed by the yellow light, Shaaday barely noticed her leave.

 

Chapter Six​

All life requires energy. All energy, like life, must transform, and through its own decay feed into new transformations. The Living Force pulsed through the roots of vegetables as it did the veins of livestock. Once the ego was factored out, those in touch with this power no longer fretted over which biologic kingdom could or could not be consumed. Everything was sanctified, from the smallest leaf to the fattest cattle.

The Agriculture Corps had come to Dantooine to farm. After the battle won by Master Windu in the early days of the Clone Wars, they instead spent most of their time recycling or disposing of all the weapons and scrap that coated the planet’s otherwise idyllic prairies. A contingent of Republic clones had always been nearby to protect them from scavengers and other criminals looking to try their hand at becoming arms dealers. After Order 66 the clones were looked at very differently. Whatever the true purpose for their arrival had been, it had become moot due to the overthrow of the Emperor.

The Agriculture Corps had a reputation for filling its ranks with Jedi washouts. It took many years for some to give up on their dreams of becoming Padawans. It had been hoped that being fated to mind the soil would bring them a sense of oneness with nature that they had failed to grasp during their childhood of austere contemplation. Jolne was one such example, a human boy only 14 years of age already resigned to a lifetime assignment he dutifully accepted but did not in any way desire. Jolne had wanted to be a hero, and for this reason Jolne idolized those who fought in the war and thought little of the lives lost to it. For that reason, no master had chosen Jolne to be their apprentice, their existential weariness of the conflict and its futility having reached its apex in the weeks before Sidious revealed himself.

Jolne was one of the last discarded cast offs dumped on the farming world. He had been brash and ready to pick on any who questioned the war effort here as well, but even in his humiliation Jolne remained utterly loyal to the Order. News of what had happened could not be kept under wraps. The Agricultural Corps was now in a dangerous limbo. Not Jedi enough to be culled but too Jedi to be left unattended, Jolne spent the following weeks wondering what his clone heroes would do to him if he tried to leave.

He put down his hoe. A ship was touching down, but not the one that usually brought supplies. The clones watched it without too much concern. They’d follow orders one way or another, and either accept the goods or send the merchants on their way.

Two Zabrak women came down the ramp. They both looked athletic, the younger one carrying an air of moodiness about her that transcended teenage rebellion. The girl obviously hated clones, but the clones were getting used to that and elected to focus on their tractor repair manuals rather than confront her. The commander had chewed them out enough times for not looking for something more useful to do rather than loitering around and intimidating traders.

The older Zabrak approached the clone in charge.

"We have the seeds you requisitioned."

The Commander, who had been given the nickname Green-Thumb by his bored men, looked at the datapad he cradled.

"Hold on, there might have been a mix up in the last order. My logs say the seed banks won't need to be replenished until the following harvest. We could always use more fertilizer though if you have it."

"Regular seed rotation is a must if you want to keep these fields fertile, not chem baths."

"That's what the last trader said, and now I'm sitting on a stunted crop yield that didn't grow right without -you guessed it- fertilizer. I don't care if we take shortcuts, the next batch needs to meet quota."

Jolne noticed that while they bartered the younger Zabrak was scrutinizing every inch of the terrain. She winked at Jolne and pointed a small laser at the largest concentration of troopers.

They noticed, but before they could do anything about it, Jedi Starfighters were diving into view and taking shots that danced around the Agriculture Corps and straight into the clones. Yellow lightsabers ignited in the hands of the Zabraks, quickly piercing a few armored chests. Zolne did his part, calling a droid’s old blaster to his hand that he had kept for just such an occasion and used it to shoot retreating stragglers in the back.

Bol Chatakk turned back into the ship, disgusted with herself. She had been one of the few Jedi to be spared by her former clone comrades, and she knew that this ambush would permanently sever the good will once held between her and the commandos of Ion Squad. Maris Brood on the otherhand was elated at having finally gotten some well deserved revenge. Her master was one of the overly trusting members of the order who had exposed himself in the immediate aftermath of Order 66 due to an inability to believe that they had been betrayed, his trust rewarded by summary execution. Master Shaaday passed Chatak on her way out of the Gray Pilgrim and patted the younger Zabrak on the back, as if to say she had done well. Shaaday then went to praise Jolne’s initiative. She would need it in the violent days to come.

Dozens of ships large and small touched down around them. Flying Thranta Rays landed on their hulls as they descended, a power sucking nuisance now but a steady supply of meat for later. Rolling hills and golden fields for as far as the eye could see played host to friends, allies and force worshippers who had answered the call. Even the Altisian Rangers, a blue capped paramilitary strictly loyal to but dismissed by the Council for centuries had made an appearance. With this motley coalition, many whispered that they could still be generals, this time commanding the backbone of a new army of light.

Shaaday watched the tearful greetings between friends lost to each other since becoming padawans. She bowed to Rahm Kota and nodded to potential fighting men who once resigned themselves to a life of quiet farming. She met with Quinlan Vos plus every other survivor that had come and looked with compassion on the physical and mental scars they’d sustained. The pain they had suffered was still raw, but it had unexpectedly reminded them of connections to the Force they had forgot existed, and the potentialities the old jedi order had forgotten amidst the aftermath of the Russan Reformation and the slow machinations of the Sith.

Dogma and tactics would be sorted out in time. Master Shaaday had not lost the pride Yoda had warned her about, nor did she feel the need to. As she saw it, the Old Jedi Order had failed because it had surrendered its knowledge to the ignorance of the mob, its peace to the emotional sectarianism of politicians. They would soon disperse to a thousand worlds to be condemned as tyrants or praised as lords, their only justification being that the Force willed it.

****

Twin suns burn low over the deserts of Tatoiine. If they could think, they would spare no sympathy for the civilized wretches living on the planet. Like the Bantha, most of the inhabitants are beasts of burdens for criminal cartels, spending their life scrounging for enough to buy their freedom, only to slowly lose it to extortion. Their only hope in life is to be left alone and live in peace, no matter how unjust.

Justice is not necessary on this planet. The Bantha Bull that wins his mates through strength does not have to be stronger or more fit than his rival, just lucky enough to have recently been favored by the unreliable water sources that shift with the planet’s sand dunes. The largest beasts are the ones must likely to end up on a dinner plate. Those who survived take and no scum take more than the Hutts.

Slimy, grotesque and vile by nature, lack of justice has made the Hutts strong. Strength and stability help them to maintain and spread their hierarchy into the galactic underworld, and through it straight into the halls of state. High society is always filled with petty tyrants and unwashed masses willing to rationalize this simple cut throat reality. Gangsters became governments and protection rackets became publicly celebrated treaties again and again over the course of galactic history, and in the tens of thousands of years since the expansion of the Hutt space, it is common for corporations and politicians to come before the Hutts with bargains framed with the empty ethics of legality. This time it is the Republic bearing gifts, eager to pay for the expansion of their alliance.

A'Sharad Hett has been given a carte blanche to punish this relationship. Hett had been brought up in the merciless culture of the sand people and had abandoned them when they abandoned his father, an action that is as acceptable in their culture as leaving a straggler to die of thirst on a dune. The Jedi had once turned their nose at this reality, but times have changed. By allowing himself to be both a Tusken and a Jedi, Hett quickly amasses a warband capable of taking cities like Mos Eisley in hours.

The Force is raw in this arid place. It does not punish predators for consuming prey. Falling into the jaws of the krayt dragon is as natural as succumbing to old age. Shaaday and the others can tell themselves that they are knights on crusade reestablishing a great and terrible covenant with the light side, but Hett does not need such self deceptions. Destruction is of the Dark Side and the Dark Side is of the Force, life without wielding such things tends to be short.

Hett points his gaffi stick at the nearest homestead. In his way are ranchers, farmers and slaves determined to cling to the scraps of wasteland they have taken for themselves. These are the so called innocents the Old Jedi Order had sworn to protect before Sidious had clouded their connection to the Force and dragged them into a pointless war. These unfortunates live stubborn but honest little lives moisture farming for Jabba so he can enjoy the luxury of sweat. These settlers are the first to fall. They don’t think about the morning dew being stolen from Tusken villages just over the horizon. They do not allow the gathered Tuskan clans to drink from their wells during the march on Jabba’s palace. If Hett tries to go around them, the warband will be discovered. If he orders the sand people to halt, their herds will die of thirst. Sand lashes at Hett’s mask as he watches a childless couple be dragged from their hovel. He feels an echo of destiny gone unfulfilled as he passes their corpses and hopes the Force is with them as it is with all things.


********

Ahsoka sets down her chai and listens to the galvanized, industrious bustle of her surroundings. Every time she returns to the self declared galactic center, she becomes more convinced it is losing the right to consider itself the fulcrum on which the fate of the galaxy rests. Compared to the order out of chaos that existed on real frontlines, the chaos that continues to spread through Coruscant seems almost comedic in its randomness. Every turbolift entrance becomes a chokepoint, every staircase a hundred clicks long the new fiefdom of deathstick addicts kept at bay away from outer platforms by bands of locals near permanently at war with neighbors too emotionally unstable to build social connections. Competing pop up restaurants called fondas, helmed by older women with a dream and their ruffian descendants who make it happen by banning all food commerce aside from what was being produced in their own kitchens are a more common source of conflict in the lower city than the politics topside. Yet nearly every gang still apes the grander disputes in the galaxy by naming themselves after leaders of their planets of origin or senatorial blocs that grant them limited patronage in exchange for entertainment or protection. Ambushes by vibro butcher blade wielding maniacs on the corners of vibrantly lit and hopelessly crowded thoroughfares are just as common as mad slicers leading droid assaults on hidden cantinas that double as hidden headquarters for whichever human supremacist thug flavor of the week that had reached the pinnacle of his kind’s limited thinking and declared himself that level’s grand moff.

Taking these constant threats down should be the work of a social worker or a holo-hero, not the clones and syndicates that vie for control in clumsy ways that only feed the bubbling of future tensions. This is a task for Jedi, a task that had been neglected even before the war. The New Jedi Order offers Ahsoka this responsibility with zero preconditions. Once again she contemplates refusing their offer.

 

Chapter Seven
It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions.​

Coruscant was a monument to eternal change. Layer over layer of half-hearted development and graft shaped the daily lives of the public, the one constant being utter devotion to growth over well being. Palpatine had promised to change things, but Palpatine was gone, just one of countless victims of the endless hubris that made the beings of Coruscant believe they could reshape their own destinies. A quarter of the population was now in a state of permanent protest, the others either complacently dependent on the bureaucracy that pretended nothing had changed while the rest earned what little credits they could feverishly constructing the automated factories that would drive more workers like them into joblessness. Industry left some places and returned to others, spurred by the first of many new cloning facilities spreading like honeycombs in a capital buckling under the weight of disillusionment and corruption.

The Republic’s politicians as always were more interested on how best to divvy up budgetary allocations. Padme turned off the holofeed, sickened by the illusion of business as usual. Anakin had liked to joke that aggressive negotiations -democracy by by blaster barrel- was the only real way to make senators agree. It was disheartening to see how the remaining senators who had submitted to the cloners’ intervention more or less adhered to that idea. There was little conscience or vision in the Senate chambers. It was also literally quite empty; She hadn’t seen such a drop off in the percent of senators in attendance since the start of the separatist crisis. She herself hadn’t returned since her rescue. She resisted the idea of going back; no faith could be placed in those who applauded the rise of a dictator.

There were other matters to attend to. A homecoming soiree was being held in Padme’s new apartment suite. The undercity was still chaotic, but those who remained in the Senate Residencies had been able to resume their lives of comfort and luxury. Laughter and the scent of Corellian Brandy filled the room. Padme sipped it and thanked the Force that her pregnancy was at an end.

Jar Jar was in the nursery entertaining the twins. They were just beginning to crawl, and between them and Threepio’s constant flustering, any day that didn’t end with a small house fire was considered a success. Senator Bail Organa would occasionally glance in their direction, horrified at the prospect of the Gungan being in the vicinity of younglings. Padme watched him and the party goers while pretending to listen to one of her handmaidens’ scripted gossiping, a common ploy of the nobility that allowed one to appear distracted while actually eavesdroping on matters of state and scandal, two topics that easily mixed.

When the soiree was over Padme stood by the door and exchanged final pleasantries with her acquaintances as they filed out. Some of these guests were dear friends while others were rivals that had not yet earned her public ire. They were treated with the same veneer of mirth and poise taught to all queens of Naboo. Representative Binks was one of the last to go, bounding out the room straight into a priceless vase in the process. The Gungan grinned sheepishly as Padme closed the door behind him, her wry pout masking that she was no longer truly phased by such accidents.

Bail and Mon Mothma shared in a quick sigh of relief and beckoned her to sit. As the leaders of the Delegation of Two Thousand, they had much to discuss. The faction’s political position was promising but tenuous. As vocal leaders of the loyal opposition in the run up to the Declaration of the New Order, their principled protests of Palpatine’s excesses had garnered them many new followers after his fall from lobbyists and power brokers looking to save their skins. The Kaminoans made a point of loudly acquiescing to minor facets of the Delegation’s platform, a simple means of beginning to build legitimacy for their regime. With worlds loyal to the Imperial Remnant retreating inwards and Palpatine’s more pragmatic sycophants voting strategically, the delegation now controlled the largest voting block in the fractured senate. Yet they had also once been adamant in their desire to reduce war budgets and begin a negotiated settlement to the Clone Wars, which was a dangerous sentiment to hold while ruled by a military junta.

Due to the importance of such topics, their conversation first drifted to drivel about healthy eating and the newest media from their home planets while their aides swept for surveillance bugs, a precaution as common in political circles as washing a dish. Padme swished the drink in her cup as she waited. The choice of spirits had been intentional, a symbolic means of steering discussions toward a sensitive topic. Mothma had noticed the ploy from the onset, and made a point of widening her eyes in mock surprise and gesturing towards the drink while they pretended to discuss how best to feed a picky eater like Leia or Mon Mothma’s own newly born daughter Leida.

"Padme Amidala, you are a skilled manipulator. You should enter politics."

Bail understood the visual cue and reached forward to top off the glasses in Padme and Mon Mothma’s hands. As members of noble houses, they all knew the fine art of casually bringing up a topic while purposefully downplaying its importance.

“I remember being introduced to Corellian Brandy at a gathering quite like this. It is a shame that Bel Iblis could not share this drink with us.”

“Bel Iblis is a stubborn fool,” Mon Mothma retorted matter of factly, nodding to her aides as they signaled that there was indeed a recorder in the room. It wouldn’t have taken long for them to neutralize it but deactivation would have been just as damning as evidence. For now it was wise to shift to less sensitive topics, but they were tired. Sensing the weight of everything that would have to go unsaid, Organa tactfully steered their conversation towards its end, leaving the expensive drinks for their aides to finish.

"In any case, senators,” he said, “we have a long day ahead of us. I hope to see you both tomorrow."

They stood. Mothma grasped Padme's hand.

"It is good to know that your family is well. If Luke has half your fire, he'll make for excellent royalty."

"I'll notify the matchmakers."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

The door closed. Padme put her head in her hands for a brief moment then removed it, revealing an expression that was more stoic than she liked. They had their schemes, Padme had her own. The handmaid nursing Luke and Leia put one of the babies down and pulled a level hidden in their toy trunk as Padme entered their nursery, revealing a secret office space that doubled as a panic room. Acoustic dampeners in the wall would protect her privacy. Once closed, a transmitter blinked to life, connecting Padme with her main contact in the lower levels of Coruscant. Ahsoka had remained fiercely loyal to her former master during her time away from the Order. That love and respect had passed on to his widow, even if she did not fully admit to realizing the depth of their relationship.

"We were successfully able to reprogram 8 full shipments of the droids assigned to the new cloning program.” Ahsoka said, relaying the results of a mission Padme had asked her to complete a week before. The Togruta had quietly entered young adulthood in the past year and looked like she could maturely handle any task. That being true, she also could still wield temperamental fire of youth against those who annoyed her.

“It would have been ten, but someone had to go overboard wasting time installing a class-conscious subroutine."

"Clankers of Coruscant, Unite!" yelled someone off screen. Padme missed the ability to make even the most dangerous tasks feel like an adventure. The idea of R2 or Threepio at the head of a guerilla army was amusing even to Ahsoka, though she feigned seriousness.

"In any case, they'll prove useful once we're ready to call for a general strike." Ahsoka said. Even the most apolitical laborers would likely join a work stoppage if the machines they relied on did so too.

"And what of Naval Intelligence?" Padme asked.

"Less luck there, I'm afraid. The ones that didn't shoot at me on sight or defected to Black Sun say they only take orders from Yularen. Judging from how they looked at my lightsabers, it's likely we’ve lost them to the Imperials.”

Ahsoka's voice had grown resentful. She had served with that man once. It was hard to believe he could willingly be in league with bigots who hated her just for being nonhuman.

"There's one more thing." Ahsoka said with hesitation. “I was approached by a senator named Mon Mothma looking to build her own network. Can I trust her?"

"With your life, but you mustn't let her know I told you this.” Padme answered. “For now we must follow our own paths and trust that they eventually intertwine."

Ahsoka nodded and the feed cut out.

Padme sat alone for a bit, saying nothing. Then she reached for a second, more sophisticated military grade holoreceiver. On the other end of the encrypted channel was a creature too close to the Hutts in disposition and appearance than she liked, but just selfish enough to reliably strike a bargain that would serve both their interests. Toonbuck Torah had no ideology or loyalty, but neither did she have any hate in her heart. It was too rotten to beat hard enough for that, though its pace did quicken at the thought of profits that might come from someone as respected as Senator Admidala finally seeing the benefits of quid pro quos and backroom deals.

"Have you read the report?" Padme said, straight to business.

The sound of artillery fire could be heard muffled in the distance. "Front to back twice, your majesty" the alien said drolly, stroking the tufts of hair on her second chin. "The cloners seek to take the place of the Trade Federation once the war is done. It’s the only way to perpetuate their business model. This proof will bring great sympathy to our cause."

“Your cause,” Padme said tersely. “At least for now. And Gunray?”

Padme frowned at the thought of the Neimodian viceroy still willing to pay millions of credits for her head almost fifteen years after their first encounter on Naboo.Toonbuck waved away the seriousness of the question.

“Lording over somewhere remote I’m sure, making promises to his corporatist allies. We will make sure he is too marginalized to gain control over our parliament once he crawls out from his hole.”

The second feed soon cut off as well, leaving Padme alone with her thoughts. Separatists, neutralists, reformists and the odd imperial respectful of the role she unwittingly played in Palpatine’s rise to power all had their own demands, offers and agendas to lay at her feet. The multitudinous diplomatic channels open to her were promising, but she would never again let herself be dependent on their answers like she had been after first coming to Coruscant as a girl and watching the galaxy’s ruling class bicker while her people slowly died. Her career since then had been defined by futilely trying to hold back the rising tide of their greed and hunger for power. Playing by their rules wouldn’t cut it anymore; the future of her children, like the future of her planet so many years ago was at stake.

 

Chapter Eight
"Cor'ika, we've got a hundred and fifty shabla contingency rules, everything from arresting the Chancellor if he goes gaga to reducing key allied worlds to slag if they switch sides…"​

The Corellian Crisis was coming to a head. Pulling the Republic 2nd Sector Army away from its blockade over the Neimodian Purse Worlds hadn’t been an ideal way to deal with the situation, but Garm Bel Iblis had made that move unavoidable. His unyielding flaunting of the Contemplanys Hermi privilege that kept Corellia autonomous and functionally neutral during the war without ceding any of the rights afforded to Republic worlds would not extend to the harboring of dissidents. Chandrila, Aldeeran and the Naboo harbored enemies of the regime too, but they did so quietly and with proper amounts of plausible deniability. When Mon Mothma attempted to clandestinely point this out, he rebuffed her. The mutual disdain shared between the Chandrilan and Corelian was immediate and scornful, both personal and a byproduct of his refusal to partake in the democratic process she still stubbornly clung to.

Bel Iblis acted in the open without concern for the alliance that she and Bail had attempted to integrate him into. This left Bel Ibliss’planet utterly isolated politically save for the well connected core worlders that his wife sheltered, rich imperial sympathizers that she stubbornly shielded against Bel Ibliss’ wishes. Ibliss much preferred another group of asylum seekers, though he made all efforts to publically ignore their presence. The Republic didn’t care: it could not allow another wave of secession to sweep through its systems, so it had come to demand the surrender of all dissidents regardless of ideology or alliegances. Iblis could not hide from them in the safe confines of the senate. He had spent the last few days cloistered in a war room.

As both a senator and a gifted military tactician, Bel Iblis had anticipated such a response, though only as a worst-case scenario. Proximity smart-mines were floating through Corellia's upper atmosphere. Frigates impounded in the Corellian Shipyards were being converted into anti aircraft batteries on the surface. Crucially there was an umbrella shield generator hung over the defenses, making the handful of Republic Acclamators already in orbit unable to rely on threats of orbital bombardment. If those blunt instruments failed, he had one more weapon at his disposal. He had Jedi.

Everything had started with the Chu’unthor. Its ambush over Corellian airspace had violated the Contemplayns Hermi, legally allowing Iblis to intervene and offer the mobile Jedi Praexium safe harbor while it made crucial repairs. Many worlds were starting to question if the Jedi had really rebelled. There were eye witness accounts of the Council moving to arrest Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to be sure, but the vids mysteriously cut off before Windu and the Council made their intensions clear. And besides, hadn’t the Clones done the same thing?

Even if the Army wasn’t lying, even if Jedi survivors had turned to piracy and sabotage, that didn’t mean the Chu’unthor needed to be destroyed. Few non-force sensitives appreciated the distinctions between those who accepted the Ruusan Reformation like the council once headquartered on Coruscant and those who did not. Djin Altis’ students had not become enmeshed in whatever triggered the confrontation between the Council and Palpatine, though with what they knew now, few privately disagreed with the attempt to kill the self proclaimed emperor. Led by a Maverick named Altis, they had mostly withdrawn from the war effort altogether, preferring instead to stick to peaceful humanitarian missions. Altis was starting to feel like he had lived a hundred lifetimes too many. A time would come when his human body would grow too frail to go on, and he’d finally transfer his essence into a holocron to teach and be forgotten by future generations. Until that day came, the Altisians were his responsibility.

Sometimes Altis felt like the Council had been right to brand him a heretic. He still believed in everything he taught his students over the years, but letting them help define their own versions of right and wrong might have been a mistake. Teachings new and old were starting to take root in his community that were not as tolerant. With one master allowed to take on as many padawans as he or she desired, sectarian cults of personality were beginning to form which Altis couldn’t control.

The technicians busy repairing the Chu’unthor fashioned themselves ‘Gray Paladins’ and minimized their usage of the Force in a misguided attempt to grow more attuned to it. The Teepo Palladins on the other hand relied on the force but deprived themselves of everything else besides anonymity and a weapons cache to complement their lightsaber proficiency. More worrisome was the Potentium doctrine, the erasure of the divide between darkness and light which made even Altis apprehensive. Though he himself suspected that passion was a source of great strength (the prime tenant of the Sith), he never went as far as believing that amassing power in all its forms was synonymous with knowledge.

Worst of all, Altis now was stuck dealing with Corellians. The older gentlemen escorting Altis was alright; he was a CorSec officer and accustomed to hunting down the smugglers and ruffians that called the core world home. His stepson however was a stereotypical Corellian rogue, albeit a rogue stuck in the vague middle ground between boy and manhood. Valin Halycon had lost his father, Master Neeja Halycon, early in the war. There were many precedents for Corellian Jedi bearing children, but Neeja had never pressed the matter, meaning Valin never lived in the temple. His training came piecemeal, sometimes supplied by Neeja but mostly from his innate instincts being fed by overheard CorSec techniques and quick-witted urchins playing in the streets.

Altis’ escort left him at the gates of the Green Enclave. The Green Enclave was once named after the ancient moniker of the Corellian Knights, a suborder from the era in which Jedi Lords ruled personal fiefdoms during the Great Sith Wars. Now it was known mainly for the oxidized ruins visited by the corellian middle class during vacations and holidays. The Corellian Green Jedi that had stood the test of time had modern lodgings within a cultural center to the south, but they had relocated here in order to make the civilians around it less of a target.

Foreboding hung in the air as did ecstatic hopes for a Jedi renaissance. Altisian youth slyly nudged each other into approaching the reclusive beauties standing by their part masters part fathers, blissfully unaware that the 'best' girls were Ensterites, thus socially barred from copulating with any who lacked pure Corellian blood, something that made more than a few of them susceptible to the pro imperial propaganda of the human high culture movement. The girls in turn sought to tease any helmeted Teepo Palladin who crossed their path in an attempt to figure out what species were hidden behind their special sensory deprivation visors. All tried to celebrate life, well aware that they might soon meet the same fates as the Orthodox Jedi on Coruscant.

Altis sat in a place of honor at the head of the disparate groups. He was the closest thing these castoffs had to a grand master. He smiled at them, and silently vowed they would continue on long after he passed on.They had chosen to flock to him after all, not the other Jedi survivors scattered elsewhere. Altis cleared his throat and began to review their battle plan.

Valin followed his stepfather away from the enclave. He had never seen so many Jedi in one place. The thought of them making Corellia their permanent home pleased him, unlike his having to make another trip to CorSec Central Precinct. The officers on duty there always made fun of him for his unusually rushed puberty. Valin smirked; no one believed he was thirteen, not even their daughters.

They returned to the precinct by mid-day. The mood there was very serious, and drained of the unchecked confidence that came with being untouchable embodiments of law and order. Interceptors were being prepped in its vicinity. Officers were being armed with weapons meant for war, not law enforcement. Even the prisoners knew to keep their heads down.

Valin could hear Bel Iblis screaming in the other room. His stepfather gave Valin a look and went inside, knowing full well that the boy would press his ear against the door. Rustek Horn saw Bel Iblis fuming at a holoprojection. Other screens showed star destroyers nearing the shipyards and surrounding the Correlian affiliated Five Brothers Defense Fleet. The clone he was speaking to had had a tattoo surgically removed judging by slight skin discoloring below his temple thanks to the sterile Kaminoans’ preference for uniformity, and he looked like he was eager to take his frustrations out on someone.

"I’ll say this for the last time, if you don't want this situation to escalate, you will stop harboring seditionists."

The clone speaking to Iblis was presumably a high ranking figure going by the palladium he wore on his shoulder. That didn't mean Iblis was going to respect him.

"Don’t shout ultimatums at me, you Kath-Mutt, no-one bosses around a Corellian!"

Iblis cut the line.

 

Chapter Nine​

Ortasil had no knowledge of these occurrences as he finished recalibrating the auto-trajectory and started to make his way to what passed for sleeping quarters on his ship. The Kaminoans had quelled most dissent in their army by dumping off legions of commissioned officers at random ports of entry without any interest in how they would get home. Ortasil was one of the luckier ones: he never had much use for his military salary over the years. His savings and untouched inheritance added up to a comfortable sum that could sustain him for the rest of his life. Ortasil had used it to buy a small freighter and quickly settled in to a life of reselling cheaply made products to worlds still comfortable enough to center their societies around consumerist lifestyles.

Space seemed especially empty and boring today. Ortasil sprawled out on the cushioned mat that covered the floor. A pedestal automatically lowered from the ceiling to within easy reach. Ortasil tilted his head back, grabbed a hose protruding from it and chugged.

What else was there to do? There was nothing to watch; the holonet was devoted to nothing but spewing falsehoods. The current slander fixated on the looming collapse of the galaxy’s financial system, blamed on the Emperor allegedly embezzling countless credits from the banks he controlled even as Supreme Chancellor. Why the undisputed ruler of the galaxy who could order anything by decree needed to in effect steal from himself wasn’t being discussed, only the ramifications of what seemed like fake news fabricated to further justify Kaminoan treachery. Laser fire and burning cities illustrated how well remaining elements of the Banking Clans that once pretended loyalty to the Republic rather than the Separatists were reacting to the story, image after image showing their uprising being put down by Clone troopers given hero worship by the media that was once reserved for Jedi.

Ortasil didn't care. He hoped they’d all kill each other along with the attaches apparatchik of his homeworld that now treated him as a persona non grata. His credits weren’t on another planet. They were bunched in a zipper on his chest, ready to be drunk away. The sudden buzzing coming from the cockpit made him worry he’d be gone before he could finish spending it. Tie Advanced fighters had moved into attack formation behind him. A much cheaper mass produced module had been in the works at the tail end of the war, but no self-respecting pilot would choose to fly one of those things unless overwhelming odds were on their side.

Ortasil turned a few dials and sighed, reversing his velocity so that his ship came to a relative stand still. Protocal dictated that he meet them in a separate pressurized room, but Ortasil simply sat by the airlock and waited for them to come to him instead. If these were pirates, they’d soon board and demand that he hand over the ship manifest. When the door opened Ortasil didn’t expect to see his old academy buddy, Captain Barriall.

Captain Barriall was a thin man, a haughty man, pallid from long stretches in space and self described as having noble aquiline features, though Ortasil thought of him less as a patrician and more as wraith whose face had been weathered by a false sense of stoicism that masked a spirit wholly incapable of mirth. Like many well connected core worlders, he had used his connections to shy away from the dangers of the war while also positioning himself to gain power in its aftermath. Men like him and Ortasil had expected to simply be handed a commanding position in the Imperial war machine. Now they were in the uncomfortable position of having to earn it.

Barriall motioned his security detail to the holonet receiver and promptly smashed it, a precaution born from knowing that transmissions in a digital medium could go both ways. Barriall took a small device from his pocket and swept the room for surveillance bugs. Once satisfied that the area was clean, Barriall uncharacteristically and enthusiastically placed his hand on Ortasil's shoulder.

"Get up, Moff. We've found it."

No-one had called Ortasil that for a long time.

Ortasil tried not to puke while being hoisted up. Ortasil was too drunk to refuse his assistance, but that didn’t mean he wanted to cooperate. The change in Barriall's usual demeanor however shook him out of his stupor. Barriall looked like a man who had just been given an inheritance long thought squandered.

"We did it. We found the Katana fleet."

***

"Remember Ozzel? The stupid fool thought the clones were going to have him executed so he made a blind jump into hyperspace in his private shuttle. We're lucky one of ours picked up on his distress signal."

Ortasil and Barriall toured the Empire's newest staging post. It was starting to become obvious what Palpatine had been doing with the Banking Clan’s money. Ortasil and Barriall were in the Deep Core courtesy of a hyperspace lane few knew existed. The planet Byss had been quietly designated Palpatine's potential final bastion of power in case Dooku's Confederacy ever overthrew the Republic. When General Grievous raided Coruscant the Spaarti tanks secretly hidden in Centax Two were evacuated to Byss just as planned.

Now Spaarti clones were being gestated by the tens of thousands. Kaminoans weren’t the only cloners in the galaxy. Knowledge of this had been one of the reasons why Ortasil audited the Kaminoans in person before their coup. Now instead of driving down prices, Ortasil was going to help beat the Kaminoans at their own game. The TK variant armor being issued to the Spaarti was pristine. More impressive was the legion of heavy dreadnoughts overhead that they’d soon man.

Barriall could barely contain his excitement.

"This is only the beginning. We already have multiple Carrack Class Cruisers lent to us by the Eriadu Authority. The Stark Hyperspace War Veterans Assembly reported to us en masse and the remaining imperator star destroyers under our control await our counterattack. Gentis and his cadets have been trickling in slower than expected, but I'm sure more will come after we move on a ship yard."

Ortasil turned away from the bay window. The unfinished massive complex he was in was starting to be called The Citadel by those busy constructing it. Not all the labcoats working on the spaarti cylinders had come willingly. Ortasil noticed a few fidgety Cransoc scientists who he had once been told were KIA. An armed inspector loomed nearby, prepared to punish them for any incompetence.

The labcoats had massed around a cylinder set apart from the others. Ortasil pointed to it.

"And that?"

Barriall sported a devilish grin. "That's our ace in the hole, and why you’re here."

The clone looked like it was in its early thirties. Genetically human, its patchwork beard and grimace made it seem weathered and disturbed. The clone's eyes opened slowly. His eyes squinted while he struggled to adapt to the eerie blue green light that coloured Byss. Then he became alert and stared deeply at Barriall. Mental flashes of Imperials toasting the destruction of the Jedi slammed into the clone of Master C'Baoth like a lightning strike.

Ortasil had more than a passing knowledge of cloning processes, its potential applications having been an area of study he had pursued even before the beginning of the clone wars. While his expertise had mostly been limited to using it to circumvent the Republic's rules against slave labor, he had been able to leverage his studies into lobbying for oversight over the Kamino oversector. Even if his wealth had allowed him to leapfrog over more authoritative figures in the field, he still knew enough to surmise that the scientists on Byss had ignored a cloner prime taboo. They had tampered with midichlorians.

Ortasil looked at Barriall in disbelief. "Are you on the spice? Who authorized cloning a Jedi?"


"Careful. Palpatine himself led the project."

A quick psychometrics scan told him that the hive virus was not present in his system, but there were no indications that underlying neuroses had been edited. Barriall shrugged when Ortasil brought this up.

Most sentients are born screaming. Most aren't born with a lifetime of dignity and glory torn from them in an instant. Wild eyed and naked, Joruus C’Baoth began his rampage by shattering the cylinder's glass, sending shards careening into the arteries of his creators. A inspector who was only lightly bleeding pulled out his blaster, but the shots were absorbed by the dark Jedi’s open palms. Ortisal and Barriall dived under a pile of unused pylons. They kept their heads down and waited for the Spaarti Stormtroopers to rush in.

The Spaartis took up firing positions but froze, mesmerized by C'baoth's mesmerizing glare. Rather than take out the mad clone the Spaartis turned their guns on the scientists. Soon all the cylinders burst open and the scientists who hadn't fled were destroyed alongside their machines, many by being throttled or pummeled by bleeding hands still uncertain about how to even form a fist. Barriall escaped this crude fate, instead being dragged out from under his hiding space by the Force.

Exposed wires sparked everywhere. Ortasil watched horrified as his friend’s body stiffened then began to seize while still dangling midair. Ortasil didn't crawl out from under the pylons until C'Baoth had led the last Spaarti clones off onto commandeered Nu-Class Attack Shuttles. Ortasill stood with his mouth agape, watching the attack shuttles enter the orbiting Katana fleet without resistance. He barely noticed the sound of crunching glass until he realized that grand moff Tarkin had appeared beside him with his hands tightly grasped behind his back.

"No more clones" Tarkin said.

The sound of sparking outlets and the tinking of falling shards filled the air. Ortasil didn't stand at attention. He was were busy gawking at the prized Katana Fleet jump into hyperspace in unison, leaving behind a paltry remnant of the invincible armada the Empire once had. With eyes more cold and more deadly than the hard vacuum of space, Tarkin watched Ortasil realize the gravity of this disaster. Ortasil’s gaze involuntarily flicked elsewhere in a desperate bid to hide that he had made eye contact. He gulped, desperately thirsting for his next drink.

"No More Clones."

 

Chapter 10​

“Damned slag-slime.”

Garm Bel Iblis slumped in his chair. This wasn’t the first holocall to drive his staff into consternation, but it might be his last, Ibis thought, judging by the incredulous infuriated glare pointed at him by Director Rostek. The Republic had called his bluff and were launching all fighters. No-one had expected him to take his defiance to its logical conclusion. After four years of refusing to join the war, he had brought it to his people’s doorstep. Rostek wanted to call Iblis a fool. He wanted to collect his family and cower while Corellia faced certain defeat. But Rostek was a Corellian, and understood why Corellians thrived when the odds were stacked against them. He had been around the Halycons long enough to know that if someone needed to stand up for the underdog, the Force would pick a Corellian to do it.


Rostek saluted the senator. People in CorSec were more than law enforcement. They were soldiers and fighter aces and whatever else Corellia needed them to be. Sirens sounded as officers hurried to their posts, Rostek included. A Lancet Interceptor had already been set aside for him. After he said goodbye to Valin, that Interceptor would send Rostek into the fray.


Rostek opened the door to his office, but the boy wasn’t there. Rostek’s heart dropped; he wasn’t the only person who knew about the ship. Rostek rushed to the garage strip, just in time to see it begin its wobbly ascent. Rostek lunged at the Lancet in a vain attempt to hold it down.

“Are you insane, boy?!” He said through gritted teeth as wind and dust overcame him and broke his grip.

“I’ll learn on the way.”

Valin wasn’t being totally serious. His older friends often let him ‘borrow’ transporters when they had the chance. He knew the fundamentals, and reliance on the astromech already aboard could get him through takeoff. Opening himself to the Force would do the rest.

When R3 gave him the go ahead, Valin jerked the yoke and sent the ship hurtling skywards. Lancet Interceptors were swift and nimble vessels that sacrificed precise maneuverability for speed. That had made it feared by smugglers but not so much by sane pilots. Without someone with heightened reflexes at the reins, the Lancet Interceptor was vulnerable, especially if turret fire was at its back and shifting minefields were in its path. The Interceptor would also be at a major disadvantage in a dogfight, as attested to by Tactical Response teams just above him being thinned out by Republic forces.

Valin could compensate for the Lancet’s weaknesses though. With the Force guiding his hand Valin swerved into trajectories the Z95s hadn’t yet decided on at lightning speeds and gunned the z95s down before they could take out his allies. He could tilt the Lancet Interceptor at just the right moment, unblocking the way for stray antiaircraft fire to strike mine clusters, setting off chain reactions that eliminated entire enemy squadrons. The odds were not on his side, but so far that wasn’t stopping the boy from almost single handedly changing the course of the battle.

Valin edged the Lancet alongside a group of orphaned strays attempting to form up and assume attack formation The comms went abuzz with confoundment when R3 told the other astromechs who was strapped inside.

“By the Celestials, is that you, Valin?”

“Anyone need a wingman?” Valin said.

“Seasoned aviators only, kid. Now get out of here before I call your mom.”

“C’mon man, you saw what the brat can do.”

“He’s sloppy!”

“At least he isn’t dead. Okay Valin, stay on my tail and do exactly as I do.”

The battle was intensifying around the Corellian Umbrella Shield. Valin had stopped thinking; he moved on impulse, sometimes allowing easy kills to slip passed him if it meant getting the right Z95 in his sights. If the Umbrella Shield went down the battle would end in a hurry. They needed to keep it functioning long enough for reinforcements to arrive or barring that, until Garm Bel Iblis came to his senses and surrendered.

Missile fire rained down from the upper atmosphere, forcing interceptors to scatter and watch helplessly as anti aircraft platforms and the city blocks around them were reduced to ash. Even if the main generator held, there simply weren’t enough counter batteries to protect everywhere. On top of that, the first wave had just been a show of force. Now the Republic was taking the Corellian defenses seriously and was determined to destroy them. Valin was just a kid, he didn’t belong in a dogfight . As soon as that fear arose, Valin pushed it down. It was too late to back out now.

The battle chatter grew more desperate. A horde of red dots appeared on radar sensors.

"Y Wings inbound."

Valin pressed a few buttons, giving his targeting system a new priority. If they passed through the shield crest, it would all be over. Republic capital ships could destroy whole cities in seconds.

"I'm breaking off in pursuit."

"Negative, Horn. I repeat, negative. We won't be able to keep those bogies off your tail."
Arc snub fighters were escorting in the bombers alongside the regrouped z 95s. Odds for survival based on a few common and unorthodox flight maneuvers fed into the cockpit’s computer systems, none of them looking good.

"Understood."

Valin switched to full manual control before the sputtering R3 could intervene. He jerked the yoke again, his hands a blur of motion between it and the throttle. The Y Wing Bombers were coming in hot. Valin launched his reserve of missiles at the first wave and banked hard to avoid the seeker mines approaching from the right.

A few pilots on the comms cheered. The Y Wings flew like sloths when compared to the Lancet. Their energy weapons weren’t as dangerous as the g-force pressures Valin subjected himself to in dodging them. Not a lot of Y Wings had made it through the mines and the antiaircraft fire, so when they went down there weren’t many replacements to take their place. The celebration quickly stopped, replaced by new frantic calls for Valin to retreat. With fewer and fewer bombers to escort, z 95s began to amass on his position and swarmed Valin as though he’d just punched a hornet’s nest.

Valin took one hit, then two.

Valin switched the comms frequency over to mission control.

"I wanna talk to my step father."

There was brief static on the line, almost imperceptible comparable to pops and noise filtered sonic booms Valin could hear in the cockpit.

"I'm here, boy."

"I met a girl, Rostek."

Valin didn't sound nervous. Horn was too afraid for him to feel pride.

"So you're a teenager."

"It's a little more serious than that."

The three remaining Y wings were closing in on the shield. Val swooped backwards in chase, ignoring the z 95s on his tail.

"My friends will help you find her. Thank you. You were always there for me after Dad died. Do the same for Corran."

"Corran? Who's Corran?!"

Valin Halcyon turned off the comm. Emergency sirens bleated in his ear as his ship was peppered with shots. Valin closed his eyes and let go of all the distractions around him. His hand flicked the trigger, taking out the last Y Wings before he himself disappeared in a puff of fire.

The Clone pilot who shot Valin down wasn't happy. The Y Wings he had been escorting were gone. They’d have wait awhile before more would have to be sent into the Corellian meat grinder.

"The bombing run failed, Tin leader. Moving to withdraw."

Tin Leader didn't acknowledge. A Kaminoan spoke to him instead.

"Stay on course, pilot. Do what must be done."

The Kaminoan's voice was cold as he listed off contingency orders. There was only one thing a clone could do: obey it.

"Yes, milord."

***

Laat’s burned alongside AT- ATs and Corellian armored vehicles. Altis had just held off the latest ground assault on the Umbrella Shield Generator. He and his closest apprentices meditated atop it, none having been injured in the skirmishes aside from Callista Ming, who had taken some shrapnel to the knee after getting too near to a doomed landing craft. The other Altisians fought elsewhere under Corellian command, keeping the Republic's Self Propelled Heavy Artillery well away from the shield generator.

Altis opened his eyes. Everyone needed rest, including Jedi. Due to his advanced age, Altis needed it more than others. He envied Yoda's ability to draw obscene amounts of energy from the living force as he came to terms with his aching knees.

Rest would have to wait. Altis sensed danger. He slowly struggled to his feet just in time to see Z95s on the horizon. Altis was tired. He'd stay in place after ordering the survivors to move inside, confident that the antiaircraft guns would take care of most of the ships. If they didn't he knew the umbrella shield wouldn't be compromised by the impact of their relatively low grade weaponry.

A few z95s stayed in position and flew low. Initially it seemed like they were trying to confuse Corellian radar, but the way they picked up speed to the point of overloading their engines the lower they flew could only mean one thing. By the time Altis realized what they had planned, he realized that his body was locked in place. The old man laughed; he had thrown out his back seconds before a kamikaze attack. The frail heretic yelled for his followers to run then returned to his meditations as the Z95s made impact.

***

CC-5052 didn't like sacrificing the lives of his brothers. Yet he had done it a thousand times before, in rearguard actions and desperate last stands in the name of a government that had bought his undying loyalty long before he came out of the pod. Although distasteful, the suicide tactics his Kaminoan General had advised worked; the umbrella shield was damaged and beginning to buckle.

"Move the Acclamators into attack formation" he ordered. "Ignore the mines and focus fire on Coronet City."

His flagship unloaded on the weakening shields. Bel Iblis or the senator's successor would surrender after his capital was ablaze. The rest of the 2nd Army would deal with Correlia's reinforcements. CC-5052 smiled under his helmet; he had won.

Blys wasn't worried when two dozen Jedi starfighters came out of hyperspace. This was an added success: the traitors had taken the bait. About thirty jedi starfighters were arrayed against him mostly of the older module, with unwieldy hyperspace rings that would be of no use during a hasty retreat. The Delta 7s and Eta-2s starships looked like they had realized their mistake, and made no attempt to rush to the Corellian lines. Then without warning two hundred dreadnoughts appeared behind them. The Katana Fleet moved as one. No allowing the Republic forces to retreat, no calls for the enemy to stand down, just a barrage of ion cannons and shockwaves in the force caused by unexpected death.

 

Chapter 11
I feel that the senate is powerless to prevent this crisis.​

Padme and Mon Mothma stood side by side overlooking the political chaos. Bail Organa and countless other representatives were noticeably absent, whittling the Delegation of 2000 down to 295. Of those who had come, most were either outraged or gripped by panic, too fixated on their own priorities to maintain a united front.

“This is a disaster,” Mon Mothma whispered to Padme. Padme wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the Corellian citizens stupidly endangered by the Republic or the unnecessary obliteration of the Republic task force that had turned a unlawful intervention in internal planetary affairs into the first volley of a new galactic civil war. Either way, Mothma’s dream of a peaceful restoration of the old ways looked to be falling apart. In one fell swoop, what remained of the Senate was once again motivated by fear.

Interim Chancellor Burtoni rapped her cane harder and harder in a vain attempt to quiet the Senate as she gave her report on how the Grand Army of the Republic's hands would be tied the longer worlds attempted to stall the next defense budget. She looked out of her depth, an aging defense lobbyist who had never truly convinced her fellow senators that she cared enough to truly be a warhawk.

“This injustice on Corellia proves that the Jedi traitors knowingly and maliciously withheld a vital resource that could have brought an early end to the Clone Wars. Heightening war spending is the only practical way the Republic can counteract this menace."

“All this proves, chancellor, is that you cloners are leaving us to die!” A random voice shouted from the backbenches, his outburst being rewarded with cheers and the idiosynchratic expressions of support from dozens of species. Burtoni didn't even pay attention to most of them, though she did make note of the wagging glowing finger of Senator Grebleips and remembered that Lama Su had asked her to check their genetic markers for midichlorian sensitivity. Burtoni rapped her cane again

"If you do not provide us the tools to act now, the Jedi could ransack key transit routes, vital hyperspace relays or even repeat Grievous’ assault on Coruscant to disastrous effect.”

Senator Meena Tills moved her floating podium forward.
“And what of the worlds that will suffer due to your refusal to resort to diplomacy? What if the Separatists regroup while you are distracted and make an example of Mon Cala?” The Mon Calamari paused for dramatic effect, finally ready to dredge up how powerless she was to help the Wookies. “What if the Republic leaves more member worlds in cinders to prevent that from happening?”

Hale Burtoni turned to her dismissively, her body slightly shaking due to the ill effects frustration had on someone of her advanced age.
"Your king has already ensured that your planet's shipyards are at the top of the list of sites to be fortified, the foolishness of him allowing traitors to rebuild them not withstanding."



More uproar filled the chamber. Meena Tills puffed out her cheeks and bulged her eyes, an involuntary defense mechanism her species had picked up during their evolution undersea. Openly demonstrating prejudice against the Quarren that she herself had been ordered to put aside was one thing, openly disparaging King Lee Char was quite another.

“I complain because your leadership has left us with nothing but wanton destruction and an inability to compromise. I complain because you practically forced the Corellians to turn against us just like you did on Kashykk, only this time you were punished for it. I and our Quarren brethren will not allow our shipyards to be used in such reckless endeavors.”

Burtoni did not have the energy for this performance . In order to hide her shaking hands, she made herself grip her cane harder.

“That I doubt. You know as well as I that a contract is a contract.”

Mounting cries of ‘Tyrant’ began to overtake the other yells. The Clones that had replaced the Senate Guard grew tense.

“She’s going to ruin everything!” Mothma muttered under her breath.

Before Padme could stop her, before she could tell her friend that the situation should be allowed to run its course, Mon Mothma had moved to her platform and hovered to the center of the chamber.

“ It’s obvious that we are now facing a very different kind of war than the one waged against the so called Confederacy of Independent Systems, one that requires doing more than confronting the moral unambiguity of legions of battle droids. I demand a motion of no confidence.”


***

“The Judicial Department? Do you mean to tell me that squabbling bureaucrats should be put in charge of the war effort?”

The official Mon Mothma was speaking to belonged to some backwater loosely affiliated to Czerka Arms. It wasn’t important in the slightest, but a vote was a vote. Padme was helping Mon Mothma whip up votes. Contacting off world members of the Delegation of 2000 was a tedious affair, especially when many of them were committed to abstention. Mon Mothma hoped they could be brought back with the promise of new leadership, but Mothma lacked the necessary amount of votes so far, and had been forced to reach across the aisle and contact systems that cared more for strength and discipline than they did proper checks on power. Met with failure after failure, Mothma was beginning to crack, doubly frustrated by the fact that she could sense that Padme's canvassing was little more than a half hearted attempt to please her.

“Those squabbling bureaucrats, mind you, kept the galaxy at peace for millennia. We should all know what happens when the senate decides that we no longer need them.”

There had been a time when Padme would have allowed herself a tit for tat retort to that unintended barb, but given the past year's events, she could tolerate the open secret that Mon Mothma still hadn't fully forgiven Padme for the vote of no confidence against Chancellor Valorum that had made Palpatine Supreme Chancellor. Padme had been like her once during her fight against the military creation act, wasting years attempting to delay a conflict she should have been preparing for instead. Mothma was known for her regality. She was also known for a certain plastic dismissal of her detractors. But after hours of arguments with politicians who’d given up on politics, Mothma allowed her pretences of calm to drop. The senators by and large were only concerned by the looming threat to their own dwindling privileges.



Exasperated, Mothma turned to Padme, hoping she’d put the negotiations back on track. But Padme looked troubled as if she was bottling something up. Before it could burst forth, Padme exited Mothma’s quarters and headed for her own.


For a time Padme had once again hoped desperately that Anakin was a member of the Jedi splinter group that had been making things so difficult for the Republic. She lingered in the old clandestine meeting places waiting for him to suddenly grip her in his arms, but his touch never came. Every report of piracy, terrorism and sabotage left her with less and less hope for his survival. Anakin was capable of many things, but he would have never been able to care for a cause more than he cared for her. For the second time she accepted his death.

Her work would distract her, and when she was ready she would let it go and return to her children. Back in her apartment, Padme activated the secret holoreceiver. Contacting Separatist politicians was still technically treason but that hadn’t stopped her before.

Toonbuck Toora was the Separatist Parliament incarnate. Beautiful by her standards but increasingly bloated, the Sly Myrthian basked in the fruits of her corruption, and left the dirty work to those who operated the nearby garbage planet.

"The Handmaiden returns. There's no need for cloak and dagger, my queen." She said to Padme, a minx coat covering the creases in her pudgy neck. "We can always have this discussion on Raxus."

Padme rolled her eyes, a bad habit she had picked up from Mon Mothma.

"I'm not sure Nute Gunray would approve of my presence there. Eventually you'll realize that working with the Trade Federation is not in your best interest."

"I don’t see how they’re worse than Kaminoans or Force users. At least the Federation keeps me rich."

"We'll see."

Xenologists still debated whether Sly Myrthians were a subspecies of Hutt. They sludged around like their larger and more notorious cousins, but had a tendency to not acknowledge the disgusting nature of their slug race. Toonbuck had a penchant for pretending to be debonair. She negotiated as one would in a salon, and made a game of her place in the highest echelons of political influence.

"Obstinance does not become such a pretty young mother. And to think Beck Lawise thought so highly of you."

The sound of Lawise's naturally exposed brains squishing on the pavement used to keep Padme up at night.

"Before I gunned him down, is that right?"

"Now, Senator, there’s no need to be so hostile. Jedi are a tricky bunch. You blamed Dooku and I believe you.”

"Or you care less about the truth than you do profit."

"There's the politician in you, my queen." Toonbuck tussled her chin hairs. She practically cooed her response. "But no, I've done business with many unsavory characters in my time. I can tell you don't have the face of a cold blooded-"

Toonbuck abruptly disconnected. Fierfeck, Padme thought, she hadn’t noticed Mon Mothma enter. Captain Typho must have let her in without a second thought.

The Chandrilan was stiff as though addressing the royal court. “I came to apologize…” She stopped, her shocked disbelief coming out into the open. “Onacanda didn’t understand the mistake he was making, but you Padme, I thought you knew better.”

Padme looked at Mon Mothma for a moment and then returned to the receivers she used to contact her growing list of contacts and temporary allies. Padme had once successfully convinced her former mentor to come to his senses before he fell in completely with the CIS. Mon Mothma was just trying to do the same.

“Do you trust me?”

“I trusted you with my life!”

“Then you know I’m not a Separatist. I am facing the hard truth that the Republic we are loyal to is gone.”

“We’re restoring it. Bail and I have a plan!”

“I know, but I fear that it is too late."

Padme saw the pain in Mothma’s eyes. As colleagues they had spurred each other through herculean ordeals, never once abandoning the ideals that drove them. As friends they had helped each other handle pregnancy, death and numerous assassination attempts. Padme reached out to hold Mothma’s hand.

“You know as well as I that your rebellion will not be monolithic. It’s already fracturing, and if I can’t discretely link groups from all sides there’ll be fighting for millennia.”

“We have tools at our disposal. If we can first bring back the Judicial Forces-“

“The Judicial Forces are a smokescreen for Bail getting his hands on more ships. You hoped it could ultimately convince the Kaminoans to stand down if they objected to us cutting the war budget but neither of you expected the Republic to fall apart so suddenly.”

Mothma understood and reluctantly agreed.

“I told Bail I could fix things without more violence.”

Padme wanted to console her, but the time for that had largely passed. She returned to her dials and transponder codes instead, this time allowing Mon Mothma to meet the next person on her list.

 

Ch 12
Yes. Yes. A flaw more and more common among Jedi. Too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones.
​

The Katana Fleet ushered the Chu’unthor to its new home. It wasn’t alone; dozens of ships large and small had answered the Covenant beacon and were also converging on Dantoine. acres of wreckage still on the ground from prior battles would provide them with adequate cover. Shaaday watched the tearful greetings between friends lost to each other since differing ideals before the war drove them apart. Shaaday didn’t tell them that she no longer thought Order 66 had pushed the Jedi to extinction; no, secretly she thought it had given the Jedi a reason to evolve. She also didn’t tell them that she had ordered the majority of her followers to scatter to various redoubts or pursue nebulous fact finding missions, a means of hiding the covenant’s true numbers until she was sure the new arrivals could be trusted.

Her biggest challenge stood alone. He wore a gray imperial uniform one size too large for his body and simmered with repressed manic energy. As unlikely as it seemed, behind those nervous eyes was the great Jedi Master C’Baoth. He’d need to be questioned over how far the cloning process of force sensitives had progressed, but until then Shaaday thought it wise to calm him with a hero’s welcome.


***

This wasn’t the first time the Jedi had survived a purge. The ruins of the Dantoine Academy had been the meeting site of a group of survivors once before, only this time an armada would protect it from any unwanted guests. The conclave was stacked with Shaaday’s most trusted inner circle: Khota and Arana were her war hawks, Sia-Lan Wezz spoke for the more hesitant orthodox survivors who had nonetheless thrown themselves into the us or them axioms that defined their fellowship. Shaaday enjoyed the authority they had bestowed on her, though some grumbled that she was hungry for the position of grand master once held by grand master Yoda.


The newcomers had a say as well: wounded Callista Ming had become the leader of the Altisian movement after the death of its founder. There were historical precedents for the rules against child rearing and simultaneously training multiple padawans being laxed whenever the Order’s ranks were severely depleted. A masked man only calling himself the Paladin of Teepo mostly kept to silence. Shaaday let him quietly judge her positions.

The Corellians and the grey paladins declined seats, having decided to rendezvous with the Corellian resistance somewhere down the line. They had openly rejected the idea of Jedi once again relying on an army of clones. The behind closed doors debate held over the sudden arrival of C’baoth had been contentious, but in the end he had been allowed a place in the conclave despite his illusionary young age. The secrets he had demanded to learn in his last life made him a valuable link to the old council. Only the Potentiates had been snubbed.


“This sect will be a problem.” Khota crossed his arms. He had wanted to plan the Covenant’s next steps, but was annoyed by how dogma took precedent over military tactics.

Shaaday was also irritated by these kinds of debates but she hid it well. “The Sith may be gone for now, but if they return…let’s not fool ourselves… when they return, the Sith tend to first emerge from within.”

For the first time in his life Master Arana was the voice of reason. “These are hardly Sith. Everything they believe builds upon the permissive environment in which they were raised.”

Sian-Lan Wezz brushed back her blond hair before addressing Callista Ming. “How did Altis handle them?”

Callista must have been in arguments about this before judging by her hurried response. “He didn’t. Altis was a dissenter, and as a dissenter he didn’t have the moral authority to forbid experimental ideas.”


“Altis was a good man, but he allowed his community to decay.” Heads turned: the Teepo Palladin had decided to speak. “Whenever we tried to return an acolyte to the straight path, those in the Potentium would be there to encourage misbehavior. A shrine to Lettow was even found in their dormitory.”


“That was probably a prank.” Callista cut in, not wanting to inflate the issue by bringing up the architect of the 1st great schism between Jedi. “But I agree: the Potentiates are at best a nuisance. It would be for the best if they were sent on their way.


“It took thousands of years to defeat the last band of exiles” Said the Palladin of Teepo.

“Is there an alternative?” retorted Ming.

“Yes there is.” C’baoth fidgeted in his chair. His fists clenched and his toes curled, the cloned Jedi looked ready to combust. His eyes trailed to the lightsabers on the hips of each new council member, an invitation to act that made the others in the room suddenly nervous.

Arana sprang to his feet, the snap hiss of his yellow lightsaber coming to life not frightening Master C’baoth in the slightest. “We have lost too many as it is. I will not allow this abomination to destroy what is left.”

Shaaday stepped between them. “Sith were reborn from less, Master Arana.”

Arana pointed his weapon at the clone. “Yes they have.”

C’baoth made eye contact with no one as he stormed out.


**

C’boath had been tempted to rip the Imperial uniform from his chest as he stormed out. He now stood in an open field flanked by two Spaartis. The eyes of the Spaartis were empty; while not dead inside, they were fast becoming mere extensions of C’baoth’s will.

C’baoth felt Shaaday approach him alone. She held a Jedi robe, and tucked within it a new lightsaber. Shaaday noticed the Spaartis begin to twitch. Their agitation reflected C'baoths mental state.

“I can sense your anger,” Shaaday said as she offered both the saber and the robe to C’baoth.

“He called me an abomination.” Joruus C'baoth said, doing his best to say it matter of factedly.

“And you believed him.”

C’baoth willed more Spaartis to approach. They dragged with them the imperial sympathizers he had taken from Corellia, an act that had poisoned the Jedi’s relationship with Bel Iblis’ wife and the upper echelons of Corsec. Their noses bled as he tore into their memories with the Force, garnering details on his next targets. Shaaday stood by, not willing to see what would happen if she attempted to interfere with the irrevocable damage he was inflicting on their minds. She took note of the fact that he was almost utterly fixated on keeping his force presence calm while a flood of emotions washed over him as he wrapped his robes over his slender frame, likely out of embarrassment for being so openly attached to both appearances and falling back into the role he had been accustomed to in his past life. The psychic torture being inflicted on the imperials was barely an aftermath, one that he did not expect Shaaday to even notice.


With this in mind, Shaaday forced herself to smile as he proudly focused on hooking his new lightsaber to his belt and made sure to turn her attention elsewhere. She quickly noticed that someone else nearby was also suffering. A Spaarti that stood by C’baoth’s side had been strangely affected by the Jedi Master’s loss of focus. The diminishment of their connection to him had caused it to forget to breath. By the time C’baoth finished, the Spaarti had collapsed.

 

Chapter 13​

Eriadu was on the verge of collective hysteria. No one had batted an eye a few months back when its largest ships departed for parts unknown, but when they returned even the most socially disconnected of subjects could figure out something had gone terribly wrong. The arrogance of the planetary elite had been unexpectedly shaken. Embezzlement, normalized by the rigid divides of Eriadu's oligarchal society had suddenly skyrocketed to unwieldy levels. Administrators and wealthy houses with centuries of lineage disappeared in the night, fleeing retribution from some unspecified foe. Rumors spread like wildfire, but nothing was confirmed until the fabled Katana Fleet appeared in orbit.

The Eriadu Authority’s propaganda machine had spent months publishing holovids of a supposed defector warning his fellow humans that the Jedi were out for blood. . All Jedi were still technically enemies of the late Emperor and by extension the Imperial Remnant after all, so the desperate alert was easy to believe, especially because the photogenic actor could demonstrate petty wizardries like levitating small objects in between dramatic diatribes entailing how mankind had been targeted for extermination and their children destined for the indoctrination he had escaped. This had at first just been a ploy to shore up the righteousness of the imperial cause, the Tarkin family promising to be the anchor of its loyal remnant. They hadn’t expected to be right.
Grand Moff Tarkin’s eyes defaulted to being chilled and distant under almost all circumstances, the result of a special kind of military discipline that demanded steadfastness even in the face of superiors and ruthless superiority over pawns.. In times like this however they were like methane ice, and a single spark could set them alight. Tarkin understood why C’baoth had ignored more valuable military targets and had come for his home planet. He knew that in order to rule, one must be feared. C’baoth had come to make the imperials afraid.

Minutes earlier Tarkin had taken stock of the odd menagerie before him, every smile a sneer, every interaction a bluff meant to convince them that they were still in control. He sat on one of six prominent seats situated around a round durasteel table shaped like the imperial crest. Attaches and advisors stood slightly behind and to the side of their masters, with all under the watchful eyes of crimson imperial guards. Ortasil and Moff Yularen were on standby in the other room, ready to share intelligence and strategies once their alliance had been formalized.
To his left was a patrician looking half breed, part Chandrilian and part lowly Fondor engineer, with a pronounced gut and a ridiculous curled mustache, ridiculous in both his appearance and the fact that he had come representing his mother, Admiral Maarisa Zsinj. Tarkin surmised by his outdated male affectation that his thoughts were proudly stuck in a past that he had never really known, making him a useful pawn to turn against the soft progressivism of Mon Mothma. Every oligarch, no matter how just was at all times surrounded in a morass of privilege and lesser houses envious of their status. So long as she was paid in ships, Admiral Zsinj would find little difficulty in corralling those ambitions for the benefit of herself, her boy and her benefactors.
To Tarkin’s right was a young photogenic COMPNOR fanatic pulled straight from the throng of disillusioned navy cadets being retrained in General Gentis’ growing list of hidden academies. This was another pet project of his fellow Moffs, the first in a long line of fools who would espouse the dignity of throwing away their lives in the name of honor and heroics. This was another bit of foolishness Tarkin would have to stomach for the time being due to lacking the time and resources to force impressment on worlds that hadn’t voluntarily accepted the Empire’s yoke.

The new officers reeked of entitlement and romanticism. Tarkin had also come from wealth, yes, but it had always been coupled with one hard reminder: his privilege was conditional. One embarrassment too many and he’d be cast aside, forsaken amongst the beasts and savages that made his home planet so inhospitable to all those who could not retreat to the protection afforded by his social class’s patrician opulence. Being reared in such a way taught a man to be utilitarian and brutal, quite unlike the leisurely camaraderie that was beginning to infect his growing navy. It would be some time before he could act with the needed levels of severity towards those who were really only loyal to their own idealized versions of power. Until that time came Tarkin would have to turn a blind eye to their pride and lack of discipline.
General Hurst Romodi represented the newly organized Imperial army, brown and black clad ground forces that already fought in the trenches across dozens of world, some campaigns entailing nothing more than triumphant fascistic marches through capitals that had been too divided or dependent on tradition to appreciate the danger they posed. He had come to the meeting wearing his standard issue cuirass, a sign that he at least was ready for combat. His troops had already begun to engage the Spaarti clones descending on the planet despite it being clear that they were already being driven back.

The so called Dark Jedi reinforcing them had not lived up to expectations and had only been allowed to come due to the as yet unexplained role in the grand design Tarkin had inherited from the emperor. The more occult force users had not even come, staying on Byss to pursue dark contingencies hidden from everyone except those who understood the true nature of the late emperor, conspiracies and rituals that even Tarkin did not understand. In their stead they had sent a man named Sarcev Quest, a human male that they demanded he respect simply due to the fact that he had somehow ingratiated himself to the dwindling Imperial Court. Like Tarkin, Quest almost completely relied on the fact that Palpatine had respected him enough to include him in secret machinations that were already falling apart.

The last member of their inner circle had been included simply due to political expediency. Inviting a woman had not been Tarkin’s first choice, but he permitted the opportunities that came from allowing Arrianya Bel Iblis to attend. By all rights Tarkin and her husband were natural enemies, but Moff Disra had convinced him to acknowledge that she was a true believer, and through her he could rally the Corellian elite that blamed the Jedi for Corellia’s present predicament. He couldn’t have predicted that encouraging division within the Bel Iblis household would lead to her relying on him for protection, granting him a reluctant ally. Even now Corsec ships were on approach to demand her safety which would grant Tarkin and his entourage a means of escape. For now they were secure in their mountain crag fortress, united only by the fact that they were suddenly trapped.

Sector defense forces across the galaxy that had used their connections to minimize their contribution during the clone wars while corruptly assured that they would have an enhanced role in the new order Palpatine promised now realized that they would have to fight to maintain their privilege. Rallying together for such a cause was against their nature. Most preffered to hide in their own systems despite knowing that if Eriadu fell, there was no reason to assume that they too might fall one planet at a time. The Moff system of governance on which Tarkin derived his authority had just proven to be an unmitigated failure.

As an added indulgence to Lady Iblis, Tarkin had allowed a few encoded holo transceivers to be placed on the table and project miniature versions of a few interested parties that had not come personally. Arrianya Bel Iblis believed that as upper class representatives of planets that had asserted their sovereignty without reliance on clones, they would be disposed to seeing the imperial cause as she did, a movement of dignity, strength and unambiguous reform. The woman was unbelievably naïve, but token gestures like this made her feel like her contributions were appreciated and delayed the realization that by coming to Erriadu, she had made herself a hostage. Two foot tall blue transparent bodies seemed to stand on or walk about the table, listening intently to the open portion of the imperial conference. Tarkin focused on the only two that didn’t blink out upon news of the attack, scared away by fear of guilt by association. Even Lady Iblis should have known that neither would ever become imperials.

Even at this size Senator Amidala was a beautiful woman to be sure, ever full of passion and willingness to assume the mantle of responsibility. Tarkin still held her in contempt, disgusted by stymieing hypocrisy her foolish convictions were steeped in. It could be admitted that the Naboo Crisis over ten years prior had spurred Palpatine to power, but if not for her planet’s naivety it would never have been victimized in the first place. Naboo was liberated by a backwards subspecies and their Jedi cohorts, not because of her leadership. Upon election to the Senate she had bafflingly argued against the collective response to disorder that a grand army would allow, preferring instead to fruitlessly negotiate with tricksters and charlatans that had already failed her once before, damning a thousand other backwaters in the outer rim to suffer an even worse fate than that of her own people. One fleeting victory had made her a pacifist, and despite her histrionic appeals for harmony and compromise, in the end she always seemed to find herself reliant upon men of action who knew their way around a conflict, and who were willing to do the things she would not.

Tarkin scoffed as she returned his scowl in kind. If not for liberal weakness, the clones wouldn’t have been needed to save her and a sizable portion of the Jedi when the Separatists’ obvious intentions to conquer the galaxy were revealed. Clones wouldn’t have been needed at all if she she had not stalled his efforts to built a proper military. Conscripts from across the core, mid-rim and beyond would have put down any nascent hostilities through strong preemptive force, and it would have been uncompromising men like Tarkin who’d have led them. History would have absolved him of any excesses he committed to secure a lasting peace.

Yet even she would have her uses. Amidala’s incessant protests of military spending was already a war of attrition all its own, albeit not one that Tarkin saw as valuable on its own merits, but rather as a practical means of weakening the resolve of collaborationists while slowly shrinking the enemy’s war chest. Tarkin turned his attendance to the others projections. A few sycophants and apparatchik bartered away whole systems on one side of the table while half listening to weapons manufacturers jealously criticize the designs of Rothana Heavy Engineering, the defence contractor which had come to nearly corner the market in regards to the Republic war machine.

Then there was young Lux Bonteri, son of traitors, former separatist and foolish boy who’d wasted more time casting quick sidelong glances at the slim hooded aide who had brought and encoded the transceivers than he did paying attention to those appraising him. In his youth Tarkin had shared that carnal weakness, at least until he learned to stay clearly on one side of the line between attraction and affection while interacting with those of the opposite sex. While marked out for eventual purging once the Empire regained power over the cosmos, Bonteri had admittedly driven the separatists from Onderan without overt Republic assistance, making his insurgency methods of some interest to the other moffs. They were all small and insignificant compared to the foreboding figure that had hacked into their feed and hovered above them.

C’baoth appeared first, a close up of his upper torso and head. Muscles straining, chin tucked in and eyes strangely mesmerizing , the Jedi said nothing for an uncomfortable amount of time. His image was then replaced by that of another Jedi, someone who seemed accustomed to belting out ultimatums but slightly disturbed by the company he now kept. He was also silent for a moment, as if waiting for confirmation that the other image was gone. Assured that it was, he became more confident.
“Attention, Imperials,” his voice boomed on all open channels.

“This is General Rahm Khota. You have been found guilty of treason and crimes against the galaxy. Prepare to be apprehended.”

Lady Iblis stood up, desperate to be noticed.

“How dare you! This world is a soverign member of the galactic senate. When it hears that you have attacked my diplomatic mission-“

Tarkin motioned sternly but politely to silence her.

“I believe that you are confused, Master Jedi. Eriadu is under my jurisdiction. You have no authority here.”

Khota pretended to contemplate this for a moment. In the old days technicalities like that really been enough to disrupt his duties as a peacekeeper. Khota savored finally being able to disregard their bluster. Lady Iblis must have not noticed his war armor and the assault underway. She held her tongue when Garm Bel Ibliss appeared beside Khota, finally angry enough to contemplate divorce.

“I regret to inform you, my lady, that the Jedi no longer answer to the senate.” Khota said, no amount of patience measuring his tone. “Despots like your friend made sure of that.”
The feed cut out as the fortress began to shake. Khota’s militia had just blasted their way inside.

The Chu’unthor hovered in the upper atmosphere, positioned perfectly between the besieged imperial fortress and the Katanna dreadnights already opening fire on the planet below. Going from a mobile preaxium to a combat ready capital ship hadn’t been an easy transition, but the ship’s unique size and design had eased its transformation into the Jedi flagship. Its engineers were smart: the vessel already could link and detach its parts like blocks. By jettisoning the horticulture labs and leisure centers, the Chu’unthor had been retrofitted with counterbatteries that made quick work of the ramshackle tie uglies attempting to repulse the invasion.

The prep work was over. The infiltrations had gone well; it was remarkably easy for male Ensterites and agricorp recruits to impersonate discharged Republic cadets disillusioned enough to join the imperial cause. They cleared the way for freighters filled to the brim with sentient cargo, making sure to give a wide berth to the first waves of Spaarti troops that through sheer attrition wiped out more heavily fortified positions. A agricorp recruit had come up with the idea to mark their armor yellow and red. It set them apart from the republic clone troopers and reminded some of Old Republic hero worship lifted from holodramas.

C’baoth guided their actions through the force, his attention near fully given to the trance that allowed him to direct his legions from the confines of his landing shuttle. Battle meditation guided the Spaartis every move, making their suicidal advance more orderly than any republic clone assault and more robotic than any separatist droid attack. C’baoth need only to point his long nails and a spaarti miles away would abandon all self preservation to rush forward achieve its objectives

C’baoth felt everything that his slaves could not. Stifling heat inside packed freighters, the cold numbness of piling bodies stepped over without a second thought. They even felt twangs of regret as they ignored the pleas of their comrades and summarily executed those who moments before they had allowed to surrender. The Spaarti clones lived to further C’baoth’s goals. They died in any way he willed. It was as things should be.

The sides of C’baoth’s mouth occasionally tweaked involuntarily downward, microstrokes that tested his mental control over the thousands under his thrall. Shaaday watched him do this stonily, remaining two steps behind him at all times once he deemed it time to personally end the battle. The exertion didn’t stop him from firing force lightning into enemy and ally alike, their contortions meaning little to him.


“You could have stayed with the Katana Fleet, master.” Shaaday said as they walked, careful not to sound like she wanted him gone.

“Every Jedi you see down there is alive because of you. You’ve done more than I ever thought possible.”

C’baoth appreciated her expression of appreciation, deeming it a right and natural acknowledgment of his earned authority. Shaaday may have carried herself like a leader amongst the other pitiful remainder of the Order, but with this coming demonstration she would soon appreciate why only he could restore it to it its old glory. She needed his wisdom, his power. Only he could foster the determination that dogma had forced her to brick away in the inner sanctums of her mind, the taboo wisdom that the Jedi code necessitated control not only over oneself, but also over those too weak to willingly submit to their promise of perfection.

C’baoth had been marching for some time into the facility before he stopped, the throngs around him no longer in perfect lockstep as his spell over them temporarily wavered. He grimaced; Paraphernalia of the being that had torn him from the assuredness of his first life into the diminishment of his second were all around him now, Dark side worship in full display. Each banner was draped with Palpatine’s visage, every bust immortalizing his cursed face. The conditioning had never left him; the Sith Lord had hidden torments that oppressed his soul in ways that kept him perpetually unbalanced, cut off from the soothing aspects of the light side. His dreams usually involved the demon in its true form looming over his clone vat, whispering lies and blasphemies in a language C'baoth didn't understand. For the time being however C’baoth’s mind was still his own. No matter its volatility, his volition couldn’t be compromised by a dead man.


The eyes of C'baoth burned but not with the signature yellowish fever brought on by the dark side. Rather they were preternaturally focused by the harnessed mania he used to keep his programming at bay. C’baoth used it to push the whispers back down into his subconscious and then amplified the power of possession he could impose on his lessers. The remaining imperials who fell under C'baoth's gaze meekly dropped their weapons, no match for the cloned jedi's mind control. He strode with a purpose, with more and more beings in lockstep inches behind.

The Covenant Infiltrators noticed and were afraid, some unable to avert their gaze in time. Such will power was unprecedented. Shaaday hushed them and reached out in the force when she could, allowing most to shake off their stupor and disperse in other directions as fast as their unsteady gaits could allow. They left with a lingering fatigue and an unexplained sensation of gratitude, parting punishments and gifts burrowed into their psyches by the mad Jedi.


Tarkin by this time knew that the situation was hopeless. Lux Bonteri’s liason had busied herself deactivating the holoreceivers and backing away from the table
Oddly she hadn’t attempted to flee despite knowing that Tarkin would likely put her and the other civilians between him and his attackers, a desperate bid to keep the Jedi and their forces from breaching his sanctum. Tarkin realized that he had not once seen her face since she arrived. Odder still, she had somehow managed to creep within arms distance to Lady Iblis and with a whisper had convinced the Corellian to become docile and sneak towards the door. When the imperial guard tried to stop her, twin lightsabers snap hissed to life. Ahsoka removed her cloak and pointed her body at Tarkin. If he tried to seize Lady Ibliss, Tarkin knew that Ahsoka would attack him directly. Ahsoka hadn’t forgotten that Tarkin had attempted to put her to death. It was her turn to hold his fate in her hands.

The dark Jedi Sarcev Quest knew that he was outmatched and made no attempt to challenge her. The Imperial guards and General Romodi drew their weapons and bunched together to protect Moff Tarkin. They waited tensely as the sounds of battle encroached closer and closer, becoming silent right before the blast doors slid open. Corsec officers rushed in then out, dragging lady Iblis away despite her loud objections. When the door opened again, a silent horde had amassed at its threshold, saying and thinking nothing as though frozen in place. Ahsoka carefully shifted her stance and the tilt of her body towards the greater threat, hoping that the dumbfounded imperials wouldn’t foolishly turn their attention back to her.

Master Shaaday passed the extraction team and the thralls as she entered the room, nodding a quick greeting to Ahsoka who had not yet deactivated her lightsabers. C’baoth was there too, but he ignored the former padawan. Quest ignited his own red lightsaber out of fear only for his wrist to unnaturally twist and snap, causing it to drop. Unsatisfied by his disarmament, C’baoth sent a shockwave in the force that shattered his torso and sent him careening to the other side of the room. The Imperial guard also crumbled, their robes tattered by the shockwaves that pounded through their chests, frying their nervous systems.

Flashing images raced through all of their minds, echoes of the indignation that had utterly overwhelmed C’baoth’s psyche. In their mind’s eye they watched Jedi, aware that their connection to the Force was clouded, nevertheless rush to devote themselves to the institutions and ideals of the Republic. The Jedi burned away their ethics and dignity out of misplaced loyalty, every sacrifice second guessed by resentful careerists, every victory another step towards their own destruction. Sidious' greatest enemy was his favorite weapon, and he used it until it broke, gunned down by the same warriors they had treated with dignity over the course of the war. Ahsoka scowled as Tarkin, the lecher who had accused her of treason, showed no signs of pity or remorse.
Tarkin suddenly understood that he had misjudged his opponents. Ahsoka had shifted her stance and now readied to fight against the mad clone, not him. C’baoth had not come to make the imperials submit. He had come to kill them all.

C’baoth stopped his attack and looked at Tarkin with a strange expression, one that seemed oddly apologetic and conciliatory, as though his recent murder of Tarkin’s underlings was akin to raising one’s voice during an otherwise polite argument. His mood then suddenly and violently shifted to pure unbridled rage, causing him to activate his lightsaber and swing with all his might at Tarkin’s neck. Before the blow could land, before he could telepathically impose his dominance over the Jedi who had not yet given themselves wholly over to revenge, Shaaday’s cortosis blade had swiped through his lightsaber, deactivating it. Before he could think to respond, Shaaday spun her sword and lodged it straight into his heart. C’baoth died before the reason for this betrayal could even register. Ahsoka was shocked but obeyed when Shaaday told her that it was time to leave.

They ran to their ships, pushing through the freed confused throngs and ignoring the parting shots fired by Tarkin’s men. The Spaarti troopers that filled the fortress were aimless now and immediately succumbing to their own madness, attacking each other just as ferociously as they did the remaining imperials. Republic clones had also arrived in force and blocked their way, forcing the Jedi to work in tandem as they fought their way out. Shaaday had prepared for this. She had been the one who invited them, a plan she had set in motion as soon as she decided that C’baoth had been too unstable to give free reign. Republic forces moved in as they sprinted out, the Corellians and Covenant militias scattering in all directions as Venerators engaged and shattered the Katana Fleet overhead. Shaaday was already priming her troop carrier’s engines as Ahsoka protected its landing ramp, buying just enough time for Khota and his men to join in their escape.

Vindictive to the last, Tarkin had attempted to send Tie Fighters to intercept them, only to realize that his pilots had already been neutralized by clone commandos that had taken his hangers and most of his facility. He had no choice but to surrender. He waited glumly for someone to take him into custody. The team that arrived had painted skulls on their armor, which was predominately dark grey with red stripes. Whatever differences had existed between their sniper Crosshair and their Commander Hunter had been set aside some time ago, a feat made much easier by the inhibitor chips that had gradually made what they were about to do much easier to stomach. Clone Force 99 informed Tarkin that his surrender had been denied. A few in their ranks would later question why they had been tasked with gunning down former officers, but they didn’t feel conflicted enough to hesitate. Tarkin didn’t try to beg: good soldiers followed orders after all.

 

The planet Mictlan appears gaseous from orbit, but beneath its plumes of acid haze there is nothing but rock and poisoned soil. Beneath that is one of the great foundries of the rim, the places where the Confederacy of Independent Systems makes its stand. Had things been different, had great tacticians like Dodona guided a long but effective war of attrition, the separatist holdout’s massive industrial capabilities would have been ripped away root by root. Jedi generals leading from the front would have achieved the impossible and proved why the living force was a far greater ally than the logic of machines. Instead Clone Commanders send wave after wave of their brothers to die at the behest of Kaminoan overseers who have not yet learned to rely on the insight of their own soldiers.

The ground quakes and the mountains spew fire, sucking in battalion after battalion of obedient doomed men, and spitting out the product of a war economy no longer hamstrung by cost cutters and treasonous puppet masters. In this place the GAR pays the price for attempting to strip its best men of their individuality and honor. Even their armor is once again made uniform, leaving no way to identify the fallen. Battles continue elsewhere, but in this land of the dead the Republic’s momentum has been broken.


Droids do not need air, droids do not need sleep, droids do not need courage; they need only a function. Everything can be stripped away; no artifice of fear to make them hesitate, no organic language to slow their processing circuits. No quarter is permitted, no cost spared; They wait in their tombs of basalt for the enemy advance, smothered in the depths of a shielded strip-mined hollow earth. The Clone Wars drag on.

More troopers are needed on the front. On worlds like Ryloth, clone legions depart with the scent of Twileki perfume on their lips, lavish parting gifts freely given by exotic partisans who once had expected to drive them from the planet through violence. Showering in glory and the affection of dancing girls, the local clone commander pays no heed to Senator Farr being dragged from his home and swiftly dealt with by freedom fighters tired of his graft. For better or worse, loyalist planets like Ryloth are given permission to settle simmering internal debts however they see fit. From Bothawui to Diamal, loyalties are bartered in exchange for furthering sectarian interests.

Civil war without end has gripped the galaxy. The Imperial Remnant, driven from its hidden bases, still enjoys the patronage of regional governors who refuse to cede control back to a puppeted Senate. The CIS, though fractured without the guidance of Count Dooku and General Grievous, bitterly delays the now merciless Republic’s reconquest of the rim. There are villains on all sides. Heroes bide their time, unable or unwilling to aid the willing victims of a grand plan undone by its own pawns. Battle lines blur as each bloc does what it must to survive.