The hardest part of any battle is the waiting.
Anakin idles in his Actis-class Jedi interceptor, a point of light winking in space on the far side of Thyferra's moon. The lunar body and a million miles of void between him and the Separatist fleet orbiting over the jungle world. His muscles tense, sparking-wire nerves taut and ready to fire. Behind him stretches the core of the combined Republic armada, veiled in the shadow of the moon, battlecruisers and corvettes adrift, engines cold, radiator fins retracted to keep any excess heat off of the Separatist sensors. Trap set, ready to be sprung.
A fool's trap. Like Tarkin said, Grievous will not be such an idiot as to rush out to meet the squadron of Republic frigates now circling about the moon and beginning their feint of an advance towards the Separatist lines. Whatever the admiral has up his sleeve, Anakin thinks, it had better work. It's that or they're locked in a stalemate against an enemy in perfect position with no reason to budge. It was bad enough at Christophsis against Admiral Trench in a similar situation; this time they face a fleet four times as large and with no stealth corvette to disrupt the enemy formation.
Anakin grips his throttle. Come on. Do something. He could've waited aboard the Adamant Edict—no doubt Obi-Wan is beside himself regarding Anakin's whereabouts by now—but if Tarkin does have a surprise attack ready, then Anakin does not want to wait to deploy from the battlecruiser before rushing in to take advantage. Seconds matter in battles. If he sees an opening, he will take it—Luminara and Obi-Wan's cautious proposal be damned. HHHSomewhere out there in that waiting Separatist armada is Grievous, and Anakin has let that monster roam free about the galaxy for far too long. They can end him here, now—but not by sitting back. Not through patience. Only decisive action. Only, as the Chancellor said, by seizing his moment.
"R2," Anakin says, and the astromech droid locked in its wing slot to his left chirps in reply. "Give me the frigates' position on my screen. I want to see what's going on out there."
The droid bleeps in affirmative, and Anakin's sensor readout whirs and switches to a pixelated minimap of the Republic frigates lurching towards the planet. The Separatist line does not so much as flinch. Impatience bubbles in Anakin's stomach as he looks up and out of his viewscreen, out to where the green sphere of Thyferra hangs steady and luminous, dots of light from the warships' engines fading as they shrink with the growing distance. Come on, Tarkin. Don't disappoint me.
Right in line with Obi-Wan and Luminara's plan, the frigates wheel to their left just outside of turbolaser range, lobbing a volley of proton torpedoes towards the Confederate defenses. It's a futile gesture—point-defense cannons will shred the warheads with ease—but as the missiles speed through space, a brilliant green light flashes in the darkness, bright enough that Anakin can see it with his own eyes. Then comes another light, a flaring of orange and red, blossoms of fire bursting in the void.
Confusion blooms. Anakin glances down at the minimap, where one of the Separatist command ships blinks and disappears, breaking into fragments of debris. Just as he realizes what happened, his commlink blares with the static-scratchy voice of Tarkin: "The time is now, Skywalker!"
The resistance cell on the ground that Tarkin had mentioned. It must have been a ground-based turbolaser or some other anti-orbital cannon firing on the vulnerable, unshielded rear of the Separatist battleship, for now the enemy lines are in disarray, ships pivoting this way and that, a few already lancing turbolaser shots towards the planet's surface, others hesitant to ignore the Republic craft but also trying desperately to move away from the anti-orbital cannon's range. Time to seize the moment. "All fighters, on me," Anakin says. He grips the throttle as R2 cheers. The fighter's engines blare to life, the interceptor shoots forward, and the thrill of battle is alive and aflame in Anakin's heart.
Behind him, a hundred and a half V-Wing interceptors boil out like hornets from Tarkin's fleet carriers. A quintet of corvettes races forward from the formation to screen the squadrons. Curling out from around the moon, Anakin boosts his thrusters to full as the cockpit rumbles. The danger, the energy, the life-or-death stakes—this is what life is lived for, these instinctual minutes where plans fall apart and fall into place, where lives in the thousands hang in the balance, where time seems to freeze and all manner of possibilities twirl in the ether. Victory. Defeat. Devastation. Heroism.
An errant concussion missile, its guidance system jammed, veers aimlessly past Anakin's fighter. The first hostile blow of the day. As the V-Wings swoop into an arrowhead behind Anakin's charge, the comm bustles to life with Obi-Wan's voice: "-akin. Anakin! Where are you? What is your status?"
"Little busy with things right now, Master," says Anakin.
"—the fleet. Stick to the mission! The Separatists—"
But Anakin sees a problem, and Obi-Wan's hesitancy can wait. He switches off his master's link, keys over to Tarkin's channel, and says, "Admiral? Admiral, some of those frigates are getting too close. We're not far enough ahead yet to give them cover while they engage. Pull 'em back for a minute or two while we close."
"Negative, Skywalker," Tarkin says. "Those men are doing their duty. Everything proceeds as planned."
Anakin shakes his head, but from this distance he can only watch. The lead frigate in the formation guns its engines as its shields fail and a pair of Separatist battleships, veering away from the carnage wrought by the anti-orbital cannon, converge. Turbolaser fire batters the frigate's fore armor, but the ship does not falter, does not retreat: Only too late do the Separatists realize the gambit. When the frigate is less than a hundred meters off of the lead Separatist ship's bow, it detonates its reactor in a self-destruct sequence. The warship explodes in a volcano of shrapnel and fire, chunks of debris shattering the battleship's shields, sheering off the Separatist vessel's bridge, and cleaving it in two.
Horrifying—horrifying, but effective. Sacrifice a smaller, damaged asset in order to eliminate a much larger piece of the opponent's forces. Like the battle is not a contest of men and lives and wills but merely a game, a great chess match waged over thousands of kilometers, ships and soldiers tally marks to be recorded once the winner is decided. Anakin grits his teeth. He cannot help but admire Tarkin's ruthlessness, his commitment to victory. Is it everything the Jedi stand against; it is everything the Republic needs.
Again the comm crackles, but this time it is not Obi-Wan: "Master? Master come in, I've got a whole wing of bombers with me, but we can't hail you and Tarkin's fleet's charging. Master!"
"Ahsoka?" Anakin says. "Say that again."
"Master? What are you doing?"
"Leading the charge."
A pause. "What?"
"Later, Ahsoka. What about those bombers?"
"It's—where are you?"
Anakin grits his teeth. "Ahsoka, lock in on my signal and swing your bombers around behind my flight. Get a move on."
"But Master Kenobi—"
"Now!" Anakin thunders. He keys over to his flight's comm line and orders, "Blue Squadron, Grey Squadron, draw out to the flanks of those attacking frigates and pull as many as the enemy fighters as you can. The rest of you, follow me. We're going right up the gut against Grievous's capital ships."
"Roger, Gold Leader," the voices of the flight leaders sound off in cadence.
From behind, the longest-range guns of Tarkin's star destroyers boom to life, blasting turbolaser bolts across the vast gap between the rapidly-closing fleets while Separatist shots answer. Anakin keeps an eye on his radar. There—right in the middle of the formation. A hole emerges, a gap large enough to exploit, thrown wide by a critically-wounded frigate ramming a Separatist Lucrehulk's central sphere. Flames belch from the reeling giant as its support squadron flees the carnage. It's too much to hope that Grievous is aboard the dying behemoth, but Tarkin's sacrificial moves are giving them a chance.
Anakin looks up, looks down. R2 shrieks as a whole horde of vulture droids race across space at them. From the rear his V-Wings drop into an arrowhead, and behind come Ahsoka's Y-Wings, slow, sluggish, but devastating to the enemy so long as he can get them through. "Relax, R2," he says, knocking his cockpit's viewscreen and smiling. "It's just like always. Boys, let's clear a hole!"
He spins, his craft twirling, and lances a flurry of laser bolts that catch the first vulture droid to close within range. The droid starfighter veers away before its wing catches fire and wrenches off, the droid twisting and turning for a moment before erupting into a fiery blast. Then the clone-piloted ships race forward and the battle is a storm of light and fire, lasers red and green and blue criss-crossing like lightning blasting across a summer sky, the very space hot and thick and dripping with tension. Anakin pivots through the thundercloud of fighters, spearing an enemy ship, evading another on his tail before an ally as faceless as any in this maelstrom lances it with a flash that too quickly fades to black.
"Master, two Tris on your tail," Ahsoka chimes over the comm. "Break to your left."
Anakin groans and veers away as scarlet laser fire flies a half-meter over R2's dome. "Ahsoka, stick with your guys, I'm fine."
"They're all right, Master. I've handed my job just fine."
He looks over as a line of Y-Wings pepper a Providence-class cruiser with proton torpedoes, tearing through shields and ripping out the ship's bowels. With the chaos in the Separatist ranks, the capital ships are sitting ducks. "Well…great."
"Stick to your left. I'm almost there."
He ducks under the exploding cruiser's hull, zipping past jets of fire as the pair of tri-fighters on his tail light up his shields. Then a Jedi starfighter in familiar marks zooms in from the front, knifing over Anakin's cockpit while throwing up a hailstorm of gunfire. He doesn't even bother to look back and see the results: She's gotten way too good at this stuff. "Nice shooting, Ahsoka."
She laughs. "Just another day."
He rubs his shoulder, feeling a slight jab of irritation. He could've lost those fighters easily, pulled them behind the dying cruiser's engine block and lit them up in the sensor blight. But the annoyance quickly fades to pride. At least it's Ahsoka saving his butt. He's done a pretty good job with her, all things considered. Even Obi-Wan has to admit that.
When he pings Anakin's comm again, however, he is less than thrilled: "Anakin, this was not the battle plan we arranged for."
"Look, Master, some things changed, but it seems to be going all right," says Anakin as he dodges a trio of vulture droids and swerves about a Munificent-class frigate's wings. "Don't tell me you're under fire."
"No, Luminara and I mostly watched you and Admiral Tarkin dismantle the Separatist forces. Speaking of which, you and I will have a chat about that later," Obi-Wan says. "Right now, get back here. Our gunships and assault ships are setting out for the planet surface. I want you as part of our defensive screen. And you'd better not ignore me this time, because I'm on one of these ships, and I'd rather not get spaced because you're too eager to shoot down a few more droids."
He chuckles. "All right, all right. I'm coming."
"About time you listen. Obi-Wan out."
He shakes his head. Another lecture on its way. But he'll deal with it later: "Ahsoka, form up on me. Let our fighters take care of the mop-up; we're escorting the ground team into the landing zones."
"Something tells me Master Kenobi's not gonna be happy about you going rogue on the attack, Master," says Ahsoka.
"Yeah, he already chimed in to complain. I'll take care of that one."
She snorts. "Lovely. Another fun battle. Doin' okay, R2?"
The astromech chirps. "There's your answer. Now let's go," says Anakin. He glances over to his droid and sighs. "Grievous isn't going to go down that easy. No doubt he's got a whole host of surprises waiting on the surface."
The droid clicks out a reply. "No," says Anakin, "we can't just go after him. We have that rumored Tath facility to pursue. Answers to find. And we'd better find some after all this." He looks out at the green and blue of Thyferra beaming in the background behind a cast of fiery rubble and fracturing warships. The anti-orbital cannon has long since stopped firing; whatever resistance crew was behind it did their job, and nothing more. One final act of rebellion. One last cry of defiance. "We sure better."
Tamri's head swirls as she exits the Sith tomb. Answers wheel and writhe in the dusk; the darkness whirlpooling about and dragging her forward, warping her thoughts, making it hard to think. She closes her eyes, swallows, and tries to focus on what she has learned: The answers she—and Sae—seek are not on Korriban but upon Ziost, the ancient capital of the old Sith Empire. And now, thanks to that digital construct—an AI? A digitized mind? An aspect of the Dark Side? She has no idea about what she actually spoke to in that place—she knows how to get there. But it all feels wrong. Awaiting her is a Celestial, if the Sith construct is correct, an unbelievably ancient and powerful being that long predates the Republic, a being so powerful in the Force that it makes Count Dooku and Master Yoda look primitive. A being that can tell the future. She is stumbling towards a truly alien horror, a yawning maw of eyes and teeth and evil at the bottom of this vortex that she and her Master have spent weeks slaloming down, from Coruscant to Belderone to Ossus to Kuat to Korriban. One more stop. One more planet. One more jump into the black, and this darkness is the deepest, deadliest of all.
She cannot make sense of it all on her own. She needs to find Sae.
She really needs to find her lightsaber; without her weapon she feels powerless. Even out of the tomb the Dark Side still tugs on her, and as she trudges forward it is all she can do to hone her focus, think of the light—for there is none here, so deep in the cave system—and stave off the temptation that yanks on her emotions.
But now there is something else. A presence in the night. Someone else walks through the darkness, first just a specter's chill prickling Tamri's feelings, but soon so near that she can hear soft footsteps, pft-pft-pft through the cave dust. Surely only Sae can be here. Her Master said she was okay when Tamri called out: Surely by now she has made her way up. "Sae?" Tamri ventures.
First there is no response. Only silence. No more footsteps. Then comes a far, far too familiar sound, one that freezes her feelings and stills her heart. The draw of a lightsaber.
Scarlet light aflame in the shadow. A tall, gaunt figure. A long, bearded face, haughty eyes, knowing grin. Count Dooku.
Tamri jerks back. Methodically does Dooku advance. "A long way from home, Tamri Dallin," he says, his voice soft, yet in the void of stone and silence he thunders like a god—for he is the one armed, the one blessed with real power in the Force, the one who, between the two of them, commands life and death. Tamri can only retreat into the tomb. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, nothing to fight with. And Dooku, smiling, nodding, knows it. "Oh, yes," he says. "I know you. I researched your file after our encounter on Ossus. You and Sae Tristess. What a shame that she has abandoned you in your time of greatest need."
"My Master's here," says Tamri, her voice pitifully mortal. "She'll come for me."
"Will she? In time?" purrs Dooku. "I know far more about you now than I did before. You are far from strong in the Force. You are a Padawan in name only—the Jedi would have rejected you if not for the mercy of Sae. Through the Jedi's teachings you will never reach your potential. You will never be more than their refuse. You will never become the woman you are meant to be. You will never be more than you are now—scared, alone, helpless." He points his lightsaber at her. "But destinies can be changed."
"I'm not afraid of you."
"You are. I can feel your fear. I know it. I have felt it from others, and so very recently," says Dooku. "Do you know a girl your age, a girl named Pella Starseer? A fellow Padawan. A fellow Jedi in training, so bright, so full of possibility."
Tamri swallows. "No."
"It doesn't matter if you do or not. She too was abandoned by her master and by the Jedi. Just like you. But I found her. And even though she is a Jedi, I will not forsake her: I will make her into the woman she was meant to be," says Dooku. "So, too, can be your fate, Padawan. Tamri. Do not let the dogma of the Jedi blind you. You are lost here on Korriban, this world of the Dark Side, are you not? Can you not feel its power? It enlivens you. Fills you. Makes you more than you have ever been. Tell me, honestly. What do you feel?"
She freezes. She knows what she felt down in that tomb—that enrapturing, that idea that she could be far more than the girl she's always been. The her that, secretly, she has always hated. Insufficient. Not good enough. She knew what strings the Dark Side pulled. But she cannot give in. She must not. Whoever this other Padawan is, this Pella, that fell to Dooku's temptations, she cannot follow in her footsteps. "Nothing more than usual."
"A terrible lie," Dooku spits. "You are here for something, aren't you? I felt it the moment I stepped into these caves. There is hidden power here, a secret of the Dark Side. I know you have found it." He aims his lightsaber at the hole in the wall leading to the tomb. "What did you find in there, Padawan? What did you discover? Do you even understand it? The call of the Dark Side is beyond simple comprehension, but in time, and with the right training, you can know its power. You can know just how strong you can become."
Whether it's the Dark Side or desperation, fear tugs at Tamri's heart so fiercely that the words now slip off her tongue: "Let me go," she protests. "You don't want me. I don't even want to be here. I don't want anything to do with you or your war or your hate. I just want to get away. You can have it. Just let me go."
Dooku smiles. "There is no getting away," he says. "You are marked, by me, by the Jedi. You have been marked ever since they took you off of the surface of Kuat from whatever future you might have lived. You will meet your destiny, young one, or you will die running from it." He pauses. "But it seems I was not wholly correct. You are not entirely alone."
He wheels, lightsaber outstretched. Tamri's breath catches in her chest. "Your Master has not given you up so easily," Dooku calls out to the darkness. "Have you, Sae?"
Tamri's heart jumps as a pair of lights flash in the darkness, one yellow, one green. A shade drifts forward through the black, a specter lurking, looming, advancing on Dooku just as he advanced on her. "You son of a bitch," Sae snarls.
"Is that any way to greet me, Jedi?" barks Dooku. "Assuming, of course, you still are a Jedi in all of that darkness."
"Talk all you want," snaps Sae. "I'm done with you."
"Are you?"
Sae doesn't reply. Instead she surges forward, sabers drawn, and lunges at Dooku like a spirit possessed, like a demon of myth enraptured by some otherworldly presence. She slams down on his blade, sabers slashing. When Dooku counters she spins away and tosses Tamri's blade up in the air. Tamri does not hesitate: With the Force she calls on her weapon. Old friend. Familiar steel in her palm. That welcome green light lighting up her eyes.
"Have at it, then!" bellows Dooku as Sae sets in on him again.
Tamri moves to attack with her master, but she stops as a cold feeling drenches her. It is not the danger, not the life-and-death stakes. It is Sae.
Sae backflips away from Dooku, launching a chunk of rock, then another, then leaping through the debris to attack, slice, slice, slice. She is awash in the Force, but there is nothing about her that is of the light. The Dark Side, that same sinister feeling that Tamri felt in the tomb, radiates off her master like the plumes of a black sun.
"Get going, Tam!" Sae shouts as she clashes with Dooku. "Move!"
But Tamri cannot. Instead she lowers her lightsaber and charges Dooku like a knight out of yore, her fears and doubts all thrown away for one moment of bravery, if only so that she might light up the night and throw back the darkness sucking Sae in. Yet Dooku whirls on her with ease, deflecting a blow from Sae and catching Tamri's saber with his own.
"No!" shouts Sae.
Like a mythic hero she leaps into the air and grabs a fallen stalactite. Wielding it like a javelin, Sae draws up on the Force so strongly that Tamri feels as if her master is a vortex, a woman far more powerful than anything she has seen from her before, enveloped in all the might and potential of Korriban in one great moment as she crashes the makeshift spear down on Dooku. It is all the Count can do to flip away, away from the Jedi, away from his attacker who would turn his own weapon, the Dark Side, against him.
And yet, even as he emerges from the dust of the stalactite's blast upon the ground, he is smiling. "You know, don't you?" he says, his eyes on Tamri. "Your master is not who you have thought her to be, and yet she is exactly what you fear. Anger. Hate. She wields them so well."
"Shut up," snaps Sae. She levels her lightsaber at Dooku, yellow light sickly and full of bile. "Back off, Sith."
"With pleasure," says Dooku, stepping back towards the hole in the wall. "Leave, and leave me to what I came for. Isn't that right, Tamri? Besides, Sae: You have already taken your first step. You will come to me. I know what you feel, what is coursing in your veins right now. Your destiny is set. No matter how much you fight, you cannot deny it."
"We'll see about that," seethes Sae. She grabs Tamri's arm. "Play in your darkness all you want, Dooku. Don't follow us anymore."
"I promise you nothing, Jedi—if you would lie and call yourself that. It is you who will write your story. It is you who has already written the ending."
A shadow dashes along the reddened ground.
They have not seen him, the Jedi. He knows how to be stealthy, how to move outside of the light. Especially here, here on this world where the light of a bitter sun labors but the Force thrives in darkness. Korriban, the world of the Sith. He would not have known it before. He knows it now.
The shadow ducks and peeks over his cover. The two Jedi retreat to their ship, the woman saying something curt to the girl. Master and Padawan. Beyond them the vessel he has identified: The Into Evening's Call, a trashy transport, junk fit for a scrapheap. But it will do.
As the two Jedi dash aboard, the shadow withdraws a bulky, broad rifle. He aims not at the Jedi but at the ship, at the underside of its hull where no one might look. Once the boarding ramp raises he fires. From the barrel of his rifle comes not a gunshot but a round, spinning disc, a tracking beacon that slams onto the transport's hull, locks on its gravitic tethers, and at once begins transmitting location data. The shadow checks his wrist link. Perfect. These Jedi will not leave Korriban so easily. Wherever it is they run off to, he will know. His master will know.
His master. The shadow rises and watches as the Evening takes off, engines blowing away the red Korriban dust. He must tell his master the news. He must ask his master what he has found in the darkness. He must ask what his master has planned.
And it is then that Count Dooku will tell him what he must do.