Chapter Thirty-Nine: Things Fall Apart
Dozens of pirates have encircled the square, all armed, all primed to kill something, anything. To enter this space at all is tempting fate; to do so unarmored is diving into a killing jar.
It doesn't matter.
Executor Vader has gone to war.
As he emerges into the plaza, the Force means he doesn't need to aim; he simply sweeps the blaster in his right hand from point to point and squeezes the trigger, knowing before each shot leaves the barrel that it means death for the being at the opposite end. Before any of the mercenaries have so much as gotten off a shot, five of them lie dead in the dirt.
By the time they start firing, Anakin is on the move.
He's not conscious of the people he kills, of the stun baton in his left hand lashing out hard enough to crack bone. Another time he might relish the combat, but now it's as if the dark side fights for him, executing a sequence of dodge-and-strike that was written into the fabric of the universe long before Vader ever set foot on San Sestina. He has other concerns; the pirates he kills don't matter, are simply obstacles to getting what he needs.
He has to kill them both. Personally. And before he takes Valis's life, he needs to hear from her own mouth what she meant. Who Sidious is.
Nothing else matters.
Chugging booms had begun rumbling through San Sestina, and as Padmé paused her sprint to look up at the sky, scarlet lances of laser fire soared upward toward Anakin's trio of Star Destroyers. Explosions blossomed against slate-grey hulls, but she knew that was misleading—the Republic ships would have raised their shields as soon as they hit high atmosphere. They'd hold against the surface-to-air blasts, for a while.
Hopefully long enough to get out of this mess, she thought, and started pelting toward the square once more.
She'd lost sight of Anakin by the time she hit the ground, but she knew where he'd been headed—and indeed, in the distance, she could hear the high-pitched pinging of small-arms fire beneath the rumble of the pirates' air defense cannons. Sound's good. As long as they're shooting, he's still alive.
The rifle, strapped across her back, slapped against her spine with every step. After a particularly sharp collision, she pulled to a stop, panting, her lungs ragged with every breath. Her stomach felt as though a stone were resting there, yet another reminder that it wasn't just her own life she needed to save, and for a moment she wondered just how much panicked running she could reasonably expect her baby to withstand.
With a wordless apology, she lurched back into motion. About half a minute later, the alley she'd been confined to took a sharp turn right, and she found herself in the plaza. The blaster fire still hadn't stopped, but there weren't that many shooters left.
Executor Vader was seeing to the ones that remained.
Padmé had seen Anakin risk his life hundreds of times in the years they'd known each other. Whether piloting the Spice Dancer through firestorms or racing swoops through caves or slicing up clones with his lightsaber, he'd sped through that risk in a kind of drunken whirl, weaving and ducking and juking from one side to another with an exhilarated grin as though the knowledge of how close he'd come to death just added spice to things. Uncalculated, foolish, jaunty—even when you couldn't see his face, his movements had spoken of the lopsided grin written across it, a punch-drunk pleasure at finding himself still alive.
If she hadn't known beyond a doubt that Vader was the same man, she wouldn't have believed it. He strode through the square with almost open contempt, moving his body only the barest amount possible to sidestep blaster shots or block enemies' paths. Each burst of crimson that flared from his right hand slammed into a chest, a forehead, killing enemies outright or knocking them to the ground. The baton in his left hand moved in a way that seemed almost lazy but snapped heads back with enough force to break necks. This wasn't a fight. Her husband was slowly, methodically butchering anything within reach.
Every instinct in her body was screaming at her to run, now, to get her and the baby as far away from this slaughter as she could. But then Anakin moved out of the way half a second too slow, and a stray shot tore the blaster pistol from his right hand. His head turned to follow it, and before she could move he'd seen her, locked eyes with her.
Before he could move, another shot slammed into his hand, and Padmé screamed. Screw it, she thought, and started running for him.
Strangely enough, Anakin didn't seem at all bothered by the fact that his right hand had presumably been turned into a useless lump of molten metal. In fact, more than anything, he looked annoyed. Glaring, he turned toward the source of the blaster fire, a Devaronian pirate about ten meters away, just in time for the alien to fire again.
This time, Padmé was close enough to see it happen.
The bolt of crimson shrieked toward Anakin's mechanical hand—which, Padmé realized, was impossibly somehow still intact after all. Plasma met glove with a fountain of sparks and a visible flicker, the leather for a split second catching fire.
Then there was just a curl of smoke rising from her husband's outstretched palm.
The next instant, Padmé's necklace flared hot enough to burn, and the pirate had hurtled backward into a wall, blown off his feet by an invisible wave. He didn't get up again.
Anakin looked back at her, just standing there, and beckoned with his right arm. "They're already gone. Come on!"
Then he was moving again.
Too late to run, she thought. Rifle clattering against her back with renewed ferocity, she tore after him.
By the time Valis's earpiece began buzzing, she already knew where Vader was—she could sense him now, all right, a hurricane of dark energy that had flared up suddenly enough to make her nauseous. "Dorran, you'd better still have him there."
"He's in the plaza," Dorran's voice confirmed. "But Valis, it's over. I ran, and everyone else who's there will be dead in a few minutes if they aren't already."
"Torch it," she shot back. "Every exit save the central artery. Drive him to us, and get the hell out of there."
"Copy that."
If Maul hadn't bloody run off, had waited for her, they could have just doubled back, caught Vader right then and there. But the Zabrak had been so impatient in his rush to find their target that she'd lost sight of him, and now she had to hunt for him by sense alone—not an easy thing to do when Vader's wrath was blooming like a fireball in the other direction. And she wasn't about to go and face down the Executor alone—the self-confidence she would have needed to try that had gone out the window the instant Maul had decapitated the decoy.
Where are you? she lashed out with her mind, not caring if Vader somehow overheard.
Returning to the plaza, the Zabrak spat back a moment later. Finishing this.
Don't bother, by the time you get there it'll be sealed off. Meet me at the graveyard, my people will herd him there.
I've listened to you too many times, weakling.
A sharp pop was almost audible as he forcibly broke the connection, and Valis gasped at the sudden pain in the base of her head. Staggering, she swore, then pulled herself back to her feet as distant explosions sounded from behind her. Dorran had done his job.
"You son of a bitch," she hissed, not knowing or caring whether it was meant for Vader or Maul.
Forget the Zabrak, then. Either way, she would head to the ship graveyard herself. She knew the hulks—Vader didn't. If she couldn't take him in the open, she might be able to lure him into the shadows and kill him there.
Switching her earpiece to the general frequency, she spat, "All patrols, clear chokepoints and hot zones. City control, trigger all herding mechanisms now. Drive him to the graveyard. Priority is to kill Vader, capture no longer an option."
Coughing through a sudden gust of rust, she turned and leapt, landing atop the nearest roof. She needed to reorient herself, then head for the graveyard.
It was in her men's hands now where Vader ended up. All she could do was get there first.
The roar of the entire plaza perimeter exploding at once still rang in Padmé's ears—Anakin, who'd been far closer than her, seemed unaffected. Alleys, doors, streets, all had been seized by a ring of flame tearing toward the sky—even the old sea docks had been blown to pieces. For a moment, the two of them just stood there, sweeping their eyes around the sudden inferno, looking for a way out.
Then a blaster bolt whizzed by Padmé's ear and broke their stupor. "Snipers!" she barked—of course, the other spotters Valis had stationed in the towers—and sprinted forward, seizing Anakin's flesh hand and tugging.
As they charged for the perimeter, Padmé saw it—a single street, narrow but passable, that hadn't been filled with fire or choked with rubble. Her husband had seen it too—already he was pulling ahead of her, running with a Force-assisted strength she knew she wouldn't be able to keep up with for long. The wooden pendant from the Temple still pulsed at her throat, the power Anakin was using roiling within the fragment of the tree.
"They have to be in the city somewhere," he said as he dragged her onward, holding up his mechanical hand against a burst of rust-infused smoke. "We just have to find them."
"Anakin," Padmé panted, wrenching her hand from his grasp, "they could have split up by now, or they might not even be here. If they took a ship out of the spaceport, all they have to do is wait up there with their fleet while the ground cannons chew your Star Destroyers to pieces."
That, at least, got his attention—he looked upward at the three daggers of grey, still holding against the constant barrage from Valis's air defense. "Their shields will hold out, they're designed to withstand full-on turbolaser barrages."
"For how long?" She swallowed, choked. "Let's just get the hell out of here, order the Star Destroyers to fire back once we're clear, give us some cover to get to orbit—"
He'd already turned and resumed his course forward. Swearing sharply, Padmé followed.
Up ahead, the street intersected with a broader avenue, one big enough for speeder traffic. Indeed, as the pair of them neared it, a landspeeder loaded with half a dozen mercs shot by, a heavy cannon of some kind mounted to the back. For a moment, Padmé wondered why the hell it hadn't shot at them—surely the pirates had to realize Vader couldn't stop cannon shots with his hands—
Then, without warning, Anakin cried out, turned, and hurled himself at her, throwing her to the ground.
Cobblestones met blaster rifle met back with an agonizing whack—Padmé wordlessly screamed into her husband's sheltering arm, a fraction of a second before a world-rending bang consumed her left ear.
Anakin had already rolled off and extended his hand to haul her to her feet—hissing an exhalation through her teeth at the pain in her back, Padmé shrugged off the whine in her ears and looked past him toward the avenue. The entire left side simply wasn't there anymore, an entire building's worth of collapsed rubble walling it off—the way forward was also gone, the street crackling with flame that was burning far too hot to be unassisted by chemicals. The only way onward was the right of the avenue, the direction the pirates had fled.
"Are you all right?" her husband asked, looking both genuinely worried and seethingly impatient.
"I . . . I'll live."
Even as she released another shaky exhalation, he'd turned and started off. "Anakin, wait!"
"What?" he snapped, looking back. "If you're not in the shape to follow me, hole up and I'll come back for you—"
For a moment, pure, animal hatred for him cut through the exhaustion and fear. "Your ships aren't firing at the city, Executor," she spat, shouting to be heard over the crackling flame and the howling wind. "So where do you think these explosions are coming from? Valis and Maul booby-trapped the entire gods-damned place."
At the use of his title, he'd squeezed his fists shut, and now he was glowering. "Yeah, they're not stupid. Your point?"
"Skywalker, this isn't random. Think about it, the entire plaza getting blown to hell except for one way out? That way out getting blasted so we can only head east? They're herding us, don't you get it? They want us to go wherever it is this leads."
"So we go there."
"What?"
Inexplicably, despite the heat of the stinking atmosphere and the still-burning flames and her own overworked body, Padmé suddenly felt cold. When Anakin next spoke, the petulance had gone—in its place was the voice of a man who knew exactly what he was capable of. "Valis wanted Vader to come here, and that didn't stop me. What she wants doesn't matter. It's what we want."
We? she only barely stopped herself from snapping back incredulously. She had plenty of experience with making Anakin angry. She didn't think she wanted to see what it was like when Executor Vader got that way.
"Come with me or not," he said. "I'm finishing this."
Before she could respond, he'd headed down the one route left to them.
The speeder that had roared by before the avenue was cauterized was waiting for them further down the path. Before it could even open fire, Anakin simply squeezed, and the cannon crumpled like so much tinfoil.
He didn't have to bother with the pirates. They bailed from the speeder and ran before he could get close enough to strike them.
Padmé, he could sense as he ran past the still-humming landspeeder, was still behind him, doggedly following despite her protestations. Same as always, he wanted to think, she complains every chance she gets but in the end she's in your corner—but he knew that wasn't right. What he sensed behind him wasn't loyalty and fierce love but fear and exhaustion and simmering anger, and below that something too deep for him to probe right now.
Guilt curdled within him, but he shoved it down into a recess he'd deal with later. With him was the safest place she could be, whether she saw it or not, and they couldn't afford to wait.
Because she was right about that, if nothing else—if Valis and Maul fled before he could get to them on the ground, he'd never reach them.
Another blast went off up ahead, channeling them left—as its echo faded, the dull chug of surface-to-air fire continued. Anakin risked a glance skyward, and saw that one of the Star Destroyers had lost shields somewhere along the bottom of its hull—charring could be seen along the rear quarter near the engines. The other two were as of yet untouched, but if one had already been breached, it was only a matter of time before the others followed suit.
Still they held fire, as instructed. Loyal soldiers of the Grand Army, it seemed—ready to obey Executor Vader's orders even if it meant death.
It won't, he snarled at himself. You'll stop this first.
Behind him, Padmé clutched at a stitch in her side and called, "We've been here before."
It all looked so different now—ash and smoke and rust choking the air, debris littering the street—but, Anakin realized, she was right. They'd taken this path to get to their sniper's perch. "They're routing us out of the city," he said, "back the way we came in. Toward the junkyard."
"That's perfect," she said, sudden desperation in her voice, "the Dancer is right there, we can get on it and get out and order—"
"We don't have time for this," he cut across her. "If Maul and Valis are on their way there too, they could hide anywhere if we don't cut them off."
As she opened her mouth to speak again, Anakin shook his head and sneered before he could restrain himself. All the work, the voice in the back of his head whispered, all the lives that have been sacrificed to make this mission succeed, and all she can think about is saving her own skin. A wave of disgust washed over him, and he wasn't sure whether it was the voice's or his own. She doesn't understand. She doesn't want to.
"Go back to the Dancer, then," he told her. "Get out of here. I'll kill them both, then get the Arbiter and save the men up there—"
"Obi-Wan is in trouble," she blurted out.
I'm pregnant, she'd almost said, but she knew that if she used it that way, as a bargaining chip, she would never forgive herself—and whatever chance she'd had of making Anakin happy, of making him trust her before she dropped this other bit of truth-telling, had vanished. All she had left was an ultimatum.
When her husband didn't say anything—just stood there, stunned—she clenched her fists and went on in a rush, "He needs your help. I need your help. You're the only one who can save him."
For a moment—a single instant—she thought it might work. Saw his expression waver toward that of a man she'd once known very well, who would drop anything for the people he loved even if they were systems away, no questions asked.
Then the Executor slammed down across his eyes like a trapdoor. "Go ask the Jedi for help."
She had no retort. No last barb, no desperate pleas, no wife's command to her husband to do what she asked right now if he loved her.
But, she knew, she did have one last card to play.
As her husband started to turn away, she reached beneath her coat and pulled out the thing he'd left behind on the roof, the thing she'd grabbed before flinging herself after him.
Anakin froze, staring at the pair of binoculars. "Padmé."
He took a step toward her.
She pressed the targeting command.
Valis had reached the outskirts of the graveyard when the warning smashed her to the ground.
DANGERDANGERDANGER the dark side shrieked like a klaxon, a physical onrushing that knocked the breath from her and twisted her guts. Vader, she thought, whirling from the hulks of rust back toward the city—only to see that it was something even worse.
Emerald turbolaser fire slammed into San Sestina. The trio of Star Destroyers hovering above had been let off their leashes.
A hideous ozone stink immediately flooded the air, and a cacophony of pulverized stone and rising flame erupted from the city. They'd target the surface-to-air cannons first, Valis thought, powerless to change the reality even as it set in—then the spaceport.
Behind her, the hulks were groaning, hulls shaking with the reverberating impact of the bombardment. The two nearest to her ground against each other with a squeal of decayed metal against decayed metal, and slid a foot or two out of place before stopping again. This, Valis knew, was nothing—as continued blasts hit the crust, the shocks would only grow worse.
Her earpiece wasn't powerful enough to reach space on its own—instead, as a second salvo of green blasts slammed into the city, she keyed in Dorran. "Get fighters and bombers down here, now, and divert what cruisers we can spare into the atmosphere. We can't have the fleet fire at them from orbit, it'll just hit the city—we have to take them down in the air."
Shaken but still there, he replied, "On it. We're going to sustain heavy damage either way—"
"I'm aware, Dorran," she snapped, then squeezed her eyes shut as their surface-to-air batteries returned fire, red and green streaking past each other in blinding fireworks. "Give the order and then evacuate before they destroy the spaceport."
"Copy that. And good luck."
There was no such thing as luck, she answered in her head even as the comm line clicked dead, just strategy and the Force, and both had failed her.
You still have the fleet, she told herself as she gazed at the firestorm raining down upon the city. San Sestina has been an excellent location, but it's the manpower and the ships that got you this far. You'll take them, after you reduce Vader's ships to slag, and find a new world to continue on.
And if Maul stays behind to die in the fire? Good.
She needed to get going herself—to get to her last backup plan and fire up its engines—but found herself transfixed by the gleam of turbolasers tearing through the city's defenses. Steam was rising from the coast, where the superheated plasma was evaporating the sea; every time the sky flashed green, she could see particles of rust thrown into sharp relief as they floated through the air, silhouetted by destruction.
She'd misjudged Vader in so many ways. Taken him for a Sith. Been so sure he'd know Sidious. Hoped, desperately, that he'd be willing to help. And now, it seemed, her last assumption had been overthrown. She would never have predicted that the Executor would flee his objective, ordering his ships to reduce it to slag. She'd thought he'd stay to finish the job, personally.
You can dwell on your failures later, she thought to herself, taking one last look upward—her starfighters had already arrived, their presence signified by the miniature fireballs blooming all over the Star Destroyers' shields. Get up there and take command. And then, once those ships are dust, you can—
The dark side sounded a warning one more time. Where the bombardment had been blunt force, overwhelming, this was sharp, specific, like a blade between the eyes. Closer, and more refined.
Valis knew what was about to happen seconds before it did.
Two hundred meters distant, two figures emerged from the mouth of the city, black shadows against orange and green flame. The second didn't matter; Valis knew who the first was.
Vader. The real Vader, this time.
He and his companion were running full-bore, almost as if—Valis frowned—he hadn't been prepared for the onslaught from his ships. No time for her to dwell on that mystery—They've seen you, the dark side whispered to her. You've no time to get away, not now.
Reaching downward, she felt her hand meet cool metal. Tearing the saber from her belt, she pressed the activation switch, then wrenched the hilt apart, the dagger in her off hand.
Behind the two, an exodus had begun. Pirates were pouring forth from the bottleneck, scattering in all directions, ants evacuating a burning hive.
You can trust them as much as you can pay them, Dorran had said—pay them she had, and trusted them she had, and now she'd reached the limit of what loyalty she could buy. Money wasn't worth much when it asked you to stay in a flaming city.
Some of the runoff of mercs was following behind Vader and his companion, but not to catch them—simply to get away. They weren't about to take the time to stop and shoot at the Executor, especially not when he'd wiped out dozens of them without any effort at all. Valis was on her own.
If Maul had listened, she thought, allowing herself this much petulant passing of blame, we could have met Vader together. Now—
One last shudder of the dark side brushed across her awareness.
Vader and his partner had closed to about fifty meters, but the Force wasn't drawing her attention to them—it was pointing past them, past her fleeing men, back to the flaming city. Back to another silhouette emerging from the bottleneck that the traps had rendered the city's sole exit, surging toward Vader with a hunter's eagerness.
She knew who it was even before twin blades of crimson sprouted from his hand.
Here we are, then, she thought, bringing her saber to guard. Maul, Valis, and Vader, as planned. Not an entirely worthless debacle after all.
The Executor and his partner were close enough now that Valis could see their weapons—a marksman's rifle in the woman's hands, a simple stun baton in his. One thing about the decoy had been honest, at least—Vader didn't have a lightsaber.
A howl of wind pushed at her back, cape unfurling around her, and for a moment, Valis, Lady of the Sith, allowed herself some hope.
Then that same wind reached Vader, and tore the hood back from his face.
Valis had only a fraction of a second to absorb the revelation that Executor Vader, the hand of Chancellor Palpatine, was in fact Anakin Skywalker.
Then a bolt of energy knocked her to the dirt.
Republic Archives: Rust Storm
Rust storms are a common sight on so-called "junkyard planets." When corroding piles of wreckage are battered by high-speed wind, flakes of oxidized metal are often carried into the air. Though the airborne metal usually forms as a dispersed haze, pockets of high pressure can compress the corrosion into a thicker cloud—a roving rust storm. Most rust storms disperse within a matter of days—though one on Raxus Prime is said to have been swirling for nearly forty years.
Such storms pose a danger to the eyes, skin, and respiratory systems of many living beings—though this danger can be mitigated with proper protective gear. The Scrapper's Guild of Bracca proudly claims in their recruitment material that no member shall be made to work the salvage yards without adequate safety equipment—a right secured by the famous Six-Month Scrapper Strike of 781.