The medical bay inside the battered ARC Base Handuin smelled of cauterized flesh, stim-gel, and recycled air pushed too hard through failing filters. Rain drummed the roof like distant artillery, a constant reminder that Jabiim never truly slept.
I sat on the edge of a surgical cot, sleeve rolled up, arm extended toward the hovering 2-1B medical droid. Its photoreceptors flickered as it scanned the puncture site.
"General Dagon," it intoned in its calm, clinical monotone, "your request is highly irregular. Jedi blood is not a standard transfusion medium. Compatibility with other Force-sensitives is theoretically possible due to midi-chlorian resonance, but—"
"Do it," I cut in. My voice was rough, scraped raw from the storm I'd unleashed. "Take the sample. Cross-match it against Ahsoka's profile. If there's any resonance—any at all—use it. She's stable, but she's not waking up. I want her back."
The droid paused, processing. "Understood. Proceeding with venipuncture."
The needle slid in cold and precise. Dark red welled up, drawn into the vial. I didn't flinch. Pain was an old friend now.
Across the bay, Ahsoka lay under a bacta tent—chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm, monitors beeping steady but slow. The wound Durge had given her was gone, sealed by whatever dark miracle I'd channeled in that moment of rage. But her mind remained locked away. Coma. Or something deeper. The Force around her was quiet—too quiet.
I stared at the ceiling, yellow fading from my eyes but not from memory. The dark side hadn't left. It coiled in my chest like a second heartbeat.
Outside, Puck's voice crackled over the comm. "General. Perimeter sweep complete. No contacts. No probes. No signals. The lightning… it erased everything. Scorpeneks are all down—shields overloaded, cannons fused. Every last one of them slag. IFVs gone. Most AT-TEs wrecked—legs sheared, turrets melted. We've got maybe a dozen AT-AT walkers still operational, hulls scarred black but legs intact. Juggernauts took the worst beating, but half the fleet's still rolling. Walls are holding—scarred to hell, half the turrets slagged or gone. But we're secure."
I exhaled. "Casualties?"
"Fifty thousand effectives remaining. Ammo critical. Power cells at thirty percent across the board. Medical bays overflowing. But… no new enemy wave. Sensors are quiet. For the first time in weeks."
Quiet.
The word felt wrong on Jabiim.
I stood, pulling my sleeve down. "Blam—Senior Marshal Command—has primary orders now. No new enemies appearing means we don't wait to be hit again. We take the initiative."
Puck's helmet tilted. "Sir?"
"Capture the cities. The settlements. The mining towns. Stratus's nationalists are broken. Their leadership is either dead or in binders. Alto's gone silent. We move now—before they regroup or Dooku finds another way to punch through the storms."
I keyed the base-wide channel.
"All units. This is General Dagon. The Separatist assault is shattered. Their orbital assets are burning wrecks across the planet. We hold the high ground. We hold the initiative. Primary objective: secure Jabiim's population centers. Ten Juggernauts will lead mobile columns. Traverse the burn zones—use the crashed CIS ships as waypoints. Secure supply caches, rally points, and any surviving loyalist cells. Treat civilians with restraint. This is not extermination. This is liberation—or the closest thing we can manage on this mudhole."
A chorus of affirmatives rolled back—tired, but resolute.
I stepped outside.
The sky was low and bruised, rain falling in steady sheets. Fires still burned in the distance—Separatist hulks smoldering where they'd fallen, orange glows painting the clouds. Destroyed Lucrehulks lay like beached leviathans, half-buried in craters, their hulls split open and venting plasma that hissed into steam. Munificents had come down in pieces, wings sheared, reactors cooking off in secondary detonations that lit the night like false suns.
Week three on Jabiim.
It felt like years.
Ten Juggernauts rolled out from the main gate—massive, scarred behemoths, treads churning mud into slurry. Their heavy laser cannons traversed slowly, scanning for threats that weren't there. Clone squads rode atop them or marched in disciplined columns behind, wrist blasters ready, armor blackened and pitted from endless combat.
I climbed into the lead Juggernaut's command turret, lightsabers clipped to my belt, rifle slung across my back. Ahsoka remained in the med bay—monitored, guarded, bacta cycling through her veins. The 2-1B would keep working. My blood was in the system now. If midi-chlorian resonance could pull her back… it would.
The convoy moved out.
We traversed the burn scar first—fields of molten metal still glowing faintly under the rain. Twisted droid limbs protruded from the muck like skeletal fingers. Charred Nationalist corpses lay in windrows, faces frozen in agony. TB-2 repulsor tanks sat half-melted, their angular hulls fused to the ground. Fires crackled in the bellies of fallen Lucrehulks, sending plumes of black smoke skyward.
Puck rode shotgun in the command hatch. "Scouts report the first settlement—Kiffex Drift—ten klicks north. Small mining town. Nationalist garrison pulled out days ago. Loyalists may still be holding out."
"Good," I said. "We secure it. Establish a forward operating base. Then push to the next."
The Juggernaut lurched over a rise. Below, the wreckage of a Recusant-class destroyer lay like a broken spine—bow buried, stern jutting skyward, turbolaser batteries still smoldering. Rain hissed on hot metal. Somewhere inside, faint emergency klaxons wailed, then died.
I stared at the ruin. Felt nothing.
The dark side didn't rage now. It simply… was. Quiet. Patient.
Ahsoka's face flashed in my mind—eyes open, unseeing.
I gripped the turret rail until my knuckles whitened.
"Faster," I ordered the driver. "We have cities to take."
The convoy rolled on—ten Juggernauts cutting through the apocalypse, fifty thousand clones marching behind.
Week three.
The war wasn't over.
It had only changed shape.
And in the silence between raindrops, the dark side whispered:
*Soon.*