Chapter 3:
Yhanajung, Kat Nak Arcehnyth
Meaning: Treason, From a Certain Point of View
"I thought I'd seen the best of what the Jedi had
to offer, but that day? They were fighting a
war of their own. And they didn't mean to lose."
– Clone Commander Fox Amidala, 'More Than Just A Number'
Their departure is not unnoticed.
The sun is setting on Coruscant for the fourth time since the Jedi have come home, and the Jedi Temple is in disarray. After three days of silence in the midst of a war that rages even now in concerningly close portions of the galaxy, the eyes of more than one planet are turned onto the Jedi Temple. Intergalactic news networks have parked their shuttles and speeders as close to the Temple as they can, more or less aware of the restricted airspace around the great ziggurat. They give hourly updates in a dozen and a half languages to worrying populaces, angry dignitaries, and curious senators. The galaxy is waiting. The galaxy is watching.
When the shuttle lifts off out of the western docking bay like a flower petal caught by the wind and banks right, drifting in the general direction of the Senate Building, it catches more than one of the news crews off guard. It's nearly evening now, the sun hanging low on the horizon, silhouetting the upper level high rises, and they don't expect movement. There's been none for nearly two days now, since the last of the far reaching Jedi had made their way home. When at last their feeds do come to life, broadcasting an 'Urgent Update', most of their viewers have to take a moment to understand what they're seeing.
It's been nearly three years since they've seen a civilian vehicle leave the Temple.
But this is a Jedi shuttle, dragged up out of the depths of the Temple for reasons not yet apparent. It's small but certainly space worthy. Too large to merge with the traffic lanes surrounding the Temple, it should have angled immediately upwards and requested clearance to exit the capitol's atmosphere. That it doesn't and instead illegally cuts through Coruscant's out-of-bounds airspace is curious to say the least.
A few of the more enterprising news crews break formation to follow the shuttle wherever it may lead but most remain where they are, certain that some greater story will follow here at the Temple. They will not be disappointed, but neither will the few who chose to follow the outbound shuttle.
The debate as to which story is better will rage for weeks.
~•~
Most days, Fox hates his helmet. Hates wearing it, hates seeing it reflected in polished metal or mirrored glass or disdainful senators' eyes. Bad enough he doesn't have a face to himself. They have to slap a bucket on his head, exactly the same as millions of others. He knows why. It makes it easier for them to forget. There's no face beneath the duraplast. No haircut he's chosen specifically because no one else in his batch had anything close to it. No tattoo running the length of his collarbone, taken from the mythology of a planet he's never been to because he's certain none of his brothers have been there either. Just another clone, another blaster. No one real.
Today's no different. He still hates it. Still wishes it were never necessary. But today, he can at least be grateful for it. Grateful he doesn't have to bother watching his expression.
Fox's fingers drum against the trigger guard of his sidearm, the rhythm unsteady, uneasy. It's the only indication of his nerves.
To his right, a fresh-faced clone not seven months out from Kamino is sitting at the landing pad's security terminal, hands glazing easily over its controls. His name is Joto. When he isn't wearing his helmet, he keeps his right eyebrow shaved, replaced instead by a tattoo of it. Fox remembers things like that, the little details that allow his brothers their sense of self. The kid – still half a shiny to Fox's eyes – clears his throat. "They've landed, Commander." His voice is soft, scarcely above a whisper. Fox doesn't need to see past the bucket to know he's nervous.
Probably he should console him. Remind him of his duty. Use those words a Commander has to memorize that makes his men stand up straighter. He can't bring himself to, though. Maybe he's too nervous himself. Maybe he just doesn't have it in him to believe the words tonight.
They'd clocked the ship nearly ten minutes ago – a small, unknown shuttle broadcasting ancient but clearly Jedi code signatures. There are other places it could be going, but it was actively violating about two dozen Coruscanti aerial laws, and they were squarely in its projected trajectory. Fox didn't make Commander by being stupid. He is more than well aware of the prisoner he has sitting three floors below him.
More than well aware of how far Jedi will go to protect their own.
He nods. At Joto's update. In recognition of what he is about to do. In resignation of how it will almost certainly end. He is again grateful for his helmet, ridiculous as the thought is to him. His men don't see his shuttered eyes, his grimacing mouth.
There are a little less than a dozen clones arrayed around the door to the landing pad just now. Himself, of course. He'd arrived mere minutes after the Sensor Suite had reported the trajectory of the Jedi shuttle. His two seconds-in-command, Blitz and Carry. Good clones, good soldiers, good brothers. They'd been with him since Kamino. A smattering of other faces he tries – and fails – not to see beneath faceless buckets. Rad, Recon, Clark, West, Minas.
"Blitz," Fox commands, lifting his head to glare into the t-shaped visor of his sergeant's bucket. "You and Squad One are with me. We'll meet the Jedi on the Pad."
"Sir!" Blitz salutes in response, but Fox is already moving down the line. He can't afford to be a brother right now. Can't afford to be a thinking, feeling sentient. Right now he's a soldier, a Commander. Right now he's a gun and a helmet.
"Carry," Fox turns to his second in command, projecting as much authority into his voice as he can to mask the nervous tremor that has begun to shake it. "Take Squads Ten through Twelve to sublevel three." He hesitates, but not for long. "You may officially consider yourselves under the protection of the Krell Protocols."
His words have their expected affect. They ripple through the air like they have physical weight, bowling into each and every clone who hears them. Armored feet scrape nervously on steel grates as they step back from them, and the all too familiar clicking of shifting blasters fills the air. It's a rushing river of subtle movements.
The Krell Protocols. Dreamt up in a singularly desperate moment by Rex, Fives, and Echo of the 501st following the events the clones collectively referred to as 'The Umbaran Incident'. Created entirely by and for clones and passed throughout the legions by word of mouth, they had been kept entirely off official channels – well outside the awareness of either the Senate or, most especially, the Jedi. Allowing for the execution of Jedi in times of great strife, stress, or betrayal, they can be enacted only by a garrison's highest ranked clone with the understanding that said commanding officer will take the fall for treason when all is said and done.
To Fox's knowledge, they have not once been enacted since their inception. He is not pleased to be the first.
Carry is wearing his bucket, so Fox doesn't see his nervous swallow, but he knows it happens all the same. Carry's salute is as lackluster as Fox has ever seen, and his, "Yes, sir," is a scant whisper through the air.
He walks off – walks, because 'marching' is too strong a word for the unsteady stumble of his gait – and three further clones fall into step behind him as he does. They are the operational leads of Squads Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, and they are already whispering orders into their comms, voices unsteady. They cannot mention the Krell Protocols yet, half because speaking of them over open channels is tantamount to treason, and half because they aren't sure the rest of the clones will respond to the order if they are aware of what exactly is at stake. Fox can't blame them. He's halfway to not responding himself when Joto speaks up again.
"Confirmed, Commander. The shuttle is on the ground. Onramp descending."
Fox nods again, this one even less sure than before. "Engines?" he asks deliberately, focusing his attention on the job – just the job.
Joto's hands trigger a series of inputs, and he is silent as he takes in the results. When he raises his bucket to stare back at him, Fox thinks he can see the nervous shine in his eyes through the visor. "They aren't powering down, sir. And," he hesitates, "their shields are up."
Fox doesn't curse, however much he wants to. He knows better than that. But he does sigh, one final exhalation of the man who has a choice before he must become entirely the soldier following orders. He raises his fingers, activating his bucket's built-in comm. "Fall in." His voice is clear, broadcasting to the entirety of Squad One. "Formation A-19."
They march out onto the landing pad from three different exits, forming something of a half-circle ring around the onramp of the Jedi's shuttle which is even now still descending. He can see General Windu's distinctive silhouette in the shadows of the shuttle's airlock, waiting patiently for the ramp to finish its descent. He's fully adorned in the garments of a Jedi – a beige colored tunic cinched tight around the waist that gives way to brown tinted slacks and boots of sturdy, well-worn leather. The rest of his form is obscured by the heavy folds of his brown cloak, drawn tight around the front of his body so as to disguise the location of his hands, his lightsaber. Fox has seen Jedi do that a hundred times. It's a favorite trick of theirs. It doesn't worry him. What does worry him is what General Windu is clearly not wearing. There isn't a single scrap of armor on his body. Not a pauldron nor a vambrace. Fox can tell by the way his cloak's outline falls like water over the natural, rounded edges of his body. There's nothing artificial, nothing hard on the General's body.
Fox narrows his eyes behind his visor and wonders exactly why that worries him so much.
The clone troopers of Squad One complete the structure of their formation roughly in sync with the lowering of the Jedi shuttle's onramp. It clicks its way onto the metal framework of the landing pad in tune with the final footfalls of the Squad's marching. The clones are arrayed into a spaced semi-circle, made up of loose squares with several feet of space between each Clone Trooper. Formation A-19 is an old one, created towards the beginning of the war for combat against the likes of General Grievous and Count Dooku and, later, Asajj Ventress. The idea is to allow space for their opponent to leap into, as lightsaber wielders are wont to do, thereby allowing the clones to close in on them from all sides. Fox realizes rather quickly that it's not going to work. He hasn't brought enough men.
General Windu is first down the onramp, straight-backed and imperious as always as his cloak glides along the ground like a mobile puddle of water, but he is not the last. Shortly behind him follows Generals Allie, Kolar and Kenobi. And behind them, Generals Koon and Fisto. And behind them, he spies General Ti and…all of them. They're all here. The entirety of the Jedi Council is descending onto his Landing Pad.
He sees more than one of his men shift uneasily in the corner of his eye, and he cannot bring himself to blame them.
"Commander," General Windu greets him, voice even, and bows.
It's Fox's first genuine indication that something is well and truly wrong. Jedi don't bow to Clones anymore, save for in times where only the most professional of relationships can be displayed. They clasp arms, as is tradition among he and his brothers – a show of solidarity, of faith and trust between Jedi and clone. Fox's arm, halfway risen, falls limply back to his side, hand twitching that little bit closer to the blaster pistol holstered on his waist.
"General," he opts to say instead, matching the Jedi's overly formal bow with his own overly formal salute.
Windu shakes his head. "Not today, Commander." Behind him, the Council has finished climbing down from the shuttle's onramp. They array around him. Fox' eyes, hidden by the tinted visor of his helmet, track their movements, waiting for a push. None follows.
"Sir?" Fox questions, in lieu of anything else to say. His eyes hang on a member of Windu's party, positioned near the back and almost hidden by Ti and Kenobi's bulk. Fox doesn't really need to ask why Anakin Skywalker is here too, but he finds himself doing it anyway.
It's Skywalker, in combination with the genuine impact of what Windu is actually saying that finally clicks everything into place for Fox. He has never – not once – seen Skywalker without armor on before today. The rest of the Council is the same, dressed in all-concealing robes that nonetheless give away a very important fact to anyone who knows them well. They aren't wearing armor. Not a single one of them. They aren't wearing anything that would denote their rank within the GAR. Because they aren't here as Generals today, but as Jedi. Fox doesn't know exactly what that distinction means for him, but – his hands twitch ever closer to his blasters – he has a feeling he won't like it.
Mace shifts. Uncomfortably, Fox thinks, but perhaps he's just being charitable. Perhaps he's just seeing what he wants to see. "Our visit today is," the Jedi hesitates, and that's something Fox isn't used to, "an unofficial one."
Fox shakes his head, fingers now skittering along the edges of his blaster pistol's pommel. "I'm afraid that's impossible, sir. Unofficial visits are not permitted at this prison."
Windu sighs, eyes fluttering closed for a brief moment, as if in resignation. In resignation of what, exactly, Fox doesn't know. Windu shrugs his shoulders in that way that all Jedi know how to do that just perfectly swings the front folds of his robe open to reveal the chiseled physique of the warrior beneath. Fox takes quick and immediate account of the lightsaber hanging loosely off his belt, and the lackadaisical way his hand hangs beside it. "I will make this simple for you, Commander," Windu says levelly, hand falling to the silver cylinder at his hip, not so much palming it as promising with it. "Move. Or we will move you."
His words spark a rush of movement in the rest of the Jedi present. Behind him, they shift in much the same way, opening cloaks and freeing up their limbs for any number of rapid, explosive movements. A few of them – Skywalker and Fisto and Allie – drop their hands to their lightsabers. There are no ignitions yet, nor any actual crimes committed if Fox can ignore the fact that the Jedi Council is currently actively threatening the Commander of the Coruscanti Guard. Which he can. This can still end peacefully. Fox's hand begins to drop away from his blaster, the cold realization of exactly what's happening washing over him like the cold front of a Kaminoan storm. He knows what they're here for. Knows what they intend to do. Knows…
…that, whatever he may think on the subject, he cannot let them do it.
Fox's hands blur, rocketing up to aim his newly drawn pistol directly into Windu's chest. He has expertly lined his shot and fired in the time it would take an average person to blink. But Windu is not an average person, and when the telltale sign of his blaster's discharge rends the night air, it is matched only by the instantaneous snap-hiss of an activating lightsaber and the hum of its blade as it cuts through the round, overlarge stun blast that Fox had fired. In days to come, Fox will charitably blame his failure on that. The stun blast. It caught him completely off guard. He hadn't been intending to stun, hadn't had his blasters set to stun when they'd been holstered. Certainly, he will say later, that is why he was so caught off guard by Windu's rebuttal. Certainly, he will insist, that is the only reason Windu got the drop on him.
The Jedi's blade completes its arc through the air, slashing the stun blast into nonexistence. Windu wastes no time. His hand raises, palm splaying flat out as if he is pressing it against a piece of glass so clear that Fox cannot see it. A concentrated battering ram of pure pressure slams into Fox and propels him backwards, clean off his feet and through the air to land almost twenty feet from where he began.
He lands roughly, taking most of the impact directly to the head, such that the duraplast of his helmet and the accompanying visor actually crack. Fox groans, half in irritation and half in delirium as he rises to a crouch, pressing his weight into one still fallen knee in a desperate attempt to line up his next two shots. It's a futile effort, made readily apparent by the fact that his optronics were apparently fucked to hell and back by the fall. His vision is, at this moment, a blurred haze of half-broken still images updated seemingly every three seconds.
A furious growl escapes him as he's forced to drop his left blaster, wrenching his helmet off in all haste and exposing his face to the unusually warm Coruscanti air.
Fox's men have followed his unintentional lead it seems, and the second it takes for them to flip their blasters into stun mode spells doom for their chances to end this either quickly or cleanly. A short lived cacophony of clicking blasters is quickly overtaken by the snap-hiss of a dozen multi-colored lightsabers humming to iridescent life. A scant few clones – those positioned towards the back of the parade who managed to escape immediate notice or those who, for reasons of their own, already had their blasters set to stun – manage to get off a few shots. It's not nearly enough.
The Jedi fall into a startlingly beautiful kind of synchronicity, stepping forward and falling back into themselves as necessary to deflect what comes their way and take swift control of the battlefield.
Fox grunts, shaking away his revery at the Jedi's movements and raises his blaster pistol, aiming directly for the half exposed back of the tholothian Jedi whose name is currently escaping him. Out of the corner of his eye, he tracks the momentous movements of Kenobi as he cuts through two stun blasts with a single swipe of his bright blue saber. The momentum of his strike will carry him past safety and into the clear line of Fox's left blaster, which will take him only a second to reach down and grasp. On his right side, he can see Koon advancing on a smattering of clones who hadn't spaced themselves far enough apart in the formation. His shot would be hit or miss on him, but he can already foresee that his two follow-up shots will force Koon back a step or three, granting him access to a surprise shot on Fisto's back when he isn't expecting it. Within five seconds, Fox will be able to drop three, maybe four Councilors. A paltry number in comparison to how many there are, but he can readdress when it's over and, anyway, the morale boost it will give his men will have an incalculable affect. Fox lines up his shot.
He grunts again, this time in frustration. His fingers…aren't moving. He glares down at his hand, seeing no damage whatsoever on his gauntlets that would lead to them sticking. His right hand is wrapped tight around the well-worn pommel of his pistol, finger a hair's breadth from its trigger. But it won't move. He looks around frantically, eyes wide for the cause of whatever it is that's going on, because he recognizes the Force when he sees it.
General Billaba – Master Billaba, he corrects himself – is over two dozen feet from him, hand outstretched to grip the edges of his fingers almost casually with the Force and prevent their movement. She's not even looking at him, turned instead to deflect a rapid series of stun blasts from a trio of clones who have begun a doomed attempt to encircle the Council. Master Kolar slides out of the huddle the Council has created at the base of the onramp to pick up Billaba's slack, sliding around the blurring edges of her lightsaber with a liquidity that astounds. He gestures with a long stroke of his hand, and the three enterprising clones respond like choked marionettes, flinging themselves with all the weight and momentum they can muster into each other, hard enough that Fox can hear the cracks of their helmets from here. They fall limp to the ground, and Kolar glides away to reinforce Kenobi who has found himself in a situation similar to Billaba.
And so the battle continues. What had begun as a squad three dozen strong has been slowly but readily dwindled to a paltry fighting force a fourth of its former size. The Jedi have separated from themselves, bleeding into the cracks of the clones' failing formation the way water finds its way into every crevice. Billaba releases him without fanfare or warning – her hand just drops as she shifts into a far more defensively aligned two-handed stance, deflecting the paltry attempts of his remaining clones. Fox immediately feels the release of the Force's invisible tension on his fingers, the way they twitch like they've been asleep for ages and the pins and needles are beginning to wear off. Fox thinks for a moment – a single, fleeting, desperate moment as he once more raises his blaster in the direction of the nearest Jedi – that he can turn this around. That he can turn the tide and stop this madness before it gets even worse.
A blur of indigo smothers the notion. Windu brings his saber down in an expert slice a hair's breadth from the duraplast armor of his gauntlets, slicing the barrel of his blaster pistol clean in half. He steps forward, dropping his still humming saber to his side and kicking his remaining blaster well outside of his reach as he does. It's all one smooth motion, like any one of the dozens of senatorial dances he's been forced to attend for security. The ending of one action flows seamlessly into the next, and Fox thinks – in a dull kind of way that's only half real – that it's beautiful.
It is truly beautiful to watch a Jedi work.
Windu's overlarge palm wraps almost gently around the junction where's Fox's neck meets his shoulder pauldron. Half of his fingers wrap around the back side of his neck, thumb splayed out to press not uncomfortably against his adam's apple. The others caress the rounded edge of his armor, fingers grazing the beginning of his back.
"Sleep, Fox." It is an instruction, passed to his ears in dulcet tones that drip with the intonation of the Force. The suggestion washes over him like a Kaminoan wave, larger than he can comprehend and impossible to ignore. He has time enough only to see that it is swelling up above him before it drags him under to a calm and immutable abyss.
~•~
Mace lowers Fox to the ground as carefully as he can, cradling his head along the way so that it doesn't bounce off the metal plating of the landing pad. By the time that he rises back out of his crouch, the rest of the clones have been dispatched in a similar vein, whether by forced suggestion and coercion through the Force or by the brutality and concussion of their impacts. It's an unfortunate, sordid, unpleasant kind of combat – as all combat is – but it is, they content themselves, combat the clones will survive.
Whatever place the Jedi have come to in this dark hour, Mace and his compatriots are quite certain it does not involve the deaths of their loyal clones, who are only doing their jobs.
Around and about him, his fellow Jedi are rising out of their own crouches or falling out of their individual stances. They do not relax. Not yet. Three years of warfare has hardened their resolve and sharpened their focus into hard won reflex. Strange though it may be to consider, they are in enemy territory right now, and danger lurks around every corner. They cannot afford to lower their guard yet, however much many of them despise keeping their muscles strained towards violence.
Skywalker breaks the silence, of course. Mace expects nothing less. "That could have gone worse." There is a pant at the back of his words. He isn't truly winded, of course – none of them are. More than likely, it's who they're fighting that's taking an extra toll on him. Skywalker, more so than even the rest of them, has always been fond of his clones.
Obi-Wan draws the folds of his cloak tight around his middle, shivering lightly despite the too warm temperatures of the night. His eyes are downcast, staring into the face of a young clone – and he is young, likely a fresh transfer from Kamino going by the lack of lines on his face – whose helmet had come off in the altercation. "It could have gone very much better as well."
Skywalker shifts, shuffling his position somewhat so as to lay a comforting hand on his old Master's shoulder, careful – as he seems to always be – that it is his flesh hand and not the cold metal of his prosthetic as he does. "Hey," he shakes him lightly. "It's okay. They're alive."
"For now," Mace sighs. He levels his own overlong stare at the unconscious form of Commander Fox at his feet. He looks peaceful, a far cry from some of his brothers no doubt. His suggestion was one mired in rest and peace, inclinations the mind – particularly a mind as overworked and harried as Commander Fox's – finds hard to ignore. He will sleep longer than almost any of his brothers, and unlike them, he will not wake up feeling as if a gravity hammer has been stress tested on his skull.
Skywalker's hand doesn't leave Obi-Wan's shoulder, but it tightens somewhat, and his face does a funny sort of dance like he can't decide between exasperation or frustration. "Thank you, Master Windu," he deadpans. "Very helpful."
Shaak breaths out a sigh through her nose, eyes alighting along the upper catwalk of the prison's landing pad, alert for movement or response. "Mace is, unfortunately, not incorrect." She advances, pausing momentarily to chastise her fellow Master with the cut of her eyes as she passes him. "Though, as always, he should learn to work on his tact." Mace has the grace to look chagrined, but he isn't sure how much of the expression Shaak catches as she continues past him. "Nonetheless. We have now officially committed an act of high treason, and the clones will have to react accordingly."
Kit's headtails bob as he turns his head back and forth, his overlarge eyes tracing over the clones' still forms. "The stun blasts were a nice surprise," he murmurs. "Don't standard protocols allow for the use of lethal force against rogue Jedi?"
Plo nods quietly, stroking the edges of his mask with pointed fingers. "They do. But they…encourage a non-lethal approach." A fact most of them are more than intimately aware of, given that the Jedi Council had written those very same protocols – encouraging words and all – themselves. The irony is lost on none of them, given their purpose here today.
Shaak crouches, her robes pooling around her legs. The burnt orange tips of her fingers trail soft patterns down the length of Fox's serene face. "You will find that when it comes to Jedi, clones seldom act in ways that could be considered standard."
She rises slowly from her crouch. At length, she stands to her full, impressive height – seconded only by Master Poof – and turns her attention skyward. The Landing Pad of the prison is surrounded on all sides by metal walls at least thirty feet high. They make up the first – and last – line of defense for the prison, allowing for the stationing of close to a hundred clones within them. At the top, along the walkways, are three dozen Anti-Aircraft turrets, constantly armed.
Her violet eyes locked tightly to the walkway, alert for any sign of movement or danger, Shaak says, "Skywalker. I presume you'll wish to lead the team into the prison to recover Padawan Tano?"
Anakin snorts, and a look – somewhere between mockery and incredulity – washes over his face like wave, briefly upturning his lips before falling away again when he realizes she isn't going to look at him. A brief chuckle falls form his lips in its stead. "You presume correctly."
"Obi-Wan?" Shaak asks, her eyes still trained rigidly on the top of the walls.
"I'll be accompanying him," Obi-Wan confirms, his own gaze the opposite of Shaak's. His eyes are still downcast, tracing the contours of each clone's face, seeing the irregularities, the differences that makes each one unique.
A deep throated hum interrupts them, emitting from Plo's vocabulator as he strokes the long length of his mask. "I too wish to accompany Skywalker."
Anakin smiles. "The more the merrier," he says, and even those of them who have their attention held elsewhere can hear the grin in his voice. More than one of them roll their eyes in response to it.
Finally, Shaak lowers her gaze from the walls and turns deep, determined eyes onto the three of them. Her face is a mask of graveness. The hard lines of her chin and cheekbones almost seem to pull their attention further in. "We are in unfamiliar waters," she says, voice firm, "and there is no telling which way the tide will pull you. These clones are not yours. They are unfamiliar with you. They do not know how you think, and they most certainly do not know how you will act. Treat them with extreme caution, and do not," she glares most heatedly at Anakin, "allow your preconceptions of clone behavior to dictate your actions. They will not give you a second chance."
To his credit, Anakin sobers rapidly, the grin on his face falling away to a determined, war friendly frown. He nods back at the togruta Master, face firm.
He looks, for a moment, as if he wishes to speak, but Shaak throws her head in the direction of the prison door, lekku flying up into the air as she does. "Go. We don't have much time."
The three Jedi waste no more time. Anakin and Plo move immediately away from the body-strewn battlefield towards the prison's main door, deactivated lightsabers in hand. Obi-Wan, for his part, pauses only long enough to discard his cloak onto the metal gangway before he too is racing after his Padawans, new and old.
Ki-Adi lifts his wrist, checking the chronometer attached there and looks up worriedly. "Yoda and the others will be lifting off now."
Kit runs a hand through his headtails. "It may be time to make some noise," he suggests. "They're civilian vehicles. If Coruscant Air Control scrambles the military, they won't have a chance."
Depa, though, shakes her head. "The military wouldn't dare take direct action against a Jedi fleet."
"We have just committed high treason," Stass reminds her dryly, lightly pushing the foot of an unconscious clone trooper out of the way with her boot as she does.
"We have," Depa agrees. "Not the Jedi as a whole."
"We're the Jedi Council, Depa," Agen smiles. "I don't think the rest of the galaxy is going to make a distinction between our actions, and the actions of the Order."
"It doesn't matter," Shaak cuts in sharply, voice taut. "The rest of the Jedi have committed no crime, nor will they. The military will allow them through, if for no other reason than sheer confusion. It hasn't been long enough for news to leave the prison, and if it has, reinforcements will be scrambled here, not at the Temple."
"At which point," Mace deadpans, his eyes sliding over the decrepit, old shuttle they'd scrounged up for their side of the mission, "we won't stand a chance."
Depa follows his gaze, amusement lifting the corners of her lips. "Skywalker and his team will have to hurry," she agrees.
"In the meantime," Mace shakes himself and turns his attention to the walkways at the top of the walls, "we need to remove the AA cannons. If they get them operational, we'll never get the shuttle off the ground." He turns, eyes tracking over his fellow Jedi. "Depa, Kit, you're with me. We'll remove the western cannons. Shaak, take Ki-Adi and Agen to destroy the eastern cannons. The rest of you, protect the ship until Skywalker's team returns."
It is telling of the respect the Council has for each other that Mace's orders were not questioned at all but followed immediately and without hesitation.
~•~
The highest security prison in the Republic is not one designed to host guests or visitors. Those confined within its walls are considered to be the worst of the worst. War criminals, organized crime kingpins, galactic drug runners, sentient traffickers, and – though it was never imagined such a thing would be necessary – rogue Jedi. There is no waiting room, nor any place of comfort within its walls, being manned entirely by a stationary clone garrison and populated only by the multitude of high level prisoners they oversee. As such, the exterior door of the prison's Landing Pad opens immediately into a high security checkpoint wherein prisoners are checked in and thereafter escorted into the bowels of the prison where they are – hopefully – never seen again. On a normal night, said checkpoint would be staffed by a minimum of five clones – four at either doorway and a fifth manning the desk.
Tonight is not a normal night, and the only clone behind the Landing Pad's door is an altogether too nervous young cadet half a year out from Kamino with a DC-15A blaster rifle held entirely too loosely in his lightly shaking hands. He is standing behind the desk, helmet on and stance as firm as it can possibly be in the wake of what he obviously just watched unfold over the viewscreen.
Anakin thinks that he can hear the poor kid gulp when the door opens to admit them.
Plo is the first to speak, and Anakin thinks that's a good thing. He has a way of calming tempers with that deep timber of his. "Stand down, trooper," he advises heavily.
The clone – Anakin wishes he knew the kid's name – shakes his helmeted head. "Can't do that, General." He adjusts his grip on the rifle, finger edging he trigger.
Anakin takes an unthreatening step forward, hands splayed out in as obvious a depiction of nonaggression as he can create. The gesture is probably undermined by the heavy lightsaber in his right hand, and he doesn't miss the way the rifle's muzzle twitches towards that hand. "We aren't here as Generals today, soldier."
"All the more reason," the clone insists. Then he fires.
It's a stun blast, the same as his fellows outside, and Anakin has to give the kid credit for that. If he had just watched three dozen of his compatriots try and fail to nonlethally apprehend a dozen active combatants, he probably would have turned off stun mode. This clone doesn't, and the overlarge circle of electrifying energy envelops the air between them, racing greedily towards the two Jedi in an arc wide enough to affect them both of it connects. It doesn't.
Anakin's cerulean blade ignites in a snap-hiss of discharged plasma, renting the air and the stun blast alike. Beside him, Plo's hand extends, his three, thick fingers splayed wide.
"Sleep," he intones commandingly, and the clone trooper obeys. He reacts as if he is a puppet that someone has cut the strings from, collapsing immediately into a boneless heap that, from the across the room, Plo catches with the Force and lowers slowly to the ground. Plo sighs, wondering how many more clone he's going to have to battle today. "That could have gone better."
Ever the more optimistic of his fellow Jedi, Anakin responds glibly. "Could have gone worse!" He rushes forward, stepping around the desk to thumb the activation switch on the desk's computer console. Normally, the system is encrypted, but no one was expecting a large scale rebellion on the part of the Jedi, and his activation codes as a General of the Grand Army of the Republic grant him full access to the prison's systems.
He looks up from the console only briefly when the exterior door slides open again with a hiss, relaxing immediately when he sees that it's only Obi-Wan. He smiles to himself as he returns his attention to the computer. Always lagging behind.
For his part, Obi-Wan takes a rapid stock of the situation – unconscious clone leaning against the wall and all – and sighs somewhat overdramatically. "It's been thirty seconds!" he cries, passing his patented disapproving glance between his two fellow Jedi.
"Like you could have done better," Anakin snarks.
"He is called 'the negotiator'," Plo admonishes Anakin in a tone completely betraying his own amusement. Anakin spares a second to look up and flash a grin at the kel dor, marveling not for the first time at how much emotion Plo is able to express despite his mask.
Obi-Wan only sighs again and, as he has learned to do over the years, moves on. "Have you found her yet?"
"Almost," Anakin replies, thumbing through the screen. "You'd think she'd stand out."
"Catalogue by date, not crime," Obi-Wan instructs.
Anakin looks up, confused.
Obi-Wan smiles. "'Jedi' isn't listed in the crime registry, Anakin."
There's a momentary pause as Anakin considers the vast number of unsavory ramifications attached to that sentence. Then he shakes himself and alters his search parameters. "Sublevel Three," he says after a moment. "Cell Seventeen."
Plo reaches up to stroke the hard lines of his mask and trades a glance with Obi-Wan. "Holding cells," he hums contemplatively.
Obi-Wan matches his expression. "They haven't moved her to the primary blocks."
"Easier for us!" Anakin cries happily. Wasting no time, he vaults over the desk and moves rapidly down the hall. Not bothering to look back, he cries over his shoulder, "Let's go!"
A look of commiseration passes between the elder Jedi, exasperation warring with faint, distant amusement on their faces. "Always on the move," Obi-Wan sighs, lips lifting at the corners. They follow after him.
The turbolift to the sublevel holding cells is only just inside the prison, the better to make it easier for the clones to immediately jail new prisoners and process them. Anakin is holding it open for them when they arrive, his own face a conflicted mask of impatience, frustration, and the tiniest bit of fear. Neither Obi-Wan nor Plo make any comment as to the younger man's roiling feelings, which boil the air about him like an upset ocean. They slide past him into the lift, pausing to thumb the button for the appropriate sublevel.
The lift itself is remarkably quick, designed as it is for the ease of the clones operating it. It speeds down three levels in under a minute, broadcasting each floor passed with a bright, loud beep as it does. When it slides to an easy, comfortable stop and the doors hiss open, it is only the will of the Force which saves Anakin's skull from sporting a bright, burning hole in it – the will of the Force and Obi-Wan's reflexes.
The moment the doors open, the all too familiar sound of blaster fire reaches their ear as five perfectly placed blaster bolts rent the air Anakin had occupied only moments ago before Obi-Wan had pulled him out of the way. The Jedi press themselves close against the walls of the elevator, Obi-Wan and Anakin on one side and Plo on the other. The lift is not overlarge, and its walls are narrow, affording very little in terms of protection. As carefully as he can, Plo thumbs the 'close door' button on the elevator's control panel, and the three of them breathe a small sigh of relief as the reinforced blast doors close.
Anakin peers nervously at the scorch marks on the back wall of the elevator, disliking the almost perfect silhouette of human form they create. "Live fire," he breathes a sigh. "That's new."
"And unpleasant," Obi-Wan snarks, his own eyes tracing distastefully over the blaster marks. "Do you think they'll cut through?"
"I doubt it," Plo shakes his head. "Close quarter combat with a Jedi is hardly what I would call 'even odds'. Let alone three of us. No, they'll wait for us to open the doors again."
"Which we can't do without being torn apart," Anakin needlessly points out. He blows a breath from the corner of his mouth, the air displacing his hair as he does. "We're lucky enough as it is that these elevators are designed to withstand prison breaks."
The three expert strategists lapse into an uncomfortable silent, punctuated by the muffled shifting of armored boots just outside the door. There's the buzz of conversation too, but it's passing through the duraplast barrier of standard issue helmets and the reinforced durasteel of the elevator door, so they can make out nothing. They fiddle with themselves in the way unique to each of their nerves – Plo his mask, Obi-Wan his beard, and Anakin his hair. At length, Plo finds his gaze drifting upward towards the ceiling, a habit built from long nights on the bridge of his warship, when drifting his gaze would turn his eyes to the endless beauty of the stars.
Here it only brings his gaze to the plain gray steel of the elevator's ceiling. Although, he thinks to himself, tilting his head slowly.
"Skywalker," Plo says slowly, "how do you feel about crawling?"
Anakin blinks stupidly at him, unsure of where his thoughts have gone and follows his gaze slowly upward to the closed hatch sitting unassumingly on top of the elevator. Anakin makes a noise of complaint, dropping his gaze immediately to meet Obi-Wan's and Plo's. "Why me?" he demands.
Obi-Wan smiles, and it's that smile Anakin remembers from when he was a Padawan. Obi-Wan only broke it out when he was about to make Anakin do something he had no logical right to refuse to do, however unpleasant it was going to be. "You're the smallest," he points out, infuriatingly correct. Anakin huffs in response.
"Fine," he snaps, aggressively working to discard his cloak. The extra layer would only get in the way in such a confined space. "But what do you want me to do?"
"Not to worry," Plo assures him. Anakin can hear the smile in his voice. "I have a plan."
~•~
For a single, fleeting moment, everything is exactly as it should be. Ahsoka is woken by blaster fire, the discharge of well over a dozen chemicals mixed together and excited enough to energize into a single, pointed laser of death. It is accompanied by an all too familiar noise. Duraplast boots thundering against metal hallways, the clicking and shifting of blaster rifles in steady, well-trained hands. Clones, moving with that indescribable purpose she's never been able to recreate. She is surrounded on all sides by cold, hard, unyielding metal. There is a stiff, uncomfortable cot beneath her. For a single, fleeting moment, she is on the Resolute, safe in her room across from Anakin's, the thunder of battle hammering adrenaline into every inch of her body.
The darkness of her cell reminds her of the truth.
Ahsoka slides from her stone stiff cot with the ease of militant necessity. Her feet touch the cold, lifeless floor of her cell silently, the weight of her footfalls eased by many years of practice and a subtle bit of help from the Force. She is crouching low, only the barest tips of her montrals peeking above the level of her cot. Her species is a hunting one, and the ease with which she is able to stalk across the length of her cell is evolutionary, requiring neither thought nor effort. She slinks across the room, crawling silently up the short stairway that leads to the door of her cell and presses herself against the door, straining to listen.
Her hearing betrays her. Only the faint buzz of movement and conversation reaches her through the reinforced metal of her cell door. But she is a togruta, and the vibrations produced by the cacophony of movement outsider her door are easily distinguishable through the rigid metal of the prison's floor. She frowns at the input she receives. There are clones outside her cell – dozens of them!
The discharge of close-quarters blaster fire rattles the edges of her montrals, and she's forced to pull rapidly away from the door. A noise escapes her, between a gasp and a groan as she works her jaw and squints her eyes against the unpleasant sensation the noise had produced. What is going on? Is someone attacking the prison? Or are the prisoners rebelling? It would be just her luck, she thinks through narrowed eyes, to be forcibly involved in a prison break at a time like this.
But no. This isn't the main prison facility. The clones had placed her in the sublevel holding cells, although for what reason she doesn't know. Perhaps, given that they think she's a domestic terrorist and a traitor, they fear what she'll do in close proximity to other war criminals. Or perhaps, she tries to think more charitably, they fear what the other war criminals will do in proximity to her.
More blaster fire reaches her through the door, made less painful by the distance, and she pulls further away from, creeping back down the stairs. She's unsure exactly how long she's been here, lacking any sort of chronometer or window to assist in marking the passage of time. Two days at least if she's counting right. Possibly longer. What could have happened in two days, she wonders, to lead to this?
Vibrations race through the floor and up into her montrals, and she squints her eyes at the imagery it creates. The clones have fallen, limp and barely twitching to the floor. Only a single set of footprints remains, moving purposefully – of course, she thinks bitterly – towards her cell. Ahsoka looks around frantically for any place to hide to better allow her an advantage in a fight. But the room is empty of anything to obscure her. Her cot is recessed, built into the wall, and the lines of the cell's ceiling are smooth. Likely, she thinks, to prevent a prisoner from doing exactly what she wishes to do.
The lock on her cell door clicks, and her door hisses open with her standing exposed in the middle of the room. She has time only to raise her fists, prepared to fight when a voice reaches her.
"Up and at 'em, Snips."
Ahsoka looks up and sees the impossible. Her Master, silhouetted in the doorframe of her cell by the overhead lights of the prison hall behind him. His lightsaber is in his hand, casting a cool tone to his face because it is activated. Skyguy has activated his lightsaber here on the Capitol Planet of the Republic in the heart of the Republic's highest security prison. He has brought blaster fire with him, although it is distant and seems not to faze him. Ahsoka is not sure if she is dreaming, and if she is, she is not sure whether or not it is a nightmare.
"Anakin?" she breathes, disbelievingly.
He grins, and it is his same roguish grin, so realistic that she thinks that she isn't dreaming after all. "Not just me," he smirks.
She groans. "Please tell me you didn't drag Senator Amidala into a war crime."
He snorts, stepping weightily down the three, cold metal stairs of her cell until he is standing before her, and the heat of his saber chases away the cold of her imprisonment. It flashes, and in a single motion he has freed her of her chains as well. "Nah," he denies her dismissively, but he is still grinning, and she knows to expect the coming punchline. "Just…the entire Jedi Order."
"What!?"
"And while we're on the subject," he continues as if he hadn't heard her, "I had nothing to do with this. This one's all you, Snips."
Ahsoka's eyes roll briefly up and down the length of his body, narrowing slightly towards the end as she meets his gaze again. "Why are you so filthy?"
Anakin's cocksure smile falters, briefly falling into a frown. Idly, like a child admitting his wrongdoing to his mother, he scuffs the edge of his boot on the floor, looking down. "Ventilation shaft," he mutters, and anyone who wasn't a togruta wouldn't have heard him.
But Ahsoka is a togruta, and despite the situation, she feels the corners of her mouth lift into a smirk. "Sucks being the smallest, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah," he mutters more loudly. Obviously eager to move things along, he steps to the side, gesturing broadly towards the door to her cell. "Can we go? We're kind of on a time crunch here."
Ahsoka doesn't hesitate to follow his instruction. She is more than familiar enough with Anakin's voice, and his body language to know when and where to argue with his urgency.
"What's happening–" she begins, crossing the threshold of her cell into freedom again, only to be cut off by the sight the greets her outside.
In the time since she departed the Temple as a fresh faced, overconfident youth to meet her Master and begin her training as a Padawan, Ahsoka has come to understand the phrase "expect the unexpected" in a way few others have. That said, she's quite confident that there is absolutely nothing she could have experienced in her life that could have prepared her for the sight of Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Plo Koon stacking unconscious clone troopers in a single, heaving heap in the middle of a high security prison sub floor.
She blinks. "What the hell is going on!?" A distant part of her pats herself on the back for managing to maintain a sense of propriety and decorum in her speech despite the situation.
Obi-Wan groans in exertion as he finished leaning the last of the clones against the pile of bodies he and Plo have created to the left of her cell and stands upright. He smiles at her in a way that Ahsoka thinks is supposed to echo the commiseratory looks they would share across table at Anakin's expense, but the expression falls flat in the wake of Ahsoka's own blank stare. Obi-Wan sighs, and the smile falls away. "Too much to explain in the limited time we have," he chooses to say instead. "For now, we'll have to ask you to trust us that answers will be forthcoming when we have escaped from this place."
Trust us, he says, and Ahsoka thinks that there was a time he wouldn't even have had to say the words. But now? Now, she hesitates.
Anakin's hand closes suddenly around her shoulder, and she starts, turning to look up at his face. He is smirking, as nonchalant and happy-go-lucky as ever, but his eyes are a deeper ocean, roiling with waves of emotion big enough to drown them both. "Trust me," he says quietly, and the tone of his voice doesn't match his expression at all.
Ahsoka doesn't see the expressions of agony that flit across Obi-Wan and Plo's faces, but she does see the genuine grin that breaks across Anakin's when she nods her assent to him.
They move quickly. Her cell is some distance away from the turbolift that will take them back to the main prison floor, but it's remarkably unguarded given the cacophony she'd been subjected to a few minutes earlier. She supposes she can attribute that to the unconscious pile of clones decorating the hallway behind her.
"How did you deal with the clones that were guarding me?" she asks Anakin beside her, her voice even. If there's one thing she and the Jedi have learned over the course of the War, it's how to have important, mission-specific conversations with each other on the go.
"Gravity," he replies glibly, his smirk broadening in response to the glare she sends his way. "There were too many for a frontal assault, and they were using live ammo." His voice is troubled as he says this, and Ahsoka understands why. Even as wild as this day has been, the idea of their clones turning live blasters onto them is discomforting and entirely foreign. But Anakin shakes himself, pushing forward with his explanation. "I crawled through the vents so I could get behind them while Obi-Wan and Master Koon used the Force to increase the gravity on the clones. Then I dropped down, disabled as many blasters as I could with my lightsaber, and the three of use reversed the gravity in the room. The clones hit the ceiling hard enough to go down."
"Though they probably won't be out for long," Obi-Wan says ahead of them, sounding very discomforted by his own statement.
"Wait!" Ahsoka cries suddenly, coming to a stuttering stop. Anakin's story has reminded her of something she can't believe she forgot. "My lightsabers." Her voice brings the rest of the procession to a standstill, three sets of questioning eyes turning to her at once in response to her words. She chafes under the attention, a new feeling as far as she's concerned. In her mind's eye, she is still in that round room, the faces of the Masters staring balefully down at her. She swallows thickly, and her words come out in a half stutter as a result. "F-Fox took them from me when I was…arrested."
She sees the way that they all flinch, and she tries very hard not to take some perverse pleasure in it.
Obi-Wan is the first to recover, stowing his guilt and shame away behind a mask of wisdom and peace as he has always been wont to do. Trading glances with her other two rescuers, he says, "They'd be in lock up with the rest of the prisoner belongings." Ahsoka's lek twitch agitatedly at the tone of his voice – there is a sigh built into it, and his words are drug along like tantruming children. He is insinuating they do not have time.
Across from him, Anakin nods resolutely. "Right," he says, and Ahsoka likes his tone much better. She's intimately familiar with it. It's the voice he uses right before doing something equally stupid and brave that's probably a bad idea objectively but comes across as dashing from him. Sure enough when he opens his mouth to speak, "You two get back. Ahsoka and I will make our way to lock up and get her stuff then rendezvous on the landing pad."
"Anakin, we cannot–"
"Skywalker, I don't think–"
To their credit, they both try, but they are speaking to Anakin Skywalker. Ahsoka has had better luck convincing a brick wall to change its mind. The way their voices fill the air, conflicting tones wrestling with each other for space and dominance only to drown out the larger intention in the process certainly doesn't help them.
Anakin holds up a single hand, face firm, and Ahsoka almost has to raise her eyebrow at the way the two Masters fall silent in response. How long had she been in that cell?
"You two need to get back and give the rest of the Council the help they need. If the garrison scrambled aerial reinforcement, we are never getting off the ground. And, respectfully," he loops an arm around Ahsoka's shoulder, that old familiar grin alighting on his face, "we move faster on our own."
There is a long, protracted moment of silence, filled only by the exertion of their breaths and the distant, but unmistakable groan of clones fazing in and out of consciousness. Obi-Wan's eyes alight on Ahsoka's face, deep and saddened by the closed expression they find, and he sighs. Taking only a moment to confer with Plo in that silent way that Masters have learned how to do, he turns his attention readily back to his two Padawans. "Be quick," he urges, and then he and his fellow Master are gone, racing down the hallway towards the turbolift that will take them back to the Council's shuttle.
Anakin's expression is as firm as the hand he lays on his shoulder. "Come on," he pulls her along down the hall, already breaking into another run. "We gotta hurry."