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The Force Wills - Chapter 125
🕑 Added 2025-04-04 10:10:55 +0000 UTCHis eyes widened as he comprehended what the Dawn was doing and what the rest of the CIS fleet were going to do.
“Bastion wing! I want every repair you can get on the Dawn now!”
A lesser squadron commander would tell Anakin that the Dawn was barely within effective range of the Bastions or hesitate because this was technically still an enemy ship and ask how sure he was.
The clone captains obeyed and within four agonizing seconds shield repairs were streaking through space to land just as the surviving CIS fleet opened fire.
Anakin brought up a more detailed holo scan of the Dawn…
It felt like a black hole had opened in his stomach as Ahsoka was bombarded with the full attention of sixteen CIS ships of the line and a dreadnought. She had transferred the battleship’s rear shields forward and had as a result maybe a quarter of the standard strength of shields to survive with.
The Bastion repairs pushed that up to half and whilst the volley from the enemy reduced it again to barely single digit percentage points.
Yet the Dawn continued its charge towards the Invincible.
‘Sithspit, Snips! What are you doing?!’
There was no reply but the blanket of her Battle Meditation was still there so he could only assume she was too busy keeping her ship alive under the bombardment to respond. The sensor scan told the story; the Dawn’s shields were struggling to properly accept the repairs and he was watching the insanity of someone doing a calibration on a shield in full battle conditions whilst it was under direct fire.
“Fark it, this is good enough. 42nd Fleet, it’s time!”
From Velthara’s southern polar region, hidden in the densest part of the radiation belt, three more Venator-IIs emerged at maximum burn and used the moon’s gravity in a sling shot to gain even more speed.
They were called Ecliptic, Colossus and Vanguard and had arrived in Eriadu barely a few hours before the battle had begun.
Tempest, Resolute and Avenger fired their engines to bleed off some velocity, letting the rest of the Republic fleet move slightly ahead of the general retreat.
“Come on, move, move,” he muttered under his breath as he watched the optimal range spheres of his reinforcement rush towards the primary target. “Admiral Yularen, are we ready?”
“We’re at full charge, general.”
He winced as another volley from the enemy reduced the Dawn to a sliver of shield, just as optimals were reached on every ship from the 42nd.
“Fire!”
Resolute and every sister ship’s ventral bay opened and deployed their main guns with as much speed as the mechanisms would allow.
Six cerulean colored collimated laser beams instantly appeared in space, drawing six lines of destruction straight towards the fore section of the Invincible.
Kilotons of armor ablated away yet the beams still tore through more and more layers before they speared straight into the hull and inner sections of the dreadnought.
Six eruptions of gas, flame and debris, that were worth entire ships, spewed out of the drifting capital ship.
Anakin felt his hands clench into fists as he watched the Invincible, still cruising on its original momentum, with only thrusters for propulsion, practically pushed to the side under the titanic blow from six Venator-IIs.
Yet its guns kept on firing and its reactors stayed under combat loads, the collimated lasers having failed to induce even one to scram.
‘Ahsoka, you don’t need to suicide ram it!’
Yet the Dawn kept coming, having survived thanks to Bastion repairs and someone pulling off a technical miracle with the shield calibration to more readily accept the support.
“42nd, fire again!”
“Recharge in fifteen seconds, general,” Yularen pointed out calmly.
“We don’t have that time!”
‘Ahsoka! Answer me, blast it!’
Dawn was barely kilometers away now, so close that most of the CIS fleet couldn’t even get a firing solution on it anymore.
The sensors suddenly registered internal explosions within the Dawn’s superstructure-
He waved his hands into the holos to zoom in as close as possible, even as he felt his heart want to jump into his throat.
The Dawn’s sphereship burst explosively away from the main rear hull.
It fired every onboard thruster it could to push itself z negative.
The main hull continued onward, now pulled into an uncontrolled tumble, but the physics and the course Ahsoka had set for it was spot on.
A few seconds later, three kilometers of tumbling starship became a projectile that crashed into the port side of the Invincible at a relative velocity of just below 900 meters per second.
He watched in awe as the Dawn’s aft section crumpled against the superior armor for the briefest of moments.
His mind struggled with the calculation of the forces on display.
No amount of armor or physical matter could withstand what was unleashed. The Dawn and Invincible could no longer be considered distinct ships anymore, as two seconds later even the latter ship's armor buckled and gave way to the incoming mass and kinetic force.
A small new star was born in the next second as multiple reactors on the Dawn went critical and all the onboard munitions and volatiles exploded as well.
Command One automatically polarized the view of the two exploding ships, yet he couldn’t help the reflex to turn his head away.
“All ships brace!”
The Resolute rumbled under his feet as its forward shields blossomed into view, resisting the energy shockwave.
When it had passed and the polarization ended Anakin could only look in amazement for a few moments.
Invincible and the main superstructure of Dawn was now only an expanding sphere of debris ranging in size from a fist sized clumps of metal to starfighter sized glowing chunks of alloy and unrecognizable components.
The closest three Munificents and a single Recusant had also been mission-killed, their hulls dead in space with huge caverns torn through the hulls and slowly spiraling out of control.
Most importantly, he still felt Ahsoka’s battle meditation.
With certain gestures, aiding by the Force’s guidance, he swiped the holo controls, shifting the view of the room to show him the Dawn’s sphereship.
It was still in one piece, its own fresh shields from the sphereship’s supplementary systems had been strong enough to handle the expanding shockwave and debris wave.
The Bastion ships, still obeying their last order, restored those shields back to 100%.
‘Ahsoka, I’m going to kill you,’ he thought in jest as a full body relief fell over him.
‘Sorry, master. It had to be this way. Even with the 42nd main guns, it would’ve taken two more cycles to destroy the Invincible. Time in which we would’ve lost more Venators than we can afford. Not if we want to keep hold of this system.’
He saw the sphereship’s own main engines deploying, angling around on a new course. ‘You’re landing on the moon?’
‘I’m not about to hog Bastion repairs, master. There’s still a Lucrehulk and a dozen ships to take care of.’
‘Go ahead then. Good work, Snips… and don’t do that again,’ he thought sternly.
‘Can’t promise that, Anakin and neither could you.’
“Skywalker to the fleet, full burn to kill relative velocity.” With gestures to the holo interface he laid in a new course. “New primary targets are designated. Fire at will. Fire at will.”
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The Battle of Velthara would end nine minutes later with no further ship losses from the Republic fleet.
Bastion repairs and the low numbers of enemy ships would ensure that the Separatists couldn’t mount an effective attack. Yet they offered no surrender to the very last. With the final ship to fall being the last Lucrehulk to a combined collimated laser beam strike from the 42nd Fleet.
In the battle’s aftermath, small fleets of SAR shuttles and tugs were launched to pick up escape pods, ejected fighter pilots and salvage critical components from both sides.
Admittedly there were few pods launched from the destroyed CIS fleet during the battle, as in most cases there was little time for anyone to even think about running to a pod before a ship under an alpha strike utterly ceased to exist.
“We found Trench,” Anakin’s holo said. “The entire bridge superstructure of the Invincible was torn off and flung away by the shockwave. He’s lost a number of arms, eyes and large bits of his head’s exoskeleton, but he’ll survive. Though he’ll need a lot of cybernetics to regain functionality.”
“Tough bastard,” I commented leaning back in the captain’s chair of the much reduced Separatists Dawn. “I assume we’re not just letting him die because what’s in his head is too valuable?”
“Precisely. Trench has valuable intelligence of how the strategic think tank of the CIS works and who are its members.”
“That would certainly be nice to know.” The danger was that it would threaten the CIS side of the equation too much and Palpatine would arrange for Trench to have an unfortunate complication during his cyber surgery. Anakin knew this so I hope he had arranged enough time for either of us to try a bit of mindwalking on the harch admiral. Unfortunately, I didn’t hold out much confidence that we’d be successful in gleaning anything from such an alien mind. “What’s the situation in Bith?”
Anakin knew what I was actually asking.
“No movement. They’re not creating another attack fleet from their defensive line that we can see at least.”
“I wouldn’t either. Not with the 42nd, the new Venator-IIs, Furors and Bastions present at least.”
That someone other than me had come up with the idea for a dedicated electronic warfare ship was rather refreshing. Of course, it was just applying the principle of a specialist ship to another aspect of the battlefield, but it was satisfying seeing the ripples of effect spread from the stone I had thrown into the pond.
Anakin folded his arms with a troubled look on his face. “How long before we have to deal with Separatist Bastions, do you think?”
“They didn’t take it seriously before. That will now change rapidly. I’ll give it two, maybe three months before that day comes.”
It must be seriously infuriating for Palpatine working behind the scenes sometimes. It wouldn’t surprise me if Dooku had the full plans and blueprints for Bastions sitting in a personal server somewhere on Serenno. Yet neither he or his master could let the CIS build it yet, simply because CIS Intel was not that impossibly good. They needed plausibility for the plans to eventually leak or maybe even stage a commando raid on Kuat to steal them.
“Have you given thought to counter-Bastion tactics when that day comes?”
I nodded, “The most straightforward solution is just scaling up the Furor EW concept, but apply it to the entire Bastion. It can’t repair the shields of a ship it can’t see with the targeting sensors of the shield emitters. If that is unavailable then it's just a matter of tactics, quick target switching or spreading out damage before abruptly concentrating it.”
He groaned, “We’re both going to have to do a strategic and tactical primer. High command and the Jedi Council is going to insist on it.”
“The price of victory, more flimsiwork,” I joked.
He rolled his eyes with a slight smirk, “Another matter I wanted to bring up, when can you get the Dawn back into space? The Resolute’s Intel department is calling me practically every hour. Any longer and I fear they’re going to hijack a shuttle and join you down there.”
“We’re still in damage control mode down here and I can’t give you an answer unfortunately. Tech had to take the Dawn’s only remaining reactor offline and is still doing the assessment to see if we can fix the damage ourselves or if we’re going to need a tow back into orbit. Our rapid detaching from the aft section was not done by the book and that had too many technical consequences to really list in a quick discussion. I’m amazed the sphereship’s power grid held out as long as it did.”
Anakin nodded, “Well, I’ll let you get back to it and let me know if you need that tow.”
“I will, Skyguy. Tano out.”
His holo vanished and for a moment I stared out through the large forward viewport at the ‘mists’ of this fantastic moon.
Hunter had managed to land the Dawn with enough precision on a large plateau area, with distant jagged mountains wreathed in the shimmering mists the moon was known for, sitting some twenty kilometers distant to the north-east. At ground level, the reflected light from the gas giant in the sky produced an amazingly complex light show when it moved close to the horizon. It was especially worthy of a painting during the local day when the Eriadu sun also hit the thin scintillating atmosphere.
I got up from the very comfortable captain’s chair carefully and engaged my mag boots to not send myself into a jump in the .3 of standard gravity that Velthara featured.
Another casualty of our damage was the artificial gravity.
The bridge bulkhead doors hissed open and Tech entered with the awkward gait and flow of magboot walking.
“Please tell me some good news, Tech.”
“We’ll be able to start the reactor in ten hours,” he reported with a pleased grin looking up from a datapad. “Thankfully the former captain had enough foresight to consider the possibility we’re now experiencing. There is enough spare parts storage in the sphere section for a repair of the damaged reactor relays and the fifteen power conduits we burnt out. Artificial gravity can be restored in four hours, since that by default works off auxiliary and emergency power.”
“Sublight drives?”
“No damage thankfully, despite Hunter’s enthusiastic landing.”
“So we’ll at least be able to make the journey to Eriadu IV, good. Hyperdrive?”
“The backup Class 10 is working. The primary was naturally housed in the main hull.”
I chuckled at the weary look in the eyes of the genius clone. “We’re not going to be saddled with the job of flying this ship back to the core worlds, Tech. More than likely this sphereship is going to a new home in the Eriadu surface shipyards and its components will be shipped home for study.”
The clone’s tense shoulders relaxed slightly. “Of course. It would be a frightful waste of our time, commander.”
“In any event, good job, Tech. Be sure to be at the captain’s mess this evening, 1900 hours. We’ll be eating in victory today.”
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It was during the three hour journey back to Eriadu IV the next day that I had to deal with the unpleasant bit of this war that was not normally a feature of it.
The bodies of Captain Vurk Thalor and his bith bridge crew.
We had carried them to the medical bay of the Dawn’s sphereship on the hyper journey to Eriadu, placing them in the ship’s small morgue.
The original Lucrehulks which had featured much higher numbers of organic crews on long trade journeys to the Outer Rim had needed to deal with a fair number of deaths on any general voyage. Thankfully, the Dawn had not done away with those facilities.
Unfortunately, given the distraction and worry about maintaining appearances during our hijack of the ship, we had not gotten Thalor’s body to cold storage in time to avoid one of the more disturbing things that happened to neimoidian bodies in death.
It desiccated rapidly, the corpse’s face elongating and the brain sac shriveling into tiny pods.
This made dead neimoidians disturbingly resemble the general proportional design of a B1 droid, which was purposeful on the part of the designers.
Their funerary rites reflected their materialistic nature and they generally preferred to be cremated, the remains entombed with a selection of what wealth they had accumulated in life. Neimoidian burial sites were hidden in underwater seas and protected to keep the vast potential wealth safe from grave robbers.
Now I had to organize its transportation to Cato Neimoidia, which would no doubt also involve diplomatic headaches with the Trade Federation.
Thalor hadn’t been anyone of paramount importance, but as a trade ship captain and with his wealth, it put him in the top levels of Neimoidian society.
That’s what led me to the captain’s private office which was as suitably gaudy and filled with wealth as someone of his station was. Auridium plated items were on display everywhere and he even had an ashtray for smoking that looked to be solid auridium that I could buy half a squadron of Z95s for the amount of credits I could bring with a sale. The floors were covered with paintings and a number of preserved animal skins such as nexu pelts, including hunting trophies on the walls ranging from mounted rancor claws, a reek head with a truly impressive horn and a number of mounted acklay carapaces.
I stood at his large crimson greel wood desk and did not feel like sitting in the ultra luxurious nexu leather chair that looked to be molded for a neimoidian body.
A quick look at the chrono referenced the current time in the Coruscant senatorial district, before I sent through the comlink request directly from the terminal that Thalor had connected to his desk.
I didn’t expect this call to go through quickly and so I was idly browsing the small bookcase that only had holoslates stacked in them when the holocall connected after only three minutes.
The upper body of Senator Lott Dod of the Trade Federation appeared in holoform hovering above the desk.
“Senator, a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I said with a polite smile. “I’m Jedi Commander Tano of the Resolute and 42nd Fleet.”
“I know of you, commander,” said Dod with the reedy hollow accent of neimoidian speech, but he had lost the typical accent associated with the homeworld of that species, reflecting his many years on Coruscant. “It’s difficult to turn a corner in the Senate building and not see you or your master displayed in COMPORs latest artwork display. Now, why are you, a hero of the Republic, calling me?”
Projecting my senses through the link, I was unsurprised to find that Dod was in his senatorial office, but he only had a single protocol droid as an aide at the moment with no other retainers or secretaries in the office. However, I could also sense someone in an adjoining office that the senator had no wish for me to see talking to him; Senator Gume Saam of the Techno Union. It was somewhat of a wasted effort and the pretense of neutrality was so tiresome. I knew that they were dealing with both sides, they knew that I knew, but still the game had to be played.
“No doubt, you’ve heard via your varied contacts that a major battle took place recently in the Eriadu system.”
His chest swelled somewhat in a subconscious defensive display of body language, “I have many sources of information, all quite legitimate, commander, I assure you. However, yes, I have received general unclassified details of the battle.”
I almost wanted to outright laugh in his face. “I was involved, naturally and in so doing came into the possession of the remains and material assets of one of your Federation citizens, Captain Vurk Thalor of the Separatist Dawn.”
“Commander, the Federation has disavowed-”
I held up a finger to interrupt the usual spiel of denial. “I don’t care to hear the party line, senator. I’m here to deal with the facts of the matter only. I have the remains of one of your citizens. No matter what affairs he was involved in or your disavowal of his ideals or actions, his remains and assets need to be dealt with as your culture dictates.”
I held up the auridium plated datapad and began tapping on it to reference the details. “The remains have already been cremated in the morgue of the Dawn and been interred in a solid auridium funerary urn according to the will found in Thalor’s database. In addition, there are just over 120 million credits worth of assets on board and a further 200 million in bank accounts and investments that need to be disbursed to Thalor’s debtors and family. However, the sphereship of the Dawn has been impounded under the Senate’s Articles of War and cannot be included in this procedure.”
Dod blinked his large red eyes in astonishment. “You… want to help make sure he is properly interred according to tradition on Cato Neimoidia?”
“Certainly Senator,” I replied matter-of-factly. “He was my enemy and I defeated him, that doesn’t imply I’m going to loot everything he has to enrich myself, no matter what my Mandalorian forebears might have done in the past. I am also a Jedi and honor bound to respect all cultures that don't act against the Force or life itself.”
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a rather speechless Lott Dod for a few moments.
“Oh, uh, very well, commander. What did you have in mind about the arrangements for the transfer of assets?”
“After a thorough scan by RI, it will all be loaded onto the next freighter that is leaving Eriadu for Coruscant. Upon which everything will be transferred to your custody as ambassador for your people. From there, I trust that you will make the arrangements for it to move on safely to Cato Neimoidia.”
I wasn’t wearing my helmet at the moment, so let my pointed expression speak for itself and for the final cherry, pushing on Dod’s spirit with the Force.
It had the proper effect and the senator nervously swallowed, “Yes-yes, I will do so, c- commander.”
“Good, I would hate to discover that in a few months’ time, that a barren tomb more fitting for a menial grub was arranged for Captain Thalor and that his wealth had fallen into improper hands.”
He coughed uncomfortably, “You can rest assured, commander-”
“And I will know, Senator Dod,” I pushed even harder and impressed on his mind that it was the absolute truth. Even if I didn’t have discretionary access to RI assets on Cato Neimoidia to do this simple check, HK needed to have a check-in with Rush Clovis anyway.
Word had reached me through Fulcrum that one of the Council of Five, the ruling body of the InterGalactic Banking Clan had been assassinated whilst on Cato.
It had been kept hush-hush so far, with the rest of the council frantically maneuvering to find a suitable replacement as quickly as possible. Only I suspected that the suitable replacement they’d find would already be in Palpatine’s pocket. That could not happen.
“Yes, I understand, commander,” Dod held up his hands wearily.
I pulled back slightly with the Force, “Good. You’ll receive a message when everything is on Coruscant and ready for you to accept custody of the assets.” There was no way I was giving the precise freighter details for him to arrange a deniable pirate operation, which is something he would do as well.
“I understand, commander.”
I nodded, “Tano-”
“Wait! Commander… Why are you doing this?”
“I’ve already said, but I can tell you mean this on a more personal level.” I folded my hands behind my back. “I respect my enemies, senator. Whatever feelings I have about their goals, way of life and behavior, or what makes them my enemy, they remind me of my own weaknesses, they highlight my faults and I never underestimate them. Besides, one day, and don’t construe this as a threat, you might be in Captain Thalor’s position or even I would. And I would hope that we’d both treat each other’s remains with the same respect. Does that satisfy you, senator?”
Dod was silent for a few moments, his red bulbous eyes blinking in astonishment but eventually he nodded. “It does, commander.”
“Good day to you, senator.”
The holo faded and the link shut down.
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Dealing with the bith remains on the other hand was far more complex.
There was a small population of them on Eriadu, who were now living in exile from their home system, unable to visit due to the war. Not to mention the general suspicion they were treated with after their government had aligned with the CIS.
They hadn’t been herded into camps or enclaves, which spoke well of the Eriaduan people, but they were all being carefully watched by the local authorities.
Which is why I had sent out a brief message to Captain Wilhuff Tarkin, enquiring about any contact he had with local bith.
“Yes, the bith are generally represented on the planet by Klyther Voon these days,” said Wilhuff’s holo. “He was originally part of a political movement of bith that advocated for more settlement beyond their home system. That drew the ire of their government and they were branded as dissenters and exiled even before the Bith Harmonic Assembly threw in their lot with the Separatists. Do you wish his contact code, commander?”
“That would be most helpful, captain. I currently have nine dead bith in the Dawn’s morgue that need their funerary rites performed, which I’m given to understand are technically complicated to say the least.”
Bith used a sophisticated chemical process on their dead to transform the body into a resonant crystal, which was then either placed into family mausoleums or in some cases even used in the construction of honorary and very treasured musical instruments. The funeral ceremony itself where this happened could almost be likened to a symphonic orchestra performance where each family member would play an instrument. The music performed was mostly lost on the majority of the galaxy, who didn’t have the proper hearing organs to appreciate it. Togruta were one of the few exceptions to that.
“That is putting it lightly,” said Tarkin dryly, he looked to the side briefly and a file began downloading on my comlink, which M8 immediately scanned and saved.
“Received, thank you, captain.”
“It’s the least I could do, commander. You and that specialist commando squad are a large part of the reason why my home planet is not under enemy occupation at the moment. Just to inform you, I have called for the Quintad to meet and one of the items on the agenda will be a suitable reward for your service to Eriadu.”
The Quintad was the council of the five ruling families of Eriadu, of which the Tarkin family was a member. They served as a distributed executive branch of the government, whilst functional ministers were nominated by them and a democratic assembly acted as a local planetary senate, who confirmed the nominations.
In practice, especially during wartime these days, the five families called all the shots, with the assembly rubber stamping the Quintad’s decisions.
My mouth twisted into a wry smile, “I will say that I was merely doing my duty and that there is no need, but you will insist and therefore I will humbly accept whatever the Quintad deems appropriate.”
Tarkin chuckled, “Quite. You can tell your master that he is also under consideration and that he would be wise to accept.”
“I will advise him so, captain.”
“Thank you again, commander. Tarkin out.”
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The Dawn landed on an appropriately sized pad in the vast Eriadu Shipyard complex, which could rightly be called a sprawling city in its own right.
It stretched over 105 square kilometers, filled with factories making components, tall skyscrapers filled with designers, engineers and administrators, huge expanses of antigrav cranes surrounding gigantic volumes of space where even freighters could be constructed. The largest such space was nearly eight kilometers in length and I couldn’t help but imagine the shape of one of the prettiest supercarriers from the New Eden universe taking shape within those arms and being mine to command.
I banished those dreams as the Dawn shuddered, its landing legs absorbing the light impact of settling on the surface and coming to a stop.
“Well done, Hunter.”
His shoulders slightly slumped as the tension of the moment passed. “Thank you, commander. Getting the hang of it by now.”
Especially as this landing was practically being watched by the entire planet and a small army of local media camped around the publically accessible perimeter around the landing pad. It was treated as a touchstone symbol of victory by the Eriaduans in their struggle against the continued Separatist threat on their border.
I stood from the captain’s chair, “Secure all systems, leave reactor on standby idle. Let’s get back to the Resolute, CT99.
“Finally!” said Wrecker with a big smile. “Though I’m definitely going to miss your cooking, commander.”
“I’m sure there’ll be more opportunities in the future for that, Wrecker.”
We left the bridge as a group who had survived death together and fought beside each other. It was a feeling and bond in my heart that I wished didn’t need such extreme and violent circumstances to be created.
A specific chirping alert in my helmet sounded and the display in my helmet HUD told me that any idea of relaxing for the next few days was out of the question.
“Mistress, priority Fulcrum message from Dathomir,” M8 reported.
I isolated my helmet, replying subvocally, “Decode, 1 – 7 – 3 – 4 – 6 – 7 – 3 – 2 – 1 – 4 – 7 – 6 – Charlie,” I said, switching to English.
The message from Mother Talzin was just three words, ‘We must speak.’
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It took almost a full local day before I could pull myself away from the post-battle debriefs and bureaucracy that threatened to drown us.
I’d barely had four hours of sleep in my quarters on Resolute before Anakin and I snuck on board the Omen in Hangar Bay Four.
“You sure about this, Snips?” he asked as he sat down at the control station of the proxy droid systems.
“Fifty, fifty, at the moment,” I sighed as I reclined onto the interface chair and placed the specially shaped circlet onto my head. “I have a good idea of what this is about, but I’d rather not say anything now.”
He nodded, flicking a row of switches and tapping rapidly onto the touchscreens and holos surrounding him. “System’s ready and nominal. Checking signal… it’s 71%, that’s borderline.”
“Can’t put this off. Hit it.”
“Hold on.”
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and braced for the disjointed feeling…
Suddenly I was left gasping as the darkened world of my inner eyelids was twisted, my sense of my own body was absent, then returned entirely anew.
Now I was standing stiffly and around me was the docking cradle of a droid recharge station, in a dusty room of stone that had been liquified and shaped by the power and minds of many Nightsisters.
I looked down at my body and saw only the raw metal skeleton and glowing blue emitters of the holo droid proxy. It shimmered a moment later with light and the appearance of me in my Mandalorian armor manifested around it. My presence in the Force surged and blossomed outwards before I reeled it back into a disciplined conforming shape around my body.
The nearby door made of brambles opened and the familiar looking form of Merrin in the red robes of a Nightsister apprentice entered. I had known she would be here, but when I saw her on my last proxy visit, it had nevertheless thrown me for a slight loop. She was in her early teens here and had one of those cute faces that gave you the irrational urge to pinch cheeks and hug the stuffing out of her. It was especially jarring given that I knew she would grow up to be quite beautiful by generally any standard, even with dathomirian traits that usually worked against it.
“Welcome Padawan Tano,” Merrin bowed her head and made a complicated signal of formal greeting with her hands. “Mother Talzin is expecting you. Please follow me.”
I bowed my head in thanks and walked in the apprentice’s wake.
The Nightsister fortress was the same as ever, an eerie place of green lit ichor flows surrounding large stone towers within a hollowed mountain. Though I was seeing a small sprinkling of technology now overlaid within the space from the occasional modern lamps hung on the walls. It was not readily apparent how it was being powered, but a quick dip into technometry provided the answer - the cabling and conduits had been molded into the stone by the Nightsisters control over base matter.
The power itself was coming from a shielded fusion reactor that had been buried even deeper below the fortress mountain. The only reason I could find it at all was by tracing the conduits to their origin point. Sensors from orbit wouldn’t have a hope of detecting it.
So Mother Talzin was finally making good on some of her goals in bringing the Nightsisters more properly into the current era.
Marrin before me turned off the familiar path to the central ritual chamber where I usually met with Talzin and instead led me towards one of the many stone towers that contained the living quarters of the Nightsister tribe. It was effectively an apartment building grown and shaped by ichor enabled matter control.
How they could have this ability, yet still struggle with their reproductive problems meant that there were definitely nuances or limitations to their powers when applied to their own bodies. I had a front row seat to Talzin’s actions when she had molded Savage Opress into the Space Marine-lite version of a male zabrak and enhanced his connection to the Force. It had let me make considerable further progress in my own healing abilities whether applied to others or internally to myself.
My only theory was that it was one thing to shape stone, bone, muscle and so forth, but completely different when you were dealing with the delicate and complex structure of a developing fetus in the womb.
Our path carried us up a winding staircase until we got off on a level about three quarters to the very top of the tower.
Marrin stopped at a nondescript bramble door a few feet away from the landing. She placed a hand on it and let out a pulse of the Force from her hand, which also let a brief visible pulse of gaseous ichor leak into visibility.
Her lips pursed and her gray cheeks darkened in embarrassment and anger.
It took me a moment to parse why - the visible ichor pulse represented a fumbling of control.
Talzin’s haunting triple-echo voice pushed into my montrals. “Enter.”
Marrin pushed open the door and led the way into the darkened room beyond.
It was a small space, barely twelve square meters. A single bed in one corner that was clearly designed for Talzin’s 2.2 meter tall frame, made of bramble and a thin mattress with rancor leather blankets. On the walls, a mounted bane back spider exoskeleton and other examples of dathomiri fauna that Talzin had either hunted herself or just found she liked the look of.
In one corner of the room, a frame carried her elaborate red outer robes, which was usually quite alive and moving under the influence of her power, but now drooped in lifelessness, obeying the conventional physical laws again.
Talzin herself was seated in the middle of the room on a small circular carpet in a near meditative pose that almost seemed like a Japanese seiza sitting position.
For all that her empowered robes made her larger than life and imposing, even without she was still physically intimidating.
The stark white skin of her scalp was on full display now and a lot more as she only wore dark trousers and strapping over her chest, holding back a pair of reasonably sized breasts that her robes hid quite effectively. Far from being wrinkled, old or ravaged, her skin still looked quite vital and smooth. If she were human, I’d have thought she was in her late thirties. The only indications of her age were scarring around her arms and abdomen from her early days that I knew she only carried by choice.
Seeing Talzin like this did a lot to break her otherworldly aura and mystique. It was still there, but seeing her in the benign and private setting of her modest living space like this did a lot to show you there was an actual living being behind all of it.
Yet, that also terrified me. Why was Talzin showing me this? Why cast off her outer mask to me?
Talzin kept her eyes closed, “Marrin, leave us.”
“Yes, Mother Talzin.”
When the young apprentice had left and closed the door behind her, Talzin opened her silver-black eyes and speared me with an intent look.
“Do you know why you are here, Jedi?”
I nodded, “Yes. You think it’s time to find your oldest son.”
“I do not think, I know. A vision of the future has been shown to me. Our enemy has known where Maul is all this time. He has been content to let my son fester in agonizing punishment and madness for his failure on Naboo.”
“Makes sense, unfortunately. They were master and apprentice for many years, there would be a bond. That would’ve degraded with Maul’s condition, but the enemy would at least know of his survival.”
“My vision indicates something has changed the enemy’s disposition to my son, as such he has dispatched an assassin of sufficient strength that would be able to kill him.”
I folded my hands behind me and pushed forward into prescience. The branching paths before me were maddeningly complex but it was irritatingly clear that Maul also had his part to play. As much as my machinations had pulled Savage away from the path to his elder brother and also saved the Nightsisters from massacre by Dooku and the CIS; it just meant that Palpatine would have to get another to do his dirty work.
Perhaps the enemy had seen the potential loose end that Maul could be or he had simply gotten tired of feeling his distant apprentice’s constant agony and madness.
“How much time do we have?”
“That is unclear, Jedi Tano. You of all people know that these visions are not interpreted easily. All that I can say is that the threat has been made clear to me and that if we do not act, my son will die, his life snuffed out on a world of great ruin and starship debris.”
I nodded as I felt the probability lines shift, tumble and settle into a new overall path. There were two great kaleidoscopes before me and even as I explored both, I recoiled from the one where I just let Maul die. It would see me become an immediate enemy of the Nightsisters as Talzin sensed my inaction. The damage she could do, not just to me personally, but to all my plans and the Fulcrum network with her powers. She wouldn’t care one whit that she was hurting the fight against Palpatine. Maul was still her son and whilst there wasn’t what you could conventionally call paternal love there, there were the bonds of blood and birth - the terrible risk all dathomiri females took whenever they had children.
‘Snips, seriously?’ Anakin thought to me. ‘Maul killed Master Jinn!’
‘You think I don’t know that?! What a terrible risk this is? But I also see what happens if we do not do this. It’s not just a matter of making Talzin and the Nightsisters our enemy. That’s just short-term stuff, in the long term, they are wiped out by Palpatine, their people, knowledge and an entire aspect of the Force… gone! The consequences of that for the future against other threats to the galaxy are even greater.’
‘How do you know she’s even speaking the truth about her vision? That this removal of her outer masks is not just a manipulation.’
‘Please, Skyguy. Give me some credit here. Of course it's manipulation and I’ve done the same to her.’
For better or worse, this was not the original Mother Talzin who had lost everything and sent Savage and Maul off on a path of blazing revenge across the galaxy. This Talzin still had her sisterhood and people, she still had her wits and we still had a common enemy.
“Understand Mother Talzin, we must be ready to shield Maul. The moment we commit to this course of action, the ripples in the Force could potentially be felt across the galaxy.”
“That I know full well, Jedi Tano. Preparations have been made,” Talzin gestured with her hand and out of a wicker basket near her desk an amulet floated out.
The pendant was about as big as my fist, circular, with ichor green glowing curved patterns etched out of gold, the silver chain was more simple and intricately woven with thousands of tiny links. It floated forward and stopped mere inches from my face.
My eyes widened as I perceived quite a few of my probability lines simply… stop? Terminating as if they had run into a solid wall of beskar.
“When this amulet comes in contact with your proxy, you will receive certain knowledge and experience from me. I’ve studied the memories and feelings of a sister I secretly sent to Coruscant, letting me perceive the Shroud blanketing the planet. It is akin to the many illusions woven on Dathomir and I suspect the enemy copied some of our techniques while he was here. With this knowledge, you can essentially throw your own personal Shroud over yourself.”
“Yet he will not notice me suddenly disappearing from his own foresight?” I asked wearily.
“That is the difference between the Nightsister shrouds and the enemy’s Sith bastardization of the technique. Just as we can make strangers perceive illusions and disappear, you will do the same, only this time applied to yourself within the causality of what you call prescience. The enemy’s foresight will not be disturbed so long as you do not cause too strong ‘ripples’. Words struggle to convey these concepts. With this technique it will allow you to move forward and shield my son as well when you find him.”
“There’s also the matter of breaking his bond with the enemy,” I pointed out gravely.
“Bonds are one of your specialties, are they not?” Talzin asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Well, given that Sidious actually betrayed him, severing it should not be too traumatic. It’ll then be a matter of tricking him that Maul is actually dead. He will eventually need to see a body.”
“That can be arranged,” Talzin said casually.
I winced as I reached out and grabbed the amulet out of the air by the chain.
This is going to suck.
The pendant touched my palm…
Green ichor surged outward a few inches, pulsing and beating like a heart…
I was suddenly elsewhere. The world was replaced with a view of the Nightsister ritual chamber. I saw out of the eyes of a much younger Talzin, as she and a dozen other sisters were instructed by the previous Mother Zalem.
… I learned illusions… how to trick the senses completely… how to anchor them into permanence… there was even a few memories of ichor manipulation…
… a jarring disjunction of time and now a much older Talzin, the Mother of the Nightsisters, showing me her perspective on the Sith Shroud…
It clicked in my mind as my lessons with Bendu on prescient perception came to the fore…
Days of perceived time passed and I perceived Talzin working and experimenting in adapting the Nightsister illusions and I gaped in awe as she wove an illusion that blunted Sidious’ foresight of Dathomir.
She had effectively pulled the wool over his eyes… invisible wool! He would only see what his subconscious bias wanted to see. This could only happen because Talzin had undoubtedly and very carefully probed Sidious on his visit to Dathomir. I was amazed at both her gall and courage in doing so. There had been no guarantee he wouldn’t sense it.
As a final memory, I saw a younger Sidious walking the guest areas of the Nightsister fortress. It was the first time I truly perceived the enemy when he wasn’t wearing the fair mask he showed the galaxy.
My hands opened and the amulet fell to the floor.
I blinked in disorientation as my prescient senses stuttered and caught up with me, telling me that I had been holding the amulet for a mere eleven minutes but it felt like days? Weeks?
“I have given, Jedi Tano,” Talzin said, her multi-voice echoing strongly in my montrals and the Force.
“And I will give in return,” I said faintly, taking a moment to regain my equilibrium and with a thought released into the Force and a flex of will, raised my own prescient shroud.
I held up my palm, and the proxy displayed a star map of the southern reaches of the galaxy.
What a fortunate coincidence that I was currently in Eriadu, as leading west out of the major crossroads system, was the Nothoiin Corridor. Precisely the route I would need to make the four day journey to…
“Lotho Minor, the Junk World of the southern Outer Rim. That is what your vision saw. Maul was defeated on Naboo, cut in half about the waist. He fell down a reactor shaft and landed in a waste disposal barge that was in the lowest reaches of the Theed plasma works. The barge left the planet barely a few hours later, allowing no one to search for his body, neither the Jedi, nor the enemy. He survived the shock through a combination of his zabrak physiology, the Dark Side and sheer stubborn willpower to never give up.”
Talzin weighed my words and eventually nodded. “Good. You need to leave for this world as soon as possible.”
Damn it.
Maul had been deep in the enemy’s inner sanctums for more than a decade before his fateful battle with Obi-Wan on Naboo. I had hoped he would keep for longer and that I could retrieve him at a more opportune date, but Palpatine had gained some inkling that the hell he had consigned his former apprentice to was under threat.
“I’ll make the arrangements.” M8 would get the job of impersonating me again it seemed.
“A final matter before you go. It’s unlikely that you alone will be able to bring my son out of his madness. You may be able to heal his body to a degree, but his mind is a different matter. I have preemptively dispatched Sister Ventress to the southern galactic reaches in anticipation of this moment. Here is her comlink code. Go together to Lotho Minor and with her help, return my son before it is too late… for us all.”
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A/N: Barely caught her breath and already has to rush to stave off another crisis, dealing with the butterflies that have created greater and greater consequences. Hope you had a great read and enjoy the weekend, folks!
Comments
Keiran's Futurism and Fantasy
Doh! :-) Thanks for catching that.
Vista
cool chapter, but you miss-spelt Merrin as Marrin an few times
Raymond
Redemption arc for maul? Or the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
G JP
Ahsoka & Asajj...sounds like a buddy cop movie in the making! This should be fun!
