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Chapter Text

Jedi Temple, Coruscant, 1086 days after the Battle of Geonosis

The war was nearly over.

Jedi Master Arligan Zey was trying very hard not to let the sudden optimism go to his head, but it was difficult.  He could feel it.  And the facts were the facts, after all.

Count Dooku, political leader and binding force of the Separatist government was dead.  Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had killed him and rescued the captured Chancellor Palpatine in the final hours of the Battle of Coruscant, only the day before.  With their political head removed and their military leader, General Grievous, routed along with their smashed fleet, the Separatists’ days were numbered.

And just moments ago, in a briefing on the Outer Rim sieges, Arligan had received even more good news.  The five month long siege of the planet Saleucami had finally ended, the Separatist leaders there killed and the secret army of clones they’d been growing destroyed.  Arligan had felt some private relief at the news.  He’d reluctantly authorized a Special Operations mission that had helped land vital reinforcements early on in that battle.  It was good to know the men he’d sent to their deaths that day hadn’t died in vain.

Jedi Master Quinlan Vos had delivered that report and added that his former master and head of Jedi Intelligence, Master Tholme, had survived the entire siege behind enemy lines.  It was this final point that had brought Arligan to his current location outside of the private quarters of Master Mace Windu.  Tholme had been out of contact for nearly half a standard year and his insight on matters that had developed since his disappearance could be vital to the war effort.

Windu’s quarters were located on the level just beneath the Jedi High Council Chamber at the summit of the Temple’s southwestern spire.  Arligan had once used his trips up the tower as an excuse to slip in some exercise and would take the stairs.  But as the war progressed, there seemed to be less and less time for anything other than work and brief snatches of sleep.

Arligan stepped out of the turbolift, his heart rate unchanged and tunic free of sweat stains, but far from feeling rested.  He remembered a time when he would meet Mace Windu for occasional lightsaber sparring sessions.  Now there was an opportunity for exercise, even if the experience was always deeply humbling.  That, too, hadn’t happened in a long time.

The doors to Windu’s quarters opened to reveal his spartan, hexagonal room dimmed to the morning’s light behind closed blinds.  Master Mace Windu, senior Council member and second only to Grand Master Yoda in rank, power and wisdom, sat cross-legged on a round meditation pod in the center of the room.  His dark eyes scarcely moved from beneath his hooded brows as Arligan stepped past the threshold and bowed.

“Master Zey,” he said slowly.  “Please have a seat.”

Arligan hid a frown behind his thick, graying beard.  Apparently the good news hadn’t been enough to lift his old friend’s mood.  He hadn’t seen Windu smile since well before the outbreak of the Clone Wars.  Even if the war ended today, Arligan wasn’t sure if he ever would again.

“Of course, Master,” Arligan replied and hurried to lower his bulk onto the seat next to Windu’s.  “Quinlan Vos reported that Tholme hasn’t transferred to the Medstar frigate yet and should be available at our convenience.”

“That is good news,” Mace said, still with the same cool distance, but sounding like he meant it.  “Perhaps he’ll be able to shed some light on a few matters.”

The senior Jedi Master reached forward to tap a control on the silver holo-stand that sat in the middle of the circle of cushions.  The one-sixth sized blue image of Jedi Master Tholme sprang to life before them.

Arligan took a sharp intake of breath at the site of his long-time colleague.  Even scaled down and through the poor quality of the long-range transmission, Tholme’s condition was painfully evident.  The old spy master was in his seventies and had always been slight of build, but now he looked positively emaciated.  The normal wrinkles and creases in his face hung down in deep folds of loose skin.

Arligan tried to remind himself of what Tholme had been through.  The man had just survived a terrible battle, not to mention five months behind enemy lines.  The fact that he was alive at all was a testament to the will of the Force.

“Masters,” Tholme said, offering a stiff bow.

“I do hope you’re well,” Arligan said, his voice coming out a bit husky.

Tholme smiled, his own voice surprisingly strong.  “As well as anyone can be expected to feel after a duel with Sora Bulq.”

Arligan frowned again and cast a furtive glance in Mace’s direction.  He knew that Mace blamed himself for Sora’s fall to the dark side, convinced that developing his aggressive fighting style, Vaapad, with the former lightsaber instructor had been what started him down his fateful dark path.

Mace showed no sign of outward emotion.  “Dead now, I understand,” he said.

Tholme nodded.  “Indeed.  That was Quinlan’s doing.  As was the death of Tol Skorr.  I was somewhat… incapacitated.”

“Skorr was a minor player in Dooku’s camp,” Arligan put in.  “But Sora Bulq was his right hand man.  With him gone, so close to Dooku’s own death…  Well, it’s a major blow to the Separatist leadership.”

Tholme smiled.  “By my count, that leaves Grievous alone to both run his army and take orders from the Separatist Council.  It might be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.”

Arligan smiled too, happy to see that he wasn’t the only one to feel the boost in morale.  “Yes, but I don’t mean to keep you from your medical appointment, my friend.  We have only a few matters to discuss.  Chief among them is the situation on Haruun Kal.  As you know, the planet has been back in the Republic ever since Master Windu’s actions there in the first year of the war.”

Arligan glanced again at the man seated next to him.  That mission had claimed the sanity of Mace’s former padawan and fellow Council member, Depa Billaba.  That alone would have been bad enough, though Arligan knew it was more than that.  Master Windu had confronted a darkness on that jungle planet and it had left him forever scarred.  He didn’t speak of Haruun Kal, and Arligan didn’t relish the news he was forced to share about it now.

“The…” Arligan hesitated.  “Er, events that led up to those actions hinged around our attempts to train the Force-sensitive Korunnai into a guerrilla force of commandos.  Those attempts failed and the Council decided against sending more Jedi to give the locals any further Force-training.  In the past few months, however, renewed hostilities between natural resource harvesters and the Jungle-dwelling locals have exceeded our garrison’s abilities to police.  The Senate voted to create an Uplands Security Force and sent Special Operations personnel to Haruun Kal to help train volunteers in conventional military tactics.”

Arligan took a deep breath.  “I selected Sergeant Marten Keelo, a Korunnai ex-pat who served as one of Jango Fett’s hand-picked mercenaries on Kamino, training clone commandos.”  He tapped a button on his datapad, and a hologram sprang up next to Tholme, this one of a middle-aged, dark skinned human male with a head of short, grey, wiry curls.  “He and two of his own former commando squads have been on-planet for over two standard months now.  He has reported excellent results, up until about a week ago when we lost contact with him.”

Tholme’s holographic eyes narrowed.  “How so?”

Mace Windu continued to stare straight ahead at Tholme’s image, with a distance in his eyes that Arligan feared meant he was reliving his own time on Haruun Kal.

“Simply that,” Arligan said.  “He and his commandos had taken the recruits on a training mission into the jungle highlands and simply dropped out of contact.  The clone troopers at the garrison have sent out numerous search and rescue flights, but have been unable to find any evidence of the group.”

“I understand Haruun Kal’s jungles hold many dangers,” Tholme said.  “Is it possible something could have wiped out the entire force?”

“Entirely possible,” Mace said, speaking for the first time since the conversation started.  “But unlikely.  Marten Keelo is one of only two Korunnai I know of who survived tan pel’trokal.”

Arligan looked at the hologram of Keelo.  He remembered something about that in the sergeant’s file but couldn’t remember the exact details.

“Jungle justice,” Mace translated.  “Stripped naked and taken far, far away from civilization.  You’d have as much luck having an arm torn off by a Wookiee and tossed down from his tree village into the Kashyyykian wilderness.”  The Korun master shook his head.  “No, Keelo knows the jungle too well after surviving that, however many years he’s been away.  The other man to survive tan pel’trokal…”  Mace trailed off.

“I see,” Tholme said into the silence.  “What do you suppose happened to them then?”

“We don’t know,” Arligan replied.  “Though we’re beginning to fear the worst after the events of yesterday.  This is where we’re hoping you might be of some help.

“Just as the Battle of Coruscant here was coming to an end, two things happened on Haruun Kal.  The first was the disappearance of every Republic Intelligence agent on planet.  No bodies have been found, but all five are MIA.  The second was a breakout at the Pelek Baw Maximum Security Prison.  Two of the survivors from the insurrection Master Windu put down were being held there.  Both were Force-trained and highly dangerous.

“At this time, we have no evidence to suggest that yesterday’s events were connected to Keelo’s disappearance, but we’ve taken steps nonetheless.  The garrison has enough clones and material to keep the peace in Pelek Baw, but not enough to continue their search efforts.  I’ve dispatched General Tier Colvos and a squad of commandos from Cresh Battalion to pick up where they left off.”

“I spoke with General Colvos before he disembarked,” Mace said grimly.  “He understands his mission, but I doubt he’s prepared for what he may face in that jungle.”

Master Windu’s tone spoke of ill omens, but Arligan felt compelled to defend the men under his command.  “Colvos and Totten Squad have done missions like this before.  They’re amongst the best Special Operations has.”

He left off that if Arligan had had his way, Tier Colvos would have taken over command of SOB after his former master, Iri Camas, stepped down early in the war.  It was the younger Jedi’s extensive experience leading the Antarian Rangers on paramilitary operations that had put his one-time mentor in the Council’s mind to direct the Grand Army’s Special Operations unit.  But the Council had maintained its position that a Jedi Master, rather than a lower ranking Knight hold overall command, and so Arligan had accepted the rank.  Colvos had gone on to serve under him, leading one of the ten Commando Groups of five hundred men and that had been that.  He and Master Windu had been through all of this before, however, and it wasn’t a matter he was about to bring up again at the moment.

“But Master Windu is correct,” he hurried on to add.  “Any intelligence he can gather before heading into the uplands could be of paramount importance.  Master Tholme, are there any operatives, spies, or contacts that Jedi Intel has on Haruun Kal that you knew of before your disappearance on Saleucami?”

Tholme was already shaking his head.  “I’m sorry, Masters, but I don’t believe we have anyone in the entire Gevarno Loop.  It’s possible, I suppose, that Quinlan may have set up a network before he began his mission to infiltrate Dooku’s inner circle.”

“I didn’t,” a new voice declared over the Holocomm.  A human male stepped into the frame next to Tholme, this one taller, with a mane of long, dark dreadlocks that framed his angular face.  “And your men are heading into a trap.”

Quinlan Vos, Arligan thought, a wash of annoyance causing him to nearly miss the man’s last words.  “I don’t believe you’ve been cleared for this briefing, Master Vos.  And how can you know about any trap?”

Even more annoying was the fact that neither Tholme nor Mace seemed the least bit concerned that Vos had been eavesdropping.

A thin smile played over Quinlan’s lips.  “I know,” he said calmly.  “Because your man Keelo is one of Count Dooku’s acolytes.”

Now Mace did react.  “That’s impossible.  We vetted Keelo before sending him on this mission.  He’s been working for the Republic since long before Geonosis.”

Quinlan simply shrugged.  “If you say so.  But I saw him with Dooku back on Antar IV.”

Tholme turned to face his former apprentice.  “If that’s true, Quinlan, then why didn’t you include him in any of your reports when you came back to the Temple?”

“I didn’t have a name then.  I didn’t even know he was Korunnai.  I just saw his face,” he pointed at Marten Keelo’s hologram.  “And that’s it.”

“When exactly was this?” Tholme asked.

“Shortly after you and Master Windu authorized my mission.  Six and a half months or so into the war.”

Mace and Tholme turned to Arligan.  He ran the dates back in his head, consulted Keelo’s file on his datapad and didn’t like what he saw.

“The dates do line up, I’m afraid.  Sergeant Keelo left the GAR’s service for nearly a year after Geonosis.  As did nearly all of the other commando training sergeants.  We corroborated the story he gave on his whereabouts during that time when he re-enlisted, of course.”

Mace leaned forward and locked his iron gaze onto Quinlan.  “And you believe Dooku taught Keelo how to harness the Force during this time.”

“I can’t say for sure, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t.  Several others of his acolytes came from outside of the Jedi Order.”

Mace sat back with a sigh.  “Then the situation on Haruun Kal may be worse than we know.  If Keelo has been training his new recruits to use the Force, even to a limited ability, Pelek Baw’s garrison won’t stand a chance against them.

“That may be,” Arligan interjected.  “But at the moment, that point might be academic.  Whether or not he has the tools to train other Korunnai to use the Force, it appears that Keelo may indeed be a Separatist agent.  With or without additional powers, the man is an elite commando.  Liberating the prison and abducting our Intel agents would fit with the tactics of an advance force prepping for an invasion.”

Quinlan and Tholme remained silent, and Mace Windu sat with his fingers steepled for several long moments.  Arligan could only guess at the silent turmoil his brother Jedi was feeling.  Any matter concerning his home-world was bound to elicit a sense of loyalty, even in a Jedi as disciplined as he.  And after his last mission to Haruun Kal and what it had cost him to bring peace there…  Arligan was afraid he’d make plans to leave on the spot.

“Then we have to assume that’s exactly what he’s planning,” Mace said at last.  “It seems unlikely that the Separatists would have any available ships that close to the Core after their loss here on Coruscant, but I’ll see if we can spare a task force to the Al’Har system.  And we must warn General Colvos.  But I’m afraid he’ll be on his own for a few days, at the least.  The end of this war is too close at hand to give this matter the attention it deserves.”

Mace Windu turned fully to address Arligan.  “Warn Tier Colvos, Master Zey.  Let him know what he and his team are up against, and that the fate of a planet may lie in his hands.  May the Force be with him.”

Chapter Text

Korunnal Uplands, Haruun Kal, 1087 days after the Battle of Geonosis

The bites never stung at first, or even itched for the first few minutes, but they more than made up for it later.  It was more like a tickle, nearly indistinguishable from the constant trickle of sweat that poured down his face.

Sergeant Case scratched beneath his jaw and found the pima fly that had just settled in to suck his blood.  He crushed the insect between thumb and forefinger and flicked it off into the surrounding understory of the jungle.

Another bug bite to add to the collection, he thought, and wished for the fifth time that day for his armor.  Haruun Kal wasn’t the first jungle planet Totten Squad had been sent to in the war, but it was the first one where they’d been required to leave their Katarn armor systems behind.  The assortment of mismatching tropical clothing, boots, and light armor plates they had been outfitted with might have worked fine for the local mercenaries and militia, but they left a lot to be desired in an environment that was so… alive.

Case adjusted a strap on his back-pack and trudged on, following the winding dirt path in the middle of their column of five.  Behind him were his brothers Rust and Slab, and directly in front was the final member of his four-man squad, Leven.  Case would have preferred to put Rust on point, but that position was taken by their Jedi General, Tier Colvos, and he knew that wasn’t likely to change any time soon.  As uncomfortable as it made him, the Jedi’s Force senses were all they had to guide them toward their target.

A rustle in the leaves somewhere off to his left caught his attention, and Case leveled his slug rifle in the general direction.  A moment later, the shadowy form of a bird flitted away to land in a tree.  The jungle was absolutely teeming with life, and while Case was an expert at walking the razor’s edge between being too jumpy and beginning to ignore the sights and sounds around him, he was used to doing it from inside of his helmet with all of its sensors.

“Sitrep, commandos,” he said into his team comm, as much to be reassured by the sound of his brothers’ voices as to make sure they were staying focused, too.  Said perhaps wasn’t the right word, however.  The team was using ear beads for their communication system, tiny round devices that were inserted deep into the ear canal that picked up on subvocalizations, allowing them to communicate without making external sounds.

It had been a relief to find out from Pelek Baw’s clone trooper garrison that the ear beads would actually work in the jungle.  Case had been afraid that the same metal-eating fungi spores that filled Haruun Kal’s atmosphere would render the beads as useless outside of the city’s sterilization field as their armor’s delicate systems and their DC-17m blaster’s electronic components.  But they’d been assured that as long as they rubbed the beads in portak amber—a tacky anti-fungal sap from a native tree—and then stuck a plug of the stuff in their ear, that they should have functioning comms for at least a week.

“Sweaty, Sarge,” Slab reported.  “And still missing my armor.”

“Look at us,” Rust grumbled.  “Ryyk blades, bowcasters, bandoliers.  The Korunnai are gonna think the GAR sent Wookiees after them.”

“If this beard gets any longer, I’m gonna mistake myself for a Wookiee,” Leven said.

Case scratched the sweaty stubble growing on his own face.  He was starting to regret his decision to pull rank and keep a clean-shaven appearance.  While he was happy not to be sporting a ridiculous mustache and sideburns like Slab had grown, or a thick beard and shaggy hair like Leven’s, shaving in this disease infested jungle was just asking for trouble.  And as much as it was standard operating procedure to alter their individual appearances in these kinds of engagements, Case knew they weren’t fooling anyone.  Any enemy who caught a glimpse of the four commandos from less than a kilometer away would know instantly that they were clones.

“You know, that’s something I’ve always wondered,” Rust went on.  “Why didn’t the Kaminoans go with a Wookiee prime clone instead of a human?”

Slab snorted, or at least Case thought it was a snort.  It was hard to tell over the sub-vocal comms.  “Cos Wookiees are dumb.  No discipline.  I don’t care how big and strong they are.”

“Wookiees aren’t dumb,” Leven countered.  “I’d like to see you plot a course through the Claatuvac Maze.  Lot tougher than pulling a trigger on your Deece.  They just live too long.  Even if they’d set ‘em to age at our rate, they’d still only have an army full of half-grown cubs by now.”

“Okay, but what about Zabraks or Sakiyans, then?” Rust said, clearly on one of his Sith’s advocate streaks.  “There are plenty of species out there a lot tougher than humans.”

“Speak for yourself,” Slab drawled.  “Nikto are tougher than your average human, and we handled their clones just fine on Saleucami.”

Case decided that their conversation had gone on long enough.  He liked to let his brothers vent from time to time, especially if it helped them keep their morale up on tough missions like this.  But they were straying into open discussion of classified information, and that was unprofessional, even if General Colvos didn’t seem to mind.  “That’s enough chatter, Totten,” he snapped.  “We’re not Wookiees because Jango Fett wasn’t a Wookiee.  Good enough for me.”

The commandos lapsed back into silence.  The jungle, however, did not.  The backdrop of screeching insect chirps and bird calls seemed to intensify as the sun sank.  Between the noise and the heat, it was easy to lose focus as they marched.  The trek would have been a lot easier if they’d been able to remain in the armored steam-crawler that had delivered them from Pelek Baw to the base camp in the foothills of the Korunnal highlands.  But stealth was critical from this point out, and even the giant, shaggy, six-legged grassers that the locals rode through the jungles weren’t an option.

Case knew he should be thankful for the heat, at least.  As oppressive as it was, it meant that summer was still holding.  The rainy fall season was fast approaching, and with it came monsoons that could blow up out of nowhere, hail and lightning storms, freezing temperatures and hurricane winds.  It was the latter that was most worrying.  The winds could pick up the heavier than air gas that formed Haruun Kal’s cloud seas and carry it up the continental shelves.  According to the briefing, breathing the gas for more than a few seconds would be fatal.  The emergency gas-masks they’d been issued had air canisters that would last an hour, but Case doubted they’d do much good if they got caught in a real storm.

The briefing had stated that the extreme weather was the reason that the decades-long civil war that had plagued the region had been dubbed the Summertime War.  The indigenous Korunnai and the settling Balawai fought for control of the jungle highlands—and their valuable natural resources—during the relatively safe summer season, then each retreated to the shelter of their homes for the remainder of the year.  No one, neither the hearty natives nor the tenacious pioneers, was willing to take their chances against the elements once fall hit.

It all added an increased sense of urgency to the mission Totten Squad and their General were embarking on.  Case didn’t mind tight schedules and critical deadlines.  In fact, he lived for them.  Failure was never an option for him and his brothers.  But now they were running against nature’s clock, and if there was one thing the clone sergeant had learned since leaving the simulated environments he’d been trained in on Kamino, it was that nature couldn’t be reliably predicted.

“Form up on me, commandos,” Colvos rumbled into his own bead-comm.  The man had a deep, clear voice that was only slightly diminished over the comms.

Case and the rest of his squad picked up their pace and entered a small clearing in the trees.  The setting sun had fallen below the treeline and the grassy opening was bathed in the same filtered, green light of the trail.  The shadow of a thick tree trunk fell over their Jedi General, obscuring his features.  But it did nothing to hide the sound and smell of what he was standing in front of.

A deep, sonorous buzz of thousands of pairs of tiny wings assailed Case’s ears just behind the powerful smell of rot that hit his nose.  A black cloud of flies swarmed over a mountain of flesh.  Tufts of fur and glistening bone jutted out in patches from the layer of pulsing, squiggling maggots that writhed over the dead animal.

The commandos joined Colvos in a loose ring around the beast, no one speaking a word.  The smell and sound began to recede a bit from the front of Case’s senses, but he stood wary of the number of large, red hornets that he picked out amongst the swarm of flies.

“A grasser,” Colvos said out loud at last.  “And the end of our trail, I fear.”  He gestured out at the surrounding trees, where multiple, grasser-sized openings in the forest led off in all directions.  The signs of the stampede were obvious, but there were none of the tell-tale shredded leaves or tree trunks that would indicate a firefight had broken out.

Case returned his gaze to the dead animal, trying to gauge what might have killed it.  “You think Keelo’s force was ambushed here, sir?”

General Colvos turned to his men.  He stepped out from the shadow of the tree and into a ray of the falling sun.  His short, unkempt brown hair and beard were backlit in gold by the light, but his facial features were still obscured by shadow.

“I couldn’t say.  Any sense of how the grasser died has faded along with most of its flesh.  But perhaps…”  He waved his hand again, this time at the beast’s head, and the mass of flies and maggots covering it was swept away.  The ivory white of bone that had been picked clean was revealed, and just above the gaping black portal of its third, central eye was a fourth hole, this one smaller, with the jagged edges of a large-caliber slugthrower wound.

“Hmm,” Slab said.  “Point blank, looks like.  Could’ve gone lame and they put it down.”

“Yeah, or else they just capped it to scatter the rest of the herd,” Rust muttered.

Case shook his head.  “Seems unnecessary.  There are easier ways to spook herbivores.  And it goes against those Korunnai tenets.  That one about protecting the herd.  Grassers are pretty well sacred to these people.”

“That’s true,” Colvos agreed.  “But I’m not sure Marten Keelo holds those tenets in the same esteem that most Korunnai do.  You all read his file.  A childhood like that may have given him something of a different outlook.”

Case recalled all of the grim details about Keelo’s background alright, but hadn’t jumped to any conclusions about him.  Colvos was trying to get into the head of their target.  It was a tactic their training sergeant had taught them on Kamino.

You have to learn how to think like your enemy.  Not just what you’d do in their place, but what they do, how they do it, and why.  It’ll give you an edge, but make no mistake:  you’re not Jedi.  You can’t read minds.  Never assume you know anything, until you know it.

Case had often wondered how literal his sergeant had been about the Jedi bit.  General Colvos often reminded them of the limits of his own abilities.  Now they were all having to rely on them far too much for his liking.

“And I believe Rust is correct,” Colvos went on.  “They scattered the grassers here and continued on foot.”

“Can you sense that, sir?”  Case felt a skeptical eyebrow climb his forehead, and he realized how much he’d come to rely on his helmet’s faceplate to hide his expressions.  Gotta work on that.

“Not exactly,” Colvos, said with a shake of his head.  Case could just make out the quirk of an apologetic little half-smile through the Jedi’s beard in the gathering darkness.  “And all physical signs of foot-traffic have been swallowed by the jungle.”

Case nodded, having already scanned the grass around the dead animal.  The large footprints from the grassers along the lines of their stampede could still be discerned in the thick grass, but any bent blades from lighter humans had long straightened and grown over.

“I’m afraid it’s just another one of those feelings.  I’ll have to ask for your trust on this one, commandos.”

Case stood still for a few long moments.  Trusting the Force was always hard for him.  It was a form of intel that he could never see for himself.  But the very fact that Colvos had been searching equally hard for physical evidence went a long way towards inspiring trust.  The man thought like a soldier.  Kriff, he was a soldier.  Had been one for longer than Case and his brothers had been alive.

Eventually, he nodded again.  “Yes, sir.  Let’s be sure, all the same.  Totten, fan out.  See if we can find any tracks before we lose the sun.  Then I’d like to be as far as we can get from this thing before we make camp.”

Leven, Rust, and Slab marched off into the tall grass of the clearing, spreading out into overlapping points of view in a search pattern.  Case turned back to Colvos, but the Jedi had already moved toward the tall tree.

The clone sergeant took a final glance over his shoulder at the rotting grasser, and the swarm of insects that were devouring it.  Its momentarily cleared skull was once again covered in a carpet of black flies.  He wasn’t sure what it was about the beast that bothered him so.  He was a difficult man to unsettle and had seen much, much worse over the past three years of war.  It just gave him a bad feeling, along with rest of the gloomy clearing and the whole stinking jungle.

He trooped off to join the search and caught the final rays of light dwindling through a gap in the understory.  He was about to spend his first night in Haruun Kal’s jungle, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.

* * *

“This isn’t your war, Marten,” said The Twi’lek Woman.

Those had been her very words before as well, all of those years ago when he’d first tried to return home to Haruun Kal.  He’d since learned her name—Shaala Doneeta—but he still always thought of her as ‘The Twi’lek Woman.’

“And how can that be?” he asked.  “With me at the very heart of it.”

She smiled at him, and the little dark mole that stood out against her blue skin rose with corner of her mouth.  “Even a star, sitting at the center of a solar system, drifts along in the greater spiral of the galaxy.  You will eventually find your place in that vortex, but it is not here.”

Marten felt himself growing impatient with her verbiage.  “These are more of your prophecies?  Or simply more of Dooku’s lies?”

Her lekku—the fleshy appendages that hung from the back of her head to drape over her shoulders like the tails of a pair of root pythons—twitched.  As was common with her species, they had been heavily tattooed, hers with an intricate pattern of black lines.  And right in the middle of each was a wide open eye.  Despite the woman’s beauty, it was always these eyes that Marten found his gaze drawn to.

“The Count’s place in the great spiral is gone, waiting to be taken up by another,” she answered, and Marten thought he might have detected a trace of sadness in her voice.

And his promise of aid gone with it, he thought.  “Then it would seem my fate has been tied to his all along after all.”

The Twi’lek Woman shook her head.  “Dooku’s death has come and gone, but you will not die, Marten.  Not here, and not now.”

Marten frowned.  He’d hoped that Shaala Doneeta’s visions might actually offer something useful for a change.  Some way out.

“And the men and women I brought with me?  What fate do you read for them?”

“You will not die here,” she said again.  Her voice sounded distant, and her body too seemed to fade and blur.  The blue of her skin was spreading, becoming the night glow of the shining moon.  Her lekku were elongating and multiplying; roots and vines that snaked out into the jungle.  But the pair of tattooed eyes remained bright and clear.  They stared straight at him.  Into him.

Now they were the only thing he could see, hanging right before him.  Unblinking, all-seeing and accusing.  He reached out with both hands to try to close them, as he would with a corpse.

And found his hands resting on the convex, armored eyes of the giant akk wolf.  Its huge, black tongue slithered out to lick his sweat-soaked chest.

The beast looked much like the akk dogs the Korunnai used as herding and guard animals, but was taller, longer and leaner.  Its armored hide was more purple than red, possibly to help blend in with the mountainous rocks high in the uplands where the wolves dug their dens.

As a little boy, Marten used to hear them howling at night from kilometers away.  His mother had told him stories about how their ancestors used to tame the beasts and ride them to the tops of the snow-covered peaks.  As he grew older, he’d come to assume that these were simply fairy tales for children.  He’d certainly never heard of anyone in living memory taming an akk wolf as they did with the lesser akk dogs.

But then only months ago, when he and his commandos had first come to the jungle, he had taken a few days to scout alone.  On a whim, he’d set about climbing Grandfather’s Shoulder, the tallest peak in the region.  There, some five hundred meters from the summit, the wolf had found him.

It should have been no contest.  Like akk dogs, the wolf had skin so thick it was completely impervious to small arms fire.  It’s long tail, powerful claws and razor sharp teeth all capable of mashing a human to pulp in a single blow.

But when it attacked, he found that the power Count Dooku had taught him to harness, the ability to bend pelekotan—the Force, as off-worlders called it—to his will had been all he needed.  He had reached out to the wolf, felt its raw animal savagery, and then, in an instant, had not so much tamed the beast as become it.

After that, the akk wolf had followed him wherever he went.  Even when he returned to the GAR camp outside of Pelek Baw and had sent the animal away, it found him again within hours the next time he came back to the jungle.  The constant presence of the huge predator clearly made his soldiers nervous, but as long as he was around, it seemed to take little notice of them.

Marten laid a hand on its massive muzzle and stood up.  Used to its company though he was, he’d never seen it down here in the lower levels before.  He’d assumed it was too big to squeeze through the narrow passages.

He glanced up the nearest portal and saw that light was no longer spilling through.  He’d taken to sleeping during the day down in the cool stone passages beneath one of the larger ruins.  But even when he was able to drift off into a few hours of fitful sleep, he would always rouse before dusk.  Perhaps his dream—vision—of The Twi’lek Woman had gone on for longer that it had felt.

He put her out of his head and walked into the thick night air.  Just as it had appeared in his dream, the moon was up and the crumbling ruins were bathed in a blue glow.  The roots, vines and trees that grew around, on top of, and through the long-abandoned buildings echoed his final vision as well.  But the only eyes he saw were those of the men and women under his command as they glanced briefly in his direction from their defensive positions.

As he scanned the scene, he tried to remember if this was how the place had looked the night he first found it.  A teenager then, naked and alone in the jungle, it had become his sanctuary.  A fortress from where he could regain his strength and build up an arsenal to fight back against the death around him.

After his team’s successful exfiltration from Pelek Baw, he had hoped the ruins could become that fortress again.  But after days of waiting for Dooku’s fleet to arrive and deliver on their end of the deal, he wondered if it was going to become their tomb instead.

* * *

From the audio recordings of Tier Colvos

Hmm.  Am I really going to try this?  I can’t sleep, so I guess I am.

Let me start over.

This is Jedi Knight Tier Colvos.  General in the Grand Army of the Republic and commanding officer of Cresh Battalion, Special Operations Brigade.

The Jedi Order thinks very highly of diaries.  Every Master is more or less required to devote time to record a Holocron.  Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’ve never had any interest in attaining the rank of Jedi Master.  I’ve had my share of experiences, but I don’t much care to share them with anyone who isn’t right in front of me.

<Sigh>  Let me start over again.

I’m recording into my earbead comlink.  It has enough space on its tiny hard drive for thousands of hours of audio.  And the files can be saved, encrypted, and set to auto-delete if the bead is removed from my ear without my first saying the password.  I can also speak into it without making an external sound.

But that is all just how I’m recording this, and how I’m justifying such a reckless and unnecessary breach of security.  It doesn’t explain why I’m bothering in the first place.  So let me start over one more time.

My mission on Haruun Kal—mine and the clone commandos of Totten Squad under my command—is to find out what happened to Captain Marten Keelo and his soldiers.  When I was given this mission, I thought it seemed odd to send a Jedi and four valuable commandos to aid with a search and recovery mission.  But then, just before boarding our shuttle, Jedi Intel uncovered something that changed everything.  I’ve wondered about the timing of that last-minute revelation.  I’ve probably just grown jaded.

They believe Keelo may be an undercover Separatist agent.  And worse, one who has been trained by Dooku to use the Force.  They suspect he and his team are responsible for the prison breakout and the disappearance of the Rep Intel agents.

And so, now our objective is to find out what really happened.  Find Keelo.  Rescue or recover the Intel agents being held hostage.  And bring Keelo back.  Dead or alive.  Master Zey didn’t use those words, of course.  He never would.  But that’s what we’re here to do.

This mission is shaping up to look far more like Master Windu’s own operation on Haruun Kal than I would like.   It’s made the private journal he recorded when he was here all the more relevant.  And all the more disturbing.  I’ve now listened to it in its entirety.  Twice.  Mace Windu is as disciplined and reserved as any Jedi I have ever met, so I knew when he chose to share his deepest, most private thoughts on the worst experience of his life, he didn’t do it lightly.  He hoped it might prepare me for what I was about to face in the jungle.

And now, less than twenty four hours into my time here, I can see why.  I’m no stranger to darkness.  Not after what I’ve seen—what I’ve done—since leaving the Temple as a young Padawan.  But never before have I felt it as I do here.  As soon as we left Pelek Baw—no, perhaps before we even made planet-fall—I could feel it.  I wasn’t sure at first.  Been telling myself all day that it’s just the heat.  But when I tried to sleep…  Even when I gave up and tried to meditate instead…

It’s there.  Just as Windu described in such vivid detail.  He told me that recording his journal helped him stay focused.  Helped him stay sane.  And given what happened to the psyche of his former Padawan, Master Billaba…

Well, perhaps talking to myself won’t seem so crazy after all.  Once I get used to it, that is.

If I get used to it.  I never thought—

Hmm?!  I sense…

END RECORDING

Chapter Text

1088 days after the Battle of Geonosis

Sergeant Case was on his feet, out of his sleep sack and through the transparent parasite mesh before he’d fully registered what the noise was that woke him up.  The loaded slugthrower rifle that had rested on his chest when he fell asleep was now tucked against his shoulder as he swept the area.

“Rust, drop!” Leven bellowed, which Case could hear as much in his empty right ear as through the bead-comm in his left.

But both sounds were nearly drowned out by a deep, snarling growl.  Two sharp cracks from a slugthrower split the night air and the snarls grew in pitch to a high yowl.

Case advanced toward the noises, which were on the eastern edge of their little camp’s perimeter.  He called out the location on the comm to Slab and General Colvos and tried to pick up his pace without tripping.  The moon was up, which created plenty of light, but it cast so many shadows through the canopy that it was hard to see the roots and vines that snaked about underfoot.  Fortunately, there were enough of the dimly phosphorescing glow vines in the vicinity to help guide his feet.

He burst through a final screen of foliage and took in the scene at a glance.  Rust was on the ground, moving but clearly wounded.  Leven was several meters away, tracking his rifle… up.  Case followed the barrel’s line of sight and made out a dark form climbing quickly up the trunk of the nearest tree and into its branches.

He squeezed off a few rounds, accompanying Leven’s controlled fire and heard another yowl of pain.  But the target was in the leaves now and his rounds didn’t seem to be finding their mark.

Then the canopy was suddenly illuminated in a strobing blue glow.  A brighter flash erupted as a whirling disc of blue light scythed through the leaves.  A large branch snapped and plunged to the ground, surrounded in a rain of fluttering, burning leaves.

Case dove out of the way, landing heavily on his chest at nearly the same instant the branch hit the ground in a massive whumph.  As quickly as he could, he rolled onto one knee and turned back to face the severed limb.  There was something moving within the tangled mass, trying to scramble free of the branches around it.  Case opened up on full auto, pouring metal slugs into the target.  Muzzle flashes from two other points of fire indicated his brothers were doing the same.

Animal shrieks of pain and fury erupted from the pile of tangled limbs, but still the creature managed to push free.  Then a bolt of green energy lanced into it, and it finally fell.

“Target down,” Slab’s voice reported.  “Nice throw, sir.”

The sniper stepped out of from the bushes, his bowcaster that had delivered the fatal shot still trained on the jumble of branch and animal.  He was cast in a blue glow from General Colvos’s ignited lightsaber, who stood beside him.

The Jedi grunted.  “I should have just let it go,” he mumbled, then walked over to the dead animal.  His saber’s steady hum shifted slightly in pitch with each step.  He stopped two meters from the beast and the glow was enough for Case to get his first good look at it.

It was a vine cat, one of Haruun Kal’s many dangerous fauna he had learned about from the data files he’d flash-read on the flight in.  They were roughly the same size as a nexu, one the galaxy’s more widely known feline predators.  Sprawled out on its side in a pool of dark blood, Case guessed this one was nearly five meters long, though over half of that was accounted for by its long, whip-like, prehensile tail.  He recalled that they used them, along with their thumb-like fifth claws, to move through the trees as easily as he walked on land.

The dim glow and its blood-soaked coat made it tough to tell, but its pelt appeared to be a deep, glossy black, striped throughout by dark green vertical lines.  Or perhaps it was the other way around.  Either way, it would be perfect camouflage.  Rust must not have seen it coming until it was almost too late.

Rust.  Case forced himself to turn his attention away from the vine cat, allowing that a Jedi Knight with an ignited lightsaber was entirely capable of making sure the threat was truly neutralized.  He found his brother propped up against the gnarled root wad of a fallen tree, his side arm held in one hand, still trained on the vine cat.  Case knelt next to him on one side and Leven moved over to do the same on the other.

“Got a few shots off, did you, bro?” Leven asked through a forced smile.

The slugthrower pistol was shaking in Rust’s left hand, but he seemed unwilling to take his aim away from the dead predator.  “Barve climbed down the tree right behind me.  I never even heard the kriffing thing until it was almost too late,” he said in a tight voice.

“Well it’s dead now, and you’re not,” Case said as he gently pried the pistol away from Rust’s fingers.  “Let’s see how bad it got you.”

Leven popped a chemical glowstick and a yellow radiance grew, casting enough light to get a better look.  Rust’s right arm was clutched against his chest and his hand was sticky with blood where he gripped his shredded shirt.  He was visibly pale and sweat glistened on his face and shaven scalp.

Rust gritted his teeth as they peeled his shirt away.  Three ragged lines started just above his collar bone and disappeared behind the plastoid armor plate that covered his chest.  One of the plate’s straps had already been torn, and Case cut the others with his long, thin ryyk blade.  Even without the sonic emitter of a vibroblade, the razor-sharp edge of the Wookiee-made fighting knife sliced through with ease.

The claw marks continued diagonally across Rust’s right pectoral muscle for another ten centimeters.  Blood welled from the gaping lines, making it difficult to tell in the dim light how deep into the muscle the scratches went.

Leven had his first aid kit out, but Rust shook his head and fumbled at his side for his medical bag.

“I’ll get it,” Leven said, reaching down to unclip the pouch.  “Figures the damn cat would have a taste for medics.”

The first item he pulled out was a single use hypo full of pain killer, but Rust shook his head again.

“No, don’t want it.  Gonna have to march outta here and I don’t wanna be stumbling around groggy.”

“I can help with that,” General Colvos announced as he came over with Slab.  He knelt down to hold his hand a few centimeters above Rust’s bloody chest.

“Not gonna mind-trick me into carefree bliss, are you sir?” Rust managed.

Colvos smiled one of his little half smiles.  “I don’t think I could manage that if I tried.  Healing was never my specialty, but I should be able to dull the pain a bit.”  He closed his eyes in concentration, but continued to talk.  “Just a matter of turning off the pain receptors in the local nerve endings…”

Rust seemed to relax a bit and let out a few deep breaths.  “Better,” he said.  “Let’s get this over with.”

Case and Leven were gloved up and had the supplies out.  First they sprayed a generous dose of antiseptic mist over the wounds, then blotted the whole area with flimsi-sponge gauze pads.  The thin little sheets swelled to dozens of times their original size as they absorbed Rust’s weeping blood.  They repeated the process a few times until Case thought the wound was about as clean as they could get it.

“Alright, Private, now the tough bit.  You ready?” Case asked.

Rust nodded and continued to watch on with clinical detachment.  Case realized he was probably dreading the next part more than his wounded brother was.  It was going to be a lot of stitches, and while he’d learned how to do a pretty good job at patching up casualties, this was one of the things IM-6 medical droids usually did in the field.  The times he had done the job himself, he’d always had access to the little auto-suture guns they usually carried on missions.  But like all other electronic devices, those were unusable on this planet as well.

He caught Leven’s eye for confirmation that he was ready and accepted the needle and monofilament line.  Fresh blood was weeping from the scratches again, which made it tough to see the edges of the wounds.

“Hold on,” Colvos said before Case made his first stitch.  “I think I can help with this, too.”

The Jedi Knight pressed his left hand on Rust’s side below his armpit and the other on his sternum.  Then he closed his eyes again and appeared to squeeze his hands together.  Slowly, from bottom to top, the wounds began to close, as if they were being zipped up by an invisible hand.

“Alright, Sergeant,” he said in a small, strained voice.  “Carry on.”

Rust’s wounds were completely closed now; just puckered lines that ran along both sides of his nipple up to his collar bone.  It made Case’s task easier, but it still took him several minutes before he’d tied off his last suture.

For his part, Rust made it through the process without so much as wincing.  Case snipped the needle off and handed it to Leven, then let out a deep breath and patted his brother on the arm.  It was only then that he noticed that General Colvos’s hands were starting to shake where he still had them pressed against Rust’s side and chest.  The Jedi’s head was bowed, eyes tightly shut, and drops of sweat were beading and falling from the point of his nose.

“General,” he said gently.  “We’re all done.”

Colvos didn’t see to hear him.  “Sir?” he tried again.  Finally he laid a hand on the Jedi’s shoulder and gave him a small shake.  “General Colvos?”

“Hmm?” Colvos murmured, opening his eyes at last.  “All done, are we?”

“Yes, sir,” Case answered a bit uncertainly.

“Good,” Colvos replied, then stood up, but wavered on his feet.  Slab caught his arm to steady him.

“You okay, sir?” the sniper asked.

The Jedi smiled, looking embarrassed.  “Fine, fine.  That just took it out of me more than I expected it would.  Delicate jobs with the Force can be a bit draining.”

“Of course, sir,” Case said, but knew he was doing a poor job of masking his concern.  He’d seen his General lift crashed speeders off of wounded civilians and disarm mines from across streets with his powers before and never looked the worse for wear from any of it.  He didn’t know how harnessing the Force felt, but this seemed like it should have been a minor effort.

He tried to put it out of his mind and turned his attention back to Rust.  The stitches might have been the toughest part of patching the injured commando up, but what came next was probably even more important.  They smeared a thick layer of bacta salve over the wounds and then carefully cut strips of bacta patches to cover the entire area.  From here it would be a race to see whether Rust’s wounds would fully close before they ran out of the magic working bacta.  If not…  Case hated to think of how easily infection would take hold in this disease and fungus infested jungle.

After they’d gotten Rust’s chest armor reattached, Slab handed him the rifle he’d dropped when the vine cat attacked him.  Rust tried to shoulder it, winced, and moved it over to his left side.

“Good thing the long-necks made sure we were all ambidextrous, eh?” he said.

Case ignored the quip.  “Are you up for this, commando?” he asked earnestly.

Rust nodded, his face a mask of grim determination.  “Fit to fight, sir.”

“Alright, then.  Let’s pack it up and move it out.  We made a lot of noise killing that thing.”  As much as Case hated the idea of them risking more injury trying to navigate the jungle in the dark, they needed to get out of the area.

Totten Squad snapped to, and Case marched back to put away his tent.  He caught sight of General Colvos heading off to do the same with his and tried to size the man up.  It wasn’t his place to look after a superior officer, but that kind of detail had never bothered him much.

“Doing alright, sir?” he asked over the comm.

“It’s nothing, Sergeant.  The Force just… feels different here.”

Colvos hesitated, as if he was considering whether he should say more.

“I could feel him for a moment,” he added at last.

“Him, sir?” Colvos asked, wondering if he meant Rust.

“Keelo.  He’s here alright.  And we’re getting close.  Very close.”

* * *

From the audio recordings of Tier Colvos

If someone had told me that on the second day of this mission, I’d be walking along talking to myself within earshot of my men, I simply wouldn’t have believed them.  Well, not technically within earshot.  The bead-comm can record privately while I still listen in on our team channel.  So, if I am going crazy, at least Totten Squad might not know it yet.

Makes me glad I was honest with Sergeant Case last night.  Mostly honest.  Not that I could have hidden much from the commandos if I’d tried—they’ve learned from birth to be very good at reading body language.  Still, my first instinct was to try to hide what I’d felt when I was open to the Force.  Jedi discipline be damned, I simply couldn’t help it.

Everything just feels so different here.  I wasn’t lying when I told him that it can be tough to do delicate jobs like closing up Rust’s wounds.  Jedi healers make it look easy enough, but even Masters can have trouble manipulating the Force on such a fine scale for long.  A lot simpler to hammer down a line of battle droids, as impressive as that looks.

But it was what it felt like when I was fully opened up to the Force that got to me.  I’ve heard the tales of Jedi going mad and turning to the dark side when they’ve visited ancient Sith planets.  Never really believed any of them.  I always figured the dark was inside of you, and touching that part of the Force was a personal choice.  Now I’m not so sure.

I don’t even think it’s the dark side I felt here.  Not exactly.  But this place is so alive that I could feel the swirl of living energy when I was in it.  And the flavor of all of that life is undeniably primal, just as Master Windu described it in his journal.  Kill or be killed.  It calls for hunters.  And within, what, seconds?  I answered that call.  I was hunting.  Searching for my prey.

And I found him.  Marten Keelo is here.  Alive.  And not very far.

I can’t quite feel Keelo himself anymore.  Not like I could last night.  He’s at the edge of my senses.  I know where he is, but I can’t feel his mind.  But for a moment, when I was hunting, I could.

I was indeed the hunter and in that moment, he knew it.  But he didn’t feel like prey.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that, but I don’t know what I can do about it until I meet him face to face to find out.  So I’m leading Totten Squad through the jungle with all haste.  No trails, no tracks, no signs.  Just me on point, trying to get us up the steep slopes and past all the ways this planet has to kill us.

It’s a lot for the commandos to take on faith.  I’ve tried hard my whole career not to lose sight of that.  I have access to information very few can see.  They just have to take my word for it and follow orders.  Which most clones do.

Not so much Totten.  They’re one of the best squads in my battalion.  The fact that they’ve made it through three years of war without losing a squad mate alone speaks to that.  But they have their own way of doing things, and they’re not afraid to tell you about it. 

ARC Captain Maze, the brigade’s executive officer, left a detailed note about exactly that on Totten Squad’s file after working closely with them on a mission.  <Throaty noise, possible a chuckle>  But I don’t mind.  It lets me know where I stand with them.  Force-senses and all, I still think the clones are better at hiding their thoughts from us than we are from them.

I’m grateful for the honesty.  Especially since they still follow orders without complaint.  Even Rust, who should be in a bacta tank right now, troops along like last night’s ordeal hadn’t been any worse than a few hours of lost sleep.  As ready and able for battle as any of his brothers, despite having had his chest torn open by a giant predator.  I served with a lot of battle-hardened vets in the Antarian Rangers, and I don’t think even the toughest of them could manage half as easily.

It's a reminder that the clones aren’t ordinary men.  I think we Jedi have begun to forget that.  Our troops are the only people most of us interact with regularly any more.  We learn to tell them apart, to see past their identical faces to the unique individuals within.  We see them bleed and die together, take blaster bolts for each other, and even joke and laugh with one another.  After three long years, they simply don’t register as the alien drones we all took them for when the millions of them were suddenly dumped in our laps.

But the Kaminoans didn’t grow them to tell jokes.  Rust’s resilience is more than just the genetic legacy of Jango Fett’s legendary grit.  He’s been engineered to survive wounds ordinary men cannot, and to keep on fighting.  He and his brothers are perfect soldiers.  Living weapons.

I need never forget that.  Because very shortly, I’m going to have to decide how to use those weapons.

* * *

Marten sat at the base of the stone column that sprouted up from the center of one of the spiral shaped temples.  It wasn’t the highest point in the ruins, but it overlooked a gap in the trees that surrounded the ring of ancient, crumbling buildings.  A living green carpet of tree tops sloped gently downward for dozens of kilometers, with the gray mass of Pelek Baw’s urban sprawl just visible at the bottom.  If a Separatist fleet were to show up and begin pouring turbolaser blasts and dropships into the city, Marten was in a perfect place to see it.

Not that he thought that was going to happen anymore.  But to his soldiers, it would appear as though that’s what Marten was looking for.  And looking truly was what he was doing.  Just not with his eyes.

That had always been his particular talent.  Long before Dooku had shown him how to control the power that lived within him, pelekotan had a way of letting him see those he hunted.  And those who hunted him.  They shone at him like the glittering, reflected eyes of a jacuna that prowled at the edges of camp at night.  And now that he knew how to feed that raw talent, he could see so much more.

Marten knew that the Republic would send someone after his team before long.  The aerial patrols were easy enough to dodge, but it was only a matter of time before more effective hunters were sent out into the jungle.  He’d simply expected that there would be more than five of them.

Four were clones.  As guarded as the minds of the Republic’s troopers were, Marten had spent too much of his life training them to miss their particular sense.  A squad of commandos, just like any of the hundred boys he’d trained on Kamino.

The fifth, he was almost certain, was a Jedi.  The being had touched his mind last night, in a way that only one trained to control the Force could.  It could have been a Korunnai, of course.  The entire indigenous population could feel pelekotan’s touch, but few of them had any sort of mastery of their abilities.  This one, who led the clones, felt very much in control.  It was a feeling of focus and purpose.  And right now that purpose was to find Marten and his team.

It was hard to gauge exactly how far away they were, but they were close, and getting closer by the moment.  If they weren’t here by tonight, they should be by tomorrow morning.  He would learn soon enough.  One of his long-range patrols had reported hearing ballistic weapons fire last night, and were en route to investigate.

Before Marten could probe any further, two much stronger presences overwhelmed his senses.  The eyes he felt them as didn’t sparkle or glitter so much as blaze like torches.  They burned even hotter as they grew near, but Marten didn’t bother to watch them approach until they were standing directly in front of him.

The sun was behind them, casting their shadows over Marten and partly obscuring their silhouetted features.  But the light glinted along the edges of the tear-drop shaped shields the men wore on their upper arms.  The vibro-shields were the signature weapons of the two sole surviving akk guards, and Marten’s team had liberated them from the evidence lockers at the prison along with the men themselves.

Akk guard was the name their defeated leader had given his six elite bodyguards.  Marten couldn’t think of a better description for them.  Any difference between them and an akk dog was almost strictly physical.  And like a dog without a master, these two were every bit as dangerous and unpredictable.

The first, Sumuk, was over two meters tall, with the long, leanly muscled limbs of a vine cat.  His skin was as dark as one’s pelt too, nearly coal black.

Kenbol was scarcely taller than Marten himself, but massed almost twice what he did.  Broad, powerful shoulders tapered along his huge trapezius muscles to a small head that continued into a sharp point at the top of his crown.  It gave him the appearance of a triangular cinder cone.   To continue the analogy, he looked about ready to blow.

“Sumuk, Kenbol,” Marten said in Koruun at last, finally turning his head fully to look up at them but not making any move to get up.  “Are you here to report on the hostages?”

Kenbol ignored the question.  “Where are promised ships?” he grunted in the thickly accented, broken speech characteristic of most Korunnai when they spoke Basic.  If they spoke it at all.

Marten repressed a sigh.  So much for trying to speak civilly.  “The Confederate reinforcements will arrive when they arrive.  Or not at all.  It doesn’t change our mission.  We hold the hostages until the Republic sends a response.  Then we act.”

Kenbol scowled and leaned forward to loom over Marten.  “We act now.  Why wait here like tuskers for slaughter?  Kill hostages.  Go back to city and take it.  This we can do without your Dooku and worthless droid reinforcements.  Haruun Kal for Karunnai, just like said, you.”

Slowly, casually, Marten stood up.  Kenbol tensed, flexing those dense muscles, and Marten could feel him preparing to let his vibroshields slide down his arms and bring them squealing into deadly life.  The old warrior’s eyes scanned up the broad, exposed body of the younger man, noting all the critical places his hidden knife could open in a single, lightning-quick movement.  A mere flick of the wrist, and all the power coiled before him would come spilling out in a steady stream of bright red arterial blood.

And then Sumuk would take his head.

No, that wasn’t how Marten hoped to end the confrontation.  As much as he’d begun to doubt the long-term use of the two akk guards, they were weapons he couldn’t afford to lose at the moment.

He took a step forward and leaned in until he was nose to nose with Kenbol.

“And how did that work the last time you tried to take Pelek Baw?  With four more akk guards, your lor pelek, and the Jedi woman?  How many of you lived to tell that tale?”

Marten kept his gaze steady, never blinking as he stared into the younger man’s blood-shot eyes.  He left his hands open at his side, inviting Kenbol to make a move.  But the man did nothing, just as he knew he would.

Kenbol gritted his teeth, the clenched muscles in his jaw making the puckered scar tissue that ran from his left cheek down to his ribs stand out.  The bacta treatment he’d gotten had been enough to save his life from his wounds, but the scars that remained would always remind him of his failure that day.

Movement edged into Marten’s peripheral vision, but neither he nor Kenbol turned.  It came on in the slow, guarded approach of one who was trying not to startle a wild animal and he knew immediately it was one of his recruits making a report.

Kenbol was still posturing, making a show that he hadn’t backed down.  But the fire had gone out of him and Marten was confident the moment had passed.  He firmly pressed a finger into the big akk guard’s sternum, just as he would have done to one of the cloned children he had once trained when he was making a point.  “We wait,” he said.  “You’ll have your chance to spill blood soon enough.  You have my word on that.”

Marten turned to Kiana, one of the younger, but most promising, of the recruits in his unit.  The girl had claimed to be eighteen—the minimum age required to serve in any division of the Republic military—but Marten guessed she was closer to two years younger than that.  Still, that made her a late starter by his own standards.

Kiana was standing at attention, trying but failing to keep her eyes from darting between Marten and the akk guards.  She was an athletic, attractive girl with a wide mouth full of big white teeth that shone brightly when she smiled.  She wasn’t smiling now.

“Report,” Marten ordered, bringing her out of her hesitation.

“Sir,” she replied, straightening up.  “Sergeant D’uan just reported in.”

Marten nodded, waiting for her to go on.  The report was several minutes late, but that wasn’t surprising.  His forces had a few functioning comm units left, but the spores were bad this time of year and getting messages through was becoming more difficult.  The Korrunai recruits were making progress at learning to send detailed reports telepathically from long-range, but they still had a long way to go.  For now, they were still forced to rely on technology.

“They found the source of last night’s weapon’s fire,” she went on.  “The camp had been broken down with little trace left, but a dead vine cat was found nearby in the jungle.  Killed by multiple slug wounds and one large caliber energy projectile.  Tracks from there head directly toward our position.  Sergeant D’uan is pursuing but estimates he’s at least four hours behind the enemy.”

Marten considered for a moment, then made up his mind.  “Tell him to break off pursuit and return here immediately.”

“Sir,” she said, then saluted and marched off.

Marten watched her go, debating his decision.  He would have liked to keep D’uan’s squad at the enemy’s back, but they were four of his best and he knew he would need every rifle he could get at the ruins once the shooting started.

Sumuk and Kenbol were still lingering nearby, and Marten could again feel energy pulsing off of them in waves.

“Well, Kenbol,” Marten said as he peered off into the jungle.  “It looks as though blood will be spilling very soon indeed.”

* * *

“Mark two more, near that eastern spire,” Leven’s voice crackled in Case’s ear.

Case lowered his binoculars—old-fashioned glass binoculars, without any of the broad spectrum filters he wished he had to help make out the dark forms of Keelo’s soldiers in the night.  The moon was up at least, providing just enough light that spotting hostiles wasn’t completely hopeless.

“That’s fourteen confirmed, sir,” Case reported to General Colvos.  “All Korunnai.  Two weapon emplacements confirmed.  One E-web and one Thunderbolt.”

General Colvos was a few meters off to his left, lying on his belly like Case was and looking across a shallow depression on the hillside to a flat outcropping, ringed by trees.  It was hard to see through the twisted branches, but there was a sprawling man-made structure of some kind behind them.  It didn’t appear to be anything like the pre-fab domiciles the jungle prospectors put up, or even the thatch huts the Korrunai traditionally built.  It looked more like crumbling stone.

The rest of Totten Squad was spread out to Case’s right, with Slab higher up on the hillside.  The sniper had reported the same thing; that the structure looked like the ruins of an ancient temple, with a few tall, spiraling columns sprouting up toward the tops of the trees.  He couldn’t see through the foliage very well either, though, and it was hard to spot Keelo’s soldiers or their defensive emplacements.

“I can feel… thirty-five Force-users,” General Colvos said slowly.  Case turned to look at the man.  The glare from the moon pierced through spaces between leaves, dotting the prostrate Jedi’s face and back with patterns of silver light.  Case could see that his eyes were closed.

“I don’t think it’s normally that easy with Korunnai,” he went on.  “But these are different.  Like bright new growth that hasn’t faded into dull greens yet.  Keelo has clearly done some kind of training with them.  And I believe all five of the hostage Intel agents are still alive.  Yes, five that aren’t touching the Force.  From them, I feel fear, uncertainty, boredom.”  Colvos finally opened his eyes and nodded.  “It’s them.”

Case stared at his general, feeling a pang of envy.  Totten Squad had been ringed out for over an hour, marking targets, and had only come up with fourteen.  If they’d had their armor system with its infrared lenses, directional microphones, and target painting software, he knew they could have done better.  But they still couldn’t have gotten them all.

All Colvos had to do was close his eyes and concentrate.  No, it wasn’t envy Case was feeling. It was resentment.  Keeping up with Jedi was always a challenge.  Armor didn’t quite put him on even ground with them, but it did help level the playing field.  Without it, he felt naked and inept.  By comparison, a Jedi could lose his lightsaber, but would always have access to his powers.  It hardly felt fair.

That’s enough.  He shook himself.  What would Sergeant Carr think if he heard you whining about fairness?  It was the lack of sleep.  He was getting tired and irritable, right when he needed his focus the most.  And there was still a piece of the puzzle missing.

“Any, uh,” Case swallowed.  “Can you feel any others that aren’t connected to the Force, sir?”

General Colvos was looking at Case now, the light of the moon reflected in his eyes.   “No, Sergeant.  I don’t.”

Case nodded.  He wasn’t sure which answer he’d been dreading most.  It meant that Keelo had killed the clone commandos he’d been sent to Haruun Kal with.  Commandos he himself had trained from boyhood.  That told him a lot about his enemy.

It also answered the question Totten Squad had been avoiding on this mission.  Because if they had been here, that would mean they—

Case cut himself off again.  More philosophizing.  He needed some sleep, but knew he wasn’t going to get it.  Once they finished their recon, Rust was under strict orders to get a few hours of sleep.  He needed it most.  The sun would rise soon after, and then there wouldn’t be a chance.  But Case had tricks to keep himself awake through the night.  He’d hold off until the last minute to pop a stim, they’d finish their job, and then he could think about sleep.

A sudden cold breeze pulled him out of his fantasy.  A moment later, the moon disappeared behind a thick cloud.  Case peered up through the canopy and saw that all of the stars in the western sky had been blocked out.  It was hard to tell in the black of night, but the clouds seemed heavy and wet, and they were moving fast.

“Storm coming, sir,” he said to General Colvos.

“Aye, so it would seem.  Let’s hope it holds off a little—”

“Contact,” Slab broke in.  “Got four new targets coming in from the south.”

Case retrieved his binoculars and scanned in that direction, but it was hopeless.  Slab had a better vantage from his position and the lack of moonlight hid all points of reference.

“Lost ‘em, sir,” Slab reported.  “Confirmed four new targets.  Something about them…” He trailed off.

The hairs on the back of Case’s neck pricked up.  “What about them, soldier?” he demanded.

“The way they moved, sir.  I don’t think they were Korunnai.”

“They aren’t,” Colvos said.  “They’re one of Keelo’s clone commando squads.”

Totten Squad was silent for a few moments, then Rust asked the question on all of their minds.  “Just the four of them, sir?”

“Just four,” Colvos answered.  “But his other squad could still be out on patrol.”

Or they could be lying in the jungle somewhere, with holes in their heads and maggots cleaning their bones like the grasser we found in the clearing.

It wasn’t confirmation, but in his gut, Case believed that was what had happened.  One squad had stayed loyal to the Republic, the other had joined Keelo’s revolt.  Maybe he’d killed or tortured one to turn the other.  Maybe he had somehow used the Force to brainwash them.  Maybe Case just needed to believe that only one squad had turned traitor.  One was an anomaly, two was a trend.

“That means they’re guilty of treason and enemies of the Republic,” Case said to everyone.

“We don’t know anything for certain yet, Sergeant,” Colvos said.  “We’ll learn soon enough.”

Case didn’t believe they were innocent, and he didn’t think that General Colvos did either.

“But we won’t learn a damn thing from corpses,” Colvos said, putting a little iron into his voice, no mean feat through the sub-vocal comms.  “We still want them all alive for questioning.  Is that clear, Totten Squad?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Case and the others replied automatically, but he imagined his brothers were feeling exactly what he felt.

“Good.  Now get into position and take your watch shifts.  Rust, you sleep first.  That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” Rust said.

The sound of distant thunder rumbled from the west and the breeze picked up.  Case no longer envied Rust for his rest time.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he tried.

“Get into position,” Colvos said again.  “Keep an eye on your chronos.  Five minutes before sunup, send the signal.  Then the next part is up to me.”

Chapter Text

1089 days after the Battle of Geonosis

From the audio recordings of Tier Colvos

[The steady sound of raindrops impacting vegetation fills background audio.  Throat clears]

Captain Keelo.  This General Tier Colvos of the Grand Army of the Republic.  You have been charged with dereliction of duty and the theft of Republic materiel and personnel.  You are suspected of murder, kidnapping and treason.  Come out with your hands up and surrender your forces and the hostages into the custody of the Grand Army.  You will be taken to Pelek Baw for questioning.  If you cooperate, no one will be harmed.

[Silence follows for 23 seconds]

[A much fainter voice, heard from a distance.  Vocal match for Marten Keelo]  We will not surrender, General.  You are an enemy in the territory of the Confederacy of Independent Systems.  Turn around.  Leave now or you and your soldiers will be killed.

[A swallow.  Six seconds of silence]  Please, Captain.  This is your only chance.  I don’t know what Dooku promised you, but it isn’t going to happen.  He is dead.  The Separatists are on the run.  There is no future in your revolt.  I implore you:  surrender now or I cannot protect you.

[A single syllable, possibly a bitter laugh]  Protect us?  Do not insult me, General.  I worked for your government, do not forg—

[The sound of nearby thunder overwhelms audio pickup]

—s  war, and we know the punishment for treason.  You must leave now.  I will give you ten seconds before we open fire.

[Sigh]  Ten seconds, Captain?  I’m afraid you don’t have that long.

[A faint roar can be heard, gradually becoming louder]

* * *

Marten could hear them before the first was in sight.  He stood out in the rain next to the stone column that gave him his best view toward Pelek Baw.  The akk wolf was crouched just behind him, silent but for the rhythmic puffs of its exhales.  Each was accompanied by a sudden blast of hot air on Marten’s back.  Nervous energy radiated off of the beast.  No doubt its shallow ear pits could hear the engines even better than he could.  But unlike the animal, Marten recognized them.

The roar that dominated the composition of the growing sound belonged to the twin jet engines of Sienar Turbostorm close-assault gunships, the aircraft of choice of the former Balawai militia, still in use by Pelek Baw’s newly established home defense force.

And beneath that roar was the lighter thrum of a different make of engine—one Marten knew equally well.  He’d spent enough time being ferried about by the Grand Army of the Republic’s LAAT/i gunships during his brief time in its service to recognize the sound of them anywhere.

There were a few of each model of aircraft, but he couldn’t tell exactly how many.  As long as there weren’t more than ten, he was ready for them.

Marten frowned as he peered into the gray layers of airborne water droplets.  His estimation of Tier Colvos had just dropped.  Did the Jedi truly believe that Marten wouldn’t have anticipated this?  Of course the man and his commando squad were merely a reconnaissance force.  The only question was whether his enemy had foreseen his preparations and taken extra steps.

No matter.  The chance-cube has been cast.  All there is left to do is fight.

Finally, the first gunship burst through a bank of low clouds.  Its matte-gray fuselage barely stood out from the backdrop of stormy weather, but the Turbostorm’s jet engines were burning near full throttle, and they gave the aircraft the appearance of a missile bearing straight down on them.  A moment later, its two wing-mates emerged from the same cloud.

But it was several more long moments after that until the first LAAT/i came in behind them.  Marten’s frown deepened.  The pilots of the Turbostorms were over-eager and had left their clone counterparts behind in a rush to get here first.

That was unfortunate.  The Korunnai’s defenses required the element of surprise.  If he used them now and took out the Turbostorms, the clone pilots would be tipped off and might get through.  And while he could feel more life forces in the nearer gunships, they had the flavor of former Balawai militia-men.  Every clone trooper was worth five of them in this kind of battle.

He would have to wait until the last possible moment before he gave the signal.  The Turbostorms reduced their burn as they began to drop in on Marten’s position.  They were close now—close enough that he could see the studs of their laser cannons swiveling left and right.

The LAAT/i’s were catching up.  Just another second.  A bolt of lightning flashed downhill, backlighting all six gunships for an instant.

Now, pelekotan whispered to Marten.  He signaled the akk wolf and the beast turned up its massive head and howled.

* * *

Warfare was noisy.  It was yet another reason Case preferred to go into battle wearing a fully sealed, sound-dampener equipped helmet.  As it was, things had been slowly building to deafening since last night, and the fighting had only just begun.

It had started with the thunder, which had grown from distant, sporadic rumbles to frequent crashes just before dawn.  With them had come the gusts of wind and hail of rain that steadily filled the background.

Then Colvos had delivered his terms of surrender to the Korunnai forces.  By the stars could Jedi make themselves heard when they wanted to.  Case still hadn’t figured out how they used the Force to amplify their voices the way they did.

And all of that was just the calm before the storm.  The gunships roaring in was loudest of all, but was the first bit of welcome noise Case had heard.  He’d brought them in himself when he’d sent the signal to the Pelek Baw garrison with their coordinates.  Case had had a lot to think about during the long, sleepless night, but worrying about whether the supposedly spore-proof transmitter he held would actually work was what had really been foremost on his mind.

But it had worked all right, and just on cue, the six gunships could be heard as they made their approach.  The commandos of Totten Squad could just make them out through openings in the canopy from their vantage on the hillside behind Keelo’s camp in the ruins.

Then had come that blood-curdling howl and everything went sideways.

Before the beast’s—it had to be some kind of beast—deep, echoing call had trailed off, the whoosh of smaller rocket engines filled the air.  And Totten Squad knew that sound, too.  They’d had their first taste of Haor Chall surface-to-air missiles during the Battle of Geonosis, when they’d watched countless Republic gunships shot down by the deadly explosives.  They were usually fired by Separatist hailfire droids.  How the Korunnai had gotten them up into the hills and how they’d managed to keep the metal-eating fungi from destroying their sensitive internal computers, Case couldn’t guess.

The missiles were a much greater defense than General Colvos, Case or GAR command had anticipated.  He couldn’t tell exactly how many had gone streaking off.  It was probably around a dozen.  Two per gunship, which might have been enough to take them all out if it hadn’t been for the undisciplined local defense force pilots breaking formation and flying in ahead of the clones’ LAAT/i’s.

The lead Turbostorm was just inside of the missiles’ range and it managed to skim in above the barrage of surface to air rockets.  Its wingmates weren’t so lucky.  Each of the heavily armored aircraft blossomed into balls of brilliant orange fire as they were consumed in the detonations of direct hits.  Case and his brothers instinctively dropped into cover from flying shrapnel, but the gunships had been at least a kilometer off, and their burning wrecks began their descents into the jungle well shy of the ruins.

Those earsplitting explosions were immediately followed by several more as ardent streams of green laser-fire shot missile after missile out of the air.  Case silently cheered on the clone turret gunners, echoed by Rust’s somewhat less silent whoop of approval.

But accurate as the gunners were, some missiles still made it through.  One LAAT/i took a hit to its port wing and lost control, veering off to crash-land somewhere in the jungle, kilometers away.  Another shrugged off a detonation just below its belly.  The gunship bucked, rising on the superheated air and concussive force like a leaf on the wind.  The pilot righted the ship, and then they were past the Korunnai’s opening salvo.

Which was apparently all the enemy had up their sleeve.  Blaster fire from some of the gun emplacements Totten Squad had spotted tracked the surviving gunships, but no more missiles were launched.

Three of the six Republic gunships had made it through.  It was less than Case had hoped for, but more than they had been prepared to attack with if need be.  He still wished the aircraft could have simply fired their entire compliment of rockets down into the ruins, ending Marten Keelo’s rebellion in a nice clean series of satisfying explosions.

That would be the end of intelligence operatives being held hostage too, of course.  And the Republic needed someone alive after this was all over.  General Colvos’s mission was to capture Keelo.  Totten Squad’s was the hostages.  If Case had wanted the easy jobs, he didn’t deserve to be a commando.

Last night, they’d determined the hostages were likely being kept beneath the largest structure in the ruins—a spiral-shaped temple that had its back to the hillside.  Totten Squad had gotten into position above it and located an open portal into the building.  That was their destination.  The arrival of the Republic reinforcements was their signal to proceed.  It was now or never.

“We’re on deck, boys,” Case said to his brothers.  “Go, go, go!”

Totten Squad broke cover, tossed their thin repelling lines down the hill and began their descent toward the nearest temple.  The hillside wasn’t too steep to traverse without the aid of ropes, but the rain had turned the forest floor into a slippery mess of fallen leaves and mud.

With his line securely tied off to a solid tree trunk and clipped to the descender on his belt, Case nimbly zigzagged his was down the hill, taking quick sideways steps and half-skiing around trees and downed wood.  That left both hands free to man his slug rifle, but he still didn’t have a clean shot at the ruins through all of the undergrowth.

About halfway down he spotted a stump that provided cover and a clear line of fire downhill.  Case pointed at it with his right hand.

“Slab!” he barked.

“On it,” the sniper replied.

Nearly there, Case thought.  Then his feet disappeared out from under him as a mat of slick leaves slid off a fallen tree branch.  The auto-brake on the descender kicked in and tightened its drag, saving him from sliding down the rest of the descent on his backside, but he still hit the ground hard and felt a sharp pain as something jabbed into his right thigh.

Case grunted and pushed himself upright, pedaling his legs furiously to keep his momentum going.  That probably saved his life.  A wash of heat, accompanied by a huge whoomph and stinging debris hit Case from behind.

“We’ve been spotted, Totten,” Case said over the comms.

Flashes of blue plasma burned through the undergrowth and exploded all around Case.  It had to be the mounted thunderbolt repeater they’d marked near the temple’s entrance.

Keep moving.  Return fire.  Case sprayed slugs on full-auto in the direction he thought the fire was coming from.  He still couldn’t see clearly through the thick leaf cover.

I wish I had my kriffing Deece, he swore to himself.  The slug rifle had a decent rate of fire and packed some punch, but it kicked like a bantha and the metal projectiles were easily knocked off course by every branch and twig they nicked along the way.

He caught a flash of green light in his peripheral vision and heard a scream from below.  Then the enemy fire stopped.

“Turret gunner down,” Slab reported.

That a boy, Slab.

“Copy that,” Case replied.

The hill leveled out and Case skidded to a halt.  He unclipped from the line and crouched behind a downed log, then poked his head up to peer through the final screen of foliage toward their destination.  It was raining hard, and the splash and steam from all the water made it hard to see for nearly a meter above ground level.  But he didn’t see any targets between his position and the open mouth into the temple.

“I’m in position, Totten,” Case said over the team-comm.  “Report.”

“In position,” said Leven.

“Ready, sir,” Rust replied.  He sounded a bit winded.

“Can’t confirm any hostiles between you and the door, sir,” Slab said.  “Things are heating up further south.”

Case didn’t need help figuring that much out.  A steady wall of noise from blaster and slug fire filled the air.

“Advise you proceed now.  I’ll be right down,” Slab finished.

“Negative,” said Case.  “Hold position and keep this exit clear.”

There was a moment of hesitation before Slab replied.

“Copy that, sir.”

There wasn’t time to consider the sniper’s feelings about being left out.  He needed the back door open in case they couldn’t find another way out.  And as cramped as it was likely to be down there below the crumbling temple, three commandos shouldn’t be any less effective than four.

“Go,” he ordered.

* * *

I could kill all four of them with one grenade, Marten thought to himself as the security force troopers crashed noisily through the underbrush towards his concealed position.  They were grouped too closely together and were single-mindedly rushing straight for their objective.

A full company of the black-armored soldiers had been dropped off by the sole surviving Turbostorm gunship in the relatively open gully to the east of the temple.  From there, they had divided into squads and proceeded on foot uphill through the jungle for the remaining two-hundred meters to the ruins.

The two LAAT/i’s had done the same with their compliment of troopers, but the clones were predictably making a much quieter approach.

The four men Marten watched trooping steadily closer had no sense of the danger they were in.  It was pouring too hard for the motion and heat sensors in their goggles to be of much use, and they wore them pushed up onto their helmets or dangling limply from their necks.  They had utter faith that their high-tech armor, weapons and numbers would be enough to overwhelm the enemy.

He held his fire and slung the grenade launcher.  That would be the quickest way to neutralize the troopers, but the noise could bring one of the surviving gunships down on him.  And Marten had always preferred to do things the quiet way.

The troopers were almost past him now.  He began to push himself up from the soaked earth.  He didn’t feel the icy currents of water run down his back when he brushed past the leaves above him.  He didn’t see the flash of lighting or hear the crash of thunder a split second later as a nearby cloud released its energy.

All of that blended into the fabric of the jungle around him.  Into pelekotan.  All Marten could sense were the life-forces of the troopers.  Those that were so distinctly not a part of the jungle.

The enemy nearest to him was only meters away.  Marten rose and with him he brought up a vine from the forest floor.  It wrapped itself around the man’s ankle and he stumbled.

Marten leaped.  He carried a sixty-centimeter curved vibroblade on his belt—the kind used for clearing paths through the jungle.  He’d been using one since he was a small child and it was as familiar in his hands as a fork or spoon.

He swung the blade in mid leap.  Its edge connected with one side of the man’s unprotected neck and came out the other before Marten’s feet touched ground.  He was on to the next man in line before the severed head did.

Graylite body armor could typically resist the ultrasonic vibrations of a vibroblade, but the combat suit had gaps at the joints.  Marten’s blade found them and the next man fell.  His two surviving squad-mates had turned now and were trying to bring their blasters to bear.

He reached the third man before they could.  With strength and speed that were more pelekotan’s than his own, Marten grabbed the trooper by the wrist and pulled.  He could feel the shlick of the man’s humerus slip from its socket.

The final soldier fired his blaster and Marten ducked behind the beefy, screaming man’s armored bulk.  The smell of burning armor and flesh filled the air.

With his left arm, he held the dying trooper up and drew back his right.  He threw the vibroblade at the final soldier with all the power of the jungle behind it.

The blade turned over three times in the air, then came down on the black helmet.  It split like the husk of a vaana nut.

Marten let his human-shield fall to the ground and stalked forward to retrieve his blade.  His focus widened back out to take in the battle at large.  The whine of blaster-fire intermingled with the dull reports of discharging slug rifles just to the north—the recruits he’d sent into the jungle to slow the Republic’s advance were doing their jobs.

Then the sound of more imminent danger accompanied a flash of warning in his mind.  Another squad of security troopers were coming to the aid of their dead comrades.

Marten grimaced and shouldered his grenade launcher.  This was the price of his failure to neutralize all four troopers before one could fire a shot.  Now things were about to get very loud indeed.

He took aim at the lead trooper, just visible through a screen of vibrant green leaves.

A series of sounds like muffled coughs filled the air and the trooper’s advance faltered.  He jerked as if suffering from some kind of convulsion and fell to the ground.  Behind him, the rest of his squad followed suit.

A moment later, four men stepped out from the trees.  They wore dirty, faded camo-patterned fatigues and armored vests.  Their rain-soaked, curly hair was plastered to their deeply tanned faces.  If their skin had been just a shade darker, they would have been hard to tell from local Korunnai.

Sergeant D’uan, the leader of Jacuna Squad nodded at Marten, then loaded a fresh clip into his silenced slug-rifle and signaled his three brothers to melt back into the trees.

Marten retrieved his blade, scooped up a fallen trooper’s blaster carbine and followed the commandos toward the sounds of battle.  An involuntary surge of pride at having trained such perfect soldiers filled him.  He remembered D’uan at the age of six, struggling to understand why their sergeant spent so much time training his company to use knives and make traps while millions of his cloned brethren were off mastering the wealth of modern weaponry they would have access to.

How much he’d learned since then.

Just ahead, the sound of deep snarls accompanied a man’s scream.  Then vibrations from massive, thundering feet and snapping undergrowth faded away.  The akk wolf was running the perimeter of the enemy forces, preventing them from fully fanning out.

A gunship soared by overhead, firing green laser blasts through the treetops in pursuit of the wolf.  The beast’s armored hide could probably shrug off even a direct hit, but if the gunship caught it out in the open, its combined firepower would bring the akk down.

Marten leaped over the mashed remains of the akk wolf’s kill and split off from Jacuna Squad.  He slipped through the jungle to another relatively open hollow and the next firefight.  Three clone troopers in camo-painted scout trooper armor were firing their blaster carbines on full-auto.

A huge man, wearing nothing more than tattered pants and a brilliant disk of silver metal on each arm jumped and twisted through the air toward them.  He landed in their midst and swung those deadly vibroshields on spidery long arms.  Arcs of water trailed off the edges of the blades like crop-watering sprinklers.

The akk guard caught round after round of the clone troopers’ blaster fire on his shields.  The plasma splashed harmlessly across the curved domes of ultrachrome.  He cut down one, then two of the clones, but missed the third as the soldier leaped back from a wide slash.

The trooper leveled his weapon and aimed at the savage warrior’s exposed chest.  Marten fired his appropriated carbine.  The blaster rounds burned through the trooper’s armor and into his back.

Sumuk glared across the hollow at Marten, apparently more angry at having his kill stolen from him than grateful for having his life saved.

“Where is Kenbol?” Marten asked him.

Sumuk broke his dark gaze from Marten long enough to jerk his chin over his left shoulder.  “He went after Jedi.”

That was good.  Marten too had intended to make the Jedi his first target, but Colvos had become mysteriously hard to track as soon as the shooting started.  If Kenbol had found him—and if he could kill him—they would be well on their way to victory.

Slow the troopers.  Kill the Jedi.  Protect the hostages.  As long as he held the Republic Intelligence agents in the temple, the gunships would hold their fire on the crumbling ruins.  That bought him time to pick off the remaining ground forces.  Then they move the hostages into the jungle and slip away.

And at that thought, Marten realized there was trouble.  He could feel the balance of the situation in the temple begin to teeter, though most of the life-forces of the recruits he’d left to guard it still burned fiercely.  The eyes of hunters nearing their prey sparkled in his vision.  The Republic must have gotten forces inside.  The Jedi’s commandos, if he had to guess.  Marten should have predicted that would be their plan.

The akk wolf, he thought.  He reached out to the beast’s mind.  It took an effort to instill in it the impression that there was tastier prey than what it was already hunting.

But convince it he did.  He heard its howl over the sounds of gunfire and explosions.  It was on the hunt and knew who it had to kill.

And so did Marten.

Chapter Text

1090 days after the Battle of Geonosis

It’s still not pitch black down here, Case told himself.  Not quite.

Totten Squad’s collective eyes had gotten a chance to gradually adjust to the unlit tunnels beneath the temple.  At first, they’d had the lighting of the stormy dawn at their backs, then the faint illumination of the trailing glowvines that snaked into the ruins from the tunnel’s entrance.

Now, even those were gone and Case could just perceive the outlines of his surroundings.  He and his brothers had good eyes, he knew.  Sergeant Carr had always reminded the clone cadets in his company that Jango Fett had better eyes and ears than just about any human in the galaxy.  And they were ‘Jango with a tune-up.’

It was true.  One of the many modifications the Kaminoan cloners had made to Fett’s genome was to subtly alter the inner workings of the clones’ eyes and give them increased blood flow, giving them better distance and night-vision.

Even so, they couldn’t see into the infrared spectrum, and Case had to resist the impulse to pop a glow stick.  That would just make him a walking target to any enemy more than a few meters away.

As long as it doesn’t get any darker…

Rust walked ahead of Case in his customary point position.  His gait was smooth and even, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he still held his slug-rifle in a left-handed grip, Case wouldn’t have known the man was injured.

Thus far, they hadn’t encountered any enemies since the guarded entrance, but that didn’t mean it was entirely quiet in the tunnel.  Noises from the battle above echoed oddly along the rounded walls and the occasional explosion shook the crumbling ruins enough to send small pieces of stonework raining onto their heads.  The sound of dripping was ever present as gravity led flowing rainwater ever downward through a maze of cracks from the surface.

Case tightened his grip on his rifle and pushed forward.  If he was crushed under an avalanche of falling rubble or drowned in a flood of water, there was nothing he could do about it.  But any Korunnai who tried to shoot him down was a different story.

Rust held up his hand to bring their advance to a halt, a movement Case barely caught.  He repeated the signal down the line for Leven.

“Got another fork,” Rust’s voice whispered into his ear.

Twice before, the tunnel had met a junction, but both paths had been easy to ignore as they’d been completely blocked by collapses a short distance from the entrance.

“Two lines stay left,” Rust reported.  “And there’s more foot-traffic that way.”

Case looked down.  Five shallow grooves had run down the center of the tunnel’s floor from the entrance.  On each fork, one of the lines peeled off down the new path.  The lines matched the strange spiral patterns that decorated the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.  It was too dark to see the designs now, but he could feel the grooves in the floor with his left boot when he ran his toe toward the center.

“Left it is, then,” Case said and the squad resumed their pace.  He hated the thought of leaving another point of attack open behind them, but there was little he could do about it.  If he’d had more men, he could have left a guard behind.  He’d already done that with Slab, though, and he didn’t have any more to spare.

A brief flicker of light flashed down the tunnel, accompanied by the boom of echoing thunder.  Case instinctively dropped into a firing position.

His team comm crackled into life.  “----ontrol to all grou-- -orces.  Storm ---ensifying.  ----of gas exposure by----- percent.  Recommend-------------”

A steady wash of static remained on the channel.

Case muted it and tried his private squad frequency.  “Sitrep, Slab.”

There was no reply but static.  “Slab?  Do you copy?” he tried again.

More static.

“Reckon the interference is from the storm?” Leven asked.  “These ruins shouldn’t be dense enough to block the signal.”

Case didn’t think either should be a problem at this range.  But he’d heard enough of control’s warning.  Rescuing the hostages wouldn’t do them any good if they delivered them right into a cloud of poisonous gas.  They had to hurry.

“Doesn’t matter, Totten.  Minds on the mission.  Let’s go.”

They picked up their pace and continued down the tunnel.  They hadn’t gone far before Rust brought them to a halt again.  Just in front of him, Case could see the faint outlines of the tunnel being swallowed up into a black void.  The steady sound of falling water filled the air.

“Chamber up ahead, sir.  Can’t tell how big it is, but I think I just saw movement.”

Case swallowed.  Was this where the hostages were being held?  How many guards were there?  He wished General Colvos was with them.  He might be able to sense something.  He wished he had his Deece with its built-in stun laser setting.  Then he could drop targets without worrying that one of them was actually a hostage.

He wished he could just see one kriffing thing down here.

“Prep glow sticks and toss them on my mark,” he ordered.  “Leven, left side.  Rust, right.  I’ll aim for the far end.”

Slowly, carefully, Case opened a pouch on his belt with his left hand and slid one of the plastoid tubes out of its pack.  Unwilling to lower his rifle for even a second, he wedged the tip of the glow stick against a strap that ran across his chest.

“Ready?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Ready.”

Case made sure his glow stick was firmly anchored in place.

“Mark,” he said, then bent the stick until it popped.  He hurled it towards where he thought the far wall should be.

Gunfire erupted from the opposite end of the chamber before any of the glowsticks landed.  Case dove onto his belly and began returning fire into the illuminated muzzle flashes.  The yellow light from the three glowsticks was woefully inadequate to fill the round chamber—he could see that it was round now, with at least two more tunnel openings—but it did help him to pick out the dark forms of targets in between volleys of fire.

Case couldn’t tell exactly how many Korunnai were in the room.  Most were behind some kind of rubble breastworks on the far side and were sporadically popping up to take shots or were blind-firing their rifles around the edges.  He couldn’t find any cover available on this side of the chamber and he felt ludicrously exposed.  He sprayed a burst of slugs toward one of the blind-firing enemies, then rolled to his right.  Grit peppered his left side and a stinging pain erupted just below his ear.

But Case was ready for it.  He pumped another burst into the enemy who had popped up to fire at him.  He heard a woman scream.  Then he noticed several shadows bobbing along the wall on the left of the chamber, cast up by Leven’s glow stick.  A stone bench ran along that wall, providing cover for enemies to move up behind it.  Case didn’t have a good angle on them.

“Leven, targets, nine-o’clock,” he called out.

Case caught movement to his left as Leven moved into position.  Then he stood up and fired.  A dozen bolts of green light streaked across the chamber in a wide spread.  Leven carried a bowcaster, shorter and snubbier than Slab’s, and its flechette quarrels were deadly at short to medium range.

More screams, accompanied by a heavy grunt.

“I’m hit,” Leven breathed.

“Moving up, on the left,” Rust declared.  “Cover me.”

Case opened up on full-auto, again rolling from side to side and trying not to think about how much he longed for a helmet.

There was only one, maybe two points of fire shooting back at him now.

A few seconds later, there were none.

“Clear,” Rust announced.  Case saw the shadow of his brother stand up from behind a pile of bricks and caught a brief flash of a knife’s blade in the dim light.

Case got to his feet and headed for Leven’s supine form.  He focused his aim on the two Korunnai Leven had shot.  At a glance, both were unmistakably dead.

“How bad?” he asked when he could see that Leven was collecting his bowcaster with one arm and trying to push himself up with the other.

“Chest plate took the round,” he gritted.  “Gonna leave a nice bruise, but that’s all.”

“You sure?” Case asked.  “Let me check, it could’ve gone through.”

Leven waved him away.  “Nah.”  He fiddled at his chest and plucked what looked like an old-fashioned coin from a tattered hole in his shirt.  He tossed it to the side where it landed with a tinny clink.  “It didn’t.  Guess this armor is worth somethin’ after all.”

Case offered his brother a hand and helped him to his feet.

“You’re hit, too,” Leven said and gestured toward the left side of Case’s face.

He reached up and touched just below his ear.  Pieces grit covered in tacky congealing blood stuck to his fingertips.

“Nothing serious,” he said then marched forward to collect one of the glowsticks from the floor.  He picked it up and twisted one end, adjusting the focus of its glowing chemical contents from a broadcast glow into a tighter beam.

Case pointed it into the middle of the room, where a steady shower of water had created a shallow pool.  He angled the beam up to the ceiling.  A portal led straight up.  It must have been some kind of chimney or skylight when the temple had been built, but it had long since collapsed in on itself.  Nothing but water was getting through that jumble of rubble.

Rust was examining the two open doorways at the other end of the chamber.  Case and Leven advanced toward his position.  Along the way, Case swept his beam over the dead Korunnai.  The woman he had shot was lying on her back, face up.  She had a wide mouth full of even teeth, and she looked very young.

“Looks like they were guarding this entrance, sir,” Rust reported.

Case agreed.  Most of the barriers had been placed in front of the doorway on the left.  Again, he hated leaving uncleared rooms at his back, but there was no time.

“Okay commandos, let’s—”

He broke off and spun around to face the doorway they’d entered from.  He’d definitely heard something, and Leven and Rust had as well—they were behind cover, weapons trained on the shadowed portal.

Case held his breath and strained to hear.  There.  Behind the steady splashing of the falling water and sporadic sounds of the battle above was a rhythmic thumping.  Footsteps, but they sounded off.

As they drew nearer, he could feel a heavy thump with each sound.  Case’s finger tightened on his rifle’s trigger.

The footsteps slowed and then stopped altogether.  Then a shape broke through the black doorway and into the dim glow of the chamber.

A head the size of a landspeeder slowly pushed its way in.  The body behind it filled the entirety of the doorway.  The beast’s huge mouth full of pointed teeth opened and a long black tongue slithered out to flick the air.  It seemed to settle the gaze of its two large convex eyes directly at Case.

“Remember that howl just before the battle started?” Rust asked over the sub-vocal comm.  “I think we just found what made it.”

“No,” Leven answered.  “I think it just found us.”

* * *

The pair of clone troopers had dug in behind a large stone slab; a perfect position to lay down covering fire.  The fighting had moved up to the outer ring of the ruins and the surviving Republic forces were on the verge of breaching the perimeter.

One of the troopers poured a steady stream of fire toward the temple and Marten felt the life force of one of his soldiers suddenly grow, shrink, then fade away.  Return fire ceased and a squad of black-armored security force troopers broke from cover and sprinted toward the temple.

From behind the bole of an enormous mifra tree, Marten didn’t have a shot at any of them.  He considered rushing out into the open, then thought better of it when the surviving turbostorm gunship passed overhead on a strafing run.

He closed his eyes and listened.  There was always a way.  Pelekotan connected Marten to the jungle and it was the jungle, not the sentient beings in this battle, that reigned supreme.

Up.

Marten opened his eyes and tilted his head back to peer through the hail of fat water drops that fell from the mifra’s leaves.  The nearest branch was nearly ten meters up.  The bark of the rain-slicked trunk as smooth as glass.

As a boy, Marten had learned to collect fruit and nuts from the treetops by shinnying up the trunks of slender trees.  By the age of his capture, he’d been well on his way to becoming the best climber in his ghôsh.  But he could never have climbed this massive mifra.  A wookiee couldn’t have wrapped its arms and legs around the base of it.

Fortunately, Marten no longer needed to climb.

He lept, and the winds of pelekotan’s energies carried him from branch to branch until he was thirty meters above the jungle floor and looking down on the sheltered clone troopers.

Marten shouldered his grenade launcher and fired.  The drum-fed weapon carried a huge magazine of the micro explosives and he wasn’t sparing with them.  He pumped round after round into the stone slab.  When the dust finally cleared, there was little left but a pile of rubble.

Immediately, one of his recruits rushed to man a vacant E-Web repeater and opened up on the enemy—only to meet oblivion for his efforts.  Antipersonnel lasers rained hell across the second level of the temple.  Another gunship, this time a clone-piloted LAAT/i, drifted by overhead.

It was time to even the odds.

Marten adjusted the aim on his grenade launcher and waited for the gunship to quit raking the temple with its chin guns.  The craft was approximately level with him and had its nose angled slightly down toward the ground.  It finished its run, then turned to circle towards the other side of the ruins.

He angled the barrel of his weapon up a few degrees and exhaled.  It was an impossible shot.  The hull armor on a LAAT/i could withstand his entire complement of grenades and if he missed, he’d do the craft little more damage than he would with his slug pistol.

The grenade left the barrel with a deceptively gentle bloomp and began its arc toward the gunship.  The projectile reached the apex of its trajectory, gravity took hold, and it plummeted inevitably downward.  But gravity wasn’t the only force in play.

Marten’s concentration held and the grenade’s C-shaped arc curved into an elongated S.  He guided the explosive on a course toward his intended target.

The air intake of the gunship’s port engine.

With a final push that took far more energy than simply adding to the grenade’s inertia and shaping its course, Marten held the projectile in place against the hull for the critical microseconds it took to detonate.

A small puff of smoke erupted at the aft of the enemy craft, followed moments later by a trail of dark black smoke.  The LAAT/i lurched violently to port, then began to spiral out of control and out of sight into the jungle below.

With its repulsors engaged and from such a low altitude, the gunship and its crew would almost certainly survive with minimal crash-damage.  But it was effectively out of the fight, and for now, that was what mattered.

Marten scanned the clearing below and found it free of combatants.  The battle had moved into the interior of the ruins.  He considered waiting in the tree for another shot at one of the two remaining gunships, but dismissed the thought.  He was needed below and would have to deal with the enemy aircover as it came.

He had just begun his descent down the mifra tree when a flash in the foliage below caught his eye.  A blue flash.  And with it, Marten could faintly hear a hum that changed notes with the movements of that blue light.

A man burst from the leaves, furiously backpedaling into the clearing.  He was of average height, light-skinned and brown of hair and beard.  Steam poured off his lightsaber where the driving raindrops instantly boiled upon contact with the blade.

Jedi General Tier Colvos.

And after him, bursting forth like a charging tusker, came Kenbol.  The akk guard cleared the distance between him and the Jedi in a single mighty leap.  His vibroshields were a blur of silver.

Colvos held his lightsaber in a two handed grip and turned the spheres of razor-edged metal away.  But the famed Jedi weapon didn’t slice through the shields.  The ultrachrome dissipated the heat and resisted the saber’s cutting power, just as Kenbol and Sumuk had claimed the mysterious metal would.

Even from his far remove up in the mifra tree, Marten could see the dark rage burning in Kenbol’s visage.  He could almost feel the energy behind every blow the akk guard hammered onto the Jedi.

For his part, Colvos fought on calmly.  Always parrying, always giving ground.

But it couldn’t go on indefinitely.  Sooner or later, one of the combatants would begin to tire and would miss a stroke.  Marten kept his grenade launcher’s sights steady on them.  If Kenbol could break through and cut the Jedi down, so much the better.  The man would have proven his worth.  But if he faltered and Colvos killed him, Marten would shoot the Jedi down before he had a chance to take a breath.

Then it happened.  Colvos was backed up against a fallen log.  He cleared it in a tight backwards summersault, but landed poorly against the shattered remains of the tree’s stump on the other side.

Kenbol was on him.  He vaulted over the tree and landed before the Jedi.  He swung a mighty backhand with one massive arm—a blow that would knock the lightsaber spinning from the Jedi’s hands.  The dome of the vibroshield arced toward the glowing blue blade—

And met only air.

The lightsaber winked out of existence for less than the blink of an eye and the force of Kenbol’s missed blow took him off balance.  Before he could bring his other shield to bear, the lightsaber blade reappeared.

The point of the glowing blade emerged left of center near the top of Kenbol’s glistening wet, broadly muscled back.  It was hard to tell from the distance, but Marten guessed the blade had gone straight through the akk guard’s heart.

Now, Marten thought.  It’s my turn.

* * *

Irony was a cruel thing, Sergeant Case thought as he poured another burst of useless slugs into the impenetrable hide of the charging monster.

The planet that grows a fungus that would render my Deece useless…

He dove to the right and narrowly avoided having his head taken off by a swipe from one of the creature’s massive, clawed paws.  The blow tore huge chunks out of the stone column he’d been hiding behind.

…just happens to be the same kriffing planet that grows the kind of creature I really need that weapon for.

Case scrambled back to his feet and sprinted for the nearest pile of rubble.  The beast was right behind him, and he found himself bracing for the sensation of being crushed inside that enormous, tooth-filled mouth.

The dull thuds of more slugs peppering the creature earned them an irritated snarl.  Case ducked behind the pile of crumbled stonework and peaked out from the other side to see the beast turn towards the source of its newest attacker.

A flash of brilliant green light strobed the chamber as a scattered pattern of energy quarrels struck the creature across its right flank and neck.  The beast howled—a sound loud enough to leave Case’s ears ringing long after the echoes travelled throughout the tunnels.  But aside from a few faint scorch marks, Leven’s bowcaster didn’t seem to do the creature any more damage than the slug rifles.

“Won’t anything take this dog down?” Leven growled over their team comm.

“Wolf,” Rust replied, then popped out from behind a stone column to fire more distracting slugs into the creature.  “It’s an akk wolf.”

Case followed suit, targeting the akk’s hind quarters as it began lumbering towards Rust.  It whipped around in a one-eighty so violently that its huge, flat tail struck one of the partially submerged stone benches in the pool.  A spray of water and crushed stone cascaded across the chamber.

In the dim light their three glowsticks continued to emit, Case could see that Rust was correct.  The yellow glow made it difficult to tell, but the beast’s plated scales were more purplish than the ruddy red he remembered of the akk dog holos he’d studied in their briefing files.  It was also taller, over two meters high at the shoulder, with a lankier build and a longer, narrower muzzle to match.  Had it not been for its curiously bug-like convex eyes and its sheer size, it wouldn’t have stood out from a common lizard on any of a myriad other worlds throughout the galaxy.

“Alright, professor.  Wolf then,” Leven conceded.  “Do you remember whether the wolves are any easier to kill than the pups?”

“Not with what we’re packing.  Unless we’re ready to reconsider about our grenades, sir?”

It was a rhetorical question, Case knew, but he answered anyway.  “Not if we want to get the hostages, or ourselves out of here alive.”

The akk wolf was heading for his pile of rubble again and Case prepared to make another break for it.  The temptation to use one of their assortment of concussion grenades or thermal detonators was indeed growing, but Case knew a blast from either was more likely to bring the crumbling ruins down on their heads than to kill the animal.

Another spread of bowcaster quarrels turned the beast before Case had to run.  It was time to try something else.  They’d be out of ammo soon—if the wolf didn’t manage to pick them off before that—and then they’d be down to their ryyk blades.

He looked around the chamber, trying to come up with something they could use to disable or trap the creature.  If they tried to fall back via the tunnel they’d come in from, the wolf would certainly catch them.  And they couldn’t let it follow them to the hostages.

Case’s eyes settled on the third doorway—the one they had guessed didn’t lead to the hostages—and knew what he had to do.

The akk wolf had apparently wised up to their game of cat and mouse and had moved to one of the far walls.  It was stalking directly for Leven now, ignoring Rust’s salvo of slug rounds.

Now or never, Case thought.

He snatched up the nearest glowstick and rushed toward the center of the chamber, firing at the akk with one hand and waving the light about with the other.  “Come on, you barve!” he yelled at it.

The akk wolf stopped and swiveled its head.  It seemed to sense something was amiss, but couldn’t still its animal instincts to turn toward a rushing attacker.

“Sir?  Are you crazy?” Rust asked.

Case ignored the question.  He stopped at the edge of the pool, directly across from the akk.  The creature was partly obscured through the cascade of falling rainwater.

“When it comes after me,” he said evenly into the comm.  “You two will head straight for the hostages.”

“Sir!” Leven started, but Case cut him off.

“That’s an order, Private.”  The akk had its mouth slightly open and was flicking he air with its tongue.  “Secure the hostages.”

Case fired another burst through the water into the akk wolf’s face.  It snapped its mouth shut and coiled into a crouch, ready to pounce.

“You read me, commandos?” Case yelled out loud.

“Yes, sir!” Rust and Leven snapped back.

Case fired one last burst and bolted.  He didn’t need to look back to know the akk had taken the bait.  The thunder of paws and a splash big enough to shower his back was answer enough.  If he’d needed any extra motivation to put everything he had into the mad dash for the tunnel mouth, that was it.

His slug rifle bounced wildly on its sling and the glowstick illuminated the dark threshold in flashes as he pumped his arms.  As he cleared the entrance, a distant part of his mind noticed that the mouth to this tunnel was smaller than the other two.  If he’d misgauged the size and the wolf wouldn’t fit…

A solid slam behind him—far too close for comfort—told him he was partially right, but then the sound of scrambling claws resumed and Case didn’t slow.

This tunnel winded left, then right, sloping ever downward.  There were bits of masonry littering the floor and the glowstick provided just enough light to guide Case’s feet.  The thundering paws were closer now and he could feel puffs of hot breath on his back through his soaked shirt.

Just ahead, a part of the wall had collapsed, blocking the left half of the tunnel and the bottom meter and a half of the right.  There was no time to think.  Case vaulted over the rubble.  His rifle’s sling slipped down his arm and caught on the rough edge of broken mortar.  It jerked against him and he let it go without a moment’s hesitation.

Case’s feet hit ground and he kept running.  Another crash came a fraction of a second later with enough force to nearly take him off his feet.  This time, he did turn his head to look back and saw the akk wolf, half in and half out of the opening.  It dug its clawed feet into the tunnel floor and bellowed.  The crumbling masonry began to give way and he ran on.

The tunnel was getting narrower, he noticed, and to his right, he saw a dark opening.  As he ran by, he turned his glowstick toward it and saw that it led into a small room.  Sleeping quarters?  Storage?  A jail cell?  He was no archaeologist, and the only thing that really mattered about the room was that it was of no use to him.

To his left his saw another room, followed by several more doorways.  Some were bigger and one led to another door at the far end.  Low windows opened from the longer room into the tunnel.

Case was moving too fast to catch that door, and he was as winded as he’d been in his life.  He decided to duck into the next big room he came to.

Maybe I can trap the bastard inside when it comes after me.  Then I slip out of one of the windows—

But there weren’t any more rooms.  All there was was a dead end.  The tunnel continued to taper for another few meters into a rounded point.  There was nowhere to go.  Case turned back, hoping to get back to the last room he’d passed.

Too late.  The akk wolf rounded the last curving bend.  It was crouched low, but still its back and shoulders scraped the ceiling and sides of the tunnel.

Case drew his slug pistol from his hip and began backing away.  The akk spotted him, bared its fangs and clawed its way forward.  It growled, a low rumble that reverberated down the tunnel.

Case angled the beam of the glowstick into the beast’s face and took aim.  The pistol packed even less punch than his discarded rifle, but it was all he had.  He settled on one of its ovular, black eyes and emptied the clip.

The rounds sparked off of the lidless eye’s armored shell but other than a slight shift in pitch of the akk’s growl, the beast paid them no mind.  Case reached for another clip to reload.  His head bumped against the ceiling.  End of the line.

The akk wolf was straining to wedge itself deep enough into the tunnel to reach him now.  It dug its diamond-hard claws into the floor and pulled itself forward.  The façades of brickwork along the final room crumbled and fell away as it shouldered its way past them.  Its head was nearly to the end of the long window of that room.

There was no way past it.  Case and the akk were only meters apart.  He couldn’t tell if it would get completely stuck before its long, pointed snout was close enough to start nibbling at him.  He didn’t care.

Case quit fumbling in his pouch for another clip of pistol slugs.  He reached instead to his belt and unclipped a thermal detonator.

“You want me,” he said out loud to the akk wolf, resting his thumb on the detonator’s activation stud.  “Well, come get me.”

The akk was whining, an ear piercing, shrill noise, as it frantically inched its way forward.

“Open wide.”  So I can jam this det down your kriffing throat.

The akk wolf’s armored body should contain the blast enough soften the concussion, he figured.  This far down the tunnel, the ruins would be safe.  Case would die, of course, but then that was a given anyway.

A fiery explosion inside the belly of a giant lizard.  Not exactly how I thought I’d cash out.

But it would give Rust and Leven a clear window to extract the hostages.  Totten Squad’s perfect record of complete missions would hold.

All up to you, boys.

Case looked the beast in its lidless, lifeless eyes.  It was only gaining a centimeter or two with each pull.

He was tired of waiting.  “Open up!” he yelled.

The akk opened its mouth to roar back at him and Case armed the detonator.  He surged forward, arm outstretched.

Then one of the akk wolf’s eyes suddenly seemed to collapse in on itself.  Case stopped in mid step and thought he noticed something protruding from that shattered hole.

A brilliant flash washed out his vision and a concussive bang knocked him onto his back.

For several long moments, Case knew nothing other than a world of white light and steady ringing.  Slowly, his vision cleared and he attempted to lift his head.  His glow stick still lay somewhere near his feet, but the air around it was nothing but swirling dust.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position and realized his right hand still clutched the thermal detonator in a death grip.  He’d been prepared to hold onto the sphere until the final moment.  A lucky thing, that.  He switched the explosive back into lock mode.

But if the det didn’t explode, what in the hell did?

A second point of glowing light caught his eye somewhere further to the right.  He could just see through the dust now to glimpse what was left of the wolf.  Its body still filled the tunnel, but its head was… a mess.

There was movement along with the second source of light.  He reached to his hip for the slug pistol.  Gone.  He must have dropped it.  He unsheathed his ryyk blade.

Then a weapon emerged through a gap in the final section of the room’s window.  Not a rifle.  It looked like…

A face that looked exactly like his own followed the weapon through the gap.  Only this face wore a set of completely non-regulation sideburns and a thick, black mustache.

“Sir?” Slab’s mouth seemed to say.  Case still couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears.

Case shook his head and cupped his hand against his ear, miming deafness.

Slab trained his bowcaster on the remains of the akk wolf, then, seeming satisfied it was no longer a threat, wormed his way through the window.  He crouched down next to Case.

“Sir, are you okay?” he mouthed.

Case wasn’t sure how to answer that question.  He looked himself over noted the thick layer of dust that covered him from head to toe.

“Your left ear’s bleeding,” Slab mouthed.  “Follow my light.”

Case obeyed, but he didn’t think it was a head injury.  “Eardrum’s blown.” He said out loud, but could only barely hear himself.  The portak amber that he had plugged his right ear with to protect the bead comm had probably saved his other eardrum.  He clicked his teeth in a memorized sequence to turn the volume all the way up.

“Say something,” he told Slab.

“You look terrible, sir,” Slab said, and Case could hear a tiny voice in his right ear.  “And sorry about the explosive round.  I was hoping the blast wouldn’t take you out, too.  But I didn’t know.  If it had—”

“Moot point.”  Case said.  “What are you doing here, soldier?  You’re supposed to be guarding the back door.”

The sniper almost smiled.  “I was.  And that’s why I saw that,” he gestured behind himself, “thing run into the ruins.  I tried to warn you, but the comms were out.  Figured you could use some backup.  Would you have preferred I stayed put?”  Now Slab did lift one corner of his mustached mouth.

Case held out his hand for help up.  “No one wants to obey orders today.”

Slab stood back to look Case over again.  “You fit, sir?”

Case nodded and sheathed his ryyk blade.  “Fit, but unarmed.”  He looked around for his discarded pistol, but couldn’t see a thing under all of the dust and debris.  “I dropped my rifle in the tunnel.  Let’s find it and go after Leven and Rust.”

“No need, sir.  My comm cleared when I got to that big room with the pool.  They told me which way you’d led the akk off.”

Case growled.  “And you came after me instead of helping them rescue the hostages?  Wrong call, Private.”

Slab smiled again.  “Relax, Sarge.  There was only one Korun guarding the hostages.  The Intel agents are secured and all accounted for.  Rust is taking them to the extraction point now and Leven is en route to RV with us here.”

Case blinked, as unprepared for such welcome news as he was to still be alive.  “Well,” he said slowly.  “How about that.”

Chapter Text

The grenades hadn’t worked, but then, Marten hadn’t fully expected them to.  He’d squeezed the trigger of his launcher as fast as the drum could cycle and fired round after round at the Jedi, but each had veered away less than halfway along its course to detonate harmlessly in the jungle.  Marten’s attempts to do as he’d done when he took out the clone gunship, to hold them on target with pelekotan’s grip, had proved insufficient against Colvos’s ability to simply slap them away.

Marten discarded the grenade launcher the moment he fired the last round, letting it tumble through the branches toward the forest floor.  Then he hopped off his branch to follow it down.  With one hand and the soles of both boots planted firmly against the bark of the mifra’s trunk, he found millions of tenuous chemical bonds that attracted his body to the tree.  His descent slowed, and Marten rode, rather than fell, down the massive tree.

Back below the canopy, Marten lost sight of the Jedi.  But he could feel him again, burning brightly.  The old commando drew his long vibroblade in one hand and his slug pistol in the other and strode through the remaining foliage into the clearing.

Tier Colvos hadn’t moved from the spot where he’d killed Kenbol, near the edge of the clearing with the ruins at his back.  His lightsaber was still ignited but held loosely at his side.  He spread his hands.  “Surrender, Marten,” he said.

It was the last thing on Marten Keelo’s mind.  He raced across the clearing, his feet nimbly avoiding the tangle of grasses, vines and fallen trees.  Each bound brought him closer to Colvos, who simply shifted his footing, brought his energy blade up into a two-handed guard and held his ground.

Close enough, Marten calculated when they were no more than ten meters apart.  He fired his slug pistol.

Colvos moved his lightsaber in a blur, incinerating each metal bullet against his blade, batting them away just as he would do to blaster bolts.  But unlike particle beams or plasma rounds, the slugs posed no threat to Marten.  They kept the Jedi’s blade busy, and that was all he needed them to do.

He kept firing and still Covlos held his ground.  Now within striking distance, Marten lunged.  He stabbed his long blade at a flat angle, aiming for the Jedi’s left arm.

Marten knew how Colvos would react before the man moved, so he didn’t bother watching his lightsaber or his hands.  He watched his enemy’s eyes.  Tier Colvos might not have had Count Dooku or Mace Windu’s reputation as a swordsman, but Marten knew he was no slouch.  He’d have known that even if he hadn’t seen him cut down Kenbol.  The Jedi’s rain-soaked face remained blank, impassive.  He too, anticipated his opponent’s moves, and his gaze never shifted.

Marten perceived the blue blade shift to intercept his simple vibroblade.  To sheer the weapon in half.

So he let it.

Even as the lightsaber burned effortlessly through the humming durasteel, Marten dropped his empty slugthrower and with a flick, replaced it with his hidden vibroshiv.

Now the Jedi’s eyes did change, growing wide in surprise.  Pelekotan moved Marten’s aging body faster than he could have ever managed as a young man.  His tiny blade slipped past and inside of Colvos’s guard in a perfect, delicate move that would open the man’s jugular.

But again, the Jedi Knight proved to be no easy prey.  An invisible wall pushed against Marten’s chest and slowed his hand.  His blade missed the curved line beneath the warrior’s bearded jaw and instead merely grazed his right shoulder.

Marten pushed against the barrier and slammed his body against the Jedi’s, unwilling to let Colvos put distance between them.  He rolled around to his enemy’s back, his left hand a blur.  Tier Colvos wasn’t garbed in the traditional Jedi robes, and instead wore camo patterned military fatigues.  The tighter fitting clothing made it easier for Marten to find a bit of flesh with each flick of his wrist.  By the time the Jedi finally managed to land an elbow in Marten’s stomach and spring away, there were at least half a dozen red stains seeping steadily down his sodden uniform.

Colvos, now looking far less serene than he had a few moments ago, returned to his guarded stance and began circling towards Marten’s left.

Marten matched his pace and circled away, his small vibroshiv held in a knife-fighter’s stance.  He didn’t like his position.  Despite the wounds he’d inflicted on the Jedi, Colvos now had the upper hand.  His lightsaber gave him a meter of reach and Marten didn’t have anything that could stop the blade.

Or did he?

Kenbol’s body still lay face down only meter’s away.  And on each forearm, pinging tinnily in the driving rain, he wore a vibroshield.

Tier Colvos seemed to make the connection just after Marten did.  The Jedi threw out a hand to knock the teardrop of shining metal off course as Marten brought it hurtling through the air toward him.  But this time he was too late and Marten reached into the convex dome to grab the weapon’s handle and bring it squealing into life.

Marten still remained unsure about his position.  The vibroshield was unfamiliar in his hands.  He knew it would hold up to the lightsaber, but his taller opponent still had reach.  And he wouldn’t fall for the same trick again.

But it was as good as he could hope for in this battle and it was time to seize the initiative.  He darted forward, hoping to again slip inside of the Jedi’s guard.

Then Colvos did the last thing Marten expected him to do.  He ran.

* * *

When it rains, it pours.

That’s what Sergeant Carr would mutter back on Kamino, wasn’t it? Case recalled as his team lead the hostages to the tunnel’s exit.

Well, it’s pouring now.

The rain had been heavy when Totten had made their descent down the hillside into the ruins, but now the view through the portal was completely obscured by a white curtain of falling water.  A cyclonic wail of gusting wind howled down the tunnel, obscuring any noises of the battle.

“I repeat, we have the hostages.  Requesting airlift at extraction point besh,” Leven was yelling into the comm, not even attempting to use the sub-vocal pickup.  Case’s hearing was steadily improving in his left ear, but between the endless ringing and the wind, he could barely hear the pilot respond.

“Negative, Totten,” the familiar voice of a clone pilot replied.  “Wind shear has gotten too strong around those buildings.  We’re set down half a klick south southeast of your position.  You’re going to have to hoof it.  And you’d better do it fast.  Air control just reported a major upwelling on the western coast.  They’re predicting gas clouds at fatal levels inbound within the half hour.”

“So move it, vat-rats,” came a second voice with a Balawai accent.

Case signaled the team to halt at the tunnel’s entrance.  Even a meter shy of the threshold, mist blew into his face, quickly turning the layer of dust, grit and blood that coated him from head to toe into a tacky paste.

“How many birds do we have left, pilot?” Case asked.

“Just me and one of your clone crates,” the Balawai answered before the clone pilot could.

Case exchanged looks with his brothers, knowing they were all thinking the same thing.  An LAAT/i could squeeze thirty bodies in a pinch, and a turbostorm could take a few more than that.  Depending on how bad casualties had been for the assault team, and how many of Keelo’s recruits were coming back as prisoners, they wouldn’t all be going home on the first run.

But Totten Squad’s mission priorities were clear:  the recovered hostages came first.  Get them to safety and then they could assist General Colvos with capturing Keelo.

Case turned back to the five Intel agents.  Three women, a man and an Ishi Tib were huddled against opposite sides of the tunnel.  They were grubby, gaunt, and looked a bit underfed, but were otherwise unharmed.

“The gunship can’t come to us, so we’re going to escort you to it,” Case said, hoping he was speaking loudly enough to be heard over the wind, but unsure if he was quite shouting.  “Stay together and follow Ninety-Six,” Case pointed at Rust.  “The rest of us will box you in.”

“I would prefer it if we were armed, soldier.  We’re all combat trained,” the Ishi Tib clicked through its beak.  Case recalled from the briefing files that the alien’s name was Feeak Brundor, but couldn’t remember whether it was male or female.  A sign of how tired he was.

“And I would prefer it if we didn’t have to run you across five hundred meters of hostile ground,” Case said steadily, locking his gaze with Feeak’s eyestalks.  He’d managed to recover his dropped slug rifle after Slab has saved him from the akk wolf, but it was all he had left and he sure as hell wasn’t going back down into the central chamber to collect weapons from the dead Korunnai.  “Just keep your heads down and keep moving.”

Case turned back to his brothers and spoke onto their private team comm.  “Any word from the general?” he asked.  They’d been out of contact with Colvos since before dawn and had just gotten comms back near the tunnel’s surface.  Case had directed Slab to keep trying to reach him.

Slab nodded.  “Just his confirmation tones and some heavy breathing.  Sounds like he’s in it deep at the moment.”

“Alright, then.  Let’s make this quick,” Case said subvocally, then cleared his throat.  “Everyone ready?” he asked the Intel agents out loud.

The man, women, and Ishi Tib all nodded.  “Lead the way,” a short-haired woman with very large eyes said through a forced smile.

Case signaled Rust to lead them out and counted down.  “Three, two, one, go go go!”

They headed out into the storm, following Rust down a level of crumbling stairs into the heart of the sprawling ruins.  Buildings—or temples or whatever they had been centuries before—towered on either side of the group.  Case swept the narrow alley with his rifle, scanning for targets.  Looking up through the pelting raindrops, he saw the ruins were as much plant as stone.  Thick matts of vines snaked along the walls, blossoming with flowers of red, purple, yellow and orange.  Petals from across the visible spectrum were torn from their receptacles by the wind and carried off, tumbling into the maelstrom.  Case returned his gaze to ground level, watching his step amongst the twisted roots and fallen masonry.

He could hear blaster and slug fire to the west now, but couldn’t see any combatants when they breached the perimeter of the ruins and dashed into the grassy clearing.  The wind lapsed for a few moments, then picked up again in a huge gust.  The human male, a tall, slender man with ginger hair, was nearly blown off his feet when his dirty robes caught the air like a sail.  Leven, bringing up the rear of their formation, caught the man’s arm, righted him and they continued on.

Visibility was cut down severely by the heavy rain, and Case wished once more for his helmet with its built in compass and navigating waypoints.  But Rust’s sense of direction was as true as when the commandos of Totten Squad were little boys training in the equally wet weather of Kamino.  The welcome shape of their waiting gunship appeared through the rain like a beacon.

“Friendlies, approaching on your two o’clock,” Rust called out.

“Climb aboard, Totten,” replied a clone’s voice.

The Intel agents threw themselves into the gunship through the open bay door.  They sprawled out onto the deck, looking like drowned vrelts.

Case leaned into the bay, relishing the brief respite from the pelting rain drops.  “Keep your heads down,” he advised.  “You’ll be lifting off shortly.”

“Why not now?” panted the ginger haired man.

“Because you’re not the only ones who need extraction.  You’re safe.  Now just hang tight.”

Leven climbed aboard and lifted the restraining bar on the gunship’s weapons rack.  He scooped up an armful of DC-15c blasters and brought them back out.

Case gladly accepted the carbine and reslung his slug rifle.  The blaster wasn’t his commando-issue DC-17m, but he’d take it over the unreliable ballistic gun any day.  He tucked a few spare power packs into his ammo pouch and checked his weapon’s charge.  Having a Republic-issued, BlasTech-manufactured weapon in his hands again made him feel almost as whole as a week’s R&R and his suit of Katarn armor would have.

He surveyed his squad and saw that same feeling mirrored on the bearing of his brothers.  Each man was listening the sporadic reports of weapon’s fire from the battle, still raging on less than a klick away.  Case gave the signal to move out.

“Keep the speeder running, will you?” Leven hollered up to the pilots before hopping down from the gunship.

“Wait!” the Ishi Tiib called as Totten began trooping off into the storm.  “You can’t just leave us.  Where are you going?”

“To finish our mission,” Case said aloud without bothering to turn his head back.  His hearing was still dominated by steady ringing and the wind was loud enough that he wasn’t sure the Intel agents could have heard him.  He didn’t care.

* * *

Marten Keelo was being played, and he knew it.

At the moment, there wasn’t much he could do about it, either.  The Jedi continued to race ahead of him, back into the ruins, and it was all Marten could do to struggle to keep up.  The strength of the storm had grown so fierce that he could no longer see Colvos’s fleeing back through the pouring rain.

But he could feel him.  And he knew exactly what his enemy had in mind.

Marten gritted his teeth and swallowed his failure.  He’d missed his chance to kill the Jedi when he had the man on his own.  Now, with Kenbol and the akk wolf dead, along with most of his recruits, he wasn’t sure he’d get another one.  The Republic forces had taken heavy casualties as well, but if Colvos reached the clones and Balawai, their combined might would have him outmatched.

His only hope was to maneuver Colvos into the path of either Sumuk or Jacuna Squad.  Marten had felt his wolf’s death but both the final akk guard and his clone commandos still lived.  Either should be enough to help him overcome the Jedi and cut him down.  But first he needed to catch him.

A crack above Marten—not thunder this time—caught his attention.  Raindrops stung his eyes as he scanned the top of the nearest buildings and he made out the dark outline of a small human aiming a long-barreled slug rifle.  Dun, Marten thought.  He was one of the youngest in his group of recruits and his sniper rifle was nearly as big as the boy, but he was an excellent shot and always followed orders.

Marten reached out to the young soldier through pelekotan.  {Below you, Dun.  Forty-six degrees to your left.  The enemy leader.  Bring him down.}.

For a moment, Marten thought Dun hadn’t felt his order, that he was too focused on his original targets, but then the young man jerked and moved to the far edge of his niche.  He angled his rifle down, adjusting his aim to acquire the rapidly moving target.

That’s it, Marten thought, preparing himself to seize any opportunity Dun’s shot might provide.  He focused through the sheets of rain on his quarry.

Blue light strobed milliseconds before Marten heard the report of Dun’s rifle.  A meter of energy blade traced an arc through the air as the Jedi slapped the slug out of the air.  Then Colvos gestured with his free hand and Marten heard Dun scream.  Crumbling stones came loose below the young soldier’s feet and he toppled from the ledge to the ground dozens of meters below.

Colvos still ran on, but he had slowed and Marten surged forward, intent on closing as much distance as he could.  The Jedi’s lightsaber remained on, bobbing as he ran.  Then his free hand was no longer empty and he twisted halfway around to aim a slug pistol back behind him.

Marten’s fist closed around the vibroshield’s activation trigger and he brought the sphere of metal up before him to intercept the bullets in a series of sparking deflections.

Turning to fire had cost the Jedi speed.  Marten knew this was his chance.  He surged forward, counting shots as he blocked them.

Taim and Bak Model K.  Standard clip holds eighteen rounds.  Fifteen, sixteen.

Colvos was backpedaling now.

Seventeen.

He turned and took careful aim.

Eighteen.

Marten slapped the final round aside and sprinted on.  They were separated by only a few meters now.  Colvos appeared to hesitate, caught between closing down his lightsaber to reload and switching fully to the ‘saber.  On the battlefield, hesitation meant death.

Marten prepared to swing the vibroshield with all of his momentum and every drop of pelekotan’s power that he could muster.

Then it hit him.

In mid-step and fully committed, Marten tried to twist out of the way, to bring his shield to bear, but he wasn’t fast enough and he’d been too focused on his enemy.

A piece of broken stonework hurtled through the air and caught him low on his right side, just above his hip.  A sharp, cracking pain to one of his floating ribs lanced into him.  He tripped and landed on the ground hard.  Marten felt the air whoosh out of his lungs.

Still, he managed to roll away from where he thought Colvos should have been and held his shield up.  He got to one knee, struggling for breath, eyes darting to place his opponent.

Over the sound of splashing rain and howling wind, Marten heard the familiar metal-on-metal slick of a clip sliding into the chamber.  Tier Colvos leveled his slug thrower and reignited his lightsaber.  Around him, at least a dozen more pieces of the crumbling ruins rose into the air, wobbling slightly and buffeted this way and that by the wind.

The Jedi angled the tip of his energy blade at Marten.  “Surrender,” he said.

                                                                                                   * * *

“Totten Squad to all Republic forces,” Case rumbled into his comm.  “We’re en route to offer support.  Please advise on point of contact.”

The commandos picked their way through the maze-like ruins, following their ears to the reports of blaster and slug fire.

“Galaar Actual to Totten,” a clone’s voice replied, “Glad to have you.  We—”

His following words were swallowed in a roll of thunder that came so close after a lightning flash that Case was almost surprised he hadn’t just been struck.  The thunder rumbled on long enough that Case found his patience with the weather had completely run out.

“No copy on that, Galaar.  Please repeat,” he snapped when he could hear again.

“I said we could use the help,” the clone replied.  “There’s still one of those huge dikut’e with the shields cutting the security troops down at the western perimeter.  We’re trying to assist, but we’re pinned down by sniper fire.  Got multiple hostiles dug in on the tallest building in the north-northwestern sector.  Just slug rifles, but they’re shabla good.  I’ve lost three of my squad to shots in armor gaps.  So take your pick.”

“Copy that,” Case confirmed.  “Will contact again when we’re in position.  Totten out.”  Case already knew where he’d be going, but wasn’t going to advertise it on the channel, secure or not.

Case signaled his team into the lee of a huge root that sprouted out of a crumbling wall and the commandos exchanged glances.

“I just hate choices,” Rust said off-comm.

“You heard him,” said Leven.  “Those snipers aren’t Korunnai.”

Slab didn’t say a word and simply swapped out the energy quarrel on the bowcaster he’d elected to keep with an explosive bolt.

“That’s right.  Move out, Totten,” Case ordered

Removing the snipers was a tactical priority.  That’s what ten years of intense training and the past three of endless war confirmed in his mind.  The fact that it was also personal didn’t have anything to do with his team’s unanimous decision.

Nothing at all.

* * *

Marten Keelo ducked, rolled and flicked his shield to block another slug round.  The hypersonic bullet skipped off the ultrachrome disk with little more kinetic energy transferred than a flick from a fingernail.

That wasn’t the case for the melon-sized chunk of stone that followed.  The missile shattered against his shield with a hollow clang and Marten felt the impact like an electric jolt all the way up his arm.

Marten scanned his surroundings, looking for anything he could use to turn the tables on his opponent.

For his part, the Jedi remained rooted in place, plucking up bits of the limitless supply of crumbling stonework to hurl and taking careful shots with his pistol.  The driving rain had washed the blood-stains out of his fatigues and he didn’t look to be bleeding from any of the numerous places Marten had cut and stabbed him.  Dooku had warned him that Jedi were difficult to kill.

His lightsaber remained on, Marten noted.  He still wasn’t sure he could beat the Republic general blade to blade, but Colvos seemed perfectly content to not find out.

Marten considered the thought of trying to match the Jedi at his own game but knew his mastery at harnessing pelekotan was nowhere near good enough to achieve that level of telekinesis.

The old Korun mercenary paced sideways, wincing at the sharp pain to his lower ribs.  Definitely cracked, possibly broken, he noted.  He noticed it more now that his adrenaline was ebbing.  Colvos tracked his pistol along with him and lifted two more large chunks of broken masonry off the ground.

“You’re beaten, Captain Keelo.  You know that.  But it’s your choice how this ends.  You can still save the rest of your soldiers if you surrender now.”

Marten gauged the distance between them.  The Jedi stood at the center of what had once been a three-way intersection, but a building had toppled and blocked off the avenue to the left.

He closed his eyes and listened.  The wind blew so hard from the east now that it carried away any sounds from the battle.  But he could sense the reverberations of small explosions through the soles of his boots.  Directly to the west, behind him.  And then he picked up the trail of Sumuk’s predatory passage in that direction.

Marten opened his eyes and glanced behind him.  There was a wall about four meters high that ran right up to the collapsed building.  He turned back to Colvos and noted the calm in the other man’s entire being.  The Jedi was right.  He had Marten beaten.  It was time to change tactics.

“You have already delivered your terms, General.  And you have already heard my answer.  It hasn’t changed.”

Marten brought his arm back and hurled the vibroshield with everything he had.  He added the might of the jungle to its trajectory, straight at the Jedi’s sternum.  Whether Colvos chose to block, dodge or deflect the shield with the Force, Marten didn’t wait to find out.

He sprang up and back, twisting in the air to clear the wall and hit the ground running on the other side.

Only he never did.

At what should have been the top of his calculated arc, gravity never took hold.  It felt at first as if he had been swept up in a great gust of the howling winds, but even the force of this storm wasn’t that strong.  He was being hurtled through the air at some speed, he could tell, and he realized that he had miscalculated.

That was his last thought before his back crashed into something very hard.

When his eyes opened again, everything was upside down.  His face was half submerged in a puddle and his back rested against the base of a huge, gray stone.

Disoriented or not, his first instinct was to his weapon and when his left hand closed on thin air, he realized he’d lost his vibroshiv.  He had another combat knife on his belt, but when he tried to reach for it with his right hand, he found his arm wasn’t responding.

He pushed against the stone with his legs and toppled forward to splash unceremoniously into the puddle.  Marten reached again for his sheathed vibroblade only to find his world filled by brilliant, buzzing blue light and the sharp tang of ozone.

Colvos looked down at him, his wet face bathed in blue.  “This is your last chance, Marten,” he growled, his deep voice strained.  “Put an end to this slaughter now.”

Marten looked past the energy blade and through a momentary lull in the force of the rain to muzzle flashes blinking sporadically from near the top of one of the tall, twisting spires.  Then an explosion blew out from that point, the flashes ceased and the familiar life force of a boy Marten had known for a decade winked out of existence.

Pirrou, Marten though.  But no, that had been his little brother’s name.  He too had died on this planet, many, many years ago.

There was a shift in what remained of the battle then, that the fallen Korun mercenary could feel more than he could track with his eyes or ears.  The intensity of blaster fire increased, another familiar life force flared and popped and Sumuk’s impression through pelekotan changed from a vine cat stalking grasser calves to one being chased off by a pack of akk dog shepherds.

We’re beaten, Marten accepted, and knew that even turning the tables on Colvos couldn’t change that now.  The cold ground sucked heat from his body and what remained of his strength was leaching away with it.  It was as if the ruins were reclaiming him.  They had once saved his life, let him escape the jungle’s justice, but he had failed to honor that debt.  Perhaps it was fate that he die here now.

The lightsaber was only centimeters from his chest and he could read Colvos’s commitment in the Jedi’s face.  The glacial calm that had carried him through their fight was gone.  All Marten had to do was make a move and it would be over.  The fingers of his good hand twitched, ready to reach for his knife.

“Don’t,” Colvos pleaded through gritted teeth.

Marten’s eyes never left the lightsaber.  He focused on the blade, and when it split in two, he thought at first he had simply crossed his eyes.  Then the two bars seemed to shrink and fatten, slithering back to rest on Colvos’s shoulders.  Marten blinked and tried to clear his vision but when he refocused, the Jedi’s grizzled, bearded face had been replaced by hers.

Shaala Doneeta shook her head, shaking her lekku with their accusing tattooed eyes from side to side.  “I told you, Marten,” she said.  “You will not die here.”

She smiled down at him, her soft, blue face one he had come to adore and loathe in equal measure.

“You hold no claim on my fate,” he said back.

“I lay claim on nothing, old friend.  Your fate is, and has always been, yours.  But I have seen it.  More than any of the myriad visions I have born witness to, your path has guided my own.  And they will soon be as one.  Today’s defeat is the final step towards tomorrow’s victory.  Go forth and claim your destiny.”

“Why should I listen to you?” he hissed.  “Look where your guiding words have led me!”

She ignored him.  “One final step, Marten…”

“Marten!”

She was gone, her lovely face replaced again by that of Tier Colvos.

“Look around, you fool!” he shouted.  The Jedi’s face was dark with helpless anger.  “Your men are dying!  Order their surrender while there are still some left to save.”

Marten did look around.  He saw Sumuk leap into the courtyard, followed by a hail of blaster bolts.  He spun like a gyrocopter, scattering plasma until he was hit by a second volley from a new direction.  A single bolt caught him just above the teardrop point of his left vibroshield.  The giant man screamed and fell.  White armored clones and black armored security troops rushed in, rifles trained.

Still more activity caught his attention as six identical men climbed through a broken section in the crumbling, low wall.  Two had their wrists bound behind them while the other four herded them along at blaster point.

Colvos took an audible breath and seemed to compose himself.  “It’s over.  You must see that.”

D’uan and Teen marched defiantly, but neither of his surviving commandos looked him in the eye.  Marten turned back to Sumuk, whose gaze was fixed on him.  The akk guard was down on his knees, supported by his good arm while the other hung limply.  He was surrounded by at least a dozen Republic soldiers but Marten could see in his eyes that he wasn’t done fighting.

He shook his head at the other man.  One of the Balawai soldiers took a step forward with a stun baton held in one hand and a pair of binders in the other.  Sumuk smiled.

“Stand down!” Marten yelled, but it was too late.

Sumuk moved faster than even Marten’s eyes could follow, spinning on the ground and slicing his vibroshield in a flat arc that severed the soldier’s legs just below the knee.

The surrounding clones and security troops opened fire.

Colvos yelled to cease fire, and the clones obeyed immediately, but the Balawai did not.  They didn’t stop firing until a clone lieutenant grabbed their commander’s shoulder and made the order clear.

By then it was much, much too late.

Colvos closed his eyes and for the first time, the man looked about ready to collapse.  He’d lost a lot of blood, but Marten could feel that it wasn’t fatigue that had broken him.

Marten Keelo understood.

“General,” he said.  “I surrender.”