Disclaimer: I don't own any of George Lucas's stuff.
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4. Dack Sneaks Around
Dack stopped outside the pilots' quarters, which were comprised of one chamber on the ground floor. Despite his inability to use the armor from his two mutineers (lightsaber strikes might raise suspicions), he'd managed to conceal himself quite well by projecting the suggestion of a regular clone soldier on patrol. It took every drop of power that he possessed to hold up the façade, but the troops he passed accepted him as B-435, and no one seemed to notice that Logres and Maverick had not returned from either a mission to the 'fresher or a quick trip to murder the general.
He figured someone would find the bodies soon enough.
He pointedly did not return to the main camp. It was too easy to assume that the insurgency involved only the two he'd been closest with; what if the rest were involved as well?
And if the rest of them are in on it… Dack straightened up and stared at the door. It might be prudent to get the hell offworld if that were the case, which was why he'd come to the pilots in the first place. Then again, what exactly was he supposed to do when he went in? Just demand a ship? Yes, Dack, that'll go over well.
His inability to sense any sort of malice from Logres and Maverick before they fired on him kept Dack on constant alert, but he was reminded of Joclad's words: The pilots aren't clones. They might not be in on… whatever just happened… .
But Dack felt nothing in that room. Nothing at all.
He poked a head in and just barely made out a body sprawled across the floor.
He reached out to the living and the dead, and now he recognized the corpses of all eight pilots: sentient beings created by their parents, not a batch of cloners on Kamino. Dack pressed further into the room, kneeling beside the only one to make it out of bed. The man – Lieutenant Jukka, if memory served - had died with a blaster in his hand.
On some dim level, Dack realized that eight dead people should have bothered him. As he sat back on his heels, though, all he could figure out was why this happened.
The clones had turned on him and the pilots. But was it a widespread revolt, or orders from higher up? He'd thought the clones were resistant to any form of bribery or brainwashing, but perhaps the remains of Dooku's network had managed some sort of mass infiltration.
But all of them? How could he... how would he? The sheer logistics involved…
Even the Dark Side could not be that strong.
…could it?
Dack touched his fingers to his forehead and bowed over the man in respect. This is because of me, Lieutenant. I apologize. Go brightly into the Force and live on forever.
Voices filtered in from the hallway, and he realized the obvious: I need to get offworld.
He rummaged through the late Jukka's things, palming security cards, clearance chips, and a handful of credits. "Sorry about this," he whispered to the lieutenant, "but you don't need it anymore, and I do." Dack thought about retrieving the blaster, but prying it out of a dead man's hand when Jukka had clearly fought so hard to live just seemed wrong.
Instead, Dack snagged a blaster rifle from the arms locker and proceeded to load himself down with rations. No robe. Need something warm. Jukka's flak jacket would do, still hanging neatly in the makeshift closet.
He paused in the doorway, strengthening his illusion and looking back at the fallen men and women. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I'll do my best to see you get a proper funeral. This won't be forgotten."
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The temple swarmed with clones, and all of them had the same order: to kill any Jedi they came across.
Cin Drallig and Serra Keto did their best to make that order impossible to fulfill.
Cin thrust out his hand and Force-shoved an entire group of clones back into a column, and their helmets cracked against the stone in a most satisfying manner. "That's seven more, padawan!" he called, spinning to deflect a blast from the lone survivor. Serra took care of that one, flipping colorfully into view and dispatching the clone with a quick sweep of her right blade.
Serra smiled grimly. "I believe I still lead," she said, turning around to make certain no one else was in the room. The bodies of Jedi and clones alike littered the floor, but none of them moved.
Cin reached down to the dead man and plucked a security card out of the armored hand. He frowned as he recognized the patterns etched into its surface. "This is high-level… only members of the Council have this," he said, looking from the card to his padawan. Serra's dark eyes widened slightly, but she leaned forward to inspect it before speaking. She disengaged her lightsabers, and then her fingers brushed the edge.
Cin waited until her silence became disturbing. "Well? What do you feel?"
Her words came slowly: "The Chancellor's office… something terrible happened there."
Cin could scarcely believe it. "What? Mace and Kit and Saesee are there. Someone turned—"
"Not them. This was Kit's." Serra pulled away and switched the blades back on. "They're dead, Master."
She had not sensed the obvious answer: that someone, somewhere, had turned. No; instead she spoke of the unthinkable. Mace Windu, dead? Smiling Kit Fisto was no more? And Saesee! Three of the best fighters on the Council…
Cin pocketed the card and sent his mind outward, trying find a path through the smothering fabric of the Dark Side. The lives of Jedi and clones in the temple flickered and went out, and something malignant simmered deep in the heart of the building. But if there were some way to push past that….
He grasped Serra's upper arm with his left hand. "Lend me your strength, Serra."
Her powerful connection to the Force allowed him to toss off the cloak and view the outside world. A shooting star coursed toward the building, moving too quickly for him to identify His mind wandered further, and great power turned in his direction—
Who are you, Jedi?
A powerful sender nearly knocked him backward. Cin cautiously felt along its lines, detecting strength that ran along an unfamiliar vein of the Force. The image he received was brief: colorless eyes peered into the very depths of his soul, and something ancient focused its attention on him.
Ancient, but not evil.
The Force moves strangely tonight, the sender said in a conversational tone. It was a bizarre contrast to the madness that currently engulfed the temple.
Cin breathed deeply. The temple--
Clunk. The Dark Side choked him off again, and Serra's attention jerked him back to the temple. "Master, they're here!"
"Yes, padawan, they are!"He leaped upward, lightsaber arcing toward a doorway as it slid open. The green blade punched through armor and flesh, and the clone trooper collapsed backward onto his compatriots. "What does that bring me to, Serra?"
Emerald plasma flashed in his sight as Serra propelled her body horizontally through the air, lightsabers extended in front of her. "I don't know," she called as she spun through the clones, "but I'm still winning!"
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The temple—
The man was shut off from the connection by something far more powerful than he, and a master of Teräs Käsi opened her eyes in surprise. Jedi? Jedi?
There was no response. Power simmered nearby, drawing on currents she'd felt long ago.
She cast her considerable reach outward and skimmed across Coruscant, noting the shocked reactions from those going about their lives in the city below.
There. Darkness yawned and grew, frightfully strong in its presence – and located deep in the heart of the Jedi Temple.
She'd felt the Dark Side often enough; her long lifespan had ensured that. But the malevolence that echoed through the Force punched through the barriers of common decency and twisted its bearer into something else, something far worse than merely an agent of Darkness.
Silently fearing what she might see, Arden Lyn leaned forward in her chair and finally looked out the window.
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Dack Meridian had never considered himself a particularly gifted Jedi. His mission records suggested a useful negotiator who preferred brains to brawn, though he was marked as competent in Form III lightsaber combat. He classified his previous accomplishments as undercover work, and lived fairly happily in the shadow of his more established – and Force-strong -- colleagues. He was no warrior and knew it.
Still, he was puzzled as to why only Logres and Maverick had come after him; after all, a Jedi was a Jedi, and even the most hapless Knight ought to have been treated with great caution. It didn't take too much thought to conclude they thought as little of his fighting abilities as he did. Dack wondered if he ought to feel insulted, but then decided that if their underestimation of him secured his escape – well, who was he to argue?
He who laughs last tends to win, he thought as he crept down the main hallway, a forbidding-looking section of architecture that would probably give plenty of younglings nightmares with its huge statues and ceiling that vanished into patches of starlight. Then again, he who laughs last might just think slowest….
Besides, he did have one area of strength that had never failed him: suggestion. If the mind was not constantly looking for discrepancies or something entirely different from what he presented to the viewer, Dack Meridian could successfully convince just about anyone that he really was his current role, be it madman, musician, theatrical actor, or a common soldier with Jango Fett's face.
Thus the clones barely paid him any attention as he made his way to the landing pad.
During the day, the ruins of Rhen Var had an eerie beauty to them. By night, they were merely ghostly stone walls, providing a maze of dead ends and collapsed pillars for him to maneuver through. Dack tried to hone in on the small gathering of starships and transports at the landing pad, but maintaining his illusion and seeking out his quarry each demanded intense concentration. In the end he gave up on locating the vessels and focused on swaying the clones, weaving his way through the building nicknamed the Citadel and trying not to be startled by the broken statues that sometimes loomed out of the dark.
Cold air wafted down, sneaking through cracks and missing chunks of ceiling. He swung the rifle over his shoulder and grasped the base of a wall, hoisting himself up and over. Broken bits of ice and rock crunched under his boots when he landed, and his fingers grazed a sharp indentation.
A barely tangible sensation of steel on stone rattled him slightly, and Dack looked at the mark with new interest. A sword struck here, he thought, touching it again. The wall had taken a blow meant for a living being – but had that living being escaped further damage after a lucky miss?
He could not tell for certain, and it scarcely mattered at the moment. Even if that being had gotten away with its life, it was certainly dead by now.
Dack continued on, rubbing the arms of Jukka's flak jacket for warmth. The last battle fought on Rhen Var thousands of years ago had left it a desolate and depressing place, its crumbling buildings the only tribute to a long-lost time. Why the Separatists wanted control of it befuddled him; their droids couldn't even fight properly on it!
It's an icy rock, he'd said to Kit after receiving the assignment. Let them have it!
But the Council ordered Rhen Var defended, and Dack wound up with a military commission.
You'll do fine, Kit had said. Dack supposed that should have made him feel much better about the entire thing.
Yeah, you send me to Rhen Var and my clones turn on me. Thanks a lot, Master Fisto.
Dack's thoughts trickled to a halt as he finally reached the landing pad and identified the ship that would hopefully bust him out: a sleek-looking transport that he knew possessed a hyperdrive. He checked the area for clones, found none, and hurried over to it. The bright lights that illuminated the place were a vast change from the torch-lit shadows of the Citadel, and he blinked back stars as his shivering fingers procured a security card to swipe through the slot.
ENTRY DENIED.
"What!" Dack swiped it again, and then hurled it to the ground when the codes failed. They'd changed the damned entry lines. Someone had planned ahead.
Wait. Didn't Windu give all his field Jedi some sort of override in case Separatist droids hacked the mainframes? Dack peered at the keypad and tried a string of buttons. This resulted in nothing more than a flashed warning, one that likely transmitted back to either the Palacia in orbit or the communications system in the main camp. Damn. He had to work fast.
I know he gave us something... 275... 275...3... 27653... 27563... He closed his eyes, remembering the day Windu had delivered the codes. Stass had paid careful attention, along with Luminara and Myri. Dack, to his best recollection, had been staring out a window wondering if he could summon up enough power to fly on his own.
Force, I really am a bad Jedi.
He punched in the first string, and was greeted with a secondary procedure. "When did these get so complicated?"
"There he is!"
Oh. I guess it is all of them.
Dack wheeled around, lightsaber out before the clones could even bring their guns to bear. He tried deflecting the shots with one hand while stabbing at the keys with the other, inwardly kicking himself for letting his guard drop. Five clones had him in their sights, and he sensed a herd of others thundering through the broken stone building. Great. Just great.
A twist of his blade sent one bolt howling back at its shooter. Dack smiled grimly and kept working, well aware that he couldn't keep this up much longer.
The second string of numbers cleared. Dack almost cheered.
And then the computer demanded a third code.
He gaped at the screen, aghast. "Are you kidding me?"
His attention wavered, and a bolt struck his knee. Dack dropped to the ground, fully depending on the Force to ward off the incoming surge and stave away the pain that bloomed directly in the joint. His precarious hold on the power slipped further away as he tried to stretch it in unfamiliar directions. I can't do this. I'm not strong enough. I can't...
Dack leaned back on one hand, blue blade a colorful blur in front of him. There were four clones left, and he was not used to sending laser blasts back at living beings. If I can sneak under the ship... His fingers brushed against something cold. Wait. That's right... Suddenly his quest to survive had a new ally. Why am I just waving my lightsaber around when I can... do THIS!
The rifle swung into one hand. He didn't bother aiming; just pointed it in their general direction and started pulling the trigger.
They went down like puppets with their strings cut, clearly unprepared for a Jedi to turn a ranged weapon on them. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Dack gained a new appreciation for a rather clever invention dismissed by far too many of his friends.
The Force trembled, and he felt the clones' deaths tug at his psyche. Dack put the rifle back over his shoulder and leaned against the ship as the shooting stopped, willing himself to ignore the cries of fallen spirits as he shifted his weight to his good leg. That was part of the burden of a Jedi with clone troops: when the boys went down, the commander always sensed it.
Damaging, Myri had muttered when Dack first arrived. It's very… damaging.
Myri hadn't said much after that. Or before, according to Logres.
Stop drifting! Think! There's just another entry code – you know this, Meridian, you idiot, come on! One last code and he could end this horrible holodrama and get back to Coruscant. One last code...
"We've almost got him, boys!"
Dack sighed. "Didn't I just leave this party?"
He punched the last key and the security panel flashed green. The hatch slid open, and Dack launched himself into it as laser fire splattered against the hull. He waved the hatch shut and tossed his lightsaber aside, the blade shutting off as it flew.
Breathe, Dack, breathe. He only needed a second. Just a second…
But his knee throbbed, and he knew it would not take long for the clones to break out more impressive weaponry. He hobbled to the bridge, jabbing instinctively at buttons and practically dropped into the pilot's seat. Shields, engines at max, where are the guns... oh... silly me...
He thumbed the auto-shootback, and a faint grinding noise under the deck identified itself as the underbelly cannon. Bursts of red energy lanced outwards as they echoed up through the hull, and the sporadic firing of the clones paused.
Dack smiled.
"Never mess with a Meridian," he said, punching in the coordinates for Coruscant. Sensors reported the Palacia on the far side of the planet; proof, perhaps, that the Force hadn't abandoned him. Any fighters the cruiser hoped to scramble would arrive long after Dack had made his escape. Just as well: he wasn't in the mood to dodge turbolasers.
The transport shrieked out of the icy atmosphere and made the jump to lightspeed without trouble, and Dack slumped back in his chair. He craned his neck around until he spotted a medkit tucked under the console, and called it to him. "Shoot a man in the knee, why don't you," he mumbled, pulling out the necessary fixers and tugging his pant leg up to reveal the full extent of the damage. He cringed to see it, and felt his grasp on the Force as a painkiller dwindling.
Don't go away entirely, he begged it. Just stay long enough for me to repair this mess.
He hunched over his work, pressing what he hoped was a genuine antiseptic over it. "Shoot a man in the knee! Insurrection. Blast it, I hate being a general."