Chapter 55
Guilt

Vader lay on his back on the wing of his Eta-2 and stared up at the purple sky. Yes, the purple sky. He sighed as a fluffy white cloud slowly drifted over the otherwise clear, though oddly colored, sky.

Why did they name this place Dantooine? He wondered idly. They could've just named it 'Purple' or 'Violet' or…something else that means purple.

It wasn't just the sky that was purple on Dantooine. The grass of Dantooine's vast prairies and plains was mostly varying shades of purple as was most of the other plant life. And since the vegetation was mainly purple, so was most of the animal life. Essentially, Dantooine was the home-world of the color purple. At least as far as Vader was concerned it was.

His Jedi Starfighter boldly stood out in the bland violet landscape. It had taken some time, but he'd finally tracked down the yellow and white paint he'd been looking for some months ago. And now his Eta-2's yellow and white paint job made it glow, especially in this environment.

It wasn't terribly warm here, even lying in the sun light like he was, but it was heaven compared to the last planet he'd been on. Nelvaan was a world just beginning to descend into an ice age and he'd been in a rather mountainous region, guaranteeing his exposure to cold temperatures and snow. He'd take boring purple everything over ice and snow any time.

Nelvaan had been the site of secret, radical experiments by the Separatists. They wanted to make better soldiers; cyborgs, a melding of flesh and metal, that would be superior to their current droid army. And they'd preyed on the primitive natives of Nelvaan to procure the needed test subjects.

He'd wrecked their plans though, and blown the Separatist's facilities sky-high. He and Obi-Wan had driven them off Nelvaan and it was highly unlikely that they would ever return. And then they'd jetted here, to Dantooine, to relax and recover before they received their next deployment orders.

Letting his eyelids drift closed, he let his mind wander wherever it felt like going…

And the first stop it decided to make was, of course, Padmé. It seemed that he thought of her at least once every day now. He didn't try to stop it anymore, he just tried to keep it clean. It was something to cling to during the dark days, something to keep him going beyond just staying with Obi-Wan and someday returning to his mother.

But, at the same time, when he thought of her, there was guilt. He felt guilt for continually deceiving her, for not divulging his true identity. And he felt guilt for having slept with her. It didn't matter that they'd both been drugged at the time. It still felt so wrong…

Sighing, he wrenched his thoughts to a different topic. And the next topic that came to mind was the mission that came before Nelvaan. The rather infamous debacle of Cato Nemoidia.

The mission had been to land secretly on Cato Nemoidia and capture Nute Gunray, the Viceroy of the Trade Federation. The plan had been simple. The Republic fleet would breach the orbital defenses and cause as much chaos as possible to deflect the attention of the cowardly Nemoidians elsewhere while Obi-Wan, Vader, Commander Cody, and a detachment of clones sought to capture the Federation Viceroy.

Unfortunately, things did not go well at all…

Cato Nemoidia was a strange world. It was a mountainous planet and the valleys were filled with thick, constant mists. It was not the home-world of the Nemoidian species, their home-world was Nemoidia. Cato Nemoidia was a 'purse world,' an old colony world that had become so rich and influential within the Federation that it earned the right to manage its own colonies and have 'Nemoidia' included in its name.

Using the endless valleys and caverns and the constant mists, many Nemoidian clans who settled on Cato Nemoidia built vaults to hold their treasures and wealth. Not wanting to be too close to their treasures and thus give away the locations of their vaults, yet not trusting their security measures enough to live far away, the Nemoidians of Cato Nemoidia made a strange sort of compromise…

All the cities on Cato Nemoidia were built on advanced suspension bridges. Long strips of buildings hung, floating over the misty voids and the hidden vaults they contained. They were marvels of modern engineering that only the super-wealthy denizens of Cato Nemoidia could possibly afford.

The instant they'd made their landing on the bridge that contained Nute Gunray's residence, everything about Cato Nemoidia went against them. The mists were unusually thick and high at the time, shrouding the entire city bridge in hazy gray shadow. And the slow rocking of the bridge in the wind made it difficult to get around for those who weren't used to it.

Then as their force began picking their way towards where Nute Gunray was supposedly holed up, things got worse. Several bounty hunters and mercenaries, hired by the wealthy, cowardly Nemoidians, appeared and hampered their advance. During the ensuing melee, one of the hired thugs somehow managed to hit Obi-Wan with a chemical-laced dart.

Whether the chemical was meant to be a poison or a non-lethal drug of some kind Vader had no idea. He didn't know what the stuff had been. All he knew was that it messed Obi-Wan up badly.

The Jedi Master slipped in and out of consciousness for the rest of the mission and that left the leadership of the operation in his hands. Normally that wouldn't be too much of a problem. He'd send his former Master back to friendly lines with a few clones and continue on as best he could. But here there were no friendly lines, the friendly lines were beyond the limits of the atmosphere and until the fighting died down there was no way to get there.

So, with enemies doing their best to take them out, with the ground swaying beneath their feet, with the air so thick and hazy it was sometimes hard to see a hand held in front of a face, with a drugged and delusional Jedi Master in tow, they forged ahead. When Obi-Wan was unconscious, he was carried. When he was awake, he was a pain in the butt.

Obi-Wan would drunkenly stagger around as the drugs scrambled his brain and babble utter nonsense. He was lost in his own delusional nightmare, cut off from the real world. He wouldn't listen to instructions and kept getting in the way of everything. And just when it got to the point where Vader wanted to strangle him, he'd pass out again.

The mission that was supposed to only take an hour or two dragged out into a nightmare that lasted nearly two days. When they finally reached Nute Gunray's residence and got past the endless security systems, the Nemoidian was long gone. The Federation Viceroy had been smuggled off-planet and past the Republic fleet and was nowhere to be found.

But the cowardly reptile had left something important behind which helped keep their mission from being a total waste. Nute Gunray didn't have time to take his precious crab chair and that particular device held some damning information. Mainly it held recording of transmissions with the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious.

Outside of Vader's own secret report, there was no evidence, no hint at all, that the mysterious figure of Darth Sidious existed. The hidden Sith Master was no more than a shadowy wraith, insubstantial, intangible, and untraceable. While Count Dooku was a known and confirmed Sith Lord, Darth Sidious was just a name of a being that might well have not existed at all.

Now, however, there was solid proof that Darth Sidious did exist. There were low resolution recordings of his voice and image. And buried in the data of the recorded transmissions were other possible clues, like perhaps where the messages had been sent from.

At this very moment the top computer slicers in the Republic were tearing apart those recordings and soon they should have those answers. It was very likely that the general location of Darth Sidious would be discovered. And then the Jedi Order could hunt the old bastard down and take care of him.

Thinking about it made Vader smile slightly.

But his smile quickly faded as his thoughts shifted to a dark rumor that had been circulating through the ranks of the Jedi. Whispers of a monster that killed Jedi and took their lightsabers as gruesome trophies. Rumblings of a creature that might be an alien, might be a super droid, might be a sick melding of the two.

General Grievous, they said his name was. A nightmare given substance and form. He was the new overall commander of all Separatist forces and his brilliant leadership was starting to be felt.

After months of pushing the Separatists back, keeping them on the defensive, the tide was beginning to turn again. Grievous led the Republic forces on a merry little chase through the Outer Rim, sparking siege after siege. What the mysterious droid general was up to was anyone's guess, but it was clear that he did have some sort of plan.

Vader cracked his eyes open and chewed at his lip. It's because of this Grievous creep that Obi-Wan and I have been out here, skimming the Rim for six months… Six months…yeesh, I'm twenty-two now. He sighed wearily. Someone needs to take care of him. I just hope it's not me…

Padmé lay in her bed struggling to wake up so she could get ready in time for today's Senate session. It was hard though. She was so very tired. And it was so hard to move these days.

With a weary groan, she somehow struggled up into a sitting position. From there, she reluctantly wiggled out of bed and made her way to her refresher. She wasn't reduced to waddling yet, but she had the sinking feeling that that was coming soon enough.

She luxuriated under the hot water of her shower, sighing in relief as it loosened some of the kinks and knots in her muscles and joints. When her sister and mother had reminisced about how uncomfortable pregnancy was, she'd always thought they were exaggerating. Now she knew they had been speaking the honest truth all along.

A solid thump at the side of her belly drew her hand immediately. "Hush baby," she murmured distractedly, rubbing her fingertips in lazy circles over the spot. "Hush now."

There were no further kicks (or punches) and her hand dropped back to her side as she continued with her morning routine. She dried off, wrapped herself up in her large bathrobe, and brushed her teeth. After rinsing out her mouth, she left her refresher behind and returned to her bedroom where she started to brush out her damp hair.

"Good morning," Sabé greeted, breezing into the room.

"'Morning," Padmé muttered, struggling not to glare at her friend.

Sabé was already completely ready for the day. She'd gotten her shower out of the way over an hour ago, she was fully dressed, her hair was done, everything. And she looked totally awake. At this moment, she was the complete opposite of her friend and employer.

"You look tired." Sabé commented, taking the brush from Padmé and continued working the snarls out of her hair.

"I feel tired," Padmé sighed, folding her hands over her swollen belly.

"Have you given any more thought to–" Sabé began.

"No, my decision stands," Padmé cut in smoothly. "I can go one more month."

"As you say Milady," Sabé replied neutrally.

Padmé fought to keep her expression calm and stoic as her chest tightened with sorrow. Ever since Padmé had discovered that she was pregnant she and Sabé had been at odds over what she should do about it. Sabé was increasingly against Padmé's course of action and showed it by retreating into her cool, distant, professional Handmaiden persona more and more. It hurt Padmé and made her feel even more isolated that she already did, but she remained firm in her choice. It was for the greater good.

Once Sabé had finished brushing out Padmé's hair, she moved on to dig through the closet in search of a dress for the day. Gone were her sleek but elegant dresses. Now there were only poofy, conical things whose sole purpose was to disguise her condition. They'd done their job well the past few months, but Padmé knew they wouldn't work forever.

"These dresses can't hide it forever." Sabé remarked as she pulled out a dark-colored dress, unconsciously echoing Padmé's thoughts.

"I know," Padmé nodded. "But they will do for one more month, and then I will take a leave from the Senate."

"As you say…" Sabé muttered, her disagreement made painfully clear.

Padmé made no reply and simply stood up to put on the dress that Sabé had selected. It was a tricky procedure most days, but now it was doubly tricky and getting worse with each passing week. But with Sabé's assistance, she managed it.

Moteé arrived then and began to arrange Padmé's still damp hair into its style for the day. She dug out one of the metal-and-wire frames that she could use to hold and shape Padmé's hair and after carefully pinning it into place she started to build the style. When she finished almost an hour later Padmé's hair was twisted into two small buns, one on each side of her head.

"Breakfast is ready," Sabé announced quietly as Moteé adjusted the final hairpins.

Following Sabé into the kitchen, Padmé settled down to eat her large breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, and biscuits. Washing eat bite down with a sip of Shuura juice, she steadily demolished the food placed in front of her. And while she ate, both Sabé and Moteé stood attentively by, waiting.

She felt vaguely embarrassed that she ate so much now. But it was much better than earlier when she still suffered the evil ravages of morning sickness. For the first few months, mornings were hell. Some days it lasted all the way into the afternoon. That had made life decidedly unpleasant for a while.

Once her plate was cleared, Padmé had her make-up done and then took a seat in her common room to wait. There was still one hour left before she had to leave her apartment for the Senate rotunda and she wanted to wait as long as possible before then. In the past, she would leave for the Senate as soon as she was ready. But now she didn't, because when she left the safety and privacy of her home, she was on stage, acting like nothing had changed when in truth everything had changed.

No one, aside from herself, Captain Typho, Sabé, Moteé, and Ellé, knew that she was pregnant. No one. Not her mother. Not her father. Not her sister. Not her brother-in-law. Not her nieces. And certainly not Vader. No one at all.

They couldn't know. It wasn't that she didn't trust her family with this information. But if she told them, she had the sinking feeling that they would react the same way Sabé had upon hearing her plan of action. And she didn't want that.

Her plan for dealing with her pregnancy was very simple. To avoid a messy scandal that would only make getting her work done more difficult than it already was, she hid her pregnancy. Most of the tabloids were certain she was pregnant and were throwing around all sorts of ridiculous candidates for the father, but she didn't care. They were tabloids. So long as those sorts of stories stayed out of more respected and credible publications, she was happy.

When it was impossible for her to hide her pregnancy anymore and continue to work effectively, she would take a leave of absence from Senate duty, citing extreme exhaustion and mental fatigue. She would then return to Naboo, tell her family that she was with child, and vanish to the remote Lake Country and the isolated estate of Varykino. And there she would give birth in complete secrecy, with only chosen family and friends present.

After the birth, a single blood test would determine her next step. If the child possessed a high enough midichlorian count, she would arrange for it to be anonymously delivered to the Jedi Temple. If the resulting infant didn't make the cut to be a Jedi, she would keep it and forge the paperwork necessary to prove that she had adopted it, not given birth to it.

It was a risky plan. And it was deceptive. She didn't like it at all. But it was the best way – and as far as she was concerned, the only way – to do this. She had no desire to be at the center of some ridiculous media frenzy as reporters rudely speculated just who the beautiful, young, unwed Nabooan Senator had joined with to create her child. Nor did she wish to draw any scandal down on the Jedi Order.

Sabé did not agree with this plan. She wanted Padmé to admit her condition to her family now. And she wanted Padmé to take her secret maternity leave last month. She feared that Padmé was compromising her health and safety with her secrecy and she wanted her to return to Naboo now so she could take better care of herself.

Padmé hated to admit it, but it was difficult to sneak off and visit her medical droid for her prenatal check-ups. However she made it to all the necessary appointments. And while the droid was forbidden to share anything but the bare minimum of information concerning the fetus (like the gender, she wanted to be surprised), it had reported no complications whatsoever to her.

Sighing, Padmé leaned back and gazed upwards through the glass ceiling of her common room. The early morning high clouds were beginning to dissipate, revealing the steel blue sky. But…something was off…

What are those flashes? Padmé squinted and stood up from her seat on her couch. Every few seconds there were faint flashes of light just barely visible through the haze of the atmosphere. Padmé had lived on Coruscant for four, nearly five years, and she'd never seen anything like this.

"Sabé, what do you think that is?" Padmé frowned.

"What do I think what is?" Sabé inquired.

"That," Padmé pointed up through the ceiling. "Those weird little flashes."

"Oh," Sabé moved to stand next to her to get a better view. "I have no idea. What do you think Moteé?"

"I can't say," Moteé murmured. "I'd say lightning but…that's not lightning."

The three of them stood there, staring through the glass ceiling at the faint light show, trying to figure out just what the heck it was. It definitely wasn't lightning. So what was it?

"Oh look at that," Sabé breathed.

A mass of specks had appeared in the sky. They started out very tiny and didn't seem to move much. But then after five minutes or so, the specks grew rapidly in size and they darted all over the sky.

They were spacecraft, a few armored shuttles and some starfighters. But they weren't Republic vessels. And as the mysterious ships rocketed across the Coruscanti skyline towards the domed Senate rotunda, one of the ships collided with some traffic lanes and then slammed into a distant skyscraper, spewing a trail of black smoke as it fell.

"Padmé!" Captain Typho panted as he burst into the apartment. "We need to leave!"

"Captain," Padmé interjected calmly as she stared at the burning skyscraper a few miles away. "What's going on?"

"We need to get to a lower level," Typho declared. "The Separatists are here and they're attacking the Senate!"

Vader left his Eta-2 behind in favor of visiting the little tent camp that had sprung up near the overgrown ruins of some ancient Jedi academy that had been destroyed thousands of years ago. It was a very temporary sort of camp, thrown up by a few handfuls of Jedi who were catching a day or two's rest between deployments. Since there was so little time for rest these days, many Jedi had taken to pitching these little camps in wild areas of planets near Republic lines but not involved in the war.

Picking his way through the knee-high purple grass, he came upon the scattered group of seven tents and paused to look around. In the center of the ragged circle of tents crouched a thrown-together communication antenna. So long as there was a single Jedi hanging out here on Dantooine, the makeshift comm 'tower' would stay there.

The tents that made up the little camp were an interesting bunch. They'd been designed for different environments. Some were meant for snow covered worlds, others for rocky barren worlds, and others for lush jungles. And so their wildly varying designs and color schemes stood out like a bunch of Wookiees in a Jawa camp against the dull violet of Dantooine's grasslands.

The Jedi who populated the camp were just as varied. Vader was one of four Humans present, and the rest were a mix of alien races. The camp residents were mainly doing two things here, sleeping or meditating.

Obi-Wan was not meditating, Vader noticed, but was being a worry-wart and was plugged into the comm antenna, listening to something. Rolling his eyes, he turned away and wandered off towards one particular corner of the camp. There sat Ferus Olin and Siri Tachi.

Apparently Siri was still not speaking to Obi-Wan and all she did to Vader was cast suspicious glances his way. Not at all interested in dealing with her, his target was the oh-so-proper Ferus Olin. Ferus was freshly knighted, having his braid hacked off by the old troll just over a month ago, and was still getting used to the whole thing.

"Hey Ferus, how are you?" Vader inquired cheerfully, flopping to the ground across from him and startling him out of his light meditation.

"Huh?" Ferus started. Once he recognized Vader he scowled slightly. "What do you want?" He asked suspiciously.

"Just to talk," Vader smiled innocently.

Ferus eyed him critically for a minute before nodding slowly. "Fine." And then he got up and started to walk away.

Oh come on, I just sat down! Vader grumbled and got up to follow. "So, how are you?"

"I'm all right," Ferus shrugged, still walking away from the camp and the curious gaze of his former Master.

"Well," Vader sighed, "that's good…" I guess.

Ferus walked for a while before he came to a stop, his dark eyes fixed on a bush near the horizon. "Can I talk to you about something?"

Oh…this is serious… "Sure," Vader nodded.

"Do you promise to keep this confidential?" Ferus asked, turning to fix Vader with a hard look.

Really serious…like I don't have enough secrets already. "Of course," Vader promised.

Ferus shifted around nervously as he struggled to pull his nerve together to share whatever dark secret he had that was plaguing his conscience. "Well…um…it-it's about Darra… I–"

There was a sharp whistle and a brief tug at his mind. Vader swung his head around to see Obi-Wan bolting out of the camp and towards where they'd parked their starfighters. Apparently they were leaving.

"Sorry Ferus, looks like I got to run." Vader apologized, sprinting after Obi-Wan. "I'll catch you later!" He called over his shoulder.

He would've liked to stay and hear just what Ferus had to say about Darra, but this seemed to be an emergency. Obi-Wan never ran anywhere unless it was an emergency or they were in the middle of a mission and running was required. Judging by the speed at which Obi-Wan was running, it was a big emergency.

Vader caught up with him just as he was diving into the cockpit of his red and white Eta-2. Annoyed at missing his chance to ask Obi-Wan what the heck was going on, Vader hoped into his own starfighter and hurried to start it up. The instant he got his headset on and plugged into his console, he called Obi-Wan.

"So what's the rush?" Vader asked as he warmed up the engines and Artoo ran a quick systems check.

"Emergency over Coruscant," Obi-Wan replied tersely, his voice a little distorted over the ship's comm.

"That's informative," Vader muttered dryly in annoyance.

"General Grievous has attacked Coruscant." Obi-Wan elaborated as they climbed up through the violet-tinged atmosphere towards the blackness of space. "He struck the Senate building and has just kidnapped the Chancellor."

"Oh," Vader blinked as Artoo plotted the quickest hyperspace route back to Coruscant. And then that information sank in… "Oh crap!"