bedlamsbard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bedlamsbard) wrote2012-03-20 11:34 am
bedlamsbard) wrote2012-03-20 11:34 am
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Star Wars fic: Dirt in the Machine (7/7)
Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6. Or read it on the AO3.
This concludes "Dirt in the Machine."
“– so we followed your tracking beacon here after Adi, Aayla, and Tholme rendezvoused with the fleet,” Kit Fisto finishes, leaning against the holocomm. “General Tsui Choi and several other masters were initially dispatched to cover the hyperspace routes to Lola Sayu, but when we picked up the signal I believe they returned to their initial destinations.”
“What tracking beacon?” Obi-Wan blinks. Swathed in a Jedi cloak borrowed from Adi Gallia, she’s a more familiar sight than she had been in civvies; Anakin finds that his gaze slides automatically away from her instead of letting himself look the way he’s been doing the past few days. They’re Jedi again; he’s not allowed either to look or to want.
Master Fisto cocks his head to one side curiously. “You didn’t set it off?”
“Quin –?” Obi-Wan starts, glancing across the room, but Vos is already shaking his head. “Anakin,” she adds, more certain. “What did you do?”
“I told you I was making that cleaning droid better,” he says, tilting his head back to grin up at her.
She just shakes her head, smiling back down at him. “You’re unbelievable.”
“You made a tracking beacon out of a cleaning droid?” says Fisto’s Padawan, a Mon Calamari named Nahdar Vebb. He blinks down at Anakin from the holocomm, impressed. “One that worked in hyperspace? I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Well, I didn’t say it was easy,” Anakin says, preening a little before he catches a faint hint of disapproval from Obi-Wan. Jedi aren’t exactly supposed to be humble, but they’re not supposed to be too proud either. Anakin frankly thinks a little pride is justified, but he’s not going to say as much.
He feels vindicated when Aayla Secura pulls herself out from beneath the nav consoles to say, “I don’t know anyone else in the Order who could have pulled that off. Good work, Skywalker.”
“Thank you, Master Secura,” Anakin says, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s knee from his cross-legged seat on the floor.
Obi-Wan’s fight with Dooku has left the bridge mostly wrecked except for a few cowering battle droids who had been dragged out and swiftly disposed of, but somewhat to Anakin’s surprise it’s still fully functional. Master Secura and several of the clones have been occupied in fixing the worst of the damage and getting the hyperdrive back online; no use in wasting a good ship. Dooku’s death won’t end the war, but having a CIS battle cruiser on their side might help them get behind enemy lines to do some good old-fashioned sabotage, among other things that Anakin can think of.
Aside from Adi Gallia, who’s guarding Count Dooku down below, all seven Jedi onboard the cruiser are up on the bridge here now. It’s the kind of number that feels excessive for a single mission a year and a half into the war, though Anakin has to remind himself that he and Obi-Wan had been the objective of the mission, while Vos had been a wild card, so really it’s just four Jedi who’d actually been sent out. Five if you count Fisto’s Padawan back on the Republic cruiser. It’s still a large number in a war where increasingly Jedi are only dispatched to battleground planets in ones and twos because there are so many systems in conflict that the Order is hard-pressed to keep up. The Council probably wouldn’t have spared so many if it wasn’t for the chance to capture Count Dooku himself; Obi-Wan and Anakin alone aren’t worth the risk in lives without tactical merit.
It turns out that Quinlan Vos had been sent deep undercover to spy for the Jedi by the Council and his old master, Tholme. Anakin is frankly of the opinion that going so deep undercover that your own side can’t tell if you’ve really gone to the Dark Side or not is a risky way to fight a war, especially when it gets senators killed and Jedi hurt, but there’s a reason he and Obi-Wan are usually assigned to combat or diplomacy, not intelligence. The Jedi spymaster’s tactics aren’t ones he likes, but Tholme and his protégées seem fine with it. Vos and his former master are talking now, sitting on the floor in a relatively undamaged portion of the bridge. Aayla goes to join them as Tholme beckons her over, leaving her toolkit on the floor.
“What about the Supreme Chancellor?” Obi-Wan asks, carding her fingers through her loose hair before she starts separating it into strands to braid. “Dooku as much as admitted he was the second Sith –”
“Dooku lies,” Vos snaps, glancing over at the sound of the count’s name.
“Dooku may lie, but you have to admit it makes sense,” Obi-Wan says. “Did you report my suspicions to the Council, Kit?”
“Master Windu is taking care of it personally,” Kit says, frowning at the holocomm. He taps it with one long green finger. “It’s a grave charge, but you’re right. It does make sense when you think about it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Anakin protests half-heartedly. “It sounds like a Separatist trick to tear the Republic apart further – I mean, for the love of – he’s the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic! There are Jedi around him all the time, surely we would know if a Dark Lord of the Sith was right there on Coruscant!”
Obi-Wan and Fisto trade meaningful looks over his head. Anakin glances up at the holo image of Vebb, and they exchange the more or less traditional shrug of Masters. They just don’t understand! He suspects that it’s identical to the gesture that Obi-Wan and Fisto are sharing, only upgraded to Padawans! They just don’t understand!
“Masters, it’s crazy,” Anakin tries again. “I’ve known Palpatine since I was a child. He’s always been a good friend to me – he only wants what’s best for the Republic! If he was a Sith, that would be utterly mad. Why would he – it’s crazy.”
“It’s the kind of crazy only a Sith Lord would engage in,” Tholme remarks from the opposite side of the room. “Once the option has been put on the table, it is rather disturbingly likely. And what Quinlan has just told me confirms that, as well as Obi-Wan’s report about her interactions with Dooku. Though the Count’s not talking now.”
Anakin scrubs his hands through his hair. “This is crazy,” he repeats, hearing the dullness in his voice. It doesn’t make sense except in all the ways it does.
Obi-Wan strokes a hand over the back of his neck. “Be calm, my young apprentice,” she says. “The truth will be discovered soon enough, and until we can contact Coruscant, there’s nothing we can do about it. Have faith in Master Windu.”
Anakin closes his eyes, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s hand. “Yes, Master,” he says obediently. “I just – I just don’t think it’s very likely.”
“I know, my young Padawan.” She glances up at Kit. “Why haven’t we reported in to the Council yet? Dooku’s capture is the first real break we’ve gotten in this war.”
“I’m having some trouble getting through to Coruscant,” Fisto admits, frowning at the holocomm and tapping it again.
Anakin starts to stand up. “Let me take a look at it –”
“No, it’s functional,” Fisto says, waving him back to his seat. “There’s just no one on the other end. Let me trying reaching Master Yoda or Master Windu directly.” He leans over the holocomm again, then stops, his hand going to his forehead.
Anakin feels it too, a heartbeat after Obi-Wan’s sharp indrawn breath. She doubles over with her hand pressed to her heart, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. Anakin scrambles up to put a hand on her back, feeling the sudden yawning void in the Force – a darkness that threatens to consume all of them. Obi-Wan’s shoulder is comfortingly warm against his palm as he says, “Master?” hearing the panic in his own voice.
“The living Force is screaming,” she gasps.
Tholme, Aayla, and Vos are all on their feet. Even Vebb looks shaken, his hand fallen to his lightsaber. “Master?” he questions of Fisto.
“A great disturbance in the Force,” Tholme says, leaning over his cane.
“Dooku,” Vos spits, clenching his lightsaber in his fist. “I’ll gut him this time –”
Anakin glances across the bridge as a flicker of blue light catches his attention – Aayla’s clone commander, who’s just turned his palm over to activate the small handheld holocomm attached to the control gauntlet on clone armor. The Force nudges Anakin towards him, an insistent whisper at the back of his mind; he leaves Obi-Wan behind and edges around the captain’s chair, where Commander Bly won’t see him. None of the other Jedi appear to notice his distraction.
Behind him, he hears Vebb say, “What is it, Commander?” and whirls at the sound of blasterfire. Fisto cries out as his padawan falls, his lightsaber still on his belt in the instant before the holocomm blinks out, leaving Fisto leaning on the console with horror chasing its way across his usually cheerful features. “Nahdar!”
“Execute Order 66,” says the figure in the palm of Commander Bly’s hand.
“It will be done, my lord,” says Bly, pulling his blaster from his holster as the comm flickers out.
“No!” Anakin yells, grabbing with the Force and throwing Bly into the nearest wall.
“Skywalker!” Aayla shouts, jerking around. “What are you –”
Vos tackles her to the floor as Bly comes up shooting, the other clones on the bridge joining in. Anakin snatches his lightsaber off his belt as Obi-Wan ignites hers, parrying blaster bolts. There aren’t many clones up here; for six Jedi it’s only a matter of seconds before they’re all dead. All except for Bly, whom Aayla and Vos pin to the floor, kicking his blaster away from him.
“Kit, get to Adi!” Obi-Wan warns, and the Nautolan Jedi nods once and races off, his lightsaber bright in his hand.
She and Anakin cross to the others. Tholme is leaning on his cane and crouching down in front of Bly, holding one hand out. “You want to tell us why you did this,” he says, his voice thick with compulsion.
“Orders,” Bly chokes out. “We were ordered to execute Order 66.”
Anakin crouches down beside Tholme. “What’s Order 66?” he asks. “Tell us!”
“Contingency Order 66,” Bly recites. “In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander, GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander until a new command structure is established.”
Vos curses. “Who’s the Supreme Commander?”
“The Supreme Chancellor,” Obi-Wan says, looking ill. “It’s Chancellor Palpatine. The message must have been coded and verified as coming directly from him.”
“I heard him,” Anakin says. “You can check his holocomm.” He breathes in, anger making him clench his fists. “It was the Supreme Chancellor. It was Palpatine.”
Aayla passes a hand over her face. “All this time we’ve served together, Bly –”
Bly’s comlink crackles. “CC-5052, can you confirm that Order 66 has been executed?” another clone asks.
“No,” Bly chokes out before anyone can stop him. “Terminate this ship!”
Vos slams his head into the deck, knocking him out, but it’s too late. Through the observation window Anakin can see the Republic cruisers turning their guns on the Sep dreadnaught. He throws himself at the nearest working console, his fingers flying over the controls as he brings up the cruiser’s partially intact shields.
“Anakin, can we make the jump to hypserspace?” Obi-Wan demands, leaning over his shoulder.
“I don’t – navig computer’s down, but lightspeed is operational –”
The ship shakes with the first hit, throwing Obi-Wan forward against Anakin. She catches herself on the console, her hair falling into his face. “Then get us out of here,” she orders. “The rest of the fleet is coming around, we can’t hold them off for long even if we start shooting back. If we give them too long they’ll box us in so that we can’t make the jump to hyperspace.”
“Jump blind?” Anakin demands, horrified. “We could end up in a sun!”
“And they’ll blow us to bits if we stay here much longer,” Tholme snaps. “Trust the Forcce, Skywalker, and jump!”
Anakin swallows, reaching for the control.
“It will be all right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, her breath warm against his cheek as the ship shakes again. “Trust in the Force.”
“Yes, Master,” Anakin says, reaching for the serenity of the Force, and pulls the handle down.
He feels the third and fourth hits glance off the ship, but by then they’re gone. Anakin sinks back in his seat for a moment, breathing hard in relief that they haven’t vaporized instantly, though that doesn’t mean they won’t in the next ten minutes. He only gives himself that instant, though, before he turns towards the navig computer, which had only mostly been pulverized by someone’s lightsaber, and starts trying to figure out how to reconstruct it. If he’s working, if he’s busy and his mind is elsewhere, then he doesn’t have to think about the enormity of what must have happened. Thousands of Jedi in the galaxy serving with clone troopers on thousands of planets. Thousands of Jedi dead, murdered by their own troops. Without that second’s warning from the Force, they might all be dead too.
“Commander Fil’s dead,” he hears Kit Fisto report, and glances up to see him helping Adi Gallia onto the bridge. Aayla goes to help her to a seat, calling the medkit over to her and pulling out a bacta patch. “None of the other clones apparently received the command, but I’m ordering them to turn over their weapons until we know more. What did your commander say?”
Aayla and Tholme explain what they know while Vos manhandles Bly’s limp body out of the bridge. Obi-Wan sits on the floor beside Anakin and passes him tools as he asks for them, both of them swearing when wires send sparks flying into their faces. “Thanks a lot, Master,” Anakin quips, because it’s easier to joke than it is to think of what had happened – what’s still happening, because he can feel the darkness in the Force, the maelstrom of pain and death and terror that scratches at him right behind the eyes when he thinks about it.
“I didn’t exactly expect that we’d have to fly this thing out of here.” Obi-Wan looks years older than she had fifteen minutes ago. Anakin thinks that it will fade in time, as the shock wears off, but he has a sudden flash of what she’ll look like in another twenty years, when her hair goes all silver instead of just a strand here and there and a lifetime of service to the Republic takes its toll: old and weather-worn and still as strong as a mountain. Still beautiful.
Anakin is momentarily grateful that the disturbance in the Force means that she probably hadn’t picked up the stray thought, then guilty for thinking it. “Try turning the console on,” he says to cover his blush, and Obi-Wan straightens up, her fingers flying over the keys.
Anakin yelps as sparks explode in his face, then swears as he realizes that the end of his padawan braid is on fire, swatting at it. “Turn it off!”
Obi-Wan does, and Anakin drags himself out from beneath the console with a smell of burning hair. “I can fix it,” he says firmly in reply to the look on her face.
“I didn’t say anything,” she protests.
“I wish Artoo was here,” he adds grumpily, leaning back against it. “We’d have this fixed in no time then.”
Obi-Wan kneels down in front of him, pulling her hair out of her face and tying it back with a band, so that it falls in a long red sweep over her shoulder. “That’s not a bad thought. I don’t know why you’re so fond of that droid in particular, but there are four astromechs here – the ones that came with Kit and the others; they’ve been busy fixing the engines. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
Anakin scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t either. I guess I’m just not thinking straight.”
Obi-Wan’s mouth tightens. “I don’t think any of us are.” She takes her borrowed comlink off her belt, clicking it on.
Anakin listens to the sound of her voice, not the words. He knows more or less what she’s saying: asking the starfighter astromechs to come up here and fix what will take Anakin hours, if not days. “Master Windu’s dead, isn’t he?” he says when she’s finished, staring down at his hands. “The Council must have discovered that the Chancellor was lying, and they went to arrest him and he was too powerful for them.” He swipes a hand over his mouth, feeling sick.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Obi-Wan says. There isn’t much hope in her voice.
“The clones didn’t do it on their own. They don’t – they don’t think that way. And there was an order given; I heard it. I know the Chancellor’s – Palpatine’s – I know his voice.”
An approaching step makes him look up, his nerves thrumming even though he already knows who it is.
“As soon as we’re out of hyperspace we should contact Kamino,” says Kit Fisto. He looks awful, his green skin tinged with gray, as if the tragedy in the Force has leached all the color from him. “If it’s in their programming, then it goes back to the cloners. Shaak Ti’s on Kamino overseeing clone trooper training; if she’s still alive, then she’ll be able to find out where this started. I’ve never been quite sure where the clone army came from in the first place.”
“Master Sifo-Dyas commissioned its creation more than ten years ago,” Obi-Wan says, glancing up. “I have some familiarity with the subject.”
“Then he must also have commissioned that they be programmed with that order,” Fisto says. “You and I both know it’s suspicious. Sifo-Dyas just happens to commission a clone army, then dies before he can tell the Council or the Senate about it? And just as we need them the first batches are coming to full maturity? Didn’t anyone ever look into this?”
“There was an investigation, but at the time we needed the clone army too badly to look too closely into their origins.” Obi-Wan scrubs a hand over her face. “Jango Fett once told me that he’d never met Sifo-Dyas. He was commissioned by someone else, but I can’t remember who – there’s something else going on here. Something elusive. I have a feeling –”
“I have the same feeling,” Fisto says. “We’ve all been tricked. The clones, the war, Dooku – this was all a Sith trick to destroy the Jedi.”
“Dooku was a true believer,” Anakin says suddenly. “He was evil, but – he really believed in the Confederacy of Independent Systems. We thought that he was the one behind it all, but if he was just another pawn…” He lets the words trail off at the look on Obi-Wan’s face. “Master?”
“It was meant to start on Naboo,” Obi-Wan says. “That’s why Darth Maul was there. Dooku can’t have been a part of it then, he would never have ordered Qui-Gon’s death. How can we all have been so blind?”
“Because that’s what the Sith do,” Vos says. “They lie, even to each other. They manipulate and destroy.”
“And what do we do?” Anakin asks. “What if we’re the last Jedi left in the galaxy? What do we do then?”
Obi-Wan grips his shoulder. “We defend the galaxy. We defend the Republic. We fight until either the Sith are destroyed or we are. Even if we are the last of the Jedi, we are still Jedi. No Sith can take that from us.”
*
end
This concludes "Dirt in the Machine."
“– so we followed your tracking beacon here after Adi, Aayla, and Tholme rendezvoused with the fleet,” Kit Fisto finishes, leaning against the holocomm. “General Tsui Choi and several other masters were initially dispatched to cover the hyperspace routes to Lola Sayu, but when we picked up the signal I believe they returned to their initial destinations.”
“What tracking beacon?” Obi-Wan blinks. Swathed in a Jedi cloak borrowed from Adi Gallia, she’s a more familiar sight than she had been in civvies; Anakin finds that his gaze slides automatically away from her instead of letting himself look the way he’s been doing the past few days. They’re Jedi again; he’s not allowed either to look or to want.
Master Fisto cocks his head to one side curiously. “You didn’t set it off?”
“Quin –?” Obi-Wan starts, glancing across the room, but Vos is already shaking his head. “Anakin,” she adds, more certain. “What did you do?”
“I told you I was making that cleaning droid better,” he says, tilting his head back to grin up at her.
She just shakes her head, smiling back down at him. “You’re unbelievable.”
“You made a tracking beacon out of a cleaning droid?” says Fisto’s Padawan, a Mon Calamari named Nahdar Vebb. He blinks down at Anakin from the holocomm, impressed. “One that worked in hyperspace? I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Well, I didn’t say it was easy,” Anakin says, preening a little before he catches a faint hint of disapproval from Obi-Wan. Jedi aren’t exactly supposed to be humble, but they’re not supposed to be too proud either. Anakin frankly thinks a little pride is justified, but he’s not going to say as much.
He feels vindicated when Aayla Secura pulls herself out from beneath the nav consoles to say, “I don’t know anyone else in the Order who could have pulled that off. Good work, Skywalker.”
“Thank you, Master Secura,” Anakin says, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s knee from his cross-legged seat on the floor.
Obi-Wan’s fight with Dooku has left the bridge mostly wrecked except for a few cowering battle droids who had been dragged out and swiftly disposed of, but somewhat to Anakin’s surprise it’s still fully functional. Master Secura and several of the clones have been occupied in fixing the worst of the damage and getting the hyperdrive back online; no use in wasting a good ship. Dooku’s death won’t end the war, but having a CIS battle cruiser on their side might help them get behind enemy lines to do some good old-fashioned sabotage, among other things that Anakin can think of.
Aside from Adi Gallia, who’s guarding Count Dooku down below, all seven Jedi onboard the cruiser are up on the bridge here now. It’s the kind of number that feels excessive for a single mission a year and a half into the war, though Anakin has to remind himself that he and Obi-Wan had been the objective of the mission, while Vos had been a wild card, so really it’s just four Jedi who’d actually been sent out. Five if you count Fisto’s Padawan back on the Republic cruiser. It’s still a large number in a war where increasingly Jedi are only dispatched to battleground planets in ones and twos because there are so many systems in conflict that the Order is hard-pressed to keep up. The Council probably wouldn’t have spared so many if it wasn’t for the chance to capture Count Dooku himself; Obi-Wan and Anakin alone aren’t worth the risk in lives without tactical merit.
It turns out that Quinlan Vos had been sent deep undercover to spy for the Jedi by the Council and his old master, Tholme. Anakin is frankly of the opinion that going so deep undercover that your own side can’t tell if you’ve really gone to the Dark Side or not is a risky way to fight a war, especially when it gets senators killed and Jedi hurt, but there’s a reason he and Obi-Wan are usually assigned to combat or diplomacy, not intelligence. The Jedi spymaster’s tactics aren’t ones he likes, but Tholme and his protégées seem fine with it. Vos and his former master are talking now, sitting on the floor in a relatively undamaged portion of the bridge. Aayla goes to join them as Tholme beckons her over, leaving her toolkit on the floor.
“What about the Supreme Chancellor?” Obi-Wan asks, carding her fingers through her loose hair before she starts separating it into strands to braid. “Dooku as much as admitted he was the second Sith –”
“Dooku lies,” Vos snaps, glancing over at the sound of the count’s name.
“Dooku may lie, but you have to admit it makes sense,” Obi-Wan says. “Did you report my suspicions to the Council, Kit?”
“Master Windu is taking care of it personally,” Kit says, frowning at the holocomm. He taps it with one long green finger. “It’s a grave charge, but you’re right. It does make sense when you think about it.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Anakin protests half-heartedly. “It sounds like a Separatist trick to tear the Republic apart further – I mean, for the love of – he’s the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic! There are Jedi around him all the time, surely we would know if a Dark Lord of the Sith was right there on Coruscant!”
Obi-Wan and Fisto trade meaningful looks over his head. Anakin glances up at the holo image of Vebb, and they exchange the more or less traditional shrug of Masters. They just don’t understand! He suspects that it’s identical to the gesture that Obi-Wan and Fisto are sharing, only upgraded to Padawans! They just don’t understand!
“Masters, it’s crazy,” Anakin tries again. “I’ve known Palpatine since I was a child. He’s always been a good friend to me – he only wants what’s best for the Republic! If he was a Sith, that would be utterly mad. Why would he – it’s crazy.”
“It’s the kind of crazy only a Sith Lord would engage in,” Tholme remarks from the opposite side of the room. “Once the option has been put on the table, it is rather disturbingly likely. And what Quinlan has just told me confirms that, as well as Obi-Wan’s report about her interactions with Dooku. Though the Count’s not talking now.”
Anakin scrubs his hands through his hair. “This is crazy,” he repeats, hearing the dullness in his voice. It doesn’t make sense except in all the ways it does.
Obi-Wan strokes a hand over the back of his neck. “Be calm, my young apprentice,” she says. “The truth will be discovered soon enough, and until we can contact Coruscant, there’s nothing we can do about it. Have faith in Master Windu.”
Anakin closes his eyes, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s hand. “Yes, Master,” he says obediently. “I just – I just don’t think it’s very likely.”
“I know, my young Padawan.” She glances up at Kit. “Why haven’t we reported in to the Council yet? Dooku’s capture is the first real break we’ve gotten in this war.”
“I’m having some trouble getting through to Coruscant,” Fisto admits, frowning at the holocomm and tapping it again.
Anakin starts to stand up. “Let me take a look at it –”
“No, it’s functional,” Fisto says, waving him back to his seat. “There’s just no one on the other end. Let me trying reaching Master Yoda or Master Windu directly.” He leans over the holocomm again, then stops, his hand going to his forehead.
Anakin feels it too, a heartbeat after Obi-Wan’s sharp indrawn breath. She doubles over with her hand pressed to her heart, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. Anakin scrambles up to put a hand on her back, feeling the sudden yawning void in the Force – a darkness that threatens to consume all of them. Obi-Wan’s shoulder is comfortingly warm against his palm as he says, “Master?” hearing the panic in his own voice.
“The living Force is screaming,” she gasps.
Tholme, Aayla, and Vos are all on their feet. Even Vebb looks shaken, his hand fallen to his lightsaber. “Master?” he questions of Fisto.
“A great disturbance in the Force,” Tholme says, leaning over his cane.
“Dooku,” Vos spits, clenching his lightsaber in his fist. “I’ll gut him this time –”
Anakin glances across the bridge as a flicker of blue light catches his attention – Aayla’s clone commander, who’s just turned his palm over to activate the small handheld holocomm attached to the control gauntlet on clone armor. The Force nudges Anakin towards him, an insistent whisper at the back of his mind; he leaves Obi-Wan behind and edges around the captain’s chair, where Commander Bly won’t see him. None of the other Jedi appear to notice his distraction.
Behind him, he hears Vebb say, “What is it, Commander?” and whirls at the sound of blasterfire. Fisto cries out as his padawan falls, his lightsaber still on his belt in the instant before the holocomm blinks out, leaving Fisto leaning on the console with horror chasing its way across his usually cheerful features. “Nahdar!”
“Execute Order 66,” says the figure in the palm of Commander Bly’s hand.
“It will be done, my lord,” says Bly, pulling his blaster from his holster as the comm flickers out.
“No!” Anakin yells, grabbing with the Force and throwing Bly into the nearest wall.
“Skywalker!” Aayla shouts, jerking around. “What are you –”
Vos tackles her to the floor as Bly comes up shooting, the other clones on the bridge joining in. Anakin snatches his lightsaber off his belt as Obi-Wan ignites hers, parrying blaster bolts. There aren’t many clones up here; for six Jedi it’s only a matter of seconds before they’re all dead. All except for Bly, whom Aayla and Vos pin to the floor, kicking his blaster away from him.
“Kit, get to Adi!” Obi-Wan warns, and the Nautolan Jedi nods once and races off, his lightsaber bright in his hand.
She and Anakin cross to the others. Tholme is leaning on his cane and crouching down in front of Bly, holding one hand out. “You want to tell us why you did this,” he says, his voice thick with compulsion.
“Orders,” Bly chokes out. “We were ordered to execute Order 66.”
Anakin crouches down beside Tholme. “What’s Order 66?” he asks. “Tell us!”
“Contingency Order 66,” Bly recites. “In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander, GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander until a new command structure is established.”
Vos curses. “Who’s the Supreme Commander?”
“The Supreme Chancellor,” Obi-Wan says, looking ill. “It’s Chancellor Palpatine. The message must have been coded and verified as coming directly from him.”
“I heard him,” Anakin says. “You can check his holocomm.” He breathes in, anger making him clench his fists. “It was the Supreme Chancellor. It was Palpatine.”
Aayla passes a hand over her face. “All this time we’ve served together, Bly –”
Bly’s comlink crackles. “CC-5052, can you confirm that Order 66 has been executed?” another clone asks.
“No,” Bly chokes out before anyone can stop him. “Terminate this ship!”
Vos slams his head into the deck, knocking him out, but it’s too late. Through the observation window Anakin can see the Republic cruisers turning their guns on the Sep dreadnaught. He throws himself at the nearest working console, his fingers flying over the controls as he brings up the cruiser’s partially intact shields.
“Anakin, can we make the jump to hypserspace?” Obi-Wan demands, leaning over his shoulder.
“I don’t – navig computer’s down, but lightspeed is operational –”
The ship shakes with the first hit, throwing Obi-Wan forward against Anakin. She catches herself on the console, her hair falling into his face. “Then get us out of here,” she orders. “The rest of the fleet is coming around, we can’t hold them off for long even if we start shooting back. If we give them too long they’ll box us in so that we can’t make the jump to hyperspace.”
“Jump blind?” Anakin demands, horrified. “We could end up in a sun!”
“And they’ll blow us to bits if we stay here much longer,” Tholme snaps. “Trust the Forcce, Skywalker, and jump!”
Anakin swallows, reaching for the control.
“It will be all right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, her breath warm against his cheek as the ship shakes again. “Trust in the Force.”
“Yes, Master,” Anakin says, reaching for the serenity of the Force, and pulls the handle down.
He feels the third and fourth hits glance off the ship, but by then they’re gone. Anakin sinks back in his seat for a moment, breathing hard in relief that they haven’t vaporized instantly, though that doesn’t mean they won’t in the next ten minutes. He only gives himself that instant, though, before he turns towards the navig computer, which had only mostly been pulverized by someone’s lightsaber, and starts trying to figure out how to reconstruct it. If he’s working, if he’s busy and his mind is elsewhere, then he doesn’t have to think about the enormity of what must have happened. Thousands of Jedi in the galaxy serving with clone troopers on thousands of planets. Thousands of Jedi dead, murdered by their own troops. Without that second’s warning from the Force, they might all be dead too.
“Commander Fil’s dead,” he hears Kit Fisto report, and glances up to see him helping Adi Gallia onto the bridge. Aayla goes to help her to a seat, calling the medkit over to her and pulling out a bacta patch. “None of the other clones apparently received the command, but I’m ordering them to turn over their weapons until we know more. What did your commander say?”
Aayla and Tholme explain what they know while Vos manhandles Bly’s limp body out of the bridge. Obi-Wan sits on the floor beside Anakin and passes him tools as he asks for them, both of them swearing when wires send sparks flying into their faces. “Thanks a lot, Master,” Anakin quips, because it’s easier to joke than it is to think of what had happened – what’s still happening, because he can feel the darkness in the Force, the maelstrom of pain and death and terror that scratches at him right behind the eyes when he thinks about it.
“I didn’t exactly expect that we’d have to fly this thing out of here.” Obi-Wan looks years older than she had fifteen minutes ago. Anakin thinks that it will fade in time, as the shock wears off, but he has a sudden flash of what she’ll look like in another twenty years, when her hair goes all silver instead of just a strand here and there and a lifetime of service to the Republic takes its toll: old and weather-worn and still as strong as a mountain. Still beautiful.
Anakin is momentarily grateful that the disturbance in the Force means that she probably hadn’t picked up the stray thought, then guilty for thinking it. “Try turning the console on,” he says to cover his blush, and Obi-Wan straightens up, her fingers flying over the keys.
Anakin yelps as sparks explode in his face, then swears as he realizes that the end of his padawan braid is on fire, swatting at it. “Turn it off!”
Obi-Wan does, and Anakin drags himself out from beneath the console with a smell of burning hair. “I can fix it,” he says firmly in reply to the look on her face.
“I didn’t say anything,” she protests.
“I wish Artoo was here,” he adds grumpily, leaning back against it. “We’d have this fixed in no time then.”
Obi-Wan kneels down in front of him, pulling her hair out of her face and tying it back with a band, so that it falls in a long red sweep over her shoulder. “That’s not a bad thought. I don’t know why you’re so fond of that droid in particular, but there are four astromechs here – the ones that came with Kit and the others; they’ve been busy fixing the engines. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
Anakin scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t either. I guess I’m just not thinking straight.”
Obi-Wan’s mouth tightens. “I don’t think any of us are.” She takes her borrowed comlink off her belt, clicking it on.
Anakin listens to the sound of her voice, not the words. He knows more or less what she’s saying: asking the starfighter astromechs to come up here and fix what will take Anakin hours, if not days. “Master Windu’s dead, isn’t he?” he says when she’s finished, staring down at his hands. “The Council must have discovered that the Chancellor was lying, and they went to arrest him and he was too powerful for them.” He swipes a hand over his mouth, feeling sick.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Obi-Wan says. There isn’t much hope in her voice.
“The clones didn’t do it on their own. They don’t – they don’t think that way. And there was an order given; I heard it. I know the Chancellor’s – Palpatine’s – I know his voice.”
An approaching step makes him look up, his nerves thrumming even though he already knows who it is.
“As soon as we’re out of hyperspace we should contact Kamino,” says Kit Fisto. He looks awful, his green skin tinged with gray, as if the tragedy in the Force has leached all the color from him. “If it’s in their programming, then it goes back to the cloners. Shaak Ti’s on Kamino overseeing clone trooper training; if she’s still alive, then she’ll be able to find out where this started. I’ve never been quite sure where the clone army came from in the first place.”
“Master Sifo-Dyas commissioned its creation more than ten years ago,” Obi-Wan says, glancing up. “I have some familiarity with the subject.”
“Then he must also have commissioned that they be programmed with that order,” Fisto says. “You and I both know it’s suspicious. Sifo-Dyas just happens to commission a clone army, then dies before he can tell the Council or the Senate about it? And just as we need them the first batches are coming to full maturity? Didn’t anyone ever look into this?”
“There was an investigation, but at the time we needed the clone army too badly to look too closely into their origins.” Obi-Wan scrubs a hand over her face. “Jango Fett once told me that he’d never met Sifo-Dyas. He was commissioned by someone else, but I can’t remember who – there’s something else going on here. Something elusive. I have a feeling –”
“I have the same feeling,” Fisto says. “We’ve all been tricked. The clones, the war, Dooku – this was all a Sith trick to destroy the Jedi.”
“Dooku was a true believer,” Anakin says suddenly. “He was evil, but – he really believed in the Confederacy of Independent Systems. We thought that he was the one behind it all, but if he was just another pawn…” He lets the words trail off at the look on Obi-Wan’s face. “Master?”
“It was meant to start on Naboo,” Obi-Wan says. “That’s why Darth Maul was there. Dooku can’t have been a part of it then, he would never have ordered Qui-Gon’s death. How can we all have been so blind?”
“Because that’s what the Sith do,” Vos says. “They lie, even to each other. They manipulate and destroy.”
“And what do we do?” Anakin asks. “What if we’re the last Jedi left in the galaxy? What do we do then?”
Obi-Wan grips his shoulder. “We defend the galaxy. We defend the Republic. We fight until either the Sith are destroyed or we are. Even if we are the last of the Jedi, we are still Jedi. No Sith can take that from us.”
*
end
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it somehow ends rather hopeful in a way. I get the feeling that this verse would end more optimistically for Anakin, and it wouldn't implode into Darth Vader.
Somewhat.
Awesome little series. :)
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I am getting the impression that things went ever so slightly differently for Anakin and Obi-Wan in this 'verse (aside from the things that went really differently), so the chances of Anakin going Dark Side are much, much slimmer than in canon. Not that Palpatine isn't still hopeful.
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Probably because Obi_Wan would be SO DISAPPOINTED in him if he did, and Anakin doesn't want to disappoint his Master! Especially when his master loves him.
Palpatine can keep hoping.
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And this Anakin's reasons are completely different from canon!Anakin's.