II
Raxus Prime's eponymous sun was already setting when they had entered the smog choked atmosphere.
They had waited with bated breath on whether or not their gunship's hastily outfitted stealth & jamming systems would hold against Raxus Prime's orbital defences and when the turbolaser equipped droid satellites didn't even stop to examine the craft, those aboard breathed a collective sigh of relief.
And now it really begins, Ardann mused.
Three standard days before, agents from Republic Intelligence had managed to partially decrypt a transmission from Count Dooku's stronghold on Serenno. Though the decrypted portion of the transmission lasted only a few minutes, it was enough excuse for them to report directly to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine who immediately apprised the Jedi Council.
Apparently, the encryption codes of the Hyper Communications Cartel—the CIS version of the Republic Holonet—were held within the Confederacy's main garrison on Raxus Prime.
It was a brilliant afterthought, Palpatine had said, that the CIS would have chosen such a bleak, uninviting and strategically worthless world to house their methods of secrecy.
Ardann knew that the Council members found such a circumstance strange, and he was in agreement with them in that regard.
But the Council knew better nowadays than to oppose the Chancellor outright.
In this case though, even they could not deny what obtaining the codes would mean for the war, a war which had already brought untold death and destruction within two short years.
And so a plan was made in haste, and they had brought Ardann into the fold immediately due to his knowledge of Raxus Prime and his success in such covert missions.
As the gunship silently landed in a derelict and abandoned docking bay, the last red slivers of sunlight had sank beneath the hazy horizon.
Night, preternaturally dark in Raxus Prime's toxic, clouded atmosphere, had fallen.
The Zeltron Jedi mused darkly how fitting it was given how the war had been going.
The dying of the light indeed.
The clones and the Jedi silently departed the ship in pairs and quietly but quickly set up a perimeter around the ship.
Ardann was the last to leave, leaving only the two pilots within.
Beckoning his Jedi companions, they immediately walked toward Commander Wrench who was thoroughly examining a holographic layout of the garrison cobbled from various intelligence reports months before
"Let's hear it, Commander."
Wrench's held his chin in one hand as he spoke, "It's not a large facility, but the structure most complex; a labyrinth, for lack of better word...I also have bad news, Generals; the plans that Intelligence supplied us aren't complete as well."
Warrgo growled a query. What do you mean incomplete?
"Yes, General Warrgo," said Wrench as he set the holoprojector to show a gross plan of the facility and he gestured to a sizeable void in its center, "Unfortunately for us, Intelligence has only ever been able to penetrate that far into the complex."
The Wookiee Jedi grumbled darkly. Warrgo was not known for his patience among the Jedi.
The solemn Master Orvid gestured to Warrgo, "Patience, my friend. All things reveal themselves in due time."
Ardann quietly sighed in relief.
It was good to have someone with a level mind like Orvid. Though he was a Jedi Master himself, he had never quite gotten that level of serenity that a lot of others did.
Then again, he had only ascended to Mastery fairly recently, while Orvid was his senior by almost a decade.
The Rodian Jedi then turned, "Master Ardann; you are the commanding officer here, what do you believe should be our next course of action?"
Ardann took a closer look at the hologram and pointed to a node located west of their current position.
"That looks like a computer interface node here. From experience, Raxus Prime's facilities have a centralized network where every node is connected to just one motherboard and memory bank," he said to Wrench.
"Affirmative, General,"
He could feel the clone commander smiling from under his helmet.
"Can you get everything we need once we get there?"
The clone tilted his head with a chuckle and a salute, "Certainly sir, I'm an engineer after all..."
Even as he smiled back and motioned for Wrench to take the lead, Ardann could not help but feel uneasy as they entered the facility.
Like most Mirialans, Shasta Orsin was a natural empath.
Such an ability was magnified due to her strength in the Force.
It was an ability that she attempted to make the best use of, as Master Orvid had always told her.
Yet for her it was a double edged sword.
She could already feel a sense of unease the moment she had stepped foot onto Raxus Prime.
The dark side was powerful on that planet, having been a stronghold of the Sith in millennia long past.
That was common knowledge—a veritable school subject— to most Jedi and yet...she wondered darkly if the echoes from those bygone days were somehow subtly influencing what she and the rest of the team were feeling.
How different it was to learn something in the Temple from experiencing it first-hand!
It had been unnerving enough when they entered the garrison, only to find it seemingly abandoned—the facility was derelict yet active—but no droids nor organics were in sight.
A preliminary scan by Commander Wrench's engineering unit confirmed that there were none in their immediate vicinity.
They had thought that perhaps it was just circumstance—that perhaps as they penetrated deeper into the garrison, they would encounter trouble.
Shasta could tell that some of her companions were actually hoping for such a thing.
They were fast approaching the computer node Commander Wrench had elaborated earlier, and still no enemies.
Yet for all that—or lack thereof—the unease she had felt had become fear.
Fear of the unknown.
The Mirialan Padawan could feel the fear in the very air.
It wasn't much.
Yet.
But it was enough.
A simple pathogen that could explode into a plague.
No. We are Jedi. Fear has no control over us.
She would have wanted to say that, and she believed it with all her heart.
They had arrived in the derelict computer node, and most unsettlingly, the door to the node was unlocked.
It screamed of a trap, and yet she knew that Masters Ardann and Orvid would have had already gone to the same conclusion before her.
The Rodian Jedi Master directed a group of clones to guard the perimeter with Myrra and Warrgo in tow while Master Ardann and Commander Wrench's unit of engineers did their work.
She felt weak for feeling afraid, worsened ten times further by the fear she felt in her companions.
The sooner they were gone from this place, the better, she thought, watching the Zeltron Jedi and the clone engineers slice into one of the computer panels.
"Almost there," remarked one of the clone engineers, "the Confederacy definitely takes encryption seriously."
Just as the decryption reached 100%, the computer node suddenly went completely dark, and the motley battalion immediately set into a defensive position, the Jedi igniting their lightsabers.
The Wookiee Jedi barked, What's going on?
"I don't understand—the entire facility's power has been cut," said another clone tech, as he looked into a holographic display of the electrical systems present within the garrison.
Just then, veritable legions of isolated pockets of electricity came into life in the hologram.
Their group was momentarily stunned—dozens, if not hundreds of droids had just activated and were fast converging on their location.
It was a trap! Ardann thought irately.
Losing no time, the Zeltron Jedi Master shouted for a retreat and the rest of the team were quick to comply.
It was something else to run through the corridors which only minutes before were lighted and climate-controlled.
They could taste the metallic reek of Raxus Prime's atmosphere slowly polluting the area and the darkness that enveloped them seemed to be as thick as the smog that passed for the planet's atmosphere.
The fear they felt which only moments ago was a mere sliver was fast expanding.
What it was expanding into was something Ardann didn't even dare to think of.
There is no time for fear, he said to himself.
But at the back of his mind, he knew that saying those words and believing them were not as easy as he would have liked.