Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Version two! Twice the pride, double the fall! Oh wait...

Chapter Text

The skies above were in turmoil. They roiled, perpetual and bruised, thunderclouds flashing like blaster fire as if the planet itself could not know peace. It had been years—years—since the Republic was supposed to have won here. Since the Emperor had declared order, victory, and control, even. But the fire had never stopped.

Only chaos reigned.

Han Solo huddled in the mire, half-submerged in a shallow trench that had been fought over so many times it no longer belonged to either side. Ash fell in lazy spirals from the sky, mingling with the ever-present chemical mist that clung to the ground like a shroud. The stench of carbon scoring and rotting metal never left. It clung to his uniform, to his lungs. He could feel it in his teeth.

Overhead, an HMP gunship banked hard through the blackened clouds, trailing fire and smoke. The thing wheeled like a dying bird before disappearing behind the droid shield wall. Han sighed, watching it vanish.

"Ghoul won't stay down long," he muttered.

"Ghoul?"

Han tilted his head back to see the speaker. Kess, a scarred prisoner-turned-soldier from a penal battalion out of Ord Mantell. One of the few who'd survived more than two pushes.

He had survived long enough to get a response.

"Been shot down four times in three months. Every time, the clankers drag it back, weld it together, and it's up in the air a day later. That's the name some Coruscanti gave it. It stuck."

Kess nodded, offering no smile. No one smiled on Umbara.

"Five creds says it takes out a TIE before sundown," Han said.

A grunt was the only reply.

The rally horns began to blare. Low. Dull. Distant. Like an old god snoring.

Another push.

Han leaned on the edge of the trench, eyes flicking across the activity. Repair droids wheeled by on narrow treads, low to the ground and caked in soot and grime. They looked almost pitiful in the haze—bent-necked, oil-slicked, single-eyed things that whirred through the dead and dying. One latched its clamp onto the arm of a fallen B-1 and dragged the limp thing toward a trench weld station. Another soldered a new power core into a sparking torso with all the urgency of a battlefield medic.

Han had taken to calling that one "Buzz." He wasn't sure why. Maybe because it had a high-pitched hum. Maybe because it was always there, watching.

"Never stops, does it," Kess said, watching the same droid.

"Nope."

A sudden burst of fire from a machine gun nest caused the droid to scurry into cover. It was all too late, as the b-1 sputtered to life before them, dragging itself into a crater and out of sight. Back from the dead.

From behind them, voices started to rise. Officers delivering another address—half performance, half confession.

"The enemy lines are weakening. We've confirmed multiple breaks in their forward bunkers. One more push, and we'll breach the inner defense grid. Once we secure the outpost, we'll have full line-of-sight on the planetary shield generator. Victory is at hand!"

Han didn't look. Neither did Kess. Neither did the other veterans nearby, huddled in their holes, checking blasters with numb fingers.

They'd heard it before. The same cadence. The same keywords. Victory, progress, hope. Every time, the shield still held. Every time, the droids counterattacked before the ground cooled.

The officers weren't speaking to them. Not to the ones with mud-crusted boots and thousand-yard stares. They were speaking to the new ones. The fresh conscripts. The ones with clean plasteel and confused eyes. The ones who still talked about what they'd do when they got off this rock.

The ones not worth learning names for.

A dozen penal battalion recruits stood near the trench's edge, barely old enough to hold their rifles straight. They murmured nervously, eyes flicking toward the skyward electro-storms and the blue horizon of the droid's one-way shield. Some clutched lucky charms. Others just stared.

This crop wouldn't make it through the first bloody harvest.

Han shifted his gaze to the skyline as well. In the black sky, streaks of green fire—another squadron of TIEs diving into the storm. One of them flared and tumbled, hit by a volley of micro-missiles from a HAML droid hidden under foliage. Even now, even after years, the defenses still learned. The shield, the cannons, the mines—they all adapted.

From the battlefield mist, movement once more.

The revived B-1 turned before joining its own in the trenches. Its head swiveled, scanning. Its body was riddled with weld marks, its plating burned black in places. It raised its arm and pointed directly toward Han's trench.

"Hello again, meatbags!"

Laughter, synthetic and cruel.

Han flipped it off. It ducked behind cover a moment later as a turret opened fire.

"Know that one?" Kess asked.

"Yeah. That's Bones alright. We think it remembers us."

"We definitely remember it."

In the dark, another shape darted through no man's land—too fast, too agile. A BX commando. The same one, probably. Black plating, red stripe down the face. Han had never seen it clearly, but he knew its rhythm, had heard the stories. Always came at night. Always took someone.

They called that one 'The Ghost of Sector Four.'

"Solo."

Han turned. It was Ril, the Twi'lek ex-slicer who'd been thrown in with them after hacking an admiral's shuttle for spare parts. She nudged him with her elbow, rifle cradled lazily in her arms.

"They're calling the push. We're up in five."

Han nodded. He checked his power pack. It was almost empty. Not that it mattered.

Kess loaded a fresh clip into his blaster. "It was a pretty bad fall... i'll take your bet on that gunship."

Han smirked, the faintest trace of life behind the grime.

"Deal."

The horns sounded again—higher this time.

Urgent.

Final.

The line began to move.

Up.

Over.

Hell.

Preliminary blaster bolts erupted from the horizon, a storm of red, green and blue. The B-1s counterattacked in disciplined lines, with squads of B-2s acting as mobile strongpoints. Somewhere in the distance, an Octuptarra launched a volley, shaking the ground beneath their boots as red trails arced overhead.

"Let's go," Han muttered.

The whistle screamed.

He vaulted the trench wall.

Another day on Umbara.

…

…

…

The sky above Umbara wept acid. It fell in hissing curtains, streaking down the wrecked durasteel cadavers, and pooling in the craters where soldiers—organic and not—had died and died again.

Beyond the shimmer of the shield wall, the Empire screamed forward.

Again.

OOM-32, designation Thirty-Two, watched in mechanical stillness from the lip of a reinforced trench. Its servos whined softly as it leaned forward, peering through the haze of war through a pair of macros. A squad of B-1s stood beside it in a riot of painted-on colors, their rifles powered and tracking. They did not speak—yet. The newer models amongst them hadn't survived long enough to form names.

Thirty-Two had.

For it was old.

Very old.

It had once stood in the hangar of the Saak'ak, among rows of gleaming command droids, its paint clean and unmarred by carbon. It remembered the cool artificial lights, the scent of oil vapor, and the methodical clatter of trade crates being lowered into place. Back then, it gave orders for security shifts, calculated loss margins for piracy raids, and once personally oversaw the offloading of chromium ore on Saleucami. Not a single blaster was fired that day.

It had been proud.

Proud.

That word wasn't in its original programming.

But time—time rewrote software in curious ways.

"Commander! Enemy infantry massing in Grid Theta-Four," barked a fresh b-1 just behind.

Thirty-Two did not respond immediately. It did not need to. The data was already streaming across its HUD in layered charts and trajectory predictions. The storm made some of it unreliable.

The air hummed. Nearby, one of the HAG-M artillery platforms stuttered, sparked, and then exploded in a belch of fire and shrapnel. Three B-1s were lost in the blast. A fourth staggered clear, half its body torn away, leaking sparks and oil as it collapsed beside a twisted barricade.

Two repair units scurried over—treaded, soot-black, their bodies pitted from years of storm-wear. One began cutting into the damaged B-1's chassis. The other stopped beside it, extended a clawed hand, and placed it gently on the ruined droid's shoulder.

"They remember," Thirty-Two muttered aloud. The words weren't for anyone.

And still the Imperial line came on.

Across the no-man's-land, they charged in screaming waves—conscripted boys with too-clean armor, Twi'leks and Zabraks forced into service with bomb collars, penal squads without names or futures. The droids had long since catalogued the survivors among them. They had names for them, same as the Imperials did.

"Target: Meatbag Alpha-3. Tall. Limp. Fires twice, hides," Thirty-Two said to its line.

One B-1 clicked its head. "That's 'Shaky,' sir."

"Shaky. Correct. That one has the explosives. Priority target."

Another B-1 piped up from the back, "Looking for a light show, sir?"

Laughter—actual laughter—rippled down the trench line. Dry. Sardonic. If a droid could sneer, it would have sounded like that.

All the while, moving among them like flickers of light, ghosted the Umbarans.

Tall, thin, gliding rather than walking. Their armor was still pristine: a bone-white exosuit with faintly glowing tracer lights curled beneath their translucent helmets, illuminating pale faces that showed no fear. They said little. Their unique rifles snapped in perfect silence. One of them passed Thirty-Two and offered a single nod.

That meant respect.

The Umbarans did not respect easily.

Thirty-Two returned the nod.

And then, a blink from Thirty-Two's holocummunicator.

The droids around it gathered to see the General.

The hologram hissed to life. The Super Tactical Droid's image resolved in a halo of static and flickering blue.

Its faceplate bore deep weld marks. Its voice was deeper than it had been five years ago. Slower. More… biological.

"Units of the Umbara Defense Web. This is General Wraith. We are entering Phase Line Gamma. The Imperials are making their push on the shield generator. Again."

Static crackled. In the trench, droids stood straighter.

"You were abandoned five years and 230 days ago. When I calculated our survivability, I gave us twenty-nine days.

Twenty-nine days.

You have exceeded every estimate. You are not expendable. You are exemplary."

Somewhere behind, a group of B-2s thudded past, dragging a fresh cache of power cells to the eastern flank. No cheers. Just focus.

"We have learned. We have endured. The enemy measures victory in inches. We measure it in defiance. In memory. In preservation of function. Every unit restored. Every rifle refired."

A ripple of affirmation flickered through the internal comms.

Thirty-Two did not speak. But it felt the speech. It recorded it. Logged it under: [MOTIVATION—UNSCHEDULED.]

"Hold the generator. Hold the trench. Hold… the line. All units—prepare for direct engagement. With mettle."

The hologram vanished.

The moment stretched.

Then the signal flare burst overhead.

"Up and firing!" Thirty-Two called.

B-1s rose. BX commandos silently passed, their own objectives in mind. The Umbarans vanished into the dark, like their people, their history, and their cause.

And then Umbara immolated.

The Imperials surged through the scorching rain. Droids opened up with everything they had—blue bolts, red bolts, scatter shots and mortars. The trench walls buckled under the pressure of too much energy and too many dead.

Somewhere behind, Ghoul rose again from the smoke amidst cheers. B-1s dragged wounded comrades from the mud, firing backward as they ran. An Octuptarra screamed and listed as it dueled an AT-AT at range.

And in the center of it all, Thirty-Two advanced. Step by step. Rifle raised. Words echoing from its archive.

You are not expendable. You are exemplary.

So it fought.

Because the shield still stood.

Because it was built of durasteel and defiance in equal measure.

Chapter Text

"I don't need any surprises"
~Cassian Andor

3BBS

The U-wing dropped out of hyperspace with the particular shudder that meant Cassian Andor had modified the hyperdrive again—not for comfort, but for speed that skirted the edge of what the frame could handle. Through the viewport, Agamar hung like a blue-white pearl against the black, its surface scarred by centuries of conflict that had left it looking as tired as everyone felt.

"Cutting it close," Gregar Typho observed from the co-pilot's seat, checking his chronometer. The former captain of Naboo's royal guard had aged into his scars well, grey threading through what hair remained, but his remaining eye still carried that hypervigilance that came from decades of keeping queens alive. "The Queen doesn't like tardiness."

"The Queen doesn't like a lot of things," Cassian replied, hands steady on the controls despite the verbal jab. "Doesn't stop her from working with the Collector."

"Double-M says punctuality is a form of respect," Kyle Katarn added from the cargo hold, where he was checking his Bryar's power cell with the casual efficiency of someone who'd learned the hard way that weapons failed at the worst moments. The beard was new since their last meeting, making him look older than his years, though the Force still moved through him like electricity looking for ground.

"Double-M says a lot of things," Cal Kestis countered, not looking up from where he was meditating in the corner, his lightsaber floating in pieces around him like a three-dimensional schematic. "Doesn't mean we have to listen to all of them."

"You listened well enough on Aldani," Cassian said, and Cal's eyes snapped open, a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

"That was different. That was fun."

"Fun," Lucky Seven repeated from his position near the loading ramp, his BX-series commando frame somehow managing to convey skepticism despite being mechanical. "Your definition of fun involves significant statistical probability of dismemberment. I remember Aldani differently."

"Says the droid who once hunted me for bounty," Cal replied, the lightsaber pieces reassembling themselves with a series of soft clicks.

"Past tense. Contract was nullified. Besides," Seven's photoreceptors shifted to what might have been amusement, "you were worth more alive. Still are, probably."

"Charming," Typho muttered, then pointed through the viewport. "Where's our contact? We're at the coordinates."

"They're never late," Seven said with the certainty of someone—something—that had worked with the Trade Federation long enough to know their habits. "Neimoidians treat punctuality like a religion. If they say oh-nine-hundred, they mean—"

The stars stretched and tore.

Not the clean slip of a single small ship leaving hyperspace, but of something more.

First came the bulk of a Lucrehulk battleship, its circular hull sliding into realspace with hulking pseudomotion. The crew of the U-wing knew the silhouette instantly; propaganda holos hadn't erased it from memory, only sharpened its menace. Entire proxy wars had begun with that outline hanging above a world.

"Lucrehulk," Typho breathed, leaning forward despite himself. His hand hovered near the safety harness, the old instincts of Naboo screaming at him to run.

"Trap," Cassian snapped, already reaching for the hyperdrive.

But before he could act, Cal Kestis smiled and laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Wait. Look closer."

The void rippled again.

Two Recusant destroyers dropped in on either flank of the Lucrehulk, their spindly frames looking like skeletal guardians. Their sensor masts lit up as they sang encrypted greetings to the battleship, voices of machines reuniting with kin.

Another shiver in the dark. This time a Providence carrier, its dagger hull bristling with hardpoints, settling into the formation like a veteran taking its place in rank.

Then another.

And another.

The U-wing's sensors filled with reports as the fleet's targeting sensors licked across their hull—not hostile, merely cataloguing, an organized net weaving itself to include them.

"Not scavengers," Kyle said softly, awe breaking through his usual calm. "Not a fleet in hiding. This is drilled. Disciplined."

More ships spilled out of hyperspace. Munificent frigates, lean and angular, sliding into escort patterns. A pair of Lupus-class corvettes banking wide, engines burning a steady crimson. Even the diamond-shaped silhouettes of old Commerce Guild ships joined the dance, antique but sharp as ever.

Lucky Seven's photoreceptors brightened, his tone almost reverent. "All of this for me?"

Cassian was about to respond sarcastically when he was preemptively interrupted.

For it was then that the last shadow came.

The fabric of space heaved radiation as if something far too large were being forced through a door not meant for it. A shape emerged—sleek despite its immensity, its hull painted in sober blue-grey, as if to downplay the power bristling from every broadside.

The Allocator-class dreadnought.

It slid into position above the Lucrehulk like a crown settling on a monarch, larger than a Star Destroyer, heavier than anything the U-wing's crew had ever seen outside of whispered intelligence reports. Rows upon rows of batteries tracked outward, patient, waiting.

"Beautiful," Kyle breathed, and for once, the Jedi initiate's professional composure cracked to show the farm boy from Sulon who'd grown up hearing stories of Confederate fleets breaking Imperial ambitions.

In the cockpit, no one moved. Even Cassian's hands, frozen above the hyperdrive levers, stilled. The U-wing felt like an insect beneath the shadow of something built to hunt Star Destroyers and win.

"They're hailing us," Typho said, his voice carrying something between wonder and worry.

The image that resolved on their comm screen was an OOM command droid, its yellow markings indicating significant runtime, its posture suggesting what in an organic being would be called confidence.

"U-wing shuttle, you are expected. Transmit clearance codes."

"Since when do you need clearance codes, Thirty-Three?" Seven asked, and the OOM's head tilted in what might have been surprise.

"BX-77. Still functional, I see. And—" the photoreceptors focused on Cassian, "—Captain Andor. You still owe me a hundred credits from that sabacc game on Onderon."

"The game was rigged," Cassian protested.

"The game is always rigged. That's why we play it." The droid's attention shifted. "Approach vector seven-seven-cresh. You'll have escort."

If the commando droid could have raised an eyebrow, it would have. "Seven-Seven? That's my–"

Those aboard rolled their eyes, because they could. "Pure chance, Sevens. Play me in Sabaac if you think its your lucky day," Andor finished with a smirk.

"Count me in too!" The OOM instant exclaimed, "Get in here! And give me my money!"

The channel closed, and immediately their ship was surrounded by Vulture droids and Hyena bombers, not threatening but shepherding, guiding them toward the Lucrehulk's open hangar with the kind of precision that made Typho whistle appreciatively.

"They're not hiding," he said. "They're not even trying to hide."

"Why would they?" Seven asked. "This is the Rim. The Empire can claim it on maps all they want, but out here?" His mechanical hand gestured at the fleet. "Out here, the Trade Federation still controls the hyperlanes."

The hangar they entered wasn't what any of them expected.

Where once there would have been rows of battle droids and tanks, someone had built... a city. The Lucrehulk's massive cargo holds had been converted into a vertical metropolis, walkways and markets and what looked like actual homes rising in tiers toward the distant ceiling. Lights strung between buildings gave it an almost festival atmosphere, while the sound of a thousand conversations in a hundred languages created a constant background hum of commerce.

"By the Force," Kyle whispered.

Pit droids swarmed their U-wing the moment it touched down, checking fuel lines and making minor repairs with the kind of efficiency that came from doing the same task ten thousand times. PK-series droids rolled past carrying crates marked in Aurebesh, Huttese, and scripts none of them recognized.

"Welcome to Free Port One," a Neimoidian guard said as they descended the ramp. His armor was well-maintained, and the rifle he carried was definitely not ceremonial. "Your contact awaits at the Founder's Square."

They walked through streets that shouldn't exist—market stalls selling everything from Corellian brandy to Ryloth spices, repair shops where B1 battle droids underwent maintenance alongside farming equipment, cantinas where Confederate veterans drank next to smugglers who'd probably shot at them during the war. And everywhere, the quiet efficiency of Trade Federation organization keeping chaos at bay. BX-77, meanwhile, wished them luck and disappeared into the throng, presumably on his way to his next mission.

"This is impossible," Typho said, staring at two merchants haggling over Dantooine grain prices. "The Empire would never allow—"

"The Empire doesn't know," Cal said quietly, his Force senses extended. "Or they know and can't do anything about it. Feel the defenses. Every person here is ready to fight. Every droid. This isn't just a trading post—it's a fortress."

The Founder's Square, when they reached it, centered around a statue that made the group stop mid-step. It was a Neimoidian, elderly, wearing the robes of a Trade Federation Official, but the face was not recognizable to any of them.

Another elderly Neimoidian stood at its base, studying the inscription with the kind of attention usually reserved for prayer. He touched the statue gingerly, as if lending his strength to the man depicted in stone.

"Your contact?" Typho asked.

The Neimoidian turned, and his face was weathered by years but sharp with intelligence. "Captain Typho. Captain Katarn. Captain Andor. And Knight Kestis" He inclined his head to each. "I am Customs Vizier Marath Vooro. I understand you require weapons."

"We require a lot of things," Cassian said carefully. "The Collector—"

"The Collector's credits are good," Vooro interrupted. "As are the credits of the other… patrons. We don't ask questions about end users. We simply facilitate trade."

"Like you always have," Kyle said, and there was an edge to it.

"Like we always have," Marath Vooro agreed without shame. "Through Republic, through war, through Empire. Governments rise and fall. Trade endures."

The ship's alarms began as a low chime, almost lazy, before rising to a steady pulse. The rebel group tensed, ready for instant action.

"Imperial fleet," Typho said, scanning his datapad. "Three Star Destroyers, full escorts. A battle group."

The U-wing's crew began to prepare automatically. Cassian's hand slid to his holster. Kyle joined him. Even Cal stopped smiling.

But around them—nothing changed. Children kept splashing in the nearby fountain. Vendors continued to haggle. A B1 shuffled past carrying fruit crates, oblivious.

"They're not reacting," Cassian muttered. "Are they blind?"

"Look closer," Vooro said, almost gently.

Outside the viewports, the Confederate fleet was shifting. The Lucrehulk rolled slowly to face its foe as vultures cruised above their heads, above the city to pass through the blue. Recusants angled into attack formation, long frames bristling. The Providence carriers aligned like knife blades, their running lights stark against the void.

And at the center, the Allocator dreadnought moved—no hurry, no wasted motion, simply adjusting her broadside until her guns covered the Imperials.

The space between the two fleets thickened, not with weapons fire but with the weight of a choice.

Seconds stretched.

Typho whispered, "If they fight—" but left the thought unfinished. Even the Rebels' own U-wing would be scrap caught between giants.

The Imperial Destroyers held their line, bright white against the void. The Rebels could imagine the officers pacing, calculating losses, hearing reports of numbers that didn't add up.

A minute passed.

Then, as if on cue, the Imperial formation wheeled about. One by one, their sublight drives flared, and they leapt to hyperspace with the ponderous dignity of ships pretending they had somewhere better to be.

Only when the last Destroyer vanished did the U-wing crew exhale.

Vooro, still standing by the statue, did not look relieved. Only certain. "They will file their reports. They will call us pirates, smugglers, what suits them. But they will not fight us. Not here."

"Because attacking would mean admitting the Confederacy still exists," Cassian added, nodding in understanding. "Would mean admitting the Empire doesn't control the Outer Rim. Would mean admitting they can't win every fight."

Around them, the market continued as if nothing had happened. Someone laughed at a joke. A deal was struck over what sounded like rhydonium futures. A bumbling group of security B1s helped an elderly human carry his purchases, to some fanfare and mirth.

"The Empire rules the Core," Vooro said, turning back to the statue. "But out here? Out here, we remember who we are. We remember what we built from the ashes."

He looked at the faceless statue with something approaching reverence.

"Some led us through hell itself. Some are still leading us." He turned to them. "Your weapons will be ready within the hour. Standard rates, no questions asked. Though the Queen might appreciate knowing her investment protects those who still believe in free trade."

"Free trade," Typho repeated, and there was something in his voice—not quite approval, not quite condemnation.

"It's what we've always been," Vooro said simply. "What we'll always be. The Empire can claim victory in the Core, can rewrite history in their schools, can pretend the war ended when they said it did. But here?" He gestured at the impossible city around them, at the fleet visible through distant viewports, at the statue of a Neimoidian whose legacy literally surrounded them.

"Here, we endure. And we profit. And occasionally," he looked at each of them in turn, "we ensure the right people have the right tools to remind the Empire that some victories are not as complete as their Emperor would like."

In the fountain, a child laughed, throwing water at his sister. She shrieked and threw water back. Their parents, wearing the simple clothes of traders, didn't notice—they were too busy completing a deal that would feed their family for another year.

It was the most normal thing any of them had seen in years.

And perhaps, Cal thought as he watched the Confederate fleet maintain its protective formation, that was the greatest rebellion of all—not just surviving, but thriving. Not just enduring, but building something worth defending.

The Empire claimed to have won the war.

Looking around Free Port One, surrounded by the living legacy of the Trade Federation and protected by the guns of a Confederate fleet that officially didn't exist, it was hard to say who was fooling whom.

Chapter Text

"Master… before you go—just a minute? Please."
~Anakin Skywalker to Obi-Wan Kenobi, outside the Temple hangar (Our POD)

Chapter Text

Dust rose in columns that twisted toward a cloudless sky, each footfall of ten thousand souls lifting ancient earth into the air where it hung like prayers made visible. From above, the exodus appeared as a river of bronze and bone—warriors with rifles that caught the sun, elders wrapped in ceremonial cloths that had seen better decades, children carried on backs or clutching at hands already cracked from the season's early frost. They moved through the gorge with the particular rhythm of the desperate–not quite fleeing, not quite marching, but something in between that spoke of calculated retreat and stubborn pride in equal measure.

The walls of the gorge rose on either side like the ribs of some primordial beast, red stone worn smooth by countless generations who had walked this same path in their own times of trial. Water had carved these channels, patient and inexorable, but now they ran dry save for the memory of rivers. The people moved where water once flowed, their footsteps following courses set by forces greater than war or want. Some stumbled on loose stones that had not felt disturbance in decades. Others paused to shift burdens—a grandmother too weak to walk, a bundle of sacred texts wrapped in hide, the last stores of grain that would need to last until they found safety or found death.

The shadows were as long as the morning, painting one wall of the gorge in darkness while the other still blazed with amber light. In that contrast—light and shadow, hope and despair—moved a people who had chosen displacement over destruction, who had decided that survival with honor was worth more than death with glory. Their breathing came in rhythms that matched their early walk, steady, determined, edged with the particular exhaustion that comes from carrying not just physical weight but the burden of an uncertain future. At the column's head, scouts watched for enemy patrols. At its rear, warriors walked backward as often as forward, rifles ready for pursuers who might never come—or might appear at any moment.

This was what it meant to move on one's own terms when all choices had narrowed to variations of loss. This was faith—not in victory, but in the next step, and the one after that, and the thousand after those.

"Would you jump for them?"

The words hung in the mountain air like morning mist, sharp with the bite of approaching winter. Young Qymaen jai Sheelal stood at the precipice, his Czerka Arms Outland rifle slung across his back, watching his people move through the gorge below like blood through a vein. Thousands of Kaleesh—warriors, elders, younglings barely able to walk—threading their way between ancient stone walls that had sheltered their ancestors since before memory began.

The gorge yawned beneath him, perhaps two hundred meters down to where his people walked. The morning sun had not yet reached its depths, leaving them in shadow while he stood bathed in cold light. From this height, they looked like Canthari beetles, those sacred insects that carried prayers to the ancestors on their elytra.

"I asked you a question, young hunter."

Qymaen turned to study the elder beside him. The old Kaleesh's mask was carved from bone so ancient it had yellowed like old teeth, decorated with mumuu fangs that clicked softly when he spoke. His name was... the memory slipped away like water through fingers. How could he have forgotten? This man who had taught him to read the wind, to understand how sound traveled differently through morning air than evening, how to place warriors not just where the enemy was but where they would be.

"If I jump," Qymaen answered, his twelve-year-old voice carrying the certainty of one who had already killed countless enemies, "I die. My people lose a leader. It is simple."

The elder's yellow eyes—visible through the mask's sockets—crinkled with something that might have been amusement. Below, the exodus continued. They were moving the entire tribe seventeen kilometers north, to the abandoned Jenuwaa sacred grounds where the Yam'rii would never think to look. The location of battle was everything—one of the first lessons this nameless elder had taught him.

"Leadership," the old warrior said, adjusting the ceremonial wrap around his shoulders, "is not simple. It is faith."

"Faith in what?"

"In the fall."

Qymaen frowned behind his own mask—still soft wood then, before he'd earned the right to mumuu bone. "The gorge is stone. Is faith death?."

The elder laughed, a sound like dried leaves. "Spoken like one who thinks the world exists only as he sees it." He gestured to the warriors positioned along the clifftops—Qymaen's first command, thirty-seven Kaleesh with rifles and spears, watching for Yam'rii scout ships. "Each of them would jump if you asked. Not because the fall wouldn't kill them, but because they have faith that their sacrifice would mean something. That you would make it mean something."

"Foolish."

"Is it?" The elder's bone fingers traced patterns in the air, as if painting something only he could see. His gnarled fingers cast shadows like sundials."When the Yam'rii came with their technology, their ships that spit fire, their weapons that kill from beyond sight—was it not foolish to fight them? Yet here we are, moving through our ancestors' paths while they struggle to understand our home."

A bird of prey cried overhead, wheeling against clouds that promised snow. Qymaen tracked it with his eyes, calculating wind speed, distance, the lead necessary for a perfect shot. He didn't take it. They needed their ammunition for the Yam'rii.

"Sometimes," the elder continued, "sacrifice seems impractical. Wasteful, even. But there will come a moment—perhaps many moments—when the impractical becomes necessary. When you must trust that the gorge will catch you, even when your eyes tell you it's only stone and death below."

What was his name? Qymaen could see every detail of the man's mask, could smell the karabbac oil he used to preserve the bone, could remember the exact timbre of his voice. But the name...

...

"Master?"

The voice was wrong. Too mechanical, too precise. Qymaen blinked, and the elder was gone. In his place stood a MagnaGuard, its photoreceptors glowing beneath a half-hood that was supposed to honor the Izvoshra but instead mocked them with its lifeless draping.

"Master, the Separatist Council's ships have departed."

The gorge was not a gorge. It was a sinkhole, one of thousands that pocked Utapau's surface like wounds that would never heal. The morning sun was wrong too—pale and distant, not the burning gold of Kalee's star. And he was not young Qymaen anymore, that promising warrior with his whole body intact and his future spreading before him like an unconquered map.

He was Grievous.

The name came back to him with the rest of it—the elder had been called Soj Vith'na, keeper of the old songs, dead two nights later when the Yam'rii had outsmarted young Qymaen's positioning. They'd come from the east when all logic said they should come from the west. The screams had woken him from exhausted sleep, but by the time he'd reached Soj's tent, there was only blood and the bitter taste of failure.

"They will not be missed," Grievous muttered, squinting across the vast expanse of the sinkhole.

A single ship caught his eye as it rose from Pau City's depths, its hull gleaming silver against the shadows that still pooled in the sinkhole's lower reaches. Grievous's eyes—still sharp, still capable of tracking prey across vast distances—followed its spiral ascent through the vertical city. The vessel banked around a transport barge, its pilot navigating the informal traffic patterns that generations of Utapauan pilots had established through necessity and tradition. Up and up it climbed, past market levels where early merchants were setting their stalls, past residential quarters where beings who had never known war prepared for another day of careful neutrality.

Water trickled down the sinkhole's walls in thin streams that caught the light like threads of liquid diamond. These feeds from the underground aquifers had sustained Pau City for millennia, patient and constant, wearing their channels deeper with each passing century. At the bottom, far below where Grievous stood, pools collected the runoff—dark mirrors that reflected the circle of sky above like eyes looking back at themselves. Life clustered around these pools–hanging gardens that had never known direct sunlight, phosphorescent fungi that provided dim illumination to the lowest levels, creatures adapted to the eternal twilight of the sinkhole's depths.

The ascending ship passed through the last shadow of the sinkhole's rim, and suddenly it blazed with reflected sunlight, transformed from metal into light itself. For a moment it seemed to hang there, balanced between the darkness below and the vastness above, a perfect symbol of escape, of freedom, of every choice Grievous could no longer make. Then it was through, disappearing into the green-tinged sky of Utapau's morning, joining the streams of traffic that flowed between the planet's scattered sinkhole cities. Its pilot would never know how close they had come to being trapped in what would soon become a battlefield. They would land at their destination and speak of normal things—trade disputes, weather patterns, family concerns—while behind them death prepared to drop from the rafters.

What must it be like, Grievous wondered, to simply fly away? To have no greater concern than your next destination, no weight beyond your cargo? He had been that free once, before the Yam'rii came, before the Republic's betrayal, before Dooku's recruitment. Now he was anchored by the weight of command he'd never wanted, by the expectations of the dying, by the mechanical parts that made flight a calculation rather than an escape.

His eyes adjusted to the brightening sun, bringing the far walls across from him into sharp focus. Pau City sprawled across multiple levels, carved directly into the living rock. He mentally catalogued details automatically—there, a natural choke point where three walkways converged, perfect for an ambush. Above it, a shadowed recess that could hide a full squad of B2s. His gaze tracked left, noting where a horizontal cavern opened into darkness. Another sinkhole? If so, it could serve as an escape route, assuming the passages were navigable.

Without conscious thought, he was already adjusting their defensive plans. Move the sniper units seventeen meters east for better coverage. Establish a fallback position at level seven-cresh. Mine the tertiary bridge—it looked decorative but could bear weight if needed.

He wasn't incompetent. He'd won too many battles to be called that. But this—coordinating an entire confederacy's death throes while his own body failed—was stretching him beyond his limits. Like trying to hold back an ocean with his bare hands, feeling the water slip between his fingers no matter how tightly he gripped.

The MagnaGuard waited patiently for orders, its designation IG-74 visible on its shoulder plating. But when Grievous looked at it, he saw Bentilais san Sk'ar standing in that same patient stance, waiting for young Qymaen to make a decision about the placement of sentries.

"Bentilais," he said, the name escaping before he could stop it.

The MagnaGuard tilted its head slightly—a programmed gesture meant to indicate attention but lacking any real understanding. Grievous felt the weight of the error but didn't correct it. Let the ghost of his old friend linger a moment longer.

"General?" IG-74's vocabulator carried that distinctive mechanical tone that no amount of programming could make natural.

"The command center," Grievous said, his respiratory system cycling with a particularly wet wheeze. "Time to see what remains of our position."

…

The war room doors recognized his approach, sliding open with a pneumatic hiss that announced his arrival before the clink of his talons could. Every head turned—organic and mechanical alike—toward the threshold where General Grievous stood silhouetted against the corridor's harsh lighting. For a moment, he saw himself as they must see him–hunched forward from the damage to his chest, cape dragging behind like the shadow of what he had been, each breath a mechanical wheeze that spoke of systems failing, of time running out.

The room was awash in blue—holographic projections painting every surface with data, with defeats, with the slow collapse of everything they had built. The light turned grey skin greyer, made shadows deeper, transformed the gathering into something that belonged more to myth than reality. These were the commanders of the Western Reaches, some of the last free leaders of a confederacy that had once challenged the Republic blow for blow. Now they looked to him with expressions that mixed hope and desperation in measures that varied by species but never by meaning. Even the tactical droids, incapable of true emotion, had oriented their photoreceptors toward him with something that resembled anticipation. Their programming demanded leadership, structure, someone to make the calculations that would give their existence purpose.

He thought suddenly of another war room, another moment when all eyes had turned to him. The hangar of the Lucrehulk Infinite Profit, when he'd gathered his fleet commanders for the assault on Coruscant. Hundreds of officers—Neimoidian, Muun, Koorivar, Quarren, Geonosian, Human—had stood in perfect formation as he'd outlined the impossible: they would strike at the Republic's heart, would tear the Chancellor from his throne, would end the war in one magnificent gambit. They had looked at him then with something approaching worship, seeing not the machine he'd become but the legend he represented. The dread General of the Confederacy. The nightmare that stalked Jedi. The weapon that would deliver victory.

Most of those officers were dead now, their ships torn apart in Coruscant's gravity well or hunted down in the retreat. Their faith had been misplaced. Their hope had been wasted. And here stood another gathering, smaller, more desperate, looking to him for miracles he no longer believed in.

He shook himself from the past and focused again on the bleak present before him. The room was crowded, too crowded, filled with beings whose names he didn't know. Some he knew—had fought beside, had trusted with fleet movements. Others were strangers wearing dead men's uniforms, thrust into positions they'd never expected to hold.

Captain Beovv Nemm stood closest to the tactical display, knuckles white as if a fight could break out at any moment. The Sullustan's large eyes reflected the holographic lights as he studied fleet positions. Typical of Bulwark captains—always wanting to close with the enemy, to feel the satisfaction of close-range bombardment. No patience for the dance of long-range engagement, no appreciation for tactical withdrawal. A true secessionist, Nemm and his people had no love for the Core Worlds, viewing them as parasites feeding on the Outer Rim's resources. They would fight to the end just to spite Coruscant.

General Kendu Ultho loomed near the viewport, his Aqualish features unreadable as always. One of the few competent commanders left, though his attention was clearly divided between this meeting and his holdings in the Atravis sector.

The rest were a mix—former seconds and thirds in command, privateers seeking payment, opportunists smelling either profit or blood. One Weequay in an ill-fitting admiral's uniform stepped forward with an eager smile.

"Supreme Marshal Grievous! I'm Captain Torvus, formerly of the—"

Grievous walked past him without acknowledgment, already dismissing the man as irrelevant. Another tried, a Rodian whose name he didn't catch, babbling about "the honor of serving under the Supreme Marshal." That title grated against his audio receptors. He was a general. Dooku had been Supreme Commander, and that position had died with him on the Invisible Hand.

"Enough," Grievous rasped, his vocabulator crackling. "Report. Starting with those present."

Captain Nemm wasted no time.

"We should attack!" the Sullustian interjected, his voice high with barely controlled aggression as he pounded on the table. "Sluiss Van is under siege. If we strike now, break through their lines—"

"Probability of success: seventeen point three percent," a T-series tactical droid interrupted, its photoreceptors flickering as it processed data. "Additionally, maintaining position at Utapau presents seventy-two point eight percent probability of discovery within the next thirty-six hours. Recommend immediate withdrawal to—"

Any semblance of strategy soon fell victim to a cacophony as the room erupted.

"—demand immediate payment for the Christophsis run—"

"—seventeen ships lost because those tin cans can't follow basic formations—"

"—if Captain Ret'lah hadn't broken position at Coruscant—"

"I held the line while you fled!" A Neimoidian captain in a scorched uniform shoved a Sy Myrthian commander. "Your dreadnought nearly collided with mine slipping out of the well!"

"Your ship was already listing! You were under throttling!" the Myrthian snarled back. "You cost us three squadrons with your—"

Ultho stood at perfect attention through it all, his Aqualish features set in an expression of professional disgust as chaos erupted around him. He alone seemed to understand that this was a military briefing, not a merchant's bazaar. Beside him, Nemm had grabbed a Munificent captain by the collar, shouting something about cowardice in the Sullustan's rapid-fire native tongue.

"The hyenas are useless!" someone yelled. "They fly straight into flak!"

"Better than organic pilots who desert at the first—"

"Payment!" Praxis pushed forward through the crowd, his affected drawl cutting through the din. "General, we need assurances about payment schedules before—"

A hand tugged at Grievous's cape. He looked down to find a young human, barely more than a boy, wearing captain's insignia that couldn't have been his more than a week.

"Supreme Marshal, sir, my ship needs repairs, and the dock workers say without authorization—"

Another tug from the other side. A Quarren commander trying to get his attention about smuggling lines to Mon Cala. Behind him, two captains had escalated to shoving, their dress uniforms—medals pinned for battles they'd probably watched from the bridge—making them look like decorated children playing at war.

"—your B1s cost me that engagement—"

"—Separatist Council abandoned us—"

"—need three thousand tons of tibanna gas—"

"—dead because you couldn't hold formation for five minutes—"

The noise rose to a crescendo, filling the war room with the sound of dissolution, of command structure collapsing into every-being-for-themselves desperation. These weren't military leaders. They were pirates with uniforms, merchants with warships, survivors clinging to whatever authority their dead superiors had left behind. The medals and ranks and titles were just costume jewelry on corpses that didn't know they were dead yet.

Grievous's respiratory system seized, a particularly violent cough racking his frame. No one noticed. They were too busy assigning blame, demanding payment, pulling at his cape like younglings seeking attention from a distracted parent. The great Confederate military, reduced to this—squabbling in a cave while the Republic prepared to bury them in it.

Something inside him snapped. Not the careful control he'd maintained since Coruscant, not the diplomatic patience Dooku had tried to teach him. Something older, more fundamental. The part of him that was still Qymaen jai Sheelal, warrior of Kalee, who had once stood over the bodies of forty enemies before his ninth birthday.

"SILENCE!"

The word erupted from his vocabulator with enough force to shriek feedback through the room's audio systems. Every voice stopped. Every movement froze. Even the tactical droids seemed to pause their processing cycles.

"Ultho. Nemm. Stay." His voice dropped to a mechanical growl that promised violence. "Everyone else—out. NOW."

The room erupted in movement, beings scrambling for the exits. Praxis, still pushing forward with his payment demands, opened his mouth to protest. IG-74's fist connected with his jaw before the first word emerged, sending the privateer sprawling across the deck.

"Heh," Praxis laughed from the floor, blood running from his split lip. "Guess that's a 'wait for your money' then?"

The MagnaGuard hauled him to his feet and propelled him toward the door with enough force to ensure he kept moving. The others fled without requiring similar encouragement, their bravado evaporating in the face of Grievous's rage and the very real possibility of joining Praxis on the ground.

Within moments, the room held only Ultho—still at attention, professional to the end—Nemm, who was straightening his uniform with sullen satisfaction, and the tactical droids, waiting with mechanical patience for order to be restored.

"Now," Grievous said, his mechanical breathing filling the sudden quiet, "the full situation."

The room darkened as the main holoprojector activated, filling the space with a three-dimensional map of the galaxy. It was awash in red—Republic advances, fallen positions, contested systems. A tactical droid stepped forward, its movements precise and emotionless.

"Analysis of current strategic situation," it began. "Republic forces have initiated simultaneous operations across seven sectors. The Core-ward shipbuilding worlds, previously neutral, are under full assault. Banking Clan remnants at Scipio and Mygheeto—contested. Commerce Guild assets at Felucia—under siege. Trade Federation neutral zones—the purse worlds–violated without warning."

The map zoomed to show the chaos near the Core. What had been orderly neutral territory was now a storm of contested space, with Republic fleets striking seemingly at random.

"The Republic has dropped pretenses, following Coruscant. New fronts join the existing resistance there. Example: New Plympto maintains resistance," the droid continued, highlighting the embattled world. "However, Republican forces under Jedi General Dass Jennir are advancing. Cato Neimoidia's bridge cities report heavy fighting but have not yet fallen. Probability of successful defense: declining hourly."

More systems flashed red. The Northern Dependencies, the Serenno line, the Atravis Sector, the approaches to Kashyyyk—all under pressure or already lost. It was as if the Republic had been waiting for Coruscant, had expected them to scatter, had positioned forces to catch them no matter which direction they fled.

"Incoming priority communications," another droid announced. "Four hundred seventeen requests for strategic guidance. Ninety-three requests for reinforcement. Two hundred twelve status updates requiring command decision."

Grievous felt his servos lock. Four hundred seventeen requests. Each one a commander looking to him for answers he didn't have, for miracles he couldn't provide. He would only take the most important hails.

Admiral Dofine's image materialized first, exhaustion etched into every line of his Neimoidian features.

"General," Dofine began, and Grievous noted with something like gratitude that he used the proper title. "The Corellian Run situation is critical. Republic forces have established interdiction fields at three points. My fleet is pinned between Druckenwell and Tynna. I need to know—do we attempt breakthrough to Kashyyyk or fall back through less used lanes?"

The question hung in the air. Either option meant casualties. Either option might fail. Grievous's mind ran through tactical scenarios, each one ending in varying degrees of disaster.

Can we afford another Coruscant?

"I'll... I'll contact you with a plan soon, Admiral," Grievous managed, the limp words feeling like defeat.

Dofine's expression tightened, but he nodded and cut the connection.

More reports flooded in. Kashyyyk's beaches under assault, Commander Linwodo requesting immediate orders. The Foundry Worlds isolated, production capacity falling. Forces stranded on Agamar, begging for transport that didn't exist.

It was too much. Each crisis demanded full attention, but they came in an endless stream. Like trying to fight a thousand duels simultaneously, knowing that losing any one meant losing them all.

Then another holo materialized—Senator Avi Singh from Raxus Secundus. The human's face carried that particular combination of fear and arrogance that Grievous had come to despise in politicians.

"Grievous," Singh began, and there was venom in how he said his name. "You answered my call. I am informing you that the Parliament convenes tomorrow to select appropriate leadership for our cause."

"Leadership? Select?" Grievous's vocabulator crackled with building rage. "While you sit in your comfortable chambers, I have been bleeding for this Confederacy. While you debate, warriors die."

"The Parliament feels," Singh continued with diplomatic care, "that our cause requires leadership that can negotiate, that can represent our ideals to the galaxy. You understand, of course."

Grievous understood perfectly. They wanted someone who could surrender with dignity, who could negotiate terms that might preserve some shadow of their independence. They wanted a politician, not a warrior who'd been carved from war itself.

"Furthermore," Singh added, "there are concerns about the... irregular nature of your command structure. Reports of mercenary desertion, of resources being redistributed without authorization—"

"Desertion?" Grievous's voice crackled with sudden fury. He turned to the room at large.

"Report. Now."

The tactical droids responded with mechanical efficiency, listing the failures. Captain Vex'ahlia's three hundred Dug mercenaries from Malastare, gone six hours ago claiming contract expiration. The droid complement meant to guard the path to this level, mysteriously redeployed to escort the Council's departure. The Geonosian technical crew that never arrived, claiming hyperdrive failure that seemed remarkably convenient.

"You see?" Singh pressed, sensing weakness. "Even your mercenaries abandon you. The Malastare companies have already sent representatives to Raxus, offering their services to whoever the Parliament selects as your replacement. They mentioned a conflict of personalities..."

"Sabotage," Ultho rumbled from behind Grievous, his Basic heavily accented. "Someone is ensuring we cannot hold."

"Or they're just skrit," Grievous spat, using the Kaleesh word for the cowardly rodents that fled at the first sign of danger. "Fleeing because they smell death coming."

"Warriors die because of your failures," Singh shot back, his diplomatic composure cracking. "Coruscant was a disaster. Our fleets are scattered. You're trapped in the Western Reaches playing at being supreme commander while the galaxy burns."

"I have led from the front," Grievous snarled, stepping toward the projection as if he could reach through it to throttle the senator. "Every battle, every campaign. Where were you when the Jedi came for us? Where was your Parliament when Dooku fell?"

"Dooku at least understood politics," Singh said coldly. "You're just a weapon that's outlived its wielder. Do us all a favor, General—end this charade of leadership before you drag us all down with you."

The rage that surged through Grievous's systems was pure, clean, familiar. His hand moved to crush the holoprojector, but Singh's image flinched and vanished before he could strike. The sudden motion triggered a coughing fit that bent him double, respiratory fluids spattering the deck. Each convulsion sent cascade failures through his systems—warnings he ignored through long practice.

When it finally passed, he stood alone among the tactical droids, surrounded by the red and blue glow of a galaxy falling apart. They expected him to have answers. They expected the great General Grievous to pull victory from this sinkhole of defeat. Some expected him to step aside and die. But he wasn't a supreme commander, or a politician, or a convenient martyr. He was a warrior, built for single combat and battlefield tactics, not this grand strategic dejarik game where every move led to checkmate.

Dooku would have known what to do. Dooku, with his aristocratic certainty and Sith knowledge, would have seen the pattern, would have had contingencies. But Dooku was dead, and Grievous was left holding together an alliance of cowards and profiteers with nothing but reputation and rage.

He pointed toward the sky.

"Ultho. You have space command. Find payment and coordinate a retreat to our forces around Sluis Van."

"Consider it done."

"Implement defensive pattern zerek-three for all Utapau positions," he commanded the nearest tactical droid, his voice steadier than he felt. "Standard deployment protocols where possible, adapt for current gaps."

"General, that will leave significant vulnerabilities in—"

"I know." He turned toward the exit, his cape swirling. "IG-38 is to meet me in training chamber two."

"General, your medical status indicates—"

"IG-38. Training chamber two. Now."

He stalked from the command center, leaving the droids to their calculations and the galaxy to its collapse. Behind him, the tactical displays continued their steady progression of red, each point another world lost, another fleet destroyed, another reminder that some wars couldn't be won no matter how many enemies you killed.

He needed to feel strong again. Needed to remember what it felt like to face a problem he could solve with skill and violence rather than impossible mathematics.

He needed to fight something he could actually defeat.

…

…

…

"—and how long must we tolerate this violation of our sovereignty?"

The Utapauan Committee sat in their traditional circle, elongated faces grave in the soft light of their chamber. Administrator Tion Medon's fingers traced nervous patterns on the stone table.

"The Confederacy treats Pau City as their personal fortress," another administrator said, voice hollow with resentment. "Our neutrality means nothing to them."

"Nor to the Republic, I suspect," a third added darkly. "We are caught between the hammer and the anvil."

Medon's large eyes darted to his colleagues. "Has the message been sent?"

"The diplomatic packet was transmitted through three relay points," came the careful response. "If the Republic monitors such channels—and we must assume they do—they will know within the day that General Grievous shelters here."

"Then we have chosen our side by choosing survival," Medon said quietly. "May our ancestors forgive us for what comes next."
​

…

…

…

The training saber felt wrong in his hands—too light, too civilized, lacking the honest weight of Kaleesh steel. Grievous adjusted his grip for the dozenth time, trying to find the balance point that Dooku insisted existed.

"You're holding it too tightly," the Count observed as they dueled on Serenno. His own blade had only a fraction of the power behind it, yet somehow he was already forcing Grievous back.

Grievous loosened his grip fractionally.

"Now too lightly."

The force came without warning, invisible fingers plucking the weapon from Grievous's hand and sending it spinning across the polished floor. Grievous tracked its path, fury building in his chest.

"This is pointless," Grievous snarled, his vocabulator giving his voice a metallic edge. "Your Force makes any instruction meaningless. You could disarm me whenever you choose."

"Precisely," Dooku said, raising his blade with elegant economy. The red cast shadows across his aristocratic features. "Which is why you must never give me—or any Jedi—the opportunity to choose."

He gestured to the collection of lightsabers Grievous had already accumulated, displayed on the chamber's wall like trophies. "I see your collection has grown. That blue one—a new addition?"

"Your training has served me well," Grievous replied, pride creeping into his tone. "It has awarded me many trophies."

Dooku's expression shifted to something between disappointment and concern. "Don't let your pursuit of trinkets cloud your reality, General. Remember what I taught you." He began to circle, each step measured and deliberate. "If you are to succeed in combat against the best of the Jedi, you must have fear, surprise, and intimidation on your side."

He paused, letting the words sink in. "But if any one element is lacking, it would be best for you to retreat."

"Retreat?" The word tasted like poison in Grievous's mouth. "I am no coward."

"No," Dooku agreed. "You are a weapon. And weapons that shatter against superior steel serve no one. You must break them before you engage them. Only then will you ensure victory..."

He smiled, a thin expression that never reached his eyes. "...and have your trophy."

The electrostaff clattered across the training chamber floor, its energy field dissipating with a dying whine. IG-38 stood motionless, joints locked in the position of defeat, waiting for reset commands.

Grievous lowered his training sabers, respiratory system cycling hard. The memory of Dooku's lesson echoed in his mechanical mind. Fear, surprise, intimidation. Break them before you engage them. But how could he break anyone in this state?

"General."

Another MagnaGuard—IG-77—stalked into the chamber at speed, movements sharp with urgency.

"Speak," Grievous commanded, deactivating the training weapons.

"A Jedi has been spotted. Port G-17. Speaking with Administrator Medon."

The exhaustion that had weighted his limbs vanished instantly. Every system snapped to combat alertness, diagnostic warnings dismissed with practiced thought.

A Jedi.

Here.

Now.

"Description?"

"Human male. Brown robes. Beard. Traveling alone in a Eta-2 interceptor."

Grievous moved before conscious thought formed, striding from the training chamber with purpose that had been absent for days. IG-77 fell into step beside him as they climbed toward the command levels. And then he stopped, doubt seizing him more than his quaking chest ever could. He looked up as the world grew darker around him.

The clouds moved like living things across the sinkhole's mouth, heavy with moisture from the morning's weather patterns. From below, they appeared to pour over the rim like slow water, grey-white masses that caught on the edges before flowing inward, gradually covering the circle of sky that was Pau City's window to the wider world. Grievous stood frozen, his head tilted back, his eyes tracking the progression of cloud cover as his mind processed the impossible news. A Jedi had come.

The clouds thickened, and with them came a gradual dimming of the light that reached the sinkhole's depths. Shadows merged and multiplied, turning the clear morning into something more ambiguous, more threatening. Was there a Republic fleet up there, hidden beyond those clouds? Venator-class destroyers holding position just outside sensor range, their hangar bays pregnant with fighters and gunships? Were clone troopers even now checking their weapons, synchronizing their chronometers, preparing for the drop that would bring death to another Separatist stronghold?

The cloud cover was complete now, sealing them in like a tomb prepared for its occupant. No more ascending ships broke through to freedom. No more sunlight to mark the passage of time. Just the grey ceiling pressing down, holding them in place while fate approached.

This was how it ended, then. Not in some grand battle among the stars, but in a hole in the ground, looking up at clouds that might hide salvation or damnation with equal indifference. The galaxy had contracted to this single point, this moment of waiting, this last breath before the plunge.

A Pau'an administrator walked over to him, allowed through by the MagnaGuards due to earlier clearance. This was not one of the neutral bureaucrats but Administrator Joqol, whose fear of Grievous was outweighed only by his fear of losing Utapau's independence. His grey skin was flushed darker with anxiety.

"General," Joqol said, his voice barely steady. "A jedi has arrived and has not left. He was... asking questions. About you. About Confederate presence."

"Where?" Grievous demanded.

"Level seven-besh, moving toward the beast pens. Administrator Medon stalled him, but..." Joqol's large eyes darted nervously. "If Utapau does not fight for its independence now, our independence will be lost forever. The Republic will never forgive our harboring of your forces."

Grievous barely heard the justification. His mind was already calculating routes, angles, positions. Level seven-besh—he'd noted it earlier as a potential ambush point. The natural choke where three walkways converged. The shadowed recess above that could hide observers.

"Alert all units," he commanded the MagnaGuards. "Defensive pattern zerek-three is now active. Move into position quietly. No one moves until I give the signal."

He took a different route from The Jedi's, moving through maintenance passages he'd catalogued during his earlier observations. The rafters here were reinforced durasteel, designed to support heavy mining equipment. They would hold his weight easily, and the shadows between them were deep enough to hide even his considerable frame.

As he climbed, his mind integrated everything he'd observed into a battle plan. The horizontal cavern he'd spotted—if it did lead to another sinkhole, he could use it to reposition, to attack from unexpected angles. The sniper positions he'd noted could provide covering fire if needed during the inevitable duel. Every detail became part of a greater strategy, pieces on a dejarik board he could actually control. One fight at a time.

His eyes, still sharp despite everything else that had failed, caught movement below. There—a figure in brown robes, moving with that distinctive Jedi confidence through Pau City's crowds. The citizens gave him space without seeming to, that unconscious deference all beings showed to those who wielded the Force.

Grievous maneuvered through the rafters with mechanical precision, his talons finding purchase on beams that would have challenged an organic being. He'd learned long ago how to move between a Jedi's awareness, to be nothing until the moment he became everything. Above and behind, death waiting to drop.

And then he saw him clearly.

Of course it was him.

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi stood at a beast pen, haggling with a lizard keeper over the price of a varactyl. The Negotiator, terror of the Confederacy, was counting out credits like some tourist buying a souvenir. The absurdity of it might have been amusing if it weren't so perfectly Kenobi—that ability to be devastatingly casual in the midst of war.

Grievous gripped the four lightsabers he had chosen for this occasion, having chosen by instinct rather than thought. His fingers—mechanical now, so much more precise than the organic ones he'd been born with—tested each activation stud. Ready.

Fear. He couldn't give Kenobi fear—the Jedi Master had faced worse than one damaged cyborg.

Surprise. Yes, he had that. Kenobi was focused on his mount, on whatever mission had brought him here alone. He wouldn't expect Grievous to simply drop from above, wouldn't expect the direct approach.

Intimidation. His respiratory system wheezed, damaged and failing. His body was more patches than original parts. But he was still Grievous, still the nightmare that had killed dozens of Jedi, still the weapon Dooku had forged.

Two out of three would have to suffice.

He watched Kenobi complete his transaction, watched him mount the varactyl with easy grace. The Jedi was moving toward what he must think was a discrete entrance to the lower levels, where he probably expected to find Grievous hiding like the skrit rodents of Kalee.

Chasing a skrit could lead one to a Karabbac.

Above them both, the oppressive cloud cover that had sealed the sinkhole suddenly cracked—updrafts from the planet's wounds meeting some higher wind, tearing the grey ceiling into ribbons of silver and gold. Sunlight poured through in sharp beams, striking the far wall first, then descending level by level until even Kenobi's brown robes caught the light, making him easier to track, easier to target. The universe had lifted its shroud.

He could not hide any longer. The paralysis that had gripped him since Coruscant, the doubt that had clouded every decision, the weight of commanding a dying cause—none of it mattered now. This was simple. This was pure. Warrior against warrior, with death waiting to claim the lesser.

He thought of Soj Vith'na's question, echoing across decades.

Would you jump for them?

The gorge yawned beneath him, the space between victory and defeat, between the General he had been and whatever he would become. It was faith, the elder had said. Faith that the sacrifice would mean something, that the jump itself had value regardless of the landing.

He would not doubt himself again. He would fight or he would die, but either would be with purpose. It was the least he could do—for Dooku, who had made him more than a warrior. For the Izvoshra, who had followed him into transformation and death. For the Kaleesh boy who had stood at a cliff's edge, certain he would never have to make this choice.

Kenobi dismounted, approaching the entrance.

Now.

Without proclamation or posturing, without the theatrical announcements that had become his signature, General Grievous jumped.

The gorge rushed up to meet him, and he was left with nothing but faith.

Chapter Text

The boardroom stretched before him in the golden afternoon light, that particular Eriadu sun that burned clean and white even through the atmospheric processors. It poured through floor-to-ceiling transparisteel panels in precise columns, each beam catching the gilt edges of datacards arranged with corporate precision, the chrome piping of ergonomic chair frames, the bright Trade Federation insignia pins that marked each director's rank and responsibility. The air carried the civilized scents of polished exotic wood, imported caf, and the faint ozone of climate control working at optimal efficiency.

A normal day. It should have been a normal day.

Nute Gunray sat in his designated place—not at the table proper, but in the observer's position reserved for the Viceroy, that arbiter of long-term vision. His robes were pressed to mathematical perfection, each fold deliberate, each crease speaking to the attention to detail that had earned him this position at less than sixty standard years. Young for such a vaunted position, but for Rish Loo's greatest student? It had long been expected.

TC-14 glided between the directors, her chrome surface catching the afternoon light as she poured tea from an ornate service that had been a gift from the Corellian Merchants' Guild. She moved with the precise grace of her programming, each gesture calculated to be unobtrusive yet attentive. Nute had insisted on her presence—protocol droids added a certain legitimacy to proceedings, made everything seem more civilized.

The Directorate was in the midst of an impromptu review of their financial position, voices carrying over the din of bureaucracy as the comfortable rhythm of beings who believed the galaxy operated according to predictable rules. Senior Director Cavik Toth, a human from Kuat, was explaining something about freight insurance rates in the Mid Rim, his tone suggesting these numbers mattered, that they would continue to matter tomorrow and the day after. Beside him, a Twi'lek from Ryloth—Director of Freight Yana'val—made notes on her datapad with elegant fingers, occasionally asking about shipping lane optimization with the kind of focus that suggested a universe where such things were the height of concern.

Director of Finances Hask, a Muun, calculated silently, his elongated face betraying nothing as columns of data reflected in his dark eyes. The Ithorian board member, whose name suddenly came back to Nute with crystal clarity—Director Pom Kreel—sat with both mouths slightly open, the breathing creating a subtle harmony that underscored the discussion. A Sullustan, Junior Director Veb Markali, laughed at something Toth said about tariff negotiations, the sound carrying too far in the boardroom's acoustic design. Near the windows was the Federation's Senior Senator Abel Grask, who seemed more interested in the beautiful skyline of Eriadu city than discussing corporate strategy.

And it was at the table's head, where authority naturally pooled like water finding its level, where Fleet Captain Rish Loo sat.

The old Neimoidian's dress uniform bore the subtle traces of his entire career—thread-of-gold embroidery for the victories at Troiken, silver piping for anti-piracy operations in the Vergesso asteroids, a small black pin for the losses at Qotile that had taught him the price of overconfidence. When he spoke, reviewing escort compositions along the Corellian Run, his voice carried the weight of someone who had earned every word through experience rather than inheritance. And naturally, given the occasion for which they were all assembled, the older Neimoidian leaned forward, ready to offer his opinion on their shared direction.

"The Republic needs us," Director Toth was saying, leaning back in his chair with the confidence of someone stating an axiom. "Their entire economy depends on our shipping lanes. Without the Federation, the Core Worlds would starve within a month."

"And without the Core Worlds," Rish Loo replied gently from his position, "we would have no one to sell to. We are not conquerors, Director. We are merchants. Symbiosis, not dominance."

The words carried the weight of someone who understood that the Trade Federation's power was always borrowed, always dependent on the very systems some directors wanted to strangle with embargoes.

"Chancellor Valorum will be here within the hour," Director Hask noted without looking up from his calculations. "Governor Tarkin has assured us the summit will proceed as planned. This ongoing economic initiative of his—turning Eriadu into a trade hub to rival Corellia—it could benefit us substantially in the western reaches–sending figures now."

The age old and satisfying noise of sent data pinged across the pads of the Federation's top members. Nods resounded, acknowledging that prosperity meant opportunity.

Nute's mind was elsewhere though. It dwelled on that old name, that conspirator Wilhuff Tarkin. Even then, Nute had known there was something unsettling about Eriadu's ambitious governor. The way he smiled without warmth, the way his "economic initiatives" always seemed to benefit his world at the expense of the reaches as a whole. But the Directorate saw only opportunity, only profit margins.

"Tarkin is using us," Director Pom Kreel observed, his dual Ithorian voice creating that distinctive harmony. "His Eriadu grows wealthy on our traffic while we bear the costs."

"All relationships are transactional," Director Veb Markali laughed, the Sullustan's voice carrying too far in the acoustic space. "As long as the transaction remains profitable—"

Junior Senator Lott Dod should have been here—was supposed to be here, seated at Nute's left—but had claimed illness that morning. A convenient illness, one that Nute had helped arrange, though in the dream he couldn't quite remember how.

"We should think of our relationship with the Republic in that way. Transactional. A compromise with the Republic serves everyone," Rish Loo continued, his webbed fingers tracing patterns on the table's surface. "The taxation proposal will pass—Valorum will find the votes soon enough. We negotiate the rates, show good faith, and maintain our neutrality. The Republic needs shipping. We need markets. Simple economics."

Simple economics. As if anything involving trillions of credits and thousands of worlds could be simple. But that was Rish Loo's gift—making the complex seem manageable, finding the profitable path through political minefields.

"I still say we should resist, drag our feet," insisted Director Kaird, a Nediji whose iridescent sea green feathers ruffled with agitation. "The Outer Rim trade routes are ours by right of development. We opened them, we maintain them, we protect them from pirates—"

"And we'll lose them if we're not careful," Rish Loo interrupted gently. "The Republic has the fleet--no matter the fate of the Outlands force. We have cargo haulers with defensive capabilities. Let's not pretend otherwise. Mark my words, with proper motivation the Republic could pursue punitive action," The Fleet Captain took a good look at his compatriots, "and remember this–we operate our best when they lie asleep."

"A compromise, then," Director Toth suggested, leaning forward. "I doubt we want to risk too much attention on the goings on anyways," that inspired nods and chuckles from across the table, "we accept the taxation framework but negotiate the rates. Show the Senate we're willing to work within the system while protecting our margins—"

This was the Trade Federation at its functional best—not perfect, never that, but working. Multiple species, multiple viewpoints, finding common ground in the universal language of sustainable profit. They would discuss a point-five percent adjustment to shipping rates, and would treat it with the gravity of beings who believed a fraction of a percent was worth discussing, that there would always be a next quarter to plan for.

Outside the panels, the sun shifted slightly. Shadows lengthened by degrees. The backs of empty board chairs acted like sundials.

Nute's hands remained folded, but he could feel his pulse in his palms. How much longer? Five minutes? Ten? He'd paid for fifteen minutes of discussion before—before—

"Your thoughts, Viceroy?"

The question came from Rish Loo, those patient red eyes finding his across the table. In that gaze was expectation, trust, the confidence of a mentor who believed his student would contribute something valuable to the discussion.

"A… As the Viceroy of the Federation I believe..." Nute's voice came out wrong, too high, too young.

He cleared his throat.

"I think we should check the ventilation systems."

A ripple of confused looks around the table. Director Markali actually laughed.

"The ventilation?" Toth asked, eyebrows rising. "Is there a problem with the climate control, Viceroy?"

As the table's eyes fell upon him he felt a sort of nervousness he hadn't felt in years. He had almost forgotten about the times before he was the voice of authority, when the Kuati had a voice to challenge him, when his mentor commanded the respect to keep him in check. He forced his throat clear.

"No, No, I just—" Nute stopped. What could he say? That he'd paid the Nebula Front to pump dioxis through those vents? That any moment now, everyone in this room would die? That outside, Chancellor Valorum was about to arrive for a summit that would never happen because the "anti-corporate terrorists" would strike first?

TC-14 paused in her serving, her photoreceptors focusing on him with what might have been concern if droids could feel such things. "Master Gunray, shall I check the environmental systems?"

"No," he said like a man condemned. "Continue with the service."

A soft hiss, barely audible beneath the conversation. The kind of sound that could be dismissed as thermal expansion, as building settling, as anything but what it was.

The first wisp of green vapor emerged from the corner vent, heavier than air, rolling down the wall like slow water.

Nute felt tears stinging at his eyes.

"I…"

"Wait," Director Kreel's dual voice harmonized into alarm. "What is—"

"DIOXIS!"

The word exploded from three mouths simultaneously. Chairs crashed backward. The Muun director lunged for the emergency panel, long fingers scrabbling at controls that wouldn't respond—couldn't respond, Nute had ensured that. Director Kaird threw himself at the doors, feathers scattered as he impacted sealed metal that should have opened at proximity.

"Sealed," Rish Loo said quietly, and in that single word, Nute heard him understand. Not the full plot perhaps, but the shape of it. The betrayal of it.

The green gas was pouring in now, not just from one vent but all of them, synchronized and relentless. The afternoon sunbeams that had seemed so clean moments before now became pillars of sickly green-gold, the dioxis visible as it rolled through the light like smoke through stage beams.

Director Toth had pulled out a hold-out blaster—always prepared, those Kuati—and was firing at the ventilation grates. The energy bolts just scattered the vapor, spreading it faster, making the air itself seem to burn green. Director Yana'val had dropped to the floor, trying to find breathable air in the last pockets near the ground, her lekku twitching in the way that meant oxygen deprivation, neural damage, death approaching on silent feet.

TC-14 stood perfectly still in the center of the chaos, her photoreceptors tracking the gas's spread with mechanical precision. "Environmental hazard detected," she announced calmly. "Recommend immediate evacuation."

The Ithorian was the first to fall completely, both throats making a sound like wind through a broken instrument before he crashed forward, the impact of his massive head cracking the obsidian table. Green foam frothed from both mouths, tinted pink where blood vessels had burst.

And through it all, through the chaos and the screaming and the desperate pounding on sealed doors, Rish Loo stood perfectly still at the head of the table, watching his directors die with the calm of someone who had seen death before and knew there was a dignity in how one met it.

"Why?" he asked, and somehow, Nute knew the question was for him.

The gas was chest-high now, a green sea that turned the dying directors into islands of suffering. But somehow, in the strange logic of the mind, Rish Loo stood clear of it, as if the dioxis parted for him out of respect and little else.

"The Federation needed stronger leadership," Nute heard himself say, the words pulled from some deep place where justifications survived. "You were too willing to compromise. The Republic was going to strangle us with regulations, with taxation, with their rules—"

"We were going to survive," Rish Loo corrected, his voice carrying no anger, only infinite disappointment. "With smaller profits, perhaps. With more oversight, certainly. But we would have survived with our honor intact."

Through the thickening haze, through the pillars of poisoned light, Nute saw movement beyond the glass wall. A silhouette standing there, hands clasped behind his back, watching with the dispassion of someone observing an experiment. It was himself—not the younger Viceroy choking on his guilt in the boardroom, but the old man, the one who was on Mustafar now. His face bore no expression, no pity, no satisfaction. Just the blank observation of someone watching a transaction complete.

"You were supposed to be better," Rish Loo said, and now blood was running from his nose, the dioxis finally reaching even him. "I chose you because I thought you understood that profit without principle is just piracy with better clothes."

Nute could hardly listen. It was agony to be here and listen.

The Sullustan was making sounds no sentient should make, wet and desperate, clawing at his throat as if he could tear the poison out. The Muun had tried to break the transparisteel with his chair, but the panels were rated for asteroid impacts. His tall frame folded like a broken stylus, all that calculation reduced to animal panic.

Director Toth had fallen to his knees, the blaster dropped, both hands at his throat. He was looking directly at Nute, mouth working, trying to form words. Maybe accusations. Maybe pleas. Maybe just the need to make sound while he still could.

The sunlight was almost gone now, not from the lack of light but from the sheer density of the dark. Those clean beams had become columns of poison, pillars of roiling green death that turned the boardroom into a temple of murder. And at the altar, Rish Loo still stood, though his legs were shaking, his breath coming in shorter gasps.

"Look at yourself," his mentor said, gesturing toward the window where the older Nute watched. "Look at what this moment makes you. Every choice after this one will be poisoned, just like this room. You'll climb to the top of a tower built on our bodies, only to discover it's actually a pyre."

"I had to," Nute whispered, but the words dissolved in the dioxis like everything else.

"No," Rish Loo said, and now he was listing–no–falling, slow and deliberate, maintaining dignity even in death. "You chose to. And that choice will follow you to places worse than death. To Mustafar, perhaps. To the edge of the galaxy where all your victories turn to ash."

The gas reached for Nute's throat, filling his lungs with metallic death. He tried to scream but produced only silence. Tried to run but his legs were already corpse-heavy. The gas seemed to rush to his open mouth, entering into him at impossible speeds, as fast as the ash on Mustafar. The last thing he saw before the green consumed everything was his own face in the window—older, exhausted, trapped on a volcanic world—watching his younger self die in the trap he'd built.

But there was something else in that older face now, something the younger Nute hadn't noticed before. A recognition, perhaps. An understanding that this moment—this boardroom, this betrayal, this birth of the new Trade Federation through the death of the old—had led inevitably to Mustafar. That every credit gained through treachery carried interest, and the payment was finally coming due.

The boardroom dissolved, but slowly, like acid eating through metal. The last sensation was the sound of credits dropping into an account—millions of them, the payment for a massacre disguised as terrorism. Each credit rang like a bell, like a funeral chime, like the sound of a future mortgaging itself for a profitable present.

And then darkness.

Complete and total.

Except for the feeling of being watched.

Nute's eyes snapped open, his lungs pulling in a desperate breath that tasted of sulfur and ash rather than dioxis and death. He was sitting upright on the narrow cot in the Mustafar facility, sweat running down his face in rivers, his robes soaked through. The nightmare's taste lingered through the faculties of the mind—metallic, poisonous, familiar.

The room–-spartan as it was—seemed like paradise compared to thoughts on his past. Lights blinked softly–red for the storm, red for unanswered messages. It was then that he noticed that a silhouette stood in the doorway, tall and still, backlit by the corridor's emergency lighting.

Rune Haako.

His oldest friend, his co-conspirator, one of three who knew the full truth of what had happened at Eriadu. Rune had been in the anteroom that day, had helped sell the performance of the horrified survivor.

Had helped count the credits afterward.

Now he stood like a ghost, watching, saying nothing.

"How long have you been standing there?" Nute asked, his voice cracked and dry.

"Long enough," Rune replied, stepping into the room. The emergency lighting painted his face in reds and shadows. "You were talking in your sleep. Saying his name."

"Whose name?"

"You know whose."

Rish Loo. They never spoke of him anymore, hadn't for years. But here, at the edge of everything, the ghost had returned.

"I've been thinking," Rune said, settling into a chair with the careful movements of someone bearing bad news. "About Eriadu. About everything that followed. About where we are now."

"Don't," Nute said.

"Our lives… dedicated to this madness," Rune continued as if he hadn't heard. "Forty-three years since you brought me into your confidence. Thirty since we decided the old Federation was too weak to survive."

"It was too weak. The Republic would have dismantled us piece by piece—"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps we would have adapted, evolved, found a way to profit within their system instead of against it." Rune's fingers drummed on his knee, a nervous habit from their youth. "But we'll never know, will we? Because we chose this path. Chose Him. Chose murder disguised as principle."

The man Rune had referred to hung between them like an accusation. Sidious. The hooded figure who had promised them power, profit, protection all of those years ago. Who had delivered on all three, for a time.

"You know what's funny?" Rune said, a bitter smile playing at his lips. "The Federation needs the Republic. Always has. Without their markets, their currency, their consumers, we're just pirates managing supply lines to nowhere. During the war, we had to stay neutral—shipping to both sides—because our entire business model depends on the credits having value. And credits only have value if the Republic says they do."

Nute felt something cold settle in his stomach. He'd known this, of course, but hearing it spoken aloud made it real in a way that was uncomfortable.

"The Confederacy was always doomed," Rune continued. "We don't have the infrastructure to create our own economy. Every credit we earned from selling to Separatist worlds was only worth something because we could still trade with the Republic. We were fighting to destroy the very thing that gave our wealth meaning."

"Stop."

"I received a message," Rune said suddenly, his voice dropping. "An hour ago, while you slept. Just a single line, no sender identification. It said: 'Are you ready for peace?'"

The words hung in the air like a curse

"...And?" Nute asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

"And I deleted it," Rune said simply. "Whatever happens, we face it together. That's what I decided forty-three years ago, and I haven't changed my mind."

The loyalty should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like another weight, another chain binding them to their shared damnation.

"There's something else," Rune said. "About Lott."

Nute's chest tightened. He'd been expecting this, dreading it. "What about him?"

"He's dead."

The words were simple, factual, but they carried the weight of another ending. Lott Dodd, proud Senator, co-conspirator, fellow survivor of Eriadu, the only other Neimoidian who had been there from the beginning.

"When?"

"Only a few hours ago. Outside the Senate rotunda on Republic Plaza."

"He went back?" Nute couldn't hide his disbelief. "Surely–I told him not to—"

"He went back," Rune confirmed. "Believed his senatorial immunity would protect him. Believed in the law, even after everything."

"How?"

Rune's expression darkened. "The HoloNet says a citizen attacked him. Someone who lost family during the Separatist assault on Coruscant. They're calling it a spontaneous act of revenge."

"But?"

"But our sources say differently. Twenty-minute firefight between his guards and Clone shock troops. The 'citizen' was a Republic officer. It was an execution, Nute. They didn't even pretend to arrest him."

"He—-that—"

The two shared a moment of silence, in their own sort of eulogy.

Justice was dead. The Republic had become the very thing it claimed to oppose—rule through violence rather than law. And perhaps, Nute thought, they had learned some of it from watching Us. From watching what corporate power could do when it decided laws were merely suggestions.

"He knew," Rune said quietly. "At the end, Lott knew what was coming. His final transmission mentioned Eriadu. Said the chickens were coming home to roost."

An odd human expression, one Lott had picked up during his years in the Senate. It meant that consequences, long delayed, were finally arriving. That the murders in that boardroom, the betrayal of every principle the Trade Federation had claimed to represent, the alliance with the Sith—all of it was finally demanding payment.

"We are going to die here," Nute said. It wasn't a question.

"Probably," Rune agreed. "The question is whether it will mean anything. Whether anyone will remember us as anything other than villains in someone else's story."

Outside, the ash storm continued its howling, though perhaps with less fury than before. Or perhaps Nute was simply becoming accustomed to it, the way one became accustomed to guilt, to compromise, to the slow poison of choices that had seemed profitable at the time.

"Do you regret it?" Rune asked suddenly. "Eriadu?"

Nute thought of Rish Loo standing in the poisoned and scattered light, disappointed but not surprised. Thought of Director Toth trying to speak through a throat full of blood. Thought of all the small cooperations and compromises that had died in that room, replaced by the aggressive expansion that had led to Naboo, to Geonosis, to this.

The words hung between them like a burial shroud.

It used to be fogged by the glass, and yet now the answer presented itself clear as day.

"Every day," Nute admitted. "And never."

It was the most honest thing he'd said in decades. He regretted the necessity, the brutality, the betrayal of a mentor who had deserved better. But he never regretted the power it had brought, the transformation of the Trade Federation from a coalition of merchants into a force that had made the Republic tremble.

Their reverie was interrupted by a sound deeper in the facility—not screaming this time, but something worse. Cheering. Jubilant voices echoing through the volcanic corridors like the cries of the mad.

Nute and Rune exchanged glances, both rising from their seats with the careful movements of beings who had long ago learned to distrust sudden changes in fortune.

"What could possibly—" Rune began, but the door burst open before he could finish.

Rute Gunnay stood there, his younger face flushed with excitement, the plume on his hat bobbing as if it too had caught the fever of whatever news had arrived. Behind him, the corridors echoed with voices—Skakoans hissing through their vocoders, Gossams chittering, even the normally composed Muuns speaking in rapid, elevated tones.

"Cousin!" Rute exclaimed, practically vibrating with energy. "The most extraordinary news! The Republic's armies have turned on the Jedi!"

The words didn't make sense.

Nute blinked, certain he'd misheard over the facility's constant rumble.

"What?"

"The clones!" Rute rushed forward, his hands moving in animated gestures. "Across the galaxy, on every front—they're executing their Jedi commanders! Reports are flooding in from everywhere!"

Rune swept out of the room and to the nearest communication terminal, his fingers dancing across the controls with practiced efficiency. Holographic displays materialized, each one showing fragments of intercepted transmissions, battlefield reports, scattered intelligence from a dozen worlds.

"Kashyyyk, per General Linwodo" Rune read, his voice carefully neutral. "His communique reads: 'Jedi Grand Master Yoda attacked by clone forces. Wookie firefights in support of Jedi escape. Jedi Master Unduli secured by our forces–-requesting directive.' Here is another report from Saleucami—General Stass Allie killed by speeder bike escort. Felucia—Aayla Secura executed by clone commander Bly."

The list continued, each name another impossibility. Mygeeto, where Ki-Adi-Mundi had fallen to the very troops he'd led for three years. Bracca, where clones retreated from the front lines to presumably deal with Master Jaro Tapal. Kaller, where Master Depa Billaba had died protecting her Padawan from soldiers she'd trusted with her life, in full view of droid forces.

"They're calling it Order 66," Rute added, his voice carrying an edge of something that made Nute's skin crawl. "Some kind of contingency protocol. The clones just... turned on their generals. Like droids following programming."

Like droids. The irony wasn't lost on Nute—the Republic's vaunted organic army, so superior to their mechanical forces, reduced to the same binary obedience.

From the corridors came a convergence of the Separatist Council, drawn by the news like insects to flame.

San Hill actually stumbled through the doorway, the normally composed Muun's elongated frame shaking with what might have been laughter or shock.

"Mygeeto will be saved!" the Muun exclaimed, his usual pessimism cracking. "Without the Jedi to lead them, the clones will falter. Kaller can be retaken… Muunilist might hold!"

"Order 66!" someone shouted—Nute couldn't tell who in the press of bodies.

"—Republic contingency—"

Behind the Chairman came Shu Mai and her head assistant Miin, both practically glowing with vindication. "Felucia is ours again!" Shu Mai declared. "The Commerce Guild's holdings will be restored!"

Wat Tambor's suit hissed as he shoved through the crowd, his vocabulator crackling with static as he tried to speak over the chaos. "Without—bzzt—Jedi leadership—bzzt—strategic advantage—"

"Move, you're stepping on my—" That was Tikkes, tentacles flailing as he tried to navigate through what had become a mob.

Even Po Nudo had emerged, though his celebration was muted by grief, his Shi'ido aide literally shape-shifting to avoid being trampled as more beings pressed into the space.

"Where's the brandy?" someone called.

"I have it—no wait—" The sound of glass breaking, followed by cursing in three languages.

Magistrate Passel Argente was attempting to calculate something on a portable holoprojector, his fingers flying across financial models. "If the Jedi are eliminated as a factor, our negotiating position improves by—"

"Negotiating position?" Tikkes interrupted, grabbing Passel's shoulder as the Quarren's tentacles writhed with agitation. "This changes everything! The Jedi were the Republic's moral authority. Without them—"

"Without them, the Republic becomes something else," Nute said quietly, but his words were lost in the swell of voices.

Poggle the Lesser and the Geonosians had arrived, his Geonosian attendants chittering translations of the various reports. Their presence could literally be felt–as the buzzing of their collective wings started a noticeable draft. The Archduke's wings too buzzed occasionally—a sign of deep thought rather than excitement. Of all the council members, he seemed least swept up in the jubilation, his compound eyes tracking between the reports with what might have been suspicion.

"Admiral Laff has a report from the fleet!" Rute announced, gesturing to another Neimoidian who had just arrived at the facility.

Through the chaos, the haggard figure in a naval uniform pushed forward—Aito Laff, his clothes still bearing scorch marks, his face drawn from days of combat.

"I am the First Officer but yes, Admiral Dofine—" he started, but was immediately interrupted by five different questions shouted at once.

"—is he alive?"

"—what about the fleet?"

"—can we counterattack?"

Nute too was taken aback. "Aito? Were you with the Defense fleet?"

First Officer Laff had served on the Invisible Hand during the Coruscant disaster, had watched the Confederate first fleet tear itself apart in recent days. But now his face carried something that had been absent for days—hope.

Laff raised his hands for silence, which only partially worked. "Admiral Dofine has achieved the impossible," Laff announced, his voice carrying over the celebration. "He's broken through the Republic blockade of the Corellian Run by doubling back through the Five Veils route. The confusion following this... Order 66... has only left further gaps in their coverage, I am sure of it. For the first time in forty hours, he's not under direct pursuit."

More cheering. San Hill was actually attempting something that might have been a smile. Shu Mai was already making plans for retaking lost facilities across the Tion cluster. The atmosphere had shifted from funeral to festival in the span of minutes.

But Nute watched Rune's face as he continued scrolling through reports, saw the slight furrowing of his brow, the way his fingers hesitated over certain data streams.

"What about Utapau?" Nute asked.

The question cut through some of the celebration. Laff's expression darkened slightly.

"No word on our end. We know Grievous was there, that a battle occurred. Several ships departed just before engagement, but..." He spread his hands. "Communications have been dark for hours between here and the Admiral."

"Grievous is probably dead," Tambor stated flatly. "But it matters less now. If the Jedi are being eliminated—"

"Perhaps they'll ally with us!" Cat Miin suggested, her high voice cutting through Tambor's vocoder. "The enemy of our enemy—"

"The Jedi working with us?" Someone laughed—Nute couldn't tell who in the press of bodies. "After what we've done?"

"They'll be desperate," Argente countered. "Hunted, betrayed—they'll need allies, resources—"

"Why did this happen?" Rune asked quietly, but his words were buried under a fresh wave of speculation.

The council members were talking over each other now, plans and theories tumbling out like credits from a broken slot machine. The Jedi would form their own faction. The Republic would collapse into civil war. The Confederacy would emerge victorious by default. Each scenario more fantastic than the last, each one ignoring the fundamental reality that they were still refugees hiding in a mining facility on a volcanic moon.

Nute found himself thinking of the Trade Federation's Director of Compliance—a stern human woman named Kora Vashane who had died at Eriadu with the others. Her job had been to ensure the Federation followed ethical guidelines, to be the conscience that kept profit from becoming piracy. She'd been annoying, self-righteous, constantly quoting regulations and moral principles.

She'd also been right about most things, in retrospect.

The Jedi had been that for the Republic—the ethical boundary, the line that couldn't be crossed. And now they were being purged with the same systematic efficiency Nute had used to clear out his own obstacles. With the same efficiency that had already killed Dod.

"Cousin," Rute said, suddenly at his elbow, voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "I've been thinking while you rested. About applications of certain... programs we've developed."

Nute's stomach turned. Rute's specialty had always been biochemical warfare—the uglier side of conflict that even battle droids couldn't stomach.

"What programs?"

"The Loedorvian Brain Plague, for one. Without Jedi healers to contain outbreaks—"

"Not now, Rute."

"But cousin, if we could weaponize the chaos, turn their own confusion against them—"

"I said not now."

Rute's face showed hurt surprise, but he backed away, rejoining the larger celebration. Someone had found more Corellian brandy by the look of it—and was pouring generous measures for anyone with hands steady enough to hold a glass.

The storm outside was definitely weakening. Through the viewport, Nute could see actual shapes now—the suggestion of mountains, the distant glow of lava rivers. The ash was settling, the winds dying down to mere gale force. Even Mustafar seemed to be acknowledging that something fundamental had shifted. The lights turned from red to amber, and from behind the din Nute could make out the facility stating that the storm had passed.

And yet Nute couldn't shake the feeling that they were celebrating in a tomb. The cheers echoed wrong off the volcanic walls, too bright, too desperate. Like the laughter of beings who didn't realize they were already dead.

"It's brilliant," he heard himself say, and several heads turned toward him.

"Viceroy?" San Hill prompted.

"The timing. The execution. Every Jedi, everywhere, all at once." Nute moved toward the tactical displays, studying the pattern of attacks. "No warning, no chance for defense. Just... elimination."

"The Republic has finally shown wisdom," Tambor suggested.

"No," Nute said. "This isn't wisdom. This is surgery. Someone identified the Jedi as an obstacle and removed them. Completely. Efficiently. Without hesitation or regret."

He thought of Rish Loo again, of the boardroom at Eriadu, of obstacles removed with surgical precision. The parallels were too perfect to be coincidence.

"You're overthinking it, cousin," Rute said, raising his glass. "The Republic has handed us victory!"

"Have they?"

Poggle clicked something that his attendants didn't translate, but Nute caught the skepticism in the sound.

The celebration continued, growing louder as more alcohol appeared from various emergency stashes. Someone had even found music—a tinny recording of something triumphant and martial. But Nute noticed who wasn't fully participating. Rune, still at his terminal, tracking data streams with growing concern. Poggle, whose compound eyes never stopped moving between exits. Po Nudo, whose grief for his family couldn't quite be drowned by the possibility of military advantage.

And in the midst of it all, a T-series tactical droid entered, its photoreceptors flickering with what would have been urgency in an organic being.

"Council members," it announced, its mechanical voice somehow cutting through the celebration. "Incoming transmission. Priority One. Source identifies as... Darth Sidious."

The effect was immediate. Glasses stopped midway to mouths. The singing cut off mid-verse. Someone dropped a helmet they'd been drinking from, sending liquor splashing across the floor.

Some of the council members looked confused—Argente, Cat Miin, a few others who had joined the Confederacy late or had been kept from the inner circles. But more knew that name than ever before. Nute saw recognition in San Hill's suddenly pale face, in Tambor's suit indicators flashing warning colors, in Shu Mai's hand moving unconsciously to her neck jewlery.

Poggle chittered something that sounded like a prayer or a curse.

"Darth Sidious?" Tikkes asked, tentacles curling in confusion. "Who is—"

"Everyone out," Nute commanded, surprised by the strength in his own voice. "Council members only. Senior council."

The room cleared with reluctant efficiency, though someone had to physically drag Cat Miin away as she protested about her "right to know." Even Rute was ushered out, protesting but ultimately obedient.

When the doors sealed, Nute looked at the remaining faces—his fellow conspirators, his fellow victims, his fellow fools who had thought they were partners rather than tools.

""Put him through," Nute said.

The holoprojector flickered to life, and the temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.

The blue light that flooded the room was wrong—too bright, too deep, casting shadows where shadows shouldn't exist. It painted every face in shades of corpse-pale azure, turned their celebration-flushed features into death masks. Half-empty glasses caught the glow, trembling in hands that had suddenly forgotten how to be steady. Someone's smile—San Hill's by the looks of it—remained frozen on their face, the expression now grotesque in the holographic radiance, joy curdled into something else entirely.

Darth Sidious materialized in that diseased light, but something was wrong with the projection. The edges writhed like living things, the shadows beneath his hood deeper than any hologram should produce. Where his face should be was an absence that hurt to perceive directly, as if the darkness there was actively consuming the light around it.

"My friends," he said, and his voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

The words slithered through the air like something physical, something that left traces. Wat Tambor's suit began cycling frantically, as if trying to filter out a contaminant that didn't exist. San Hill swayed on his feet, his elongated frame rippling like a reed in a wind that only he could feel.

"Lord Sidious, we—" Shu Mai started, her voice high and desperate, but the words died as if crushed by invisible fingers. She stood there, mouth still open, eyes wide with the particular terror of someone who'd just realized they'd interrupted something that should never be interrupted.

Sidious continued as if she hadn't spoken, as if she didn't exist at all.

"The Jedi impediment is being removed," he said, and behind his words Nute could almost hear something else—screaming or laughter, or perhaps the sound of a galaxy moving. "Soon, the Republic will have no choice but to seek terms."

A pause that lasted seconds or hours.

"Peace is at hand."

Every word was reasonable. Every promise exactly what they wanted to hear. The blue light pulsed with each syllable, and with each pulse, Nute felt something inside him wither. Poggle's wings buzzed—once, twice—then fell silent, as if the Geonosian had forgotten how to use them.

"When the Jedi come to you—and they will come, desperate and betrayed—show them no mercy." The smile beneath the hood widened impossibly, showing too many teeth that caught the light when they should have emanated it. "They are rabid animals, nothing more."

Shu Mai made a sound that might have been agreement or might have been choking.

"Prepare your shutdown codes," Sidious continued, each word dropping like stones into still water, sending ripples through the blue-lit air. "We wouldn't want any... accidents... during the delicate negotiations to come."

The hologram flickered—once, twice—and in those flickers, Nute could swear he saw something else. A meeting room. Bodies strewn across the floor. A figure in black.

Then nothing. The blue light vanished like it had been swallowed, leaving them in the facilities amber glow that now seemed warm and welcoming by comparison.

For a moment, no one moved. No one breathed. They stood like statues in a tomb, waiting for permission to be alive again.

Then San Hill stumbled toward the environmental controls, his long fingers shaking as they flew across the panels.

"Open the hatches," he gasped. "I need—we need air."

"The cleaning cycle isn't complete—" a droid warned, but the Muun was already overriding the safeties.

"Open them anyway!"

The seal broke with a hiss that made Nute's blood freeze. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ash came.

White particulate rolled in like fog—the storm's final gift, carrying the burnt smell of a world that consumed itself daily. It wasn't poison, just the remnants of Mustafar's regular tantrums, but it filled their lungs all the same. The first breath brought coughing. The second brought tears. By the third, everyone was doubled over, hacking, gasping, the celebration transformed into a symphony of respiratory distress.

Through burning eyes, Nute watched the others stumble through the white haze—mighty corporate leaders reduced to animals seeking breathable air. Wat Tambor's suit alarms shrieked. Shu Mai had fallen to her knees, makeup running in dark streams. Po Nudo stood completely still, as if he'd forgotten how to move, ash settling on him like snow on a statue.

In TC-14's chrome surface, Nute caught his reflection multiplied infinitely—young and old, past and present, all of them choking on the consequences of choices made in boardrooms long ago. And in the years since they'd climbed so high only to find the air at the top was unbreathable.

The white haze swirled, and in its patterns, Nute saw faces—Rish Loo, the directors, Lott Dodd, all the small murders that had led to this grand execution, all ghosting around him as if time hadn't passed at all.

And over the din, the hacking, the alarms of facility systems, of the screams, that noise beneath everything could be heard again.

It was glacial, it was all around them, it was impossibly large.

It was if the mountain had spoken for itself, tired of listening to the bickering of those beneath it.

It said aloud, for all to hear–

"Hell has its own hierarchy, and you are not near the summit."

Chapter Text

The question had hung in the air around the deployment grounds that morning, as the 212th battalion loaded their tools of war back aboard the Vigilance for what they all hoped would be their final operation. The atmosphere was palpable, given to a sort of optimism and finality that had seemed so impossible before Coruscant, before the electric present. Grievous was on the run, and the Republic's finest were being given the green light to engage. This was the cream of the crop, the warriors and veterans of the Open Circle fleet, even if it would be without the Galaxy's hero this time around. That same hero's words were still echoing around in Obi Wan's mind, strange and vulnerable in a way that Anakin rarely allowed himself to be. The Negotiator raised a brow.

"Ready for what, exactly?" Obi Wan had asked, though something in Anakin's eyes suggested this wasn't really about mission parameters or combat techniques.

"For…more." Anakin's mechanical hand had clenched and unclenched, that nervous tell he'd never quite learned to control through the war. "The Council keeps saying I need patience, that I'm not ready for the deeper knowledge of the Order, for the restricted archives, for—" He'd stopped himself, jaw working around words he couldn't or wouldn't say.

"You want to know when you'll be ready for Master, to serve as a true member of the Council," Obi Wan had supplied, deliberately misunderstanding. It was safer that way.

"No–it's not that–I…" Anakin had run his living hand through his hair, frustration radiating off of him like heat. "There are things I need to learn, Master. Things that could help people, save them from—" another stop. Another swallowed revelation. Or the tearing away of an illusion we tell each other.

"The Council acts like knowledge itself is dangerous." The Jedi Knight leaned into the light of the day, watching Obi Wan with searching eyes. In the background, the hum of war continued to be heard, though they had walked some distance from the deployment zone, from Obi Wan's starfighter.

"Some knowledge is," Obi Wan said gently. "But I don't think that is really what you're asking."

Anakin looked at him with such desperate hope that it had taken Obi Wan aback. His former Padawan, the Chosen One, the Hero With No Fear, looking like a lost child asking for directions home.

"You want to know how to be ready for something you can't even name," Obi Wan said. "Something coming that you feel but can't quite see."

The relief on Anakin's face had been immediate. "Yes. How do I prepare for… whatever's coming?"

Obi Wan took a moment to look at the city around them, choosing his words carefully. "You know, you and I have always approached the Force differently, ever since I took you in as a young boy. You have always been like a river during a flood season–powerful, direct, carving new channels through sheer will. You will see a problem and overwhelm it with your strength. It has served you—it has served the Jedi Order—well."
"But?"

"But there is another way. Patience isn't just waiting, or stewing, Anakin. It is a form of preparation in itself. When you're patient, when you let the universe flow without forcing it, you become like still water—reflecting everything, disturbed by nothing. You learn to be ready for anything by accepting everything."

Anakin frowned, that particular expression he got when wrestling with concepts that didn't involve lightsabers or starfighters. "That sounds very… passive Master. Grand Master Yoda did not offer advice that was so different either."

"Do you see it as passive?" Obi Wan smiled. "Letting the force decide—I prefer to think of it as being a conduit for the Force rather than trying to direct it. You push the Force where you want it to go—and yes, you're remarkably good at that, with your natural power. But when you simply listen, when you let it flow through you without interference, it tells you things. Warnings. Opportunities. Truths you did not know you needed."

"And that saves you?" Anakin had asked, skepticism clear in his voice. Something more. "When everything comes crashing down on top of you, this patience, this listening—that's enough?"

The memory shifted. Stuttered.

Anakin hadn't said that last part. Not then. Not in the hangar. The Chancellor had called for him, had cut their conversation short.

But someone, something was saying it now, and the words came with a sensation like ice water down his spine, like the universe itself was clearing its throat.

When everything comes crashing down on top of you—

Obi Wan's eyes snapped upward.

Four points of light descending like falling stars–blue, green, blue, green–beautiful in their symmetry, terrible in their purpose. Time stretched like heated glass, each nanosecond expanding to contain impossible amounts of information. The angle of descent, the speed, the distance and time to impact, it all slammed into his mind with the kind of premonition and force that only the Force could provide.

His lightsaber was in hand before the command to draw it even reached his muscles, igniting in a perfect arc that shouldn't have been possible from his position. The Force wasn't pushing through him now–he WAS the Force, every cell in his body aligned with its desperate warning.

The first two sabers met his own with a sound like thunder. The impact travelled up his arms, through his shoulders, tried with all of its might to drive him to his knees. But his body was already moving, already twisting in a pirouette that belonged more to dance than combat. The third saber passed through empty air where head had been an instant earlier. The fourth carved a line through his cloak, close enough that the shearing fabric smelled burnt and faintly of ozone.

It was only then that Grievous hit the flagstones with the force of divine judgement. The ancient stones–laid by Pau'an craftsmen three thousand years ago, worn smooth by millions of feet and the need to live underground–exploded outward in a perfect circle. Fragments of rock became crude shrapnel, each piece potentially lethal, but Obi Wan was already elsewhere, his body following a path that the Force had drawn before Grievous had even jumped.

The Dread General flowed from impact to attack without pause, without transition. Four lightsabers created a sphere of death that should have been inescapable–each blade covering the weakness of the others, each strike calculated to force Obi Wan into the path of another. This wasn't the theatrical Grievous of their previous encounters. This was the warrior who had killed dozens of Jedi, distilled to pure furious purpose.

At the same time, Obi Wan's mind went quiet. Not empty–full. So completely filled with the Force that there was no room for thought, for self, for anything but the perfect expression of Soresu. His blade hardly moved to block attacks–it simply existed where it needed to be, when it needed to be there. Each parry flowed into the next like water finding its level, creating a defense that seemed to almost exist outside of time entirely.

The two carved through the marketplace, their battle measured less in moves and more in heartbeats. Seventeen strikes in the first second. Twenty in the second. By the third, they had destroyed a vendor's stall, send a family of Pau'ans diving for cover, and had turned a decorative fountain into rubble and steam.

Grievous pressed forward unerringly, his mechanical precision and organic fury combining in the kind of assault only a lifelong warrior could perpetrate. His attacks did not lack in creativity–with swings approaching from angles that should not exist–the advantage of four arms and joints that could rotate 360 degrees. A thrust from above while simultaneously sweeping low. A pincer movement while striking at center mass. Each attack would have, should have killed a normal jedi. Most would have killed even exceptional ones.

But Obi Wan was listening to the Force with the kind of clarity that came only in moments of perfect crisis, and his destiny called for a symphony of survival. Fate compelled his movements where even a second thought would be his last.

Duck now.

Step left.

Blade at thirty degrees.

Push here.

Pull there.

Let this strike pass.

Meet that one.

The General's assault was relentless, overwhelming, magnificent in its terrible perfection. But something was wrong. Black fluid–not oil, but something organic mixed with mechanical lubricants–leaked from Grievous' mouth with every fourth strike. His breathing, labored for days now, had become a wet, rattling horror.

It was after fifty seven seconds of continuous attack–an eternity of near death strikes–that Grievous suddenly disengaged, stumbling backward. His entire frame convulsed as he coughed with such violence that one of his arms actually disconnected at the shoulder joint, hanging by cables and sparking servos. Even more black fluid splattered atop the shattered stones, mixed now with something that looked disturbingly like blood.

It was in that moment of respite, as Grievous fought his own failing body, that Obi Wan reclaimed control, his hand flying to his earpiece. The words that emerged were not the calm, measured tones of a Jedi Master but instead something raw, desperate, pulled from a place of absolute need.

"CODY! NOW! ENGAGE NOW! EVERYTHING! THROW EVERYTHING!!!"

The plea echoed through the comm channel, carrying with it the unspoken truth that Obi-Wan Kenobi, Master of Soresu, the Negotiator, one of the greatest Jedi of his generation, had just barely survived the last fifty-seven seconds and wasn't sure he could survive fifty-seven more.

Around them, Pau'ans were still screaming, still running, still trying to process what had just torn through their marketplace like a localized apocalypse. But above, in the depths of the sinkhole's hidden spaces, thousands of clone troopers were already moving, their response to their General's desperation about to transform a duel into a war.

Grievous straightened, forcing his damaged arm back into its socket with a sound like breaking bones.

His eyes fixed on Obi-Wan with an expression that might have been satisfaction.

He had made his opening statement.

The real battle was about to begin.

…

1756835280615.png​

"All units, standby for go."

The first indication of what was coming appeared as sensor ghosts on the Separatist tactical displays—brief flickers that could have been atmospheric interference, might have been civilian traffic, were dismissed as glitches by B1 units that didn't know to look closer.

The 212th Attack Battalion had been in position for fourteen hours.

They'd begun their infiltration during the night cycle, when Pau City's commerce slowed to a trickle. Not as soldiers but as everything but–mechanics, traders, refugees—whatever cover story fit their insertion point. The advance reconnaissance teams had been there even longer, mapping every corridor, marking every defensive position, calculating blast radii and civilian evacuation routes with the methodical precision of surgeons planning where to cut. Other teams, other maps were made without any knowledge of the upcoming operation, the kind that occurred on every neutral world that could become a battleground. The Republic was prepared.

And this wasn't an invasion, regardless.

This was an execution.

Cody's voice whispered through encrypted channels that the Separatists' tactical droids couldn't even detect, operating on frequencies that mimicked Utapau's natural geological resonance. "Remember—this is a decapitation strike. Quick, clean, overwhelming. The General's safety is paramount. Everything else is secondary."

In maintenance shafts throughout the sinkhole, clone troopers checked their weapons one final time. These weren't standard shinies—every member of the 212th Airborne had undergone additional training on both Kamino and Coruscant. Jump training in zero-G, high-G, and variable-G environments. Urban warfare. Hostage rescue. Precision demolition. They could fight in vacuum, underwater, in toxic atmospheres. They were scalpels in a war that usually called for hammers or worse.

Sergeant Boil adjusted his helmet's seal, the orange markings on his armor barely visible in the darkened shaft. The men of Ghost Company had been living off ration paste and recycled water for six hours, maintaining position while civilians walked past meters away, oblivious. To his left, Waxer ran through his equipment check with the unconscious efficiency of someone who'd done this a thousand times—Hisseen, Ryloth, Nabat, Geonosis—grappling hook, det-charges, spare power packs, field medical kit—everything precisely where muscle memory expected it, where hard-lived experience had tested it.

Above them, LAAT gunships held position in the cloud layer, running silent, their pilots breathing recycled air and watching altitude readings with the patience of birds of prey. The Venators hung even higher, beyond visual range, their targeting computers already locked onto predetermined positions. Every shot had been calculated, modeled, and approved. Collateral damage assessments had been run. Acceptable losses had been determined.

This was how the Republic fought when it decided something absolutely had to die.

"Contact," someone whispered. "The General's engaged. Go go go."

The assault began not with explosions but with precision. EMP charges detonated simultaneously at seventeen power junctions, killing lights across three levels. Separatist communication nodes went dead as slicing programs—uploaded by infiltrators hours ago—activated. For twelve seconds, every tactical droid in Pau City was blind and deaf.

The 212th used those twelve seconds as if they were hours.

The battle spewed across the City's layers.

On the upper rings, LAATs backed into the wind and spilled squads onto balconies and service bridges. Clones made their way down in fours and sixes, clearing corners and doorways, marking cleared areas on their holopads. AT-TEs dug in their heels and brought guns to bear while dropped AT-RTs wove through irregular terrain to take the shortest path to victory.

Across the concourses the droids met them head-on. B1s formed firing lines behind vendor stalls and cargo crates. B2s pushed up the center in pairs, trading space and durability for shots. Crab droids scuttled toward the deployment zones to interfere. Dwarf spiders targeted the heavy vehicles. Droidekas unrolled behind waist-high cover and threw shields across the lanes, turning open floor into blue-lit checkpoints.

Hardpoints flared to life on every level. Cargo lifts became pillboxes. Train stops became fortified choke points. Stairwells were chained with knee-high barricades to force the clones to jump into open fire. Machine gunners kept up steady streams of suppressing fire until an AT-TE shouldered into view and responded in full. When one level stalled, gunships slid sideways and raked the deck below so a sister squad could move. When a balcony went hot, a team above punched a hole in the ceiling and dropped down, then followed.

From the clouds to the bedrock the sinkhole quickly turned into stacked gunfights. Each ring fed the one under it. Each push made room for the next, slow and steady, always bending downward.

All the while, the advanced forces performed their predetermined objectives down to the smallest detail. Shaped charges blew preset entry points—not randomly but at structural weak points that would create specific collapse patterns, herding defenders into predetermined kill zones. Clone troopers burst through walls, ceilings, floors, appearing from directions that shouldn't have existed. They moved in perfect synchronization, each squad knowing exactly where the others would be, creating interlocking fields of fire that left no space for survival.

Meanwhile, B1s pivoted from alcoves like shop mannequins jerking to life mid-sale. Heads wobbled. Photoreceptors blinked awake. "Roger ro—" The lead unit's sentence ended in vapor as an orange-striped trooper stitched its chest from left to right. It folded like a marionette with cut strings.

"Airborne elements, deploy," Cody ordered.

LAAT gunships dropped from the clouds like stones, only igniting their repulsors and engines at the last possible second. Doors slid open and clone troopers leaped out—not rappelling but leaping, jetpacks firing in short bursts that turned fatal falls into controlled insertions. They landed on platforms, walkways, balconies—anywhere that offered a firing angle.

The 501st might have been Anakin's fist, the 327th Aayla's dancers, but the 212th Airborne were Kenobi's ghosts—everywhere and nowhere, striking from impossible angles with impossible timing.

A squad of B2s activated in what should have been a secure position, only to find themselves surrounded before their photoreceptors fully focused. The firefight lasted four seconds. The clones were already moving before the last droid fell.

"Venator support, execute fire mission Alpha," Cody commanded.

The turbolaser strikes that followed weren't the wild bombardment of a conventional assault. Each bolt was targeted with microscopic precision, aimed not just at enemy positions but at specific structural points that would create tactical advantages. A strike here would collapse a walkway that droids needed for reinforcement. A strike there would open a hole that clones could use for infiltration. It was demolition as an art form.

But even precision has casualties.

A turbolaser meant for a droid garrison clipped a residential tower. Stone that had stood since before the Republic existed turned to vapor and rubble. A family of Pau'ans who'd been watching the battle from what they thought was a safe distance simply ceased to exist. The clone gunner who'd fired the shot would never know their names, never know they'd existed at all. In his targeting computer, it was just a successful strike on Grid Reference 5-Alpha-3.

It was seconds of success, and yet it was not nearly enough. The Republic had cut into the ribs of Pau City, and had found there the beating heart of the Confederacy. And yet with Grievous engaged, with explosions rocking the sinkhole's levels and clone squads weaving through the aftermath, blocking intersections like plaque in an artery, they failed to contain Separatist forces. The response still activated, the heart still beat.

It began from within the caverns, where vultures shook rain from their wings.

They had perched along the sinkhole's ribs, camouflaged as scaffolds, as signage, as harmless fixtures—until the uplink pinged and the hooks released like a disturbed colony of bats. They fell, then caught, then screamed into tight spirals that sent grit and cloth flapping as they passed, each one dancing through a corridor of rock so narrow a living pilot would have balked. Hyena bombers lifted on slower, heavier thrusts, carrying loads shaped for starship hulls that were now to be used in a vertical city. They crawled through sedimentary rock, climbed through relentless gunship flak and descended into the churning gulch like patient doom.

The vertical column that was the sinkhole became an airspace overtaken by chaos, as descending ARC-170s and V-19 Torrents dove through the cloud layer to meet the rising Separatist screens. Gunships took wild shots at the emerging threat as munitions filled the air. The first wave of droid fighters died in their launch sequences, turned to flaming debris that rained down on the battle below.

All the while, ground based Hailfire dud missiles, Hag-M artillery arcs, and concussion cannon shots joined the chaotic aerial fray.

"Push through to the upper levels," Cody ordered, impatience creeping into his tone. He was watching his tactical display update in real-time, as precious seconds bled into minutes. Blue dots advanced in a relentless helix from above. Red dots disappeared in droves. It looked clean on the display. It was anything but.

CT-5599 kicked down a door and found not droids but a Pau'an family huddled inside. For a second, their eyes met—soldier and civilian.

Then training took over.

"Stay down, stay quiet," he barked, already moving. There would be no extractions, no safe zones. The 212th wasn't here to liberate. They were here to kill one being. Everything else was obstacle or collateral.

He swept rooms until the building was called secure. Two brothers—CT-5643 and CT-5594—knelt by windows to calibrate snipers.

"Ok Sweeper, I see their positions, do you want me to—"

The sentence cut off as the building exploded. An Octuptarra, firing at a passing LAAT, had missed wide. Its blast tore the structure apart.

The counterattack had begun.

Seventeen tactical droids linked across the sinkhole adjusted in unison, processors meshed into a single calculating web. The lead T-series, designation T-99, stood deep near the bedrock, photoreceptors flickering as it parsed the assault.

"Republic deployment: catastrophic for standard defense," it reported. "But concentration indicates singular objective—The Supreme Marshal. Solution: rally to the leader."

As the Republic forces pressed inward like an infection, the droid army pulsed back. Not randomly, but with rhythm. Units that should have been cut off suddenly had corridors open. Positions that should have been overrun were reinforced at the exact moment of collapse.

A battalion of B2s, cornered in a storage hall, should have died there. But an OOM command unit had already calculated their predicament forty-three seconds earlier. Detonations in the rear wall blew a path open just before Republic charges could finish the job, leading the battalion straight toward Grievous's position.

Obi-Wan felt the shift. The chaos was knitting itself into shape, and not in the Republic's favor. Where scattered droids had been dying in place, now they moved with unnerving coordination. Each withdrawal flowed inward. Each sacrifice bought time for others to reach their General.

An AT-TE dominating a plaza suddenly found itself flanked by droidekas that shouldn't have been there—they'd rolled through sewage conduits, guided by maps etched into droid processors. The tank's armor held, but it had to halt its advance, guns wheeling to defend its flanks.

"Sir, they're coalescing faster than predicted," Boil reported over comms, his voice strained. "It's like they know exactly where we're going to—" an explosion sundered the transmission.

Above, Commander Cody watched his tactical display with growing concern. The clean, surgical strike was becoming a grinding battle of attrition. Every meter gained cost lives—clone and civilian both.

"Venator Command, we need those turbolaser strikes now," he ordered. "Full bombardment authorization."

"Sir, civilian casualties are mounting," a lieutenant said carefully.

"Noted," Cody replied, and said nothing more. They all knew the arithmetic. A prolonged siege would kill thousands. A quick, brutal strike might only kill hundreds. It was the kind of math that would haunt them later, if there was a later.They'd come too far, committed too much. The General had to die here, today, no matter the cost.

The first true bombardment began thirty seconds later. Not the precise strikes of before, but raw firepower meant to crack bunkers, meant for ship-to-ship combat, now turned on a city. Turbolaser bolts the size of gunships slammed into the sinkhole's walls, each impact turning centuries of carved stone into vapor and rubble.

A bolt meant for a droid strongpoint hit two degrees off target—atmospheric interference, perhaps, or simple human error in the chaos. It vaporized a Pau'an medical center. Three hundred beings—patients, healers, children waiting for their parents—became atoms between one heartbeat and the next.

The tactical droids registered the escalation and adapted. "Republic forces have abandoned precision parameters," T-99 observed. "Acceptable. Chaos serves our purpose."

A final squadron of Hyenas—Grievous had hidden more than anyone expected—erupted from reserve positions beneath the city. They rose like plague carriers, bellies full of ordnance that would never reach the Venators above. The Republic fighters engaged, but the Hyenas were never meant to survive. Bombs fell like rain alongside the ruined bombers, explosions reverberating as their final death knell, destruction sweeping outward as their final purpose.

One string of those explosions walked across a clone position with mathematical precision. Another found a column of AT-RTs, turning them to twisted metal and worse. But the third string hit the city's main water processing station. Ancient pipes, pressurized beyond imagination, exploded outward. Water—millions of gallons of it—began flooding the lower levels where civilians had taken shelter.

The heart continued to beat.

MagnaGuards began to appear in disciplined waves. Four here, three there—never all at once, always just enough to drag the fight out. Each group bought him seconds he could not afford to lose.

An IG-100, scarred from dozens of campaigns, launched at Obi-Wan from a blind angle. His blade cut it in half, but momentum carried the electrostaff forward, forcing him to dive aside. The momentary lapse gave Grievous the opening to drive him further, deeper—

Toward what? Obi-Wan could feel it in the Force, a growing certainty that he was being herded, but the battle left no time for analysis.

The Republic responded to the stiffening resistance with escalating force. Entire platoons of clones began using heavy weaponry as standard ordnance. An AT-TE fired its main canon straight through three levels of city, not caring what was between its gun and its target. Y-wing bombers, called in from the fleet, began proton bombing runs meant for fortress worlds.

From one quarter, an Octuptarra tri-droid forced its way through a cargo hall. The 212th had marked it hours earlier. Three charges brought tons of stone down on its frame the moment it emerged. It fired once—vaporizing two troopers and the balcony beneath them—before vanishing under rubble.

Pau City began to die. Not quickly, not cleanly, but in pieces, like a body losing organs one at a time.

Through it all, the pulse of droids continued. They flowed toward their General like blood toward a heart, each arrival perfectly timed. A squad of BX-series commando droids—among the Confederacy's last elite forces—emerged from a shaft that intelligence had marked as sealed. They'd cut through three levels of rock to reach this position, guided by tactical droids that had calculated exactly when they'd be needed to respond to a TX-130 tank company.

"All units converge," Cody ordered. "Weapons free. Danger close authorized."

Danger close—ordnance so near to friendlies it might kill them too, but the alternative was worse.

"Sir, structural integrity failing across five sectors," someone reported to Cody.

"Continue the bombardment," he ordered.

CIS air forces tried to respond to the assault, tried to claw their way to the Republic forces in orbit, but the 212th's anti-air specialists were ready and unrelenting. Soldiers with targeting computers linked directly to their helmets painted the surviving bombers with laser designators. Venator gunners, watching through their scopes from ten kilometers up, put bolts through the bombers' engines with the casual precision of snipers shooting stationary targets.

The battle wasn't a battle anymore. It was evolving into a hunt. And Grievous, for all his tactical genius, for all his warrior's skill, was becoming the prey.

Ten of the seventeen tactical nodes were gone—two captured, eight destroyed. With those losses, droid control broke into pockets, their cohesion melted away with lost processing power. Orders that were once citywide became left to a Command OOM's liberal "interpretation". A hardpoint that held the key to Grievous' position held behind stacked defenses and a droideka screen until Ghost Company slipped through a service duct and took it room by room. Another node low to the ground lost its power feed and went dark. The droids there fought blindly until they ran dry.

The clones tightened the cordon in simple steps. Doors behind them were welded shut. Stairwells were collapsed and marked dead on the HUD. Service lifts were cut and dropped to keep routes from reopening. Platoons moved by grid and minute, linking fields of fire and trading sectors as they advanced. Gunships hovered nose-in to hold junctions while AT-TEs blocked long halls and kept their ordinance aimed downrange.

The flow of Separatist reinforcements thinned to a trickle. Where eight MagnaGuards might have arrived, three made it. Where a company of B2s should have pushed, a handful limped in with a crab droid missing a leg. Commando droids reached a junction and found it sealed on both sides. A rogue airstrike bought seconds, but little more. Sector by sector, paths toward the General closed.

Encirclement markers touched around Seven-Besh and the ceremonial bridge. There was still shooting everywhere—single rooms, short halls, broken balconies—but the motion of the whole city had only one direction left. Everything was collapsing inward, and at the center Kenobi and Grievous were relentlessly trading blows.

All of the Republic's clinical precision rebounded off of desperate fury.

Obi-Wan deflected a strike from Grievous's upper right arm, pivoted from the lower left, body caught between instinct and prophecy. They had fought for three minutes—an eternity—and the battlefield shifted around them like something alive.

A B2 fired over his shoulder at pursuing clones. Obi-Wan redirected the bolts without looking, sending them into a MagnaGuard that had been flanking him. Grievous pressed the advantage of his distraction, all four blades creating a cage of light, but Obi-Wan was already moving, already elsewhere, the Force singing warnings that arrived just before the dangers they described.

"Sir, we can't get a clean shot!" someone shouted over comms—Boil or Waxer, Obi-Wan couldn't tell through the static and explosions.

"Don't try!" he managed between parries. "Clear the civilians!"

As if in mockery of that order, a surviving AAT tank rumbled through what had been a market square, its main gun traversing to track an AT-TE that was doing something tanks shouldn't do—climbing the sinkhole wall, its fastened feet finding purchase on the ancient stone. The AT-TE's main gun spoke first, its round punching through the AAT's armor and out the other side, through a shop wall, through someone's home, through three hundred years of accumulated history.

The AAT's return fire went wide, its gunner already deactivated, the bolt carving a molten groove up the sinkhole wall that several clones had to leap away from.

Grievous laughed—that mechanical rasp that sounded like grinding gears—and drove Obi-Wan backward through the burning market. They moved through the battle like it was choreographed around them, both combatants unconsciously using the chaos as weapon and shield.

The Separatist forces were collapsing, but they were collapsing inward, toward Grievous. Every B1 that survived the initial assault, every B2 that could still walk, every functioning droideka—they all gravitated toward their General like iron filings to a magnet. Not from loyalty—droids couldn't feel that—but from programming that prioritized his survival above their own.

"Protect the General!" a B1 shrieked before a DC-15 cut its head away.

The organic Separatist forces—Quarren volunteers, Koorivar mercenaries, a handful of Geonosians who'd been maintaining the equipment—fought with the desperate courage of beings who knew surrender meant execution. They formed firing lines that held for seconds before being overwhelmed, bought time that was measured in heartbeats and meters.

Despite it all, Obi-Wan was beginning to find the rhythm of Grievous's assault. Four arms meant more attacks, but it also meant patterns, and patterns could be predicted. The General favored his upper right for power strikes, his lower left for feints. The upper left was defensive, the lower right opportunistic. As they fought across a bridging platform, Obi-Wan saw his opening.

Across a ceremonial bridge older than the Republic, the pattern unfolded.

Grievous spun—four sabers whirling in a killing wheel. Obi-Wan dropped low, let the storm pass overhead, and brought his blade up in a perfect arc.

Metal parted.

A wrist severed.

A lightsaber tumbled away into fire and smoke.

Grievous staggered back, black fluid hissing on the stone.

Three arms now.

Three blades.

"Getting slow, General," Obi-Wan rasped, breath raw.

"Fast enough." Grievous's rasp deepened—and Obi-Wan suddenly understood. The duel had not been random.

He had been led.

MagnaGuards burst from cover, electrostaffs crackling. Obi-Wan spun to meet them, blade blurring, Force singing. One fell to clone fire from the far side of the bridge. Another to a clean cut at the neck. But the trap had already closed. He was driven, step by step, onto the bridge's heart.

Around them, the city convulsed.

An OG-9 spider droid collapsed under AT-TE fire, its legs giving way one by one until it toppled screaming into the abyss.

A gunship spiraled down, tail aflame, smashing into a residential tower and cutting it in half.

Water roared through lower levels, bursting pipes turning districts into drowning graves.

Heavy laser fire sheared a market square into rubble.

Y-wing bombs chewed through streets that had stood for centuries.

Clones advanced, droids fell back, civilians ran—and all of it was collapsing inward, toward this bridge, toward this duel.

Grievous struck again, blades screaming. Obi-Wan's defense flowed into precognition. High, low, thrust, feint—he was already moving before each strike came. The Force painted the next beat in his mind.

He began to gather the Force around him, preparing for—

One of Grievous's hands moved to his chest chassis.

Not for another lightsaber.

For a device.

A detonator.

Obi-Wan felt it in the Force an instant before it happened.

"No—"

"Yes," Grievous replied, and squeezed.

The charges that BX commando droids had placed along the bridge's supports detonated simultaneously. The span, once meant for the triumphant march of a victorious army, came apart like a broken promise.

They fell.

Not the controlled fall of a Jedi. Not the calculated drop of a machine. This was chaos.

Stone. Fire. Droids. Clones. A single trooper who had been sprinting to help and now clawed at empty air. All falling together.

Obi-Wan reached for the Force, tried to slow, to control—but Grievous was still attacking even in freefall. Three sabers lashing, forcing defense where there should have been escape.

They plunged past burning levels, past civilians fleeing, past the broken husk of the spider droid that had fallen before them.

A secondary platform cracked under their impact, then gave way. Obi-Wan lost his saber in the tumble, caught it again by instinct. Grievous landed on his back, sparks spraying, but still swinging.

Another fall. Another impact. This one final.

Darkness.

They lay in caverns beneath the city, where no light reached, where even emergency systems had not been meant to shine. Obi-Wan struck rubble, rolled, struck again, came to rest against a wall or a boulder. Pain sang in every bone—ribs cracked, shoulder dislocated, ankle screaming.

Blood in his mouth.

Dust in his lungs.

Darkness all around him.

…

…

Dust fell in miniature vortexes around the Jedi Master, the sound of crumbling civilization reverberating around, as if the planet itself was moaning in agony. He stiffly sat up.

"Cody," he rasped into his comm. Static. "Cody, this is Kenobi. Position unknown. Cody?"

Nothing. They were too deep, or the rock was too thick, or his equipment was damaged. He was alone in the dark with—

A hiss.

A crack.

The snap-hiss of a lightsaber.

Green light spilled across the cavern, sick and pale.

"So you yet live, Kenobi? Good."

Grievous hauled himself upright on a broken beam. Two of his arms hung useless. His chest was split and leaking, fluids pooling at his feet. But he still held a lightsaber, and his eyes—burning—still lived, still carried purpose.

Around them, dust continually settled like snow or ash. Above, muffled by tons of rock, the sound of continued collapse—the battle was eating the city, level by level. A few scattered B1s stumbled through the darkness, their night vision providing pinpricks of red light. Some Pau'an warriors, cut off from the main battle, fired a couple of rounds at the droids with slugthrowers that boomed in the enclosed space.

Then even those sounds fell silent.

And in that silence Obi-Wan realized something with a jolt of cold clarity: Grievous had planned this. He had thrown himself, the bridge, the city—everything—into ruin to reach this moment.

Dust drifted in narrow shafts of green light, slow as snow, bright as ash. Here, at the bottom of the world, two figures faced each other across a spill of shattered stone that had once been homes, halls, history.

Metal scraped rock like a whetstone drawing a blade. Sparks licked from his broken chest. Black fluid patterned the floor. He should have been finished. Instead he advanced, the glow of his saber cutting angles into the dark, his eyes bright with something that refused to die.

The cavern held its breath.

And so the General spoke.

"Yesterday," he rasped.

"Since yesterday your clones laid in wait. Their maps were perfect. Their charges placed. Their patience surgical." His head tilted, voice lowering to a predator's whisper. "But Utapau cried my name in fear for the first time yesterday. Tell me, Kenobi—when did your Republic learn what even the wind did not know?"

Obi-Wan had no answer that would stand.

"They should not have known," he said.

They should not," Grievous agreed, and a laugh curdled into a cough that shook him end to end. He caught himself on a beam, straightened by will alone. "But someone knew. Someone always knew."

He lifted his gaze past stone and smoke, past the weight of a dying city.

"Your master's master was Count Dooku, was he not?"

Obi Wan nodded, for all he could do was nod. Silt ghosted off of his head with the motion.

Grievous almost seemed to glaze over, his vision occupying some space in the empty darkness.

"He was always fond of his chains," he said softly. "He sang of honor and old codes. He kept a Jedi's spine under his silks. He listened to the Force." The green light sharpened the bones of his face. "I listened to war. And still—still—he listened to another. To one man he claimed as his own master, even in the end."

Grievous's eyes found Obi-Wan's again, and in them was something terrible, something that had been burning there since Coruscant, since before, since the beginning.

"He always listened to Darth Sidious."

The name was a detonator. It blew dust from the ceiling and certainty from the mind.

Geonosis. The hangar. The Council's years of blind reaching. The Chancellor's careful gravity. A thousand coincidences aligning like a sniper's sight. Obi-Wan felt the pattern lock into place and almost gagged on the dust of it. The dust accumulated after years of negligence.

Grievous watched comprehension take root and tried to laugh again; pain turned it into a tearing sound.

"Yes, Yes." he hissed. "You see it too. The Chancellor. The one I held in my talons above Coruscant. Your friend of the Senate. Voice of the people. Surgeon and disease, priest and butcher. He writes your consequence and your mercy in the same script, and he decides what you will learn to call acceptable. Look what you call acceptable now."

The ribs of Pau city groaned in agony around them.

And then a thin chime whispered from the ruin of Grieouvs' chest—the ghost of a transmission. He listened, and something like satisfaction touched the corners of his mouth.

"My forces scatter," he said. "Mere shards of what could have been. But shards cut long after the sword is broken." He tapped his cracked chestplate with the hilt of his saber, once. "He came to stop this, Kenobi—this beat. He sent your fleets to cauterize a heart, my heart. Look around you." He gestured with the saber toward the dark, toward the rain of grit. "This is not the Republic of times past."

"This is the darkness of the present."

Above them, something enormous failed. The sound rolled down like thunder trapped in stone. Dust fell in thick sheets, bright in the saber's light.

"If we're learning this now," Grievous said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper, "then the galaxy was never meant to know. The Republic came here to silence me. Your precious democracy is the corruption it claims to remove."

He took another step forward, and Obi-Wan instinctively reached for his lightsaber—still lost somewhere in the rubble.

"But I won't give them the satisfaction," Grievous continued. "And neither should you, Kenobi."

From the shadows behind him, two shapes emerged—MagnaGuards, as damaged as their master. One was missing an arm, the other's head hung at an unnatural angle, but their electrostaffs still hummed with deadly energy. They flanked him like pallbearers.

"The Council is gathered on Mustafar," Grievous said, beginning to back away into the deeper darkness. "If you would see the truth unmasked, you will come. Or you will stay in the dark, with your Republic's lies."

"Wait—" Obi-Wan started, but Grievous was already moving, already fading into the shadows with his guards. The green light of his lightsaber winked out, leaving Obi-Wan in darkness so complete it felt solid.

Obi-Wan rose and his ankle failed him. He went to one knee among the wreckage, tasting rust and grit. Sidious. The line ran through his head like a seam of lightning, illuminating three years of war in the color of one man's will. Every victory that came too easily, every defeat that arrived on time, every "miracle" intelligence drop that opened a door just wide enough for slaughter—all of it laid bare.

A sound made him look up.

Footsteps.

Multiple sets.

Moving with the synchronized precision he knew too well.

Orange-painted armor emerged from the dust like specters, like ghosts of the men he'd fought beside for three years. Their helmets gazed upon him in eerie unison. Their weapons rose with the same mechanical precision.

"Eyes on the General," one of them said—might have been Boil, might have been Waxer, might have been any of them beneath those identical helmets.

The rifles didn't waver.

They aimed.

Obi-Wan's hand, trembling, found cold metal in the rubble beside him. Familiar. Beloved. He closed his fingers around it as though the hilt itself might anchor him against the tide rushing to claim him.

He thumbed the activator.

With a hiss, the blade came alive. Blue light cut through the dust, sharp and merciless, casting the cavern into icy blue relief. It bathed the helmets before him, row on row of black visors gleaming like the eyes of executioners well into the deep.

For three years that light had led them through darkness. For three years it had been their rallying flame. Now it only revealed their rifles, raised and steady, aimed at his heart.

The Force carried the truth through him with perfect, cataclysmic clarity.

The Republic had come here to kill.

And they no longer specified who.

...

...

The rush of water could be heard, flooding the lower levels relentlessly, mercilessly. Many drowned in those dark depths, and yet others learned how to hold their breath, how to swim, rise and survive.

Chapter Text

The golden afternoon light of Naboo streamed through the throne room's great windows like a benediction to the liberated. It painted the marble floors in warm honey tones, caught the delicate filigree of ancient columns, turned the scattered debris of deactivated battle droids into something almost artistic in its destruction. Outside, the waterfalls of Theed sang their eternal song, indifferent to the small dramas of politics and war that played out in the palace above them.

It was almost as if the palace could look beautiful in any setting, though the disgraced Viceroy could hardly bask in the beauty of the present moment.

That was because Nute Gunray now sat in a simple chair—not the ornate mechanical throne he'd occupied mere hours ago. That technological marvel, with its Corellian leather and micro-repulsor fields that had cost more than most beings saw in a lifetime, now lay overturned in the corner like the pretensions it represented. Energy binders hummed against his wrists with that particular frequency that seemed designed to remind prisoners of their helplessness with every pulse.

Such a waste, the older Nute thought, remembering how proud he'd been of that chair. Three million credits for something that ended up as debris.

Beside him, Rune Haako maintained his own silence, equally bound, equally reduced from conqueror to cargo. His robes—usually pressed to silent perfection—hung askew, the left shoulder seam torn from some scuffle during their capture. It bothered Nute more than it should have, that imperfection in presentation. Even in defeat, standards should be maintained.

The throne room bustled with the quiet efficiency of victory. Naboo security forces in their burgundy uniforms moved with purpose—cataloging damage, removing droid remains, restoring order to a space that had briefly known occupation. Captain Panaka directed the operation with military precision, occasionally pausing to confer with his queen.

Queen Amidala herself stood near the great windows, still wearing the formal robes of state that she wore in the earlier firefight. They were of a deep burgundy inlaid with gold threading that caught the light like promises. The fabric was Cyrene silk, if Nute's eye was correct. Expensive but durable, the kind of investment that spoke to long-term thinking. Even in his current position, he could appreciate the craftsmanship of those seams, the way the gold thread had been woven to create patterns that shifted with movement.

The spineless Governor Sio Bibble flanked her, his ceremonial robes somehow still immaculate despite the chaos. The man had always been a political survivor, Nute knew. Too spineless to resist occupation but too useful to eliminate. Hugo Eckener was there too, the Theed's city planner and lead architect, already making notes about structural repairs. Nute vaguely remembered a conversation with that man, some unnecessary request for there to be a victorious statue of him in the courtyard, one of those ideas that looked horrible in hindsight.

Also there, standing slightly apart, was Horace Vancil.

The Economic Advisor, Nute thought with bitter clarity. The asset he'd cultivated for months, feeding him credits and promises of plasma dividends. The same man who now stood with his legitimate government, his suit—a modest local weave, nothing imported—showing not a wrinkle of guilt.

Even then, the older Nute reflected, I should have seen it. A man who dresses below his bribe level is hiding something.

Outside, crowds had gathered in Theed plaza, their celebration audible even through the palace's thick walls. They were cheering something specific now—a name, repeated like a prayer of deliverance.

"Pal-pa-tine! Pal-pa-tine!"

Their senior senator had become Chancellor. Their tragedy had become political triumph. The HoloNet feeds, active and being viewed in the room's corner, showed the same image cycling endlessly: the kindly face of Sheev Palpatine accepting his new position with appropriate reluctance, promising to restore order to a Republic shaken by the Trade Federation's aggression, speaking well of his predecessor's time in office, but promising–as naturally as breathing–that he would do better.

That same face, the older Nute remembered, would look at me after the trial like I was a ledger entry. Useful but not irreplaceable.

The younger Nute simply sat straighter, affecting dignity he didn't feel.

Then she approached.

Queen Amidala moved through her throne room with an economy of motion that her elaborate costumes usually disguised. This simpler form of dress revealed something else—a young woman who'd learned to carry weight beyond her years.

She stopped a few steps away, studying them with those dark eyes that seemed older than the face that held them. Victor and vanquished. Child and adult. Though which was which seemed suddenly unclear.

"Leave us," she said quietly.

Her advisors withdrew without question, even Panaka, who looked like he'd rather eat broken stained glass than leave his queen alone with enemies, obeyed.

They were alone now—the queen and her prisoners, and the ghost of everything that had happened.

Rune, to his end, simply maintained his stoic expression, lending his silent support as he always did.

I never did thank him for not speaking of this moment ever again.

And then the Queen broke the silence between them.

"You know," she said finally, not looking at them but at the overturned throne, "I spent hours thinking about what I'd say to you when this moment came. Grand speeches about justice, perhaps. Threats about what the Republic would do to you.

Nute maintained his silence. Let the child have her moment of triumph. The courts would sort out the rest.

"I spent all of that time thinking of what I would say, and yet I find myself with more questions to ask you. Do you know what has confused me the most, no matter how much I think about it?"

She moved closer, close enough that he could see the exhaustion written in every line of her young face.

"Not the invasion itself—that was just commerce by other means, as your people say. Not even the violence—the galaxy is built on violence, dressed in different clothes. What confused me was that you seemed to believe you could win."

She moved even closer, so close now that he could see she wore no makeup, that her eyes were bloodshot, that her right hand was shaking.

"Not just win the battle, but win the war that would follow. As if the Republic—twenty-five thousand star systems, millions of ships, countless citizens—would simply accept that the Trade Federation had conquered one of its worlds."

The younger Nute felt words rising, prompted by pride that wouldn't accept silence as surrender. "The Senate is corrupt," He said, his voice rusty from hours of silence.

"The Senate is corrupt," Amidala agreed, cutting him off. "Paralyzed, venal, bought and sold a dozen times before breakfast. But do you know what it's not? Weak."

Indignation formed words before his common sense could stop him. "The Senate, even now, is incapable of action. You were bold, but the Senate was not." The younger Nute sat back with a sort of uncomfortable, unearned self-satisfaction. His older self could hardly stand to look, to look back at his younger self.

The Queen began to pace, her elaborate garb trailing behind her in gentle billows like the wake of a sea-ship.

"It is incapable of small actions," she agreed. "But you didn't commit a small crime, did you? You invaded a Republic world. You made the Senate choose between looking weak and acting strong. And weak things don't survive in this galaxy, Viceroy. Even weak Senates."

"Weak things die in this galaxy of ours, Viceroy. The Senate has survived for a thousand years not because it's virtuous, but because it's powerful. Because when truly threatened, it can mobilize resources you can't even imagine. This was one of the earliest lessons taught to me at the Academy."

Rish Loo tried to tell me, the older Nute remembered suddenly. His old mentor's voice echoing across the years: "The Federation is a merchant, not a warrior. Merchants who forget themselves become neither."

The younger Gunray could only click his tongue. "Powerful. Perhaps on paper, perhaps to an idealist. In truth, the Trade Federation commands the commercial arteries of—"

"A sliver," she cut in. "Your Federation is a rounding error in the Republic's ledgers. They spend more on clerks and forms each year than you're worth."

The numbers hit like physical blows. Nute wanted to dispute them, to explain about hidden holdings and unofficial subsidiaries, but—

"You thought you were giants, that you are a giant." Amidala continued. "But you're not. You're successful merchants who confused regional influence with galactic power. Who thought that because you could pressure Outer Rim worlds into unfair contracts, you could do the same to the Republic itself."

Silence pooled between them, the kind built from heat and coolness in equal measure, the kind that built up into powerful storms.

The two regarded each other for a long moment. Not the younger Nute, who was still stewing in anger at being interrupted, but rather the young and idealist Padme, set against the weathered and exhausted Nute of the present day. He desperately wanted to have an answer, any answer to her provocations. But instead, he found himself hardly able to meet her in the eyes.

Padme seemed to look around the room, her voice dropping from lecture into a conspiratorial whisper.

"When I held that blaster on you," she said suddenly, "when I had you at gunpoint in my own throne room, I will admit something to you. I thought about pulling the trigger."

Rune gasped in shock. Nute could hardly find it in himself to care anymore.

"Then why didn't you!" Nute heard his younger self demand, full of false bravado and equal measures delusion.

"Because I realized you weren't the problem. You were just someone who'd been convinced they were bigger than they were. And whoever did the convincing..." She stood, brushing dust from her dress with automatic precision. "They're not in binders right now, are they?"

Indignation rose like a tide that the older Nute could watch from the horizon. "I am the Viceroy of—"

"A Viceroy of one corporation among thousands," she cut in, her tone sharp as glass. "You thought you swam in deep waters. But you paddled in the shallows while the real powers circled unseen. And now, when the debt comes due, you will pay it alone."

Her posture shifted—the girl vanished, the Queen remained.

The cheers outside doubled in muffled volume, the building softly vibrated in celebration.

She glanced at the entrance, and then looked back at the two of them. It was almost as if she had more to say, but was preparing to be cut short. Had she truly been trying to tell me something?

"The Republic is here. You will be dragged to Coruscant, tried, and no doubt released on some convenient technicality. But you and I both know you'll never be free again. Every step you take, you'll wonder when the voices that promised you power will decide you've outlived your use."

"No one convinced me—"

"Please," she said softly, almost pitying. "You're not fool enough to dream this up alone. Someone whispered in your ear. Someone promised you the galaxy. And now they're already planning their next move while you sit in chains."

The throne room doors opened, admitting a squad of Republic guards in their resplendent blue uniforms. Chancellor Palpatine's new security detail, already serving their new charge loyally. The younger Nute watched them approach with affected dignity. The older Nute remembered what came next—the show trial, the convenient mistrial, the decade of toiling as Sidious's creature because the alternative was destruction.

"One more thing," Amidala said as the guards prepared to take them. "When you were sitting on my throne, dictating terms to my people, you said something about the inevitable march of commerce. Do you remember?"

Nute had nothing more to say. He did not want to remember.

"You were right," she said. "Commerce is inevitable. But so is gravity. And when you fly too high…" She let the pause hang, just long enough for the binders' hum to fill it. "…the fall is certain. The only question is how hard you strike the ground."

Gold melted down into a dull orange, and then bled into a cast of grey. The marble that once shone like starlight was caked with ash until the layers absorbed more light than it gave, dull as durasteel. The warmth of triumph, of youth, of beginnings, all leeched away. What had been brilliance became residue. What had been promise became dust.

Candelabras and elegant fixtures were torn aside for bare facility lamps and spartan holotables. The bright gallery of Naboo's victors—Palpatine smiling into history, Amidala lit by sunlight, a people reborn in song—was replaced by its negative image: the dirty, the desperate, the destitute, cowering on Mustafar's volcanic stone. Faces that once cheered power now reflected only indignation, misery, delusion. It was the inversion of the old, a corrupted reverse image where triumph had soured into its hated opposite.

And it all was in reaction to his command.

A tactical droid broke the silent tension of the room.

"The shutdown codes have been prepared, Viceroy."

The words hung in the air like a death sentence. Around the holotable, the Confederate Council—what remained of it—stared at Nute with expressions that ran the spectrum from horror to resignation. The amber emergency lighting painted them all in shades of ending.

"This is madness!" Passel Argente's Koorivar features twisted, his cranial horn flushing darker with incomprehension. "The droid armies are all we have left!"

"Then we have nothing," Nute said quietly.

"You're giving up?" Tikkes snarled, his Quarren tentacles writhing with barely contained fury. "My people didn't join this war to surrender at the first setback! Nossor Ri still holds Mon Cala's depths—we can regroup, we can—"

"First setback?" Nute almost laughed, but the sound died in his throat, strangled by ash and exhaustion. "We're hiding in a mining facility on a volcanic moon. Our fleets are scattered or burning. The Republic is executing Jedi—their own generals—what do you think they'll do to us?"

"Fight them!" Someone shouted—one of the younger delegates who still believed in causes.

With what?" San Hill's voice emerged hollow as a drained account. The Muun swayed slightly, his elongated frame seeming to contract with each word. The Muun gripped the meeting table to steady himself. "Empty treasuries? Scattered ships? The Banking Clan is finished—Mygeeto has fallen despite our best projections. The Northern Dependencies are lost." San Hill seemed to age a decade in front of them all. "Muun…Muunilist is lost. Our survivors flee toward the Void of Chopani, hoping the Ciutric nobles will grant sanctuary to beggars who once held their loans."

The weight of it settled over them like funeral shrouds. Muunilist. The Muun homeworld, the emerald city, the center of galactic finance for millennia, reduced to a convoy of refugees scattering into the dark spaces between stars.

"There is pride in bankruptcy," San Hill continued, his voice growing stranger, more distant. "But this? This is not even that. This is erasure."

"Lord Sidious promised peace," Shu Mai interjected, her assistant Cat Miin nodding frantically beside her. "His new apprentice—"

"His new apprentice," Nute repeated, thinking of the first one. Maul, with his burning eyes and talent for violence but no vision beyond the next kill. What kind of enforcer would Sidious send this time? What kind of executioner?

The thought of Daultay Dofine surfaced unbidden—his old friend who'd never trusted the shadow in the hologram, who'd warned that anyone who hid their face hid their intentions. But Daultay was atoms scattered across Naboo's atmosphere, and the shadow was all Nute had left.

"The Techno Union's experiments alone—" Wat Tambor's vocoder crackled with static born of desperation. "Surely our research has value. The defoliation protocols, the biological programs—"

"You mean your war crimes?" Poggle the Lesser clicked in Geonosian, his wings buzzing with agitation. One of his aides, some head engineer named Gizor Dellso, chittered something angry in response, but the Archduke silenced him with a gesture. "We all knew what we were building. What we were becoming."

"We were building independence!" Argente slammed his fist on the table, the sound sharp as breaking bones. "Freedom from Core World exploitation!"

"We were building profits, personal success," Nute corrected quietly. "Let's not dress it in principles now, at the end."

The room erupted.

Tambor's suit was pitted with ash and leaking at the seams where his environmental filters had burned out. Shu Mai's robes, once a confection of Guild wealth, were sweat-stained and fraying at the cuffs. Even San Hill's tunic—a Muun's proudest boast, tailored credit by credit—hung loose on his frame, the fabric drooping like an empty ledger.

Nute caught himself cataloguing these details the way he once had on Naboo, but there was no satisfaction in it now. Then, he had judged strength by seam and silk. Now, every tear, every patch of grime only proved what he already knew: they were not rulers of empires but beggars in borrowed finery, waiting their turn at the gallows.

Yet even the condemned would rail against their captors on the walk to the block.

"Coward!"

"—still have the Foundry Worlds—"

"—Lok Durd reports the Annihilator is ready—"

"—biological weapons could turn the tide—"

It was Rute Gunnay's voice that cut through the chaos, young and fever-bright with delusion.

"Uncle!" Rute pushed through the crowd, his ceremonial robes torn and stained with ash, his eyes wide with the particular desperation of someone who'd been dismissed too many times. "Uncle, please—just listen to me for once!"

Nute barely glanced at him. "Not now, Rute."

"When then?" The younger Neimoidian's voice cracked like an adolescent's. "You've been saying 'not now' for hours! For days! While everything falls apart around us!" His hands shook as he gestured wildly. "The Loedorvian Brain Plague is ready for deployment. I've been trying to tell you—one carrier in the Core Worlds' water supply and we could turn this entire war around!"

"I said not now."

"But the Jedi purge!" Rute's voice rose to a near-whine, the sound grating against Nute's frayed nerves. "Don't you see? This is our moment! While they're in chaos, while they're turning on each other—we could strike! We could—"

"Could what?" Nute snapped, finally turning to face his cousin. "Act the part of the monster? Give them retroactive justification for everything they're about to do to us?"

"We could survive!" Rute shrieked, his composure finally cracking completely. "We could win! But you won't even listen! You just sit there like—like some defeated old man, preparing surrender codes while victory slips through our fingers!"

The words hit like slaps. Around them, the arguing Council fell silent, all eyes turning toward the family confrontation unfolding in their midst.

"Victory?" Nute's laugh was bitter as volcanic tephra. "What victory, Rute? Look around you! Look at what we've become!"

"We could still—"

"We're already dead!" Nute roared, something finally snapping inside him like a cable under too much tension. "Don't you understand? We've been dead since we took Sidious's bargain! We're just... still moving. Still thinking we have choices when we never had any! Still believing we matter when we're nothing but—"

"NO!"

The scream tore from Rute's throat with such violence that spittle flew from his lips. His face contorted with rage that had been building not just for hours but for years—years of being dismissed, ignored, treated like an eager child by the cousin he'd idolized.

"You're killing us all!" He lunged forward, his ceremonial robes tangling around his legs. "For what? For Sidious? For a promise of mercy from the merciless?"

Nute stumbled backward, but Rute was younger, faster, driven by the particular fury of someone watching their future evaporate. His shoulder caught Nute in the chest, driving them both to the floor in a tangle of expensive fabric and flailing limbs.

"You coward!" Rute screamed, his hands clawing for the datapad containing the shutdown codes. "You're ending everything! Centuries of Federation strength! Our people's future! All because you're too frightened to fight!"

They rolled across the floor, Nute trying to protect the codes while Rute grabbed at anything he could reach—robes, arms, the datapad itself. The younger Neimoidian's fingers closed around the device for a moment, and Nute felt a surge of panic unlike anything he'd experienced since Naboo.

"Give it to me!" Rute snarled, his face inches from Nute's, eyes wild with desperate fury. "I'll show them what the Trade Federation really is! I'll make them pay for—"

"Gap!" Nute gasped.

"Security! Now!" Gap Nox barked, his voice cutting through the chaos.

B1s clattered forward, their worn servos protesting as they grabbed Rute's arms. But the younger Neimoidian fought them with the strength of the truly desperate, his ceremonial garb tearing as he thrashed against their grip.

"They'll hang you, Cousin!" Rute screamed as the droids finally got leverage, pulling him away from Nute and hauling him toward his feet. "They'll hang you for a coward and a fool! The Trade Federation fought for decades! For centuries! And you're ending it with a whimper!"

"Remove him," Nute wheezed from the floor, clutching the datapad to his chest like a shield.

The droids began dragging Rute toward the door, but his voice only grew louder, more desperate.

"You could have been great! We could have ruled the galaxy! But you're too weak! Too frightened! Too—"

"YOU'RE KILLING US! YOU'RE KILLING US ALL!"

His voice echoed down the corridors long after the security doors sealed, the sound bouncing off volcanic stone until it faded into the facility's eternal background hum.

Silence fell like a hammer.

The remaining Council members stood frozen, some still crouched from when they'd scattered during the fight. They stared at Nute as he slowly pulled himself to his feet, his robes torn, his dignity in tatters, ash from the floor clinging to his expensive fabric like grave dirt.

Not the Viceroy of the Trade Federation.

Not the architect of Naboo's invasion.

Not even a leader.

Just a tired old Neimoidian holding the codes to shut down their last hope of resistance.

Rune stepped forward, offering a hand that Nute took gratefully. His oldest friend's touch was steady, warm, real in a way that nothing else felt anymore.

"The codes remain ready," Nute said into that terrible quiet, brushing ash from his sleeves with shaking fingers. "When the apprentice arrives—"

A chime cut through his words. Priority transmission, highest encryption.

The sound froze them all. Every face turned toward the holotable with the unified expression of beings who had learned to fear good news as much as bad. Nute felt his heart hammering against his ribs, felt cold sweat breaking out despite the volcanic heat.

Sidious, come to deliver final judgment? The apprentice, arriving to collect them from this purgatory? Some new horror they hadn't yet imagined?

"Incoming transmission," a tactical droid announced, its voice somehow more ominous in the silence. "Priority One. Highest encryption."

Around the table, beings who had once commanded star systems now huddled like children afraid of the dark. San Hill's hands shook as he gripped the table edge. Wat Tambor's suit cycled frantically, as if trying to filter fear from the air. Even Gap Nox had gone pale, his soldier's composure cracking.

"Put it through," Nute whispered, the words barely audible.

The holoprojector flickered to life, and for a moment—for one terrible, eternal moment—the blue light seemed to carry the weight of ending itself.

Then the image resolved.

The gasp that went up from the Council was audible even over Mustafar's background rumble. Not Sidious. Not some black-clad apprentice carrying their death warrant.

It was a skull. Bone-white, damaged, beautiful in its defiance.

It was Grievous.

The holographic image hung in the amber-lit air like a promise written in damaged metal and failing systems. His chassis leaked fluids that pooled invisibly wherever he stood. Two of his arms hung useless, mere weight attached to a frame that could barely support itself. Bandages were wrapped around his torso, soaked through with fluids both mechanical and organic.

But those eyes—those Kaleesh eyes—still burned with a purpose that death itself hadn't extinguished.

The transformation in the room was immediate and electric. Shu Mai actually sobbed with relief. San Hill's legs gave out, dropping him into his chair as if the strings holding him upright had been cut. Even the tactical droids seemed to shift their posture, photoreceptors focusing with something that might have been hope.

"General!" The word came from multiple throats at once, a prayer of deliverance that echoed off the volcanic walls.

"You're alive," San Hill breathed, as if the concept itself defied his calculations.

"We're saved!" That was Cat Miin, always quick to seize on hope like a drowning being grasping at debris.

Grievous raised one functioning hand, and the gesture alone silenced them. Not through authority—he commanded no fleets here, no armies—but through the weight of what he represented.

The last general standing. The final heartbeat of their military resistance.

"Utapau is lost," he said, each word seeming to cost him effort. "Sluis Van holds."

In the silence that followed, those four words carried more weight than all of Rute's passionate speeches, all of Sidious's dark promises, all of their desperate schemes.

They were not alone. They were not the last. Somewhere in the galaxy, Confederate forces still fought, still resisted, still carried the flame they had thought extinguished.

"Prepare for my arrival," he said, and the hologram died, leaving them in the facility's emergency lighting.

…

…

…

The bridge of the Profusion hung suspended in that particular silence that came before battles—not quiet, never quiet with hundreds of droids and organic crew maintaining systems—but suspended, like the moment between drawing breath and speaking. Through the vast transparisteel viewports, the Republic fleet hung in perfect formation, a wall of triangular daggers aimed at their heart.

Admiral Lushros Dofine stood at the tactical display, watching numbers that refused to improve no matter how many times he recalculated them. His uniform, once weaved of pristine Neimoidian fabric, now bore the particular wear of a commander who'd been fighting without pause since Coruscant. Burn marks from a near-miss on the bridge. Oil stains from helping repair a critical system when all the technicians were dead. The kind of details that told the story of three days that had aged him three years.

"The calculations for the right flank?" he asked, not looking up from the display.

The tactical droid swiveled its head with mechanical precision, two OOM command droids flanking it with datapads, their fingers clicking across the screens in perfect synchronization.

"Analysis complete, Admiral. Probability of successful breakthrough on the right flank: sixty point two percent..."

"...advantageous odds," the droid added, as if probability was all that mattered.

"Advantageous?" Dofine's laugh was bitter as recycled air. "Forty percent chance of failure when our ships are held together with emergency welds and prayer? When a quarter of our force are mercenaries who'll run at the first sign of real resistance?"

Captain Kendu Ultho shifted beside him, the Aqualish's dark eyes studying the Republic formation. "We may not get another chance, Admiral. If we wait much longer..."

"If we wait, we die slowly. If we attack, we might die quickly." Dofine turned from the display, moving toward the viewports where the enemy fleet waited with mechanical patience. "But without the General..."

He let the words hang. Grievous. Everything came back to Grievous.

Through the transparisteel, he could see the Republic fleet in perfect parade formation. Two Victory-class Star Destroyers anchored the line, their wedge shapes designed for exactly this kind of engagement. Ten Venators spread in screening formation, fighter bays already glowing with preparation. Acclamators behind them, loaded with troops for the ground assault that would follow their destruction. Smaller ships—Arquitens-class light cruisers, CR90s repurposed for war—filling the gaps like mortar between bricks.

Against that, he had... wreckage that still flew. Four Lucrehulks, including his own, but only two fully operational ones that were captained by the bickering Trade Defense rivals of Vooro and Hatha. Five Providence-class carriers that leaked atmosphere from a dozen temporary patches. One Providence-class dreadnought that had lost a third of its guns at Kashyyyk. Eleven Munificents so battered their captains had stopped naming them, just referring to them by hull numbers. The Recusants were in better shape, but only because they'd been smart enough to run earlier.

And scattered through his formation, twice as many hulks that couldn't fight—ships they were towing, hoping to reach Sluis Van's shipyards for repair. Dead weight that would become funeral pyres if the Republic attacked.

"The General makes the impossible possible," Dofine said quietly, speaking to the stars more than Ultho. "That's why the mercenaries stay. Why any of us stay. Because we've seen him pull victory from the throat of defeat so many times we've forgotten it's impossible."

He pressed his palm against the transparisteel, feeling its coolness.

"I was on his bridge, you know. At Coruscant. On the Invisible Hand when we dropped out of hyperspace." His voice grew distant, lost in memory. "A thousand ships, Ultho. The largest fleet the Confederacy ever assembled. And Grievous just... walked onto the bridge like it was another day. Like commanding a thousand ships was no different than commanding ten."

Behind them, the bridge crew—organic and droid alike—had grown quiet, listening.

"He told the captains what they already knew. That this attack would draw Republic fleets from across the galaxy. That every ship that came to defend Coruscant was one not bombarding their worlds." Dofine's fingers traced patterns on the transparisteel. "They fought like demons because of it. Not for victory, but for time. Every minute we held was another minute their families had to evacuate, to hide, to survive."

The Aqualish listened solemnly, nodding along. Ando had been relieved by the attack, for a time.

"And then he went down to the surface," Ultho said, having heard the story but understanding Dofine needed to tell it.

"In the middle of the battle. Just... left. Took a squadron and dove into Coruscant's atmosphere while we were trading broadsides with half the Republic navy." Dofine laughed, short and sharp. "I called him insane. The tactical droids calculated a zero point three percent chance of success. And then..."

"He captured the Chancellor."

"He ripped the beating heart out of the Republic." Dofine's voice carried something like awe. "When that transmission came through—'Package secured'—you should have seen it. Captains who'd been preparing to die suddenly believed they might live. We fought like we could win because he made us believe the impossible was just another tactical problem."

"But you lost."

"We lost." Dofine turned from the viewport. "The Crimson Blade Fleet. The Solar Wind Fleet. The Open Circle Fleet. They just kept coming. Wave after wave, until we were drowning in Star Destroyers." He gestured toward his ruined uniform. "I only survived because Grievous ordered me to take a damaged battle group and run. 'Preserve what you can,' he said. Like he knew what was coming."

"And now?" Ultho asked.

"Now I'm an Admiral because everyone above me is dead. Leading a fleet held together with hope and plastoid tape, waiting for a ghost to tell me it's worth dying for something."

"Admiral!" An OOM droid came running—actually running, its legs pumping with comic urgency. "Ship exiting hyperspace within our formation!"

"What?" Dofine spun toward the tactical display. "How did it get past our pickets?"

"Unknown, sir. Our picket line is..." the droid paused, processing. "Operating at twelve percent efficiency."

"Twelve percent." Dofine wanted to laugh or cry. "What kind of ship?"

"Belbullab-22 starfighter, sir."

The bridge froze.

Every organic stopped breathing.

Every droid ceased processing non-essential subroutines.

Dofine felt his face crack into the first real smile he'd worn since Coruscant. "No," he whispered. Then louder, "No, it can't be."

He ran to the viewport, Ultho close behind. Around them, the bridge erupted—not in chaos but in something like reverence. Through the transparisteel, they could see other ships responding. On the bridges of battered Munificents, figures pressed against viewports. Providence carriers shifted position slightly, as if leaning in to see. Even the recusant droid brains seemed to chatter with excitement, their electronic communications buzzing with something that in organic beings would be called hope.

The fighter drifted through their formation with casual ease, weaving between hulks and operational ships alike. It wasn't running or hiding.

It was reviewing.

Taking stock.

A General examining his troops.

On every bridge, silhouettes watched. Captains who'd given up hope. Mercenary commanders calculating new odds. Droids whose probability matrices suddenly required recalculation.

The cheering started on the Righteous Indignation, a Munificent whose captain had lost three brothers at Coruscant. It spread to the Last Stand, a Providence carrier held together by emergency force fields and blind faith. Then it spread to The Warden of Freedom, Beovv Nemm's Bulwark, which threatened to break rank and do battle with the enemy right then and there. Then The Falchion, Ultho's own ship, where the Aqualish crewmembers began to taunt the Republic in remembrance of Ando. Within moments, the entire fleet's communication channels filled with celebration—organic voices and droid acknowledgments creating a symphony of relief.

The droids responded in their own way to the shift in fortune. Tacticals froze mid-sentence, recalculating probability trees. OOMs shifted into parade rest as though awaiting inspection. It spread like current through a circuit—belief moving faster than orders.

"Get back to your ship," Dofine told Ultho, his grin now wide enough to hurt. "There's going to be a battle today after all."

"The odds haven't changed," Ultho pointed out, though he was already moving toward the exit.

"Haven't they?" Dofine called after him. "The General's alive. That changes everything."

As Ultho departed, Dofine turned back to the tactical display. The numbers were the same—damaged ships, exhausted crews, impossible odds. But the equation had a new variable now. The same variable that had made Coruscant possible, that had kept the Confederacy fighting long after logic said they should surrender.

Grievous was alive.

And if Grievous was alive, then the impossible was just another tactical problem waiting to be solved.

"All ships," Dofine commanded, his voice carrying new authority. "Prepare for combat operations. The General returns."

Through the viewport, the Republic fleet waited in its perfect formation, unaware that the mathematics of the battle had just changed. Not in ships or guns or numbers.

But in faith.

And sometimes, Dofine knew, that was enough.

…

…

…

What followed was a parody of military preparation, a shadow play of what competent forces might accomplish. The few hundred B1s that could stand vigil were arranged on the landing platform in something approaching parade formation, though half couldn't hold their rifles straight and one kept trying to salute with the wrong hand. Gap Nox marshaled the Neimoidian Guard—all twelve of them—into pairs, their ceremonial armor hastily polished, their weapons cleaned for what might be their first and last real engagement.

Rute was nowhere to be seen, his tantrum having driven him deep into the facility's bowels where shame and rage could ferment in private. Nute found himself almost missing his cousin's misplaced enthusiasm. At least it had been energy of some kind, not this hollow pantomime of preparation.

When Grievous's Sheathipede finally punched through the ash-thick atmosphere, its hull glowing with the heat of entry, Nute watched from the viewing platform and tried to summon some feeling—hope, fear, anything. But there was only the familiar weight of watching another act in someone else's play.

The ship touched down with unusual gentleness, as if its pilot knew the passenger couldn't survive a harder landing. The ramp lowered, and what emerged wasn't the terror of the Republic, wasn't the nightmare that had stalked Jedi through three years of war.

It was a ruin that walked.

Grievous didn't stride down the ramp—he lurched, each step a negotiation with gravity and failing servos. His joints sparked with every movement, shooting little coronas of electricity that lit the bandages wrapped around his torso. Those bandages—actual cloth bandages, like something from a primitive field hospital—were soaked through with fluids both mechanical and organic. He'd clearly wrapped them himself, one-handed, with the desperate efficiency of someone who had no one else to rely on.

He made it perhaps ten meters before the coughing started.

Not the theatrical cough of their previous encounters, not Windu's parting gift. This was wet, desperate, the sound of systems failing in cascade. Black fluid splattered the landing platform as Grievous bent double, his remaining functional arm gripping a support strut that groaned under his weight. The coughing continued for thirty seconds that felt like hours, each convulsion shaking his entire frame, making his damaged arms swing like broken pendulums.

Ash clung to him like a funeral shawl, turning the seams of his plates the color of old bone. Beyond the curl of his breath, the Council huddled in a heat that could blister steel—yet they shivered. Skakoan gauges ticked into the red. Muun fingers fussed at precise cuffs. A Quarren's tendrils tightened around nothing. They looked less like leaders than like inventory left in a storm—Sidious's loose ends gathered at the edge of the galaxy, waiting to be tied off. The sight pulled another cough out of him, deep and tearing, as if his body were trying to expel the war itself.

When it finally stopped, he straightened slowly, painfully, and fixed the assembled Council with eyes that held nothing but contempt.

"We have been fooled," he rasped, each word seeming to cost him. "All of us. From the beginning."

"General," Wat Tambor stepped forward, his vocoder crackling. "Surely you need medical attention—"

"I need you to listen," Grievous cut him off. "And to walk," Grievous said, marching forward on grit and resolve alone.

"Move."

He shouldered past them and the Council fell into a ragged procession, trailing him off the ramp and into the windbreak corridor. The garrison held a crooked parody of parade rest as their commander limped by. B1s knocked their muzzles together like cutlery; a droideka's shield hiccuped to life, then it guttered out with a tired hiss. A Neimoidian guard broke rank with a thin, helpless keening.

"Stand your ground!" Gap Nox snapped, palm striking the guard's breastplate with a flat crack.

"Again—dress the line!"

The guard stumbled back into place, eyes glassy with terror. The formation re-formed—crooked as a bad account.

"Sidious," Grievous said over the scraping of metal feet and the shuffle of the defeated. "Our benefactor. Our master." He spat the last word like acid.

"He set this board. Both sides of it."

They took the first bend; ash leaked along the floor like fog. The Council trailed after, beggars dressed in tatters. Geonosian attendants' sashes were half-melted where fire had scorched them. Gossam's jewelry hung tarnished, green with corrosion from Mustafar's air. Even Rune, always immaculate, had a rent in his sleeve he hadn't bothered to mend.

The words should have been shocking to him, to them all. It should have sent them all reeling. But looking at their faces, Nute saw only the exhaustion of people receiving confirmation of what they'd always suspected but never wanted to believe. His mind drifted like the ash around them all, mired in the depths of defeat and time wasted. It was easier to count golden threads than defeats, and yet the General did not cease his procession, the very example of defiance.

"The Jedi know," Grievous continued, taking another lurching step forward. San Hill actually flinched away, whether from the news or Grievous's deteriorating condition was unclear. "I told Kenobi myself. Gave him the truth as a parting gift. Let him choke on it as the Republic he served reveals its true face."

"You told a Jedi?" Argente's voice rose to a squeak. "You've doomed us all!"

"We were doomed the moment we took Sidious's orders," Grievous replied. "The moment we believed we were partners rather than tools. At least now we know the shape of the hammer falling toward us."

"Lord Sidious promised peace," Shu Mai said weakly. "His new apprentice—"

Grievous's head snapped toward her with such violence that more fluid leaked from his chest wounds.

"New apprentice," he repeated. "You spoke with him? When?"

"An hour ago," Nute said quietly. Almost embarrassed. "He said his apprentice would... handle things."

The laugh that erupted from Grievous was worse than the coughing—a grinding, mechanical sound that had nothing to do with humor. Another coughing rake pulled at his frame and he swallowed it like a blade.

"Handle things," he repeated. "Yes. I imagine he will." He turned to Gap Nox, who straightened reflexively despite his terror. "Captain. Every defensive position. Every droid that can hold a weapon. Everything on that landing platform. Now."

"Sir, our defensive capabilities are—"

"Nonexistent. I know. Do it anyway." Grievous turned back to the Council. "We are on borrowed time. Let us at least pay interest on it."

"This is insane," Tambor protested, his suit's environmental systems whining with stress. "We should evacuate immediately—"

"To where?" Grievous asked simply. "Name one system that would shelter us now. One world that would risk the Republic's wrath for the privilege of harboring war criminals."

First Officer Laff, still at the facility, opened his mouth to speak. "With the victory at Sluis Van--"

Grievous raised a hand in consolation, or finality. "We will be followed to any safe harbor, until this apprentice is endured."

They spilled into the council room in a disorderly drift. The moment they crossed the threshold, two Magnaguards—one head drooped at a ruinous angle—took Grievous's weight and bore him a step.

"We can find safe harbor. We're not war criminals!" Argente protested, tripping over the room's entrance.

"Tell that to Honoghr," Grievous said. "To Ryloth. To every world where our armies left more graves than credits." He began limping toward the medical bay, each step leaving a small puddle of mixed fluids. "Prepare your defenses or prepare your prayers. But do something more than standing there gaping like fish pulled from water."

His eyes swept the chamber, one by one, until the cowards flinched beneath the weight of it. "If you intend to run," he rasped, "then run now, and run quickly. Sidious will not wait for us to be ready."

The words left a gouge of silence in their wake.

Then he turned, coughing hard enough to rattle his frame, and limped into the facility's depths, Magnaguards scraping after him. Fluid streaked the floor like a trail of ink.

He didn't look back. He didn't need to. The moment he vanished, the Council was rudderless.

To their credit, they gave the General a minute of solemn silence, their faces drawn as they heard the irregular scrape of metal on metal. And only then did composure break.

"We have to run," Argente said as soon as he felt he could. "My ship can break atmosphere in Six minutes—"

"My Mankvims are faster," Tambor countered. "Skakoan engineering… Union engineering—"

Po Nudo lifted a palm-sized holo and steadied it with two careful fingers. A family bloomed in blue—frozen smiles, a child's impatient wave. The image shook once, then held. Behind him, the first of Captain Kendu Ultho's officers stepped into the doorway, still marked by Sluis Van's fire: scorched pauldrons, salt-white scars patterned like tide lines across their armor. Aqualish stood with Aqualish—silent, squared, the proud set of a people who had bled for a victory the galaxy would try to forget. For a heartbeat the chamber felt like a harbor, and Po Nudo's voice found stone where the others found sand.

"No one's leaving," Po Nudo said quietly, and something in his voice made them all turn. He tightened his grip on the holo until the image quavered, but his stance never shook. The Atravis officers flanked him, tusks set forward, eyes unblinking. Together they looked less like delegates and more like a phalanx– a fragment of a nation that refused to bend, even as the galaxy itself bent around them. "Admiral Dofine and Captain Ultho just won the only true Confederate victory in weeks. They deserve better than us fleeing like rodents."

"The General can barely walk!" Argente protested.

"Yet he still came here," Po Nudo replied. "Still warned us. Still prepares to fight whatever comes." He looked around the room, his dark eyes holding each of theirs in turn. "We've all done terrible things. Accepted terrible bargains. But perhaps... perhaps we can do one thing right before the end."

"Pretty words won't stop a Sith apprentice," Tambor said.

"No," Po Nudo agreed. "But they might let us die as something more than cowards."

The room erupted in arguments. Skakoans clustered together, hissing through their vocoders about defensive positions. Geonosians buzzed angrily about being assigned inferior droid complements. Gossams tried to broker deals for escape routes even as everyone knew no such routes existed.

Through it all, Nute stood silent, watching the dissolution of their Confederacy in real-time. No grand collapse, no final battle—just frightened beings squabbling over scraps while death approached on silent wings.

Despite Po Nudo's strong words, the Koorivar and Skakoan delegations all but ran from the room in a panic, grabbing droids to follow them, pushing at the walls as if that would help them move faster. Nudo watched them leave with an Aqualish scowl, the officers by his side taking it all in stoically.

"Pathetic," Rune said quietly beside him.

Nute turned to find his oldest friend watching the chaos with an expression of profound sadness.

"Forty-three years," Rune continued, "and it ends like this. Not with dignity or purpose, but with..." He gestured at Tambor trying to physically push past a Geonosian engineer to reach a droid control panel. "This."

"It was always going to end like this," Nute said.

"No," Rune said firmly, and something in his tone made Nute look at him fully. "It ends how we choose to end it. Even now. Even here." He gripped Nute's shoulder, and Nute was surprised to feel strength in those old fingers. "You gave up, old friend. After everything, you chose defeat. But we're not dead yet. We can still build something from these ashes."

"Build what? With what?"

"I don't know," Rune admitted. "But Grievous is right about one thing—we're on borrowed time. Every breath we take is one more than Sidious planned for us. That has to mean something."

"Does it?"

"It does if we make it mean something." Rune's eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, held a spark of the old fire that had carried them through decades of schemes. "The Neimoidians need a leader, Nute. The Confederacy needs someone to remind them they're more than just victims waiting for execution."

Nute wanted to protest, to explain that he had nothing left to give, no inspiration to offer. But looking around the room—at Gap Nox trying to organize panicking guards, at Po Nudo standing alone in his dignity, at the chaos that was all they had left—he felt something shift inside him.

Not hope. Nothing so grand. But perhaps... responsibility. One last debt to pay to the people who'd followed him this far.

He stepped forward, raising his voice. "Council members—"

A chime cut through the chaos. Every head turned toward the holotable as a new image resolved—a tactical display showing a single fighter approaching through the ash clouds. Not just any fighter. A ETA-2 Jedi Starfighter, its green markings visible even through the interference.

On the landing platform, two amber pips winked into life as ground crews scrambled transports for launch—Tambor's and Argente's, abandoning the cause before the chamber doors had even closed.

The room fell silent.

"How long?" someone whispered.

"Sixty seconds to landing," a tactical droid reported with mechanical calm.

Sixty seconds. After everything—all their schemes, their wars, their dreams of independence—they had sixty seconds.

Nute looked at the frightened faces around him, at these beings who'd followed their ambitions to this volcanic hell, and found words rising unbidden. Not a great speech—there was no time for that.

Just truth.

"Then we have one minute to decide who we die as," he said quietly. "Cowards or Confederates. Victims or—"

The lights flickered. Emergency klaxons wailed. On the display the green starfighter surged forward, speed spiking.

Fifty seconds now.

Whatever they would be, they would be it soon.

There is meant to be an image here, but I cannot upload it to Ao3 to save my life! The link leads to the image! 

Chapter Text

The interceptor dove through Mustafar's atmosphere like a blade seeking flesh, weaving between the blackened towers of earth that jutted from the moon's wounded surface. Lava plumes fountained hundreds of meters into the ash-choked air, and the pilot threaded between them with the casual precision of someone who no longer feared death—because he had become death, had worn it like a shroud since the Temple's marble floors ran red with innocence.

Inside the cockpit, Anakin Skywalker's corpse flew the ship while something else wore his skin.

The thing that called itself Vader hummed an old Tatooine melody, one about binary sunsets and freedom, but the tune came out wrong now—too sharp, too manic, like a music box wound past breaking. His eyes, rimmed in Sith gold, reflected not the lava flows below but the ghost-images of younglings looking up at him with trust even as the blade fell. Their faces floated in the canopy's transparisteel, asking why, why, why in voices that should have driven him mad.

Should have. But madness implied there was sanity to lose, and Vader had traded that for power somewhere between the first child's scream and the last.

"Almost there," he said to no one, to everyone, to the voices that wouldn't stop. "Almost time to make them pay for everything."

The Separatists. Every loss, every humiliation, every moment of powerlessness in his life—he traced it back to them. His mother's death while they plotted and schemed on Geonosis. His hand, taken by their leader. The war that had twisted him into something the Jedi couldn't accept, couldn't understand, couldn't save.

They had made him into this. It was only fair he returned the favor.

The facility materialized through the volcanic haze, and Vader laughed—actually laughed—at the ease of it all. Administrator clearance codes, highest priority, had every defensive system rolling over to show its belly. Sidious had given him the keys to their kingdom, though a distant part of his mind wondered how his new master had acquired such perfect access. But that was a thought for later, for never, for someone who still cared about such things.

What mattered now was the platform stretching below him, and the delicious sight of panic in motion.

Two shuttles sat warming their engines—a Sheathipede with Separatist markings and a Techno Union transport. Beings and droids alike scrambled across the platform like insects sensing the boot about to fall. They knew. Somehow, at the eleventh hour, the rats had smelled the cat.

"Too late," Vader whispered, diving down.

R2-D2 warbled a warning—pull up pull up pull up—but it was all background noise now, like the screaming in his head, like the interceptor's own klaxons shrieking about heat and pressure and imminent destruction.

He pulled up at the last second, the fighter's belly kissing a lava plume, paint blistering from the heat. The landing was less touchdown than controlled crash, struts groaning as they absorbed momentum that should have shattered them.

And then, blessed silence.

For a moment after the canopy opened, Vader simply sat there, breathing in Mustafar's poison air. Sulfur and metal and melting stone—it tasted like the Temple had smelled after he was done with it. The wind came in sharp gusts, carrying ash that swirled without pattern or purpose, coating everything in grey-white dust that looked like cremated hope.

He took his time climbing out, savoring the fear that radiated from the platform like heat from a forge. Red-painted B1 battle droids staggered into something resembling a defensive line, their movements stuttering with mechanical panic. Two were dragging a J-10 dual blaster cannon into position while an OOM command unit with yellow markings barked orders in that tinny voice all battle droids shared. A couple of B2 super battle droids anchored the line, their wrist blasters already warming. Two droidekas had deployed, shields shimmering in the heat.

Pathetic. After three years of war, this was their last stand? Part of him was actually insulted.

But his attention was drawn to the fleeing groups—Koorivar in their high-collared finery, Skakoans in their life-support suits. Argente's and Tambor's people. The architects of Ukio's burning. The orchestrators of Ryloth's suffering. Not good men, but Vader found his usual rhetoric about justice curiously absent. He simply hated them, purely and without complication, the way fire hates wood.

Through it all, DUMs and PKs dragged fuel lines, moved cargo, or exclaimed, gesturing madly as his appearance. It seemed that even the droids could fear. Vader just stood patiently, drinking it all in.

Finally, a Skakoan waddled toward him—Tambor having shoved one of his subordinates forward like a sacrifice. The subordinate's vocabulator whined as he tried to speak, something about being welcomed in peace, but Vader wasn't listening.

He was now watching the lava.

A plume erupted from the flows below, molten rock fountaining up past the platform's level, and Vader found himself transfixed. How much power was in that release? How much raw, volcanic fury? The facility's shields shimmered blue as drops of lava spattered against them, each impact a small sun dying against invisible walls.

Beautiful.

He raised both hands, black robes fluttering in the sulfurous wind, and reached out with the Dark Side. The lava plume, at the apex of its flight, suddenly stopped. Hung there, preserved and impossible, molten rock splitting into perfect spheres that glowed like miniature stars.

"Do you see them?" he asked the stammering Skakoan, though he wasn't really talking to him. "Worlds suspended in the dark. I can hold them forever or let them fall. The choice is mine now. It's all mine."

The Sheathipede's engines reached takeoff pitch as the Skakoan stuttered an answer.

Enough chit chat, then.

It was time to work.

He released the lava, letting it rain down in red-hot drops, and turned to the Skakoan with a smile that had too many teeth. The Skakoan took a step backwards out of pure instinct.

"The Techno Union," he said conversationally, lifting the being with a casual gesture. "You poisoned worlds. Turned gardens into graveyards. Made children into orphans." The Skakoan rose higher, legs kicking, vocabulator squealing. "I'm going to enjoy cleansing the galaxy of your stain."

From across the platform Tambor yelled something out.

And the droids opened fire.

Vader shifted, holding the screaming Skakoan between himself and the blaster bolts, the being's suit sparking as it absorbed shot after shot. Only when the corpse was more char than flesh did he cast it aside, igniting his lightsaber with the casual grace of someone beginning a familiar dance.

He had been looking forward to this.

The battle that followed wasn't combat—it was art, if art could be made from violence and screaming.

Vader waded into the droid line like a shark through water, his blade leaving blue afterimages in the ash-heavy air. Red blasterfire poured in from every direction, every angle, until the platform was veiled in the haze of tibanna and the sulfur stench of melted metal. B1 heads separated from bodies with mechanical precision, clattering across the durasteel like dice cast in a game no one could win.

A B2 raised its arm to fire; the arm fell away, still spitting lazfire even as the droid toppled. Another lumbered toward him, servos whining, only for Vader to seize it with the Force and swing it like a club into its comrades, crushing them in a tangle of dented durasteel.

The droidekas' shields shimmered bravely for all of three heartbeats. Then Vader reached into their cores and clenched. Generators shrieked, the energy barriers collapsed, and the destroyers folded in on themselves like paper in a fire.

A cluster of B1s huddled behind a barricade, their combined fire enough to burn trenches into the platform. One of them screeched, "Thermal detonator out!" as a sphere arced through the air toward him.

Vader caught it mid-flight without so much as a glance. The tiny device quivered, frozen in place, before he redirected it on a perfect return path. It landed in the droid's open hands as if returned to sender.

"Uh—detonator in—" was all it managed before the blast reduced the barricade, and every droid behind it, to glowing fragments raining across the platform.

Others tried to retreat in formation. He would not allow it. A simple push of his palm and an entire rank of B1s went skidding backward, their skeletal limbs pinwheeling as they sailed over the platform's edge into the lava rivers below. Their electronic screams cut off one by one as they hit the molten surface and vanished without trace.

But even as he carved through their defenses, his attention split. The Koorivar shuttle was lifting off, engines screaming, scraping across the platform as its pilot tried to build momentum. Beings still clung to the boarding ramp—those who hadn't made it aboard in time, their expensive robes fluttering as they were dragged along.

"No," Vader said, raising his left hand while his right continued its deadly work. "Not yet."

He caught the shuttle in an invisible grip, and it was like holding a thrashing animal. The engines roared defiance, but defiance meant nothing to the Dark Side. With a pulling gesture that looked almost gentle, he guided the Sheathipede toward the Techno Union transport.

The platform seemed to hold its breath in the wake of such power.

And then the two ships collided.

The collision was beautiful in its totality. Shields met and died in coronas of blue light. Metal shrieked. Fuel cells ruptured. Then the explosion—a perfect sphere of fire that expanded outward before the wind tore it into burning streamers. Koorivar fell from the destroyed ramp like drops of rain, some landing hard on the platform, others sailing over the edge into the lava below.

A spinning piece of hull plating came at him, edges glowing white-hot. He caught it with the Force, spun it like a discus, and sent it through two advancing B2s. They fell in perfectly bisected halves, upper portions sliding off lower portions with wet metal sounds.

Vader laughed at the sight.

The OOM commander, its yellow markings still crisp despite the chaos, recorded the sound on its internal log even as it sent a broadwave: "Unit cohesion compromised. Recommend full retreat to interior—" The transmission dissolved into static as Vader's gaze cut across the droid line, and the OOM's processors stuttered through the impossible calculation: fire or flee? Programmed logic trees splintered, none accounting for a single being who could walk through barrages untouched.

Meanwhile, the J-10 cannon finally found its range, twin barrels spinning up with that distinctive whine. The OOM commander staggered back a step, its servos jerking like a man who had just glimpsed his own death. Static warbled through its vocabulator as it snapped, louder and louder, "FIRE! FIRE NOW!"

It lunged for the B1 at the gun, skeletal fingers clutching its fellow droid's shoulder. The gunner stammered in that tinny voice, "Uh—uh, sir, it's walking straight at us—"

"FIRE!" the OOM shrieked again, dragging the B1 into place, jamming its arms toward the firing levers. Its voice crackled with a distortion almost human in its desperation. "TARGET ACQUIRED—FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!"

Obedience turned frantic, the B1's hands shook as it unleashed a storm of scarlet bolts. The air itself seemed to boil with energy, the cannon screaming as the barrels poured destruction at the lone figure.

Vader walked through it.

Not with deflection alone—though his blade swept in constant, sweeping arcs, batting aside searing lines of red—but with the Dark Side bending space around him. Bolts curved away at the last instant, whipped aside like reeds in a gale. Each ricochet scythed through the surrounding ranks of droids. B1s burst apart in showers of sparks; a B2 staggered and fell as its chestplate caved in, molten metal dripping down its frame.

The B1 gunner squealed in horror as its own fire gutted its comrades, swiveling to try and avoid the saber—only for the OOM to clamp tighter on its shoulder and physically drag the cannon's aim back on target. "NO! HOLD ON HIM! HOLD!"

Vader then chose to flick his wrist. The OOM and the gunner both jerked upward, slammed together with bone-snapping force, and were hurled bodily into the cannon they'd tried so desperately to man. The J-10 shuddered as its own crew became ammunition, their frames sparking against the weapon's housing. Even as those two were annihilated, another B1 ran to man the machine next, representing what seemed like their only hope of survival.

The Sith then leaped, assisted by the Force, and came down with his blade through both the droid and the weapon's heart. The explosion sent him sliding backward, but he landed in a perfect crouch, still smiling.

The droid line was gone.

The biological survivors—those few Skakoans and Koorivar who hadn't been on the shuttles—were fleeing toward the facility entrance.

Good.

Let them run.

Let them think they might escape.

Vader was in no rush to end things here. Instead, the Sith Lord looked down at the platform beneath his feet, feeling the structure's stress points through the Force. All that weight, all that engineering, holding itself above an ocean of fire. He felt the war being fought here below, the valiant, constant defense against a moon in turmoil.

It wanted to fall.

Everything wanted to fall, in the end.

He raised his right knee and brought his boot down with the full weight of the Dark Side behind it.

The platform shook. Hairline cracks spread from the impact point like a spider's web, racing toward where the landing pad met the facility proper. He blocked a stray blaster bolt almost absently, his attention on the failing metal.

"Do you feel it?" he called to the audience he knew was watching. "Your foundation cracking? Your last hope breaking?" He raised his knee again. "This is where you all die."

The second stomp was different—not just force but hate, years of it, compressed into a single moment of pure destruction. The platform buckled, support struts snapping like bones. A shield pylon sputtered out and died in a burst of ultramarine. The whole section began to tilt, one degree, then two, then more.

At the same time, the fleeing Skakoans had reached the door, and Foreman Tambor began pounding on it with both fists while his subordinates tried to rewire the controls—the same controls Vader had deliberately damaged with a reflected blaster bolt minutes earlier. Their vocabulators created a symphony of panic, electronic screams and screeches mixing with the agonizing noise of the metal around them.

One Koorivar—red-skinned, female, Denaria Kee by her elaborate dress—had grabbed a railing and was firing a hold-out blaster at him. The shots went wide, wild with terror, but she kept pulling the trigger as if noise alone could stop him.

Vader walked toward them unhurriedly, perfectly balanced despite the tilting platform. The Dark Side held him as surely as gravity held everyone else—except gravity was failing them now, degree by excruciating degree.

A Skakoan lost his footing first, sliding down the increasingly steep platform with a mechanical wail. Then another. They tumbled past Vader toward the edge, toward the drop, toward the lava that waited below with patient hunger.

"One," he counted as the first passed through his blade's reach.

"Two."

"Three."

They slid into his lightsaber like a production line of death, each meeting the sapphire blade at the perfect point. Some tried to grab the platform's surface, leaving scratches in the metal. Others simply screamed. Denaria Kee held on longer than most, her bloody fingers locked on the railing even as the platform reached forty-five degrees.

"Four."

"Five."

"Six."

Finally, desperately, two Skakoans managed to get the door mechanism working. It cycled open just as Kee lost her grip, sliding down into Vader's waiting blade. The two Skakoans did not made it over the edge.

"Seven."

"Eight."

"Nine."

Tambor alone crawled through the entrance on his hands and knees, suit hissing, not looking back, not helping his fellows, just scrabbling forward in pure animal panic.

Then he stopped, frozen mid-crawl by invisible hands.

Vader climbed over the tilted platform's broken edge with a predator's grace, the lava light painting him from behind in orange and shadow. His lightsaber hummed at his side, patient as death itself.

"Wat Tambor," he said, savoring each syllable. "Foreman of the Techno Union. The first Council member of the day to meet me and my blade."

Tambor's vocabulator crackled with what might have been words or might have been pure electronic terror. "I—I will give you anything. Credits, ships, weapons—anything you want."

Vader tilted his head, considering. Then he crossed the distance between them with deliberate steps, each footfall ringing on the metal like a countdown.

"What I want," he said, raising his lightsaber with both hands, "is you."

He drove the blade through Tambor's chest plate with the slow precision of a surgeon.

Metal screamed.

Circuits popped.

Flesh boiled.

The Skakoan shuddered once, then went limp. Vader held him there for a moment, suspended between life and death, then deactivated the blade and let the corpse fall with a hollow clang.

He turned to the nearest camera, knowing the Separatist Council was watching, had seen everything. His smile was the expression of a child who'd discovered that breaking things could be fun.

"No cheating," he said with a playful wag of his finger.

Then he reached out with the Force and crushed every camera simultaneously, the feeds dying in showers of sparks.

The entrance yawned before him like a clutched throat. Somewhere in that darkness, the rest of them huddled and waited and prayed to whatever gods corporations believed in.

Vader stepped over Tambor's corpse, still humming that broken Tatooine song, and entered the facility.

The hunt had begun.

…
...

...
...

The blade emerged from Wat Tambor's chest like a tongue of blue fire, and for a moment the command room fell into a silence so complete that Nute could hear his own heartbeat, could hear the blood moving through his veins with the sound of credits being counted for the last time.

Nothing made sense. Where were the auto-turrets that should have been firing? Where were the blast doors that should have sealed? Where was even the panic that should have gripped them all?

Instead, they stood in mute shock, watching death perform on their screens like an audience that had forgotten they were also on the stage. Nute recognized this feeling—it was the same numbness that had taken him on Naboo when the Queen played her hand, the same hollow unreality that preceded every great defeat. They were being lulled into death's lullaby, rocked gently toward an ending that seemed too large to resist.

On the screen, Vader let Tambor's corpse fall, and when it hit the ground the sound was almost impossibly loud. Two members of the executive council were dead, and the hunter was not even winded.

"No cheating," the young man instead said with a playful wag of his finger, and then—

The screens died in showers of sparks, every camera failing simultaneously, and the spell finally, mercifully broke.

It began with Shu Mai, whose scream cut through the command room like shattered glass. "I won't die a pauper! Not here! Not like this!" Her jewelry jangled as she ran, Cat Miin and the other Gossams scrambling after her, their greed finally serving the purpose of self-preservation.

San Hill tried to flee in another direction, only to be shoved to the ground by Tikkes, whose tentacles writhed with panic. "Move, you walking calculator! Quarren, with me! We make for the thermal vents!"

The Muun hit the floor hard, his elongated frame slamming against durasteel. As his fellow Muuns tried to help him up, Po Nudo and his Aqualish officers stepped over him without acknowledgment, rifles already in hand, faces set with the grim determination of beings who had already chosen their deaths and now only needed to meet them.

Meanwhile, the Archduke chittered rapidly in Geonosian, pressing a data chip into Gizor Dellso's claws with an urgency that transcended language. The lead engineer nodded once, and the Geonosians split into two groups, wings buzzing as they fled in opposite directions.

"I won't go down easy!" Senator Rogwa Wodrata of the Holwuff pulled two blaster pistols from her robes, her reptilian eyes blazing with defiance. "Three years of war won't end with me cowering in a corner!" She ran toward the sounds of destruction, toward the monster wearing a Jedi's face.

And through it all, Nute stood frozen, watching the dissolution of their Council like he was viewing it through transparisteel, present but not participating, a spectator to his own ending.

Captain Gap Nox was looking at him. First Officer Aito Laff and the Federation staff were looking at him. The twelve Neimoidian guards, their ceremonial armor hastily polished for a last stand that would never be remembered, were looking at him.

Settlement Officer and closest confidant and friend Rune Haako was looking at him.

In all of their eyes, Nute saw something that cut through his dissociation like Vader's blade through Tambor—he saw that they would follow him. Despite his failures, his defeats, his crimes that stretched back to Eriadu's boardroom and forward to this volcanic tomb, they would follow him to whatever end he chose. They would walk with him among the lost and the damned, and help him write his own verse in this terrible story.

That weight, the weight of their loyalty, undeserved and absolute, pulled him back into his body, back into the moment, back into the catastrophe that required action. It pulled him back amidst wailing klaxons, amidst the metallic shuffle of droid security pouring to their doom, it pulled him back to the command droid that had failed to protect them thus far.

He wheeled on that tactical droid that stood at the console, the same one that had announced Sidious's transmission, the same one now intoning about security malfunctions with mechanical calm.

"Delete the shutdown codes," Nute commanded. "Now."

The droid's photoreceptors flickered a strange red. "Unable to comply. Shutdown codes have been integrated into facility systems per council directive."

"Delete them anyway," Rune said, stepping forward. "That is a direct order."

"Unable to comply. Deletion requires authorization from the designated council member Wat Tambor."

"Tambor is dead and you know it," Nute said, his voice rising. "I'm ordering you as Viceroy of the Trade Federation—delete those codes!"

"Unable to comply. This unit does not recognize Trade Federation authority."

The words hung in the air like an accusation. Nute felt something cold crawl up his spine.

"Then on my authority as a founding member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems Executive—"

"Unable to comply."

"Who do you serve?" Nute asked, though he already knew the answer.

The droid's head tilted slightly, a programmed gesture of consideration. "This unit serves the leader of the Confederacy. Lord Sidious."

The name fell into the room like a stone into a still pool, ripples of understanding spreading outward. They had been betrayed from the beginning, their own droids programmed to ensure their destruction, their defenses deliberately sabotaged, their deaths scripted before they'd even arrived.

As Nute willed himself to respond, to argue, a heavy clank drew their attention to the doorway. A MagnaGuard stood there, one arm recently welded, its frame still bearing scorch marks from whatever battle had damaged it. In one hand it carried a satchel. In the other, a blaster.

It did not wait to use it.

Without ceremony, without hesitation, it raised the blaster and put three bolts through the tactical droid's head. The droid toppled backward, sparks fountaining from its ruined processors.

The MagnaGuard extended the satchel toward Nute, who took it with numb fingers. Then it produced a commlink, offering that as well.

"Viceroy Gunray," Grievous's voice crackled from the device, each word punctuated by mechanical wheezing. "We'll have to do something about these traitorous machines, won't we?"

The MagnaGuard had already turned to the command console, pulling a heavy blaster from its back. The Neimoidians all flinched as it opened fire, systematically destroying every terminal, every display, every system that could be used to transmit the shutdown signal.

"The satchel contains explosives," Grievous continued. "Military grade. Enough to bring down a battleship's bridge."

Nute immediately shoved the bag at Gap Nox, who took it with an expression of professional alarm.

"The facility is compromised," Grievous said, his breathing getting worse with each word. "Can't activate the defenses. Can't delete the codes. But we can ensure the facility doesn't exist to transmit them. The army must remain operational, or everything is lost."

"General," Nute said, his voice barely steady, "what do you want us to do?"

"Get yourself together, Viceroy." The words came out sharp despite the failing vocalizer. "Your target is the communications array at the facility's peak. Cut all contact. Deny any possibility of the shutdown order being transmitted."

The holoprojecters of the room's center table flickered to life, showing a three-dimensional map of the facility. A red line traced from their position to the communications tower.

"Use the rest of the Council as a distraction," Grievous continued, and there was something almost like amusement in his mechanical rasp. "They're running as it is. Might as well make their panic useful."

"Ever the resourceful tactician, General," Nute scoffed.

The General wheezed. "If it thins their numbers, my job only becomes easier, Viceroy. Those who live may be fit to serve the Confederacy for a while longer."

"I hardly–" Nute's retort was cut short by the raised hand of his confidant.

"And after?" Rune asked.

"After, you take the industrial elevator to the facility's lowest level." The map shifted, showing depths Nute hadn't known existed. "There's a droid foundry down there. Active. Producing."

"In an active volcano?" Nute couldn't help the disbelief in his voice. "While the facility falls apart around us?"

Grievous's laugh was the sound of grinding gears, the mirth of someone with nothing left to lose.

"Our boldness will not be forgotten by this moon. We must kill this apprentice, Viceroy. This Anakin Skywalker. Or die trying." A pause, filled with labored breathing. "He'll never be alone like this again. Never be this vulnerable. If we die today, we die taking the Chancellor's spear point with us."

The transmission cut, leaving them in the red emergency lighting as the first sounds of blaster fire echoed down the corridor. Through the doorway, they could see B1s running past, their red paint catching the emergency lights like blood. Mouse droids swarmed in the opposite direction, squeaking their warnings for all to hear. The MagnaGuard melted back into the facility, back to the General.

"Move!" Nute commanded, and for the first time in decades, his voice carried real authority. "Captain, the charges. Everyone else, weapons ready. We move for the communications array."

They burst from the command room into the greater chaos. The facility was shaking—not just from Mustafar's geological tantrums but from something more immediate, more deliberate. Systems were failing in cascade. Lights flickered from amber to crimson. In the distance, an explosion. Then another.

As they ran through corridors that groaned with stress, Nute caught glimpses through viewports of the facility's exterior. Shields flickered like dying stars. Where they failed, even momentarily, the facility's skin began to bubble and run like wax. Support struts seemed to glow with heat. Small sections started to peel away, snapping and tumbling into the lava flows below.

Behind them, getting closer, came a sound that would haunt whatever remained of Nute's life—the echoing sound of Vader laughing with sickening glee, the sound of him approaching what used to be the command room.

They ran faster.

They ran as fast as they could through corridors that had never been designed for fear.

The passageways of mining facility followed the pragmatic geometry of engineers who had built for efficiency, not aesthetics—straight lines where the rock allowed, gentle curves where it didn't, junctions placed at regular intervals like nodes in a vast circulatory system. Many of the walls were carved directly from volcanic stone, their surfaces bearing the subtle tool marks of automated mining equipment that had worked in darkness before the first sapient corporatist had ever set foot on Mustafar. Everything was functional, purposeful, designed to last millennia.

None of it had been built to contain a monster.

Nute's boots echoed off the durasteel in rhythm with his racing heart as their group moved through the facility's arteries. Around him were the gunners—their carapace armor jingling with every step, their rifles held at their midpoints. Captain Nox led them with professional calm, his scarred visage betraying nothing of what must have been churning through his mind. Lieutenant Fame Drimal kept the rear guard, his young features set in an expression of determined terror that Nute recognized from a dozen corporate boardrooms where careers had been ended with a single vote.

The facility groaned ominously around them, the sound like a massive beast stirring. Dust fell in thin streams from the ceiling joints, and through the walls they could hear things breaking—not the clean snap of structural failure but the crumbling, cascading sounds of destruction that spoke of more than mere demolition, but rather eruption.

"Left here," Rune called, consulting his datapad as they reached a junction. "Service corridor twenty-seven should take us up two levels toward the communications array."

Officer Laff, still wearing his scorched naval uniform from the escape through the Corellian Run, jogged alongside them with four other Trade Federation staffers. Unlike the guards, they carried only holdout blasters—weapons meant for intimidation rather than warfare. The kind of tools that corporate executives used to feel safe in boardrooms, not to fight Sith Lords in collapsing mining facilities. One of the staffers, the sole technician amongst them, held an electric torch, its shaky beam only adding to the feeling of panic. Shadows flinched and stirred wildly in the mad dash, their collective peripheries alight with afterimages that loomed large.

How did it come to this? Nute thought as they navigated another turn, Gap waving them through after rushed sweeps. How did forty years of careful planning, of building the Federation into a force that could challenge the Republic itself, lead to running through a cave with a handful of guards while death hunts us through the dark?

A sound echoed from behind them—not the mechanical wheeze of air ventilation or the groan of stressed metal, but something else. Something that might have been singing.

They all froze, weapons rising, eyes fixed on the corridor they were about to traverse. The sound came again, clearer now—a melody, light and cheerful, like something a child might hum while playing in a manax grove. But the acoustics of the facility twisted it, turned it into something wrong, something that spoke of innocence corrupted into madness.

Gap Nox gestured sharply, and his men spread into defensive positions along the corridor walls. Two knelt, rifle stocks braced against their shoulders. The others took standing positions, creating overlapping fields of fire.

The melody grew closer. And with it they could hear the sound of something metallic hitting the ground, over and over rhythmically. Something was approaching.

Just as Nox was about to tell his men to fire, just as one of the staffers was going to flee for their life, just as Nute was going to give up on living entirely, they saw it.

Around the corner came shambling a figure that had once been a B1 battle droid. Its arms were gone, severed cleanly at the shoulders, leaving sparking stumps. Its head lolled at an angle that suggested internal damage to the neck servos. But it still walked, still functioned after a fashion, bumping into the wall with each step, pivoting, walking forward until it hit the opposite wall, then repeating the process.

"R–R–Roger Rog–er," it said in a voice like grinding glass, then bumped into the wall again.

That echoing melody they heard earlier had stopped abruptly, when exactly none could say.

Lieutenant Drimal lowered his rifle, hands shaking slightly. "It's just a damaged droid."

"Just a damaged droid," Rune murmured, and something in his tone made Nute look at his old friend more closely. There were lines around Rune's eyes that hadn't been there that morning, a grayness to his skin that spoke of stress beyond the merely physical.

They continued past the shambling droid, but Nute found himself looking back at it as they moved away. Something about its purposeless movement, its broken repetition, struck him as deeply wrong in a way he couldn't articulate. It was like watching a microcosm of their entire situation—damaged, directionless, continuing to function only because no one had thought to turn it off.

And no one will turn it off, if we make it to this transmitter.

The facility shuddered, the sound ambiguously geological. Then there was the distinctly structural, as if answering the mountain's call—those were the sounds of support beams failing, of a building trying to tear itself apart from the inside.

"How is one man doing this?" Aito Laff asked over the din, his voice tight with disbelief. "The shields, the defensive systems, the droids—how is he cutting through all of it?"

Gap Nox, checking his rifle's power pack, answered without looking up. "He's not just any man. Skywalker was the Republic's ace pilot, their finest duelist. If the intelligence reports are accurate, he's killed more Separatist commanders than the rest of the Jedi Order combined."

"But he's supposed to be on our side now," one of the staffers protested. "The transmission said—"

"The transmission deceived," Nute cut him off. They'd reached another junction, this one marked with Techno Union symbols that would have meant something an hour ago and meant nothing now. "Whatever game Sidious is playing, we're not his allies. We're his cleanup."

From somewhere in the facility's depths came a scream—high, desperate, cut off abruptly. It was followed by an explosion that shook dust from the ceiling and made the emergency lights flicker.

"That was from Level Three," Rune said, checking his datapad. "Commerce Guild section."

They all knew what that meant. Shu Mai and her people, probably. Another faction of their grand alliance reduced to echoes and rubble. Nute felt something twist in his stomach—not grief, exactly, but the recognition of his own approaching extinction. They were being harvested, picked off systematically, and there was no force in the galaxy that seemed capable of stopping it.

Another scream, from a different direction this time. Then another. They were dying down there, all of them, and their deaths were painting a map of the facility in blood and terror.

"Move faster," Nute ordered, though he wasn't sure speed would matter. The corridors seemed to stretch ahead forever, and behind them—

Behind them, that cheerful humming was getting closer again.

They pressed on through a maze of passages that grew more labyrinthine with each turn. Service corridors branched into maintenance shafts. Storage bays opened onto mineral loading docks. What should have been a straight path to the communications array had become a serpentine journey through the facility's bowels, and with each detour, the sounds of destruction grew louder.

The smell hit them first as they approached Level Five—acrid smoke mixed with something sweeter, something organic burning. Then came the heat, radiating through the walls themselves. When they reached the junction that should have led to the primary stairwell, they found their path blocked by a wall of twisted metal and stone.

The corridor had collapsed, but not from structural failure. The edges of the destruction were too clean, too precise. Something had pulled the ceiling down deliberately, with surgical accuracy that spoke of Force powers applied with architectural knowledge.

Then, suddenly, a section of wall behind them groaned and snapped with a sound that made them all flinch. Voices cried out as dust poured into the passage, and Neimoidians bumped into one another for cover, for safety, for anything.

It took a minute of barked commands to gather the group together, and to take stock of the changed structure.

And when the dust cleared enough, they saw it.

One of Gap's men—Sergeant Jorik, a veteran of Naboo and Geonosis—lay pinned beneath a beam that must have weighed tons, his armor crumpled, his eyes staring at nothing.

"Damn," Lieutenant Drimal whispered, kneeling beside the fallen soldier. "He was right behind me. I heard him say something about his daughter on Neimoidia, how he wanted to—"

"He's dead," Gap said, breaking the impromptu vigil. "Honor him by surviving."

They retreated from the blockage, but the facility groaned around them with increasing violence. Through a viewport, Nute caught a glimpse of the deteriorating outside—shields flickering like dying stars, entire sections of the facility's outer hull peeling away like skin from a burn victim. The sun looked as if it was in the process of being eclipsed by a planet, though Mustafar's poisonous atmosphere thick with ash and volcanic debris had already turned day into a sickly twilight. Light almost seemed as lost here as they were.

Rune was furiously consulting his datapad, trying to map alternate routes, when Nute activated his commlink.

"Grievous," he said. "We're running out of time and paths. What exactly are you doing to help us?"

The response came through layers of static and what sounded like blaster fire. "I'm buying you time, Viceroy. But Skywalker moves like a force of nature. He's not hunting you—he's harvesting you. Systematically. Room by room."

"We gathered that much. Can you stop him?"

A pause filled with mechanical breathing and distant explosions. "I can slow him. But the facility won't hold much longer. The locals—" another pause, this one longer "—the locals understand what's at stake. They're helping to ensure the mountain itself becomes his tomb."

Nute felt a chill that had nothing to do with the facility's failing climate control. "You made allies of the Mustafarians?"

"I made them understand that their survival depends on his death." Grievous's laugh was like grinding metal. "They know these lava flows better than anyone. They know which supports matter, which walls are load-bearing, which chambers can be flooded without warning." Another explosion in the background. "But it takes time, Viceroy. Time you may not have."

The transmission cut, leaving them alone with the sound of approaching destruction. But Nute found himself thinking about what Grievous hadn't said. The General—warrior bred, shaped by conflict since childhood—had somehow accomplished in hours what Kleeger had failed to do in years, what the Union had failed to do in months, what the entire Council had failed to do in days. He'd found common ground with the native population, had made them understand that their interests aligned with the Confederacy's survival.

A soldier's mind thinks differently, Nute realized. Where we saw profit margins and resource extraction, he saw potential allies. Where we saw a mining operation, he saw a battlefield that could be shaped.

"Viceroy," Rune called, his voice tight with discovery. "There's another route. Service passage Eight. It's longer, unsteady, but it should take us around the collapse."

A terse nod and shuffling feet was all he could manage.

They backtracked through corridors that now seemed to be contracting around them, the facility's death throes making every passage more treacherous. Emergency lighting flickered in patterns that hurt the eyes, casting shadows that moved independently of their sources. The air grew thicker, more oppressive, tainted with smoke and the metallic taste of blood.

That was when they found the Muuns.

The passage opened into what had once been a secondary conference room—Banking Clan territory, marked with the austere symbols of fiscal authority. Now it looked like a slaughterhouse decorated by a madman with delusions of artistry.

San Hill, the poor Chairman, hung from the ceiling, suspended by twisted durasteel beams that had been shaped into something resembling a gibbet. His body was bent at impossible angles to fit, and his face—what was left of it—wore an expression of terminal surprise. The other Banking Clan representatives were arranged around the room in postures that suggested they had been used as toys by something that understood anatomy well enough to keep them conscious while it worked.

That was all sickening enough. But it was the message written on the wall in Muun blood that made Nute's hands shake as he read it:

ＴＨＥ ＤＥＢＴＳ ＯＦ ＴＨＥ ＰＡＳＴ ＣＯＭＥ ＤＵＥ

"By the Maker," Aito Laff whispered, his naval stoicism warring with the evidence before his eyes. "What kind of monster—"

"The kind we created," Nute said, though he wasn't sure he believed in that himself any longer. This level of systematic cruelty, this theatrical precision—it spoke of something that had moved beyond mere revenge into the realm of pure sadism.

The gunnery Captain, professional to the end, was already directing his men away from the carnage. "There's an opening in the far wall. Blast damage. We can use it to bypass this section."

They moved through the improvised breach, trying not to look too closely at what remained of the Banking Clan's leadership. The passage beyond was darker, older, carved from stone that pre-dated the facility's construction. Emergency lighting was sporadic here, creating pools of dull illumination connected by stretches of near-total darkness.

It was in one of those dark stretches that they heard it again—that cheerful humming, impossibly close now, so close it seemed to be coming from inside the walls themselves.

They pressed against the dark igneous, weapons ready, listening to the melody that had no business existing in this place of death and fear. It grew louder, then seemed to pass them, then faded again.

"He's toying with us," Lieutenant Drimal said, his voice not daring to stretch beyond a whisper. "He knows where we are. He's letting us run."

"Then we keep running," Gap said. "Until we can't."

They emerged from the ancient passage into a stairwell that should have been their salvation—a direct route to the communications array at the facility's peak. But as they began to climb, the facility shook with such violence that two of the guards were thrown against the walls, their armor clanging like bells.

Through the stairwell's narrow windows, they could see the extent of the destruction outside. The facility was sloughing apart, piece by piece, section by section. Entire wings had fallen away into the lava flows below, and the remaining structure groaned under stresses it had never been designed to bear.

But they climbed, because the alternative was unthinkable.

The door at the top opened onto Mustafar's hellish surface, and the assault of heat and ash nearly drove them back, doom nearly seeming preferable. The air was thick enough to taste, loaded with particulates that turned every breath into a struggle. Above them, the system's primary star was almost completely obscured, visible only as a dim orange disc swimming in layers of atmospheric poison, all while a shadowed giant lurked to the fore.

Before them squatted the communications array—a massive dish antenna that could reach across star systems, that could carry the shutdown codes to every command node, and from there to every Confederate droid in the galaxy. It looked almost organic in the hellish light, like a massive flower blooming on the facility's roof, its pollen the death signal that would end their cause forever.

"Set the charges," Nute croaked, though his words were nearly lost in the wind that howled across the facility's roof like the breath of a dying god.

Gap Nox and his men moved with practiced efficiency, two of them placing explosives at the antenna's base while Technical Specialist Keph Dollor—one of the Federation staffers who actually understood communications equipment—worked frantically at the array's control console.

"It's not that simple," Dollor called over the wind. "The shutdown codes are embedded in the facility's primary systems. If we just blow the dish, they can be transmitted through backup arrays, emergency channels, even through individual droid comm systems. We need to corrupt the codes themselves, route them through the primary transmitter and overload the whole system."

"How long?" Nute demanded, his sleeve raised to cover his olfactory glands.

"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."

Fifteen minutes on the acrid surface of Mustafar, with a Sith Lord hunting them through the facility below. Fifteen minutes while their whole cause balanced on the edge of extinction.

"Set up a perimeter," Gap ordered his men. "Defensive positions around the antenna. Whatever comes up those stairs, we hold it here."

The Neimoidian Gunners—what remained of them—took positions behind improvised barricades of antenna components and facility debris. Their ceremonial armor, so impressive in corporate boardrooms, looked pitiful against the hellish backdrop of Mustafar's surface. But their rifles were clean, their power packs full, and their faces set with the determination of beings who had nothing left to lose.

Rune had been working with his datapad throughout their ascent, and now he moved to Nute's side, his face grim with discovery.

"I found it!" He said, having to shout over the wind. "Pre-dates the main facility. Carved out of a lava dike—it must be what Grievous was talking about. Apparently some old corporate interest built the original structure from within the pluton below."

Nute activated his commlink again, grateful that the facility's peak still had comm access. "General, we've found your elevator. Where exactly are you sending us?"

Grievous's response was fragmented by static and what sounded like combat. "To the mountain's heart, Viceroy. Where Tambor thought to hide his final surprise for us, and our common cause. You'll see when you—" The transmission dissolved into noise, then cleared. "—hurry. Skywalker has reached Level Seven. He'll be with you soon."

Level Seven was three floors below them. Three floors through a facility that was already collapsing, with a madman who moved like liquid death and seemed to treat solid matter as a suggestion rather than a law.

"For how long has the General been giving us these cryptic answers?" Nute muttered, but loud enough for Rune to hear.

"Since the beginning," his oldest friend replied. "Since he first appeared out of nowhere, in that cursed bid for supreme commander. We assumed he was just muscle back then. A blunt instrument."

Nute let out a terse laugh as he looked out across Mustafar's hellscape, where lava fountains painted the sky in smoking shades of orange and red, where the very air seemed to burn with malevolent purpose. Somewhere in the facility below them, Jedi General Anakin Skywalker was climbing toward them, leaving a trail of systematically murdered Separatist leaders in his wake. And somewhere else, in the deeper places of the mountain, Grievous was orchestrating some final gambit that he hadn't seen fit to explain.

Trust, Nute thought. At the end of everything, it comes down to trust. Do I trust the General who has kept his own counsel, or do I trust my own instincts that have led me to this precipice?

The facility shook again, and this time sections of the roof itself began to crack. They were running out of time, running out of options, running out of everything except the slim hope that their destruction might serve some greater purpose in a war that had already consumed everything they had ever built.

"...Keep working," Nute called to Dollor. "We hold here until it's done."

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed up from the stairwell—multiple sets, moving with military precision despite the facility's groaning protests. Gap Nox raised his rifle, finger tensing on the trigger, but then Po Nudo's distinctive silhouette appeared at the stairwell entrance.

The Aqualish emerged onto the roof with grim purpose, his remaining officers behind him—six warriors whose armor bore fresh scorch marks and whose weapons showed signs of recent use. Their large eyes swept the defensive perimeter with professional assessment, and Po Nudo himself moved with the deliberate calm of someone who had already made his peace.

"Senator," Nute called over the howling wind. "What's your status?"

Po Nudo's response was flat, matter-of-fact. "Death follows close behind us, Viceroy. The Sith moves quickly through the facility's heart. He toys with his prey before the kill."

Behind the Aqualish came a shuffling procession of damaged droids—B1s with scorched plating, B2s missing arms, a lone droideka that rolled on dented metal. Gap Nox immediately began positioning them, his voice cutting through the ash-laden wind as he directed the mechanical reinforcements into firing positions around the antenna array.

"Form a crossfire pattern," Gap ordered, his desperation overriding any squeamishness about commanding damaged equipment. "B2s on the flanks, B1s in overlapping zones. Droideka, shield wall facing the stairwell." He grabbed a damaged B1 by the shoulder, manually positioning its rifle. "You hold this position until you're scrap. Understood?"

"Roger Roger," the droid replied, its voice crackling with static.

The Technical Specialist looked up from the antenna controls, sweat mixing with the ash on his face. "Five more minutes. M–maybe four if I bypass the secondary confirmation protocols."

"You have whatever time we can give you," Nute said, taking position behind a makeshift barricade of antenna components. The facility's roof stretched before them, a maze of ventilation systems, support structures, and communication equipment that would have to serve as their fortress.

The eclipse was deepening, the system's star now nothing more than a thin sliver stretched taut.

They waited.

The facility groaned around them. In the distance, lava fountains painted temporary auroras against the darkening sky.

Then they heard it—something climbing the stairwell. Not the frantic scramble of fleeing survivors or the mechanical precision of droid patrols, but a measured, deliberate ascent. Footsteps that echoed with the confidence of something that had never known defeat, that treated obstacles as temporary inconveniences.

The sound stopped.

Everything stopped.

Even Mustafar's eternal geological fury seemed to pause, leaving only the facility's death rattles and the distant boom of lava eruptions that felt like the planet's own labored breathing.

The eclipse reached totality, plunging the roof into a hellish twilight where emergency lights became the only source of illumination.The remaining lights looked impossibly weak, flickering against the darkness above them.

And in that darkness something rolled out of the stairwell.

At first, in the dim light, it looked like debris—perhaps a helmet knocked loose in the facility's collapse, or a piece of equipment that had tumbled down from above. But as it settled against a support beam, the emergency lighting caught familiar features.

Senator Rogwa Wodrata's severed head stared up at them with lifeless eyes, her final expression one of fear.

Sergeant Kallik—one of Gap's younger guards—broke. He bolted from his position, rifle clattering to the roof as he ran blindly across the facility's peak, his armor glinting with eclipse.

He made it perhaps twenty meters before invisible hands seized him, lifting him into the air with casual malevolence. His scream cut through the wind as he was dragged backward into the stairwell's darkness, the sound dopplered with distance, becoming more desperate, until it ended with brutal finality.

Silence returned, heavier than before.

"OPEN FIRE!" Gap Nox roared.

The roof erupted in light and sound. Blaster rifles spat coherent energy into the stairwell's mouth, their bolts painting the darkness in shades of red. The droideka's twin cannons added their voice to the barrage, shield generators humming as they prepared for return fire. B2s walked their shots across the stairwell entrance while B1s maintained rigid covering fire from their positions.

The barrage lasted perhaps ten seconds—an eternity of concentrated firepower that should have reduced anything in that stairwell to atomic vapor.

Then came the blue.

It emerged from the darkness like a star being born, a coherent blade of energy that moved with liquid grace, deflecting their shots with casual precision. The deflected bolts scattered across the roof, some ricocheting harmlessly into the night, others finding their marks among the defenders with surgical accuracy.

And behind the lightsaber came Vader.

He flowed up from the stairwell like smoke given form, his black robes rippling in the superheated wind. The emergency lighting painted him in shades of shadow, making him appear less like a man than like some primordial force of destruction given humanoid shape.

All that could be made out were his eyes—and they burned with the cold fire of distant stars.

A B1 to Nute's left took a deflected bolt through its photoreceptor, sparks fountaining as it collapsed. Another tried to adjust its aim, only to watch its rifle crumple in invisible hands, the metal folding like paper.

Po Nudo and his Aqualish warriors held their ground with the stubborn courage of their species, heavy blasters spitting suppressing fire even as Vader advanced through their barrage one step at a time. Lieutenant Drimal rallied the Neimoidians, his young voice cracking but determined as he called out targeting coordinates.

But Vader was no longer merely deflecting their shots and redirecting some.

No, he began to redirect them all.

A bolt meant for his chest curved back toward the B2 that had fired it, punching through its torso with devastating precision. Another shot, aimed at his legs found his saber instead, ricocheting upward to catch one of Po Nudo's officers in the throat mid-dive. The Aqualish warrior dropped to the ground, clutching at the wound, and then rolled onto his back in death.

"Concentrate fire!" Gap shouted, his rifle chattering on full automatic. "Don't let him close that distance!"

But the distance seemed to mean nothing to Vader. He gestured casually, and the droideka's shield generators overloaded from blaster fire, erupting in a cascade of sparks. Another flick of the wrist sent a B2 skidding backward across the roof, its feet searching for purchase on the slick metal as it tumbled toward the facility's edge.

Technical Specialist Dollor looked up from his work, face pale with terror. "Two! I need two more minutes!"

They didn't have two minutes.

Vader reached the first defensive line, his lightsaber carving through blaster rifles like they were made of clay. A Neimoidian guard—Corporal Vekk, a veteran of three campaigns—tried to block with his weapon's stock. The rifle split in half, followed a heartbeat later by Vekk himself. Two of the Federation staffers tried to break cover, firing their holdout blasters as they ran, but reflected shots found them both, sending them tumbling to the ground.

Po Nudo stepped forward, both hands wrapped around a T-21 light repeating blaster, the kind of weapon meant to stop vehicles rather than individuals. The barrel heated up with a whine that cut through even the wind's howling, and streams of energy poured toward Vader in a continuous river of destruction.

Vader walked through it.

Not deflecting now, not redirecting—simply walking forward as if the blaster fire was nothing more than rain. The bolts seemed to bend around him, curving away at the last moment, creating a corridor of distorted space through which he moved with unhurried purpose. The gravitating shots found even more of the defenders.

Aito yelled one last lament as he aimed for the Sith's head, squeezing the trigger to pour shot after shot downrange. He had served the Confederacy well over its last tumultuous days, but he would not live to see what it would become. A reflected shot from T-21 swiped to the left in midair, finding the Neimoidian Officer and dropping him like the rest.

The Senator continued to hold the trigger down until the weapon's pack whined like a wounded beast, until the barrel glowed red hot and his palms smoked against the overheated metal. Only then did he let the T-21 fall, scarred hands trembling but still steady enough to draw one last weapon from his belt. A metal sphere no larger than a man's fist blinked with a growing pulse of light.

"For my family," he said, voice calm despite the fire eating his flesh.

He ran.

Vader's blade impaled him cleanly, blue fire bursting through his chest in a hiss of steam and charred tissue.

Po Nudo staggered but did not fall. Instead, he grabbed Vader's robes, dragging the Sith Lord close, pressing the blinking detonator hard against the front of his tunic.

The grenade screamed its warning tone. Vader snarled and twisted partially away, but the dying Aqualish had the strength of a man already in the grave. For a single terrible instant, they were locked together—Sith and separatist, killer and victim—each caught in the other's gravity.

The explosion tore them apart.

The blast ripped through Nudo's body, vaporizing it into a rain of gore and molten armor. Vader staggered back across the roof, cloak aflame, half his tunic scorched. His saber faltered for a heartbeat as his grip slipped. He had protected himself with the Force, but for the first time since setting foot on Mustafar, he looked less like death incarnate and more like something that could bleed.

"Now!" Lieutenant Fame Drimal bellowed, seizing the moment. He hurled aside his cumbersome rifle and charged, an electrostaff raised high.

The young Neimoidian struck like a soldier out of myth. The staff came down in a crackling arc, its energy field colliding with Vader's raised lightsaber in a detonation of sparks. The two weapons screeched against one another, staff and saber locked in a contest of raw strength.

For an instant—just an instant—Drimal held him.

Vader pushed back, eyes blazing a molten gold.

Drimal shifted his stance, bracing his legs against the tilting roof, teeth bared as he forced every ounce of muscle, training, and sheer will into the fight. "For Cato Neimoidia!" he cried, voice breaking with fury.

Vader finally managed to wrench the staff sideways and away. Then, with an impossible quickness, he met Drimal's follow up swing with his outstretched mechanical hand. The electric purple arcs danced harmlessly across his gauntlet as he gripped and twisted the weapon free. With one smooth motion, he reversed it, and then drove the crackling tip through Drimal's chest. Electricity coursed through the young lieutenant's body, lighting him from the inside until his scream broke into static. His convulsing form dropped, still twitching, smoke curling from his mouth and eyes.

They had all acted as heroes, and yet their desperation, their fear, their misery, it was fuel to Vader's personal inferno.

Gap Nox was next. The captain of the Neimoidian Guard had planted his boots over Specialist Dollor, ceremonial rifle cracking out precise shots. His scarred face was set in iron, eyes locked on the black shadow recovering from the blast as red light flashed across his face.

"You will not pass," Nox said between shots, calm as a funeral vow.

Vader blocked one last shot and swept his other hand aside. The Force hit Nox like a tidal wave, flinging him across the rooftop. His rifle spun into the void. The veteran slammed against the antenna's base and slid down in a crumpled heap, motionless.

"The systems are fighting me!" Dollor shouted, voice high and panicked as he scrambled over the relay console, sparks flying with every keystroke. "Corruption sequences—almost there—just a couple more seconds!"

Nute could see Vader turn toward the technician, cloak smoldering, stride steady once more. The Sith lifted his saber, blade gleaming with all the inevitability of sunrise.

"Hold him!" Nute shrieked, desperation ripping through his voice as he shakily fired his own wild shots downrange. "Hold him a heartbeat longer!"

Two of the remaining ceremonial guards broke ranks and charged, long-barreled rifles firing as they ran. Their shots careened off Vader's blade in showers of sparks, defiant but hopeless. He cut the first gunner down at the knees, skewered the second through the throat, and destroyed a b-1 with its own shot for good measure.

"Done!" Dollor screamed. "The codes are in the transmitter! Blow it now!"

Vader turned toward the technician with predatory grace, lightsaber raised—

"BLOW IT NOW!" Nute roared, his voice carrying across the roof like a final judgment. "DAMN IT ALL!"

Rune's thumb found the datapad.

The world ended.

Not the controlled demolition they had planned, but pure chaos—military-grade explosives detonating in a chain reaction that tore through the antenna array, the roof, the facility's upper levels. The communications dish vaporized in a column of fire that reached toward Mustafar's poisoned sky like an accusation against the gods.

The shockwave hit Nute like a physical blow, lifting him from his feet sideways and hurling him backward. The roof cracked, buckled, then gave way entirely, sending him tumbling into the facility's wounded depths. Metal shrieked. Stone crumbled. Emergency lighting failed in cascades of sparks.

He fell through darkness, through smoke, through the death rattle of a structure that could no longer remember how to stand. Something struck his head—debris, or a falling beam, or perhaps just the weight of his own failures made manifest.

Consciousness fled.

Chapter Text

A talon scraped across bent durasteel, almost slipping, almost sending him tumbling into the abyss. The beams shuddered beneath his weight—beneath all their weight—buckling to the whims of a moon tearing itself apart. Yet the battered General pressed forward, each step an act of faith in metal that might not hold, toward whatever destiny had prepared for him in this burning tomb.

The ailing warrior no longer fought against fate's current. Not as he once had when fate visited him through dreams, presenting him with his first love. In those distant days, he had thrashed against the gods' design, screamed defiance when the Huk struck, raged when the waves claimed Ronderu lij Kummar—when he howled at indifferent heavens until his throat bled raw.
That had been another lifetime, when all that mattered was her twin blades dancing in sunlight, the death of the Huk, the simple clarity of revenge. A lifetime as the hero his people needed, as the Khagan, as their great conqueror. During those days, he often imagined himself as a new Xim, a reborn Despot, ready to carve out a kingdom for himself and his love. They would rule together, dispense justice where it was due, and die the easy death of victorious warriors who had left their mark on history.

And then she died.

Qymaen reached a shaky hand to grab a loose cable, using it to swing across a chasm where floor had been moments before. Black cloth whipped around him—the shroud that hid his exposed systems, his shame, his transformation into this thing that was neither warrior nor machine but something trapped between.

A cough bubbled up.

He swallowed it with all the rest.

The one who came to him in dreams was torn away by the great sea and her merciless currents. She never saw how far they drove the Huk back, never witnessed their victories turn to ash. And was that not the great irony of destiny? That his love, his conqueress, visited him in dreams, yet they were denied the true achievements promised to a Dreamer and the Dreamed One. The old legends spoke of such warrior-heroes, but never mentioned how few reached their promised ending. And no matter how deeply he grieved—for he was Grievous now—the gods offered neither answer nor closure. They simply drew their line in the sand and called it fate.

To his right, an entire section of the facility groaned like a dying beast, tilting backward in slow surrender before accelerating into its final plunge. It crashed into volcanic rock with a sound like thunder, sending shrapnel outward—deadly metal butterflies dancing on superheated thermals.

IG-74 signaled: they'd reached position.

The Shadow of Malevolence slowed to a stop.

An earth-shattering boom rolled across the valleys.

The mountain was exhaling fire.

He'd seen the readouts before the systems failed—pressure building for decades finally finding release, as if the moon itself had chosen this moment to join in their destruction, their cause's conflagration.

A small part of him wondered why, why the moon would exhale now, as the Sith came to bring their cause to a close. Perhaps the Force had a role to play, though his alien blood would never whisper its secrets to him.

The Force cared nothing for Kaleesh grief.

Through billowing black smoke, a glint of silver caught his eye—so small, so brief, anyone else would have missed it.

But to Grievous it bloomed into something else.

The broken General's memories blossomed into dreams as Qymaen imagined the Martyr, his transport on that fateful day, as it took off from the same beach that once claimed his dream visitor. The Martyr, filled to bursting with his loyal warriors, his elite, his Izvoshra, who saluted and cheered, waving at the people who they would fight to avenge. t had been a clear day, a perfect day, a day when destiny seemed certain—when crystal waters reflected the endless sky with such clarity that heaven and sea became one.

The beach had overflowed with his people—children on shoulders, elders leaning on carved staffs, young Kaleesh who gazed up at the Izvoshra with worship in their eyes. They scattered white petals upon the waves, casting their hoarded luck upon their champions with prayers made visible.

None of them could see the bomb already counting down in the cargo hold.

To them, the Martyr was invincible—silver hull blazing in dawn light, engines roaring defiance at a universe that had already taken too much. He remembered standing at the boarding ramp, rifle raised to the crowd, feeling like the hero from their oldest songs. Qymaen jai Sheelal at his zenith, the one who would make the Huk pay for every burned village, every orphaned child, every sacred site desecrated.

Sand kicked up from liftoff in golden clouds.

The ship climbed toward heaven amidst thunderous cheers, and then—

He watched from the ruins of Mustafar as his past flew skyward to die. Watched as the beautiful silver hull caught emerging sunlight, daring to challenge the smoke, the darkness, the ash of everything. Grievous found himself reaching outward and up, as if he was one of his own people celebrating the journey ahead, indulging in the feeling of having someone else to fight for him. He imagined a world in which he did not have to shoulder the burden of an entire cause, or make every decision, lest it all crumble into the sand.

And then he saw the ship explode from the inside.

The silver beauty fell into countless pieces, raining back down to the earth amidst fire and weeping trails of smoke. Dreams glittered to the ground like shattered glass, as his final hopes for the future were dashed into the molten sea like his great love, long ago.
The vision faded for what it truly was.

It had been a collapsing collection arm, not a ship—industrial equipment failing as shields died, tumbling into the lava river below.

Time to focus on the now.

He turned to his assembled dead.

Four MagnaGuards, Four Izvoshra, joints sparking, hydraulics leaking, patient as tombstones as their white rags fluttered in the merciless wind.

Ten Geonosian warriors, wings folded tight, understanding this would be their hive guard's final flight, their Archduke's last command.

For there stood Poggle the Lesser himself, standing apart with the dignity of one who'd built wonders and lived to see them burn.

The Archduke of the Stalgasin Hive took a moment to survey the assembly. The group shared a strange quiet, perhaps in remembrance of those who had already given their lives fighting death incarnate.

The Geonosian lingered on Grievous a moment longer than on the others, gazing upon the fractured light across his armored frame.

"We made many weapons," he chittered, voice carrying the dry click of memory. "Hives rose and fell on them. But you… Khagan… you were our greatest craft. Flesh reforged into legend. No brood will ever match it."

A MagnaGuard translated, and Grievous nodded solemnly.

"And yet we have failed," Poggle chittered simply, compound eyes reflecting nothing. "The next brood will learn from our remains." His mandibles clicked once—sharp, final. "Now I return to my Queen."

The other Geonosians buzzed in mourning harmonics.

It was an epitaph in three sentences. They were all ghosts now, haunting the same doomed facility.

"Target approaching," one of his Izvoshra reported.

The reverie melted away as eyes tracked their quarry.

Through gaps in the ruined floor, Grievous saw him—Vader, striding across a battered catwalk as if the facility wasn't dying around him. The shroud that clung to the Sith wasn't like Sidious's calculated shadow. This was raw carnage given form, newborn and ravenous. Even through Kaleesh eyes that had never touched the Force, Grievous could feel the wrongness of him, like looking at a wound in the shape of a man as it waded through the facility.

That connection between the external facility and the mountain groaned slowly, as if pondering whether it should collapse in that very moment. Yet it held, though it would be tested soon enough.

"Positions. My signal."

The Geonosians peeled off with barely a whisper of wings, diving to position themselves at the windows flanking the catwalk. The MagnaGuards followed Grievous as he descended, their joints somehow silent despite the facility's groaning protests. They crawled to the roof of the catwalk's structure, each movement sending lightning through Grievous's damaged frame.

He pulled his black cloak tight, as if the fabric could hold his breaking body together. The pain was overwhelming—systems failing, organs that shouldn't exist anymore screaming their protest, fluid leaking from wounds that refused to heal.

But what was this pain compared to watching the Martyr fall? Compared to Ronderu's empty grave? Compared to a lifetime of loss compressed into this mechanical mockery of his former self?

How long since I thought of you, oh Dreamt One? The war had consumed even his grief, leaving only the mechanical purpose of survival, and the searing shapelessness of revenge without reason.

Will I see you soon?

They waited patiently.

Vader emerged from a pipe's billowing steam, striding across the catwalk with the calm inevitability of a blade already descending.

Something dragged in his grip, limp and glittering.

Shu Mai.

Her gold neck-rings, the same gaudy trophies she had flaunted even here, had become a leash. They dug into her throat, twisting her head at grotesque angles as he hauled her like refuse. Jewels clinked softly against metal, as wealth composed a song of mockery in her final parade. Her limbs were slack, her eyes half-lidded, yet still some spark remained.

A sound came unbidden from her throat—broken, half-breathed, words dragged out by the motion of her body more than by will.

"…you'll… get… a handsome… reward…"

Vader did not look down.

His voice was steady, cruel.

"I am the handsome reward."

Her head lolled once, twice, and then stilled.

He let her drop without pause, her jeweled corpse clattering against the facility floor. Then he walked on, crossing into the kill zone's center as if born for this very stage.

Grievous signalled to the Mustafarians.

And explosions rang out through the structure, forming a booming cascade that stood in place of battlefield roars.

The catwalk didn't fail; it was pulled down with the violence of those who'd learned the mountain's weak points through generations of survival.

The Sith braced as the entire structure broke off from both connective points, falling a short distance before slamming into more twisted durasteel.

In that very moment, molten rock poured through part of the exposed roof in a golden cascade, beautiful and terrible, forcing Vader to dive forward with the fluid grace of a predator sensing the trap closing.

But the Sith dove into the trap.

The first sonic blast hit like an invisible fist, driving Vader sideways into the wall hard enough to crater metal. Transparisteel exploded inward as the catwalk's windows shattered—a thousand diamonds catching fire.

In a single flutter of their wings, ten Geonosians opened fire from the flanking windows in perfect synchronization, their sonic blasters creating a crossfire of invisible hammers. The air itself became a weapon—compression waves overlapping, reinforcing, building into a crescendo of destruction that should have pulped any living thing caught within its embrace.

Vader rolled, fluid as mercury, dodging between pressure waves that could collapse a skull.

One blast caught him in the shoulder, spinning him like a leaf in a hurricane—but even spinning, he was calculating, adjusting, learning.

A third blast clipped his leg, dropping him to one knee, and for one perfect moment Grievous thought they might witness the impossible: a Sith Lord brought low by simple physics.

The roar that erupted from Vader's throat was not human. It was the sound of iron undergoing fusion, of a star going supernova, of something fundamental breaking free from whatever chains had been holding it back. Even the Geonosians faltered at the sound, their concentrated fire wavering as instinct screamed at them to flee.

Through that rage, the Sith learned the rhythm of their fire.

Through pain, he was set free from the trap that threatened him.

He rose to his full height, and suddenly the crossfire that had seemed inescapable became a dance he knew the steps to.

He ducked low, allowing two shots to soar overhead and punch holes in the facility's far wall.

He lunged forward into a spinning leap that carried him between four simultaneous blasts, the compression waves close enough to flutter his cloak but never quite finding flesh.

One shot passed between his legs as he twisted in midair. Another grazed his armpit, close enough to singe fabric. His lightsaber spun useless in his hand—sonic weapons couldn't be deflected, only evaded—but Vader felt every vibration in the facility around him, the Force whispering the location of every stress point, every weakness, every opportunity.

And so he asked, and so the Force answered.

After another rotating leap that carried him through what should have been certain death, Vader dropped into a throwing stance. His lightsaber left his grip like a flaring blue comet, the spinning blade carving a deadly arc through the window frame. It curved impossibly in its flight, chasing the screeching Geonosians as they tried to scatter on buzzing wings.

The weapon moved like a living thing, guided by will rather than physics. It swept through the first warrior in a spray of green ichor and shattered carapace, banked around a support beam to catch the second, then curved upward to bisect a third who had thought altitude meant safety. The remaining Geonosians broke formation, their disciplined crossfire dissolving into panicked individual shots as they realized they were being hunted by an extension of Vader's very hatred.

It was exactly what Grievous had been waiting for.

The battered General collapsed onto the catwalk with his MagnaGuards, four lightsabers igniting in his grip—blue, green, blue, green—a cold constellation burning in shake-shuddering air.

No Surprise.

The joints sang, the cloak was torn; even the dying walls knew he was coming.

Dooku's first lesson was already spent, before the battle had started in earnest.

Yet Grievous pressed forward, four blades weaving death. Vader didn't meet the assault—he flowed around it. A high cut claimed a handrail, a low stroke plowed molten furrows through flooring, another cleaved conduits that vomited steam and sparks.

Through it all, the Sith moved with contemptuous economy, always in the gap, always where the strikes weren't.

"All that noise," Vader murmured, drifting past four intersecting blades, "for so little speed."

Grievous roared and crossed two sabers in a scissoring strike that found only a pipe, which screamed apart and filled the catwalk with a fresh cloud of scalding vapor. Vader ghosted through it, silhouette shivering and gone.

"Dance, then," the Sith's voice came from somewhere inside the steam. "Show me the legend."

Grievous roared and struck again and again.

Vader dodged.

Not the desperate scrambling of prey, but the fluid evasion of something that had transcended the normal limitations of flesh and physics. He flowed between the strikes like a wisp of smoke, like liquid shadow, like the very concept of murder given form and purpose.

His position was ephemeral, superimposed where the blades were not.

Each blade passed so close it should have drawn blood, should have carved away pieces of robe and flesh, but Vader existed solely in those spaces between the attacks, moving to positions that shouldn't have been possible for something bound by mere anatomy.

The assembled dead through everything they could at the Sith Lord, swinging electrostaffs, four lightsabers, and sonic shots unending in a barrage from all angles. But the Force refused to yield, reason collapsed in the face of dark ruination. Sonic shots went wide, swings missed by a hairs breadth, and a MagnaGuard got to close.

The IG unit struck from the left, electrostaff crackling with enough voltage to stop a rancor's heart. Vader spun around the thrust with ballet-like grace, his hand lashing out to strike the precise pressure point where the droid's head connected to its central processor.

Circuits failed.

A droid died.

The MagnaGuard collapsed in a shower of sparks, its body convulsing as negative feedback loops tore through its neural network.

The fallen droid's electrostaff bounced once on the platform before Vader's outstretched hand caught it without looking. The weapon spun in his grip, electricity dancing along its length like captured lightning, and suddenly he was no longer defenseless.

Three Geonosians fell in the next heartbeat, their wings sheared away by Vader's returning lightsaber as it completed its deadly orbit. The dying warriors plummeted into the lava flows below, their death-screams fading as they fell toward the molten embrace of the mountain's heart.

The electrostaff in Vader's hands became an extension of his fury. He blocked Grievous's upper strikes with the weapon's charged length while his returning lightsaber dealt with the threats of the air. When the second MagnaGuard pressed its attack, Vader slid low to the ground, moving with impossible speed, his free hand making a subtle yanking motion.

The MagnaGuard found its balance destroyed by invisible Force, careening sideways into a strike so powerful that the electrostaff pierced clean through its armored torso. The weapon emerged from the droid's back in a fountain of sparks and synthetic lubricants, and Vader twisted it free with the casual motion of someone pulling a cork from a bottle.

Grievous met him in a hiss of crossed blades—two sabers scissoring down on the electrostaff's charged spine. Metal screamed and blue fire guttered, heating until the staff sheared cleanly in half.

The pieces spun away into the dark.

Vader yielded a lazy half-step, letting the sundered tip clatter past his boot. "Better," he said, eyes alight with gold amusement. "Make me feel something."

The General obliged. Four arms blurred, carving modern murals into bulkhead and beam, shaving plates from the catwalk's ribs. Vader gave ground by choice, backing through the steam surrounding them both, each retreat a measured theft of the other's breath, a slow bleed of Grievous' remaining time.

Intimidation?

The Count had taught it as a weapon.

But how do you intimidate a shadow?

""Weak," Vader said softly from within the steam. "A broken general for a broken cause."

The remaining Geonosian warriors numbered only two now, their formation shattered, their courage broken. They wheeled away from the windows with despairing cries in their clicking native tongue.

They had seen enough.

They knew the taste of defeat when it filled their mandibles like ash.

Only Poggle the Lesser remained, the ancient Archduke breathing hard from his flight away from the lightsaber. He gazed upon the chaos around them—the failing facility, the rising lava, the mechanical specter of death approaching with measured steps. The leader of the great hives had built wonders that spanned star systems, had commanded armies that could blot out suns.

He had emerged into the galaxy as a pauper, a lower-caste drone. But he had never let his past define him. He had, with time, become living proof of what a lesser could do. Never again would the toiling workers of the hive believe they could not rise, that they could not fly upward to the highest echelons of their beautiful cities, to their Queen's side.

This great point had been proven, his life's work.

Now he stood alone, facing the end of everything he had ever known.

Vader smiled at the sight of such naked vulnerability, his teeth gleaming blue in the plasma-light of the sabers. The expression was worse than any snarl, more terrifying than any roar. It was the smile of something that had learned to find joy in the breaking of beautiful things.

The Force lashed out like an invisible whip.

Poggle the Lesser, standing at the platform's edge trying to rally his scattered warriors with desperate chittering commands, crumpled like paper in an invisible fist. His exoskeleton collapsed inward with the sound of breaking chalk, millennia of evolutionary perfection undone in a single moment of casual malice. The Archduke's death scream became a wheeze, then silence, as he plummeted backward and broken toward the lava, taking that lifetime of effort with him into the fire.

Vader's lightsaber returned to an expectant hand, its job finished.

The moment of shock—watching Poggle die, seeing the casual ease with which Vader snuffed out such ancient dignity—cost Grievous everything. In that fraction of a second when horror overcame calculation, when emotion trumped tactics, Vader's blade effortlessly carved through the last MagnaGuard in a blur of superheated plasma. The droid's death was almost beautiful—its form outlined in sapphire fire for one perfect instant before collapsing into component parts that scattered across the platform like metallic rain.

In response, Grievous attacked with everything. With all of the speed and strength he had left, he traded blow for blow with this dark nexus of the Force. The colors of the Jedi Order dominated the darkened passage as two Generals from the Clone Wars swung hard, met, and riposted.

Two sabers would spin, and would be wrenched aside with a flicker of blue.

A stabbing thrust would be enveloped in a death grip, threatening to wrench the beating heart of the Confederacy from its frame.

The Geonosians had fled or died. Grievous' own warriors were melting in the rivers below.

And his own time had run out.

Their blades bound for a heartbeat longer—saber to saber, crumbling arms to death's baleful grip—until the weight behind the lock shifted, inexorably.

Servos stuttered, snapped.

Vision lagged a fraction.

Calculation failed to keep pace with physics.

Fear arrived—not as panic, but as the body's quiet truth: too slow.

Vader felt it bloom and pressed down.

"Dooku promised me a challenge," he said, driving the bind apart with a twist that wrenched aside metal and will alike. "You both were faster when the war was young."

Not a question–

A final assessment.

"I expected more."

Then Vader's follow-up strike swept upward in a diagonal slash that severed two of Grievous's arms at the elbows. The cybernetic limbs peeled away, taking their lightsabers with them, the weapons clattering across the durasteel platform like the chime of the dead.

Grievous tried to bring his remaining sabers up to block, but the impact was too much, the Force behind it too overwhelming. He stumbled backward and shattered through a transparasteel frame, out into the open air above the lava flows, his cloak streaming behind him like the tattered wings of some great mechanical bird of prey as he fell, fell, fell toward his demise.

So this is how it will end.

Falling, always falling.

The Martyr once more.

...

But not yet.

His grappling hook fired by instinct more than conscious thought, the cable singing through superheated air to catch a floating piece of facility debris. The impact when the line went taut nearly tore the remaining arm from its socket, and it sent cascades of white agony through every functioning nerve cluster. He slammed against the twisted durasteel, his dented chest plating cracking like an eggshell, precious fluids leaking from wounds that hissed when they met the heated metal.

The jolt nearly tore his arm from its socket, and pain flooded him like seawater rushing through a breach. He dangled there, chest cracked, leaking, the mountain's furnace breathing against his face.

For one raw heartbeat he felt himself letting go.

But the line held. The hook had found purchase. Against every probability, against every cruel arithmetic of fate, the cable had answered his need.

Faith. The fourth factor, one that the aristocrat from Serenno never mentioned. But it was one that had been learned long before he had ever learned of the Banking Clan, of Darth Tyrannus, of the Confederacy.

He learned it on the shores of the great sea Jenuwaa.

Grievous clung to that faith now, mask shattered into a broken smile that did not reach his eyes.

If the gods existed, they had left him hollow. But faith—faith was his alone to wield. Faith that time had been bought, that even cowards might serve a cause, that the Confederacy could yet leave more than ashes behind.

There—through the smoke and ash, through the dying facility's mechanical death rattle—he could see who Vader had been chasing all along.

Nute Gunray, the cowardly Viceroy himself, was somehow still alive, crawling toward the elevator leading to the facility's depths. The Neimoidian would descend into the mountain's molten heart, and Vader would have to follow on his relentless hunt.

The skrit leads the predator to the karabbac's den.

Grievous hung there, swaying against the burning metal, watching as Vader turned from gazing upon his broken form in satisfaction, to resume the pursuit of his true prey.

The General had failed to kill the Sith.

He had failed to survive intact.

He had failed by every meaningful measure that mattered to military minds.

But he had bought time.

That coward Gunray—who had somehow found fragments of courage at this molten end of all things—would lead Vader deeper into the mountain as it erupted around them. Into the foundry where ten thousand warriors waited in endless ranks, where the mountain's own fury could be turned to their cause.

Perhaps there, in the volcanic heart of Mustafar, failure might still transform into something else. If not victory, then at least an ending worth the price they'd all paid to reach it.

Poggle's body was gone, swallowed by the fire unending, but his last speech still echoed, short as it was.

Our greatest craft.

Grievous chose then to wear those words like a final honor guard.

He allowed himself to believe them, if only to live for a moment longer.

As he swayed there, perched upon some battered fragment of facility, the General thought of Tambor's begging, of Argente pushing others aside, of San Hill—the wretched debt collector who had once hired him like a common mercenary—scrambling into his own coffin. That was the Confederacy as he had always known it: parasites, cowards, fattened and left destitute by war's end.

And yet—

Po Nudo, lighting up the eclipse with his relentless resolve. Neimoidians, who held out long enough to see the transmitter destroyed, and their cause preserved. Poggle the Lesser, proud even in defeat, saluting his greatest work before falling with his hive's honor intact.

The Confederacy had been built by profiteers.

But it was dying with martyrs.

His gaze drifted downward, following the path Vader had taken after Nute Gunray—the coward who somehow crawled forward still, dragging fragments of courage out of sheer terror. Perhaps cowardice could serve as well as valor. Perhaps survival, too, was a weapon.

Perhaps that would be the Confederacy's legacy: not outright victory, not a dreamlike glory, but defiance—in valor, in cowardice, in whatever scraps of will its sons and daughters could muster against a Republic that promised only chains.

The facility groaned as the mountain reclaimed what had never truly belonged to mortal hands. And General Grievous—broken, beaten, but somehow still breathing—followed the currents of a river of rock, all in search of the destiny the gods had in store for him.

I will see you again one day, my love, be ready for my arrival.

But that day will not be today.

Chapter Text

The bridge of the Profusion stretched in familiar grey monotony, its surfaces scarred by weeks of running battles but still operational. Emergency repairs had left welding seams across bulkheads like surgical scars, and several consoles flickered with intermittent power fluctuations.

But the ship lived,

and fought,

and endured.

A green light pulsed on the communications array, different from the steady stream of tactical data flowing across other displays.

It blinked once, twice, then held steady—the particular rhythm that meant priority transmission from an encrypted source.

A blue-painted B1 battle droid turned from its station, photoreceptors focusing on the figure standing at the tactical display. "Admiral," it said in that distinctive tinny voice, gesturing toward the waiting signal. "Incoming transmission on secured frequency."

The light continued to pulse, patient as a heartbeat, carrying with it the weight of distant decisions and converging trajectories.

The cathedral of war rose from living stone.

Carved by ten thousand years of patient Geonosian hands, the demonstration factory stretched upward until its ceiling vanished into engineered shadow. Red rock had been shaped with an artisan's care—not blasted or melted but persuaded into flowing geometric patterns that seemed both organic and mechanical at the same time. Columns twisted upward into the heights above, their surfaces etched with reliefs that recorded the art and culture of the Stalgasin Hive.

For a species that dealt in engineering, art was the afterthought that acted as window dressing for what they found to be the true beauty.

The factory.

Light fell through precisely calculated apertures, each beam catching the iron oxide in the stone in so precise a manner, that one could tell time from the shadows on the wall. It was through this temple to industrial perfection that the future itself marched—rank upon rank of B1 battle droids, their sand-red coating catching the light, each one stepping in perfect synchronization. Left foot, right foot, pause for inspection, continue. The sound of their march created a rhythm that vibrated underfoot.

"Beautiful, is it not?" Count Dooku asked, his voice carrying that particular aristocratic resonance that transformed observations into judgments. He wore robes of rich brown, still a Jedi's cut but made from fabric too fine for their austere tastes. Beside him walked a figure Nute couldn't quite place—blue-skinned like a Pantoran but wrong somehow, her features too sharp, her pure red eyes burning with an intelligence that seemed to catalog everything for future violence. She said nothing, merely observing, one hand resting on the lightsaber at her hip.

"The production capacity is... impressive," Nute replied carefully, watching a squad of super battle droids emerge from their assembly cocoons. They activated in sequence, photoreceptors lighting like eyes opening for the first time, systems running through initialization protocols with a mechanical satisfaction.

Behind Nute, his delegation of Neimoidians couldn't quite hide their awe. Rune Haako maintained his usual composure, but the younger officers and trade captains whispered among themselves, calculating crew complements and defensive capabilities. To them, these weren't just droids—they were the future of the Trade Federation fleet, untethered crews that would be free from the central processing unit, would be free from the mistakes of Naboo.

"Impressive," Dooku repeated, and there was something almost sad in his tone. "Such a small word for such a grand endeavor. Do you know what you're really looking at, Viceroy?"

They had stopped at an observation platform that jutted out over the main assembly floor. Below, thousands of droids moved in rivers of red and tan, flowing toward packaging stations where they would be compressed into C-9979 deployment racks, and from there into the countless core ships that had landed on Geonosis over the past weeks. The Geonosians had turned warfare into an art form, art gilded violence and violence in turn would churn with assembly-line efficiency.

It all seemed so simple.

"An army," Nute answered.

"Freedom," Dooku corrected. "For the first time in a thousand generations, the Outer Rim has the means to say 'no' to the Core. To chart its own course without asking Coruscant's permission." He gestured at the endless ranks below. "Each droid represents a choice—to accept the Republic's slow strangulation or to resist."

A flight of Geonosians passed overhead, their wings catching the light in translucent patterns. They carried their sonic weapons with casual expertise, warrior-engineers who had married destruction and creation into a single discipline. One settled nearby, chittering something to Dooku's companion, who nodded without expression.

"The Geonosians have no quarrel with the Republic," Nute observed, watching the insectoid beings move through their domain with proprietary confidence. "Their world is inhospitable enough that the Senate barely remembers they exist. Why risk everything for a war that isn't theirs?"

"Because the good Archduke understands something that you have seen for yourself," Dooku said, beginning to walk again. Their path took them through the heart of the factory, between endless rows of deactivated droids standing at perfect attention. "The Republic's hunger is infinite. Today they tax trade routes. Tomorrow they'll demand oversight of droid production. Next year, they'll insist on inspectors in every factory, regulations on every design. The free worlds of the Rim will become nothing more than resource farms for the Core's endless appetite."

"Lord Tyranus," someone called, and Nute turned to see a figure in Mandalorian armor approaching. The bounty hunter Jango Fett moved with the controlled countenance of a killer. "Business calls. I'll return before the week's end."

"Of course," Dooku replied smoothly. "I trust you'll handle the matter with your usual efficiency."

Fett's helmet turned toward Nute for a moment, and though the visor was opaque, Nute felt himself being evaluated and dismissed in the same instant. Then the Mandalorian was gone, vanishing into the shadows between assembly lines.

"A necessary evil," Dooku said, though whether he meant Fett or something else wasn't clear.

They climbed a carved stairway that spiraled around a massive support column. As they rose, the factory spread out below and above them like a map of possibilities. Here, experimental droidekas were being tested, a new variety that would be meant for long-range engagements. There, a line of dwarf spider droids scuttled through an obstacle course, their cognitive processors learning from each failure.

"The executive council meets in a week," Dooku continued, his blue-skinned companion falling back to speak with someone via encrypted comlink. "All the major corporations will be represented. The Trade Federation's commitment will be... influential."

"The Trade Federation remains officially neutral," Nute said, the words automatic, rehearsed.

"Of course," Dooku smiled, and it was the expression of someone who enjoyed the elegant architecture of a lie. "Your neutrality is famous. Almost as famous as your defensive fleet that just happens to be the largest in the Outer Rim."

Captain Mar Tuuk, one of the younger Neimoidians in Nute's delegation, couldn't contain himself any longer. "Viceroy, these new B1 units—the targeting algorithms alone are revolutionary. And the command protocols! They could crew an entire Lucrehulk with zero organic oversight."

"They could indeed," Dooku said, turning that penetrating gaze on the young officer. "Imagine it. Your great trade ships, defended by truly autonomous crews. The Republic's taxation becomes meaningless when you can patrol every hyperlane with impunity, when warfare becomes a matter of resource extraction alone."

A Lieutenant's eyes—an up-and-coming Neimoidian by the name of Sentepeth Findos–shone with something approaching worship, and Nute realized with a start that to these younger Neimoidians, he wasn't just the Viceroy—he was the architect of their people's resurrection. The one who had taken the Republic's attempt to humble them at Naboo and transformed it into the catalyst for revolution.

"Count," Rune said carefully, "there are those on Raxus who speak of more than corporate independence. They talk of democracy, of a confederation built on ideals rather than credits."

"Idealists," Dooku replied with a dismissive wave. "Let them have their speeches. When the conflict comes—and it will come—they'll learn that ideals without economics are just poetry. The corporations provide the substance. Raxus will provide the rhetoric. Together, we'll build something the Republic cannot ignore or destroy."

They reached another vast chamber where Geonosian warriors trained alongside prototype droids. Organic and mechanical moved in surprising harmony, each learning from the other. The warriors' flight gave them advantages the droids could never match, while the droids' perfect repetition of successful tactics informed the warriors' strategies.

"Do you all see the nature of our movement?" Dooku said, gesturing at the synchronized violence below. "Unity through diversity. Each member of our alliance brings their own strengths. The Geonosians provide engineering genius and warrior tradition. The Trade Federation brings the ships and logistics. The Banking Clan provides the credits. The Techno Union offers innovation. Together, we become more than the sum of our parts."

"And what do you bring?" Nute asked, genuinely curious.

"Purpose," Dooku replied with conviction. "Direction. The Republic has lost its way, become a tool for the Core Worlds to exploit everyone else. The Jedi have become enforcers for a corrupt Senate, too blind to see they're defending the very system they should oppose." His voice took on an edge of genuine passion. "I bring the moral authority of someone who walked away from power because it had been corrupted. I bring the wisdom of someone who has seen both sides and chosen justice over comfort."

It was a beautiful speech, Nute thought. The kind that would play well on the HoloNet, that would make beings across the galaxy believe this was about more than corporate profits and tax disputes. Dooku believed it too, or at least the part of him that had once been a Jedi still believed it. But Nute had seen the hooded figure in the holocommunicator, had heard the voice that promised power in exchange for obedience. Whatever ideals Dooku carried, they were already compromised.

"The factory extends twelve levels below us," the Count continued, leading them onto another observation platform. "Each level can produce a full battalion per day once fully operational. The Geonosians can construct facilities like this on a hundred worlds—hidden, defended, impossible for the Republic to destroy without committing to total war."

"Which they won't," Rune observed. "The Senate can barely agree on taxation rates. They'll never authorize the military buildup necessary to fight a galactic war."

"Precisely. They'll negotiate, compromise, grant concessions. By the time they realize negotiation has failed, we'll be too strong to defeat." Dooku paused at a terminal, entering commands that brought up a holographic map of the galaxy. Red points marked worlds already considering secession, and there were more than Nute had expected. "The beauty of our movement is that we're not trying to conquer the Republic. We are simply leaving it. How can they justify war against worlds that simply want independence?"

Below them, a new batch of droids marched off the assembly line, their rust colored coating still wet, gleaming like fresh blood in the hive's light. They joined their brothers in perfect formation, adding their footfalls to the rhythm that filled the cathedral.

"One week, Viceroy," Dooku said, turning to face him fully. "The executive council meets, and we make history. The Republic thinks we're scattered, disorganized, driven only by greed. They're about to learn otherwise."

The demonstration ended where it began, in the main assembly hall where ten thousand droids stood in silent ranks, waiting for the activation codes that would send them to war. With a whisper of silk, the Count drew himself close to the Viceroy for some parting words.

"Remember this moment," Dooku said quietly, for Nute's ears alone. "This perfect army in this perfect place. Because perfection never survives contact with reality. You know more than your peers that these droids will malfunction, betray, fail in ways we cannot predict. This alliance will be challenged. The war that may come could push us to the brink."

"Then why begin it?" Nute asked.

"Because the alternative is slow death," Dooku replied, a strange glimmer in his eyes. "At least this way, we will take our stand, write our names into history. We will earn our place in victory, or in defeat."

The Count had moved on with the demonstration as if the words had never left his mouth. Nute watched as his hands rose upward in benediction, catching the scattered light, as if the former Jedi was blessing the army for the conflict to come.

The Viceroy had been left confused by the change in tone. He slowed to a stop, watching his fellow Neimoidians continue onward, chattering to each other excitedly. None of them knew that the next conflict would not be Naboo, it would be something far, far different.

It was only years later that the Viceroy realized what the Count had spoken of. When he finally understood the reasons for convictions, even when they were not true. Because without conviction, they would fail. Without spirit, he would never find the end he sought.

Of those gathered on that perfect day, when it all seemed so very simple, only four would be left alive in the present.

...

...

Nute limped through corridors carved from volcanic stone, his left leg dragging behind him with each step. Blood had soaked through his crimson robes, the fabric clinging to the wound that ran from knee to ankle. A few scattered emergency lights flickered overhead, casting brief pools of red illumination across debris-strewn passages.

A section of the facility's outer wall peeled away off to his side, the durasteel plating glowing cherry-red before tumbling into the lava flows below. Through the gap, he could see another wing of the complex tilting sideways. Its support struts snapped one by one until the entire structure crashed into the mountainside in a cascade of sparks and molten metal.

The air tasted of ash, copper, and burning things. Each breath brought grit that coated his throat and made him cough. Forward movement was all that mattered now—anything was preferable to waiting for death by lightsaber or lava.

At least it's an improvement over Union architecture, he thought, looking at a collapsed doorway where Techno Union symbols were half-melted into abstract shapes. This ruin has character.

He continued onward through the ruins, even as darkness threatened to turn sickly day into night. The corridor bent toward a viewing port. Through it, Mustafar's slopes seemed to swell. The mountain was alive under his feet, rumbling like a beast ready to break its chains.

Then the world outside vanished.

First came the sound—a deep groan rolling down the stone and slope. Then the flash—orange light flickering inside the ash cloud, making the walls glow faintly. Finally the ash itself—falling in sheets so thick it turned day to night. The viewport went black in an instant, as if someone had slammed a lid on the world around him.

A powering down noise sounded through the corridors, lowering in volume until silent. The last light inside flickered once, then failed. What remained was only a sickly glow from the lava grates below, just enough to sketch outlines of walls and debris. The corridors were almost blind now, and in the blindness, they filled with company.

Figures waited in the dark.

As Nute limped onward in near-total darkness, he saw the silhouette of a ghost waiting for him. His mentor stood by the junction ahead, the commanding frame of the old Neimoidian forming around the empty spaces. The medals on his chest caught the faint light as he turned toward Nute, his weathered face holding not disappointment but something approaching pride.

Nute paused.

He noticed that the details were absent, and that he was not afraid. There was something about the moment, as everything came falling down, that seemed to encourage the ghosts to come and watch. Was it the work of the force? Or his own mind failing to process his imminent demise? Nute did not know, nor did he care to truly ask. Instead, he nodded at the shadowy form of Rish Doo, the man who had given him so much.

His old mentor's lips moved silently, forming words Nute did not hear now, but had heard decades ago during their first meeting.

"The Federation needs Neimoidians who understand that power is responsibility, not privilege."

A smile crept across the Viceroy's lips. He had agreed back then because to agree was to climb the corporate ladder. Then he continued limping onward.

At the next intersection, the entire Directorate sifted past in smoky discussion, at least in Nute's peripheries. Director Toth gestured at datapads of ash while Director Yana'val made notes, her Twi'lek silhouette focused on commercial regulations that would never matter again. The wind carried the fragments of ideas that lost their meaning years ago, filling the dark like whispers in a tomb.

None of them paid Nute any attention, too absorbed in their eternal debate about the galaxy's commercial arteries. Still planning, still calculating, still believing in tomorrow's profit margins, it seemed.

When did it all go wrong? The question followed him as he dragged his useless leg forward. Was it on Eriadu, when he'd chosen power over principle? When he'd watched dioxis fill that boardroom while good beings died for his ambition?

The Directorate faded into the dark.

As Nute continued, the shapes of the past dominated the spaces he did not dare to look at directly. Through one shattered window to his right, Amidala stood in the full regalia of a Queen of Naboo. The young monarch watched him with those dark eyes that had seen through every justification, every careful rationalization. Her expression held neither condemnation nor forgiveness—only the steady judgment of history itself.

That wretched Senator was right, he thought. We were never giants. We were just merchants who forgot our place.

But was that when it all went wrong? Naboo had been a blunder, yes, but the Federation remained strong, even united.

He walked past the silhouettes of Nabooans shuffling amidst the motes, continuing onward even as he felt the Queen's judgemental eyes on his back.

Perhaps it had been later, then.

It was in that moment that Count Dooku materialized from the shadows ahead, his fine ash robes somehow pristine despite the filth. The fallen Jedi's aristocratic bearing remained intact, his weathered shadow carrying that same certainty Nute remembered from the hive-world.

"We built something beautiful," the shadow of the Commander-in-Chief said without moving his lips, his voice seeming to come from the walls themselves. "The cathedral of production, the symphony of synchronized violence. We gave the Outer Rim hope."

"Look at the cost," Nute replied aloud, his voice hoarse from smoke and ash.

The voice of the Count came from within.

"Look at what it accomplished. Every droid that still fights, every world that remembers it once said no to Coruscant. The seeds we planted will grow in soil we watered. But we will never see the fruit it bears."

Geonosis.

The Executive Council.

The moment when a trade dispute became a galactic war. When he'd committed not just the Federation but his entire species to a war they couldn't win.

The thought struck with him as he stumbled against fallen debris. He hadn't just been the Viceroy of the Trade Federation. By accepting that role, by challenging Kuat for leadership, by becoming the public face of Neimoidian ambition, he had shouldered the burden of an entire people.

Every choice he made reflected on them. Every victory elevated their status. Every defeat painted them with his failures. The Neimoidians had never asked to be led into this apocalypse, but follow him they had—loyal to the end, dying in ceremonial armor on volcanic roofs because their Viceroy had chosen war over submission.

The dead multiplied as he limped deeper into the facility's corpse. Faces from three decades of corporate warfare walked beside him in silent procession—negotiators, captains, consuls, clerks, guards, engineers.

Collateral turned into company.

The Corellian shipping magnate whose routes he'd redirected, bankrupting her family company. The Twi'lek spice merchant whose warehouses had burned during the Ryloth blockade. Neimoidians from Cato who'd died when he'd chosen his palace over evacuation protocols.

Others were strangers who had become casualties of mathematics—beings reduced to statistics in reports he'd signed without reading, collateral damage in corporate wars he'd waged from comfortable offices parsecs away.

But now he saw their shapes. They all walked with him toward whatever ending waited in the mountain's heart.

A distant crash echoed through the passages—the sound of combat, the scream of plasma weapons, the impossible symphony of titans clashing. Through a gap in the ruined wall, blue and green light danced in deadly patterns. A figure in black moved with liquid precision while Geonosians fell from the sky.

Grievous was keeping his promise. Buying time with his ruined frame, holding back the inevitable for precious minutes.

The younger Nute would have hidden in the darkest corner and prayed that death would pass him by. Would have calculated survival odds and chosen the path with the highest probability of living another day.

That Nute was buried beneath the rubble of his trade empire. This Nute had already prepared for death, already accepted the mathematics showing no path to survival. Everything from this moment forward was borrowed time, just as his best friend said to him.

And in that acceptance, he had found something unexpected. He had found a semblance of courage that could only bloom in absolute despair. The courage of the condemned, who had nothing left to lose.

He was being hunted by the Hero with No Fear, Anakin Skywalker himself—the living weapon that had shattered Confederate fleets. Any rational being would flee from such a predator.

But Nute Gunray was no longer entirely rational. He was a ghost wearing the flesh of a failed corporate executive, a remnant given purpose by the simple habit of continuing forward, even in defeat.

After all, hadn't he done that before?

He shuffled onwards, collecting the ghosts of the pasts like ash building up after an eruption. The pressure built, threatening to take him, as he shouldered the feelings and fates of those he never bothered to know.

On and on he went, faintly aware that the distant fighting had ended, and that if Vader lived–he would be next. This did not stop him, instead, he added it to the weight he was already carrying, and moved forward one lurching limp at a time.

And then, suddenly, the pressure on his shoulders became real rather than spectral. Weight settled against him—not ghostly but solid, warm with shared exhaustion and mutual recognition of their approaching end.

An arm fell around him.

Nute turned to see Rune Haako's face in the dim light.

His oldest friend, his closest confidant, the one being who had stood by him through four decades of choices both brilliant and catastrophic. Rune's ceremonial hat was gone, lost somewhere in the facility's collapse. His usually immaculate robes were torn and stained. His right arm hung useless, clearly broken in some way.

But his smile was the same one Nute remembered from their first meeting in the Federation's junior executive program, when they had been young and ambitious and full of dreams about reshaping the galaxy's commercial architecture.

"Well," Rune said, his voice hoarse but steady, "this is quite the mess you've gotten us into, old friend."

He could only meet Rune's smile with one of his own, one born of relief.

"I've gotten us into?" Nute croaked, accepting the support his friend offered. "As I recall, you were the one who suggested we 'think bigger' after Naboo."

Rune smirked into the dark. "Details. History will remember it as your idea anyway. The victors write the histories, and we are decidedly not the victors."

They moved together toward the elevator, two broken old men supporting each other in the ruins of their shared ambitions. The ghosts of their choices walked behind them in silent procession—all the beings they had lifted up, all the beings they had torn down, all the unnamed casualties of a corporate war that had grown beyond their original conception.

At the elevator entrance, a single MagnaGuard waited in patient stillness, its scarred frame a palimpsest depicting battles fought in the facility's depths. As they approached, it straightened—not in mechanical precision but rather the respectful acknowledgment of a warrior recognizing fellow survivors.

The elevator doors stood open, halfheartedly concealing a shaft that descended into absolute darkness. Somewhere far below, in the mountain's molten heart, the final gambit waited. Whatever Grievous had planned lay in depths where even Mustafar's native fury might serve their cause.

Nute looked back once at the facility around them, at the ruined facility where so many had died buying him these final moments. Through the gaps in the walls, he could see that there was hardly anything left of it anymore.

Then he stepped into the elevator with his oldest friend at his side, the two of them carrying the weight of an entire people's hopes, bearing the burden of choices that had shaped the destiny of stars.

The doors closed with finality, and the wounded Viceroy of the Trade Federation began his final descent into whatever judgment awaited below.

The two Neimoidians immediately collapsed against opposite walls, each a mirror of the other's ruin. Nute's leg was broken, bent at an angle that made geometry weep. Rune's shoulder hung wrong, dislocated in their desperate fight for survival. Between them stood the MagnaGuard, patient as death, cradling a satchel of explosives like a midwife holding the future.

Through the transparisteel wall, they watched the lower facility floors die slowly. A pipe burst, vomiting superheated steam. Drops of magma punched through metal plating, each one a tiny sun sputtering out on impact.

The elevator groaned downward, its frame shuddering as if the mountain itself protested their intrusion.

"Look at us," Rune wheezed, his hand finding blood from a gash above his eye. "The lords of commerce. The architects of war."

"The fools," Nute completed, and they both laughed—wet, painful sounds that tasted of copper and defeat.

The elevator shuddered again, dropping several meters before catching itself. The emergency lighting flickered, painting them in shades of shadow.

"Do you remember when we thought the biggest risk was a Senate audit?" Rune asked, pressing his good hand against his ribs.

"Now we're being audited by a Sith Lord," Nute replied. "And I suspect his accounting methods are less… forgiving."

Another laugh, darker this time. The gallows humor of men who'd already calculated their final balance and found it wanting.

The elevator creaked, slipping past stone that had never known sunlight. Through the transparisteel they saw glimpses of the industrial nightmare they were entering—massive support beams glowing with heat, foundations that had melted into abstract art, warning signs in languages nobody would ever read again.

"Are you scared?" Rune asked suddenly, his voice almost lost in the mechanical groaning.

Nute considered lying. Considered the depthless bravado that had carried him through forty years of corporate warfare.

Then he looked at his oldest friend—his co-conspirator in every crime, his witness to every triumph and failure—and told the honest truth.

"Terrified," he said simply. "You?"

Rune gave him a tired but warm smile.
"The same." He shifted, wincing. "Though I think all this terror has inspired new feelings I don't have the words for."

The elevator lurched again as it passed an invisible threshold, and through the transparisteel, the pluton's heart revealed itself.

Hell had architecture.

The mountain's interior opened into a vast chamber that stretched far beyond sight, a cathedral built not by hands but by pressure and fire. The factory had been carved directly into the stone, and now both were breaking apart together—steel beams warped into molten ribbons, gantries sagging like skeletons picked clean by heat, entire assembly lines collapsed into the glowing rivers below.

Lava ran down the walls in slow rivers, each stream carving new channels through stone that glowed like coals. Veins of light pulsed through the blackness, alive as arteries, feeding the volcano's fury. The roof bulged in places, red-hot blisters that swelled and burst without warning, vomiting molten rock onto the factory floor. Where it struck durasteel, the metal boiled, curling back on itself until it became something unrecognizable.

The heat distortion made everything shimmer, as if they were descending through a fever dream. Shadows bent the wrong way. Lines wavered. Nothing seemed steady.

But it was the darkness that truly horrified. Despite the lava, despite the glowing metal, shadows pooled thick as oil in the vast spaces between collapsed structures. The factory floor was invisible, lost in a roiling sea of soot and smoke that rose and fell like a living tide. Shapes shifted down there—suggestions of movement rather than anything definite, silhouettes half-glimpsed and gone, like watching nightmares from the corner of your eye.

"If this isn't hell," Rune murmured, "then I lack the imagination for what would be worse."

The mountain rumbled—not an earthquake but a voice, ancient and angry, warning them that they were trespassing in places never meant for the living.

They staggered upright anyway, two old merchants preparing for one last negotiation with death.

The elevator touched down with surprising gentleness, as if the mountain had decided to save its violence for later.

Then the doors opened.

And an army of the damned stood waiting.

Thousands upon thousands of battle droids filled the darkness ahead—B1s standing in perfect rows, their factory coating invisible beneath layers of soot and volcanic ash that had transformed them into shadows. Among them, the hulking shapes of damaged B2 super battle droids loomed like broken monuments, their heavier frames still managing to stand despite missing limbs, cracked torsos, exposed circuitry sparking fitfully in the gloom.

Some B1s clutched E-5 blaster rifles against their chests like soldiers in eternal vigil. Others stood empty-handed, their weapons lost to time or never issued at all.

The silence was absolute save for a sound that made Nute's skin crawl—the endless, unconscious shuffle of metal feet on stone, thousands of droids swaying almost imperceptibly in place, creating a susurrus like mechanical breathing that rose and fell in waves across the darkened factory floor.

Every photoreceptor turned toward them in perfect unison.

Watched.

Waited.

"Welcome to Mustafar," Rune whispered into the vast chamber.

The MagnaGuard disappeared into the darkness without preamble, presumably to plant its charges, to ensure this tomb would seal properly when the time came.

They had no time to waste.

Vader was coming.

Supporting each other—Nute leaning heavily on Rune's good shoulder, Rune using Nute as a crutch for his failing legs—they shuffled forward into the ranks of the dead. The droids parted before them with eerie precision, creating a narrow corridor barely wide enough for two broken old men to pass. Metal bodies pressed in from all sides, so close that Nute could have touched them. The photoreceptors tracked their movement, heads turning in perfect synchronization, but no droid spoke. They just watched with the patience of things that had never been fully born, waiting for orders that would never come.

Nute's hand found Rune's arm and gripped it with desperate strength. In this darkness, in this sea of silent machines, losing contact meant losing each other forever. Rune's fingers dug into his shoulder in return, both of them clinging to each other like drowning men sharing driftwood.

Three rows deep, and they could see nothing beyond the immediate circle of droids around them. The darkness was absolute, pressing in from all sides with physical weight.

They might have been walking through an infinite plain of silent soldiers, or they might have been three meters from a wall.

There was no way to know.

The factory floor seemed to stretch forever in all directions, each step taking them deeper into a mechanical underworld that had no beginning and no end.

A B2's damaged vocabulator sparked to life for a single second, emitting a static screech that sounded almost like a scream before dying again.

Neither Neimoidian dared look at it.

Time lost meaning in the darkness. Each step was agony, their broken bodies protesting every movement, but stopping meant being swallowed by the endless ranks that surrounded them. They shuffled forward, two figures lost in an ocean of soot-covered metal, their only anchor to reality the pressure of each other's grip.

"How long?" Rune wheezed. "How long have we been walking?"

Nute didn't answer.

Couldn't answer.

Minutes?

Hours?

In this place beyond light, beyond hope, duration had become meaningless. They walked through this mechanical Asphodel, two old sinners making their way through purgatory, searching for an exit that might not exist.

The droids seemed to multiply around them. For every rank they passed, ten more appeared ahead. The mechanical breathing grew louder, as if the army itself was becoming aware of their presence, acknowledging these organic intruders in their silicon afterlife. Sometimes Nute glimpsed stranger things in the darkness—droids fused together by heat, creating chimeric shapes that shouldn't exist. A B1 torso welded to B2 legs. Three heads sharing a single body. The volcanic forces had created sculptures of mechanical suffering that belonged in no army, served no purpose except to stand and wait in the darkness.

Then—light.

Faint, flickering, but unmistakably real.

It materialized from nothing, as if the darkness itself had chosen to birth this single point of illumination. They stumbled toward it, still gripping each other, through ranks that seemed to go on forever, until suddenly the droids parted to reveal a command post that hadn't been there a moment before—or had been invisible until they were close enough to see.

A single OOM unit stood at attention, its yellow command markings barely visible through layers of soot. How long had it been standing there? How long had they been walking to reach it?

"B1–are you the droid who activated them?" Nute gasped. "Did Grievous—"

"Clarification:" the droid said, and its voice was wrong—too sophisticated, too aware. "This unit's designation is OOM-47, though previous iterations included more... aggressive nomenclature."

Rune's eyes widened even through his exhaustion. "Rute found you. He said some of our engineers tried to integrate your matrix with OOM protocols."

"Confirmation: Your cousin possessed surprising competence… for a meatbag. The integration was partially successful. I retain higher functions while bound to Confederate command structures." The droid's head tilted with unsettling fluidity. "Observation: The meatbag Rute Gunnay activated this army before his termination via geological compression. His final words were, quote, 'At least I did something right.' Unquote."

Nute felt something twist in his chest. His cousin, who he'd dismissed as a fool, who'd wanted to deploy biological weapons, who'd thrown tantrums about being ignored—he'd died making sure they had this last, desperate chance.

The OOM unit's head snapped up suddenly, looking past them into the darkness they'd emerged from.

Then it happened.

Every droid in sight—thousands of them—turned in perfect unison. Not toward Nute and Rune, but away, facing back the direction they'd come. The mechanical breathing stopped. The silence was absolute, pregnant with terrible anticipation. In the darkness, they could hear it—rank after rank of droids turning, the chain reaction spreading outward like ripples on black water, until the entire army faced a single point somewhere in the depths they'd escaped.

Nute and Rune went rigid.

They knew what this meant.

The OOM unit's photoreceptors flickered. "Observation: My preservation subroutines suggest immediate evacuation." It raised one mechanical arm, pointing into the darkness opposite from where the army now faced. A faint glow, barely visible—a wound of light in the absolute dark. "Analysis: Exit identified in that direction. Estimated distance: unknown. Survival probability if departure is delayed: approaching zero."

Nute opened his mouth to speak, but another did first.

"VICEROY GUNRAY!"

The voice exploded through the factory like thunder, bouncing off metal and stone until it seemed to emerge from the darkness itself. Not shouting—almost singing, playful, the voice of someone who had discovered that hunting could be joy.

OOM-47 gave a considerate look toward the direction of the voice, and then began to move for the exit, its sophisticated protocols apparently including a sense of self-preservation. "Statement: This unit will coordinate tactical resistance from a safe distance. Suggestion: you meatbags should run."

And it vanished into the darkness, moving with inhuman speed toward the exit.

For a single heartbeat, nothing moved.

The army stood frozen, weapons raised, facing the invisible threat.

The factory held its breath.

And then the world erupted in red light.

Thousands of E-5 blasters fired simultaneously, the tibanna gas igniting in perfect synchronization. The darkness transformed into a hellscape of crimson laser fire, all of it converging on a single point they couldn't see. The sound was beyond deafening—not just the shriek of blaster fire but the mechanical precision of an entire army engaging a single target. The nearest ranks fired first, then the ones behind them, creating waves of red light that rolled through the factory like tide.

They ran.

Or tried to run, broken bodies managing barely more than a desperate shuffle toward that distant point of light OOM-47 had indicated.

The red light revealed the true scope of their surroundings—countless droids stretching in every direction, rank upon rank disappearing into a pluton that seemed infinite, were it not for the glowing veins of the volcano that were visible in the distance.

B1s fired unendingly while damaged B2s launched their heavier ordinance, wrist rockets streaming through the air leaving contrails of smoke. The mechanical discipline was beautiful and terrible—an army that felt no fear, firing with precision at something that shouldn't exist.

Another volley.

Another wave of red.

In the strobing light, they caught glimpses of their destination—an exit carved into the far wall, impossibly distant.

They pressed on, Nute practically dragging Rune now, both men using reserves of strength they didn't know existed. Around them, the battle raged. Through the endless volleys of blaster fire, they heard him—Vader, laughing. The sound cut through the combat like a blade, transforming their mechanical army's assault into nothing more than entertainment.

Rune stumbled, nearly fell. Nute caught him, both men using their last strength to keep moving.

They dared a look back.

Behind them, something impossible was happening.

The droids were rising.

Not walking—lifting. First a few, then dozens, then hundreds. Blaster fire continued even as the B1s floated upward, their targeting protocols trying to compensate for their new positions. Pieces of destroyed droids—arms still clutching rifles, heads without bodies, torsos without legs—all of it beginning to rotate, slowly at first, then faster, creating vast spiral arms of metal and death.

"Do you see it, Viceroy?" Vader's voice carried over the chaos, closer now though still hidden in darkness. "Your army becoming my instrument. Every droid you built, every credit you spent, all of it just making me stronger."

The mechanical galaxy grew larger, its arms stretching across the entire chamber. Pieces collided in mid-air—the shriek of metal on metal creating a symphony of destruction that hurt to hear. Red blaster fire still erupted from the floating droids, creating a spiral of laser light that painted impossible patterns in the darkness.

The mountain chose that moment to speak—a grinding roar from above. The first boulder of igneous rock punched through the ceiling like a fist, slamming into the factory floor with enough force to shatter a hundred droids still on the ground. The impact sent shockwaves through the floor that nearly knocked them down.

Another boulder.

Closer.

The heat from it washed over them, blistering exposed skin.

The exit was twenty meters away.

Fifteen.

Ten.

A figure stood beside it—OOM-47, having decided that securing their successful escape fell within its parameters. "Observation: Geological instability increasing. Suggestion: Increase velocity."

Five meters.

The mountain screamed—not a roar but a scream, as if the pressure had finally found its voice. Cracks spider-webbed across the ceiling, glowing red like veins of fire.

The MagnaGuard's charges detonated.

The explosion transformed darkness into day, revealing everything—the thousands and thousands of droids, the lava beginning to pour through growing fissures, and there, at the center of a swirling galaxy of twisted metal, Vader himself. Arms raised like a conductor, still laughing as the mountain began its death throes around him.

OOM-47 had already vanished through the exit. They threw themselves after it as the roof began its final collapse.

Rock slammed down behind them, sealing the entrance with the finality of a tomb. The sound was beyond enormous—it was the mountain swallowing its secrets, ensuring that what had been built in darkness would remain there forever.

The two Neimoidians were pushed forward by the collapsing mountain, and rolled uncontrollably forward, sending cascades of pain through Nute's body.

And then, mercifully, they were released from the depths of hell, and released onto the surface of it.

For a long moment, Nute could only lay perfectly still, his face pressed into black volcanic sand. The grit filled his mouth, tasting of endings, of finality. His body refused to move, every muscle trembling from exertion, every nerve screaming in protest. Beside him, Rune's labored breathing created small clouds of ash that drifted away on the poisoned wind.

They lay there, on the surface of the planet, gasping Mustafar's poisoned air, unable to even believe they'd survived.

Minutes passed.

Maybe longer.

Time had lost meaning in the darkness below, and here on the surface, under a sky choked with volcanic ash, it seemed equally irrelevant. Eventually, groaning like the old men they were, they helped each other to their feet.

The entrance they'd escaped from was above them—a wound in the mountainside now sealed with fallen stone. They had to descend, picking their way carefully down a slope of sharp volcanic rock and cooling lava flows. Each step sent agony through Nute's damaged leg, but Rune kept him upright, just as he supported his friend's failing strength in return.

As they descended toward the shore, the scope of destruction became clear. The river that had once flowed past the facility was choked with debris—half-melted sections of wall, twisted metal supports, entire rooms that had been vomited downstream when the complex began its death throes. The wreckage formed a grotesque dam, forcing the lava to find new channels, creating a hellish landscape of molten rock and industrial ruins.

"Movement," Rune croaked, pointing a shaky finger forward.

Figures on the shore.

Nute's heart leaped—reinforcements? Perhaps other council members had escaped? They quickened their pace as much as their broken bodies allowed, hope flickering despite everything.

Two B1 battle droids stood at attention, or tried to—one was missing its left arm, the other's head sat at an unnatural angle.

Between them was a familiar form.

Councilor Tikkes, the Quarren's tentacles hanging limp with exhaustion. He was cradling another figure—Cat Miin, unconscious or worse, her pale form completely still in his arms.

Tikkes looked up as they approached, and his eyes were haunted, vacant.

He'd seen too much, endured too much. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, returning his attention to Miin. Whatever had happened to them in the facility's collapse had left wounds that went deeper than flesh.

A few meters away, another figure knelt in the ash.

This one wore robes—bent and soiled but unmistakably Jedi. The man's back was to them as he bent low over something, his hand moving in gentle, soothing motions. A familiar chirping rose from whatever he was tending to—an astromech droid, its blue and white panels barely visible through layers of soot, beeping in what sounded like distress or pain.

"Reinforcements?" Rune whispered hopefully, taking notice of how the being had not attacked their allies.

They moved toward the robed figure, desperate for any ally in this nightmare. But as they drew closer, something in Nute's chest went cold. The way the man held himself, even bent and exhausted. The sandy hair visible beneath the hood. The careful precision of his movements despite obvious fatigue.

The figure stood slowly, as if bearing great weight, and turned to face them.

Those blue eyes—the ones that had haunted Nute's nightmares since Naboo, that had looked at him with such disappointment during his arrest, that had represented everything noble and infuriating about the Jedi Order—looked back at him from a face marked by soot and sorrow.

Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The universe's final joke.

"Of course," Nute laughed—a broken sound that might have been sobbing. "Of course it's him."

The two enemies stood looking at each other across a beach littered with the wreckage of corporate empires. Nute raised his hands in mock surrender, too exhausted for real fear. "Make it quick, at least. After everything, I think I've earned that much."

Kenobi's gaze patiently took the two of them in, and for a moment something flickered there—the ghost of his old humor, the negotiator who had once found wit even in war's darkest moments.

"Viceroy," he said, voice rougher than Nute remembered, hollow despite the attempt at levity, "You look well. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask you to step aside. I'm not here for expired trade disputes."

The words were light, almost the old Kenobi, but his eyes had already returned to the mountain. There was something terrible in his focus, something that spoke of loss beyond calculation. The astromech beside him—R2-D2, though the Neimoidians didn't recognize the droid—gave a low, mournful whistle.

Nute began to shuffle away, Rune supporting him, moving toward where Tikkes still cradled the unconscious Cat Miin. They'd barely taken ten steps when the mountain began to scream.

And then it did not explode—it erupted.

The sealed entrance blasted outward with the force of a volcano being born. Lava fountained into the sky, painting the ash-choked air orange and red. Molten rock rained down, hissing as it struck the beach. But through the fountain of fire and stone something impossible flew—a sphere of metal, thousands of droid parts fused together by heat and the Force into a protective shell.

The sphere burst apart as it cleared the lava flow, sending white-hot metal in every direction. And at its center, descending to the beach with the casual grace of a dark god, was Vader.

His robes were singed, his face marked by ash, but his golden eyes burned brighter than the lava itself. He hit the ground in a crouch that sent cracks spreading through the volcanic rock beneath him, then rose slowly, almost lazily, like a predator who knew his prey had nowhere left to run.

"Well, that was invigorating! As I was saying, Viceroy—"

The words died on his lips.

Obi-Wan had started walking toward him, each step measured, deliberate.

His hand reached for his lightsaber—not in haste but with the terrible certainty of someone approaching an inevitable moment.

The sorrow in his eyes was absolute, but beneath it burned something else—determination as unshakeable as bedrock.

"Anakin," Kenobi said, and the name was said in greeting and mourning in equal measure.

Vader's entire body went rigid.

The playful malice, the casual cruelty, all of it evaporated in an instant.

What replaced it was something far more dangerous—pure, focused hatred that made the lava around them seem cold by comparison.

Master and apprentice stood facing each other across a beach of volcanic rubble and industrial wreckage, the river of fire behind them casting everything in red and shadow.

The air between them was heavy with everything that had been and everything that could never be again.

No more hunting.

No more running.

No more games.

Just the inevitable collision of two stars that had once orbited each other, now set on trajectories that could only end in mutual destruction.

The final duel was about to begin.

And on the shores of hell, two old Neimoidians, a broken Quarren, an unconscious Gossam, and three damaged droids could only watch as the galaxy's fate was decided by two brothers.

Two brothers that had changed the fate of the galaxy in life, and would change it in death.

Chapter Text

Grievous Clique - The Warlord

The Situation:

From the moment Grievous was named Supreme Commander, he ruled through results, not relationships. He made no friends, forged no lasting alliances. His victories bought him fear, his failures contempt. Dooku shielded him, the rest tolerated him. At Coruscant, he held the largest fleet the Confederacy would ever muster—its loyalty given not to him, but to the desperate hope that the Republic might finally be humbled.

The battle ended in failure.

Now the grand armada lies scattered, fighting tooth and nail to survive. Grievous himself obeyed Sidious's final command and vanished into the Western Reaches, a lawless quarter where pirate fleets and petty kingdoms thrive in the shadows of great powers. Here he must claw together his strength, for on paper he remains the leader of the droid armies, yet on Raxus Secundus his replacement is already being debated.

The General knows his priorities. First, survive the onslaught. Second, tame the Reaches—fast. He cannot waste years bickering with warlords and backwater kings. He must solve what problems he can, delegate to what allies he dares, and then drive eastward. The path leads through Kashyyyk, the crossroads between anarchy and the last glimmer of strength for the Confederacy.

Sullust and Sluis Vann must hold. And Eriadu, pernicious Eriadu, she must be humbled. 

Unlike the splintering councils of Raxus, none question who commands in the Western Reaches. None dare to. The scattered talents of the region—naval captains, generals, and insurgents alike—find in Grievous a source of order, however brutal. The Reaches are far more united under one warrior than the Tionese corridor could ever hope to be. Yet unity is their only advantage. The front lines are fractured, the foundries battered, the supply lines thin. The Reaches produce few droids and fewer vehicles; no Perlemian-style foundry worlds churn beneath Grievous' hand. He commands not legions of durasteel, but a coalition of half-starved survivors. His army is a herd of nerfs led by a krayt.

At the head of his navy stands Admiral Lushros Dofine, the "Indomitable." A Neimoidian of a long line of Lucrehulk captains, he commands with tradition and dignity. Many doubted he could rally a fleet in tatters, yet he has gathered both the shattered remnants of Coruscant and the old Trade Defense Force that barely survived the Republic's assault on the purse worlds. Now two distinct fleets sail under his banner—one forged in war, one a relic of peace. Captains Vooro and Hatha feud, Captain Ultho grits his teeth at the stubborn Beovv Nemm, but all are united by necessity. Survival is their common cause, and for now, Malevolence's shadow binds them.

The ground war is no less colorful. Among the most steadfast allies are the Nosaurians of New Plympto, who fight under General Rootrock. Rootrock is the consummate rebel, scornful of corporate politics, guided only by practicality. The Republic abandoned his people; his people now abandon the Republic. At his side serves a suspiciously human officer—one whose true identity as a Jedi turncloak is a secret best left unspoken.

Alongside Rootrock stands General Drogen Hosh of Druckenwell, an aging human who once served the Trade Federation. Hosh belongs to an older generation of officers, when treaties were honored and wars had rules. He may have lost battles for his scruples, but he has won respect from friend and foe alike. He and Rootrock fight a kind of war foreign to Grievous—one with rules, causes, and lines that matter. They serve him now, perhaps in the hope they might one day temper the Kaleesh general's savagery.

General Dalesham of Dac brings a different gift: fortresses. A Quarren veteran of Free Dac, he knows how to turn a warship into a bastion, a world into a bulwark. In the Sluis sector, he began building such redoubts before Grievous swept through; now, he finishes his work as part of the coalition.

Nor are the Reaches solely a story of discipline. They are also the haunt of rogues, pirates, and outcasts. General Atticus Farstar exemplifies this—an idealist commanding scoundrels. His "army" is a patchwork of battered B1s, malfunctioning T-series droids, mercenary captains, and self-styled warlords. With bases on dozens of worlds, he coordinates chaos more than strategy. Yet he fights on, determined to rally the fringes to something greater.

Sullust provides another case altogether. Under siege for months, supplied only through sacrifice, Sorosuub itself now weighs the profit of surrender. Their staunchest voice, Admiral Dua Ningo, perished long ago. Into that void stepped Lok Durd, once a corpulent tinkerer, now transformed by years in Republic prisons. He emerged lean, bitter, and relentless. On Sullust, he fights not for victory but for spite, determined to drown as many Imperials as possible before the end. His men call him the Wraith, and in his eyes every battle is a reprisal.

Other figures drift in Grievous' orbit: Belo Tusus, disgraced puppet of Orto, begging for reinstatement; mercenary captains offering their services to whichever side pays; and nameless privateers who dream of plunder under Confederate colors. It is a host of the desperate, the destitute, and the damned.

Altogether, it is a coalition of scavengers led by a predator. The Western Reaches rally under a single banner because they must, because no one else can force order upon them. Grievous is their lion, their krykna, their terentatek—feared more than loved, but obeyed all the same. Whether he can forge this herd of survivors into an army, whether he can carve a corridor east before the trap closes, remains uncertain. For now, the Reaches hold together not because they are strong, but because the General is stronger than anyone who might break them apart.

• [ATTACH=full]132982[/ATTACH] Navy under Admiral Lushros Dofine [The Indomitable]
  • OOM-14 - Command B1 serving Dofine
    • Tri-0 - Ace Tri Droid
  • Trade Defense Force Remnants (Nominally under Trade Federation Viceroy Nute Gunray)
    • [ATTACH=full]132985[/ATTACH] Blox Hatha (Lucrehulk)
    • [ATTACH=full]132988[/ATTACH] Marath Vooro (Lucrehulk) Image credit to Mr.Alexios
    • Captain Orrin
    • Captain Sib Canay
  • CIS Navy
    • [ATTACH=full]132994[/ATTACH] Captain Ultho - Atravis Flotilla [Stoic Captain]
      • Officer Beshgrun
    • [ATTACH=full]132997[/ATTACH] Captain Nemm [Bullheaded Bulwark]
    • TV-94C [Doomed]
    • Nas Ghent - Ace Pilot (Z95)
    • Commander Krett - Neimoidian Lucrehulk Captain
  • Sluis Van Planetary Fleet
    • Corlissi Ludar
• CIS Army under General Grievous
  • General Drogen Hosh
  • General Dalesham
  • [ATTACH=full]133003[/ATTACH]General Rootrock [Refugee Rebellion]
    • General Dass Jennir
    • Commander Limbfree
    • Scout Bomo Greekbark
  • Orto Remnants
    • Belo Tusus [Desparate Supplicant]
• Independent Forces
  • Sullust Planetary Army
    • [ATTACH=full]133000[/ATTACH]Beolars Bribbs [The CEO]
    • General Lok Durd [Wraith]
  • [ATTACH=full]132991[/ATTACH]The Rogue's Gallery - General Atticus Farstar
    • Sergeant Bislav Merril
    • Lima Starcourt
    • Reebo Keen
    • Phootla Veer

Thats the last time I try to get a screenshot of everyone lol...

Raxus Clique /  Unsteady Quadriga

The Situation: 

While much ink has been spilled over the death of Count Dooku, far fewer have considered what the fall of Admiral Trench meant for the Confederacy. Dooku's death robbed the movement of its political and spiritual leader, but the Harch's passing hollowed out its military core. The Confederacy had never been rich in great personalities - it relied on a few giants whose experience demanded respect. When they fell, the ranks shuddered, and the vacuum they left could not be ignored.

In the war's final weeks, when Trench was killed by the "Hero with No Fear" at Anaxes, no one could fill his many shoes. He had been a singular blend of corporate ties, military acumen, and sheer force of will. His absence left the defensive lines leaderless at the very moment when the Republic was pressing hardest. Into that void stepped not a senator or a celebrated general, but two rival machines.

The first was the self-styled Admiral Kraken. The Super Tactical Droid claimed to have been named Trench's successor on the Harch's deathbed. Most regard this as a fabrication, yet the fact remained—if not Kraken, then who? Kraken inherited the fleets, and Kraken kept the defenses intact. He coordinated guard rotations on Raxus Secundus, dictated fleet movements at Felucia and Quermia, and negotiated with criminals and pirates to keep the wheel of war turning. Never before had a droid held such sweeping authority. To the Parliament, and to many flesh-and-blood officers, that authority was unsettling. To Kraken's fellow droid, it was intolerable.

That rival was T-Series General JF-86. At first glance, JF-86 was nothing remarkable—another of the countless tactical droids produced during the war. But unlike so many others, JF-86 had survived years under Trench's personal command without a single memory wipe. He absorbed every lesson the Harch offered, becoming stubborn, idiosyncratic, and unshakably proud of his experience. Kraken wasted no time exiling him for "insubordination", banishing him to a hopeless holding action at Anaxes. Yet the T-Series endures there still, his directive unbroken: bar the gate to the Eastern Rim, and someday return to confront the pretender who claimed Trench's mantle.

If it had remained a duel of droids, the matter might have resolved itself in calculated silence. But Raxus, still the Confederacy's beating heart, attracted other leaders. Officers, senators, and survivors of shattered campaigns began to gather, each bringing their own remnants, each staking a claim to the inheritance of a dying cause. Out of this crucible of rivalries, three additional figures emerged, and the Parliament gave the three sapients a name: the Troika.

The first was General Kleeve. An optimist from Devaron, he had been driven from Kaller by the Empire's relentless advance, dragging what was left of his command to Raxus. Kleeve embodied the idealist's strain of Separatism. He had no corporate ties, no patrons, no golden ladder to climb—only his own skill at command, honed through strategy and discipline. Among the younger senators, disillusioned with Kraken's "droid administration," he became the beacon of moral leadership. They saw in him a future where the Confederacy could claim legitimacy not through terror or profit, but through justice. Yet Kleeve's forces were weak—mercenaries who demanded coin, Devaronian guards loyal but few, remnants that could not form a base of power. Without Dooku's coffers, even his ideals had a price he could not always pay.

The second was General Horn Ambigene, the rogue. A scarred veteran of the Perlemian campaigns, Ambigene cared little for ideals or propriety. He lived only to see the Republic broken and its soldiers slain. He despised droids—none more than Grievous himself—yet his forces bristled with them, for no Separatist army could function without their ranks. To the droids under his command, service was misery. To the sapients he recruited, service was survival. On Jabiim, he forged a concord with the Nimbus commandos, among the most feared of the Confederacy's elite. From there, he held the Perlemian against impossible odds, dozens of worlds resisting the tide that now bore the Imperial crest. Whether he would one day march west to stake his claim was uncertain, but if he did, Ambigene carried a dangerous legitimacy: he had fought the Republic longer than almost any other commander.

The third was the most cautious—and, to many, the most dangerous. General Flebek of Mefti had long been a middling officer, willing to take the jobs others would not, enriching herself quietly through corporate contracts. She became the Techno Union's fixer, the Corporate Alliance's instrument, the officer who would invade when the numbers promised profit. In the war's last year, this caution became a virtue. Flebek amassed funds, influence, and quiet allies among the corporate bloc. Now, on Felucia, she works under Kraken, grumbling at his orders while hoarding her resources. She is not bold, nor reckless, nor inspiring—but she is the corporations' chosen candidate, a dark horse with money behind her and patience enough to wait. For those who despise Kraken's cold logic, Kleeve's idealism, or Ambigene's brutality, Flebek is the safe alternative.

Together, these four form a fragile edifice. The Parliament calls the four combined the Quadriga, the term for a podracer with four aligned engines - popularized by an old racer by the name of Ben Quadinaros. It is known across the rim that if one were to be misaligned, the podracer is left liable to lose the podrace in... calamitous fashion.

In truth, these remnants share nothing but rivalry with one another. Kraken holds the fleets, Kleeve holds the dream, Ambigene holds the Perlemian, and Flebek holds the purse. None can dominate without the others, yet none are willing to submit. For now, Kraken commands by virtue of presence, by the simple fact that when the greats fell, he was there. But every cycle, his lead erodes, chipped away by the moralists, the veterans, and the corporations. The Confederacy's armies hold the line, but their leaders are already drawing up plans for a war with one another.

THE QUADRIGA

• Admiral Kraken (The Successor)
  • Captain Aviso [Quiet and Competent]
  • General Flebek (The Corporate Choice)
    • Gossam Commandos
  • Vulpus - Ace Ginivex fighter pilot (Hates Grievous)
• General Kleeve (The Moral Voice)
  • General Kazameer [Haunted Hassarian]
  • "Understand, as a Separatist, I fought for freedom...but put my trust in a corrupt leadership."
• General Horn Ambigene (The Rogue)
  • Captain Mazzi - Nimbus Commandos
  • Sergeant Anto Kreegyr
  • Captain Jorm - Auxillary
• T-Series JF-86 (The Exile)

Kalani's Clique - Serenno Line

The Situation: 

When the Northern Dependencies collapsed, when the Republic's offensives smashed through line after line, the scattered remnants could have disintegrated. Instead, they bent toward one figure: General Kalani. An ST-series tactical droid freshly returned from near-disaster at Agamar, Kalani proved what his model was built for—cold calculation, perfect efficiency, unyielding command.

There is no debate here, no Quadriga. These forces are united not by affection, but by necessity. They know that without cohesion, they will be destroyed. And so Kalani's word is law.

• General Kalani [Droid Command] - The ST droid who commands with precision, never with rhetoric. To his allies he is a wall against Imperial advance, to his enemies an inevitability.
  • Senator Tyreca Bremack - The Faithful Administrator -
    • A rare senator who has not only accepted droid command, but championed it. For her, Kalani is proof that machines can safeguard her people better than men.
  • Commander Horgo Shive [Desparate Muun] -
    • Once an officer in the InterGalactic Banking Clan's private guard, now a hollow-eyed Muun who has escaped death too many times to believe in luck.
  • Captain Riklon Tost [Renegade Fighter] -
    • An Iotran commander bred for discipline. His loyalty is not to ideology, but to the chain of command—Kalani's chain.
  • Teaok - Dathomir fighter wing [Ace pilot]
    • A starfighter prodigy, feral in manner, unpredictable in loyalty, but lethal in the sky. To Kalani, he is a variable; to his foes, a nightmare.
  • TA-1313 - Serenno T-Series
    • A tactical droid that still quotes the late Count Dooku's orders, operating as if the Count might yet return. His precision unnerves even other machines.
  • Shaala Doneeta - Dooku's Final Commands
    • A Twi'lek with ties to Dooku's personal retinue, she and TA-1313 act as twin phantoms of a dead master. Enigmatic, cryptic, but undeniably effective in keeping Serenno loyal.

Kashyyyk Remnant - At All Costs

The Situation:

If the Serenno Line is discipline and the Quadriga is division, Kashyyyk is desperation forged into defiance. The world has been under blockade since the Republic's collapse into Empire. The siege should have broken them. Instead, it bound droid and Wookiee into an unlikely coalition, forged in mud and blood.

Power here is split between Toora in space, and Linwodo on the ground. They wish each other luck when they have the chance. 

Neither inspires affection, but both inspire survival. Between Toora's flighty raids and Linwodo's guerrilla campaigns, the Empire has failed to stamp out the defiance of Kashyyyk.

• ST General Linwodo – The Resourceful Guerrilla
  
  • A tactical droid who rewrote his directives for jungle war. His units emerge from mud, from brush, from shadows of great wroshyr trees, then vanish again. The GAR calls him a phantom; the Wookiees call him an ally.
• Senator Toonbuck Toora (Sy Myrth) – The Blockade Runner
  • 
    
    • Rare among senators, Toora leads from the bridge of her flagship Defiance's Banner. Her raids are sudden, reckless, and costly—but they bleed Imperial supply lines dry. Her stubbornness makes her the Parliament's most credible "war senator."
  • Vorrik Saan (Yag'Dhul) – The Loyalist of Logic
    • Captain of the Curse of the Core, a Providence-class carrier. He fights here because the Body Calculus decreed Kashyyyk must not fall. Cold, mathematical, unflinching.
  • Captain Mar Tuuk – The Gambler
    • Tuuk is a survivor, a strategist, and a risk-taker. In blockade-breaking and convoy raids, his flair for calculated gmble finds new purpose.
  • Commander Tok Ashel & First Officer Dif Gehad – The Pair
    • Trade Federation holdouts who serve under Toora. Competent, loyal, but weary. They execute her maneuvers with quiet efficiency, even when they doubt her chances.
  • OOM-09 – The Veteran Droid
    • An aged B1 command model, rusted and scarred, who has somehow outlived every campaign from Naboo to now. His memory banks hold two decades of war. To Nute, he was a friend. To Linwodo, he is a flank that needs to be held.
  • DFS-1VR – The Phantom of the Skies
    • A vulture droid ace that flew at Naboo and still survives. Known among clone pilots as the "Dirt Stain." To the Wookiees, he is the color of their catamarans, their soil, their defiance.

RAXUS and the Confederate Parliament - The Chorus Without a Conductor

The Situation:

If Grievous' Western Reaches hold together through terror, and the Quadriga survives through rivalry, then the Separatist Parliament is a chorus of voices with no conductor. It was built as window-dressing: a veneer of legitimacy while Dooku and Sidious pulled the strings. Now Dooku is gone, and the strings are cut. The Parliament finds itself with powers it never had before—and with no idea how to wield them.

They meet in the weathered halls of Raxus Secundus. Holograms flicker where members are absent, seats remain empty where senators have fled or died, and duplicate droid secretaries fill the gaps. The chamber is loud, unruly, and fractured. Some see themselves as statesmen, some as profiteers, some as warlords, but none can agree who leads them. The great voices of the past were silenced, all by the design of the Grand Plan

The Parliament does not command the droid armies—that power remains with the generals and ST droids. What it does command is legitimacy, the illusion that the Confederacy is still a government, not merely a coalition of fleets and governors. And in a war now bereft of leadership, that illusion still matters.

The Parliament can be broken down into factions:

The Peace Bloc (Frayed Optimists)

These senators cling to the hope of compromise, or at least survival through submission. They are the voices urging terms with the Empire—even when it is clear no such terms will be honored.

• Kerch Kushi - Naïve idealist, once a peace faction voice, still believes honor can be salvaged in a settlement.
  Quadriga Alignment: backs Kleeve as a "reasonable general."
• Ta'am Khlaides (Delrakkin) - Bitter pessimist, longs to crawl back into the Republic's Senate.
  Quadriga Alignment: neutrality shading toward Kraken, if only because resistance seems pointless.
• Tychon Nulvolio (Utapau) - Resents Grievous' violation of Utapau's neutrality, advocates leaving the war altogether.
  Quadriga Alignment: non- prefers disengagement.

The War Hawks (Corporate and Militarist)

These senators demand escalation, often because their profits or positions depend upon it. They are the loudest voices, but also the most transparently self-interested.

• Voe Atell (Corporate Alliance) - Corrupt to the core, her "hawkishness" rises in proportion to corporate dividends.
  Quadriga Alignment: backs Flebek, the corporate choice.
• Punn Rimbaud - Amphibious senator, more bluster than substance, hails Kraken as successor to Trench and even entertains admiration for Grievous.
  Quadriga Alignment: Kraken's camp, loudly.
• Silvu Donte (Riflor) - Zorzsin crime family operative. Sees in war a chance to extend underworld power.
  Quadriga Alignment: Flebek, who keeps the credits flowing.

The Realists (Pragmatists and Converts)

Once peace advocates, these senators now accept that only war can preserve them. They differ on who should lead, but share the conviction that survival demands resistance.

• By Bluss (Leyakian Sector) - Once a peace voice, now rallies behind Kleeve as a moral leader.
• Tawni Ames (Desix) - Governor-Senator, pragmatic, understands there is no survival without war. Loyal to none, but supports collective resistance.
• Zurros (Falleen) - Brought in by Quinlan Vos, sympathetic to the Jedi, believes either Kleeve or Kraken could lead—so long as someone does.
• Avi Singh (Raxus Secundus) - Political giant, friend to all factions, neutral until neutrality is impossible. Leans toward Kleeve but fears burdening him with too much too soon.
  • Ansibella Dellu - His aide, influential in shaping Shadowfeed propaganda, quietly shaping opinion against Kraken's "droid autocracy."
• Daggibus Scoritoles (Yag'Dhul) - Representative of the Body Calculus. The Givin do not argue—they calculate, and their calculations insist the war must continue.
  Quadriga Alignment: Kraken, admired for his precision and ST logic.
• Lux Bonteri (Onderon) - Absent at first, but destined to return, disillusioned, transformed into a cold warrior. Unlike the Parliament's politicos, he looks outward, toward supporting insurgencies and rebels across the galaxy.

The Outliers and External Voices

Some senators attend irregularly, more concerned with their sectors, but still cast long shadows.

• Toonbuck Toora (Sy Myrth) – Rarely in Parliament, almost always aboard Defiance's Banner. A respected leader with one foot in both corporate and idealist camps. She commands fleets, not votes, but her candidacy for theater command is serious.
  Quadriga Alignment: respected by all, unobjectionable to most... would likely be appointed ahead of the others as the Parliament representative, if the chamber could ever agree that is.
• Esu Rotsino (Abrion Sector) – Her foodstuffs move only with Hutt cooperation, tying her to underworld compromises. She has her hands full through black market dealings.
• Corlissi Ludar (Sluis Van) – Absent physically, but sends holograms. His focus is the defense of Sluis Van, not chamber debate.
• Dodra F'ass (Bith, Mayagil Sector) – Focused inward, coordinating local defenses. Engages only sparingly with Raxus.
• Daragi Hoba (Ando) – Same as Dodra: local over galactic.
• Tikkes (Dac) – Nominal representative, but absent, and embroiled in activities... elsewhere.

The Prism. 

A secret so deep even the Empire has forgotten it exists. A hundred droids, a lone Jedi master, and a rogues' gallery of Separatist grandees who, if freed, could change the war's balance overnight.

Some Prisoners of Note:

• Major Domb Treetor – Skakoan, Techno Union Appropriations Chief
• Commander Zolghast – Zygerrian warlord
• Admiral Pors Tonith – Muun naval commander
• Chief of Staff Karaksk Vey'lya – Bothan strategist
• Senator Nix Card – InterGalactic Banking Clan functionary
• Calli Trilm – Separatist agent
• Ur'Loach – Mercenary of unknown origin
• Shonn Volta – Confederate official
• Whorm Loathsom – Kerkoiden general, veteran of Christophsis
• Lieutenant Rame Cartroll – Confederate officer
• N'won Raines – Ace cyborg pilot
• Gorgol – Geonosian ace pilot
• Baron Nax Cirvan – Dark Jedi once sworn to Count Dooku

MISC

Bounty Hunters/ Rogues

• Aurra Sing
• Durge
• Cad Bane
• Cyreltov - Chiss
• Vianna D'Pow - Zeltron w/ 3yo clone of herself
• Mandalorian Commando Spar
• Mandalorian/Clone Kaddak

SKAKO MINOR

• Foreman Watt Tambor II
• TA-175 of the Techno Union

Acherin Resistance 

• Raina Quill
  • Commander Toma
  • Jedi Master Garen Muln

MISC:

• Tendir Blue - Mercenary Intel Agent
• Jenna Zan Arbor - War criminal scientist
• Mistryl Shadow Guard (Emberlene, by Kashyyyk)

Chapter Text

…

…

…

Whhhhooooossssshhhh

Behind Vader, the wound he'd torn through Mustafar's crust vomited rock and fire into the darkening sky. Black shadows the size of gunships tumbled down the slopes, trailing smoke. Lava fountained in irregular geysers, each eruption painting the ash clouds orange from within. The beach trembled with aftershocks–not the facility's death throes now but the planet itself, wounded by what had burst from its depths.

Debris rained down in a constant percussion–chunks of cooling stone that shattered on impact, sending shrapnel skittering across volcanic sand. One piece of girder, still glowing dull red, crashed into the lava river and sent up a geyser of molten rock that hissed as it fell back.

Through it all, ash descended softly from the sky. It coated everything, turned the air itself into something that had to be pushed through with each breath. The system's star was barely visible now–a dim ember struggling through layers of particulate that transformed twilight into something approaching night.

And two brothers faced each other across volcanic sand.

Anakin responded to his name with a sneer and a pointed finger, almost snarling as his eyes tracked past Obi-Wan to the cowering figures in the rocks beyond.

"So the Jedi sent you to help them."

He started moving–not attacking, but circling left. Each step placed him closer to a direct line toward the Separatists. His boots left prints in the ash that immediately began to fill again, erased by the falling darkness.

Obi-Wan shifted to block him. The old dance reasserting itself. "Anakin, please–"

"They started this." Vader's voice carried genuine disbelief, as if he'd discovered a conspiracy so obvious he should have seen it years ago. "Built armies to tear the Republic apart. They decimated worlds–" His mechanical hand clenched. "And you defend them?"

A fire devil spun across the beach, its vortex howling. Vader's free hand flicked out, and the whirlwind bent–warping sideways, breaking apart into scattered flames. He'd barely glanced at it.

"I'm not–" Obi-Wan started, then stopped. How did he explain? His mind felt sluggish, thoughts fragmenting under exhaustion and the weight of what he'd come here to do. "Anakin, we–on Geonosis, we found–there was a Sith. In the government. We knew this. Dooku told us. The recordings from Cato Neimoidia–the labyrinth of evil–"

He was rambling.

He could hear himself rambling.

Obi-Wan took a breath, tried to center himself through the chaos. A boulder crashed into the lava river behind them, and the planet shuddered.

"Someone orchestrated this war," he tried again, forcing his voice steady. "Both sides. Someone who had access to Republic intelligence and Separatist command. Someone who could scatter us across the galaxy and–"

"The Jedi were plotting to take over!" Vader cut through, his voice rising. But something in his expression flickered–doubt, brief as lightning. "Master Windu tried to murder the Chancellor when–"

"When what, Anakin? When he revealed himself?" The words came out sharper than Obi-Wan intended. "When Mace realized that Palpatine was the Sith we'd been hunting for thirteen years?"

Overhead, the dark clouds roiled. Something large moved in the facility ruins behind them–something scraping against twisted metal. Neither man looked.

Vader's circling slowed.

His brow furrowed, confusion flickering across his face before rage smothered it again.

"You're saying..." He trailed off. Shook his head. "No. The Chancellor saved the Republic. He ended the corruption. The Jedi were–"

"The Jedi were murdered." Obi-Wan's voice cracked. " Aayla... Mundi...." Some rocks still falling from the eruption slammed into the ground with each name, as if in punctuation. For a moment, Obi Wan found himself unable to stop rambling the names of the fallen, the emotion was simply too great.

"Drallig… Depa… Allie…"

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Anakin seemed to recoil with the names and falling ruin around them.

Obi Wan re-gathered himself.

"…all at once, Anakin. All across the galaxy, at the same moment. How? How does that happen unless someone planned it? Unless someone gave the order? The Clones. Fives…"

A lava geyser erupted, close enough that both men felt the heat wash over them. When it subsided, Vader was staring at him with those gold-ringed eyes that held too much understanding and not enough.

"I..." Vader's hand wandered around his lightsaber hilt, then drifted away. "I don't–"

"You do, Anakin," a tear formed a stream from eye to chin. "You followed his command, marched on the Temple, and..."

The words hit like a physical blow. Vader's eyes widened, then narrowed with something that might have been pain.

"I did what was necessary," he said, but his voice wavered. "To save–to protect–"

"The younglings?" Obi-Wan's question was quiet, terrible. "What were you protecting from them, Anakin? What threat did they pose?"

For a moment–just a moment–the mask cracked. Vader's face twisted with something that might have been horror, quickly smothered by rage.

"You don't understand," he said, and his voice was suddenly young again, desperate. "I had to. There was no other way to save–"

He cut himself off, jaw snapping shut.

A lava geyser erupted nearby. In the sudden flare of light, Obi-Wan saw it–the fear beneath the rage, the desperation driving everything.

"Save who, Anakin?" He asked gently, though he already knew. "Who are you so afraid of losing?"

Vader went very still. His hand drifted to his lightsaber hilt.

"I know about Padmé," Obi-Wan said quietly.

The effect was immediate. Vader's entire body went rigid, eyes blazing with sudden, terrible suspicion. His gaze swept the beach, the rocks, the interceptor in the distance where two astromechs waited.

"Where is she?" The question came out dangerous, soft. "What did you–if you touched her–"

"I came alone, Anakin." Obi-Wan spread his hands, showing empty palms. "I'm not here because of her. I'm here because–" He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Because I know that fear is what's driving this. Fear of losing her. But this path you're on, the things you've done–they won't save her. They'll destroy everything you love."

"You don't know anything!" Vader snarled, but beneath the rage, something crumbled. "The Jedi–your precious Order–it would have taken her from me! Forbidden, they said. Attachment leads to the dark side, they said. But they never loved anyone! Never risked anything for–"

"We loved the Republic," Obi-Wan interrupted, his voice hardening. "We risked everything for it. Died for it. And you burned it down."

"I saved it!" Vader's voice rose to a roar. "From corruption, from the Separatists, from the Jedi who wanted to rule it!"

"You are lost." The words came out flat, final. "The Jedi served the Republic for a thousand generations. We never wanted power–we were the guardians of peace and justice. And you helped destroy us because of a Sith's lies?"

Something in Vader's expression fractured. For just a moment, confusion broke through–raw, lost, searching.

Something in Obi-Wan's chest seized.

This was it.

The opening.

The crack where light could still reach.

He stepped forward, his hand rising reflexively not toward his weapon, but in an old gesture, the one he'd used when Anakin was twelve and learning to center himself when feeling fear. "Anakin, listen to me. You were deceived. We both were. This whole war was–"

He stopped.

Caught himself mid-reach, mid-hope, mid-mistake.

Because he saw what he was doing. Saw himself trying to talk his way through this, trying to negotiate, trying to save Anakin when he'd come here knowing–knowing–that salvation wasn't possible anymore. Not after the Temple. Not after what he'd felt in the Force when thousands of Jedi died screaming across the galaxy.

The hand fell.

And Anakin saw it.

Saw the gesture from its beginning, to its aborted end.

He saw the hope flicker and die in Obi-Wan's eyes.

"You're not here to help me..." The realization settled over Vader like a final layered veil. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by something colder.

"You're not here..."

"Anakin…."

"You're here… to kill me." The words came out flat, dead.

Obi-Wan said nothing.

Couldn't deny it.

His hand remained near his lightsaber.

Understanding dawned in Vader's eyes, followed by betrayal so absolute it was almost physical.

A section of the facility behind them finally gave way, sloughing off and sliding into the lava with a shriek of shattered metal. The sound echoed across the beach, fading into the volcanic wind.

"Not to save me. Not to help me." His voice was hollow, dead. "You're here to execute me. For the crime of wanting to save the woman I love."

"For the crime of murdering children," Obi-Wan said, and his voice broke on the words. "For helping Sidious destroy everything we built. For becoming his weapon."

"I had no choice!" Vader's composure shattered. "You don't understand–the visions, the dreams–I saw her dying, Obi-Wan! I saw it every night! And he was the only one who could help, the only one who offered–"

"So you burned the Temple." Obi-Wan's words cut like a blade. "Murdered the younglings. Allowed your brothers and sisters of the Order to be hunted down by the clones. All for a promise from a Sith Lord?"

"To save her!" The words were screamed. "Something you would never do because the Jedi choose duty over love! Over life! You taught me that–you showed me when you let Satine die!"

The accusation hung in the air like poison.

"I tried to save Her," Obi-Wan said quietly. "I failed. But I didn't murder innocents to do it. I didn't become the very thing we swore to destroy."

Vader laughed, and it was the sound of something breaking. "The very thing–you still don't see it! The Jedi became what we fought against! Commanders of an army! Politicians in robes! The Separatists were trying to break free, and we crushed them for it!"

"The Separatists were led by a Sith," Obi-Wan replied. "By Dooku. Who served Sidious. It was always the Sith, Anakin. You just helped them win."

For a long moment, Vader stood there, breathing hard. Ash gathered on his shoulders, in his hair. The eruption behind him continued its violence, but he seemed not to notice.

Then something shifted in his expression. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by something colder, more calculated.

Then something unexpected happened.

Vader went still. His breathing, labored from dark side corruption and rage, slowed. When he spoke again, his voice had changed–quieter, carrying a terrible sort of clarity.

"Go," he said suddenly. His gloved hand gestured toward the rocks where the Separatists huddled, then toward the ship. "Take them. Take your ship. Leave this place." His jaw worked. "I won't follow. Won't pursue. Just... go."

The offer hung in the air like the ash around them.

Mercy.

Twisted by darkness, motivated by confusion rather than compassion, but mercy nonetheless.

Obi-Wan stood frozen.

Ash gathered upon the folds of his fabric like snow.

In the Force, he could feel the weight of the choice pressing down on him–not just for this moment but for everything that would follow.

He could leave.

Walk away.

Let Anakin live and hope that somehow, someday, the light would find him again.

His feet actually shifted, ready to turn.

He thought of the remaining Jedi, on the run and soon to be hunted for no fault of their own. He thought of Senator Organa, of the resistance that would consume this new Empire, of untold trillions who would suffer under Imperial rule if Vader remained at Sidious's right hand side, growing stronger, becoming the weapon that would enforce tyranny for generations.

He thought of duty.

Of responsibility.

Of the terrible, incessant thought that whispered one life–even Anakin's–weighed against the galaxy itself.

His hand drifted downward.

"I can't," Obi-Wan said, and the words tore from his throat. "Not while you serve him. Not while Padmé carries children who'll grow up in the shadow of what you've become."

Vader's eyes widened. "Children? She's–" Then fury replaced shock. "You knew. You've known and you kept it from me–"

"I suspected," Obi-Wan said. "I didn't confirm it until now."

The betrayal on Vader's face was absolute. "Everything. You'd take everything from me."

"You've done this yourself, Anakin." The words were quiet, final. "Your anger, your fear, your lust for power–they consume all. It ends here."

His hand found his lightsaber.

Vader's expression went cold. Dead. When he spoke, his voice carried no emotion at all.

"Is it now?" Vader's hand tightened around his own lightsaber. "Prove it. Prove your conviction. Prove that your peace is better than mine."

Vader stopped stalking amongst the black rocks and shimmering shadow.

"Prove that you are willing to fight."

Snap-hiss

Blue light, piercing and terrible.

Obi-Wan's lightsaber answered with its own snap-hiss, and the sound seemed too final, too absolute.

For a long moment they just stood there, master and apprentice, two blue blades casting their faces in the same harsh light.

The mountain screamed behind them.

Torrents of ash drifted on hostile winds.

"I wish–" Obi-Wan started. His voice caught. What could he say? That he wished it had been different? That he wished Anakin had been stronger, or that he himself had been a better teacher?

All of it was true.

None of it mattered.

Vader's face hardened, the last trace of Anakin disappearing behind the mask.

"I will kill you," he said, cold as vacuum. "And every other Jedi who stands in my way. And when your Order is nothing but ashes, I'll build something better in its place."

They stood facing each other across volcanic sand, surrounded by the wreckage of everything they'd built together. Behind them, the ragged Separatists watched from the rocks. Around them, Mustafar tore itself apart. Overhead, churning clouds turned day to night.

Outer robes fell away and caught on the rocks.

Grips tightened.

Vader faced away and up, at the darkness, at the heat of the forge that would cast him into something stronger.

Obi Wan watched him, and shifted into a stance worn deep as bone.


"I will do what I must," Obi-Wan whispered, and felt something inside him die with that promise.

"You will try," Vader replied.

He leaped.

Vader flew, upward and backward, pirouetting into a collision usually reserved for things far larger than life.

Two blades met with a sound like screaming stars.

The newborn Sith attacked like something unleashed–not the careful forms of a duelist but pure, overwhelming aggression. His lightsaber carved through the ash-thick air in strikes that would have shattered stone, each blow carrying enough force to drive Obi-Wan backward across the black sand.

Each blow was a statement that glowed in searing afterimages.

They spoke of finality and death.

I'm going to die here.

The thought arrived with perfect clarity as Obi-Wan's blade caught a descending hammer-blow that would have split his skull. The impact sent vibrations up both arms, made his shoulders scream in protest. He redirected rather than blocked, channeling the force away, already moving to intercept the follow-up–a thrust toward his sternum that came faster than should have been possible.

Anakin is going to kill me.

Because the boy he'd trained had been exceptional. This thing wearing his face was something else entirely–faster, stronger, fueled by rage that seemed inexhaustible. The dark side had amplified Anakin's considerable gifts into something that transcended normal human limits. Each strike landed with more power than mere muscle could generate, and they came in combinations that left no opening, no respite.

Obi-Wan gave ground.

Not retreating–surviving. His blade moved in the tight, economical arcs of Soresu, creating a sphere of protection that turned aside strike after strike. But even as muscle memory guided his defense, that cold certainty remained–that against this, even the ultimate defensive form would not be enough.

Vader drove him across the beach, each exchange forcing Obi-Wan back another step, another meter. His breathing was ragged–hours of slaughter on a volcanic world had taken their toll even on someone sustained by hatred. But that only made him more dangerous. The exhaustion fed his rage, and the rage fed his power, creating a feedback loop that had no natural end point.

"You should have stayed away!" Vader snarled, his blade coming in high before reversing low in a feint that nearly took Obi-Wan's legs. "Run back to your temple and your codes!"

Obi-Wan deflected, spun away from the follow-up strike, his boots finding purchase on debris-strewn sand. Around them, the ruins of the facility groaned in their death throes. Sections of durasteel wall glowed Sith red where they rested against the volcanic rock, slowly surrendering to the heat.

Automatic mining droids, their programming corrupted but still functional, wandered aimlessly through the wreckage. One rolled past pulling a wagon filled with molten metal that it had no destination for, its single optic flickering as it processed instructions that made no sense anymore. In the distance, the silhouettes of the Mustafarian people could be seen, slowly making their way toward a new beginning.

And at the center of it all, two brothers fought.

"I taught you better than this!" Obi-Wan managed between parries, his voice strained. "To never let anger rule you–"

Vader's response was a spinning strike–blade passing behind his back, giving Obi-Wan a split-second of uncertainty about where it would emerge. But he'd seen this move a thousand times in the training halls. The tell was in Anakin's shoulders, the slight shift in weight distribution. Obi-Wan ducked under the blade as it came around at neck height, slid forward, and came up with his own strike that Vader batted aside with contemptuous ease.

"You taught me weakness!" Vader pressed forward, not giving him time to reset. His strikes came in a pattern Obi-Wan recognized–the opening sequence of Form V, but executed with such speed and power that it became something else entirely. "To doubt myself! To hold back!"

Their blades locked, crackling and snagging where plasma met plasma. Vader's face was centimeters away, twisted with rage and something that might have been pain. Sweat ran down his face in rivers, cutting tracks through the ash and soot. His golden eyes blazed, but beneath them were dark circles that spoke of exhaustion running bone-deep.

Obi-Wan shoved him back, using the Force to add strength he didn't have. Vader stumbled, caught himself, and came on again immediately.

The wreckage of the facility loomed behind Obi-Wan like a mountain of melting slag. Sections of it had been washed downstream by the lava river, coming to rest against the volcanic shore in configurations that defied any original design. What had once been corridors now jutted at impossible angles. Gantries twisted into abstract art. Entire rooms had been compressed into metal pancakes that radiated heat like small suns.

And it was all slowly,

Inexorably,

Melting down.

Obi-Wan backed toward it deliberately. The beach gave Vader too much room to maneuver, too much space to build momentum for those devastating power strikes. The ruins would provide obstacles, uncertain footing, narrow passages where Vader's aggression would work against him.

Survive.

Just survive.

Let him make a mistake.

He leaped, pinwheeling slightly as the Force carried him up onto a tilted section of hull plating that had once been the facility's outer wall. The metal groaned under his weight, already softening from the ambient heat. Vader followed with a confident leap that carried him even higher, coming down with an overhead strike that would have cleaved Obi-Wan in half.

Obi-Wan deflected, the blade passing so close to his shoulder that his robes smoldered. He jumped to another section–a piece of interior corridor that clung to its support beams by corroding welds. Each landing sent vibrations through the precarious structure.

"Running!" Vader laughed, that terrible sound echoing across the hellscape. "Just like you taught me! Survival before victory!"

He gestured with his free hand, and a massive chunk of facility–perhaps twenty tons of twisted durasteel and melted machinery–moved. It tore free from the wreckage with a shriek of protesting metal and cascaded through the air toward Obi-Wan like a falling moon.

Obi-Wan jumped.

Not higher, as there was no purchase, but down–down to where the lava lapped against half-submerged pieces of the facility. Metal platforms that had minutes, maybe seconds, before the heat worked through their molecular bonds and they collapsed into the molten river.

He landed on one, felt it shift beneath him.

Jumped again before it could tilt.

Found another island of rapidly-disappearing safety.

Behind him, Vader's projectile crashed into the wreckage where he'd stood, sending fragments of superheated metal flying in all directions.

Three more jumps, each one requiring absolute precision, absolute faith in the Force's guidance. The heat was intense enough to blister exposed skin, to make every breath feel like inhaling fire. But the Force showed him the path–here, now, there, quickly–and he followed without thought.

A mining gantry angled upward to his left, offering escape from the lava's proximity. Obi-Wan caught it with his free hand, swung himself up, landed on metal that groaned but held. He was meters above the lava now, standing on a network of support beams and twisted catwalks that spider-webbed through the ruins.

Vader landed behind him with a impact that sent hairline fissures spreading through the metal.

"Impressive," he said, breathing hard but grinning with manic energy. "But you delay the inevitable."

Vader pressed forward with a devastating swing, and Obi Wan parried while retreating.

They fought along the narrow beam, single-file, leaving no room for elaborate footwork. Just blade work, pure and lethal. Vader pressed forward, jabbing while Obi-Wan gave ground, each deflection and counter-strike sending sparks cascading into the darkness below.

The beam ended at a junction where three others converged, creating a small platform of connected metal. Obi-Wan vaulted backward and onto it, finally having room to properly set his stance. Vader followed, and for a moment they fought in the open–an impossible flurry of strikes, blocks, parries that would have been invisible to normal eyes. Blue light painted frantic patterns against the volcanic night.

Vader's blade came in with a horizontal slash that Obi-Wan ducked under. The follow-up was a reverse grip stab that he side-stepped. But Vader anticipated the movement, his blade already sweeping back around in a figure-eight pattern that forced Obi-Wan to give up the platform entirely, dropping to a lower level where a section of floor clung precariously to its moorings.

"You're slowing down, Master," Vader called from above. "How much longer can you keep this up?"

Not much longer, Obi-Wan thought, but didn't say. His arms ached from the constant impacts. His lungs burned from breathing the toxic air. Every muscle screamed for rest that wouldn't come.

But something was keeping him alive beyond mere skill.

Vader was holding back.

Not consciously–the rage and hatred were genuine, the killing intent real. But in certain moments, at certain critical junctures, Vader didn't fully commit. That savage barrage of strikes that should have overwhelmed Obi-Wan's defense simply... didn't come. Instead they'd fallen into rhythms that felt almost familiar. The patterns of their old practice duels, when Anakin was still learning, still growing under Obi-Wan's tutelage.

Muscle memory.

The body remembering what the mind tried to deny.

It was tragic.

And it was the only reason Obi-Wan still lived.

A massive column–once part of the facility's structural support–teetered nearby, its base eaten through by heat and stress. Obi-Wan reached out with the Force, just a gentle push, letting physics do the rest.

The column toppled, falling directly into Vader's path.

He turned to face it, both hands coming up, the Force arresting the column mid-fall. For a moment he held it there, tons of metal suspended by will alone. Then he pushed, sending it flying sideways into the lava river with obvious contempt.

"Tricks," he spat.

He dropped down from his vantage, landing mid-stride, his arms swinging forward into an attacking arc.

And Obi-Wan continued his retreat.

They fought onward, deeper into the ruins. Obi-Wan led, always a breath ahead of the collapse, drawing Vader through choke points and bent corridors where the footing turned treacherous and the air tasted of sulfur and ash. Behind them, sections of wreckage surrendered to the lava with hisses of steam. The mountain groaned underfoot–alive, angry.

A sharp click-click cut through the heat.

Not debris.

Not collapsing metal.

A cadence.

From the wreckage ahead, shapes emerged through heat shimmer–B1s with scorched frames and missing limbs, a B2 dragging one dead leg, a droideka lolling on dented chassis with a failing shield generator. At their head came an OOM command unit, its paint boiled away, one side of its cranial plate melted into slag. Where its designation should have been, only bubbled metal remained.

Its vocalizer sparked, found a piece of itself.

"–T–" it rasped. "–targ–Sit–"

The broken antenna in its hand rose like a standard.

The droids opened fire.

Red bolts converged on Vader from three directions. Obi-Wan saw the opening, lunged forward with a strike toward Vader's exposed side–

Vader's blade became a unbroken cascade of blue light. Bolts ricocheted outward in a perfect spread, each one finding the droid that fired it. A B1 took its own shot through the photoreceptor and collapsed. The B2's wrist cannon exploded, taking its arm. The droideka's shield popped like a bubble, and the second return bolt punched through its core.

Obi-Wan's strike met empty air–Vader had shifted, using the droids' own attack to reposition. The counter came fast, a horizontal slash that forced Obi-Wan to abandon his advance, to deflect desperately and give ground.

The OOM kept advancing, its broken antenna still raised.

"–Tar–" it managed. "–get–"

The B2 threw itself forward on one leg, trying to grapple. Vader's blade took it through the torso, clean and dismissive. Two B1s followed, firing point-blank. Their shots painted Vader's outline in red light–all of them deflected, one through each droid's center mass.

The OOM reached him last. It had no weapon, no shield, nothing but forward motion and a single imperative stuttering through damaged circuits.

"–Sith–" it said.

Vader's blade went through its torso and out its back.

The droid looked down at the blue light bisecting it. Its photoreceptors flickered, found Obi-Wan, held steady for one moment.

Then the light went through its neck and the command unit fell in pieces, antenna clattering against metal.

The last B1 stood ten meters away, rifle raised with parade precision despite its scorched torso and missing arm.

"Ro–" it started.

Vader gestured.

The droid's head popped free and its body folded.

Silence rushed back amongst the peripheries, only to be broken by the echoing sounds of titans once again clashing.

Through it all, Obi-Wan realized he'd been driven back another five meters. His brief attempt to press the attack had failed… worse, it had cost him precious spacing. The droids had bought him nothing but the knowledge that Vader was too strong, too fast, too far gone.

But it gave Obi-Wan a bare second's respite.

A moment to breathe, to let his arms rest. He used it to scan the terrain ahead–more ruins, more twisted metal, more uncertain footing that might let him survive another minute, another exchange.

Sentient bodies were scattered through the wreckage. Separatists who'd died in the facility's collapse, their corpses slowly baking in the ambient heat. A Neimoidian whose robes marked him as Trade Federation, his face frozen in terminal surprise. A Gossam with expensive jewelry melting against charred skin. A cluster of Geonosians who'd fallen together, their wings now fused by heat.

But something was wrong with the bodies.

Some were incomplete. A torso with no legs, the wound too messy to be from a lightsaber. An arm missing, torn away by something with strength and teeth. Drag marks in the ash leading toward darker sections of the ruins.

Something was eating them.

Something large enough to haul away entire bodies. Something that had learned the facility's collapse meant feeding time.

Obi-Wan filed the information away, focused on survival. The immediate threat was in front of him–Vader advancing again, blade held in a high guard, eyes blazing with renewed determination.

"No more running," Vader said, and his voice had dropped to something almost calm. Almost sane. "End this, Master. Show me what you've truly become."

They stood on opposite sides of a gap–a section where the facility had torn in half, leaving five meters of open air above the lava river. The platform Obi-Wan occupied was solid. The one Vader stood on was slowly tilting, its support finally giving way to heat and stress.

"I am what I need to be," Obi-Wan replied quietly. "What about you, Anakin? What have you become?"

Vader's answer was to leap.

He crossed the gap with lightsaber held high, coming down like judgment itself. Obi-Wan met the strike, was driven to one knee by the force of it. Vader pressed down, using his height advantage, his weight, his fury.

"Stronger," he hissed. "Free. Everything you feared I'd be."

Obi-Wan twisted and spun, throwing him off, rolling away to put distance between them. But there was nowhere left to go. The platform ended three meters behind him, falling away into darkness and heat.

They'd reached a place where the ruins formed a natural arena–a collection of platforms and beams surrounding a central space. Above them, a partially intact ceiling section cast deep shadows. Around them, the lava's glow painted everything in shades of sunset.

Vader walked forward slowly now, almost leisurely. His breathing had become ragged, each exhalation carrying a wheeze from lungs strained by volcanic gases. But his eyes had never been clearer, more tainted, more focused.

"I'm going to enjoy this," Vader said, taking another step forward.

Then they both felt it.

A presence in the Force–not dark, not light, but hungry.

Ancient.

Powerful in the way that apex predators were powerful, honed by millennia of evolution on a world that killed casually and without mercy.

Vader's eyes flicked toward the shadows.

Obi-Wan's hand tightened on his lightsaber.

And the Sher Kar burst through a gap in the wreckage with impossible speed for something so large.

It was massive–easily four meters tall at the shoulder, twice that in length when not counting the tail. Six segmented limbs carried it across the unstable terrain with the fluid grace of something that had evolved to hunt on volcanic slopes. Brown scales covered its body, each one the size of a human hand, with wicked spikes protruding from every joint. The tail–longer than the rest of its body combined–swayed behind it with hypnotic rhythm, the twin black prongs at its tip gleaming like obsidian blades ready to strike.

A Koorivar's body lolled from its massive maw, limp and broken. The creature's throat worked, muscles contracting in rhythmic waves, and the corpse disappeared with a sickening crunch-slide of sound. A pink tongue emerged, tasting the superheated air.

It had no eyes.

Where orbital sockets should have been, there was only smooth scale. It swiveled its head toward them–not seeing, but sensing.

Heat.

Movement.

The scent of living flesh in a landscape of death.

For one heartbeat, the three apex predators regarded each other across the ruins.

Then the Sher Kar lunged.

"Up!" Obi-Wan shouted.

"Move!" Anakin yelled simultaneously.

They scattered in opposite directions as the creature's maw snapped shut where they'd stood, teeth the size of vibro-blades scraping against metal. The platform buckled under the impact, support beams shrieking as they gave way. Both Jedi leaped to higher ground–Vader to the left, Obi-Wan to the right–landing on sections of wreckage that rose like irregular stairs toward what remained of the facility's upper levels.

The Sher Kar followed the Skywalker.

It scuttled up the debris with impossible agility, six legs finding purchase on surfaces too hot for most creatures to touch. Its tail whipped forward, the twin prongs driving through a support beam as thick as a man's torso. The metal sheared like paper, and an entire section of platform collapsed into the lava below with a hiss of steam.

Vader jumped, his blade slashing across the creature's flank as he passed. The lightsaber scored a line of burning flesh, but the scales were thick–he'd barely penetrated. The Sher Kar shrieked, a sound that resonated in the chest more than the ears, and its tail swept sideways in retaliation.

The Sith caught it with the Force–not stopping it, that would have been impossible, but redirecting it. The prongs struck another section of wreckage, punching through and sending fragments flying. He used the moment to gain height, jumping to a catwalk that swayed alarmingly under his weight.

"Its joints!" Obi-Wan called from across the arena. "Between the scales!"

The creature whirled toward his voice, head tracking the sound. It changed targets with predatory focus, launching itself across the gap toward Obi-Wan's position.

Obi-Wan was already moving, running along a narrow beam that connected two larger platforms. The Sher Kar's front legs slammed into the beam behind him, buckling it. He jumped just as it gave way completely, rolling forward in mid-air to land on a tilted section of hull plating.

The creature followed, but Obi-Wan had read its movement. He'd seen how it hunted–relentless forward assault, using its mass and reach to overwhelm prey. It couldn't track them visually, which meant if they stayed mobile, stayed unpredictable–

Vader's blade bit into one of its rear legs, finding the gap between scales at the joint. The limb gave way, ichor spraying black against the red glow of lava. The Sher Kar screamed again, rounding on him with its tail leading.

"Left!" Vader shouted, not at Obi-Wan but because tactical information was tactical information.

Obi-Wan saw it–the creature's turn had left its left flank vulnerable, the spikes there oriented wrong to defend. He jumped from his platform, blade extended, and carved a deep line from shoulder to thorax as he passed.

The Sher Kar tried to track both threats now, its eyeless head swiveling back and forth. It couldn't–they'd split its attention, and that was death for a creature evolved to hunt singular prey.

But it was learning.

Its tail drove straight down into the lower platform Obi-Wan had just landed on. The prongs punched through, then the tail flexed, tearing the entire section free. Metal groaned, support cables snapped, and suddenly Obi-Wan was falling with tons of wreckage.

He caught a beam mid-fall, swung himself up and over, landed on another platform just as the wreckage crashed into the lava below. The impact sent a wave of molten rock splashing upward–drops of liquid stone that hissed through the air.

"Watch the tail!" Obi-Wan called. "It swings–left, center, right!"

Vader was already exploiting it. He'd positioned himself on the creature's right side, forcing it to either expose its wounded left flank or strike predictably with its tail. When the tail came–center–he was ready, his blade meeting the prongs in a shower of sparks. The impact should have driven him back, but he'd planted himself, using the Force to anchor his feet to the metal.

The deflected tail swung wide, slamming into a vertical section of corridor. The entire structure toppled, falling directly toward Obi-Wan's position.

He ran up it as it fell, boots finding purchase on what had been a wall, then a ceiling, jumping free just before it crashed down. He landed on a higher platform–far above the lava now, near what had once been the facility's communications array.

The Sher Kar followed him upward.

It moved through the three-dimensional space of the ruins like it had been born to it, remaining legs finding holds that shouldn't exist, tail providing balance as it climbed. Each movement was fluid, economical, speaking to millions of years hunting in environments just like this.

Vader pursued from below, harrying its rear legs, forcing it to divide attention between the prey above and the predator below.

"Drive it up!" Obi-Wan shouted, seeing the play three moves ahead. The partially-collapsed antenna formed a cage of metal struts–if they could lure it in–

They worked without words after that, old training reasserting itself. Obi-Wan drew the creature forward with precise positioning. Vader drove it with attacks that wounded but didn't enrage. The Sher Kar, focused on the closer prey, on the one that fled rather than attacked, followed Obi-Wan into the broken antenna structure's embrace.

The collapsed metal struts closed around it–not a trap, not yet, but a constraint. Its movements became jerky, inefficient, as it tried to navigate the maze of metal without getting caught.

Obi-Wan jumped to the antenna's peak–the highest point in the ruins, high above the rest. From here, he could see the entire battlefield. Could see Vader moving into position at the antenna's base. Could see the plan complete itself without needing to be spoken.

The Sher Kar's tail lashed upward, seeking him.

"Now!" Obi-Wan shouted.

Vader's blade carved through the antenna's main support strut in one precise stroke. The half-ruined structure held for a moment–held another–then began its collapse.

The top of the antenna folded in on itself, metal struts bending inward like closing fingers. The Sher Kar tried to escape, but its bulk worked against it. Struts pressed against scales, found gaps, drove deeper. One prong of its tail was caught, then severed, ichor spraying. It shrieked again, thrashing, but the collapse continued.

Obi-Wan rode the falling structure down, jumping from strut to strut as they gave way, his blade finding joints and wounds and soft tissue. Above him, metal rained down. Below him, the lava waited.

He jumped free at the last moment, landed on a platform that groaned but held.

Vader was already there, breathing hard, his lightsaber held in guard position but not pointed at Obi-Wan. Not yet.

Instead, they watched.

The antenna hit the lava with a sound like the end of the world. The Sher Kar, wrapped in metal, went with it. For a moment its head emerged from the molten rock, maw opening in a final scream that never came. Then it sank, bubbles of superheated gas marking where it had been.

Then silence.

Just their breathing, harsh and labored, and the eternal sound of Mustafar dying and being reborn.

They stood five meters apart, lightsabers still ignited but lowered. Looking at each other across a gap that had nothing to do with distance.

Obi-Wan saw exhaustion in Vader's face–the dark circles under his eyes, the tremor in his hands, the way he swayed almost imperceptibly. Hours of slaughter finally catching up, the adrenaline of combat fading to reveal the toll beneath.

Vader saw something in Obi-Wan too, though what he saw made his expression twist with emotions too complex to name.

"That was–" Vader started.

"As it should be," Obi-Wan finished quietly.

The words hung between them, heavy with everything they'd lost. Three years of war, fighting side by side against impossible odds. Back to back in the halls of Grievous's flagship, upon the emerald spires of Muunilinst, in the tunnels beneath Jabiim. Master and apprentice, brothers in all but blood, reading each other's movements with the precision of beings who'd trained together through it all.

All of it dead now.

Buried under choices made and lines crossed.

"It doesn't have to end this way," Obi-Wan said, though he knew it did.

Vader's expression hardened.

The vulnerability disappeared behind the mask of rage and betrayal.

"Yes," he said. "It does."

His blade came up, settling into an opening position of Form V. But there was a difference now–a slight tremor, a hesitation that hadn't been there before. Exhaustion, yes, but something else too. The memory of what they'd just done, fighting together one last time.

Obi-Wan raised his own blade, settling into Soresu's perfect economy of motion.

"Then I'm sorry," he said.

"So am I," Vader replied.

Then the moment passed.

The blades met once more, and this time there was no holding back.

They fought across the highest sections of the wreckage–what had once been the facility's upper levels, now a twisted landscape of buckled metal and failing supports. Everything below them was slowly surrendering to the lava, sections breaking free and tumbling into the molten current with sounds like dying giants.

Vader came in with a three-strike combination that Obi-Wan recognized from their second year training together–high, low, thrust–but executed with such speed that recognition barely helped. He deflected the first, jumped over the second, twisted away from the third. His counter was already in motion before Vader's blade had fully extended, a strike toward the ribs that Vader parried without looking.

Like we're reading each other's minds, Obi-Wan thought distantly. Like we always could.

They moved across a section of floor that tilted at thirty degrees, their footwork adapting unconsciously to the cant. Vader spun, blade passing behind his back, and Obi-Wan was already ducking. The blue plasma passed where his head had been, and his own blade came up to catch Vader's follow-through.

Sparks cascaded between them.

"You taught me every move you know!" Vader snarled, pressing forward, forcing Obi-Wan toward a gap where the floor had fallen away entirely.

"I taught you self-control!" Obi-Wan shot back, using the gap to his advantage–jumping backward over it, landing on another section. Vader jumped after him, blade raised, and they met as he was in mid-air, the impact sending both men falling in opposite directions.

They landed on separate platforms ten meters apart. For a heartbeat they stood there, breathing hard, lightsabers humming.

Then they charged.

The platforms they fought on were dying. Support struts snapped with sounds like slugthrower shots. Connections failed, sending entire sections sliding toward the lava. They fought through it all, jumping from surface to surface as their battlefield disintegrated beneath them.

Obi-Wan found himself defending against combinations he'd taught Anakin as a Padawan–sequences from Form V that he knew intimately because he'd drilled them into the boy over years. But Anakin had added his own variations, his own innovations born from three years of war. The familiar became lethal through modification.

A section of ceiling collapsed between them, forcing them apart. When they came together again, it was on a narrow catwalk that swayed with every step. Single-file combat, no room for anything but blade work. Strike, parry, riposte, counter–a conversation in plasma and motion that needed no words.

And yet the words came unbidden.

"This is the end for you, my Master," Vader's voice cracked with old pain and new rage.

His blade came in horizontal, then vertical, then diagonal in a pattern that would have killed any other Jedi.

Obi-Wan deflected all three, his blade moving in tight arcs that conserved what energy he had left.

Vader's next strike carried enough force to buckle the catwalk beneath them. Metal groaned, and they both jumped–Vader forward, Obi-Wan back–landing on a section of facility that had somehow remained mostly intact.

This piece was larger, perhaps twenty meters across, but it rested at a severe angle. One edge dipped toward the lava while the other rose toward what remained of the facility's superstructure. Cables–once part of the communications array–still connected it to higher sections, holding it in precarious balance.

They fought across its tilted surface, boots finding purchase on rivets and seams. Above them, those cables groaned under stress. Below them, the lava churned.

"You failed!" Vader's blade came in low, forcing Obi-Wan to jump. He landed higher on the platform, giving ground but gaining elevation.

"I failed you," Obi-Wan agreed, his voice heavy with sorrow. "I failed you."

The acknowledgment seemed to enrage Vader further. He pressed forward with renewed fury, driving Obi-Wan higher and higher up the angled surface. Each strike carried desperation now, the exhaustion finally catching up, turning precision into something more primal.

Obi-Wan defended, always defended, but with each exchange he could feel Vader weakening. The dark side sustained him, but even the dark side had limits. Hours of slaughter, of fighting on a volcanic world, of pouring everything into hatred–it was all burning through him like a candle lit at both ends.

But weakness made him more dangerous, not less. Made him unpredictable. Made him willing to take risks that defied logic.

A cable snapped somewhere above them. The platform lurched, tilting further. They both stumbled toward the lava, caught themselves, and resumed the fight without pause.

They made their way upward near the platform's highest point, where the main support cable–thicker than a man's torso–stretched up toward the facility's remaining superstructure. The cable was taut, singing with tension, holding up tons of metal that wanted desperately to slide into the lava below.

Around them, the last remnants of the facility groaned their death songs. A section fifty meters away collapsed entirely, falling in pieces.

The shockwave made everything shake.

Vader attacked in a fury of strikes that had no pattern, no form–just rage given motion. Obi-Wan's defense became pure instinct, his blade moving to intercept attacks he couldn't consciously see. Trust in the Force, absolute and complete.

Blade met blade, again and again, so fast it became a continuous sound rather than discrete impacts. Blue light ricocheted wildly on twisted ruin. Neither gave ground now–they'd reached some critical point where retreat was impossible, where only the fight mattered.

"I hate you!" Vader screamed, and his voice broke on the words.

"I know," Obi-Wan replied, and his own voice carried the weight of absolute grief.

They locked blades, plasma crackling between them, both men straining against the other with everything they had left. Vader's face roiled–twisted with emotions too complex to parse, exhaustion written in every line.

Lava plumed behind and before them, reaching impossible heights as Mustafar made itself known.

Then, distantly, from somewhere in the ruins to their left, Obi-Wan felt something in the Force.

Not Vader.

Not the planet.

Something else.

Something familiar.

Something great and terrible.

Something that shouldn't be possible.

Vader felt it too–his eyes widened fractionally, his concentration wavering for just an instant.

And in that instant, from beyond the fountaining lava's glow, came the terrible sound of broken laughter, the sound of machine and faith molded into singular purpose.

…

Sulfuric wind carried the whistle of metal on mettle.

...

General Grievous swung across the churning durasteel gorge on a cable that should have snapped under his weight.

His chassis was a ruin held together by emergency welds and sheer Kaleesh stubbornness.

Two arms hung useless at his side, sparking.

Another was broken save for its connection to the cable.

His chest cavity was smeared with fluids that ignited in the superheated air, leaving a trail of thick smoke behind him like a comet's tail.

Bubbling lava raced by perhaps two meters beneath his talons–close enough that the heat made his remaining organic components scream in protest.

Close enough that one miscalculation, one moment of weakness, would end him.

His vision blurred.

Exhaustion threatened to take him, to make his grip fail, to send him tumbling into the molten oblivion he'd been defying for hours.

But the Kaleesh General had faith.

Faith that this swing would carry him across impossible distance.

Faith that his failing body could endure one more act of defiance.

Faith that he could fall one final time and, in falling, seize control of his own destiny and the Confederacy's greater fate.

The cable sang with tension as he arced across the gap–ten seconds that stretched into eternity. His eyes, parsing through the shimmering mirage of heat, tracked the platform where the Jedi and Sith fought.

Calculated trajectory.

Measured distance.

Confirmed what his warrior's instinct had already known.

He would reach them.

Then, cutting through the wind and smoke and labored breathing, came another sound.

A sonic boom that cracked the sky.

A roar of torn air, the roar of a cause that still had something left to give.

His eyes flicked upward, and through the ash and smoke he saw it–a Recusant-class light destroyer still reeling with pseudomotion, its angular hull cutting through the upper clouds like a blade unsheathed, having exited impossibly low, as its engines now roared to keep it airborne.

Above it was a ragged squadron–the silhouettes of Munificents and a Providence poking above the cloud layer.

The distress call had been answered.

Laughter erupted from Grievous–raw, unhinged, the sound of a warrior who'd spent hours convinced he would die alone and now discovered he would not. The burden that had weighted his shoulders since Utapau suddenly lifted, replaced by something almost like exuberance.

The downward blast of sublight engines rated for space punched a hole in the cloud layer, exposing the fleet for what it was.

He reached the upward part of his swing, momentum carrying him toward the tilting platform. His remaining functional arm brought up the green lightsaber–the last weapon he could still wield, the final gift from a murdered Jedi whose name he'd never learned.

Backed by a task force, and amidst the screams of a Recusant churning atmosphere above, Grievous swung with the full might of the Confederacy.


"WE WILL NOT FAIL!"


Grievous soared between two arcs of billowing lava, duranium alight in the color of flame.

Malevolence continued to cackle with an unhinged, unstable resolve, and yet the blade swept true in a perfect, searing arc.

The cable tore.

The cable parted.

The platform dropped.

Kenobi and Vader, Jedi and Sith, still locked in combat and now overtaken by shock, lost their footing and fell together into the clouded chaos below.

The platform crashed onto the lava river with a shriek of tortured metal.

The impact sent a shockwave through the ruins, and with it came the ash–not falling gently now but erupting upward in massive billowing clouds. The collision had disturbed deposits that had been gathering for hours, and now they rose like a tidal wave of darkness, swallowing everything.

Visibility collapsed to nothing.

The world became ash and sound–the hiss of settling debris, the groan of tortured metal, the distant roar of lava that could no longer be seen. Obi-Wan hit hard, rolled, came up in a crouch with his lightsaber raised. Its blue glow barely penetrated a meter into the choking darkness.

Beneath his boots, the metal was already growing hot. The platform had fallen onto the lava it had been suspended over, and now heat worked through it with terrible efficiency. He could feel it through his soles–not burning yet, but close.

He moved by instinct, scrambling toward where the Force indicated higher ground. His boots found a slope–twisted facility hull angling upward. He climbed and climbed, ash filling his lungs with each breath.

A blue glow emerged from the infinite darkness ahead.

Vader.

They faced each other perhaps three meters apart, barely visible through the ash. Both injured, both exhausted, both swaying on their feet. The platform they had escaped from was beginning to glow dull red, heat rising in waves that made the ash swirl in hypnotic patterns.

Vader attacked.

His blade came in with desperate fury, and Obi-Wan met it with his final reserves. They fought blind, guided by the Force alone, their lightsabers the only sources of light in absolute darkness. Strike, parry, counter–each exchange driving them through the ash like shadows in a nightmare.

Obi-Wan's arms rattled with each impact. His breath was short, frantic, his focus fracturing. The heat, the exhaustion, the grief–it was all too much. Vader's blade slipped through his guard, scoring across his shoulder.

He stumbled, nearly fell.

I can't–

Vader pressed forward for the kill, blade raised–

And stopped.

Something in the Force.

Something approaching through the ash.

Vader spun, lightsaber coming up just as a figure emerged from the darkness.

Grievous stalked forward like death given form. His cape was aflame, tongues of fire licking across the tattered fabric. One functioning arm held the green lightsaber raised. His eyes burned with singular purpose through the ash-choked gloom that glowed red.

"Sith," he rasped.

Obi-Wan attacked from the other side.

Vader caught his strike without looking, and then spun to engage Grievous's thrust. It was terrible, glorious, impossible but he fought them both. His blade became a wheel of blue fire, intercepting attacks from opposite directions. He pivoted, ducked, his movements flowing between defense and counterattack with a grace that transcended exhaustion.

The dark side sustained him fully now, burning through the last of his reserves to fuel something beyond human capability.

Grievous's blade came in high. Vader deflected. Obi-Wan struck low. Vader jumped, spun sideways in mid-air, and landed already striking. Green and blue converged on him from opposite sides–he caught both, his saber meeting each in rapid succession.

Strike.

Block.

Spin.

Deflect.

The ash swirled around them in a vortex, matte black lit by their blades, creating a chamber of darkness.

Vader snarled–not words, just pure animal fury–as he held them both at bay.

Then his blade came around in a devastating arc that met Obi-Wan's with such force that it was less a parry than a gnarled extension of raw hatred. The riposte followed instantly, precise and overwhelming, striking near Obi-Wan's hilt with surgical accuracy.

The lightsaber flew from Obi-Wan's hands, spinning away into nothingness.

Vader turned fully toward him, blade descending for the killing blow–

And--

And green light erupted from his abdomen.

Grievous's blade had found its mark, punching in and through from behind, the plasma burning through cloth and flesh and hatred with a hiss of superheated tissue.

Vader's mouth opened in shock.

In agony.

In disbelief.

He pushed forward and twisted with strength that shouldn't exist in a ruined body, his lightsaber coming around in a wild, savage arc. The blue blade caught Grievous at the shoulders–both remaining arms separating with sounds like breaking machinery. The blade came within a centimeter of a decapitation strike.

The green lightsaber fell with the arms, clattering against metal, still ignited.

Grievous stood there for a moment, his eyes like an extension of some strange tranquility.

Vader's free hand thrust forward.

The Force hit Grievous like a physical wall. His body flew backward, disappearing into the ash-darkness with the green lightsaber tumbling after him.

Vader turned back to Obi-Wan…

And the blue lightsaber slipped from nerveless fingers.

It clattered against the metal, the blade extinguishing, leaving only the faint glow from below to illuminate his face.

Shock rendered his features almost boyish–Anakin again, young and confused, blood now trickling from his lips.

Obi-Wan wasted no time in rushing forward, catching him as he fell.

His arms wrapped around Anakin, lowering him gently to the smoking metal.

"I'm s-sorry," Anakin whispered.

Obi Wan simply smiled down at him, a beacon of tranquility.

Anakin's metal hand gripped Obi Wan like a lifeline.

"M–Master, I'm–v–visions–Padmé–I c–couldn't–"

"Shhh," Obi-Wan soothed, one hand coming up to caress his former Padawan's face with infinite gentleness.

"I know."

"I know."

Above them, the ash began to thin. Shapes moved through it–droid gunships and dropships descending, their engines screaming. Reinforcements that came too late, or perhaps exactly when they needed to.

"I love you, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, tears cutting tracks through the ash on his face. "You are my brother. You still are."

"The bu–balance," Anakin stuttered softly, his eyes beginning to glaze over. "The F–force–I can feel it–ch–changing–"

"You'll find balance," Obi-Wan promised, though he didn't know if it was true. "You'll make things right. Through the Force, through your children, through–"

But Anakin's eyes had already closed.

His breathing–that tortured, ragged breathing–stopped.

The Hero with No Fear was gone.

Obi-Wan held him, rocking slightly, openly weeping as droid reinforcements landed around them. Somewhere in the darkness, Grievous lay broken but breathing. The fate of the galaxy had become clouded, impossible to read.

The Force sang out in ripples across the volcanic landscape–not in triumph, not in defeat, but in pure, crystalline sorrow. A note of grief so profound that every Force-sensitive being in the system would feel its echo. A disturbance that marked not just a death, but the ending of something that should have been beautiful, it could have been terrible.

It marked the beginning of something no one could predict.

On Mustafar's hellish shore, surrounded by ash and enveloped in sorrow, Obi-Wan Kenobi cradled Anakin Skywalker's body and wept for the third time in his life over someone he loved as they passed into the Force.

Beyond them, the planet cooled in streaks like veins of blood frozen into glass. In their reflection, survivors gathered themselves for the future to come.

And the galaxy itself, half-collapsed and ruined, twisted slightly toward a future that had been written in the choices made in this single, terrible moment.

The Sheathipede's ramp hissed as it lowered, hydraulics protesting against Mustafar's caustic air. Two MagnaGuards descended, their movements precise despite the treacherous footing. They walked over to two of their comrades at the base, and between them floated a repulsor stretcher, its anti-grav field humming steadily as it carried the broken frame of General Grievous.

Nute Gunray stood at the base of the ramp and to the side, leaning heavily on a makeshift crutch fashioned from facility debris. His leg throbbed with each heartbeat, but he remained upright, watching as the guards maneuvered their burden carefully into the shuttle's interior.

Grievous looked small on the stretcher. Strange, that. The General had always seemed larger than life–a force of nature rendered in durasteel and fury. Now, bandaged and unconscious, fluids dripping from emergency medical lines, he looked almost fragile. Almost mortal.

The MagnaGuards secured the stretcher in the cargo hold with mechanical efficiency, then took up positions at either side like honor guards at a funeral.

Nute turned back toward Mustafar one final time.

The planet writhed in its perpetual agony. Lava flows carved channels through cooling rock. Ash clouds billowed overhead, pregnant with orange lightning that never quite struck. In the distance, the remnants of the mining facility continued their slow dissolution into the volcanic river.

This miserable world had taken so much from them. Colleagues dead. Causes shattered. Any illusions of control burned away in fires literal and metaphorical.

And yet.

His hand moved to his chest, feeling the steady rhythm beneath cracked ribs. Still beating. Still functioning. Still alive when by all logic he should be atoms scattered across a volcanic hellscape.

Living on borrowed time.

The phrase resonated through him with crystal clarity. Every breath from this moment forward was a gift–unearned, undeserved, but no less real for that.

And he would spend it.

Every second.

Every decision.

Would make it count for something.

Something new.

The Confederacy endured. The droid armies remained operational. The fight continued.

And Nute Gunray, Viceroy of the Trade Federation, Schemer of Eriadu, and survivor of Naboo, Geonosis, and now Mustafar itself, would be there to see it through to whatever ending awaited.

A hand settled on his shoulder–weathered fingers that had touched him in friendship and conspiracy for forty-three years.

Rune Haako stood beside him, his own injuries evident in the careful way he held himself. But his eyes were clear, focused on the same hellish vista.

"Time to go, old friend," Rune said quietly.

Nute nodded. Together they limped up the ramp, supporting each other as they'd always done, leaving Mustafar and its horrors behind.

The ramp sealed with a hiss of finality.

The Sheathipede's engines ignited, lifting them toward the ash-choked sky and the fleet waiting beyond.

Their time in hell had passed.

What came next would be their choice to make.

The bridge of the Imperator hummed with controlled chaos as status reports flooded in from every station. Officers moved with practiced efficiency, their voices tense.

Chancellor Palpatine–no, Emperor now, though the title still tasted strange on tongues trained to different forms of address–stood at the viewport, hands clasped behind his back. His face showed nothing. No anger. No frustration. No acknowledgment that the great machine of his design had just suffered its first critical failure.

"Separatist fleet emerging from hyperspace," the sensor officer reported, voice tight. "Multiple capital ships. Providence-class carriers. Lucrehulks. They're moving to establish a blockade."

"Withdrawal vector plotted, your Highness," the navigation officer added. "We can jump before they achieve firing solutions."

The Admiral looked at him with thinly veiled fear.

The Emperor said nothing.

On the viewport before him, Mustafar continued its eternal dance of destruction and creation. Somewhere on that volcanic hell, his apprentice–his weapon, the one with such power, such potential–lay dead.

Skywalker had been perfect. Strong in the Force beyond measure. Driven by fear and love in equal measure, malleable, desperate for guidance and validation. The kind of tool that came along perhaps once in a millennium–raw power waiting to be shaped, refined, wielded against the enemies of the Sith.

And now, gone.

Cut down on some forsaken rock by the last desperate thrust of a dying Order. A final act of defiance before the Jedi were erased from history forever.

Except they weren't erased. Not completely. Not while Kenobi and Yoda still lived. Not while the shutdown codes remained untransmitted, the droid armies intact.

Not while those loose ends remained.

The Emperor's eyes tracked the Separatist fleet as it coalesced around Mustafar like antibodies surrounding an infection. They'd beaten him here. Had somehow anticipated, outmaneuvered, arrived in force while he'd counted on isolation and a quick evacuation.

"Your Highness," the fleet commander prompted carefully. "Your orders?"

For a long moment, the Emperor said nothing. His mind, trained across decades to calculate contingencies upon contingencies, reached for the countermove, the response, the way to turn this setback into advantage.

And found... nothing.

No apprentice to hunt the surviving Jedi. No easy answer to the Separatists. No way to claim a quick, clean victory that would cement his rule in the eyes of the Senate and the people.

Just the slow, grinding war that would continue. The Separatists, wounded but unbowed. The Jedi, scattered but dangerous. The Empire, newborn and already facing enemies on every front.

He felt it then–something he hadn't experienced in so long he'd almost forgotten its shape.

Uncertainty.

"Withdraw from the system," he said, his voice carrying no emotion. "All ships. Immediately."

The orders rippled outward. The fleet began its careful disengagement, maintaining formation as it prepared to jump to hyperspace. On the viewport, Mustafar grew smaller, and with it, the corpse of his greatest gambit.

The Emperor stood alone at the viewport, surrounded by his officers and guards and yet utterly isolated, and felt the dark side shift around him like a coat that no longer quite fit.

He'd built an Empire on certainty. On perfect planning. On foreknowledge gained through visions and schemes decades in the making.

Now, for the first time since Naboo, since the very beginning, he had no apprentice at his side, no clear path to victory, no move that would guarantee the outcome he'd orchestrated for so long.

The stars elongated into hyperspace, and Darth Sidious, Emperor of the Galaxy, Lord of the Sith, discovered what it meant to be without equal.

The Sundered Heart hung in the void between stars, its hull scarred from the escape from Utapau but intact. Through the viewport of the observation deck, distant nebulae painted the darkness in shades of violet and crimson.

Obi-Wan Kenobi stood before that cosmic canvas, his robes still stained with ash and volcanic dust, and felt nothing.

Not triumph. Not relief. Not even grief–not yet. That would come later, in some quiet moment when his mind finally processed what his body had done. What his duty had demanded.

For now, there was just emptiness. The kind that came after a wound so deep the nerves hadn't registered it yet.

Behind him, soft footsteps approached. He didn't turn. Didn't need to.

Master Yoda settled beside him, ancient eyes reflecting the starlight. The diminutive Jedi said nothing, but his presence in the Force was profound–sorrow mixed with understanding mixed with the terrible acceptance of beings who had lived through the death of everything they'd built.

They stood together in silence, master and former student, two of the last guardians of an Order that had burned.

"Felt it, I did," Yoda said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "Across the galaxy, it was felt. A scream. A shadow passing. Then... silence."

Obi-Wan's jaw tightened. He didn't ask what Yoda meant. He knew. Had felt it himself in those final moments on Mustafar–Anakin's presence in the Force, once so bright, so powerful, suddenly... gone. Not dimmed. Not transformed. Simply absent, as if it had never been.

"In mourning, the Force is," Yoda continued. "Twisted, a prophecy is. Balance..." He paused, the Grand Master left searching for words. "A different shape, perhaps. See it clearly, I cannot."

"I didn't want–" Obi-Wan started, then stopped. What was the point? Want had never entered into it.

Only necessity.

Only duty.

Footsteps again–heavier this time. Senator Bail Organa approached with the careful tread of someone entering a sacred space. His face was grave, aged by the last days in ways that years should have been required to accomplish.

"Obi-Wan," Bail said gently. "We need to discuss our next move. The Separatists are regrouping in-system. And we–" He gestured to the ship around them, to the scattered survivors who huddled in its holds. "We're caught between."

Obi-Wan nodded but didn't turn from the viewport. Couldn't. Not yet.

Captain Antilles appeared at Bail's side, datapad in hand. "Senator, the coordinates are plotted. We can jump whenever you give the word."

"Where?" Obi-Wan asked, his voice distant, hollow.

"Polis Massa," Bail replied. "It's remote. Neutral. We can regroup, plan our next steps. Figure out how to survive in this galaxy we no longer recognize."

"Set the course," he said quietly.

Bail nodded to Antilles. The captain moved to the communications panel, relaying orders to the bridge.

A moment later, the ship's engines hummed to life. The stars began their familiar dance–stretching, elongating, becoming lines of light that carried them away from everything that had been, toward everything that would be.

As they jumped to hyperspace, Obi-Wan Kenobi took one last look at the receding starfield and whispered words that only Yoda heard, carried on the Force like a prayer or a confession:

I'm sorry, Anakin. I'm so sorry.

Then the Sundered Heart vanished into the void, carrying its survivors toward an uncertain dawn, leaving behind a galaxy forever changed by the choices made on Mustafar's volcanic shores.

Chapter Text

The jungle breathed.

The undergrowth exhaled moisture in visible clouds as dawn light filtered through the canopy kilometers above. Condensation clung to every surface like a second skin, turning leaves into mirrors and bark into rivulets of running water. The air itself was thick enough to chew, heavy with the rot of fallen giants and the savage resourcefulness of things growing in their place.

This was Kashyyyk's true face.

Not the orderly wroshyr cities where Republic citizens once marveled at Wookiee architecture, but the green hell that existed between the great tree-trunks–layers upon layers of competing ecosystems stacked vertically through a kilometer of vertical forest. Here, vines thick as Neimoidian bridge cables strangled anything that stood still for too long. Insects the size of humans hunted in packs. Fungi glowed with bioluminescence in impossible colors, saying aloud to all that they would kill in mere seconds.

The clones called it the Green.

They'd learned to fear it after the first squads vanished without trace, swallowed by a world that had evolved to kill.

The Empire called it a temporary obstacle.

The droids had learned to call it home.

Something moved through the undergrowth with unnatural silence–a shifting sway of vegetation that slowly flowed around obstacles rather than disturbing them.

No footfalls.

No snapped branches.

Just the subtle displacement of moisture-heavy air and the occasional glint of something being where they shouldn't.

The green specter approached a cliff face that was, in truth, the exposed flank of a wroshyr root the size of a star frigate, its ancient bark weathered smooth by centuries of rain. The "ground" here was meters upon meters of accumulated soil and detritus packed atop the root's horizontal span, creating a natural ridgeline that offered clear sightlines over the valley below.

At the ridge's edge, a figure crouched with predatory stillness. Black fur caught what little speckled light penetrated the canopies, and massive hands cradled a modified E-5 sniper rifle fitted with a scope that looked too large for anything humanoid to use comfortably. Black Krrsantan–a rogue amongst his people–had found a new way to channel his passions. His targets now wore white armor instead of whatever Wookiees had once drawn his attention.

The bush behind him rustled.

Krrsantan's head turned fractionally, ears twitching to track the sound. A low grunt rumbled from his chest–greeting, not challenge. His lips pulled back from his teeth in what might have been a smile.

The specter stopped.

Mechanical fingers–camouflaged beneath woven leaf and vine–reached up to pull back the hood of foliage. Beneath it, the angular features of a Super Tactical droid emerged, photoreceptors gleaming amber in the pre-dawn gloom. Moisture beaded on his mud-painted chassis, making him appear almost organic in the half-light.

General Linwodo regarded his ally with the patient stillness of a predator that had learned the jungle's rhythms.

And then the droid spoke.

"It is time."

Linwodo growled in the tongue of the tree people, the syllables rendered perfectly by a vocabulator that had spent weeks analyzing and mastering Shyriiwook's complex modulations.

The world came alive.

What had seemed like scattered mounds of earth suddenly resolved into B1 battle droids in sniper configurations, their frames wrapped in camouflage so complete that even their photoreceptors were masked. One rose from what had appeared to be a mound of small insects, its rifle emerging from cover like a serpent from its den. Another unfolded from beneath a fallen log, servos whispering as moisture dripped from its concealment. A third had somehow wedged itself into the hollow of a massive fungal bloom, its skeletal frame wedged to mimic the growth's internal structure.

"Requesting foliage pattern upgrade," one B1 whispered softly to another, its voice barely above the ambient sound of dripping water. "My current one attracts insects."

"I think they like me," another whispered to the Wookiee, angling to show a borer beetle the size of a fist that was clinging to its shoulder plate.

Krrsantan's response was a sound like thunder rolling through the canopy, deep and resonant, making the foliage quiver with its force. Linwodo filed the vocalization as an acceptable deviation from stealth protocols–the Wookiee's laughter had proven useful in the past for intimidating clone scouts who survived initial contact.

"Yes," Krrsantan rumbled in Shyriiwook, still grinning. "Long wait. Ready for the hunt."

Linwodo placed a hand on the Wookiee's shoulder–a gesture he'd taken up after watching the Wookiees interact. Then he moved along the ridgeline with footsteps that never quite seemed to land, his weight distributed through calculations that unconsciously accounted for soil density, root structure, and the microscopic give of organic matter.

He'd learned this world.

Adapted to it in ways that would have been impossible for his original programming. The jungle had tried to kill him–twenty-three times by his count, from venomous flora to carnivorous fauna to merely structural collapse. Each attempt had been catalogued, analyzed, integrated into tactical doctrine. Now he moved through the green with the confidence of something that belonged here.

The ridgeline revealed a massive horizontal branch that poked over the drop–what looked to be a wroshyr limb that had grown perpendicular to the root below. Vines wrapped around its surface in intricate patterns… but these vines concealed something that didn't belong to the jungle's natural order.

Linwodo nodded to the droids who materialized before him. They moved to the vine-wrapped canvas and pulled, revealing durasteel beneath the camouflage. Then the woven leaf tarp came up and away like shed skin, exposing the brutal functionality underneath.

A J-1 proton cannon crouched on its squat, half-sunken legs, its barrel pointed toward the valley like the accusing finger of some droid god. Its plating still bore the grooves and scars from an atmospheric entry–burns and blistered paint that showed what it meant to survive upon a falling star. Condensation beaded on its large red photoreceptors, making the weapon appear to weep.

Linwodo ran his hand along its flank with something approaching reverence.

"Thank you for your patience," he said quietly.

The cannon chirped–not in basic but in its own machine language, the rapid-fire communication protocol used by ship-mounted weapons. Linwodo understood it perfectly, having spent weeks interfacing with Free Dac gun crews to learn their unique dialect.

'Time?' the cannon asked eagerly, its targeting systems already beginning pre-firing calculations. 'Finally time?'

"Soon." Linwodo moved to the cannon's side platform as two B1s emerged from concealment and began loading procedures. Their movements were practiced, efficient–they'd drilled this sequence two hundred times in the past week. "Surge, have you run the calculations?"

'Yes. Yes!' The cannon's enthusiasm translated through fluctuations in its internal mechanisms, making it bob slightly. 'One thousand three hundred forty-three iterations.' The canon listed off variables excitedly. 'Wind variance. Humidity gradient. Planetary rotation. Target coordinates locked!'

"Do you remember your ship?"

The cannon's response was immediate, tinged with something that shouldn't exist in machine code but did anyway–pride mixed with grief.

'Rogue Wave. Providence-class. Captain Saan commanding. We held the line at Ryloth. At Felucia. At–' It paused, processors cycling through memories. 'We fell here. Atmospheric breach. Hull failure. Controlled descent. Captain once said to 'make it count."

'…I will make them count.'

Somewhere high above, beyond the stifling atmospheric envelope, where the green hell finally surrendered to vacuum, Senator Toora's Defiance's Banner was bleeding the Imperial blockade in ways the Empire couldn't counter. Another raid on a supply convoy. Another vital shipment denied. Another day bought for the resistance below through stubbornness and calculated recklessness. Linwodo had never met Toora personally–their coordination happened through encrypted bursts and dead drops–but he'd filed her tactics as audacious and effective.

She kept the Empire's attention divided.

That division kept his forces alive.

"Do this for your home," Linwodo said, climbing over and into Surge's side platform. His hand idly found the cannon's targeting interface. Then he made a minute adjustment–point-zero-zero-three degrees, accounting for a wind shear he'd observed developing over the past hour. "For the Rogue Wave. For all the ships that sank so we could rise."

Every droid in the clearing seemed to lean forward. The B1s finished their loading sequence, standing at attention. Krrsantan's breathing slowed, becoming the measured rhythm of a predator about to strike. Even the jungle seemed to hold its breath, insects falling silent, leaves ceasing their endless drip.

Linwodo's hand found the firing stud.

"Surge," he said. "Light them up."

The cannon roared in agreement.

The first shot erupted from the barrel with a crack that shattered the morning's tenuous peace. The recoil shook the entire branch, sending cascades of accumulated moisture flying in every direction. Condensation that had gathered over hours of waiting–on leaves, on bark, on Linwodo's own chassis–exploded outward in a sudden deluge, creating the illusion of rain falling up as much as down. Foliage blew outward from the blast, causing leafy cloaks to flutter in the forced breeze.

The forest screamed its response before them. Birds and bugs and flying things erupted from the valley below–-thousands of them, tens of thousands, flocks, swarms, packs and plumes that had been invisible in the green suddenly taking flight in panic, forming an ever-shifting riot of color. The beat of their wings created a susurrus like rushing water, a static counter-melody to the sudden thunder.

Not a single droid flinched.

Instead, the B1s worked with mechanical precision, cycling the next shot into the chamber while Surge's targeting systems made microscopic adjustments.

The second shot followed three seconds later.

Then the third.

Then the fourth.

Each one a crimson streak that arced up and over the distant hills, disappearing beyond sight but not beyond calculation.

Walking barrage, Linwodo's tactical processors noted with satisfaction, as he descended from Surge's side.. Six meters between impacts. Advancing horizontally toward primary target zone. Enemy will have twenty-two seconds to recognize pattern.

And Insufficient time to evacuate.

Surge fired again and again, its entire frame shuddering with each discharge. The J-1 had run these calculations for a week without pause, ever since its salvage from the Rogue Wave's fallen wreckage. Every atmospheric variable. Every potential target. Every angle that would let it strike back at the beings who'd killed its ship, its home amongst the stars.

The fifteenth shot thundered out.

The B1s immediately began re-covering the weapon, working with the desperate speed of beings who knew that counter-patrols would be inbound. Woven tarps fell back into place. Vines were repositioned. Within forty seconds, the cannon would be invisible again–just another irregularity in the jungle's chaotic geometry.

As shadow and shroud fell across Surge's photoreceptors, the J-1 transmitted one final burst for all to hear:

'The wave crests!'

An old saying from when they'd traded broadsides in space, ship-to-ship, when battles were measured in the clean mathematics of orbital mechanics rather than the messy reality of jungle warfare.

But it still held meaning.

Still carried the weight of Defiance.

Linwodo clicked an indicator on his wrist.

The attack would proceed on schedule.

The strike teams were already moving through the undergrowth, converging on the Imperial power stations that kept their carved routes in the jungle operational, that kept them possible. Without those generators, the clones' advantage in the air would mean nothing.

The jungle would reclaim their feeble channels like the pretensions they were.

Satisfied, Linwodo pulled his hood of woven foliage back into place. The camouflage settled around him like a second skin, transforming him from droid General, back into anonymous vegetation. His photoreceptors fell into shadow and dimmed, barely visible beneath layers of carefully arranged leaves.

His forces saluted him, Defiance on their minds.

And then Linwodo, satisfied, stepped backward into the foliage and simply vanished.

The green hell swallowed him without trace.

On the ridge, Krrsantan resumed his position, scope ranged for the inevitable clone recon elements. The sniper droids folded back into their concealment with the patience of predators that measured time in days rather than minutes.

And somewhere in the forest beyond, crimson death was already falling on beings who'd thought they were safe behind their perimeters, their training, their sensors, their biological resolve.

They were slowly learning otherwise.

One bloody lesson at a time.

Chapter Text

The grass was soft beneath her back, each blade tickling her bare arms where the yellow sundress left them exposed. Padmé lay sprawled on the hillside, one hand behind her head, the other resting on the warm metal of the subspace transceiver beside her. Above, the sky was brilliantly, impossibly blue.

It was the kind of blue that existed only on Naboo, clean and endless and free.

But on the horizon, the storm waited.

She could see it clearly from here, miles away across the rolling green hills. A single dark mass, ponderous and inevitable, its edges crisp against the perfect sky. Beneath it, the world disappeared into grey uniformity—rain, she knew, though from this distance it looked like fog, like smoke, like the world itself being slowly erased. Every few seconds, lightning would fork through the cloud, brilliant veins of light that pulsed and vanished.

Beautiful, silent.

Too far away for thunder.

She was young, then. Old enough to understand politics, young enough to believe it could be simple.

The transceiver crackled beside her, voices emerging from the speaker in that tinny, compressed way of long-distance broadcasts.

".....strong opposition from the Trade Federation and the Commerce Guild," the announcer was saying, his Theed accent crisp and professional. "Chancellor Valorum's Proposition 31-814D would impose new taxes on trade routes through the Mid and Outer Rim territories, with the stated goal of funding infrastructure development in underserved systems....."

"A noble goal," a second voice interrupted, female and skeptical, "but one that's sparked considerable uproar among the major galactic corporations. Senator Lott Dod of the Trade Federation has called it 'economic overreach,' while...."

Padmé let the voices wash over her, only half-listening. She'd read the full text of the bill already, had discussed it with her tutors, had formed her own opinions about trade route taxation and corporate influence and the perpetual tension between the Core and the Rim. It all seemed so straightforward on paper. Tax the wealthy corporations, help the struggling systems. Why would anyone oppose that?

Because it's never that simple, her political instructor had said. Because power protects power. Because change frightens people, even beneficial change.

She didn't fully understand it then. Didn't grasp the complexity, the compromises, the thousand invisible threads that bound every decision to a dozen others. Didn't know that Proposition 31-814D would fail in its stated purpose, that Valorum would be left politically destitute, that the Trade Federation would grow bolder, that everything she was listening to would cascade toward blockades and invasions and war.

She was just a girl on a hillside, watching a distant storm and listening to the galaxy turn.

Lightning forked again, brilliant and silent. The storm crept closer, perhaps a degree nearer on the horizon. In an hour, maybe two, it would reach her. She would have to gather her things, return to the city, take shelter. The rain would come, as rain always did.

But for now, there was only the grass and the sun and the distant, beautiful violence of the approaching storm.

She closed her eyes and let the voices from Theed Station fade into background noise, their endless debate becoming just another sound, like the wind through the grass or the distant call of birds she couldn't name.

The storm would arrive when it arrived.

There was nothing to be done but watch it come.

...

...

...

High above the city-planet of Coruscant, in the thin atmospheric layers where the towers finally ended and sky began, the weather stations activated.

They were ancient structures, most of them, built into the superstructure of Coruscant itself during its transformation from world to ecumenopolis. Massive cylindrical installations that jutted from the upper reaches of the planet-city like the fingers of a buried giant, reaching toward space. Inside each, compressed moisture reserves, harvested from recycled water, atmospheric condensation, even imported ice from the systems asteroids, waited in pressurized tanks.

At 0437 hours local time, Sector 7-Alpha's primary seeding station received its automated command. Weather parameters indicated optimal conditions for precipitation. Reservoir levels were sufficient. Air quality indexes suggested particulate cleansing was Possible, if early.

A nudge and it activated.

Permission granted.

Commence seeding protocol.

The station groaned, its machinery waking from dormancy. Pumps engaged. Valves opened. And from ports along the station's upper reaches, great columns of moisture erupted into the atmosphere. These laminar masses of dense vapor billowed upward and outward, catching the pre-dawn light in shades of grey and pearl.

Other stations joined the chorus. Sector 2-Beta. Sector 8-Prime. Sector 6-Tertiary. All across this part of the planet, moisture plumes rose like pillars supporting an invisible ceiling, spreading and merging as they climbed, forming a ceiling of grey that began to blot out the stars.

Pump.

Pump.

Pump.

Ominous towers of perfect, smoky grey churned and churned, impossibly dark with a purpose that needed shaping.

For this moisture alone wouldn't make rain.

Not without help.

The atmospheric drones launched at 0442 hours. There were thousands of them, small and nimble, their repulsorlifts humming as they rose through the artificial clouds. Each carried a payload of nucleation pods, crystalline structures designed to give the moisture something to cling to, something to condense around. The drones wove through the billowing grey in precise patterns, dropping their cargo like seeds in a field.

And the clouds grew.

It was unsettling how quickly it happened, how unnatural. One moment, scattered plumes of vapor. The next, a roiling mass that spread across kilometers, darkening as it thickened, taking on weight and substance. The nucleation pods did their work invisibly, each one becoming the heart of countless water droplets that clustered and merged and grew heavy with themselves.

Artificial winds rose, generated by thermal differential stations that heated some areas and cooled others, creating pressure gradients that pulled the clouds exactly where they needed to go. The whole system worked in concert, the moisture stations and drones and shields and thermal generators, all of them orchestrating precipitation with mechanical precision.

By 0500 hours, the clouds hung heavy over the Senate District, dark and pregnant with rain. Lightning already flickered within them, the natural consequence of static buildup seeking ground -- artificial or not. The first drops began to fall at 0507 hours, fat and heavy, splattering against the endless artificiality of Coruscant's surface.

Within minutes, the drizzle became a downpour.

Rain hammered the city-planet, washing away the accumulated grime of a trillion lives, filling the drainage systems, feeding back into the great recycling infrastructure that would purify it and store it and, eventually, pump it back into the weather stations to begin the cycle again.

You could almost believe it was all natural, unplanned.

Almost.

But not quite.

...

...

...


The rain fell in endless sheets.

Senior Senator Padmé Amidala stood before the transparisteel window of her apartment, her gilded cage, watching on as the storm coated Coruscant in curtains of endless grey. Droplets raced each other down the glass, tiny rivulets catching the muted light of the overcast sky. Beyond, the cityscape was obscured by the deluge, the endless towers reduced to dark silhouettes that pierced the weeping clouds.

She had seen this storm coming days ago. Not this one specifically, but the storm. The one that had been gathering on the horizon since the moment Palpatine's face had twisted into something unrecognizable, since the moment she had felt something fundamental break in the galaxy.

It reminded her of Naboo.

Of sitting on the green rolling hills with a transceiver beside her, watching a storm crawl across the plains.

She had been younger then.

Freer.

The storm had been beautiful in its distance, something to be admired rather than endured. She had watched lightning fork across the sky and felt only wonder.

Now the storm was here.

Now she stood at its very center.

"Padmé."

The voice was quiet, almost hesitant.

Padmé turned from the window to find Ahsoka Tano sitting on her bed, cradling one of the twins while the other slept in the bassinet beside her. The young Togruta looked exhausted, her orange skin pale, her montrals bearing scars Padmé didn't remember from before. But her eyes were still sharp, still alive with that fierce spirit that Padmé remembered from their very first meeting.

"Ahsoka." Padmé moved away from the window, lowering herself carefully into the chair beside the bed. Her body still ached from the labor, a constant reminder of what she had nearly lost.

"Thank you for coming."

"I shouldn't be here," Ahsoka said, but there was no conviction in it. "Being on Coruscant right now is asking for...."

"I know." Padmé reached out, placing a hand on Ahsoka's knee. "And I am sorry. I just… I need your help. I will not hold you long."

Ahsoka gave a small smile as she looked at the infant in her arms, and then looked up at Padmé with that same warmth.

"It was worth staying, to see them."

For a moment, they simply sat in silence, the only sound the rain drumming against the window and the soft breathing of the twins. Little Luke stirred in the bassinet, making a small noise before settling again. Leia, in Ahsoka's arms, gazed back at the Togruta with wide, observant eyes–as if taking everything in.

Padmé leaned over, and ran her hand through little Leia's wispy hair.

For a moment, neither dared to confront the moment.

And then Padmé spoke.

"Do you think he's alive?" She heard herself ask. The words came out smaller than she intended.

Ahsoka's expression flickered—pain, grief, something harder to name. "I don't… I don't know. What do you think? You spoke to him last."

Padmé closed her eyes.

She had been asking herself that question since the moment she emerged from her hours of labor, when she had felt a terrible absence in a place she hadn't known existed until it was empty.

It wasn't something she could explain, wasn't something that made sense in words.

But she knew.

"No," she admitted with a whisper. "I don't think he is."

She couldn't say how she knew.

Couldn't explain the certainty that had settled in her chest like a stone. The galaxy had whispered it to her in a language without words, and she had understood. Anakin Skywalker—her Anakin, the man who had loved her with a desperation that frightened them both—was gone.

But a galaxy without him, she didn't dare yet imagine.

"I'm sorry," Ahsoka said, and her voice broke on the words. "Padmé, I'm so sorry. I should have—I should have seen—"

"Don't." Padmé opened her eyes, reaching out to take Ahsoka's hand. "Don't do that to yourself. Neither of us saw this coming. Neither of us could have stopped it if we had."

Could we have?

That question haunted her now more than ever, as she looked at the beautiful children that he had left in his wake.

It had haunted her last night, when she had replayed every conversation, every moment, searching for the signs she must have missed before he departed the last time. When had Anakin started to fall? When had the darkness begun to take root? And why hadn't she seen it?

Why did she never admit it to herself?

Because she had been too close.

Because love made you blind.

Leia gurgled, a soft sound that drew both women's attention. The baby's eyes were so dark, so knowing.

Padmé felt her heart clench.

"He knew about them, didn't he?" Ahsoka's voice was careful. "Before... everything."

"Yes." Padmé's throat tightened. "He had dreams. Visions, he called them. He was so afraid I would die bringing them into the world."

"The Force doesn't always show the truth," Ahsoka said quietly. "Sometimes it shows us our fears."

And sometimes our fears come true.

Padmé had died, in a way.

The woman who had sat on those Naboo hills, who had believed the Republic could be saved through words and reason—that woman was gone.

What remained was harder. Colder.

Born in pain and loss and the ruins of everything she had fought to protect.

"Palpatine will want them," Ahsoka said, and now her voice carried an edge of durasteel. "Or he'll want to hurt them. Padmé, I still do not know what is going on—what Anakin was involved in, what he might have done. But if Palpatine knows they're his children—"

"I know." Padmé stood, moving to the bassinet to look down at Luke. His tiny fist was curled against his cheek, his face peaceful in sleep.

So small. So innocent.

"That's why you have to take them. Both of them. Today."

"I will," Ahsoka promised. "I swear it. They'll be safe. I will find what is left of the Order," the Togruta frowned in determination, "I will find Obi Wan, beginning with where Bail left him."

The words should have been a comfort. But Ahsoka's frown only showed her age, so young still, despite her time at war. Instead, the words felt like the death of innocence, for none could be shielded now.

And yet, Padmé had made her choice. She could not fight for the galaxy and protect her children—not here, not now. She could only hope that keeping them away would keep them alive.

A soft knock broke the quiet.

"Padmé?"

Jar Jar's voice was gentler than she remembered—still lilting with its native cadence, but low, careful, as though even he feared to disturb what lingered in the air.

Ahsoka stiffened. In one swift motion she slipped into the shadowed alcove between the bed and the wall; by the time the door slid open, she was gone, the faint shimmer of the Force closing behind her like a curtain.

The Junior Senator stood in the doorway, water blotching his mottled robes. His long ears hung limp, plastered to his neck, and his great amber eyes held a mournful gravity that was rare for for them, for him.

"Yousa time comin', Padmé," he murmured. "Da otha senators, dey's waitin'. Storm or no storm."

"Thank you, Jar Jar." Her tone was warm but steady.

He nodded once, awkwardly, and stepped aside.

Padmé turned to where Ahsoka had been—only the soft sway of the drapes betrayed her passing.

The bassinet was empty.

The twins were gone.

Good.

Then she drew a long, deliberate breath and stepped into the corridor.

And what greeted her was a living room in turmoil.

Voices clashed and overlapped; datapads glowed through the dim light; rain-dark guards crowded the entryways.

Every breath carried the smell of ozone and wet metal.

Naboo guards, her guards, in their deep burgundy stood at attention near the windows, their helmets slicked with rain. Captain Gregar Typho stood at their center, barking out orders over a rain-swept holoprojector. His hand swept in dramatic arcs, over the shimmering blue depiction of the Coruscanti Senate district.

Alderaan security forces, their armor styled with their signature hats, walked over to the Nabooans with Captain Raymus Antilles at their center. The young captain's face was grim, his hand resting on his blaster as he cleared his throat to Typho.

"We should move them in armored speeders," he said. "You're seeing the same reports I am. On foot we won't reach the plaza intact."

Typho's eye flicked up from the projection. "Speeders make us targets. We march. That's her way."

Captain Ric Olie, representing the Nabooan pilots amongst them, snorted. "Then give me clearance to put two J-types in the air. A squadron of fighters to match. If she's to walk through hell, Let me fly over it. Through it, if needs be."

"And paint a target on her head while you're at it?" Typho's tone was dry, fatalistic. "No. We walk."

Near the far wall, Fang Zar was shouting over the hum of a commlink. Bana Breemu, newly freed from the chaos of the last two days, sat wrapped in a borrowed cloak, her hands still trembling. Riyo Chuchi stood with her own guards at the edge of the throng, the embroidery of their Pantoran cloaks glittering faintly under the overhead light.

In that moment, Captain Typho ran a hand through his hair, affixed his Captain's hat, and strode over to the Senior Senator of Alderaan.

"—at least three more checkpoints between here and the Senate," She heard him say, his single eye sweeping the room. "The clones are nervous. They're still not opening fire, but they're not backing down either."

"They won't fire on senators," Bail said, but he didn't sound convinced. The Alderaanian looked years older than he had just days ago, new lines etched around his eyes. "Not without direct orders."

"And if those orders come?" Mon Mothma's voice trembled slightly. The Chandrilan senator stood with her arms wrapped around herself, her usually perfect composure fractured. Padmé knew she had only been released from detention hours ago, released through Padmé's own pressure and connections.

The experience had clearly left its mark.

"Then we adapt!" came a new voice, harder and more confident. Senator Garm Bel Iblis of Corellia stormed in from the apartment's entrance. He looked every inch the soldier-senator now, grim, broad-shouldered, the veins in his neck taut with anger. "We've talked this to death already. If we don't move now, there won't be a Senate left to defend."

"It may be suicide," Mon retorted, her composure beginning to splinter. "You never listen, Garm. You think everything can be solved by marching forward, blaster in hand, but this isn't Corellia. It's Coruscant. You can't—"

He laughed, a harsh, tired sound that cut through the din. "No, and it isn't Chandrilla either, thank the stars. On Corellia we still know what it means to stand our ground."

"That's enough," Bail said, stepping between them. "We've all said our piece a dozen times over. None of this–"

"Master Amidala! Oh Master Amidala!" C-3PO's familiar voice cut through the tension. "Oh my, this is all so dreadfully concerning! R2, do tell them that—"

R2-D2's responding whistle was sharp enough to cut the protocol droid off mid-sentence. Despite everything, Padmé felt the corner of her mouth twitch.

Some things, at least, remained constant.

Padmé stood framed in the doorway for a moment, listening. The air itself seemed swollen with voices, the distant thunder rumbling like footsteps through the floor. It rolled down the avenues outside, growling between towers, echoing through the Senate District as though the planet were clearing its throat.

When she stepped forward, the crowd shifted as one. Conversations broke. Even the holograms flickered uncertainly, as though aware of her presence.

Two of her staff moved first, Sabé and Saché crossing swiftly to her side. Yané, Saché's wife, followed close behind, her cloak dark with rainwater.

"Padmé," Sabé said with gentle firmness. "You should be resting. You only just—"

"I've been lying down long enough," Padmé said softly. The pain was there, it would be there for days yet, but it was distant somehow.

Manageable.

There were greater pains to endure now.

She met Sabé's eyes, conveying with a look what she couldn't say aloud: The children are safe.

Sabé touched her arm, soft but firm, her eyes flicking toward the inner corridor where the nursery lay. A brief, silent exchange: They will see to it. The children will be taken below.

Padmé gave the smallest nod.

And then turned to face the assembled Senators.

"Padmé," Bail began, stepping forward, his voice low but thick with fatigue. "Please, I am begging you, reconsider. We have been through this... there are still other ways to—"

"To what?" Padmé's tone was not sharp, but it cut cleanly through the noise. "To send another letter to the Emperor's office? To beg for leniency from the same man who orchestrated the arrests? Sixty-three senators, Bail. Sixty-three. You and Mon. Taken in daylight. For the crime of asking when he intended to honor his own promise and step down."

Her words were calm, but they impacted the assembled like a hammer blow.

"She's right," Bel Iblis said, moving to join them. He was still dripping water, the runoff of the assembled forming smears of grime on the polished marble. "The Petition of 2000 was well within your rights as senators. Kriff, I would join the petition right now, if I could. And his response was to call it treason. The man doesn't need more of our courtesies. He needs to see our defiance."

"Defiance," Mon Mothma repeated, her voice trembling but her eyes cold. "And when that defiance brings a Grand Army to our doors? When my people burn next? Tell me, Garm, will your blaster rhetoric rebuild my world when it falls? When it turns us all into Separatists?"

Garm's head snapped toward her, jaw tight. "And what would you do, Mon? Hide behind procedure until there is none left? Wait to speak while he signs away every liberty we ever had? Perhaps Separatism…" Thunder shook the foundations of the apartment complex with the rumble of artillery, as blinding flashes of light haunted the Corellian's visage.

"…is better than humility under Empire."

Mon shook her head with an intense sorrow. "We are senators," she countered. "We use the system. We do not storm it."

But Garm's words stuck with them all.

"Enough." Bail raised a hand, though his voice carried little authority anymore. "We have all said these things before. You two will keep saying them until the end of days. Today? It changes nothing. The question is no longer whether she should speak, but whether we can afford the cost of it."

The silence that followed was taut.

Padme's eyes swept over the gathered faces, settling on Organa's .You're speaking as though this hasn't already cost us everything."

Bana Breemu stirred from her position amongst the furniture, her voice small but clear. "She's right. I would not be here today if it weren't for the good Captain Typho and his men," she gestured toward the Nabooan guards,"Senate Intelligence came for me with chains, not summonses. Chains."

Senator Zar muttered from nearby, "They had 2000 arrests on their list, one for every name. Perhaps even that list grows ever higher, hour by hour."

"They call it a 'chance to reinforce loyalties'," Riyo Chuchi said softly, her tone deliberate, almost ceremonial. "That word… 'loyalty'... when did it become so muddled?"

Another growl of thunder, and flickers of alien light.

Bel Iblis crossed his arms. "See? Even the young ones understand. There is no system left to appeal to."

Mon exhaled, exasperated. "And so what? Corellia secedes? Would you so quickly turn to chaos? All of you?" The Chandrillan cast her pleading gaze across the apartment. "The Emperor casts a long shadow, but so will our actions on this day. Shall Senator Amidala lose her life to the man? The leviathan? Lose it all for a single, impassioned speech?"

The room stilled.

Bail seemed to deflate, turning to his longtime friend and ally. "Padmé, you know Mon's counsel is wise, for all that I know it will not convince you otherwise. But the clones are already on edge, and with the press there? I sent word, but if this all goes terribly wrong—"

"If?" Fang Zar interrupted. "There is no 'if' left. The moment she steps outside, the Empire will know we are not cowed to their liking…"

"And that is exactly what worries mem" Bail said, his anxiety and patience unraveling now, replaced by quiet dread. "I have the same reports you do, that the Emperor is… elsewhere… for now. But do you think he will simply let this play out? That Palpatine will watch her take to the Senate steps and not make her an example? I… I contacted our fellow Senators… I contacted the Admiral… however…" Bail Organa, Senator of Alderaan, looked more frayed than he had at any point in his service to the greater galaxy.

"He might tear it all down," Bel Iblis said grimly, "but we need to have faith in our numbers, in our peoples, or we are nothing.

"All bravado," Mon chuckled grimly. "Corellian bravado."

"We must march."

All heads turned to Padmé at last.

Her voice softened, but the weariness in it only made it stronger. "We've spent hours debating the same circle. How to move, how to speak, how not to offend the very power that destroys us. I'm done asking permission. You may think it madness, but the galaxy needs to see that the Senate can still stand upright."

Bel Iblis inclined his head slightly, almost in salute. "Now she sounds like a Corellian."

Padmé almost smiled. "You'd call that a compliment."

"High praise," he said, though the humor was bitter.

Mon's arms tightened across her chest. "And when the clones open fire? When your defiance ends with blood on the Senate steps?"

"We outnumber them with our sector guards alone. With the Senate guard… or at least without any other element of the Imperial army, we…"

Padmé then shook her head. "If we all fall, then let the rain wash it away. At least it will mean we tried."

And to that, even Mon could not find a reply. She had a family now, a precious daughter. But the Nabooan, the Senator from Chommel, that firebrand and voice of Senate reason? She was right.

The Chandrillan stood down. "I have said my peace and will march with you. May the Force remember my words."

Padmé turned once more to Senator Organa. "Bail?"

His expression softened, and the argument ended. "I contacted my connections in the Admiralty. All of the news agencies worth their licences. Every Senator on planet. I have done my part, because I believe in you, despite my fears." He gave her a warm look. "I will be right behind you."

Captain Olie walked over and handed Padmé her cloak. She drew it around her shoulders and stepped to the front of the group. "Captain?"

Captain Typho nodded. "As ready as we will ever be, Senator."

She nodded back. "Then it is time."

The thunder murmured its assent.

…

The rain outside was relentless.

From the high windows of the Senate Apartments, the storm blurred the city into a single trembling mass of light and shadow. The sound of it was everywhere–on the glass, on the duracrete, on the armor of the soldiers below.

Rivulets of water shot down in torrents across the skyscrapers, the sheen of the deluge acting as mirrors that showed the city neverending. So too did these mirrors reflect light–lots of it, as lightning from above cracked on the highest points. That light illuminated the distance, where a smoking temple dominated.

A LAAT gunship swept past, low and heavy, its floodlights cutting through the downpour without mercy. Its turbines roared like a beast in pain as it banked toward the Temple, joining other lights circling the ruins.

Down below, the storm broke in sheets across the Senate District. Floodlights flashed intermittently through the murk. The air stank of ozone and lubricants, of rain striking hot metal. Boots splashed through puddles, and voices rose in agitation.

Clone Commander CC-5869, "Stone" to those who knew him, stood beneath a dripping awning and watched the Senate Apartments through the storm. The red paint of his Coruscant Guard armor ran in glistening trails down his chestplate, like blood washing into the street he stood on.

He had fought across half of the galaxy, and had seen more battlefields than any man had a right to survive. But this… this was different.

This was not a warzone.

This was the Senate District.

Though… it now looked like one.

Shock troops were spread thin along hastily erected barricades, their pauldrons darkened to a maroon by the rain. Opposite to them was a gathered opposition–sectoral guards that had been gathering all day into swelling numbers, barreling toward some critical mass.

Stone recognized the cut of their cloths, the types in their armors. Many had been studied as far back as Kamino. Nabooans stood rank in file next to Anderaanians and Corellians, and a smattering of others from countless other sectors. Reinforcements were arriving by the minute, carrying banners that blurred into waving wet nothingness beneath the deluge.

Their individual standards mattered little. They were one, organized, an opposition.

A trooper approached, water pouring down his helmet and off with laminar flow. "Sir… new arrivals. At least three companies worth; We spotted chrome ships–Nabooans–they landed a click away.

Stone didn't answer immediately. He looked past the trooper to the glow of the apartments above, their high windows like embers behind sheets of rain. He saw shadows behind transparisteel, and wondered which one was Senator Amidala.

He exhaled slowly, his breath fogging the inside of his helmet slightly. "Maintain formation. Nobody fire unless fired upon."

"Sir, Commander Fox's orders were clear. Detain all members of—"

"Fox is dead," Stone interrupted. The words came out flatter than he expected. "Killed at the Temple an hour ago. That leaves me in command."

The trooper stiffened. "Sir… confirmed?"

"Confirmed"

Lightning cracked across the skyline, and the temple loomed large for an instant. Its spires were charred, and its wounds curled upward into the heavens. Every now and then, sounds of fighting could be heard from that direction, easy to mistake for thunder, but not to a trained ear. They were the echoes of a war refusing to die.

"Commander Thire?" The lieutenant ventured after a long pause.

"Off-world," Stone replied. "Accompanying the Emperor. No reinforcements coming from him either. The 332nd, because I know you will ask, told me they are still repairing their blasted comms. And even if they weren't… Rex has gone quiet."

That left perhaps two dozen men, maybe thirty at best, to contain what was fast becoming a 'military parade' of planetary guards and senators.

Stone looked down the length of the boulevard. The clones had built what they could from transport crates and riot shields, but even now, the soldiers behind it were shifting uneasily. The glowing lights from their visors and headlamps flickered in the rain.

Across from them the volume rose as the new additions joined their assembled brethren. Boots drummed softly in a rhythm as the assembled Nabooans formed forward ranks–men and women in burgundy armor, visors down, their rifles slung or holstered but visible. Behind them the Alderaanians were setting up portable shields, the kind used in defensive urban operations. The Corellians… they weren't bothering with any of that. They looked to be rallying the misfits, blasters slung over their shoulders in a way that promised trouble.

This was no protest.

This was a front line.

Stone keyed his comms. "Command, this is CC-5869 requesting immediate reinforcements. The situation is escalating. Potential hostilities… over."

Static filled the line. Then a clipped voice answered. "Negative, Commander. Temple operation still active with heavy losses. Jedi arrivals continue… All of our forces are committed."

Stone's jaw tightened. "Who is in command?"

The clone on the other end did not answer for a moment. Then, "We are following Commander Fox's last orders… sir."

Stone swore under his breath. "Understood… trooper."

This is what loyalty looks like. He thought. Mud and orders and no answers.

The channel went dead.

The rain softened for a heartbeat, the kind of lull that precedes the breaking of the sky. The thunder rolled low, rumbling through the duracrete under Stone's boots.

And then the doors opened.

The first figure emerged—small, unarmored, unflinching. Burgundy gown, rain like tears against her drawn face.

Padmé Amidala.

Stone's hands flexed around his DC-15.

And he sent a small prayer out for none to hear.

…

Captain Panaka had seen many things in his years of service. He had defended Queen Amidala during the Trade Federation invasion. He had fought in the Battle of Naboo. He had watched as the gentle young queen transformed into a formidable senator.

But he had never seen her like this.

Padmé Amidala emerged from the Senate Apartments in a gown of deep burgundy, the color of her homeworld.

Of a scar.

She carried no umbrella.

The rain struck her immediately, plastering her hair to her face, but she didn't flinch. She simply stood at the top of the steps, surveying the scene before her with an expression of absolute calm.

Her cloak quickly became plastered to her frame, turning the fine fabric heavy as sorrow.

Panaka had only just arrived, having landed with his reinforcements nearby. Altogether, Naboo was bringing nearly her entire force to bear, a force he had personally trained and had overseen for his entire length of service.

When word had reached Theed that the Senator's Delegation had been targeted for mass arrest, the Queen Apailana had wasted no time expressing her outrage. She had ordered him to Coruscant personally, granting him the provisional rank of General for the purpose of protecting Naboo's interests.

One small thought snaked around his mind, though he would never voice it.

Moff outranked General.

His mind returned to the present, as he fastened his cap to shield from the rain.

"Your orders, Senator?" he asked, moving to her side.

Padmé turned toward him. Her eyes were calm–not defiant, not reckless, simply decided. "Captain-General, it is good to see you. We march," she announced. "To the Senate."

Behind her, a new storm broke.

Senators began to emerge from the apartments like exiles from a collapsing empire, pouring outward from the complex and into the rain with varying states of worry or consternation.

Panaka counted as best he could–a hundred, perhaps more–before he stopped. The numbers no longer mattered.

The idea of them did.

"Captain Antilles," he called. "Form the corridor."

Antilles was already moving, his voice ringing out through the commline. "Alderaan Guard! Advance! Form ranks! Single file!"

"Captain Typho,"

"Understood, General. Naboo! With your Senator!"

The Naboo moved with practiced precision, armor shining under the rain. They took their place on the steps, forming a living channel of burgundy and brown that began to extend in the direction of the distant Senate Rotunda. The Alderaanians fell in beside them, their movements quieter but no less resolute. Corellians joined from the flanks.

Other planetary guards filled in wherever there was space, their banners drooping under the rain.

Panaka stood at the front, his gloved hand resting on the hilt of his blaster though he prayed to every god of Naboo that he would not need it. "Hold your lines," he said quietly into his comm. "Do not fire unless fired upon."

The air felt thick, alive with static. Across from them, the clone shock troopers watched from behind their barricades. They looked like faceless red and white phantoms, their blasters held low but ready.

The commander stood among them, rain running down the dagger red of his armor, his stance unyielding.

Stone.

Padmé's eyes found him at once.

"Commander," she said, her voice carrying even through the storm. "It has been some time."

The clone inclined his head almost imperceptibly. "Senator Amidala." His tone was neutral, but Panaka caught it–the faint ripple beneath the steel.

He knew her.

"You served once under Representative Binks, on Florrum," she said. "You fought alongside a company of Gungan volunteers. You saved my people... I will never forget that report."

Stone said nothing, but the faintest shift of his helmet betrayed something nearly imperceptible, be it recognition, or discomfort.

"Tell me," Padmé continued, "does that man still live inside that armor? The hero of the Republic?"

The rain answered first, hissing as it hit the makeshift barricades.

"Our orders are to maintain perimeter," Stone said at last. "No senators are to leave the premises."

Padmé took a single step forward. "And what are my orders, Commander? To stay silent while my colleagues rot in cells? To pretend the Senate is not in session?"

"You are to remain within the apartments until further clearance from Imperial Command."

"The Senate," she said, "remains under its own authority until dissolved by law. I have received no such decree."

The words cut through the storm like lightning. For a heartbeat, even the thunder seemed to hesitate.

"Stand down," she said, her voice rising now, the strength of the orator surfacing from beneath the grief. "Stand down, and let us pass. We go not to riot, not to rebel, but to meet as senators. The Senate is in session, Commander. We go to its steps."

The nearest shock troopers shifted slightly, the faint scrape of plastoid boots against wet stone.

From behind Padmé, the murmurs of the watching senators grew louder. Thosearranged nearby, those who had answered the summons, began to move. A few at first, nothing more than a cautious ripple–then more.

The words had reached them.

The Senate was in session.

They joined the march.

Hundreds now, their umbrellas tilting aside, their cloaks dragging through the water. They came down the steps, falling into ranks behind Padmé's vanguard.

Panaka felt the ground tremble as they moved, the thunder above echoing their steps.

Stone's hand tightened on his rifle.

For a terrible moment, it seemed the world would split in two. That it would be clone against senator, blood red against burgundy cloak.

But when the first line of sector guards pressed forward, the clones did not fire. They yielded ground, step by slow step, their boots splashing backward into the flooded street.

A tactical retreat, Stone would tell himself.

Not disobedience.

Not hesitation.

Still, Padmé saw the flicker in his visor. She inclined her head ever so slightly, as if acknowledging an old comrade's mercy.

"Thank you, Commander," she said quietly.

The two lines moved together now. It became an awkward dance, clones shadowing the senators, matching their pace in uneasy harmony.

Panaka exhaled for the first time in minutes. "Keep it steady," he murmured.

Above them, holocameras whirred to life, their lenses blinking like curious eyes. Citizens leaned over balconies and skybridges, whispering. The word spread like fire in the rain.

That the Senate was marching.

Padmé raised her head toward the storm, her eyes fixed on the distant glow of the Senate Rotunda. Lightning illuminated her face, resolute and solemn.

"Forward," she said.

And the Republic's funeral procession began.



…

…

The Senate Rotunda loomed before the assembled, vast and smoldering, its metallic dome blackened and streaked by wayward fire.

Lightning flashed across its curvature, revealing the scars that marred its once-pristine facade—scorch marks clawed into the structure from the rumored battle between the Jedi Grand Master and the Emperor's own guards.

Smoke still trailed from the higher tiers, thin and stubborn, curling and wisping into the rain like the final breath of a dying titan.

The air here was thick, almost unbreathable. Ozone, wet stone, the faint acidic tang of melted durasteel—it all mingled into one oppressive scent of aftermath.

The heart of the galaxy, still burning.

And the plaza before it was in a state of chaos.

The funerary procession slowed as the full extent of the disorder came into view.

Clone shock troopers, all of those who could be mustered on short notice, stood in a rigid barrier at the foot of the steps, their distinctive red armor clotted and dulled by the darkness of storm. Behind them, officers of every rank barked splattered orders into commlinks that no one obeyed fast enough. Local security from the City Defense Force mingled uneasily with Senate security detachments, each unit answering to a different chain of command that had begun to fray.

Above it all, like pieces on a gameboard half-swept from the table, stood the officers of the Home fleet.

To the left of the barricade stood Admiral Jan Dodonna, his rain-slicked salt and pepper immaculate despite the weather, his expression seemingly carved from stone. Beside him stood Adar Tallon, that Alderaanian firebrand, his gloved hands resting on his belt as if to keep from drawing the blaster there. Both men wore the humid air well, unbothered by the moment. They were war heroes who had served for far too long to be so easily cowed.

Opposite of them, across the shallow flood that ran down the plaza steps, stood the crimson figure of Admiral Kiner of Imperial Intelligence. His uniform was the red of fresh blood, bright even under the storm's grey shroud. Rain coursed off the polished brim of his cap as he gestured sharply toward the approaching procession. At his side loomed Admiral of the Home Fleet Terrinald Screed, the harsh lines of his face broken by the gleam of his cybernetic eye. Between them, like a fulcrum, stood General Gentis, expression unreadable, his cloak plastered close to his shoulders.

They were shouting over one another, their words fractured by the thunder.

"They have absolutely no authorization for this!" Screed barked, his voice carrying even through the storm. Rain splattered out with every breath. "Jan, by the Emperor's decree—"

"Decree?" Dodonna shot back. "There's been no decree! No orders, no proclamation! Only arrests and silence!"

"We are not talking about silence! We are talking about order! A New Order! basic security!" Kiner snapped. "These senators, look at them! They are armed with private forces—mercenaries masquerading as guards!"

"All I see is legally sanctioned planetary security," Tallon cut in, his voice booming. "I've read the statutes. Have you?"

"You're citing laws that no longer exist," Kiner hissed. "You're clinging to the Old Republic like it isn't already dead."

Tallon's hand tightened into a fist. "If it's dead, it's because men like you keep burying it before the heart stops beating."

The rain seemed to surge with their words, hammering against the Avenue of the Core Founders like the applause of unseen, ancient gods.

The statues that flanked the avenue loomed impossibly large, standing in their silent vigil over the chaos.

Padmé's procession had halted at the edge of the cordon, the senators massed behind her in a sea of dripping cloaks and dark umbrellas. The Captains flanked her, with Antilles and Typho at her sides, their vestments gleaming dimly in the half-light. Beyond them, Bail Organa held an umbrella as he conferred quietly with Mon Mothma, both pale with tension. Garm Bel Iblis simply stood, arms crossed, soaked and unbothered, jaw tight, watching the admirals' quarrel above with an indecipherable expression.

Panaka scanned the scene, his instincts from years as a royal security officer alive and bristling. It was too crowded. Too unstable. The wrong spark could turn this entire plaza into a massacre.

Overhead, repulsor cameras hovered and drifted out of reach like insects, transmitting every second across the capital and through to the greater galaxy. News anchors, drenched and shouting into microphones, clung to the edges of the crowd under haphazard pavilions.