Lowering the interceptor toward the stabilized platform, R2 whistled an encouraging string of commentary regarding the commotion below. Anakin's plan worked. His creativity was communicated decisively to each commanding officer inside each star destroyer, and though the process was rough, the drop had been ceased and many lives saved. Cargo and medical droids were interspersed among clones as they bustled en masse along the east and west docking bridges to secure the city remains. 501st and 104th ground troops fanned out from there, while the droids marched on to the evac and medical operations that were busily resuming near the plaza. Brewing below was the large-scale backup the 212th so desperately needed, although at a day late, the assistance was arguably useless. Enemy patrol units were soundly defeated, the air devoid of Separatist fighters. And if any J-1s had managed to cling to their roosts through Shadow Squadron's indelicate reaping, the drop had certainly finished them off. The supplementary troops were, in a brutally honest way, the cleaning crew.
Undisturbed by cannon fire, the interceptor touched down gracefully at a more-or-less flat stretch of ground only a short distance off from the central hub of activity. Anakin jumped from the hood. There was no time to celebrate his tactical quick thinking. He landed with a puff of dust that curdled about his feet, and while he meant to press on to the evac area for Obi-Wan's sake, his legs buckled in disorientation from the abrupt shift to solid ground. He cursed under his breath as he floundered to catch himself on one knee – successfully, if only just. Obi-Wan's pallid face scrunched in discomfort where it lay on his shoulder.
"Master?" The words came without thought. "Hey. Just stay still. Don't worry - I've got you." In truth, Anakin had been consciously stowing his doubts to this point. It was a habit of war (or merely a habit of being a Jedi) that he was able to suppress his overwhelming fear of the situation at hand. When his squadron entered the smoking arena that was Sector 6, anyone could guess that things would be ugly. But only Anakin, with years of firsthand experience, thought first that his former Master was bound to look equally maimed.
"Mmn… Anakin?" Pads of raw skin gripped Anakin's pauldron through frayed, well-worn gloves.
"Don't move. Save your strength. It's over now."
Opposite as intended, Obi-Wan stirred. So much of this battle had taken place at the thin edge of "over" that the very idea spurred him to act. It had become an automatic switch of sorts, triggered by acquiescence to vehemently defy the prospect of defeat. He wrestled away from Anakin's arms, weak but insistent, like a wet noodle that refused to submit. Anakin was perhaps just as eloquent on his unaccustomed legs. And so their duel commenced, as far as a duel could be justified between such wobbly contestants, in a strange, amorphous knot that knitted and unraveled itself, thoroughly shaming the renowned ideal of Jedi finesse. Finally, somehow, Obi-Wan's feet ended up on the ground and Anakin stood apart from him on unsteady knees. Both were out of breath.
Not missing a beat, Obi-Wan ratcheted back into war-mode and made to resume the fight. "Cody," he invoked by comm with a drooping arm laid over his side. "Report." The last few hours were blurry - if in fact they were hours. He needed to know what he'd missed. Cody would know, because Cody always knew. And then, coordinates granted and situation up-to-date, they'd be back on track. Unsurprisingly, a stagnant silence wafted from the other side.
"Are you stupid?!" Anakin filled in instead.
It wasn't his heightened volume, but the unbridled pleading that projected through his being as he berated his Master an arm-and-a-half's reach away. For the first time then, Obi-Wan looked up. Not to a chessboard of strategic positions, terrain advantages and enemy garrisons, but for the first time, he truly saw the landscape before him:
Extinct.
Buildings were dark and crumbling, in places already gone. Clones and droids scurried about carting corpses and near-corpses of his own men, weapons tucked and away without need. The idyllic architecture of Bespin's finest engineers was ground into dust. An empty space ushered crisp, midday sunlight through where the galactic comm station used to thrive at the peak of Sector 6. There was no way to deny it: this was mission end – mission failure in its purest sense.
Gazing out at the destruction surrounding his irate apprentice, the flames of resistance died out from his eyes. Passively, he dropped his wrist. It suddenly felt immeasurably heavier.
"Well, it was a bit of a gamble to begin with," he planned to say in the most uplifting voice he could muster, though peculiarly, no sound escaped. In the same event, even the ambient noises were mute. The boisterous winds, the shuffling of clones, the deep grind of underground machinery… All of it was lost in a powerful flush that emanated from a rampaging heat in his temples and stole its way down. The ground disappeared out from under him. He could not feel the rough hands on his arms, nor the hypospray in his neck. What seemed like an instant multiplied into hours, then slingshot again back in time. He'd felt this before, except now, a vague glimmer was there to guide him. Its warm, steadfast presence saw him through this bizarre and unexpected journey, reassuring him with foreign words that all would be well.
The gurney towed him away. Initially, Anakin kept pace. Over crumbling obstacles and shallow trenches he trailed alongside, dedicating the full extent of his abilities toward holding Obi-Wan's frail signature close in the Force. It felt beyond tired. It was limp and forlorn and in terrible need of his care, but with four clones and a medical droid crowding around, Anakin stepped back at last to allow them more room. I should've been there, he found himself thinking. It didn't matter how many excuses were crammed in the back of his mind. Watching his Master shrink further away, he felt the guilt swell. At the end of the day, it was irrevocably true that a handful of clones had been dropped on a rock with one Jedi and numberless hostile droids. Something could have been done differently. Something should have been done differently, and if Anakin were a better strategist, maybe he would have.
. . .
By the strength of the destroyers' combined docking maneuver, the chasm was squashed together again in a jagged, colossal scar. Unintentionally, that meant every sentient underground was forcibly sealed inside. A subset of the evac team toiled for almost an hour at this newly shaped ridge, arduously persevering to avert sudden collapse while burrowing deep enough to contact the pair of Jedi captured within. Detached from the medical squad now, and endeavoring to bury his guilt, Anakin put his talents to use as a human dowsing machine. He meditated, stock-still in an eerie sort of way, until lifting his mind from the depths of the Force and announcing the location that resonated below in the shape of two Jedi. Where he indicated, the team started their course drilling into the ground. It was thus an exceptional feat of Force-driven excavation that finally enabled them all to unearth a chalky orange hand waving enthusiastically from several meters below. Meddlesome wires and beams were slashed as Ahsoka climbed with far less caution than the team would have preferred. She scaled sharp ledges and corners, Plo at her heels, grabbing troopers' outstretched hands where they dangled into the shaft by their cords. Then, facing the rim opening out to fresh air, the last hand to assist her was augmented with recognizable cybernetics.
"Welcome back," Anakin hailed with a smile, hauling her up from the pit.
She coughed in return. The sun was too bright without clouds to shield it, and only when Plo was upright by her side did she find the composure to answer intelligibly.
"H-hey. Is everything clear?"
Everything seemed clear, if the plain depiction of emergency relief efforts surrounding them was anything to go off. But she'd been working apart from the counterattacks staged both on ground and in sky, so the possibility remained she was still needed somewhere.
Efficiently, Anakin quenched her tired, altruistic spirit. "We're clear. The troops are out scouting for battledroids and anyone else in the 212th. I found Obi-Wan, but…" A frustrated sigh, and he folded his arms. "Grievous got away."
Ahsoka deflated in turn. The destroyers were docked, barred from pursuit. All but a few pilots of smaller crafts had since merged with the evac and medical operations. It wouldn't be right to deploy them on what would probably become a fruitless hunt, and besides, backup wasn't an option. For all they knew, the Separatist fleet could be repopulating in the exosphere, waiting to retaliate against just such a group.
"General Grievous was never part of this arrangement," reasoned Plo. He welcomed his Commander with a placid, raised hand as he approached. "What's important is that the civilians receive food and shelter as soon as possible. Now that we've established a path into the quarantine, we may commence their evacuation. Commander?"
"We're on it, sir," Wolffe proudly informed, "I've got a unit on route from the flagship as we speak."
"Good. Then seeing as I am not needed here, I will rejoin the operation shortly. Ready the transports and reserve medical personnel."
"I should go too," Ahsoka butted in. "Same setup as before, right? I'll drop into the room and send the refugees into the tunnel."
Stroking his mask once, Plo contemplated the kindest way to express his misgivings. "…Not… Exactly," he attempted. "Shall we say, I expect the civilians will not be as pleased, meeting us for a second time."
"Oh. That… Yeah, I guess that makes sense." They'd made it quite clear only minutes ago that those people were to be abandoned.
"I see you understand. Visit the medical station as soon as Wolffe's men have arrived. I suggest you do the same, Master Skywalker." With a nod his direction, Plo left for the pit.
Question marks populated Anakin's face and articulated themselves through his eyebrows.
"What did you do to those refugees?" he probed curiously, leaning left toward Ahsoka.
"I-" she began, and then, realizing the complexity into which she'd rather not delve, "Nothing. Forget it. They're fine."