***
Caelus moved deftly between the tops of the Jedi Temple’s high pillars, as a bloody massacre unfolded beneath him. The Emperor had declared the Jedi Order to be traitors to the state, and ordered a genocide that spanned the entirety of the Galactic Republic. It was a more than unfortunate development.
The Republic, of course, would be divided – many people mistrusted the Jedi, and the theocratic order had, without authority, attempted to depose the chief executive and assume military control of the government. A massacre enacted without a proffered opportunity to surrender would raise the ire of many, even some who had no love for the Jedi, but their resistance was unlikely to prevent the chancellor from uniting the Republic and its weakening enemies under his increasingly autocratic leadership – the entity that would emerge from the destruction of the Jedi Order and the Confederacy of Independent Systems would look more like an empire than a democracy – which meant the Brotherhood was failing in its duty to preserve the freedom and liberty of the galaxy’s sentient occupants.
Caelus was Mandalorian by birth, raised a true Mandalorian in the rustic backwaters of the planet, not in one of the pristine hermetically sealed metro-centers. His childhood education, though typical for his culture, was a rigorous training regimen focused on survival skills and combat that made him what other civilizations would consider an elite warrior. He stood out from the crowd though – while not antisocial per se, Caelus had thrived in semi-autonomous operations. He preferred cooperation with a small cell of specialists rather than advancing shoulder to shoulder in a gett’se-to-the-bulkhead battlefront assault.
Because of that, his clan leader had singled him out for training off-world. His clan leader had told his buire that for every one hundred warriors, the Mandalorians needed one agent – an individual who could act on the best interests of Mandalore outside of a Mandalorian army. The clan leader had neglected to mention that acting in the best interests of Mandalore meant joining a group with a much larger scope – the Brotherhood of Assassins. Though young, Caelus had at first resented that deception, believing he’d be expected to forfeit his family, his culture, his duty in service to some aruetiic knock off of the Jedi Order. With time, he came to realize this was not the case – as he learned the ways of a hundred worlds, so did his peers learn the ways of Mandalore. Each initiate added to a whole, rather than being erased by it. A fact he was very grateful for as he dangled above a murderous brigade of clone troopers, relying on lessons learned from the Fallanassi, the Matukai, and the Luka Sene.
The Brotherhood’s importance to Mandalore was also well illustrated by what transpired below. Mandalore, true Mandalore, was a wild and independent world, where people worked together, supported each other, fought for each other because it needed to be done, not because any government or divine force told them to. They decided for themselves what they needed to do and how to do it. They lived on their own terms.
But below Caelus, in the clouds of burning robes and acrid o-zone, fought an army of stolen Mandalorians. The Jedi had helped the Death Watch destroy the Mandalore Jango Fett at the Battle of Gallidraan, and the Sith bought the shell of a man that was left. The Sith used Jango to create an army that carried the face of Mandalore, but whose mass-produced, colorless armor mocked what it meant to be Mandalorian. Billions of identical men, trained identically, with no world to fight for, no lovers or parents, or children to fight for, no freedom to choose when to fight, who to fight, or even how to fight. An army of Mandalorian slaves, created by the machinations of the Sith, and, until earlier this evening, controlled by the Jedi. And with the fall of the Jedi, and the ascension of the Sith, it wouldn’t be long before this army descended upon all of those independently minded, spirited little worlds like Mandalore.
Mandalore couldn't destroy an army of that size, nor could the Brotherhood of Assassins, but a small amount of force applied in the right way at the right spot could cripple even the mightiest of enemies. Cutting the head off of the kolo wasn't feasible; attacking Palpatine in his own, heavily defended citadel was the sort of foolishness of which the Jedi were so fond. But even if one couldn't decapitate an enemy, removing one of its fighting arms was often a solid second choice. Palpatine had a number of lieutenants, advisers, and agents working in varying levels of subterfuge, but almost all of them were expendable pawns in his schemes, their replacements lined up and eager.
Among the cannon fodder, however, one man stood out - Anakin Skywalker. Palpatine had taken an interest in him when he was inducted into the Jedi Order as a child, and had become something of an informal mentor. Although Anakin's Jedi master had likely seen such a connection as potentially useful down the line, Brotherhood agents had immediately flagged it as a potential threat - senators with shady pasts weren't unusual, but Palpatine's was especially dark, and someone with his religious and philosophical leanings taking such an interest in the training of a particular Jedi raised immediate concerns.
Now it appeared those concerns were warranted. Almost all of Palpatine's actions had served to accomplish one of two things - to put him at the head of a militarized Republic, and to place Anakin Skywalker in a high-access position within the Jedi Order. With Skywalker's security clearances and knowledge of the Order's inner workings, the Jedi never really stood a chance. Their doors were open, their comms were dead, and confusion had paved the way for panic and death.
In destroying the heart of the Jedi Order, Skywalker had likely already served his primary purpose within Palpatine's greater plan, but a Jedi with his skill and experience would continue to be a valuable tool of destruction in the coming years as Palpatine set about the task of rooting out and hunting down his enemies. Eliminating Skywalker would be a severe, early blow to Palpatine, and send a powerful message - the Brotherhood was coming for him.
And no time was better to eliminate Skywalker than now - killing Jedi or Sith was as much an exercise in psychology as martial prowess. Although those using the Dark Side of the Force didn't value serenity the way their Light Side counterparts did, they still relied on focus, certainty, and clarity. Right now, Skywalker was in Coruscant's great Jedi Temple, surrounded by the screams of dying friends, their blood clinging to his boots and soaking the edges of his robes - he was more unbalanced now than he ever would be again, and that made him vulnerable.
Caelus leaped from column to column, Republic Troopers swarming below, and reached out lightly through the force, searching through the din and panic to find his target. The Jedi were primarily filled with fear, as were the clone troopers, to a lesser extent, but one man in the chaos radiated more rage, guilt, and regret than anyone else in the building. The force guided Caelus's eyes to his quarry, and with a flick of his eyes, Caelus tagged Skywalker in his HUD. The view screen inside the helmet shifted most of Caelus's surroundings to various shades of blue, as the software in his buy'ce highlighted the rogue Jedi in gold and the clone troopers in red. With his armor handling the tracking, Caelus could withdraw his limited reach into the Force, making it harder for Skywalker to sense his approach.
Skywalker cut down two Jedi as Caelus closed on him and then walked through a doorway leading to the Jedi council's chamber, leaving two clones to stand guard outside of the doorway. Caelus had hoped to reach him and kill him from above in a quick, clean surprise attack, but there was no way to follow Skywalker without sacrificing his vantage point. Once Skywalker had disappeared, Caelus dropped from the column he clung to and released the hidden blades inside his gauntlets. He landed feet first on one of the clone troopers, knocking him unconscious and badly injuring him. He grabbed the second trooper's gun with his left hand, yanked the man forward, and swiftly killed him with a blade to the throat. The HUD in Caelus's helmet pinged Skywalker's location - he was in the council room, straight down the hallway, behind a rapidly closing door and staring down a small group of frightened children. There was no way to sneak up on the man; Caelus would have to hope that the Jedi was distracted enough to respond slowly.
Caelus sprinted down the hallway towards the closing door. When he reached his full foot speed, he activated his jetpack and launched down the hall. He cut power to his pack at the last minute and threw himself to the ground to slide feet first under the door. His spiked boots narrowly missed Skywalker's ankles as the Jedi leaped straight up into the air and ignited his blue lightsaber. Caelus slid underneath him, cursing quietly inside his helmet at having missed his opportunity. His slide stopped as he hit a low step, and with a hard kick and short burst from his jetpack, Caelus sprang back towards Skywalker, head down and gauntlets up to fend off the blade of blue energy. Rather than taking a swipe at him, though, the Jedi just reached out into thin air and stopped him telekinetically, holding him off the ground, immobile. The assassin felt his throat start to tighten.
***
Caelus had killed a lot of things in his (relatively) short life – there was no way to varnish that grim truth. Sentients, animals, droids – Caelus carried more guilt over some droids he’d dispatched than most of the sentients – but one thing he’d never tire of killing was Dark Jedi.
Dark Jedi weren’t especially interesting opponents; quite the opposite really. In fact, it was their predictability that made it satisfying to dispatch them. Caelus sometimes thought that it reflected a weakening in his moral fiber that he had come to enjoy killing anyone, but then his latest quarry had expunged that introspection when he reached out through the force and seized him by the throat.
The thing that Caelus had come to loathe about Dark Jedi was that they were trying, and usually failing miserably, to pose as something they just weren’t. Decades of living and breathing the principles of order, justice, and to a lesser extent, mercy and compassion, and they all seemed to think that doing one bad thing – or some morally ambiguous thing – could suddenly promote them to badass Sith Lord. Caelus had killed Sith too – never a Sith Lord, but plenty of acolytes and cultists – and there really was no comparison.
And what was this new, would-be-Sith's motivation? After being star of the Jedi order for a decade, he’d attacked and crippled one of his Jedi masters, when said fellow had attempted to execute, without due process, the Republic’s own head of state, Chancellor Palpatine. Skywalker had prevented a theocratic coup, clearly upholding the laws of the Republic (and society in general) but on discovering that his friend and mentor really was an evil mastermind, Skywalker had apparently decided that he himself was also a genocidal mad man bent on eradicating the entirety of the Jedi Order. Like many Dark Jedi in the Republic's history, Skywalker had gotten played by someone older and smarter, and because his attempts to do the right thing had led to a bad end, he'd suddenly decided to turn heel on everything he'd ever believed about right and wrong - 'I helped a villain! Oops! Guess I'm a bad guy now!'
It wasn’t just the contrived motivations that made Dark Jedi so annoying though, it was the whole way they carried on after they'd 'fallen' to the Dark Side. They always tried so hard to be evil, that they all inevitably resorted to regurgitating the same juvenile clichés, and using Force Choke was like the pièce de ré·sis·tance of cheesy villainy. It seemed as if Jedi must all sit around watching holodramas of Sith Lords force choking people, and fantasize about doing just that someday.
But Caelus knew that a Sith Lord, a real Sith Lord, wouldn’t do that. She’d use force lightning, or a lightsaber throw, or a telekinetic crush. They wouldn't stand there slowly crushing their opponent's throat while leaving them otherwise free to act; that would be as stupid as an assassin trying to garotte someone face-to-face. Yet, Dark Jedi, that's what they resorted to nine times out of ten.
Caelus raised his hands as if to grasp his throat in futility – after all, that’s what they all want to see, isn’t it? But with a flick of his wrist he flung an Echani dagger at the Dark Jedi’s neck. The Jedi raised his free hand to stop the dagger with the force, but had underestimated how fast it was travelling. The Jedi lost two fingers and fumbled his lightsaber, as well as Caelus.
It was the assassin’s Matukai training that made him faster than Anakin expected, and his Teras Kasi training added a few more surprises as he slammed into the would-be Sith and knocked his lightsaber towards the handful of cowering younglings. In a flurry of blows he dislocated one of Anakin’s eyes, blurring his vision. He slammed his fists into both sides of the Jedi’s head, pulping cartilage and rattling ear drums, before grabbing him by the scalp and giving him a 'Keldabe kiss' with his white buy’ce. The Mandalorian iron cracked the skull on the receiving end of the headbutt; Chosen One or not, Jedi and Sith all channeled the force with their minds, so brain trauma was a great equalizer when fighting a saber jockey.
Anakin grabbed Caelus’s left arm with his vice-like droid hand and twisted it into a painful lock. The assassin countered with the hidden blade in his gauntlet, opening a nice little bloody incision in the right side of Skywalker’s abdomen. The Dark Jedi tried to knock him away with a force wave that blew out the windows in the council chambers, but Caelus hung onto him by one wrist, yanked hard to pull him off balance, twisted his arm behind him, and pushed him to the floor, blade aimed at his brain stem.
A half a heart beat would have ended it, but a plasma bolt from a trooper’s rifle knocked Caelus off of his target. It didn’t penetrate his beskar’gam, but the round carried enough kinetic energy to knock the wind out of him. A duel-wielding clone commander and two lackeys with blue trim rushed into the room, guns blazing as Anakin crawled to cover.
Caelus dodged their aim, rolled, and lunged into melee. Both of the lackeys came at him simultaneously, so Caelus twisted between them. He slammed his elbow into the back of one clone’s helmet, unbalancing him, and grabbed the other one’s gun as he turned. The gun wrenched free of the owner’s grip, and Caelus swung it on its natural arc, clobbering the other trooper in the face just as he regained his balance and turned around. Plasteel fragments popped through the air as his helmet cracked. Caelus released the rifle, tossing it aside. He grabbed the stunned clone by his rifle, plunged his wrist blade into the man’s armpit, and threw his body at the other trooper. The trooper stumbled but kept his feet until Caelus shot him in the face with the stolen gun.
No longer concerned about friendly fire, the commander – probably a true Alpha-class ARC trooper – opened fire with his duel pistols. Caelus rolled, firing some erratic shots that came uncomfortably close to the terrified children, and threw the gun across the floor at the ARC trooper’s ankles, tripping him. Caelus pounced on him and delivered a strong right cross that twisted the clone’s helmet out of place and cracked its visor. The clone forced the assassin off with his knees. He ripped his cracked helmet off as he rolled to his feet, revealing a slightly more weathered than average face and a shaved scalp.
Disarmed, he popped a vibroblade punching dagger from the back of his gauntlet and stood ready to brawl, “So what are you supposed to be then? Deathwatch?” the man guessed based on the Mandalorian armor, “Since when does the Deathwatch defend the Jedi temple?”
“Since when does the Grand Army of the Republic slaughter children?” Caelus asked, gesturing to the cowering younglings.
“What?” the man looked at the terrified children, “No, our orders are to take them for re-education…”
“No Rex,”Anakin said as he finally got to his feet, lightsaber in hand, “We kill them.”
“Sir?”
“The Chancellor is a Sith Lord, Rex,” Anakin said, “And although I believe he’s right, that the Jedi Order must be destroyed, Sith reeducation methods are… This is my last act as a Jedi, Rex: kill the younglings, rather than let them fall into the hands of the Sith… into my hands… Do you understand Rex?”
“Yes sir… I suppose it’s not the first time you’ve asked me to disobey orders, is it?” Rex looked at the children as he picked up one of his blasters, “We’ve made something of a sport of it really. It used to really bother me, but I’ve come to understand, there are times when doing the right thing, being a good soldier, means ignoring orders.”
“Exactly, Rex.”
“But the thing is, if we’re going to disobey orders anyway, let’s just get the kids out of here altogether.”
“We can’t do that Rex, they know too much.”
“They’re six years old.”
“I’m four!” a tiny voice came from the corner.
Rex's posture shifted to be more confident, “I can take them, and gather up the others scattered about, and lead them to the old service tunnels. From there, they can make their way to the undercity.”
“Send them down there with the murderers, pimps, and rapists? That’s cruelty, Rex.”
“No, that’s giving them a chance. The General Skywalker I’ve followed into war would take even the slimmest of chances over just giving up and dying.”
“I’m sorry Rex, but I don’t think there’s a place for you in Vader’s Fist,” Rex crumpled to the ground, clutching his throat.
Always the dikutla Force choke.
Caelus tossed a smoke bomb at Anakin’s feet and rushed him. Rex gagged and coughed on the smoke, a good sign that Caelus’s target had released his hold, but said target was making no such noise, probably using some advanced Jedi breathing techniques. That was fine. It spared Caelus the monologuing he’d have gotten otherwise. Jedi talked too much. Sith talked too much. Jedi trying to be Sith never shut up.
Anakin swung his lightsaber erratically in the dense smoke, clearly frustrated that he couldn’t sense his target in the force. Caelus couldn’t compare to a true student of the Fallanassi when it came to concealment, but with a little bit of environmental distraction or obfuscation like a crowd or a cloud of smoke, he could ‘fade into the current’ of the Force, making his presence and position unclear even to enemies with supernatural perception.
Anakin and his lightsaber, however, were extraordinarily obvious in the infrared display of Caelus’s HUD. In many ways the Assassin’s HUD was his best weapon, tying together the various offensive and defensive resources at his disposal – he didn’t understand how so many of his order preferred simple cloaks like the Jedi wore.
Caelus dodged deftly until a good swing glanced off his beskar with a shower of sparks, cluing his opponent into his position. Anakin attacked savagely, unleashing his rage, letting it feed the dark side of his soul and power his attack as he swung straight for the assassin’s core…
Using the Dark Side as a weapon is a curious thing in the realm of warfare, though. The Sith loved to brag about the power it gave them, but Caelus knew of only a handful of other cultures whose martial arts actually embraced anger, and none of them had made it past the stone age. Anger helped you push aside pain, sure, but it clouded ones judgment, and made one paradoxically impulsive and predictable. Supposedly, it made Force wielders stronger in general, but to Caelus it seemed like the Dark Side was inherently self-defeating – the Force expanded awareness, increased focus, but giving into anger seemed to inherently contradict that. Perhaps a true Sith would have had some deeper understanding of how the anger was supposed to be channeled, tempered, directed, but a Dark Jedi was like a rutting Gundark – savage and powerful, but practically blind.
Caelus stepped toward Anakin, rather than dodge away from the blade, and seized Anakin’s hands and the lightsaber hilt they held. He dug his fingers into the wounds he’d inflicted on the Jedi’s biological hand earlier, as he stepped forward and turned, twisting the blade. As he turned about-face, he threw his weight into Anakin’s elbows with a satisfying crack and a grunt. He forced himself backward, pulling Anakin tight against his back as the Jedi struggled to hang onto his weapon, and then threw his head back, hard. The Mandalorian iron in his Buy’ce collided with Anakin’s face, not just breaking his nose, but fracturing the zygomatic bones extending from the nose past the eyes. It compounded the head trauma Caelus had already inflicted, and Anakin screamed; the pain was intense enough to trigger the failsafes on the Dark Jedi's droid arm, releasing his lightsaber.
Caelus knocked the Dark Jedi back as he seized the lightsaber and spun to decapitate his opponent, but in spite of being nearly blinded, Anakin halted his attack with his maimed left hand, and seized Caelus by the throat with his droid hand, lifting him off the floor as he crushed his throat.
Caelus triggered the hidden blade in his left gauntlet and stabbed for Anakin’s shoulder, but fueled by the Dark Side, Skywalker ignored the pain, almost seemed to feed on it as his eyes glowed yellow. Caelus gurgled unintelligibly.
“What’s that, assassin? Last words? Are you trying to beg for mercy? Absolution? Or was there some defiant, pithy last remark you had in mind?”
Caelus finally let go of the lightsaber, sprung the blade in his right gauntlet, and plunged it into Anakin’s left eye socket up to the hilt. Skywalker’s corrupted, right eye seemed to stare at him with a pained expression of shock, betrayal, and disappointment for an eternity, before a brief flicker of relief seemed to pass across his face. The fallen Jedi collapsed as his central nervous system failed.
Caelus caught his breath, rubbing his bruised neck as the clone commander, 'Rex', gathered up the younglings and led the away. He didn't say a word to the assassin - his compassion for the children granted him no good will towards the man who'd killed four of his troopers, but he left without further violence.
“How much longer would you have waited before doing something?” Caelus spoke to the apparently empty room.
“Waited?” came a voice from the shadows, “No gratitude at all…”
“He almost killed me,” Caelus croaked as he rubbed his bruised throat.
“But he didn’t.”
“And you had some part in that?”
“When you do things right, people’ll never be sure you did anything at all. Isn’t that an axiom of your brotherhood?”
“Actually, that sounds more like the other guys.”
Kali stepped into view, her Fallanassi cloak evaporating, revealing a feminine form concealed beneath light brown Jedi robes and light armor, with a full face covering mask – being a woman, she’d received the full training their Fallanassi master had to offer and had been standing there, invisible, for who knew how long, “Thank you for saving the younglings. I wouldn’t have made it in time. The Jedi archives needed to be… edited, for their new owners.”
“Don’t mention it. Just doing my duty.”
“Since when does saving Jedi children fall in the scope of the Brotherhood’s duties?”
“Since whenever I feel like it; everything's permitted, right? And balancing the scales by dealing with this chakaar definitely needed to be done.”
“Hm, speaking of which,” Kali ignited the short lightblade on one end of her cortosis Watchmen’s staff, and plunged it into Anakin’s head. She held it there until his eye sockets smoldered.
“Was that really necessary?” Caelus asked.
“Oh, cyar, yes it was. There were volumes of information about the Jedi Order still in that skull of his, ripe for the picking. We should deal with his droid as well. It’s never had its memory wiped.”
“Is that my concern?” Caelus asked.
“To the extent that anything pertaining to me has ever been your concern,” Kali tilted her head in a way that clearly communicated her familiar smile.
“Fair enough. He came here with his troops in a laarty, so his astromech is probably still with his Eta-2 at the Senate’s secure landing pad.”
“That’s… helpful.”
“I was there all day, waiting to see how this all played out.”
“I guess now you know. I told you Palpatine was the problem.”
“You could have dealt with him.”
“You know I’m not permitted to do that. The Custodians only oversee the Jedi Order and its knowledge. We’re not assassins or warriors.”
Caelus didn’t say anything, but he knew the wave of skepticism would be felt. Many millennia ago, the Jedi Order had created an internal sub order devoted to uncovering information and protecting the people of the galaxy from hidden threats – the Jedi Sentinels did everything from solve murders to ferret out potential Sith conspiracies. Over time, the Sentinels had divided into a number of specialized paths – the Investigators, the Watchmen, the Shadows, and even the Recruiters. One path had devoted itself to policing the Jedi Order’s internal affairs. As far as most knew, they now existed as the Jedi Temple Guard, under Master Cin Drallig. Well – Caelus amended his thoughts – had existed; most of the Guards, and Drallig himself were likely dead now.
Kali’s organization would survive though. While originally an official subdivision of the Order, they had essentially become a separate entity long ago, a separate Order that existed both within and outside the Jedi Order. Some posed as members of the Jedi Order proper while others used their training to move unseen throughout the galaxy; all were devoted to a single cause – ensuring that the Jedi did not, in some form or another, ‘unbalance’ the galaxy in their quest to bring peace and order to it. According to Kali they were watchers and manipulators - they observed the decisions of the Jedi council and nudged the senate to stand its ground when it was necessary. They attended to the security of the Order’s knowledge, watching carefully who was spreading what teachings outside of the order and why.
To the extent that they sought to limit the power and influence of the Jedi, the Custodians were natural allies of the Brotherhood, but Caelus had always sensed a darker underside to their duty. On occasion, Jedi ‘joined the Force’ unexpectedly early, and while accidents do happen, they seldom happen to individuals gifted and trained in precognition. If Kali’s order was responsible for the occasional… pruning… then it raised questions about how far they were willing to go in their silent mission – Tion’ad hukaatii’hukaat? There were even rumors within the Brotherhood that a group existed created by Darth Bane to enforce the Sith traditions like the Rule of Two, and Caelus sometimes wondered whether the two groups were one-and-the-same.
“Are we done here?” Caelus asked frankly as he picked up Anakin’s lightsaber and attached it to his belt.
Kali touched her forehead as if thinking, but he knew she was using the Jal Shey technology in her mask to access the Temple’s security network. She nodded, “There are still a few Jedi fighting… but they’re not even trying to escape at this point, just killing as many troopers as they can. Even with their commander dead, the clones will have this wrapped up soon. And at some point they’ll have to start wondering why their commander hasn’t re-established comlink.”
“Fast exit or slow exit?”
“Well unless the inquisitors have turned up, I can walk out of here as I please. Not sure I want to wait for you to hop and climb out though, so if you have a faster exit, by all means…”
Caelus smiled behind the black visor of his helmet, “Try to keep up.” Caelus turned, ran, and leapt out of the broken windows into the neon lights and dark shadows of Coruscant.
Kali rushed after him and stopped at the edge of neon oblivion, “I don't have a jet pack!”
***
“No sir, there’s no one here,” the red trimmed clone trooper said into his comlink, “General Skywalker’s personal ship and his droid are both here, sir.”
“Lord Vader,” an identical trooper said, “I heard from someone in the TOC for the Knightfall Op, He’s ‘Lord Vader’ now. The 501st are being called ‘Vader’s Fist’.”
“From what I heard,” another trooper said, “General Skywalker’s dead like all the other Jedi. Word has it he got sentimental over some former students, killed a couple of his troopers, and had to be put down with the rest of the order.”
The first clone trooper nodded as his superior officer relayed new orders through his helmet, “Roger, that sir, we’ll stay here with the ship and the droid.” He flashed a thumbs up at the larty pilot who’d delivered the three of them to the floating landing pad, and the gunship peeled away.
“Well?” Trooper #2 asked.
“They don’t know where the dispatch that directed us here came from," the first trooper said, "but the entire city’s in such chaos tonight, the right hand probably doesn’t even know the left hand is in the…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Trooper #3, “Why’d our ride leave us here though?”
“News is you’re right," the first trooper said, "General Skywalker rebelled with the rest of the Jedi, and had to be executed,” the astromech droid in the fighter behind him made a pitiful moaning whoop, “Which means this quality Jedi equipment is now the property of the Grand Army of the Republic, until such time as it’s processed and handed over to the proper division.”
“Proper division?” Trooper #2 asked.
“Well apparently there’s some confusion because they're already reorganizing things.”
“Reorganizing how?” Trooper #3 pressed.
“Look, I don’t know, it’s chaos, okay? It’s like someone was planning for this to happen from the get go, and had all these protocols ready to follow – merging the CSF with COMPOR and stuff – but didn’t have any sense of… I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” said Trooper #3, “The city’s headed towards widespread panic and looting, and we don’t even know where our orders are supposed to be coming from right now.”
Trooper #2 smacked his pauldron hard and gestured emphatically at the side of his helmet, to draw attention to the built in comlink, “It. Will. All. Be. Fine.”
Trooper #3 looked at him like he was crazy for a moment, then straightened up, and nodded, “Yeah, you’re right. The guys up top know what they’re doing. We don’t have the right perspective to really understand the situation, I’m sure.”
Trooper #1 gave him an affirming fist bump, but then clutched his helmet and shouted in pain. The other two followed suit in a fraction of a second, and ripped the helmets off to escape the deafening, high pitched noise that had suddenly jammed their filled comlinks.
The first trooper tried to talk to his buddies, but they couldn’t hear him, their ears were still ringing from the noise. The air suddenly blurred around them, and a ghostly figure appeared and struck them down as he watched, striking their heads forcefully with armored bracers. The trooper raised his rifle to fire at the ghost, but a short, thin yellow blade of light flashed before him and destroyed the weapon in a shower of sparks. He dropped the remnants of the weapon and drew his knife before taking a boot heel to the jaw. He slashed ferociously in spite of the painful pop, but he fell limp when another thin yellow blade of energy flashed through the back of his neck, severing his brainstem. Kali appeared next to him, as the golden light stilettos withdrew back into her gauntlets.
Caelus dropped onto the platform – Kali had no idea from where – and walked over to the incapacitated troopers, began frisking them for anything useful, “That was surprisingly sloppy.”
“I didn’t see any necessity in killing them, if it could be avoided.”
“You shouldn’t take risks like that out of sentimentality.”
“There wasn’t a risk. I jammed their comlinks, and the only one to see me is dead. The other two will get to go back to their barracks alive, because I took an extra moment to try.”
“There could be other people watching…”
“But there aren’t,” Kali said with finality. She kicked the bisected rifle off the platform into the depth below, and with a little assistance from the force, heaved the large corpse off the platform as well, “Two troopers confused and disoriented, and one missing, never to be found. They should have plenty of creative explanations to give their commander.”
Caelus ripped the com unit out of the dead trooper’s helmet before pitching it into the void as well, “Where does our little friend fit into this story of theirs?”
Kali walked over and leaned on the fighter next to where the droid was fidgeting, “Well, the simplest thing would be a direct slice to erase as much as possible, an EMP to scramble what’s left, and a thermite charge to be safe.” The droid twittered anxiously.
Caelus walked over next to her as he pocketed the com unit, “But…”
“But the droid has value to us too. And do you know how many commendations this droid has received? The little guy’s a war hero.”
“Does seem like he’s earned a fair trial at least,” Caelus leaned next to her.
“How about it little droid,” Kali asked, “do you understand what’s going on?”
The droided beeped and whirred frantically, Caelus understood some basic droid-speech, but not at this speed.
Kali held up a hand to signal the droid to pause, “Artoo here has got the basic idea. He knows his master went off like a genocidal nut-bomb, and he tried to warn some friends, even, but couldn’t do much without violating his programmed imperative to serve said master.”
“I have a feeling there’s a lot of war heroes that could understand that tonight,” Caelus said.
Artoo began tweeting and beeping again, and Kali tried to interpret, “He’s upset.”
“You don’t say?” Caelus cocked his head.
“No, I mean he’s really upset. I’ve never heard a droid talk like this before.” The droid kept clicking and beeping, “I think he may need… therapy.”
“Well, we can download the data we need, wipe his drives, and he’ll be all the happier for it.”
Artoo made a low, repetitive sound that seemed like… sobbing?
Kali reached out and patted his silver dome, “What do you want us to do Artoo? Would you rather just… not remember any of this?”
Artoo’s ‘sobbing’ slowed, he made a few vague beeps, and then finally he shook his dome silently in a universally understood ‘no’.
Kali stroked his dome like a mother assuaging a child, the droid had no way to feel it, but seemed so in tune with human body language that Caelus imagined the gesture was probably appreciated nonetheless, “Do you want to come with us?”
The droid beeped an interrogative.
“I can’t tell you that, but if you stay here, more of them will come, and you heard what they said…”
Artoo let out another electronic whimper of despair.
“If you come with us, I won’t erase you, but you have to pull your own weight, okay?” she talked to the droid with a tender but firm tone, “I need you to be functional right now, we don’t have time for grieving, do you understand? We can talk later, but right now we have to run. We have to hide.”
The droid beeped, and the small projector on its dome nodded up and down slowly.
“Can you unlock the fighter’s controls?”
The droid beeped an affirmative and raised the canopy of the fighter.
“Whoa,” Caelus said, “what’s the plan here? Fly a dead traitor’s bright yellow fighter to the hyperspace docks in orbit and just ask nicely to be allowed out of the system?”
“No, not exactly. You see, as of fifteen minutes ago, CSF records have Master Skywalker’s personal fighter being green, and possessing a completely different eVIN. I will be flying away from here in a ship that looks oddly like a Jedi starfighter, but which registers on every electronic monitoring system on the planet as a senator’s new, bright yellow and silver AN-7 Lambda sports-speeder, which most of the graphic confirmation programs in the network will see at a glance, provided I don’t clock over 900kmph. The all of… what? Three? … sentients actually watching the planet’s security footage probably won’t notice the difference either, and in the current political climate, probably wouldn’t bother to call in anything less conspicuous than an eighty-story tall Krayt Dragon shooting lightsabers out of its mouth.”
“Okay,” Caelus held up his hands in surrender, “but where are you headed with it?”
“Our rendezvous point, cyar.”
“Where’s that?”
“You tell me; I’m coming home with you.”
[Skipping way ahead – I said these were just fragments, remember?]
He radioed Skirata, on the ground near the checkpoint, “Look, old man, we’ve got a problem.”
“What do you see?”
“I think your girl’d make it through fine, she’s cool as a jibarri melon on an ice planet,” Caelus said to the older Mandalorian.
“But?”
“We’ve got three likely troublemakers making their way up through the crowd behind her.”
“Troublemakers?”
“Adolescents. Their hearts are pounding like there’s no tomorrow, and I can practically taste the adrenaline from up here. I think they might be Jedi fleeing the temple.”
“Based on?”
“If they’re Jedi, they’ve switched into civvies and cut their braids, but the crowds been letting them pass too easily for normal pushing and shoving, they’re all wearing loose clothing, and they each’ve been keeping one hand close to their sides. They’re either packing heat under those coats or lightsabers.”
Skirata cursed, “They won’t make it past the barricade with that sort of stealthy maneuvering.”
“And your girl’ll be in the middle of it. Can you pull her out?”
“If I could I would have.”
“Which way will she go?”
“There’s only one direction.”
“No, I mean who’ll she side with if a fight breaks out, the Jedi or the clones?”
There was a seemingly long silence, then finally, “I don’t know. Could we create a distraction?”
“Anything startling is going to set off this ammo crate. The troopers are on edge too. Someone’ll start fighting.”
“So we have to take down one side of the fight before there can be a fight,” Skirata said rhetorically.
“That’s going to be hard either way,” Caelus said.
“Which way will you go?” Skirata asked, the reference to Kali, traveling to their ship, was unnecessary.
“Jedi have become something of an endangered species tonight, and that’s partly on me for not doing more sooner,” Caelus said, “But I don’t see any way those three could make it out of here alive and free, no matter what we do.”
“Etain will be upset.”
“But alive.”
“You know, I thought the brotherhood could practically work magic,” Skirata said.
“Is that a dare? This is the mother of your grandchild we're talking about. Pretty big risk there, old man.”
“Do you think you can take them down without killing them? And without starting a fight?”
“I can try. Risky though.”
“… She’d want you to try.”
Caelus dropped down into the edge of the crowd, gaining some attention, but with a confident walk and a slight manipulation of the Force, he persuaded the people around him he was no one to be concerned about, and quickly blended in. He pushed through the crowd as quickly as he dared, until he came up on the kid furthest from the barricade. He focused his ‘I’m nobody’ image upon the kid as he bumped into him, and walked away with his lightsaber. He could sense the kid panic as he quickly realized he’d lost the weapon, but he had the good sense to stay quiet for the moment.
Caelus closed in on the second one, the crowd was beginning to pack so tight it was difficult to move. Again, Caelus laid on the suggestion thick, but this time directed it to everyone else. He came upon the teenaged Jedi from behind, grabbed his lightsaber with one hand, and wrapped the other arm around the kid's throat, interrupting the flow of blood to his brain while completely silencing him. This was more dramatic than he could deflect attention from, but the kid collapsed within a matter of seconds, and with a few select words, Caelus embedded the idea in the confused onlookers that the poor kid had passed out from the stress and the crush of bodies, handing him off to two concerned bystanders, unarmed.
The final one was at the checkpoint with Etain by the time Caelus caught up to him. The slightest trigger was likely to send the kid on a killing spree surrounded by half a dozen innocent civilians, and one ex-Jedi. Only the pervasive aura of confusion in the mob had prevented the kid from sensing his comrades go down nearby. The clone asked for his identification, and the kid reached for his lightsaber. Caelus gambled.
He reached out, grabbed the Jedi’s wrist with his left hand and belted him across the jaw hard enough to make the poor kid’s ears ring. Caelus twisted the weapon out of the kids hand and shook it at him, “Dikut’la punk! Did you really think you could steal from me and get away with it?”
The clones reached for their guns but hesitated, waiting for an explanation.
Caelus flashed the three lightsabers – Anakin’s and the two padawans’ blades – where they hung from his belt, “They’ve put out a bounty on lightsabers tonight,” Caelus explained, “Bounty hunters, mercs,” he shook the kid, “under city gang scum – doesn’t matter who you are, 5,000 credits a lightsaber, no questions asked. Kid lifted this off my belt, trying to cut in on the profits of my hard work.”
Etain looked at him with an expression of alarm, but slid away, one of the distracted clone troopers waving her past the checkpoint with a minimal look over.
“Five thousand credits?” one of the clones asked, “That’s insane.”
“That’s robbery is what it is,” Caelus said, “The risk you take hunting Jedi? You should get at least 10,000 credits a bounty. It’s not like you’ve got health insurance if something goes bad.”
“Oh, well,” the trooper nodded, “We don’t really get paid at all.”
“Oh, wow, seriously?” Caelus asked, changing tone as if he was genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. I mean, all expenses and care paid for, but no salary. Probably couldn’t even cash in one of those weapons if we got one. It’d be considered within the line of duty.”
“Ah, I’m sorry,” Caelus hooked the weapon on his belt, and continued to hold onto the kid with his free hand, “I feel like a real sha’buir now.”
“It’s alright, but hey, you know, buy a Clone a drink if you ever have occasion to do so, right?”
Caelus laughed and smacked the clone’s pauldron, “Definitely will.”
One of the other clones pointed at the supposed pickpocket, “Should we take him in sir?” he asked the officer.
“If I press chargers, I’d have to hand over the ‘evidence’, right?”
“Yeah,” the officer said, “Stolen property would have to be held until the trial was completed. Look, if it doesn’t matter to you, I can stand to skip out on the paperwork. Tonight of all nights.”
“I’d appreciate it. Not much sense for me to miss out on 5,000 credits to see the kid prosecuted for nearly robbing me of 5,000 credits,” Caelus laughed.
The trooper nodded, “Exactly.”
“Let me take the kid over here and have a quick word with him, and then I’ll let him go. Kid needs to hear some grown-up speak about dealing with bounty hunters.”
“… Yeah, I can see what you mean. Next guy’s liable to kill him outright.”
“Thanks for understanding,” Caelus said, “Stay safe tonight, yeah?”
“Will do,” the trooper flashed him a thumbs up as Caelus dragged the Jedi past the barricade.
Skirata’s voice piped in over his com, “Sith’s blood that was amazing. They don’t lie about the Brotherhood working miracles.”
Caelus got out of earshot of troopers and whipped the kid around in front of him, he spoke quietly, but made sure that it was clear to everyone in sight it was not a gentle conversation.
“Look kid, this isn’t a game or a holovid. You can’t just plow your way through a checkpoint swinging a weapon like a hopped up wookie. Even if you’d killed them, and by some miracle hadn’t killed a half dozen people whose lives are worth more than yours, they’d have chased you down in a matter of blocks. The clones outnumber you and are coordinated, and CSF knows these streets better than you do, got it? If you want to stay alive, you don’t dare get noticed.”
The kid looked at him in confusion and slight fear, “I have friends back there…”
“Then you can stick around and see if they make it through the checkpoint, but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Can I have my lightsaber back…?”
“No. Trust me, your chances are better without a I’m-a-Jedi-kill-me road flare hanging from your belt,” Caelus smacked the kid’s chest intimidatingly and discreetly dropped some credits into his shirt in the process, “Use them wisely. Only spend money on what you can’t steal. Find a knife and learn to use it.”
“Can’t we come with you?”
“No kid, not tonight,” the kid only looked slightly disappointed, he clearly hadn’t expected to hear a yes, “Look, kid, you survive the next year, you make it through this, you start looking for this symbol, okay?” Caelus pointed to the Assassin’s glyph painted on his pauldron, “You go to them and you, say ‘nothing is true’. If they say, ‘everything is permitted’, you tell them you’re looking for a new home. Got it?”
The kid stared at the symbol for a moment, probably committing it to memory with a Jedi technique Caelus had seen Kali use. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” the teenager repeated back to him.
Caelus nodded.
“What does it mean?” the Jedi asked.
“You’ve got a year to figure that out,” Caelus punched him in the shoulder, “Good luck kid.”
“May the…” the kid stopped himself, “Thank you.” He turned and disappeared into some shadows, doubtless to find a vantage point from which to see whether his friends made it through.
Skirata’s voice cut into his thoughts again, this time from right next to him, “I thought you were going to adopt him there for a moment.”
“You said no more passengers,” Caelus answered as he walked away from the area.
“Yeah, yeah I did,” Skirata said, “You think he’ll make it?”
“I hope so. But we’re not exactly in the clear yet ourselves.”
“I’m feeling very optimistic now, actually. Things could easily have gone very differently back there, but now, relatively speaking, my sons and daughter-in-law are practically off this miserable duracrete spit ball. Come on, you’re riding back with me; no one’ll bat an eye at a Mando bounty hunter riding with a Mando anti-terror specialist tonight.”
***
And that's mostly it. I quit writing fanfic pretty soon after that, and moved onto making my own stuff from scratch. Be sure to check out my completed (not related to Star Wars) novel The Rise of Azraea, Book I, on my other blog, as well as the in-progress sequel The Rise of Azraea, Book II.
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