The second chapter will be out tonight cause I got a review on my other fic; if y'all want more, go review that. P@treon chapter is out as well. 15 chapters ahead of webnovel.
P@treon Hermit47
...
Ahsoka ran with the smell of burning metal and alien blood thick in her throat.
The corridors of the Resolute had become unrecognizable.
Only an hour ago, Anakin's flagship had felt like a moving fortress, all disciplined motion and red-marked certainty. Now the lower decks were a maze of smoke, emergency lights, sealed blast doors, and bodies. Clone troopers lay where they had fallen, some dragged behind cover by brothers who hadn't had time to check if they were dead or unconscious. Black scars marked the walls where Vong weapons had eaten through durasteel. In places, the floor itself was warped from heat and impact, and the ship groaned around them as if the hull were trying to hold its own bones together.
Jango Fett ran at the front of their little group, blaster up, helmet sealed. Aiylan kept pace at his right side with a carbine in her hands and her shoulders tight with focus. Ahsoka followed close behind, one lightsaber ignited, the green glow flickering over the smoke curling along the ceiling.
Scud came behind them like a walking siege engine, massive and silent, his heavy cannon locked against one armored forearm. HK-47 moved beside him with both blasters drawn, his copper-brown frame marked by scorch burns and splashes of something dark and wet that Ahsoka sincerely hoped wasn't clone blood.
K2-SO stalked after them with long, irritated strides.
R2-D2 rolled between his legs, shrieking in binary every time the ship shook.
"I understand the complaint," K2 said, glancing down at the astromech. "But unless you've developed the ability to seal three hull breaches at once while being shot at by living religious lunatics, screaming louder isn't a plan."
R2 answered with an indignant whistle.
HK looked over his shoulder while still moving. "Observation: The astromech's vocal distress is surprisingly morale-enhancing. It reminds me that at least one member of this party is smaller, angrier, and less tactically useful than I am."
R2 screamed something far less polite.
Aiylan snorted despite herself.
Jango did not turn around. "Quiet."
Everyone quieted.
Even HK, though his head tilted in a way that suggested he was filing away future insults.
They were supposed to be heading toward the munitions depot, but the sound ahead changed that.
Not blasterfire from one position.
A whole corridor battle.
Sustained fire, shouted orders, something roaring in a language Ahsoka didn't know, and the hard crack of lightsabers striking weapons that refused to break.
Jango raised a fist and stopped at the corner.
Ahsoka almost ran into him.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"Bad," he said.
Then he leaned around the edge and opened fire.
Ahsoka came in a heartbeat after him and saw exactly what he meant.
The corridor ahead was chaos.
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were holding the center of the hall with Cody, Rex, Commander Virek, Commander Cairn, and a battered line of clones fighting behind them. The Jedi were still standing, but only just. Obi-Wan's robes were burned along one side, his armor scarred and blackened. Qui-Gon's prosthetic arm sparked faintly at the elbow joint, and his breathing was heavier than Ahsoka had ever heard it.
The Vong pressed them from the far end of the corridor.
There weren't many left compared to the size of the breach, maybe a dozen still standing, but every one of them fought like it took a whole squad to kill. Blaster bolts hammered into crab-like armor and either splashed off, smoked across the surface, or burned through only after repeated hits. Their snake-weapons snapped and hardened, striking with enough strength to stagger even a Jedi.
Rex was dragging a wounded trooper backward with one hand while firing with the other. Cody stood beside Obi-Wan, directing his men with clipped precision, but even he looked strained. Cairn's green-and-cream marked troopers were trying to hold a flank where the corridor narrowed, and Virek's 501st were firing in tight bursts at exposed seams under arms and behind knees.
They were doing everything right.
They were still being pushed back.
Scud moved before Jango could give the order.
The Gendai launched himself down the corridor with terrifying speed for something so enormous. He hit the first Vong hard enough to lift the creature off its feet and drive it through a cracked bulkhead panel. The attacker slashed at him with an amphistaff, the weapon cutting deep into the armor along Scud's shoulder, but the Gendai didn't react like anything living should have reacted.
He caught the Vong by the torso.
Then he crushed inward.
Armor cracked. Bone cracked beneath it. Something wet burst through the seams, and the alien warrior folded around Scud's grip like a broken machine.
HK stopped mid-stride, photoreceptors brightening.
"Complaint: The large meatbag is taking all the fun."
Then he stepped past Ahsoka and began firing with murderous enthusiasm.
K2 gave an exaggerated mechanical sigh and looked at Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon as if they were fellow sufferers in a social event gone terribly wrong.
"It continually amazes me that HK has survived for thousands of years. Not because he lacks skill, but because everyone who's ever met him should have tried harder."
Then K2 charged.
For a droid built like a long-limbed tower, he moved fast. He slammed into one Vong from the side, caught the creature's weapon arm, and twisted until something snapped under the armor. When the warrior tried to bite at him, K2 drove one metal fist down into the side of its head and crushed it against the floor.
"That was unpleasantly moist," he said.
Qui-Gon turned toward the reinforcements, relief flashing across his face before he turned it back into focus.
"Your timing is appreciated," he called.
"Don't thank us yet," Jango answered, firing three shots into the exposed armpit of a Vong Scud had thrown against the wall. "We're still in the middle of it."
Ahsoka sprinted toward Obi-Wan's line, sliding into place beside him as another warrior came forward. She met the amphistaff with her saber and tried to twist around it, aiming for the gap beneath the armor. The creature anticipated her, drove his shoulder into her chest, and shoved her back hard enough to steal her breath.
Obi-Wan caught her by the back of the arm before she lost her footing.
"Careful."
"I noticed," she snapped, then winced because that had sounded much too much like something she'd say to Anakin.
Obi-Wan parried the next strike, his blue blade scraping across armor before sliding into a softer seam at the elbow. "These opponents punish impatience."
"They punish everything," Ahsoka said.
A Vong lunged toward them, only to be caught from behind as Scud seized him by the neck and hurled him into two others. The impact cleared enough space for Rex's line to pour fire into the pile.
The corridor fight began to turn.
Not quickly. Not cleanly. But it turned.
HK had found a rhythm now. He didn't waste shots on the armor's hardest plates anymore. He fired at ankles to stumble, at armpits when they lifted weapons, at mouths when they roared, and at any exposed organic seam that presented itself for even half a second. Once, when a Vong closed too quickly, HK dropped one blaster, pulled a vibroblade from inside his frame, and drove it into the creature's throat with a delighted burst of static.
"Exclamation: I have discovered that the screaming ones also have arteries. This is becoming a very educational day."
K2 stepped over a fallen clone, caught a charging attacker with both hands, and used him as a shield while Rex and Virek's men fired through gaps in the living armor. The Vong thrashed, the crab plates absorbing some bolts and failing against others, until finally the body stopped moving.
K2 dropped him.
"I object to enemies that require teamwork."
R2 rolled up beside him and let out a smug chirp.
K2 glanced down. "You shocked one wounded enemy in the neck and now you think you're a commando."
R2 whistled proudly.
By the time the last Vong in the corridor fell, the silence that replaced the battle felt unnatural.
Not peaceful.
Just empty enough for everyone to hear the wounded.
Rex was the first to speak, pulling off his helmet and dragging a hand across his face.
"Fett," he said, voice rough with exhaustion. "Good of you to join the party."
Jango stepped over a dead Vong and looked down at the mess of bodies between them. "You throw lousy parties."
Cody lowered his blaster, breathing hard. "We were about thirty seconds from losing this corridor."
Cairn moved among his men, checking the nearest wounded with quiet efficiency. "Perhaps less."
Virek looked toward Scud, who stood in the middle of the hall like a blood-streaked monument, cannon still smoking.
"Useful timing."
Scud did not answer.
He rarely did.
HK looked up at the Gendai and raised one blaster slightly. "Statement: I am willing to admit that your excessive size has temporary tactical merit."
Scud turned his head just enough to look at him.
HK lowered the blaster. "Clarification: A compliment."
Obi-Wan shut off his saber, though he didn't clip it back to his belt. "What are these things?"
Ahsoka turned toward him. "You don't know?"
Obi-Wan looked at the dead Vong sprawled across the deck, his expression troubled in a way that made him look older. "I've never seen anything like them."
Qui-Gon knelt beside one of the bodies, not touching it at first. His face was pale beneath the grime of battle, and his eyes held a distance Ahsoka didn't like.
"I cant sense them," he said.
Ahsoka frowned. "You mean they're hiding?"
"No." Qui-Gon reached out slowly, holding his hand above the dead warrior as if expecting the Force to answer from somewhere beneath the armor. "The Force moves around them, through everything near them, but not within them. It is as if they have been abandoned by it."
Ahsoka stared at the corpse.
"How is that possible?"
Obi-Wan's answer came quietly. "It isn't."
Qui-Gon looked up at him.
The faintest humor touched his tired eyes, not enough to soften the danger, but enough to remind Ahsoka that this was the man who had trained Obi-Wan and Anakin both.
"Certain of that, are you?" Qui-Gon asked.
Obi-Wan gave him a flat look. "Please don't start sounding like Master Yoda. I'm not emotionally prepared for that."
Qui-Gon rose with a small grunt. "Then I'll say it plainly. If these beings are here, then what we believed impossible was simply something we had not yet learned to understand."
Ahsoka hated how calm he sounded.
She also needed it.
Jango holstered one blaster and checked the charge on the other. "We don't have time to stand around and wonder where they came from. If they're on the ship, they'll hit anything that keeps us alive. We need the armory secured."
Qui-Gon looked toward him. "Would the hyperdrive not be the more urgent target?"
"Already handled," Jango said. "Skirata took the ARCs, the Wookiees, and Krrsantan to reinforce it. If anything breaks through them, we've got bigger problems than whether I sent enough men."
Obi-Wan nodded. "Kal, the Alpha and Null ARCs, and the twins should be able to hold it."
Ahsoka looked at him. "That sounds like you know those Wookiees are dangerous."
"I've recently been given several reasons to believe so," Obi-Wan said dryly.
Qui-Gon turned his attention down the branching corridors, listening not only with his ears but with something deeper. "The hangar remains exposed. If we lose it, we lose more than a landing deck. We lose fighter recovery, deployment, evacuation routes, and the fastest movement point for reinforcements."
Cody's expression hardened. "Hangar bay two was already contested."
Rex clipped his helmet back on. "Then that's where we go."
Jango shook his head. "You take Ahsoka and the droids. I'll take Aiylan and Scud to munitions. We clear anything between here and the depot, then lock it down."
Obi-Wan looked at him. "You're certain you can handle that?"
Jango glanced toward Scud, then toward Aiylan, who had already reloaded and looked more irritated than frightened.
"We'll manage."
Aiylan gave Obi-Wan a quick nod. "Try not to get killed before we catch up."
Obi-Wan looked mildly offended. "I'll do my best to meet your expectations."
Jango pointed at Ahsoka. "You stay with the Jedi. And this time, when someone says fall back, you fall back."
Ahsoka opened her mouth.
Jango cut her off with one finger. "Don't."
She closed it.
Rex made a sound that might have been a laugh inside his helmet.
The groups split again at the next junction.
Jango, Aiylan, and Scud moved toward the munitions depot with a line of 501st troopers forming behind them. Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Ahsoka, Rex, Cody, Virek, Cairn, the remaining clones, and the three droids turned toward the hangar.
The ship shook as they ran.
Somewhere beyond the hull, capital ships were dying.
Ahsoka tried not to think about that.
Hangar bay two had become a battlefield inside a battlefield.
The great chamber was lit by fire, emergency lamps, and the stuttering flashes of blasterfire. Gunships sat half-loaded along the deck, some burning, others being used as cover by clone squads who fired through open troop bays. A wrecked V-19 had skidded sideways into a maintenance rig, scattering tools and bodies across the floor. The hangar shield still held, but beyond it the void was alive with moving fire and distant shipwrecks.
Vong boarders had forced their way in from a breach near the lower launch lane.
They had not taken the hangar.
Not yet.
But they had made it bleed.
Qui-Gon entered first, not because he ran ahead but because he seemed to flow into the chaos before the others had fully crossed the threshold. His green blade snapped to life. Ahsoka followed at his side, matching his speed as best she could, while Obi-Wan took position closer to the clone line, deflecting incoming organic projectiles and blaster-like bursts that hissed and splattered against saber light.
Rex and Cody split their men automatically.
Virek's 501st drove toward the left barricade. Cody's 212th strengthened the center. Cairn's Pathfinders moved to the right, using damaged support struts and gunship hulls as cover while they built a crossfire across the breach.
HK stepped into the hangar and made a sound that was almost reverent.
"Exclamation: Oh, this is magnificent."
K2 looked at the burning wreckage, the screaming wounded, and the advancing Vong line. "Your idea of magnificence is deeply concerning."
"Correction: My idea of magnificence is practical, varied, and resistant to sentimental limitation."
HK took three steps forward, then paused beside a ruptured fuel line venting pale vapor from a damaged ground unit.
Ahsoka saw his head turn.
Then he looked toward a cluster of Vong pushing through the smoke.
"Oh," HK said, far too happily. "Idea."
He fired once at the fuel line regulator.
Gas flooded the floor in a rolling low cloud.
The Vong charged through it.
HK waited until the first five were fully inside the vapor, then fired into the cloud.
The explosion lifted two of them completely off the deck and threw the others into the side of a gunship. Clone troopers ducked behind cover as heat washed through the hangar.
K2 turned his head slowly toward HK.
"You nearly set the entire hangar on fire."
"Clarification: I successfully set part of the hangar on fire."
R2 shrieked at both of them and sprayed emergency foam from a side nozzle as he rolled past.
"That's fair," K2 said, watching him go. "He's becoming the responsible one, which is a catastrophic reflection on all of us."
Qui-Gon and Ahsoka hit the surviving Vong near the edge of the blast.
They moved together for the first time in combat, and Ahsoka understood almost immediately why Anakin had spoken of Qui-Gon with such reverence even when complaining about him.
Qui-Gon didn't fight like Anakin.
Anakin was power contained by will, a storm deciding which direction to break.
Qui-Gon was different. He fought like water finding the weakness in stone. He didn't force every exchange. He let the Vong's strength pass just far enough, then struck where the armor breathed, where the joints opened, where living crab plating had to give way to motion.
Ahsoka tried to copy him.
Her first attempt nearly cost her an arm.
The Vong's amphistaff snapped around her blade and bit toward her shoulder. She twisted back in time, but the fangs grazed her upper arm and left a burning line of venom across her skin.
Qui-Gon's saber flashed past her cheek and cut into the attacker's exposed throat seam.
The creature fell.
"Do not copy what you do not yet understand," Qui-Gon said, already turning toward the next enemy.
Ahsoka gritted her teeth and followed. "I thought Jedi were supposed to learn by observing."
"Observation is not impersonation."
"Master Skywalker usually just says, 'Try it and don't die.'"
"That sounds like Anakin."
"He says it works."
"It has a selective record of success."
Despite herself, Ahsoka laughed once.
Obi-Wan's voice cut across the hangar from behind them. "Perhaps save the philosophical debate for after the enemies with living swords are dead."
Qui-Gon parried an amphistaff, turned, and drove his elbow into the Vong's exposed face before finishing with a cut beneath the arm.
"A fair point."
Ahsoka ducked under another strike. "You always listen to him?"
"Rarely."
Obi-Wan deflected a projectile away from a wounded clone and gave them both a deeply offended look. "I heard that."
HK, who had moved to the top of a disabled loader, fired down into the enemy line while speaking loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Observation: Organic morale increases when organics exchange pointless words while nearly dying. I find this perplexing, inefficient, and occasionally useful."
K2 drove one Vong bodily into the side of a cargo crate, crushing the creature's ribs under crab armor. "I also find it perplexing. But then, I find most of you perplexing."
R2 answered with a sharp whistle while slicing into a hangar control panel.
A moment later, one of the overhead magnetic cargo cranes swung loose and slammed a suspended engine housing into a Vong warrior trying to flank the clone line. The creature disappeared beneath several tons of machinery.
HK turned toward R2.
"Praise: Very good, small angry cylinder."
The fighting continued for several brutal minutes.
The Vong did not fall easily, but they did fall.
Under pressure, the Jedi adapted. Qui-Gon and Ahsoka hunted seams. Obi-Wan anchored the defense with his usual terrible patience, keeping clones alive long enough for their focused fire to matter. Rex and Cody coordinated volleys into exposed areas once the Jedi forced openings. Virek's men advanced in short, violent pushes, refusing to let the Vong regain ground. Cairn kept his Pathfinders angled wide, catching any attempt to break through the flanks.
K2 lost a strip of plating across his torso to an amphistaff and responded by ripping the weapon from the warrior's hands and beating him with it until the living staff went limp.
"That was disgusting," he said afterward.
HK looked over. "Correction: That was beautiful."
Finally, the last Vong in the hangar fell under a storm of blasterfire and a clean strike from Qui-Gon's blade.
The silence that followed was broken only by alarms, groaning metal, and wounded men.
For a little while, nobody moved much.
The clones began pulling the injured back from the open deck. Medics rushed in from the central access lane. R2 sealed the fuel line he'd been screaming about for the last three minutes. HK stepped down from the loader with the leisurely satisfaction of a droid who had just discovered a new hobby. K2 limped slightly, though he would almost certainly deny it if asked.
Ahsoka sank down beside a scorched gunship strut, breathing hard. Her arm still burned where the amphistaff had grazed her, but the pain helped keep her focused.
Qui-Gon sat beside her a moment later, lowering himself with a tired sound that made him seem suddenly older.
"You alright?" Ahsoka asked.
"I should be asking you that."
"You can after I catch my breath."
He smiled faintly. "Reasonable."
Obi-Wan approached with Cody and Rex, the two commanders still speaking into their comms, trying to gather casualty reports without letting the numbers show on their faces.
Ahsoka looked at Qui-Gon, then at Obi-Wan.
"Have either of you ever fought anything this dangerous?"
Obi-Wan's eyes shifted to Qui-Gon, as if he wanted the answer too.
Qui-Gon looked out across the hangar, over the bodies of clones and Vong alike, over the burning fighters and the damaged deck, toward the open shield where space flashed with distant battle.
"No," he said quietly. "I have fought Sith. I have fought beasts, assassins, soldiers, and men who had surrendered themselves to hatred. I have never faced something like this."
That answer scared her more than she wanted to admit.
Before she could respond, Virek's voice cut through the shared channel.
"Bridge, this is Commander Virek. Hangar bay two is clear for the moment. Casualties are heavy, but we hold."
Anakin's reply came after a second of static.
"Who is with you?"
Virek looked around, taking quick inventory. "General Kenobi, General Jinn, Commander Tano, Captain Rex, Commander Cody, Commander Cairn, HK, K2, R2, and surviving elements from the 501st, 212th, and 119th."
Another pause.
Then Anakin said, "Inform Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that the Chiss captain has identified the enemy classification."
Everyone near Virek's comm went still.
Virek looked toward the Jedi, then answered. "Go ahead."
Anakin's voice came through the channel, colder than Ahsoka had ever heard it.
"The fleet we're fighting is not a fleet. It is a scouting expedition. The beings we're facing are not their true warriors. According to the Chiss captain, these are lesser caste forces and advance elements. Their dedicated warrior caste has not yet engaged."
The hangar seemed to go quiet beneath the alarms.
Ahsoka looked down at the bodies scattered across the deck.
These were the weak ones?
Rex did not say anything.
Cody's face hardened until it looked carved.
Cairn lowered his head slightly, as if committing the words to memory and hating them.
Obi-Wan's eyes closed for one brief second.
Qui-Gon turned his gaze to Ahsoka, because he must have felt the fear rushing through her before she could bury it.
Anakin's voice returned once more.
"We continue the fight. Skywalker out."
The channel closed.
Ahsoka stared at the dead Vong nearest her, at the armor that had resisted her saber, at the weapon that had cut through clone plating, at the enemies that had not existed in the Force and had nearly taken the hangar.
Her mouth felt dry.
"If those weren't their warriors," she said, "then what are we supposed to do when the warriors come?"
Qui-Gon rested one hand gently on the floor beside him.
"We trust the Force."
Ahsoka almost laughed, but it came out too shaky. "Master, I couldn't even feel them."
"No," Qui-Gon said. "But you can feel yourself. You can feel your allies. You can feel the moment around them. The Force works in ways we do not always understand. It brought us here for a reason."
"What reason?"
"I do not know."
"That's not very helpful."
His smile was tired but kind. "The truth often isn't at first."
Obi-Wan sat across from them on a low cargo crate, wiping alien blood from the edge of his saber hilt with a strip of cloth. "Qui-Gon has long believed that inconvenient mysteries are the Force's preferred teaching method."
"It does seem fond of them," Qui-Gon said.
Ahsoka hugged one knee loosely, trying to force her breathing to settle. "I'm not scared."
Qui-Gon looked at her.
She looked away.
"Alright," she muttered. "I'm scared."
"That is better."
"How is that better?"
"Because now you are no longer wasting strength lying to yourself."
Obi-Wan looked up with a faint smile. "He used to say things like that to me."
"Did it help?"
"Not at the time. Much later, annoyingly."
Qui-Gon chuckled softly, then winced when the motion pulled at some injury beneath his armor.
Ahsoka caught it. "You're hurt."
"Everyone here is hurt."
"That's not an answer."
"It was almost one."
She gave him a look, and for some reason that amused him.
"You remind me of Anakin," he said.
Ahsoka made a face. "I don't know if that's a compliment."
"It depends on the day."
Obi-Wan's mouth twitched. "Usually on whether he is present to hear it."
Ahsoka looked between them, and something of the panic loosened in her chest.
"You were trained by Count Dooku, right?" she asked suddenly. "I forget that sometimes."
Qui-Gon's expression changed.
Not sharply. Not with anger.
But the warmth in him became older, more distant.
"Yes," he said. "I was."
"What was he like?"
Obi-Wan paused in cleaning his saber.
Qui-Gon looked toward the open hangar shield, where flashes of the space battle reflected faintly in his eyes.
"He was brilliant," he said. "Demanding. Proud. Far too certain that intelligence could solve what compassion should have softened. He wanted change in the Order long before most of us admitted change was needed."
Obi-Wan's voice came quieter. "He was a great master."
Qui-Gon nodded. "He was."
Ahsoka watched him carefully. "But now he's…"
"Walking a dark path," Obi-Wan said.
Qui-Gon did not answer immediately.
That silence made Obi-Wan look at him.
The older Jedi's face had gone still in a way Ahsoka could not quite read. She wondered if he was thinking about Dooku. Then, suddenly, she wondered if he was thinking about Anakin.
The thought made her uncomfortable.
Because if Dooku had walked a dark path after wanting change…
What did that mean for her master?
Qui-Gon seemed to sense the direction of the thought and turned back to her.
"Dooku once told me that power reveals the architecture of a soul," he said. "I believed him too easily. Power does reveal, but it also pressures, distorts, and tempts. A Jedi must learn not merely to refuse darkness, but to understand what in them answers when darkness calls."
Ahsoka swallowed. "And if something does answer?"
Qui-Gon looked at her with such patience that, for a moment, the war seemed farther away.
"Then you do not pretend you heard nothing. You listen carefully, you seek wisdom, and you choose again."
The words settled in her.
Then the hangar wall exploded.
The impact threw Ahsoka sideways.
Sound vanished into a ringing pressure that crushed the world flat for half a second. Fire and debris burst across the hangar. The shield flickered. Clones screamed. A gunship lifted off its struts and slammed back down with one wing sheared clean away.
Another boarding pod had punched through the hangar's far side.
Larger than the first.
The organic shell split open before the smoke even cleared.
The things that came out were different.
Ahsoka knew it immediately.
They were taller, heavier, armored more completely in dark living crab plates. Their weapons were stranger and more elaborate, amphistaffs coiling around forearms before hardening into blades, hooked polearms grown from bone and living sinew, organic shields flexing on their arms. Their faces were marked with deeper scars and ritual carvings.
They moved with purpose.
Not like raiders.
Warriors.
Obi-Wan rose, blue blade igniting. "I imagine these are the ones Mitth'raw'nuruodo warned us about."
HK fired at the first warrior.
The bolts struck armor and did almost nothing.
The warrior turned toward him.
HK paused. "Concerned statement: Ah."
K2 charged anyway, because K2 was many things but not a coward. He slammed into one of the new warriors, driving him back two steps, then froze when the Vong caught both his arms and held. The two strained against one another, metal and living armor grinding, before another warrior slashed across K2's side and tore open a long strip of plating.
K2 staggered back.
"I dislike this version."
HK fired a wrist-mounted dart into the exposed gill under one warrior's arm. The Vong ripped it out, snapped it between his fingers, and kept coming.
"Reassessment: I dislike this version as well."
Qui-Gon saw the line breaking.
"Fall back!" he shouted. "All units, fall back to the inner hangar doors!"
Rex echoed the command instantly. Cody and Cairn pulled their men into retreating formation, firing as they moved. Virek's 501st held the center long enough for wounded clones to be dragged back, but the Vong warriors crashed into the line before it could fully disengage.
The retreat became a trap.
Ahsoka found herself between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan as the first warrior reached them.
She attacked the joint.
He was ready.
The amphistaff snapped around her saber, twisted, and nearly pulled it from her hand. She reversed grip, kicked off the side of a cargo crate, and slashed down at his neck. He caught the blow on a living shield and shoved her backward with such force that her boots slid across the deck.
Another warrior came at Obi-Wan.
Another at Qui-Gon.
Then the largest of them stepped from the pod.
He was taller than the others, broad and scarred, his armor ridged with pale growths that looked almost ceremonial. His amphistaff coiled around his arm like a living serpent, then hardened into a spear longer than Ahsoka was tall. He moved slowly at first, not because he was sluggish, but because he had no need to hurry.
The clones fired on him.
He advanced through it.
Bolts burned into his armor. Some found softer seams and drew blood. He ignored them.
Ahsoka stepped into his path.
She did not know why.
Maybe because he was moving toward wounded clones. Maybe because Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were already engaged. Maybe because Anakin would have gone straight for the largest enemy in the room and some stupid part of her had learned that from him too well.
The Vong leader struck.
Ahsoka blocked.
The impact drove her to one knee.
Her arm went numb.
He twisted the spear, and the living weapon flexed around her saber, nearly hooking the blade aside. She rolled under the follow-up strike and cut toward his leg, but he stepped back just enough for the saber to scrape armor instead of flesh. Then he backhanded her.
She flew.
Obi-Wan broke from his duel immediately. "Ahsoka!"
Qui-Gon moved too.
They engaged the leader together, blue and green blades striking from opposite sides. For several moments, even the Vong leader had to give ground. Obi-Wan's defense boxed him in, Qui-Gon's precision found seams, and the clones under Cody and Rex poured covering fire into his flanks whenever an opening appeared.
But the leader did not fight like the others.
He read them.
Not through the Force. Not through any sense the Jedi understood.
Through experience, cruelty, and instinct sharpened into command.
He slammed the butt of his spear into the deck, forcing Obi-Wan back with a sudden sweep. Qui-Gon stepped in to cover, blade rising.
The spear changed.
It softened, bent, then hardened again mid-strike around Qui-Gon's guard.
Obi-Wan saw it too late.
"Master!"
The spear punched through Qui-Gon Jinn's chest.
For one impossible second, everything stopped.
Qui-Gon looked down.
The weapon had gone clean through his armor, through flesh, through the heart beneath it.
Ahsoka could not breathe.
Obi-Wan's face emptied.
The Vong leader ripped the spear free.
Qui-Gon fell.
He did not stumble dramatically. He did not cry out. His green blade vanished as it slipped from his hand, and his body hit the hangar deck with a sound far too small for what had just happened.
"Master!"
Obi-Wan's shout broke the world open.
He attacked with a fury Ahsoka had never seen from him.
For a moment, he was everywhere—blue blade flashing, cloak torn, face twisted with grief and rage as he drove into the Vong leader and the warriors around him. He cut one across the inner arm, stabbed another through the throat seam, forced the leader back three steps under a storm of strikes.
But three steps were not enough.
The Vong warriors surged around him.
Rex and Cody fired until their rifles overheated. Virek dragged a wounded clone out of the path of a blade and nearly lost his arm doing it. Cairn shouted for smoke cover. HK and K2 reengaged just long enough to force a gap.
"Master!" Ahsoka screamed.
He didn't hear her.
Or he did and couldn't obey.
She ran to him, caught his arm as he pulled back for another strike, and nearly got thrown off by the force of his movement.
"We have to go!"
"I won't leave him!"
"If we stay, we die!"
He turned on her then, and the pain in his face almost broke her.
K2 grabbed Obi-Wan from behind with one damaged arm while HK fired wildly into the advancing Vong.
"Urgent statement: As much as I appreciate grief-driven slaughter, this position is becoming mathematically fatal."
K2 hauled Obi-Wan back another step. "I am choosing not to die for your emotional closure."
Obi-Wan fought them for half a breath.
Then he saw Qui-Gon's body beyond the Vong line.
Unreachable.
The realization hit him harder than any weapon.
Ahsoka pulled again.
This time he came.
The surviving clones fell back through the inner hangar doors as smoke charges detonated behind them. The Vong leader stood amid the haze, spear dripping, watching them retreat as if letting them carry the wound deeper into the ship.
The blast doors slammed shut.
For half a second, the survivors stood in the corridor beyond them, breathing hard, bloodied, stunned.
Then Obi-Wan collapsed against the wall.
Ahsoka stayed beside him, one hand still gripping his sleeve.
No one spoke.
No one knew how.
On the bridge of the Resolute, the Force cried out.
Anakin felt it before any alarm sounded.
Before any report reached the command deck.
Before his name left Yularen's mouth.
The scream tore through him from below, from the hangar, from the dying echo of a presence that had been part of his life since the moment he was taken from Tatooine.
Qui-Gon.
The universe stopped.
The bridge became silent.
Officers moved around him, but they moved without sound. Lights flashed, mouths opened, hands pointed toward displays, alarms pulsed in red across the command pit. Beyond the viewport, ships burned in beautiful, meaningless streaks of orange and white.
Anakin heard none of it.
He saw none of it clearly.
He was standing in the Naboo ship again, smaller, shivering, Qui-Gon kneeling before him with patient eyes.
He was in the Temple, angry and young, Qui-Gon telling him that anger heard was not the same as anger obeyed.
He was on Korriban, the red dust moving around them, Qui-Gon's living hand steady on his shoulder.
He was on Geonosis, hearing Obi-Wan shout as the mask fell.
He was everywhere at once and nowhere at all.
Then sound began to return.
Not gently.
In pieces.
"General?"
Yularen's voice.
"General Skywalker?"
The tactical officer shouting damage reports.
Mitth'raw'nuruodo's voice through the comm, calm and distant, requesting a timing correction for the center line.
Ahsoka's fear somewhere below.
Obi-Wan's grief like a blade dragged across the Force.
And underneath all of it, the empty absence of the thing that had killed Qui-Gon Jinn.
Anakin's gloved hands curled into fists.
Outside the viewport, one of his own Venators folded inward.
No enemy fire struck it.
No visible projectile hit its shields.
Its central spine simply bent as if caught in the fist of an invisible god. Armor plates screamed apart. The hull collapsed along its middle, crushed into itself before secondary explosions tore the dying ship open from within.
The bridge erupted in horror.
"Venator Resolute Spear has been hit!" an officer shouted. "Unknown gravitic weapon impact. She's breaking apart!"
Yularen's face drained of color. "Was that one of theirs?"
No one knew.
No one could know.
Anakin stared at the dying ship and felt nothing for the men aboard.
Not yet.
The grief had not reached them.
The rage had taken all available space.
He turned from the viewport.
His cape swept behind him as he began walking toward the bridge exit.
Yularen stepped forward. "General, where are you going?"
Anakin did not stop.
"Below."
"General, the fleet—"
"Mitth'raw'nuruodo has command."
Yularen stared after him. "General Skywalker—"
Anakin halted at the edge of the bridge.
When he turned his mask back toward the admiral, the command deck seemed to shrink under the weight of him.
"Do not question him. Do not delay him. Do not argue chain of command while my ships are dying and my men are being butchered. Until I return, every vessel in this fleet obeys the Chiss captain's battle orders as if they came from me."
Yularen looked as though he wanted to object.
Then he saw something in Anakin's stillness and decided survival had its own discipline.
"Yes, General."
Anakin turned away.
The bridge doors opened before him.
For one moment, he stood framed in red emergency light, silent and enormous and full of a darkness even the war seemed reluctant to touch.
Then he was gone.
Behind him, the battle continued.
Ahead of him, deep in the wounded body of the Resolute, Qui-Gon Jinn lay dead on the hangar floor.
And Anakin Skywalker went to meet the thing that had killed him.