"Space Bound"
Chapter Twenty-Six: World On Fire
"Merry Christmas, you suckers, you bleary eyed lot
You'll never get rid of that headache you've got...
But stick to it, suckers, go swallow a pill
for this is the season of peace and good will
While we patiently wait for that nuclear blast
Merry Christmas, you suckers - it may be your last"
-Paddy Roberts, "Merry Christmas, You Suckers"
There are some sights, or sounds, or smells, in life that are all but impossible to forget.
You never forget the sound of your first kill screaming in agony, nor the thud as his body falls to the ground. You never forget the first creature of the opposite gender with which you spent a long night of painful, rapid, and terrifying fucking. You never forget the first time your face was sprayed with your partner's blood and gray matter. You never forget the minute you lost any ounce of respect you had for who you thought was someone pure and nobile. You never forget what dozens of rotting corpses smells like on a hot day under an unmerciful sun.
This was one of those things.
The sublevel hangar was eerily empty, although the earlier presence of clone troopers was unmistakable. A few Jedi younglings had attempted to escape through here, and what was left of their bodies after hand grenades had taken care of them, was collected in a pile that Cad Bane walked past without blinking. At the moment, however, the place was deserted. The space where ships were normally stored was replaced by stacks and stacks of crates, tossed about at random and vaguely labeled. He didn't have time to give thought to what might be inside. Even if some of the contents were important or useful, it would take too long to sort through so many crates.
Before he was barely two-thirds through the hangar, he heard the sound of more clones coming, as he had been expecting. Cad Bane ducked between two narrow aisles of crates, tucking the Republican blaster rifle under one arm and balancing the barrel on his knee, as the squadron marched past. He heard muttering between them, muffled by the helmets.
"Bull isn't responding," one grunted. "Neither is Skip."
"You think Nix's squad met some resistance along the way?" another asked their commander.
"Only one way to find out. Let's move."
Under a minute later, they were around the bend.
He stood up and continued his way.
The entrance to the inside of the Temple was blocked by a blast door, which led to a winding corridor. Beyond that was a winding staircase, narrow and almost concealed completely in the darkness, since the lights had been shut down. Something triggered his memory, and he remembered the last time he was here. Before the clones would be coming back, he quickly began ascending the steps as he looked into the hologram map once again.
From the level above, a series of shots rang out, echoing down the long corridor, followed by a short-lived scream. He got a bit of a chill. Just a bit.
As he took the first set of rising steps, a wave of dizziness seemed to swim out of nowhere. He pinned his arm against the wall to brace himself, and paused to catch a quick breath. A few black spots did a little tango in front of him.
What was up with that?
As if in reply, another round of shots sounded upstairs.
Well, of course. He couldn't even recall the last time he had felt actual hunger, much less eaten any real food at all. He wanted a deathstick. Right now. Just one.
That was when he began to taste it in the air again. That old, all too familiar, smell of death.
At last, he reached the top of the stairway after what had seemed like an hour-long trek. His hands shook as he fumbled for a thermal detonator in case he would need it. One of his knees threatened to buckle. The black spots were gone, but not the dizziness. Cad wondered how much weight he had really lost in these past couple months, as if he had needed the physical change in the first place. Was the whole blame to be pinned on the deathsticks, and consequently the headache?
But only briefly. He did not give much thought to it one bit.
For, by now, the smell was overwhelming—a black shroud hanging over the Temple—and he almost didn't want to ascend the final step to see what had come upon this once-hallowed place. But he had come this far, and so there was no choice left.
There are some sights, sounds, or smells impossible to forget.
Before Cad Bane had even arrived at the top step, the front hall of the Jedi Temple, or what was left of it, sprawled out before him.
All had fallen silent. The tall bronzium pillars, statues of legendary Jedi Masters, had crumbled to scattered pieces. Faint sunlight streamed through, shedding rays down on the maroon carpet floor. He made it to the top step. The faroff gunfire had ceased yet its echoes still rang down the giant hall. Smoke trickled up from small patches of flames along the walls and sitting in piles of ash. There was only silence. A beautiful silence flooding over a graveyard.
Cad stepped forward, his red eyes slowly surveying the scene. His initial response was to look around for the safest but nearest exit way, which would hopefully lead to further clues as to where he would find the remaining Corrino brother. He began to take precautious steps across, wary of possible mines set by the clones.
It was a graveyard. Clones, rifles nearby. A few rogues, Weequays and Rodians and even a few Boltrunians he knew were Dio's—dead, finally. Massacred as they ran for the Temple loot. But he saw at least twice as many of the blackened, robed figures—of any sort of species from human to Pantoran—men, women, and younglings—riddled with black burns from the standard blaster rifle. They were Jedi. The hall reeked with the stench of dead, dead Jedi.
He walked on, passing one of the fallen pillars, which had crushed a clone and two Jedi younglings. Bodies had been tossed around and some thrown into piles. Some were already starting to show signs of bloating, obviously the earliest kills. Blood stained the gorgeous pattern carpet, coloring its glistening golden swirls black. Lightsabers separated from their owners were scattered everywhere. Jedi Temple guards, too, had not been spared in the massacre, and lay crumbled and tangled in their dark robes. So far away he could not decypher in which direction it came from, gunfire picked up again. A disguise would be helpful, and reasurring, but any clone armor was too damaged to pass off as belonging to a live one. Unless he was willing to take on a live clone and kill him in some other fashion, which he was not, it would be safer to not wander around looking like a badly-wounded clone who lost his squadron.
Cad would never admit it to anyone, but his hollow stomach was becoming nauseated by that smell, that stench. He paused to glance down at a Jedi Master and Apprentice, side by side. One had tried to protect the other in the heat of battle. Now both were turning to a color never seen on a living being of their species.
What the hell happened here? He wondered.
How does an Order that stood for millenia vanish in the course of one night? It was like putting every credit he had earned during his lifetime on a gambling table, and losing it all. It just—didn't—make—sense.
Good thing he hadn't come here for answers.
A dismembered arm of a clone lay in Cad's path, and he kicked it aside with the toe of his boot on top of a pile of dead younglings—whom, he noticed at second glance, had not been killed by a standard blaster. Not even a grenade or a falling pillar.
He looked again. The burning gashes across their chests and necks could only mean—lightsaber.
Lightsaber?
Several seconds later, as he pulled out his hologram again, Cad found himself taking a small step back. A group of seven to eight younglings had been slashed to death by either a lightsaber or a weapon that was closely related to one. He paused a moment, almost shutting his eyes to reenact the scene in front of him—clones closing in, Jedi of all ranks surrounded, fire raging, bodies burning, more battalions storming through, the younglings screaming and the Masters shouting final orders to hold the line...until it made sense.
Perhaps those Masters would have rather killed their own Padawans than sacrifice them to a surrounding army that would inevitably slaughter all of them anyway.
It sounded un-Jedi like, thought Cad Bane.
After all, the only alternative was that a Sith Lord himself had led the attack on the Temple.
It did not take him long to decide that the latter possibility was the worser of the two.
Blythe opened her eyes, all at once aware of the sticky sensation below her legs. She tried sitting up to pick away at the dried blood, but her abdomen tightened as she did. Moaning in pain, she lay back down. To distract herself, she decided to stick the tip of the barrel of Cad Bane's spare blaster in her mouth, and nibble on it to find some taste. Without hesitation, she jammed it against her upper lip.
The metallic flavor was definitely present, with a blend of something else she could not pinpoint. She lifted her finger off the trigger as she began to nibble harder, and harder.
It's the last time, Blythe. He said it's the last time he's going to leave us.
Then everything will be all right.
She jumped when there was a loud sound outside, most likely a blast door opening and closing. On accident, she bit down on the barrel so hard, it would leave a toothmark.
Footsteps were coming closer—slow, but firm.
A flood of relief felt like cool water on her dry tongue and parched throat. He was back. Cad was back.
But she hesitated, as the footsteps drew closer, and realized something could not be right. How could he have come back so early? He couldn't have, could he?
She slipped the blaster out of her mouth and chewed on her lower lip.
Is that you?
She recognized the voice outside, but it was not the one she was expecting. There was a crash of impact against the locked door to Sleight of Hand.
No, this was the last voice she thought she would have heard again.
Blythe wrapped her finger around the trigger.
A hundred yards or so from behind him, Cad Bane heard clone troopers shouting at each other just prior to blasters piercing the silence. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head to hide behind one of the fallen bronzium statues. The teeth-shattering sound echoed off the looming walls and sent a hot shiver down his back.
"Make your way to sublevel hangar Twelve-B-Forty-one. There has been a reported resistance down there and the squad hasn't reported in."
"Sir, yes, sir!"
Cad squeezed the Republican rifle until the sound of running troopers had faded around the bend. Only when he was over eighty-percent certain it was safe to come out did he stand up again. It had been twice as easy to go down.
At the end of the hall, he saw a passageway uncannily clear and wide open. He opened the hologram, zeroed in on the front hall, and discovered it lead to the central security station. At least three dead Boltrunians lay a few feet from the passageway, yet no corpses were visible beyond them, as if whoever had been traveling through survived a distance.
The central security station would be full of security data and files—obviously, supplies a Corrino could not ignore.
It was a fairly safe gamble that he would be headed there. If Cad Bane's predictions were off, at least the station would be a decent place to collect enough information that would lead him back on the right path. The presence of clones may be high, but hopefully, the rogues who had gotten there first had taken care of it. It was a risk he had to take.
He turned around only to lay eyes on yet another dead Jedi, lying face-down with his weapon hand tucked in. His cloak was burned, face disfigured, Togrutan lekku mangled and torn. This one, too, had been slain with a lightsaber—stabbed through the stomach and hacked across the back.
The idea of Masters giving their Padawans a mercy killing further diminished as Cad closed up the hologram. He deeply craved a deathstick.
Not here for answers, he remembered. Not here for answers.
Yet, the strong possibiliy that a Sith Lord had been here did not help his dizzinesss.
He wobbled a bit as he stood up straight. It was going to be a long day in the Jedi Temple.
Keeping his senses peeled for anymore clones, Cad walked on through the passageway, passing countless corpses. The sight of so many dead from all sides—clones, Jedi, and the rogues—brought to mind the unfortunate souls who were going to have to clean up the mess before long. He smiled a bit to himself at the thought. Thanks to all the petty criminals marching in with the intention of taking many of these Jedi delights for themselves, the workload had been doubled, to say the least.
And how many delights there were to steal. There were pieces from the bronzium statues that would sell well on the black market to be melted down. There were exquisite artifacts preserved for centuries, belongings of famous Jedi Knights and Masters, security chips that could lead to further information on some of the tougher official buildings to hack into. Who knew what the Jedi libraries held with their thousands of holobooks, or the communication center. If Cad hadn't understood the meaning of the word 'hallowed' before, he did now. Despite the bodies and ashes and rubble strewn everywhere—to walk down the wide, looming halls bursting with color from the multicolored windows, to see thousands of years put into the surrounding architecture, to enter the Temple in such a way he never would have imagined himself doing before, and to do so alone and for the most part in utter silence—brought a sense of awe, sacredness, and wonder to this mysterious, deathly place.
For a few minutes, at least. It wore off quickly.
Because he knew the truth. That to be hallowed was to be worshipped for something that did not exist. That to be sacred was to pretend something was perfect, when even the pursuit of perfection was futile. And girls like Blythe, or Blythe herself, may very well have been smuggled into a private quarters in this temple and drugged until all they could do was giggle about it. Some of them may have died here. There was no telling. It could have been these halls in which a much-younger Blythe finally snapped and stopped caring if people touched her anymore.
Even if such was not the case, did it change any of the stark facts? Would it bring back any of the invisible little lives destroyed here? Would it undo the carnage now plainly spread about the main halls and divine chambers?
No, it did not. It could not. It never would.
The sacredness was a mask. And only now did the true smell of death that had existed here for years become so unavoidable, it was making him sick.
As the passageway dropped down to the central security station below, the headache sent off a series of explosions behind his eyes, pain like that of a hundred hot needles being driven into his skull with a hammer. Although his stomach was empty, a bit of bile jumped to the back of his throat. To bite back the agony—god, the fucking agony. Just end already and be done with it.
The blast doors hissed open. When he stepped into the room, it was almost in a stagger as the headache swelled. The blaster rifle seemed to gain fifty pounds in his arms, and it took twice as much effort to keep holding it up.
The hall of the central security station was cold and dank, like the frozen bowels of a cargo ship. Four pieces that once made up two clones littered the floor. A blue glow rose from the holo-files stored in the aisles of recorded and recieved messages, adding a low-key buzzing hum to what would have been complete silence. The headache pounded. It rose in full symphony to a level it had never reached before. If only Jedi smoked deathsticks. Or, used to smoke deathsticks.
Strange enough, it was as if the whole Temple had fallen silent. No more gunfire in the distance, or clones or rogues shouting or screaming. Somehow a spell had been cast down, and he had missed it. Darkness swept across the station. With the headache, the blue light from the aisles was changing colors every second, or so it seemed.
So were they blue after all, or red, or green? Or white? Or black? Because, strictly speaking, the last two were not colors. Now they were blue again.
Cad took two more steps forward, slowly making his way through the main division of the station, eyes peeled for any sign of a Boltrunian's past or present intrusion. As he had learned with Gasta Corrino back in Happyface, a lone Boltrunian was a dead one, but having partners alongside him meant a deadly game for their opponent.
One of his legs suddenly went stiff, like a board, and he had to drag it along.
The lights were beginning to change color again. Damn it all.
The dizziness had faded out, for good riddance, but its absence did not seem to help matters much. The blue—or green, or black—glows doubled in size, and then shrunk eight times smaller, only to whiten like the train in Happyface, blinding. Luckily, when he blinked, shut his eyes, and shook his head, they returned to normal. He kept going. Inching closer.
Steady. He balanced a hand against the wall, gripping the rifle in the other. Breathe, keep going.
Without a doubt, somebody had already been here; otherwise those clones wouldn't have been cut to pieces. Anyone could easily have stolen a dead Jedi's lightsaber and decided to use it for themselves, so fresh lightsaber kills should be expected.
And then he stopped.
Wait.
It was not that somebody had already been here, but that someone was still here.
He could smell it.
His hand, which had been pressed to the wall, dropped to his side. He let his gaze fall to the floor.
Behind him, about fifteen feet's distance, Cad Bane heard the familiar startling hiss of an ignition, and the subsequent lethal hum.
Slowly, Cad turned his head to the side just enough to see. His heart almost stopped.
"Bane. Is that you?" he heard a human voice blurt out, sprinkled with a sharp Corellian accent.
Oh, I know that voice.
It was either apprehension, or the mere startle, that put a tremble in the bounty hunter's voice when he spoke.
"Hello, Kenobi."