Chapter 8 – "Dangerous and disturbing this puzzle is" (Jedi Master Yoda)

"I have always valued power greatly. The Sith replied with poorly disguised superiority. "It is with power you shall win this, if you can." The stones beneath the figure darkened as it moved in front of the only light coming from the door.

Luke could not stop his eyes from sliding over to the ghost of a light coming through it. Anywhere else, someone might have called the light a shadow, so little it was. The figure followed Luke's quick look at the exit. Luke did not think he imagined the small smirk at the corner of its lips before it was gone, but there was no trace of it in the figure's voice when it spoke again.

"You cannot tell anyone of this future." It said with a finality that left little room for argument. The yellow eyes dared Luke to challenge it, and Luke was not about to disappoint.

"And what's to stop me?" Luke said, and his sharp tone turned the question into a dare. "If you break the contact early it will have consequences for you as well. I will make sure of that." He allowed the threat to linger between them for a long moment, and finally added. "Mark my words."

Luke would be lying to himself if he did not feel a small measure of enjoyment at the way the Sith's posture suddenly stiffened, even if the room suddenly felt colder.

Luke walked closer to the figure and blocked its line of sight to the door. With his back to the door, his shadow fell forward towards the Sith, as the light behind him pushed it into the dark.

"You threats are as empty as this tomb." Luke continued, watching the anger in the figure's eyes burn at his insolence. Clearly it was not used to being challenged. "As soon as I go back, I will be out of your reach. You and I both know that-"

"Do not presume Jedi." It snapped. The last word was spat out as if it was a curse. "I have power you cannot imagine, not even in the void would you be out of my reach." The yellow eyes tilted lazily down to look at him. The voice was confident and condescending as it continued. "Remember who you are talking to."

The malice in them was unlike any Luke had ever seen, but the words didn't fool him for on moment. He had come a long way since his sheltered life at Tatooine. He knew a lot about lies now.

And liars.

"Why does it matter to you how he dies?" Luke stretched out tendrils of the force from himself and out towards the Sith. He tried to find just some small measure of reason behind this senseless rule but all that met his searching senses was the cold constant anger the Sith wore like a second skin. "The whole point of this is killing him!"

At this outburst the figure paused and Luke felt a ghost of confusion under the permanent anger. Luke didn't know how to react. It was the first time the Sith had shown any emotion other than different stages of anger or pain

He kept his face carefully blank, and waited for the Sith to speak.

"I am many things but I'm not a traitor to my principles." The Sith finally said in a low voice. "If he cannot defeat you, then he is unworthy to be Sith, and deserves to die." The figure stepped forward and stopped. It stood just outside the reach of the light coming through the door and the darkness of the tomb surrounded it like a macabre aura.

"But you will not have him defeated simply because you turn the entire Jedi order on him." it said and the darkness seemed deeper than before. Luke knew the figure was a shadow of its former self, but old power still lingered dormant around it. Like an old predator with sharp claws and blunted teeth.

"And who is going to stop me?" Luke spat back regardless of the unease clawing at his back.

The answer was not the familiar anger, but a smile.

"You don't seem to understand, so allow me to make it very clear." The Sith said, and towered over him in a wordless threat. It stepped around him slowly, lazily, but its yellow narrowed eyes never left Luke and he was force to turn around to keep it within his vision.

"Breathe a word of this future to anyone, and I will end the ritual immediately." It said and stopped just in front of the door and blocked the light with its massive form. "…Regardless of the consequences."


"Would you just listen to me!" Anakin threw his arms up into another block. The red saber hissed as it slammed against the blue blade. "I need to pilot this scrapheap right now or we all die!"

"Then go." Luke replied mercilessly. The red saber danced around the blue one again in a flash of movement. Always the blue lightsaber blocked its path, but the opening Luke was waiting for would come.

He knew it would.

Anakin would slip any moment now.

Lightning blasted out from his outstretched fingers in a roaring storm, and jumped straight for the target. A brilliant flash of blue rushed in the way of the blast. It was like the lightning had slammed straight into a wall. Purple lightning crashed against an invisible force and exploded out into the rest of the room.

A pillar of electricity went wide and crushed into the console right beside Luke. He threw himself to the side and pulled a force shield around him. The console exploded with a deafening roar of fire, a hailstorm of sharp metal pieces were flung out from it and slammed into his shield.

It sounded like thunder when the shards struck out in all directions and crashed into the floor and the walls.

They did not only cover the floor, the force of the explosion had been so violent that the sharp edges had cut right into the metallic floor. The floor was torn open and the pointed edges stuck out, reaching for the celling.

It spread almost all the way to the front of the cockpit where Obi-Wan was frantically trying to fly the ship. The shards reflected the red flashing light brightly, and in contrast their long shadows were ominously black.

It looked like a sea of teeth.

A flash of blue rushed for him. Luke released a harsh breath and struck forward at the same time he jumped back. The lightsaber in his hand hummed as he threw it up in a block, seconds before Anakin's saber collided with his.

Luke gasped through clenched teeth and his arms shook under the insane strength of the attack. His arms could not help but to give under the pressure as the blue lightsaber rose and dove again with strikes so powerful and so fast that Luke was forced back under the assault.

Anakin was wielding the lightsaber like it was a hammer.

Luke stepped around the second strike. The blow that went flying past him was so powerful that he felt a gust of wind from it against the soft skin of his neck. The smoke from the exploded console parted before the saber as it retreated away and was cut through again when the blue blade rushed forth again.

The lamps above and around them had turned from yellow to a blaring red. It was ideal for Luke, the red saber was almost impossible to follow in red light from the flashing lamps. Anakin's blue lightsaber on the other hand was the only thing that broke that sea of red.

In these conditions it should have been easy to fight past Anakin

It wasn't.

Luke moved his lightsaber into another fighting form, and turned from defender to attacker. He threw a bolt of lightning from his hands as a distraction and stabbed at his father's left side. The lightsaber's deadly bite met yet another block.

He increased the pace. Time was running out. Through the window the impressive view of an endless sky of stars had turned into a hellish red.

The ship was going to hit the atmosphere any moment now.

The red saber swung back and around. Luke shifted the weight off his feet and hurled a blast of force lightning towards Anakin. The Jedi tripped, and his back slammed against a toppled console. He threw an arm hastily out and managed to steady himself with it, but not before Luke had bolted past him.

A warning screamed through the force, and Luke acted on instinct and swung back around. The blue lightsaber jumped through the smoke and Luke had already raised his stolen lightsaber to meet it, when his eyes widened in shock.

Anakin wasn't there. The lightsaber had been thrown.

He felt Anakin's presence before he saw it and then it was already too late. An insane pressure crushed down on him from all sides, and he couldn't breathe. His arms refused to obey his furious command to move. To do something!

Anything!

His heart hammered in his chest, and horror and panic drowned out anything else when he realized that he couldn't move anything at all. The control of his own body had been ripped out of his hands!

In slow motion the blue lightsaber sped past him and fell into an outreached hand. The world blurred, and a sharp pain ripped through his knees.

Even as his world blurred in and out of focus, he saw enough to realize that he had fallen on his knees. Everything appeared to him as if he saw it through a thick fog, and he couldn't hear anything. The world had gone completely silent, the sirens had muted, and the world seemed far away.

By some inexplicable urge he focused on his limp hands lying lifeless on the floor at his side. He could no longer feel them, but his fingers curled up on their own will in short twisting movements. In the red flashing light, it reminded him of the way leaves curl up when they burn.

It was only when the glowing blue lightsaber rose over him like an executioner's axe that his mind jumped back into action. He could not move anything, but he did not need to with the force as his ally.

A thin line formed just above his head in a second, before it spread out into a shield. The shield had barely formed before it violently flung upward. The shield became a wall, and Anakin's saber crashed into it.

Through the force it looked like a blinding explosion of sparks when the saber and the barrier collided. In the same moment Luke threw himself up, and towards his adversary. The stolen red lightsaber flew back into his hands.

In a furious series of movement the red and blue slammed together in ever shifting patterns. Luke stabbed the lightsaber forward, striking faster and faster, but he couldn't break through.

A look darted to the side, outside the window, and his heart missed a beat.

Time was running out.

He bit his lip nervously as he saw how dangerously close the ship was to impact. Anakin would not risk the entire ship for Sidious. Any second now Anakin would run for the ship's controls and leave him to his fate.

Anakin would not let all of them die just so he could protect a Sith!

Right?

But Anakin did not move.

"Are you actually going die for him?" Luke asked despite himself. He was closer to horror than surprise as the ship twisted under his feet again. It was worse this time, and somewhere he heard a rumble. It sounded like an explosion.

"His fate will be same as ours." Anakin said with conviction that chilled Luke to the core.

Anakin was ready to die for this monster!

"He would not do this for you!" Luke spat back, helplessness curling in his gut. He could not get past Anakin like this, and if it did not happen now he would not be able to get the ship under control before impact.

… And then they all died.

With a heavy breath he forced his arm down out of the block. The lightsaber went out like a candle, and the defeat felt familiar when relief washed over Anakin's tense expression.

"Go." Luke said, and nothing more.

He could not bear it.

Obi-Wan jumped out of his seat before Anakin started moving and walked in between Luke and Sidious. Sidious moved quickly further behind Obi-Wan and his deceptively yellow-less eyes watching Luke. Then Obi-Wan and Sidious drew back toward the very front of the cockpit where Anakin was already in the pilot seat. Luke was left alone in the middle of the room.

A shower of fire rushed past them outside, and bathed in that light stood those three. Anakin and Obi-Wan were caught in the flickering light, but Sidious hiding behind Obi-Wan was little more than a formless Shadow. The red light touched Luke's face without warmth, and he felt cold everywhere.

Anakin frantically pushed just about every button on the control panel without any visible effect. The ship kept the insane speed, and the violent twists that rocked the entire ship did not become smaller. Instead they got steadily worse. Dread started to grow within Luke when Obi-Wan started to look worried as well.

'Had it been too long?' Luke thought, and shifted his eyes from Anakin to Obi-Wan. 'Had he doomed them?'

Obi-Wan didn't move from his spot beside Anakin, and he did not even glance in the direction of the empty seat of the co-pilot. Luke looked to it and back to Obi-Wan and didn't understand. His old teacher was not a bad pilot, so why wasn't he helping Anakin to-

He drew a glance to his old teacher and almost startled at the pair of intent eyes looking back at him. Luke realized his mistake and steeled himself. Of course Obi-Wan weren't helping; he was too busy standing in between Luke and Sidious to help Anakin.

Luke's cloak dragged after him on the floor as he stepped closer. He kept his movements slow, despite the urgency, as he closed the distance between himself and Obi-Wan. Carefully, he made a show of holding his open palms outward and away from the lightsaber in his belt.

He could summon the saber to his hand in a breath should Obi-Wan try anything, but the passive gesture made Obi-Wan pause his hand over his own lightsaber.

"Let me pass." Luke ordered his old teacher when he got close enough. He avoided looking directly at him and instead looked past him. There was a sudden uncontrollable ache in his heart when he saw Obi-Wan this close. He looked so young.

So unbroken.

Luke hid the sudden rush of emotion under a front of irritation that made the emotion easier to stomach. "He cannot land this thing alone." He reasoned. By the look on his face, Obi-Wan had already realized as much, but Obi-Wan still hesitated as the thousand fires outside became a deeper red.

"I am not about to let you-."

"- If we crash I die too." Luke snapped back, and threw another look at the flames licking up against the windows. Whatever patience he had left was hanging by a thread. "Let me pass!" he repeated and this time, unwillingly, a little force persuasion echoed beneath his words.

He had gotten to depend on it so much that it just slipped through like the habit it had become.

Force persuasion was a subtle technique, and it was extremely hard to notice through the force, even for an experience force user. In a future with so few force sensitives it had been one of the only trick's he could use almost constantly when he needed too.

But he had never used it on a Jedi before, simply for the reason that there had been no other Jedi in his own time. Luke realized the mistake the second the command rushed past his lips, but by then it was too late.

Obi-Wan flinched back for the fraction of a second, then the connection Luke had opened to him was torn to pieces and Obi-Wan's eyes snapped open. His shoulders tensed up and the eyes narrowed. The intensity of the glare from his old teacher made Luke feel very small.

Obi-Wan shifted forward on his feet and stepped forward ever so slowly. Every movement appeared practiced, tense and his hand curled around the hilt of the lightsaber in his belt. The flicking shadows in the faded emergency light fell heavily around his old teacher. He looked ready to move at the smallest threat.

Obi-Wan had never appeared so sinister in all Luke's memories of him.

Using force persuasion had been a mistake.

"He cannot land the ship without me." Luke tried as a last effort. He let the truth of it shine though the force. "I will get us all safely to the ground, I swear on the force."

An eternity passed between them. Obi-Wan stood unmoving for so long that Luke at the end didn't think he was going to let him pass.

Then, without removing his hand from the lightsaber, Obi-Wan gestured to the seat while he kept himself firmly planted between Luke and Sidious. Luke stepped past, and almost stumbled, his foot slipped on the ground when the ship twisted and he fell up against a console.

Luke could practically feel Obi-Wan's burning stare following him. He tried to disguise his discomfort by moving faster than he normally would and made his way to the pilot seat in record time. Throwing himself into the abandoned seat, his eyes skittered over the control panel.

It was outdated, roughly designed and complicated at a first glance. But he recognized the main controls. It was an old system that was only still used on backwater planets like Tatooine in his future. He scoffed inwardly.

If anyone had told him that he would once be grateful for growing up on that dust ball he would have laughed in their face.

The thought had barely registered before all the lights suddenly went off.

A gigantic crash ripped through the ship. The lights blinked back into life but went from red to yellow and the sirens that howled through the ship snapped on and off every few seconds. Out of the corner of his eyes, through a window that was holding on due some kind of miracle, a part of the ship floated past at an incredible speed.

A big part.

Clicking sounds from his right barely rose over the intense noise, but it was enough to make Luke flick a look over to see Anakin's fingers dancing over the many buttons on the control panel, but his hands never went anywhere near the main controls. Luke was flying this thing alone.

"What are you doing?" He yelled, fighting against the violent twists of the ship and struggled to keep it on course. "That is not helping!" The words were practically hissed through his teeth that were clenched so tightly together that his jaw ached.

Then suddenly, from one moment to the other, the ship became less intense and easier to handle.

How? He snapped a look over to his co-pilot.

"You are welcome." Anakin raised an eyebrow, a smirk played at his lips and he moved his hands back to the main controls.

'Smug bastard' Luke thought, and was about to say as much when the atmosphere suddenly was very close.

"Hold tight!" Anakin shouted, and a second later all he could see was fire. Flames licked against the windscreen in an endless inferno even fiercer than before. The yellow light of the blinking lamps flashed faster and faster until they with a cracking noise went out all at once.

Hitting the atmosphere was like hitting a wall at high speed, the ship jumped under them, so violently that Luke was airborne for the fraction of a moment. One hand came loose from the desperate hold on the controls and anchored on the seat keeping him from sliding off.

Within the span of a second he ripped the hand back to the controls beside its brother. It was all he could do to keep the ship on course, as they speared though the clouds and the ground rushed up against them.

It wasn't a landing.

It was a controlled crash.

The ground ripped apart beneath them, flinging concrete and dirt meters into the sky. The ship groaned like a wounded beast and twisted under them. Sparks flew around them contributing to the chaotic input of noise and flashing lights.

Finally the world stopped moving and shapeless blur of the world around them became buildings under a clouded sky. His fingers uncurled like a spider and came loose from the controls. The first thing that registered as Luke's heart desperately tried to calm down after the insane landing was Anakin laughing.

High on adrenalin Anakin smiled at his mentor and said something that Luke didn't quite catch. None of them looked at him. Not even Sidious seemed to remember he was there as he was steadying himself against the wall. Luke, and the threat he was, had in the intenseness of the moment been forgotten.

It was a chance he couldn't afford to miss.

Luke had just closed his hand around the lightsaber when he saw Anakin throw a look out though the broken window that had smashed on impact and wave at someone on the other side. Luke's saber remained deactivated as he caught a glimpse of the familiar brown Jedi robe outside.

And not just one.

Obi-Wan rose to his feet from where he had fallen on the floor, Luke had not even noticed him fall. There was no way to get at Sidious without alerting Obi-Wan. He hesitated. Sidious was just there, but he might as well have been on the other side of the planet with the guard created by those two.

Luke was proud of the abilities he managed to gain through years of searching old scrolls and holocrons, but he did not think for a moment that he could take on Anakin and Obi-Wan at the same time. They had been trained their entire lives by real Jedi instructors. Luke himself barely had three months put together.

No, he thought and started stepping back and away from the three others in the room. The bitterness that rose in his throat was hard to swallow, but he was outmatched. If he fought them now, he would not win.

This battle was lost

To the background noise of Anakin laughing mildly and Obi-Wan calling out a name Luke did not recognize, he pulled away. Neither noticed Luke slipping out of his seat, and no one noticed his light steps as he half crawled towards the door to keep out of sight.

When Anakin with a gasp suddenly remembered the fourth passenger on the ship and turned around to face him Luke was long gone.

Unseen by the people rushing to the crash site, a shadowed figure disappeared into Coruscant's underworld.


The door slid open and three figures stepped out onto the platform. Two of them were bodyguards to the one walking in front. The leader's steps were heavy but firm, as he made his ways to the other side of the room.

The sunlight that shone down through the opening in the wall was left behind when he walked into the shadows. The guards fanned out to stand on either side of the only entrance as the leader continued on alone.

His breath was strained, and a dry nasty cough wracked his body. He came to a stop in front of a circular terminal. Robotic fingers darted over the terminal when he quickly pressed three buttons on the console and accepted the incoming call.

The machine bleeped a few high notes and immediately after a blue glow flickered from the middle of the terminal. The shape it formed was familiar to the figure, even if it was cover from head to toe in a heavy cloak.

"Yes, Lord Sidious." The figure said and bowed. The question implied in his tone did not hang in the air between them for long.

"General Grievous." Sidious greeted, he made the smallest pause and silently watched the general straighten back into his full height. "I suggest you move the separatist leaders to Mustafar."

"It will be done my lord." The General said, and bowed once again to the cloaked Sith, that showed no reaction to the respectful gesture.

"The end of the war is near, General." Sidious continued in the same monotone voice as if the general had not spoken at all.

"But the loss of count Dooku-"

"Yes, I know." Darth Sidious interrupted, and clenched his jaw in suppressed anger. "That was not how I envisioned we would lose the good count."

The answer when it came was carefully controlled, but there was something odd about that statement that the general could not put his finger on. Grievous choose not to comment on it, count Dooku was after all dead, and Grievous had to focus on the living now.

The time for grieving would come later.

Sidious might seem unconcerned about the war, but Grievous was not. He could not keep fighting a war on so many fronts, and the capture of Palpatine was supposed to have at least improved the catastrophic morale. Instead the mission had ended in disaster.

Not only had they lost almost half the ships they entered the battle with, but they had also lost one of their most skilled commanders. What made matters worse was the fact that count Dooku was a very public figure in the separatist propaganda.

He didn't want to think about what kind of ripple effect his death would have in the ranks, when the news got out.

… It was also a personal loss.

The count had never really been a friend, but Grievous had respected him more than anyone left in the army because so few of the officers were actual warriors. Most of them hid like cowards far behind the lines and never saw any combat personally.

Count Dooku had been different.

"Do you know his murderer?" The general asked and allowed himself this personal question because it was also vital to the war effort. The troops were going to need retaliation for the Count's demise. If he could catch the little yellow-eyed bastard that murdered Dooku, he had no doubt that it would boost the morale.

It would hopefully also turn this shameful defeat into something more bearable.

"I know he is on Coruscant." Sidious said. Grievous watched his leader closely for any outward sign of emotion, but as always Sidious was impossible to read. The heavy hood made it impossible to get any clue to his leader reactions. "Find him for me." Sidious ordered, and Grievous noted with approval that there was finally real anger in those words.

"It will be done, my lord."


To be continued:::;