Order 66

by Kavek

Somewhat AU. A Jedi is betrayed by his clone comrade in the midst of battle, and finds himself struggling with fear. But he has never been known for his mental toughness... R and R is greatly appreciated. Finally edited. Cleaned up.

A/N: I know, I know, Rattatak was already conquered. Yeah, yeah, there were only clones in the Republic's army. Don't be a hater! ;) Anyway, Valgorn Velprik is something of an enigma -- a Jedi who is so emotionally unstable that his Jedi restraint is little more than a temporary barrier. I hope you enjoy, though I must warn you that I wrote this entirely in one sitting and didn't edit it.

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This is Executive Order 66. A command to betray. An order to destroy all Jedi.

"The order is given once. Its wave front spreads to clone commanders on Kashyyyk and Felucia, Mygeeto and Tellanroaeg, and every battlefront, military installation, and spaceport cantina in the galaxy. And all across the galaxy, clones reply with the same phrase: 'It will be done, my lord.'" – Jedi holocron, post-Galactic Civil War

And Jedi die.

Valgorn Velprik twisted the focus on his macrobinoculars, staring across the red steppe of Rattatak at the huge droid control sphere that sat like some lumpish beast in the shadow of a tower of stone. "There it is, Commander," he declared, and handed the macrobinoculars to the clone standing next to him.

Commander Delta Four-Seven received the tool and raised it to his glare shield with one hand. Sighing, he lowered them after a moment, and grimaced beneath his helmet. "Twice as large as I'd expected," he muttered.

Valgorn grinned. "It won't be a problem, Commander. Remember Cato Nemoidia?"

Four-Seven snorted, but he couldn't help the grin that spread across his face – a face shared by hundreds of millions of clones across Republic space. "Well… I guess it will be fine," he replied reluctantly, considering how many thousands of droids could be held in a control pod of that size. He wondered who commanded the CIS forces here, or if it was simply some droid intelligence that had guided the battle against them. He mentally shrugged, but felt somewhat insulted that it was possible that a computer had held him off for so long.

Valgorn shook his head violently for a moment, trying to clear his long black hair of the sand that wafted up from the plain below. "When will we begin the assault?" he asked.

Four-Seven tapped a hidden sensor in his blue-emblazoned gauntlet. A holoscan appeared on his palm, and he held it where Valgorn could see. "The Vengeance dropped six Jadthu-class landers less than an hour ago. When they arrive, they'll drop twelve wings of LAAT/i assault craft, an ATT walker, and two battalions of foot soldiers."

"Artillery?"

"Not this time, Master Velprik. They needed the turbolasers on Cato Nemoidia; some kind of Trade Federation uprising there."

Valgorn sighed and stared at the deck. "I guess we'll just have to do without."

"I guess so."

Valgorn Velprik had been born on Telos, the son of the Viceroy of Citadel Station. At age two, he had manifested Jedi skills, having visions of the future that gave him incredible reflexes for a mere baby. His parents turned him over to Master Plo Koon on Dantooine, in order that he could be trained in the Enclave of Youth there.

Valgorn never saw his parents again.

When he was fifteen, disaster struck Citadel Station. When the fuel shipments that provided the energy to keep the Station in orbit around Telos were cut off, the Station plunged into the surface of the planet, making a continent-sized scar on Telos and in Valgorn's heart.

Because of his Jedi skills, he remembered his parents well; he felt only a wellspring of love for them, despite having known them for only two years. And because of the deep connection in the Force he had with them, their deaths changed him forever. He was scarred by fear.

He had always wondered why Yoda told him never to form attachments, to let things flow out of his life. He found out why after the disaster on Telos. And he was never the same. His Jedi restraint managed to beat back his fear and his anger, but it was always a difficult struggle.

Valgorn adjusted his two sabers at his belt and lifted his hood. Stretching the Force through his body, feeling it extend his senses until he could reach out into the fathomless depths of space with his perception, he nodded to Four-Seven and stepped off of the deck of the LAAT/i that he stood in. And he dropped. Straight down.

He reached out in the Force, flipped a switch on the hidden swoop bike he had so carefully positioned the day before, felt it whizzing toward him… he let the Force nudge him into its path, reached out even though he couldn't see it…

Whack.

He was on the bike. A perfect landing. Sometimes he marveled at how the Force could guide him in everything he did.

At that moment, twelve wings of LAAT/i assault craft shot over the horizon, thirty-six ships. They blazed toward the droid control cluster, their sublights making huge, flaring halos of light in the morning sun.

One of Valgorn's sabers hissed out, the green bar of plasma bursting from his fist like a fountain. The control cluster was scrambling its defenses, sending out streams of tri-fighters and droid assault craft.

A silver haze could be seen slowly beginning to protrude from the control cluster, and it quickly dispersed into several metallic shapes, running to man the fortified places of the gladiator arena that housed the cluster.

As the assault craft blasted over Valgorn's head, hundred of white polyplast cables shot from their decks, and hundreds of clones slid down them so fast they seemed to be falling. All around Valgorn clones dropped to the ground, gathered into squads, and moved for the ridge on the right of the main line of assault. Several units of CIS forces were making their way there; it wouldn't do for them to obtain the high ground on the Republic.

Valgorn saw the laser blasts coming almost too late, but he leapt from the seat of his speeder bike in an agile Force-leap. The droids' bolts punched almost right through the armor on his swoop bike, knocking it aside as if it were a toy.

Robes fluttering, Valgorn flipped over and landed almost directly in front of the line of destroyer droids who had now planted themselves on the ridge. His saber whizzed through the air, and he fed the iron beasts nearly a meter of plasma.

Delta Four-Seven watched Valgorn's progress in his macrobinoculars and smiled. With Jango Fett's smile, he shook his head. "It won't be a problem, Commander."

"I guess you were right, Valgorn," he muttered, laughing to himself. The ship suddenly rocked, knocked sideways by a blast from a hailfire droid. Catching himself on the zero-gee handle above his head, he cursed as a pounding barrage of turbolaser blasts caught his ship broadside. But even over the sound of screaming steel and energy scatter, he could hear an almost imperceptible beeping in the comm sensor in his helmet. A communication from Coruscant.

Frowning, he stepped away from the cockpit and tapped a sensor on his earbud. "This is Commander Delta Four-Seven. What's happening?"

A holoscan flickered into existence on his gauntlet, a small hooded man who exuded authority, even through the blue-lined haze of a hologram. "Execute order 66."

Four-Seven arched his eyebrows, but he replied as he had been trained to since before crèche-school. "It will be done, my lord."

Grimacing, he fought the pitching of his craft and raised his macrobinoculars again. Valgorn was on foot now, leading a squad of clones toward the control cluster. He sighed. As a clone, he was trained to be cynical and hard-edged, following orders without remorse. But he was also human, and capable of feeling some attachment to the Jedi master who had led him through so many battles. He stepped toward the pilot. "Order 66 just came through! Train every ship's weapons on Master Velprik!"

The pilot looked puzzled. "Isn't that overkill, sir?"

If the pilot could have seen through Four-Seven's helmet, he would have seen a disgusted frown. "It's not overkill; I just have a very clear idea of what it's going to take to kill him, soldier. Do as you're ordered."

He stepped away as the ship finally settled down, its assailant now a smoking heap of scrap durasteel. He stared out toward where Valgorn sprinted across the field, totally unaware of what was about to happen. "Too bad, Master Velprik. Too bad."

Valgorn let out a shout as his sabers slashed through the braincase of a super battle droid It reeled back, pushed by flashing blue blaster bolts. He leaped to the left to dodge a warhead that blew toward him from out of nowhere, watching as it streaked past him to skid across the dusty ground and bury itself in a boulder with a thundering explosion that blinded him for an instant.

Suddenly, it struck him that that missile had come at him from behind…

He whirled, sabers up, ready to dodge at any instant… four clones stood behind him, DC-15 blaster rifles leveled at him so close he could smell the energy-scorch on the barrels. "What in the Force…" Suddenly, the armorplast visages looked distinctly threatening….

For a split second, the only sound he could hear was the click-click of bolts being pulled back.

And at that moment, rocket tubes rotated, laser turrets twisted, clone gunners grabbed controls. Fingers pressed down hard on triggers, and Valgorn's world exploded in heat and light and sound.

Commander Delta 47 scanned the fiery crater littered with clone bodies. "Nothing. We got him."

A figure materialized in the dust-choked catacomb beneath the arena. Brushing itself off, it threw back its filthy hood and shook itself. A cascade of soot and sand slid from his clothing.

This figure was Valgorn Velprik.

Trying to remain calm, the Jedi Master slowly and painfully eased himself into a position of meditation, legs crossed. He carefully extricated a small package from the folds of his robe and set it on the ground in front of him, pressing a button on its plasteel surface. A space antenna slowly slid out with the whirr of machinery, and a holocomm screen buzzed to life a few inches above the ground.

A sound came to Valgorn's ears that he had not hoped to hear. A series of accelerated beeps, accented by an undertone that got on his already strained nerves. His restraint nearly broke, and he almost began to curse, but he calmed himself, remembered Master Yoda's teachings. For a Jedi, calm there is. Nothing else.

That sound was the beacon of the Jedi Temple, a signal for all Jedi to return. Something was amiss on Coruscant. Valgorn grimaced and began cycling through several secure Jedi frequencies. Picking up the comlink, he said, "This is Master Valgorn Velprik calling any available Jedi. Master Valgorn Velprik calling any Jedi."

There was a moment of static in which his heart clenched up and his soul nearly shattered – no Jedi? Surely not! Fear began to set in, chewing at the walls around his heart… and suddenly, a hazy holoscan buzzed to life in the dirt before him. A figure that he had known since he was a baby: Yoda.

The tiny yet much-respected Jedi warrior was leaning on his precious gimer stick, a tired look in his eyes, and even a strange dread in the droop of his ears. "Master Valgorn, is it? Good, it is, to hear from you."

Valgorn gave a sighed of relief, made the bow of an apprentice in the presence of the Master, and leaned toward the holoscan. "Yes, Master Yoda. My clones have turned against me; they tried to kill me! What's going on?"

Yoda seemed to grimace. "Happened, this has, on Kashyyyk as well."

Valgorn shuddered. Master Yoda was insinuating something, and he intended to know what this was. "You speak as if this is a widespread thing, Master Yoda"

The wizened alien shook his head in sorrow. "Wise you are, Master Velprik. Recall the Sith threat the Council spoke of, do you?"

Valgorn frowned and thought hard for a moment, recalling the last time he attended a Jedi fellowship. It had been in the Room of a Thousand Fountains, Master Windu saying something about a Darth Sidious… yes, he remembered. "Of course, Master Yoda."

Yoda nodded vaguely and looked toward something not cast by the hologram. "Struck, Darth Sidious has. Revealed himself to us, he has."

Valgorn's eyes went wide. "A Sith attack? Who is this Darth Sidious?"

Yoda sighed and shook his head, swaying a little where he stood. "Chancellor Palpatine, Darth Sidious is. Turned our clones against us, he has."

For a moment, Valgorn could not speak. Chancellor Palpatine? But he was the head of the Republic, the one who was leading them against the Confederacy of Independent Systems! What was going on? That fear that had attacked him at first returned, stronger than ever.

"What about… the other Jedi?" he asked, tremors in his normally strong voice.

"Master Obi-Wan Kenobi I have with me. Disappeared all others have."

"But… what about Master Windu? Ki-Adi-Mundi? Kit Fisto? Jurokk?"

"Perished at Sidious' hands, Master Windu and Master Fisto did. Heard from Ki-Adi-Mundi and Master Jurokk, I have not."

"What about… the Chosen One?" Valgorn asked. Anakin Skywalker was an enigma amongst the Jedi, an example for Jedi Masters to hold up to their Padawans. 'Hero With No Fear' was what the HoloNet called him. Surely he had survived. He would be able to defend the Jedi in this terrible time.

"Fallen to the Dark Side, he has."

And in that moment, the vast scope of the deception, the treachery, struck Valgorn like a drexl's claws.

Anakin Skywalker –

Had fallen –

To the dark side.

The galaxy was going to die.

The battle for Rattatak was finally over. The infamous gladiatorial arenas that ruled the landscape had been turned into veritable scrap heaps for droid parts. The debris of war was scattered across the scarred steppe, draped over rocks and hanging from diseased trees. And somewhere, beneath the planet's red surface, a Jedi Master wept.

A Lambda-class frigate sat at the Mobile Command Center, engines hot. Commander Delta 47 stood nearby, musing retrospectively upon the battle that had just found its finish in the destruction of a droid control center underneath the CIS command post.

Delta 47 still felt a modicum of regret at slaying the Jedi who had commanded him and his men for so long. He thought back to the battles they had fought through together. Geonosis. Muunilinst. Jabiim. Even Cato Nemoidia. And it had all finally ended on Rattatak.

Sighing a little, he ducked beneath the port wing of the frigate and clambered up the loading ramp. He failed to see the dark-cloaked figure make a superhuman leap after him.

The frigate slowly lifted from the pad, repulsorlifts humming, then, with a screech, its sublights fired and it shot off toward space.

Delta 47 unstrapped his helmet and lifted it off. The world transformed from the dimmed haze of his shaded visor to the brightness of space, Rattatak's sun almost blinding him. He glanced over at the pilot, the humanity unrecognizable beneath the yellow-accented armor. "How long until we dock with the Vengeance?"

The pilot glanced at the control panel, eyes sweeping it invisibly beneath his visor. "ETA is… thirty-four minutes, Commander."

Valgorn cracked a smile from his hiding place in the cargo hold. Thirty-four minutes. He had time to meditate.

He continued to tell himself that he wasn't angry or afraid, denied it vehemently. And for a while, he believed himself. But he knew that deep down, he was seething with rage about the betrayal yet absolutely terrified about what would happen to the Jedi Order, to the Republic. For those were his forbidden attachments: he loved the Republic, and he loved the Jedi Order. The emotions were slowly beginning to eat at the durasteel walls of his Jedi restraint, like Myrkyr acid rain.

The ship shuddered, groaning as if in pain. Valgorn was jerked from his meditations, his eyes snapping open to glance at the cargo hatch. He heard the loading bay hiss open. He could envision Commander Delta 47 stepping out into the hangar of the Vengeance through a silvery haze of gasses.

Suddenly, he heard voices outside. Letting the Force fill him, he closed his eyes and reached out, trying to see what went on outside. A hand on the hatch controls.

The cargo hatch snapped open and slid to one side. A pair of clones entered quickly and began to unload several boxes full of flimsiplast sheets. The Jedi went unnoticed, standing silent and practically invisible in the very back of the hold. Soon, the clones left, and the door hissed shut. Valgorn smiled, and the anger bubbled against his heart again. His hand brushed the handle of his saber, and he silently slipped from the cargo bay and disappeared.

On the bridge of the Vengeance, Delta 47 stood at the command deck, looking far out over the vast emptiness of space. In front of him, the rest of the fleet, including two Star Destroyers, slowly moved away from their newly conquered planet, sublights making blue trails across the black expanse.

A voice crackled over the holocomm, and a blurry blue image appeared. 47 glanced over. "Yes?"

The hazy figure saluted. "Commander Beta 96 of the Instigator reporting, sir. The fleet is ready for the jump to lightspeed."

Delta 47 nodded. "On my mark." He glanced down at the navicomputer; green light blinked on the indicator. "Go."

Stars suddenly flared in the transparisteel blast shield, streaking to starlines. They were going back to Coruscant.

Daavyd Tyrall groaned in annoyance and smacked his hydrospanner against the dismantled sensor array. The device squealed and sparked, making the Republic tech to sigh in frustration. "Blast that dratted astromech," he muttered, looking toward where a small, squatty R-5 unit sat smoking, its motivator a scorched, melting lump of metal sticking out of the droid's dome.

Squatting before the array panel, he took one last glance back at the fried droid and wondered, Maybe it'd just be easier to fix Ar-Five instead of the array itself… but then he got another good look at the melted motivator and thought better of it. He couldn't help but chuckle a little, thinking of how the droid accidentally stuck its nosy little data-arm into what it had assumed was a datajack, only to find out it was a power socket. Oh well. There were plenty of astromechs in traction.

It got lonely on the Vengeance sometimes, out there in the middle of a war zone. He was one of the few Republic soldiers who weren't clones, men who had signed up to fight when the CIS revolted. The clones looked down on them a little for their relative lack of discipline, but secretly were jealous of the fact that they had lives of their own, histories, families… and speaking of families, Daavyd had a Twi'lek wife and two lovely children waiting at home for him on Coruscant. He dropped his tool and sighed happily, thinking of their coming reunion.

He desperately looked forward to the leave on Coruscant, wanted to walk into the door of his home, hug his children, kiss his wife, just enjoy life… not constantly be looking over his shoulder for a droideka or a battle droid. Being separated from his family hurt. It cut his heart, waking up in a barracks next to squadmates, seeing them die, bloody bodies scattered on fields, not even buried in the proper fashion. But soon that would end.

Now that the war was effectively over, he wouldn't ever have to carry a blaster rifle, drive a vibroblade into the wriggling body of a Geonosian, aim turret cannons at a capital ship loaded with helpless Nemoidians. Never again. Pain suddenly knotted in his chest, and the desire to come home again was almost unbearable. Brushing aside a single tear that ran into his three days growth of stubble, he picked up the hydrospanner and got to work again.

Suddenly, he was smashed against the sensor array by an unseen hand, felt his face cut open by the jagged edges of metal. "Agh!" he groaned as he was jerked back by a cruel hand. He broke from the invisible grip and whirled, looking for his assailant… but nothing could be seen. He reached for his blaster pistol with one hand, his comlink for the other… but the hand never got there. A glowing beam of plasma whizzed through the air almost invisibly, and his hand was gone, thumping wetly on the durasteel floor of the communications bay. Daavyd screamed in agony and staggered back, slipping on his own blood to land heavily in a heap on the floor.

A figure swung down from the fathomless depths of the darkness of the ceiling, flashing between the coolant pipes that made up its hiding place. A bar the color of life sprouted from its hand, its face hidden by a dark hood. Daavyd gasped. He had heard about the Jedi rebellion, but he hadn't believed it. A Master named Shaak Ti had saved his children's lives on the Lipartian Way; he couldn't believe that their Order had turned to evil… but now he wondered.

The figure threw back its hood, revealing a pale face twisted by hatred and fear, eyes clouded and literally bright orange. The eyes of a Dark Jedi. A voice spoke from the mouth, but it seemed to not belong to the body. "What is your designation?"

Daavyd's eyes flashed. He recognized this Jedi; it was Valgorn Velprik, commander of the Ninth Republic Fleet. He had supposedly fallen on Rattatak; Daavyd now saw the folly of that assumption. "I'm no clone," he quavered. "I'm Daavyd Tyrall, technician," he explained, saluting out of habit.

Valgorn's face twisted into a hideous grimace. "You lie," he intoned deeply, and he raised a black-gloved hand. Daavyd found himself slowly rising into the air, felt his vocal cords being constricted, squeezed against his windpipe, which was already collapsing. "But… but…" he choked, raising one hand to weakly lift the visor of his protective helm.

At the same moment, Valgorn's saber shot from his outstretched hand to make a curving sweep through the air. Daavyd's eyes rolled heavenward as his life was burned away by the terminal curve of a lightsaber.

Valgorn Velprik carefully examined the body, looked carefully at the face. To his surprise, the face was not Jango Fett's… it was the face of another human being, a distinct life, sacred, precious, that which he had once sworn to protect. But the crimson smoke of the dark side blinded him again and swept away that moment of clarity in which he should have realized that even clones are life, should be respected as such.

Instead, he thought, It matters not. They all betrayed me, clones and men. And they will pay for it. The Force flowed powerfully through him, making him into a nexus of dark energy. Eyes burning with hatred once more, he hurried to the nearest turbolift. The Vengeance was about to experience a little population drop.

An alarm went off on the security officer's panel. The clone grunted and smacked a button, turning the annoying klaxon off. Four-Seven glanced over at him, tearing his gaze away from the slipstream of hyperspace. "What's going on, Nine-Eight?" he snapped, irritated by the noise.

Nine-Eight looked bewildered. "Not sure, Commander. Electrical systems have failed on the maintenance level for some reason – whoops, there goes communications for that level."

Four-Seven rolled his eyes. "Send a security detail and find out what's happening down there."

"Of course, sir."

Security Detail Thirteen didn't last very long. Maybe they just weren't fully prepared, maybe they didn't have the right weapons to deal with the threat, or maybe their designation was just unlucky. At any rate, they were marching down the hallway toward the maintenance bay, carefully avoiding sparking halogen plugs, when a green glow whizzed through the hall and gutted all nine of them. All the bridge got over the comlink was a guttural "Ugh…" and a crackling sound that told them that Security Detail Thirteen no longer existed.

Delta Four-Seven swore. "Well, something's on this ship, and we're gonna get it. Mobilize all the security details. I want people guarding every bloody turbolift on this ship. And don't send anybody else to the maintenance level. We'll trap whatever it is down there until we can eradicate it."

Nine-Eight saluted. "Yes, sir." Suddenly, he glanced over at the security panel again. "Oh, blast."

Four-Seven whirled, enraged. "Now what?" he snarled.

"We just lost communications with the barracks on Level Nineteen… yep, there goes most of the electrical systems. Cascade failures in the atmospheric scrubbers, sir."

Four-Seven calmed himself, folded his hands behind his back to disguise the shaking. "Are gases escaping into the ship?" he asked, reserving his anger for a better time.

"Not yet, sir… wait. I've still got a holocam feed on the barracks level."

"Fire it up," Four-Seven commanded. "Let's see what's going on down there."

Nine-Eight nodded and for a moment, his fingers flew across the keyboard, clicking like a Geonosian's nails on duracrete. A fuzzy, distended image buzzed to life on the holopad, revealing the wrecked interior of a barracks. Several bodies lay in pieces, scattered on the beds and across the floor. A single figure stood in their midst, hands clasped behind its back, much like Four-Seven's position. The commander's eyes narrowed. "Zoom in. If that's who I think it is…"

Nine-Eight obeyed, grabbing a small joystick and manipulating the holocam. But the figure cocked its head sideways, as if it heard the buzzing noise from the holocam's tiny expanding lens. A bar of light so bright that it made havoc with the video feed flared in the figure's hand, and it whizzed back to split the camera down the middle. The hologram winked out.

"Velprik. He's here."

It is such a quiet thing, to fall." The darkness creeps into your heart, whispers reassuringly, it's just once and the next thing you know, you have become a heretic, a traitor to all that you once loved. And you don't even know it for a long time, until you are finally forced to admit it. And that is far more terrible than the fall itself.

But as for Valgorn Velprik, he was still hovering in the black and crimson smoke of rage and hatred. With each life that fell beneath his blade, he fed his rage. He became like a generator: the more energy that flowed into him, the more he produced, and vice versa. It was a never-ending loop of dark side power. And it was moving toward the command bridge.

He stood stock-still for a moment in the flickering darkness of Barracks Nineteen, and let the power of what he had just done rush through his body with a deep satisfaction. Deep in his heart, he felt horror at what he had become, but he took his horror in his hands, touched it, examined it, took it apart and put it back together again. He looked down upon himself from the high, detached place in his soul. He did not deny his lust for revenge; indeed, it seemed only to burn the brighter. Where his heart had been, now was a festering boil, a leeching wound in the Force. And things were about to get worse.

"How's his progress?" Delta Four-Seven asked quietly, peering over the security officer's shoulder. The bustle of the bridge had become quiet at the news that Valgorn Velprik was coming, and he had a thirst for blood. Nine-Eight wiped sweat from his brow and exhaled. "He's on level Sixteen… but we've got the ARC commandos there. If anyone can stop him, they can."

Four-Seven rolled his eyes. "The Jedi will cut them down. We can only hope to slow him down long enough to scramble the rest of our men, and bring forward the supercommandos."

Nine-Eight looked puzzled. "Sir?"

"Oh." Four-Seven grinned in spite of himself. Bloody carelessness to reveal a military secret. "An elite unit of commandos, almost pure Mandalorian blood. The best warriors in the galaxy," he explained rather half-heartedly.

"But sir… I didn't know we were carrying classified units."

"That's why they're classified. Intended for a mission on Coruscant. Something about a Jedi beacon. But now they'll be used to eliminate this threat to the Republic."

ARC Commando Omicron One-Three yanked back the bolt on his flame-thrower and stifled a whimper of fear. "Commandos don't whimper," he growled to himself. Crouching as low as he could in his bulky environment suit, he cursed the Jedi and his Order with all the anathema he could muster. It had been quick. The ARC troopers hadn't stood a chance. One by one they fell to an unseen hand – the Force wielded by a vengeful Dark Jedi. One had even fallen to what looked like lightning. Now One-Three was all that remained. He hoped that Commander Four-Seven hadn't forgotten them down there, that he would send help, but he knew he was alone against the Jedi.

Plans for escape bustled in his rattled mind, but were all brushed away. It was impossible. He couldn't kill the Jedi, there was no way he could get to the bridge turbolift… wait… the turbolift to the maintenance level was just around the corner. If he could only get there, he could escape into the relative safety of the already-razed maintenance bay. Yes! That was it.

He tapped a small button next to his visor, and suddenly, the darkness lit up beneath a powerful halogen headlight --

Thunk.

Omicron One-Three was dead.

Valgorn Velprik stepped from the shadows, his face lit up by the glowing green blade of his saber. He glanced at the turbolift, surveyed the holo-screen. This one led to the bridge. Perfect.

Nine-Eight swore so violently that Four-Seven turned and gave him an annoyed look. "What's going on, soldier?"

"Velprik is on this level. Look!" Nine-Eight fired up the holocams on that level, and what he showed was horrifying. The Jedi Master was standing stolid, silent, before the door to the bridge, corpses scattered about his feet – all that was left of the last security detail.

Four-Seven swore. "Close the blast doors, now!" But even as the doors began to close, some invisible force seemed to hold them open as the security doors hissed open, and Valgorn Velprik stepped through, a knowing smile on his face. "Hello, commander," he chuckled, and suddenly, he was a weapon, his saber flashing through the pilot, the communications officer, whirling around the room, an unstoppable force, a hurricane, feeding off of the death all around him. "Kill him, now!" Four-Seven ordered, and he reached for his blaster pistol.

The supercommandos lunged into combat, two drawing cortosis-weave vibroblades, the other two adding sniper attachments to their customized DC-15 blaster rifles. Valgorn's second saber, a shimmering blue blade, hissed in his hand, and he was suddenly a whirlwind. Sabers hissed against vibroblades as the clones dropped into the best martial arts forms they knew, but it could do nothing against Velprik's hate-enhanced Ataro. The Jedi Master rolled low, spinning across the floor, sabers whirling at ankle height, cutting one Mandalorian down, lightsabers blazing a superheated trail through polyplast armor and bio-enhanced bone. The second warrior panicked, backed away, holding his vibroblade in a shaky grasp. Valgorn sneered contemptuously, and flicked a hand toward him.

A scream of agony ripped through the artificial atmosphere, and the commando stared down at his chest in horror as his armor burst open. He felt his ribcage shatter, blood spewing through his fragmented carapace. He swore once. And that was all.

A Force leap propelled the Jedi over the last two supercommandos blaster bolts, and with a whiz of plasma, two blaster rifles clanked to the floor, barrels sliced in half. The disarmed yet still unperturbed Mandalorians flicked their wrists, deadly vibroblades snapping out from hidden wrist sheaths – but they were already dead. They had fallen pitifully before the might of this Dark Jedi.

The co-pilot ducked for cover beneath his seat, hoping to evade the might of t he Dark Jedi that strode up to him, eyes glowing with unbridled fury. "Don't kill me! I surrender… I'll… I'll give you anything!"

The co-pilot flopped back against the control console, two sabers burning a fist-sized hole in his heart. "Thanks," the Dark Jedi chuckled.

The security officer screamed in terror as he fled. Such a victim wasn't worth the effort of chasing down. With a gesture, a console ripped itself from its moorings and crushed Nine-Eight flat.

The chief gunnery officer backed away slowly, feeling for the alarm console. The Jedi caught him in the act, moved menacingly toward him. "No… please! You can't just kill me!"

"Watch me."

Whiz. Plop.

Delta Four-Seven scrambled for cover, firing indiscriminately at the Jedi. The bolts were skillfully deflected, killing the rest of the personnel on the bridge. Four-Seven felt a mysterious tug on his pistol, felt it suddenly jerked from his hand into the outstretched grip of the Jedi. "A big mistake, commander. No one betrays me."

Delta Four-Seven felt his composure swiftly slipping away, and he fell to his knees, beginning to beg, "No, please – I was only following orders…" and two sabers crossed at his throat like scissors.

Some say that life is like a candle, and that when the winds of death extinguish it, the person it burns within dies. None have ever heard stories of the candle of life being trimmed, however. Except once.

Snip.

Valgorn Velprik had eradicated all life on the Vengeance.

The Vengeance never reached Coruscant. For some reason, it suddenly dropped out of hyperspace and made one terrifying, uncharted jump across the galaxy, slipping out of hyperspace somewhere near Myrkr.

And on the bridge, a Dark Jedi's mind suddenly cleared, the smoke swept away by the Force, the clouding influence on the Dark Side gone – and he saw what his hand had wrought for the first time. Blood, limbs, broken, shattered beings lay crumpled all around him, all over the entire ship. And suddenly, his fall was no longer a quiet thing. He admitted it. He had fallen.

The scream of agony that tore into the Force rivaled the echo that had carried through the Force during the Jedi purge.

The Vengeance suddenly swung around toward Myrkr, as though it intended to land there. But instead of making a controlled flight, it suddenly jumped into hyperspace – right at the planet.

Far away, on Coruscant, in the security room of the Jedi Temple, Master Yoda was poking Obi-Wan Kenobi in the ribs with his gimer stick. "Make a Jedi fall, one cannot; beyond even Lord Sidious, this is. Chose this, Skywalker did."

Obi-Wan lowered his head. "And I'm afraid I might know why."

"Why? Why matters not. There is no why. There is only a Lord of the Sith, and his apprentice. Two Sith." Yoda leaned in close to Kenobi, about to speak of his great hope, of the Jedi on Rattatak… and felt a Jedi fall, felt pitiful screams of pain, terror, and fear. He quickly, sorrowfully amended his sentence. "And two Jedi."

So this is how twenty-five millennia come to a close. Corruption and treachery have crushed a thousand years of peace. This is not just the end of a republic; night is falling on civilization itself. Thus do the Jedi learn one of their hardest lessons in Valgorn Velprik. "The brightest light casts the darkest shadow."

This is the twilight of the Jedi.

This is the end of the age.