Author notes: Because screw putting all this in the summary. Original story, mostly OCs, shouldn't conflict with movie canon much. Rated T for language and some violence.

Chapter One
19 BBY
0330
Somewhere in the Mid Rim

Vice-Admiral Thomas Kien was not having a good day.

First, the small Separatist fleet he had been tracking had vanished from all scopes, slipping away into hyperspace along an uncharted route. They could be anywhere in the galaxy by now. The subsequent daily report to Coruscant had been predictably frustrating, leaving him in a sour mood. Not long afterwards, word had reached the Sunrise of an unexpected extension to her deployment; this did not help morale among the officers, although he knew the rank and file would take it on the chin as always. They had no families to return to, no homes gathering dust, no business to attend to while on shore leave. Of course, neither did Kien, these days. To top it all off, he had found himself completely unable to shake the mounting feeling of disquiet that had been creeping up on him over the past week or so.

All of these complaints whizzed dully by in the back of his head while Thomas Kien watched, horrified, as his bridge became a war zone.

One blaster shot of many whizzed past Kien's ear, dissipating violently on the blast-proof window behind him. Outside, the familiar serenity of space belied the turmoil inside his little metal and transparisteel box. Snapping back to reality, Kien cursed his reflexes, dulled by years away from the battlefield, and threw himself behind a console, rolling into a crouch and peering around the side to assess the situation. What he saw beggared belief. Half a dozen clone troopers – his own damned men – stood by the main entrance in perfect suppression formation, laying down covering fire as another squad advanced on –

Her. Kien realised with a jolt that his knee-jerk conclusion had been misplaced. The clones were not even aiming for him or his officers. This was no mutiny – or was it? Their target was clear, and his heart sank into his stomach as his eyes caught up with his brain, skimming across to the Jedi Knight who, until a few moments earlier, had been sitting in silent meditation just metres from Kien's station.

As a young Pantoran – far too young for active duty, surely? – General Yuli Chath had sky-blue skin. Tall for a female, with fine, pointed features and sharp black eyes, she cut an impressive figure – or she would have, if she weren't desperately fighting for her life. Twirling her bright green lightsaber deftly, Chath deflected and dodged the incoming storm of laser fire as she retreated towards the front of the bridge. Cyan bolts hammered the ground around her, and the ones bouncing off her saber flew wild, the young Jedi lacking the necessary focus or intent to return them to her attackers.

"Stand down, troopers!" she pleaded, voice unsteady, but the hail of blaster fire continued unabated.

Kien cursed, lifting himself into a half-crouch to slam his fist on the emergency shutdown switch on his console. Red lights flashed, sirens wailed, and blast doors slammed down with a crash at the various entrances to the bridge. Thumbing the intercom, he projected his voice across the command centre, barking orders over the cacophony.

"All non-combat personnel, fall back to port side egress. This is an emergency situation. Troopers on the bridge, cease fire! I repeat, cease fire!" Kien watched anxiously as his officers scrambled away from the firing line, clustering at a smaller door on the port side. Still keeping an eye on the retreating Jedi, he opened the door remotely, ensuring that all the technicians and officers had passed through before slamming it closed again. He thought he saw a glimpse of white as the door irised shut, but he had to worry about the troopers inside the bridge before he dealt with the ones outside.

Now that his priority – the men entrusted to his command – had been taken care of, Kien did something very foolish: he closed his eyes and stepped out from behind his rudimentary cover. Taking a deep breath, Kien shivered slightly as he allowed his mind to become still, falling back into an ancient meditation pattern. As his earpiece erupted with chatter from all corners of the Venator-class cruiser, he plucked it out of his ear and set it aside, walking slowly toward where he had last seen the squadron of clone troopers.

Alarms still blared. Blasters shrieked. Somewhere behind him was the hiss and snap of the General's lightsaber, lasers ricocheting off it as she maintained her defensive stance. It was only a matter of time before she succumbed to the overwhelming pressure, though. Allowing the sounds to blend together and fade out into the background, he took another step. He felt lasers scream past his face, causing him to grit his teeth involuntarily. Now is the time to take action. Stepping forward once more, Kien opened his eyes, finding himself right in front of the lead trooper, who stopped firing in surprise. Glancing at the markings on the man's helmet, Kien identified him as Wire, a hardy Captain who had been assigned to the Sunrise for nearly as long as the Vice-Admiral himself.

"Cease your fire, soldier," Kien ordered once again, despite the fact Wire had already done so. Trying to keep his voice level, he looked the Captain right in the faceplate and continued, "There will be no blood shed on my watch."

Wire hesitated, then held up a clenched fist to his men. The lasers petered out within a couple of seconds, though the troopers still held their blasters at the ready, trained on the Jedi. "Only because it's you, sir," Wire said. His voice, though masked by his helmet and identical to all of his brothers, was one Kien knew well. Today, it was pointedly studied and indifferent. Something was very wrong here. As if I didn't know that already.

"I want an explanation for this, Wire," Kien said, just loud enough that only the man directly in front of him could hear over the blaring sirens. "And it had better be fucking good. As long as she is on my ship, the Jedi is under my protection."

Wire paused, as if uncertain how to continue. After a few seconds, he holstered his blaster and removed his helmet, though his men remained on alert. The clone looked more conflicted than Kien had ever seen him, and he refused to meet his eyes.

"I'm waiting," Kien said, trying to inject some semblance of command into his tone. He had to wrest control of the situation somehow, or this would only get worse. His mind was whirling at a hundred klicks an hour, trying to sort out the events of the past – how long? It felt like a lifetime, but it had been barely thirty seconds since all hell had broken loose. Glancing around, he saw that his bridge was in tatters. The blaster fire had been concentrated on Chath, so the area around her had taken the most damage, but stray fire and deflected shots had left their marks all over the command centre. One of the communication consoles sparked and belched smoke. That wasn't good.

"Sir," said Wire, straightening up, but not saluting. "With all due respect, sir, this situation is out of both your hands and mine."

"You're not making sense, soldier."

"Emergency order just came in, sir. The Jedi have attempted to stage a coup, kill the Chancellor and topple the Senate. All Jedi are to be treated as hostile and immediately terminated . . . sir." Wire did not exactly look pleased with the situation, but there was a spark of determination in his eye. Kien knew intuitively that the trooper had made up his mind.

"I don't believe a word of it." Without taking his eyes off Wire and his men, Kien raised his voice to address the young Jedi behind him. "General Chath! Is this true?"

"No, Vice-Admiral." Chath's voice trembled slightly. "I don't believe the Jedi Council would ever do such a thing. I'm certainly not a part of any such plot."

"Of course they wouldn't." Wouldn't they? "The Jedi do not seek power, Wire. You and I have both served with them long enough to know that." Haven't we? Kien cursed inwardly. This was rapidly spiralling out of control. Now that ominous feeling was beginning to make sense, but it was far too late. There were nearly twenty armed men on his bridge, waiting only on a word from their captain to execute an innocent woman, and Kien himself was the only one who could possibly stop it. Think. Talk. Keep them talking. You've talked your way out of worse situations than this. A bald lie, even to himself.

"Even so, sir. Orders are absolute. This directive comes straight from the Chancellor himself, and as such I cannot stand down." Wire still refused to meet Kien's eyes, speaking determinedly to a point somewhere above his superior's left shoulder.

"You have ceased fire," Kien noted.

"Only because you stepped in front of us, sir. With all due respect, that was a damn fool thing to do."

Despite the grim situation, Kien forced a smile. "I know this isn't what you want, Wire," he said. Feeling about with the fringes of his mind, Kien pushed gently, adding a little extra weight to his words. He had to be careful. He hadn't called on the Force in a long time, and it took a little extra effort to bend it to his will. "You will order your men to stand down."

Wire frowned. "No. I'm sorry, sir, but orders are orders. Squad, prepare to fire!" In one quick motion, the Captain donned his helmet once more and drew his blaster, stepping past Kien and taking aim at Chath again.

Shit. With the reflective visor back in place, it would be damn near impossible to manipulate Wire now. Suggestion had failed. It was time to try something more direct.

But what? Twenty heavily armed troopers versus one young, inexperienced Jedi and a commissioned officer. Kien's hand twitched by his leg, wishing he was armed – if not with a saber of his own, at least with a blaster.

"Attack!" Wire barked. Time seemed to slow down. The clones opened fire, blaster rifles roaring. Chath fell back into the defensive Form V stance that she had dropped, forming a barrier with her lightsaber, blade moving faster than the untrained eye could follow. She had good form, a part of Kien's mind noted idly. Lacking finesse, but a very solid grasp of the basics. Even as he thought that, though, a single blaster shot clipped Chath's right arm, causing her to shriek and drop her lightsaber. She dived after it through a hail of blaster fire, scooping it up in her left hand and resuming her defence, but slowly. Clumsily.

Every instinct in Kien's body was tugging on him, trying to force him in different directions. Battlefield reflexes, dulled from lack of use, sloughed off their rust and screamed at him to run. His training kept him in place, however, a rock in the middle of a river of blaster fire. The troopers were taking care not to hit him, but how long would that last? Could he step in front of Chath and stop them from shooting once more? Or would he then be considered an accomplice and a traitor, accomplishing nothing but dying next to somebody he barely knew? He began to move without even really thinking about what he was going to do; only one thought crossed his mind: Can I save her?

Should I save her? An ice-cold thrill rooted him to the spot not a half-second later. He was an officer of the Republic Navy now, beholden to the will of the Senate and the Chancellor. It was no longer his place to stand beside the Jedi, as much as his instincts tried to convince him otherwise. Besides, Wire could have been telling the truth. It had been more than eight years since he was privy to Council politics; the Jedi could have turned on the Republic in that time.

No. No, they wouldn't! They couldn't . . .

Another scream pierced his agonised thoughts, as a second blaster bolt found its way past Chath's guard and slammed into her shoulder. With a sudden moment of clarity, Kien knew he could not let this pass. The hell with the Republic! As the clones closed in on the wounded Jedi, he broke past their ranks and barrelled towards her with a yell.

Yuli's mind was a white sheet of pain. Two sizzling blaster wounds on her right arm, one at the shoulder and one near her wrist. The arm hung uselessly at her side, forcing her to keep up her defence with her weaker hand. She could feel herself flagging, as she devoted all her remaining energy to warding off the unrelenting storm of blaster fire. How was she not dead yet? It would only be a matter of seconds. Already she could feel her consciousness wandering, pain shutting her down.

Gritting her teeth, Yuli grasped for her Jedi training. Don't ignore the pain. Welcome it. Overcome it. Use it. Master Sinto's words rang in her ears as she focused, dipping into the Force to numb her pain. There was too much turmoil in her to fully utilise it, though. Why was this happening? How did she suddenly find herself staring down the rifle barrels of men who had loyally served with the Jedi for years? Could there really have been a Jedi plot to seize control of the Republic?

Still, Yuli felt herself slipping. A sudden shout roused her temporarily, as a figure in grey leapt towards her, moving supernaturally fast. Vice-Admiral Kien, she thought absently, though her vision blurred. Suddenly, her lightsaber was gone, wrenched from her hand before she could do anything about it. Kien was still five metres away, standing between her and the clones, brandishing something that glowed with a fiery green light. All pain and fatigue temporarily forgotten, Yuli rubbed her eyes and watched in shock as the tall, solidly-built officer wielded her lightsaber with expertise and confidence, forming a complete barrier of flashing green light as he twirled the weapon, repelling every single bolt.

For a blissful moment, Yuli was safe. "What . . ." she managed to croak out through the pain and surprise, but she never got to finish that thought. It was then that the entire ship shook and groaned, the bridge tossing bodies and equipment every which way. The sounds of distant explosions vibrated through the floor, and the troopers stopped firing as they were thrown to the ground. Miraculously, Kien stayed on his feet.

Dragging herself unsteadily to her feet, Yuli grasped a railing on the still-bucking bridge and scanned the starscape. On the starboard side, she spotted the unmistakeable bulbous façade of a Separatist cruiser. As she watched, a second cruiser came out of hyperspace in formation, guns blazing, followed by a third. Momentarily forgetting the attempt on her life, she watched in horror as the three Confederate battleships unloaded all of their considerable firepower on the lone Sunrise.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit!" Kien unloaded a string of increasingly vile curses as he struggled his way back over to the command console, still holding her lightsaber. Punching a button to silence the alarms that still shrieked across the bridge, he yelled into an intercom. "All personnel to battle stations! Three Separatist cruisers inbound!"

"It's hopeless," Yuli mumbled.

"I know," Kien said, causing her to jump. She hadn't expected him to hear her. "I think it's clear that this ship is doomed. We can't win against these odds, and I just sent all my officers off the bridge to who knows where. Oh, and there's the minor issue that every clone trooper on this bucket is probably after your head." He was angry. Furious, even. Not at her, she thought, but still. She could sense his rage, rolling off him in waves.

Yuli cringed. No part of her training had prepared her for this. She had completed a tour of duty on Geonosis; she'd been shot at, stabbed, buried alive under a collapsed building, and gotten lost in a sandstorm, but all her trials paled in comparison to this. Turned on by her own soldiers. A commissioned officer with an uncanny mastery of at least one of the seven Forms of lightsaber combat. A surprise attack by a Separatist force three times their size, with the chain of command in shambles and nobody to trust. There would be no winning this battle. There would be no surviving. She felt her breathing and heart rate quicken as her emotions flared. No! Stay calm! But it was impossible. She was very rapidly losing what little control of the situation she had left.

Vice-Admiral Kien, by contrast, seemed to suddenly relax. He hunched over his battered command console, gripping tightly to its edges as the ship continued to shake. His head was bowed, eyes squeezed shut. His lips moved silently, rapidly.

"We need to get you off this ship," he said suddenly.

"What?" Yuli blinked.

"You. Escape pod. Now." He grabbed her good arm and pulled her toward the door, keying it open before charging through it.

Kien dragged the girl behind him as he headed for the crew escape pods. Chath stumbled and almost fell at every other step, but managed to keep up somehow. He supposed an arm wound didn't directly impact your ability to run. He didn't really want to have to carry her. Even as they approached the pods, however, the largest explosion yet rocked the ship, throwing him off his feet.

Swearing, he stood up and made to activate his commlink, forgetting that he had discarded it on the bridge. He swore again and dashed to the nearest window, a circular porthole that offered a very limited view of the battle outside. Well, calling it a battle was generous. As he had feared, the clone troopers had been unable to mobilise without a proper chain of command. He'd given the order to go to battle stations, but without the network of communication that the fleet usually relied upon, their response would be lethargic at best. Vulture droids swarmed past the window as the Separatist cruisers bore down on the Sunrise.

"We'll never make it in a pod," Chath groaned as she joined him at the window. She looked pale and clutched her wounded arm, but she seemed to have regained her wits somewhat. "Without fighters, those droids will blast us out of the sky in no time."

Kien hated to agree with her. There was no Republic presence in the space around the Sunrise; something had stopped the fighters from scrambling. "So we need a ship," he grunted. "Come on." Electing not to drag the Jedi this time, Kien set off at a sprint along the hallway.

"Where are you going?" Chath shrieked as she struggled to keep up, pointing to their right. "The hangar is that way!"

"The main hangar?"

"Yes!"

"The one likely crawling with troopers with orders to kill you on sight?"

". . . Yes. What's your plan?"

Kien leapt into a nearby elevator and waited for Chath to follow him in before punching a button. The door whipped shut and the carriage jerked as it began a rapid descent. Sinking to the floor of the elevator, he gulped in deep breaths of air. His lungs burned. He wasn't exactly unfit, but he hadn't been in combat for years. This was all new and quite a shock to the system.

"The plan," he said eventually, as the elevator continued its descent, "is to reach one of the auxiliary hangars and find a ship there."

Chath copied him, sliding to the floor, still clutching her right arm with her good hand. "Will there be anything there?"

"Unlikely, I'd say. Well, I would normally, except we happened to take those pirates into custody last week. I haven't had time to inspect their ship, so it should still be in Hangar C."

The elevator whizzed to a stop and the door slid open. Kien leapt to his feet at the sight of four clone troopers passing by.

"Halt, traitors!" one of them shouted, raising his blaster. That was as far as he got. Wincing inwardly, Kien ignited the Jedi's lightsaber, ramming it into the trooper's neck. It cut through the reinforced armour like butter, and its owner dropped like a stone. The other three panicked and opened fire, but the Force was pulsing through Kien for the first time in nearly a decade. He leapt and spun, slashing two troopers diagonally across their chestplates before finishing the third with a vertical strike.

"Vice-Admiral!" Chath hissed, looking stunned as she followed him out of the elevator. "What in the galaxy are you doing?"

Kien set his mouth grimly as he set off towards the hangar. "I don't like it either, General, but it seems Wire was telling the truth. Every clone trooper on board this ship is now our enemy, and who knows who else? I'd rather strike first than hesitate and lose everything."

"Even so –"

"Even so nothing, General!" Kien snapped. "My cruiser is a war zone, my own men have turned against me, and I am officially a traitor to the Republic. I'm getting off this damned ship, and you can come with me, or you can go down with it!" It was a bluff, of course. He had well and truly thrown his lot in with General Chath now, and he wasn't going to let her die after all that.

She followed him in silence for several seconds. "Yuli," she said eventually.

Kien blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Call me Yuli. I'm . . . I'm no general. Especially not after today." There were tears in her eyes, and she sniffed awkwardly as they ran.

Shit! She really is a youngling. What had the girl said when he picked her and her men up on Geonosis? One tour of duty. He had assumed that she'd been in the system since the Clone War started, as part of the Republic garrison on what had been a key Separatist factory planet, but from the sounds of it, she was barely out of the Jedi Academy. Just my luck. I stuck my neck out for a greenhorn. Kien immediately regretted that thought. You made your choice to get tangled up with the Jedi again.

"All right, then. Yuli," he said, in what he hoped was a vaguely-comforting-but-not-too-familiar-or-condescending tone. "I'm willing to bet that I'm no longer an officer in the Republic Navy either, so from now on it's just Kien. Got it?" He didn't wait for a reply. "Here's our stop."

Kien punched in the security code, granting them access to Auxiliary Hangar C. A massive room compared to the corridors they had just been navigating, the hangar would still be dwarfed by the central staging area where the clones should have been launching their fighters right at that moment. A single ship, sleek and pointed, sat quietly in a corner, guarded by two troopers. When they saw Kien and Yuli approaching, they immediately raised their blasters and fired.

Letting the Force flow through his body, Kien leapt forward, deflecting bolts with his borrowed lightsaber. The Force came a little easier every time he called, as if eager to return to him. No, he realised as he used it to grasp one of the clones' weapon and wrench it from his grasp, sending it spinning across the hangar floor. It was always with me. It never left. This felt right, somehow. Like he finally belonged again. Lasers flying, lightsaber in hand, sprinting at inhuman, Force-assisted speeds. It made his heart pound in a way that no space battle or aerial bombardment ever could.

With a swift movement, Kien sheared the second trooper's rifle in two, whipping the lightsaber around to rest at the clone's throat as he reached for his sidearm. Remembering the four troopers he had dispatched ruthlessly just moments earlier, Kien bit his lip and flicked the lightsaber to the side, shutting off the blade. "Get out of here."

"They'll raise the alarm!" Yuli protested as the two disarmed soldiers backed away. "We can't-"

"We'll be long gone before anyone gets here. Come on." Kien thumbed the door release and clambered into the pirate ship. Despite his assurance, he watched the retreating troopers nervously as Yuli followed him on board, then he closed the door and turned around.

The ship was deathly silent, at least compared to outside. The battle still raged all around them, but for a moment, the explosions and tremors faded into the background. The interior of the pirates' ship was surprisingly clean, having been stripped bare of contraband and anything dangerous by a squad of clones. He just hoped they hadn't disabled the engines; if so, they would have to come up with a new plan, and fast.

A cramped hallway led to the cockpit. Kien hurried in and set himself up in the pilot's seat, kicking the ship into action. Lights danced across the control panel, and he scanned the dashboard. Everything still seemed to be working. Right then, the biggest blast yet rocked the Republic cruiser, causing the pirate ship to jerk and rock in its moorings. Kien swore loudly as he was nearly thrown out of the chair, then fumbled with the harness as he continued pre-flight checks. Protocol battled with pragmatism: there was no time to run proper diagnostics, but this would all be for nothing if the ship malfunctioned and left them drifting in space. With both sides of the battle actively gunning for him, he couldn't afford to take any chances.

The cockpit vibrated as the engines thrummed to life, deep and powerful. A detached corner of Kien's mind marvelled at the machine's sheer power and flamboyance. It was as tricked out as a Tatooine podracer, with signs of custom aftermarket and amateur upgrades everywhere he looked. For a brief moment, Kien felt a stab of guilt for the fate of the pirates, who were likely still held in their cells on the lower level. Captured a few days before, they were destined for trial on Coruscant or one of the other Core planets, but now they were as doomed as every other man on this ship. To add insult to injury, he was stealing their pride and joy. Criminals they may have been, but it was clear that these pirates had loved their ship.

Yuli's appearance behind him put paid to that train of thought. "So? Can you get us out of here?" she asked urgently.

Instead of answering, Kien flicked a switch and the engines roared into full lift, taking them off the ground and hovering in the middle of the hangar. Carefully – this ship's steering was a lot more sensitive than the Sunrise – he turned their nose toward the ray shield that separated them from open space. Outside, dozens of vulture droids whizzed past, hammering on the wounded cruiser with laser fire as it languished, unresponsive, in space.

"This isn't going to be pretty," Kien said grimly. "Go find the medical bay and strap yourself in. There's nothing you can do here."

Yuli nodded and withdrew, her lips pursed.

A blinking red light on Kien's right drew his attention. Weapons systems disabled. "Fuck!" he spat. That wasn't going to help. There was no time to fix it, though, he realised as the Sunrise groaned ominously, listing to one side. It was only a matter of time before the reactor became exposed, allowing a chain reaction that would end with his beloved ship becoming nothing more than a fireball in space. It was time to leave.

Gritting his teeth, Kien punched his stolen ship forward, out of the tenuous safety of the hangar and towards the waiting Separatist fleet.