They came in the night.
A team of ten Jedi, the best Guardians of the Order. Beings who were trained from birth in combat. And Havoc Squad, professional thorns in the Empire's side. They arrived on Dromund Kaas in a stolen Imperial shuttle, landing in the jungle to meet their contact.
He was a pureblood Sith who didn't speak much to them and they didn't ask questions. He brought them to Kaas City in the back of a covered airspeeder and handed them off to the second contact in the chain. They were all Sith who who were disenchanted with the new Emperor and had agreed to help the Republic in hopes they would overthrow him.
The human man, a lowly cargo officer took them into the back of his airspeeder among a food shipment that was going into the Imperial Citadel, the heart of all Sith operations. They would enter through the kitchen and work their way through the Citadel until they had neutralized their target. Their target being the Empress. Intelligence had told them that the Emperor had gone off-world to join an apprentice of his at the front. Despite the fact that he was gone, they expected the Empress to have many defenses in place. This certainly would not be easy.
Tarpollah Ma'ku, Mirialan, the commanding officer of Havoc Squad exchanged anxious looks with Master Bela Kiwiiks. She had a bad feeling about this.
"It's okay" her husband Aric said with a reassuring smile. They had been in many tight spots before and had always gotten out of it but Tarpollah had a bad bad feeling about this.
There was a knock on the back of the airspeeder, their contact letting them know they'd arrived at the Citadel.
They crept out behind the man and slid through the kitchen entrance. None of the staff were there because it was so late. Master Kiwiiks handed their contact his payment and he nodded his thanks and left them.
"Let's go" she said to her team. Jungkwon Karresh followed next to her and the others pulled up the rear. Tarpollah pulled on her helmet and followed silently behind Aric.
Sahesri arrived on The Glory ready to work. The Sith were planning an assault on Alderaan and he would soon follow Jaesa and Casia to the warfront to put these plans into action. But he kept feeling a disturbance in the Force.
"Master are you okay?" Kira asked at his side.
Kira Carsen had truly blossomed in her time back with the Sith. When they had captured her, Sahesri had seen alot of the same things he'd seen in Jaesa. True potential that was being marginalized by the Jedi's restrictive ways. The former Jedi apprentice had seemed lost. Looking for something. Her progress had been nothing short of astounding. Sahesri couldn't be more pleased.
"I feel a disturbance in the Force. Do you sense it?"
Kira's nose wrinkled as she reached out her senses. "Yes Master. I feel it."
There was definitely a disturbance in the Force. Something was telling him not to leave the system. They were still in the Dromund system and he could sense something wrong on Dromund Kaas.
He walked over to the holo station and called up Jaesa's frequency.
"Master." Jaesa greeted with a bow.
"Jaesa, something is wrong. Do you feel it?"
Sahesri could see in his apprentice's face that she did sense it as well.
"Master I feel like we should head back planetside."
Suddenly Sahesri felt a blaring warning in the Force. And he realized it was in fact coming from the capital planet. "Take a shuttle from your ship Jaesa and meet me on Dromund Kaas. Vette and the boys are in trouble."
"Master let me go with you!" Kira yelled.
"No Kira! I'm putting you in command of The Glory while I'm on planet. Don't let me down."
"Yes Master" Kira said lamely as he ran towards the hangar. She had been eager to prove herself but knew her Master had to handle this himself if it involved his wife and sons.
They had finally encountered resistance. The Citadel's battalion of guards had deployed and were slowing down the strike team. They were still holding on but their progress had been halted.
Master Kiwiiks batted away blaster fire effortlessly, providing cover for Havoc Squad to try and thin out the squad of Imperial guards.
"Go!" Master Kiwiiks yelled "I'll hold them off!"
Aric, Tarpollah, Jungkwon and Havoc Squad's medic, Elara backpedalled down the hallway. "The nursery's this way!" Aric yelled to them. They ran down the hallway, cutting down those who stood in their way. The air was peppered with the stench of blasterfire and Jungkwon's cyan lightsaber cutting through the air.
"You will go no further than this."
They turned at the sound of a voice behind them. The figure removed her black hood and there she was. The leader of the Empress' Royal Guard, Saria.
"Lord Saria." Jungkwon greeted shortly.
"Jungkwon Karresh, you visiting Dromund Kaas again has been greatly anticipated. Lucky for me I get to be the one to bring you to justice before you do something dumb."
"Let me handle this" The Zabrak Jedi cautioned them.
"You Jedi really are something you know? Trying to kidnap infants? Aren't you supposed to be the protectors of the Galaxy?"
"Enough Sith!" Jungkwon yelled and sprung towards the Cathar woman. Her taunts had worked. The normally serene Jedi Master was thrown off kilter and had charged the Sith Lord in a rage. Saria was calm and able to assess his every strike and counter it perfectly.
"Come on" Elara yelled to her two Squad mates as the two force-users battled.
Aric kicked down the door and they were confronted by the twins' two scared nannies.
"Please, please don't take them!" One human woman yelled putting herself between the cribs on one side of the room.
"Stand aside ma'am" Aric warned.
"Please!" the woman sobbed. "They're just babies! They haven't done anything!"
"I said stand aside!" Aric yelled throwing the woman off to the other side of the room. That's when the twi'lek woman who had been in the room with her reached into her boot and pulled out a hold-out pistol, getting a perfect shot that hit Elara right in the face. The former Imperial-turned-Republic medic fell to the ground with a smoking hole on the left side of her face.
"NO!" Aric and Tarpollah both yelled. Aric whipped out his blaster rifle and shot the human woman twice and shot the twi'lek in the face, her jaw came flying off. Tarpollah ran over to Elara but it was too late, she was dead.
"Get the babies and let's get out of here." Tarpollah could sense her husband's sadness in his voice behind his helmet. Cathar generally did not become close to people but he had always looked after Elara like a younger sister. He reached down and closed the young woman's eyes, murmuring something under his breath.
Tarpollah walked over to the two cribs and saw the two month old infants sleeping peacefully. Her ears were filled with the sound of lightsabers singing against each other outside the door. She reached into one crib and pulled out one of the boys, Julius, she remembered him to be.
When she took the boy into her arms his brother began to wail. It was unlike anything that Tarpollah had ever heard. Animalistic and primal it dug right into her soul.
"Yaah!" Aric suddenly yelled.
Tarpollah turned back around and there was her husband clutching the remains of his left hand. Standing behind him, holding the still-smoking blaster was the Empress.
"Put my son down" she whispered, her voice sickly calm.
"Tarpollah go!" Aric commanded through their helmets' personal comm system.
"No! I won't leave without you!"
"Do as I say! Someone has to get at least one of these kids out of here! Go!"
And as she ran back down the hall, clutching the infant in her arms she knew that for the rest of her days she'd be haunted by the image of her strong, beautiful husband being gunned down by the Empress and her Royal Guard.
Sahesri and Jaesa ran through the Citadel, destroying all those from the Republic that they could find.
"Nursery! Go to the Nursery!" Sahesri yelled to Jaesa. The pair ran down the hallway to see Vette laying in the hallway crying her eyes out.
"Vette!" Sahesri yelled running to her. He grabbed his wife tightly and pulled her into his arms.
"They took Julius" she sobbed, repeating the words over and over into her husband's chest. "They took my baby."
Sahesri quieted the rage that was growing in the pit of his stomach. There would be a time for that later.
"It was like they weren't here...and then they were! I mobilized the guard to eliminate them and a couple of their team pinned us down in the hallway outside our bedroom and it was taking us so long to deal with them so Saria and Ti'va went ahead to the nursery to protect the boys. But they had Jedi with them and the Jedi distracted Saria...when we finally got here there was one trooper left that we killed. They already had murdered Ti'va and the Nanny and Saria died in my arms. Julius was already gone. Oh Sahe what are we going to do?"
"Shhhh" he soothed, rubbing her lekku as he held her. "They will pay. The Jedi, the Republic and whoever helped them get in. But we have to be calm for our son's sake ok? Auggie is still here and he's ok. We're going to fix this I promise. I love you. I love you. I love you so much."
"Master?" Jaesa said quietly, bending down next to them. "The entire Republic team has been eliminated except for one Jedi and Havoc Squad's commanding officer. I'm transmitting the orders to shut down the spaceport."
"It'll be of no use" he said with a sigh. "If the Jedi got into the Citadel they had inside help. They'll definitely have a way off-planet. I need you to start meditating Jaesa, use your powers. We have traitors to root out."
Jaesa's sadistic grin broke out across her face at the prospect of hunting down traitors.
"As you command Master."
After running for hours through the jungle and cramming into a packing crate on a smuggler's ship leaving Dromund Kaas all while dealing with a screaming infant, Tarpollah was back in Republic space. She had split up from Jungkwon outside Kaas City, they had run into an Imperial patrol and the Jedi Knight held them off for her while she ran. She had no idea what happened to him and had no time to muse about it.
Master Satele was there to greet her when they arrived on The Preseverance. She handed the infant over to a Jedi nanny and walked to Master Satele.
Each step towards the older woman felt heavy, like her feet were made of stone.
And she fell to the ground in sobbing hysterics at the Grand Master's feet.
"It was a disaster!" she sobbed to the Jedi. "They killed everyone! Everyone! I'm sorry Master but there was no way we could find your son. I barely got out of there with one of those blasted Sith kids."
Suddenly Tarpollah got angry. "You knew didn't you?! My husband died in that raid and you Jedi knew that we would all go to our deaths!"
"Jedi died in there too." Satele replied calmly, trying to keep her voice even-keeled.
"Yeah well it was all for the greater good right?" Tarpollah sniffed as she got up off the ground and mockingly saluted. "Don't worry Master Jedi. I'll just try and hide my emotions better like you guys do and be ready to throw myself at the next blaster cannon on your order."
As the young commander skulked away Satele couldn't help but wonder if this all was really worth it? Was all the death really justified in the end? Because it seemed like everything around her was crumbling.