I had to make up a species for Rhombulus because in the show he was...you know...made of magic and therefore was one-of-a-kind. The species name I went with was "Cerulean," which, if you don't know, is a shade of blue. I just think it's a cool word and it ends in "an" so it sounds like it could be a species of something.

See, it's funny, because Rhombulus is green.

"We are so dead!"

"I told you to can it!" Rhombulus whisper-yelled at his left hand. He peeked through the opening again. Darth Vader stood in the middle of the street, terrifying and menacing in appearance without even moving. The stormtroopers ceased their march, waiting at attention for orders.

Huddled beneath the awnings and overhangs of the rickety buildings that lined the central road, the citizens of the small and remote outpost cowered in fear as they watched the Imperial forces invading their home.

"This is all my fault," Rhombulus moaned, shaking his head. "I never should have come here."

His right hand blinked at him. "Just gonna throw this out there one more time: I wanted to go to Mon Calamari."

"Shut up!"

Rhombulus was a Cerulean Jedi Knight, a very strange alien species containing three separate consciousnesses. Each of his hands literally had a mind of its own, along with their own eyes, mouthes, nostrils, and vocal chords. They rather looked like snakes who's tails morphed into his muscular body. The head that capped that body was a giant crystal containing Rhombulus's singular main eye and no further features, making him part reptile and part rock.

"That Jedi is here," Vader said. "I can sense his presence. Spread out and find him."

"Yes, sir!" The stormtrooper captain signaled his men. "Fan out! Search every possible hiding place. Tear this place apart if you must and find that Jedi!"

Rhombulus cringed as the troopers broke their ranks, the residents of the outpost shrinking back even more as the Imperial soldiers passed. He watched as they forced their way into every shop and home on the main street, roughly pushing the inhabitants out of the way.

Definitely not the same clone troopers I served with, Rhombulus thought. They would never treat civilians with so little respect.

Then again, my own troops turned on me, so what do I know?

Rhombulus had been deployed on assignment when Order 66 had been issued. He and his troops had been stationed on Ord Mantell in the Mid-Rim, defending the planet's capital from the Separatist droid army. They were losing. Badly.

Which ended up being quite fortunate for Rhombulus.

They were greatly outnumbered and, despite Rhombulus's best efforts to defend his company, his clone troopers' numbers were dwindling fast. The battle droids forced them to fall back to the command post located on the ground floor of the capital building. By the time they made it, only seven of Rhombulus's clone troopers were still standing.

"What do we do now, sir?" Commander Blick had asked when they had barricaded the door. The other remaining troopers had taken up firing positions at the windows, picking off the droids as they advanced on the capital building.

Rhombulus shook his head sadly. "We did our best, but I'm afraid Ord Mantell has fallen. We'll have to call for an evacuation." He rested a snake hand on Blick's shoulder. "You and your men fought valiantly, Commander. Those droids just had us so badly outnumbered, we never stood a chance."

Blick removed his helmet, smiling somberly. "I appreciate the sentiment, General. And, if it's any consolation, win or lose, my brothers and I have been proud to serve under you."

Despite what happened next, Rhombulus did not doubt that his second-in-command's words were truthful. Rhombulus had always been very popular with the Clone Troopers for much the same reason that the Republic's bred soldiers were proud to serve under General Skywalker, Kenobi, Plo Koon and several others: he treated his men as equals, friends, not just expendable humans grown in a test tube for the Republic's war machine. The clones looked up to Rhombulus. Even when they were losing, their moral never faltered so long as their Jedi General was leading the charge, his azure-bladed lightsaber guiding them along. Often, Rhombulus would detour his command ship between assignments to stop at a cantina somewhere and take his battle mates for drinks, toasting the comrades they had lost on the last mission and to good fortune and victory on the next.

And yet, in spite of all of that, Commander Blick had still tried to kill him without a second of hesitation. Rhombulus could not understand how it could be so. He had no way of knowing that Clone Troopers had been bred with a biological control chip in their brains that would make them unable to disobey when Order 66 was issued. Thus, he was left feeling not only betrayed, but incredibly saddened.

Blick had offered to call the cruiser waiting in orbit and request an evacuation, stepping away to make the communicate. But just as he was about to call the cruiser, his commlink chimed with an incoming transmission. He answered it. "This is Commander Blick, seven hundred and eighteenth Legion."

"Commander Blick. This is Chancellor Palpatine."

Blick was stunned. Why would the Chancellor be calling him?

He wasn't given any time to think about it, though, as Palpatine did not allow him the chance. "The time has come. Execute Order 66."

The switch had been thrown. The loyalty shifted. One singular desire consumed every fiber of Commander Blick's being: Follow Orders.

"It will be done, my Lord."

Blick switched off the commlink and slid his helmet back onto his head. He pulled his blaster pistol from the holster on his belt and turned around. Rhombulus was at the window beside the front door with a trooper called Max, using a spare blaster that had been in a supply crate, firing at the coming onslaught of droids bearing down on them.

Blick touched the trigger on his helmet that switched on the comm channel in each clone's helmet. "We have new orders, boys. Protocol 66."

If Blick had still been acting of his own free will, he might have noticed how, even underneath the full-body armor, his brothers' body language changed. They tensed, their movements becoming almost droid-like.

Max, directly beside Rhombulus, stopped firing at the droids. He looked at the Jedi beside him, still shooting out the window with his blaster, not yet having noticed that Max had ceased fire. Slowly, he pulled his blaster rifle back inside the window and was just turning it to take aim at the General when a droid's shot hit him right in the front of the helmet, killing him instantly.

"Max!" Rhombulus cried, dropping his blaster to the floor and frantically grabbing Max's shoulders with his snakes. "No! Not you, too!"

He was distracted. This was the perfect opportunity. Blick took careful aim at Rhombulus's head and squeezed the trigger. The blaster bolt ricocheted off of the side of Rhombulus's crystal cranium.

"Ouch!" He looked up and found himself staring down the barrel of Blick's blaster. "Blick! What's gotten into you?"

Then Rhombulus noticed the others. All six of the remaining clones were aiming their blaster rifles at him. Moving with incredible speed, Rhombulus grabbed the lightsaber from its pocket inside of his cape, the pale blue blade igniting as the clones fired on him. While his crystal head could deflect blaster bolts, the rest of his body could not. Leaping aside as he deflected the shots he could, Rhombulus was beyond confused. "What are you doing?!" he roared.

The clones did not respond. They just kept firing.

And then the room erupted in a tremendous explosion of granite and plaster. A B2 super battle droid outside had fired wrist rockets in through the open window, exploding against a support column. Rhombulus and the six remaining clone troopers were sent flying from the shockwave before being buried in debris as part of the second floor of the capital building collapsed on top of them.

As one might imagine, it's difficult to knock out a being with a head literally harder than a rock. A little beat up but none the worse for wear, Rhombulus wasted no time in lifting away the rubble that pinned him down using the Force. When he had freed himself, he could see the droids still advancing on his position, only a few dozen meters away. The remains of his Clone Troopers were gone, buried beneath the destroyed section of the capital building.

With no time to waste, Rhombulus took off running. There was nothing he could do on his own to save Ord Mantell; now he needed to focus on saving himself. The droids fired at him a few more times, and Rhombulus deflected their blaster bolts behind him as he ran. Battle droids were never known for being exceptionally speedy, and it wasn't long before Rhombulus lost them in the streets of the capital city.

Soon enough, Rhombulus happened across a ship abandoned when the city was evacuated, a little Q-39 Sunchaser. The old four-seater, single-engine shuttle coughed to life when he fired it up, but it flew and would get him back to the cruiser. That was all that mattered. As he climbed up through the atmosphere, the Cerulean Jedi wracked his brain, trying to figure out why his troops, his friends, had turned on himso suddenly.

Soon enough, the Venator-class Republic Cruiser Diamondhead came into view. So many of the clones aboard had been forced to join the losing battle on the planet's surface that the ship was operating on essential crew members only.

Rhombulus tuned the comm transmitter to the Diamondhead's comm frequency. "This is General Rhombulus. I am returning to the ship now...alone. I'm in the old Q-39 off the bow. Ord Mantell is lost. Blick and his men turned on me..."

"General..." The voice responding belonged to Admiral Willard, commanding officer of the Diamondhead, having served the Republic Navy since before the advent of the Clone War. "I'm afraid I know why your troops turned against you."

"What?! Why?"

"Sir...the Supreme Chancellor has issued Protocol 66."

"Protocol 66? What in the galaxy is Protocol 66? I didn't know there was a Protocol 66!"

"Neither did I, sir. But one of my officers explained it to me. Apparently..." the Admiral paused nervously. "It states that in the event the Jedi have committed treason against the Republic...all Jedi commanding officers must be executed on site."

Rhombulus was stunned into silence. "Jedi...treason..."

"And I'm afraid that includes you, too, sir."

The comm channel went dead.

"Wait, what was that last thing?"

The Diamondhead's canons turned toward Rhombulus's commandeered ship. The first shot was made with pinpoint accuracy, a massive bolt of blue energy streaking directly toward his viewscreen.

"Oh."

His hands acted of their own accord, grabbing the control yoke and juking hard to starboard. The laser tore past, missing by less than a meter.

"So, hey," his left snake said. "You think maybe we could think about getting out of here?"

The right snake agreed. "Yeah! It's getting awfully hot around here!"

More lasers filled the sky as the rest of the cruiser's canons opened fire. Rhombulus jerked back to reality. "Uh, yeah! Good idea!"

Taking back control for himself, he pointed the ship passed the Diamondhead and pulled back the hyperdrive lever. The stars stretched into streaks as the ship jumped to lightspeed, but the second he made it fully into to hyperspace, he dropped out again. The microjump was enough to get him sufficiently far away from Ord Mantell and the cruiser full of his former battle mates.

Once he was safe, Rhombulus took stock of his situation. It was clear that he could not return to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, nor any military installation. He needed to disappear, but to where?

The solution was not a difficult conclusion to reach, though his hands disagreed and suggested Mon Calamari would be a better destination. He would go to Shri'gaa Outpost on the forrest moon of Endor.

Endor has a number of sentient native inhabitants, but they are primitive races for the most part. However, there is a small outpost located in the moon's northern hemisphere that hosts a few hundred off-worlders who relocated to the quiet moon for one reason or another. Many years before the Clone Wars, Shri'gaa Outpost was plagued by a band of Outer Rim pirates. Rhombulus had been the Jedi sent by the council to ward off the marauders, and had done so single-handedly. He'd been heralded as a hero and some of the friends he had made there stayed in occasional contact with him. Surely, they would assist him.

He had hidden the ship out of sight in a ravine just south of the settlement and walked to Shri'gaa Outpost. As he strolled down the middle of the main street, someone called out to him.

"Master Rhombulus! Is that really you?" The voice came from an old Quarren man who hurried over to Rhombulus as quickly as his old bones would allow.

"Torano!" Rhombulus exclaimed. "You're still here!"

"Indeed, I am! It is so good to see you, Master Jedi! It has been so many years since you were last here!"

"Its good to see you, too. I just wish I was here under better circumstances," Rhombulus said sadly. He explained everything that had happened.

"Well, don't you worry, Master," Torano said when Rhombulus's story ended. "You've got a home here, for as long as long as you need it!"

And so, Rhombulus became a resident of Shri'gaa Outpost. It wasn't long, though, before news of the Imperial Army's actions reached the little settlement. Even in such a huge galaxy, news still spread fast, and soon enough, Rhombulus was informed of Darth Vader and his inquisitors' hunt for the remnants of the Jedi Order. The Cerulean was worried.

"Don't stress yourself over all that," Torano told Rhombulus one morning. "How would the Empire even find you out here? Not a single trooper ever came here during the Clone War. Most people don't even know this here outpost even exists!"

"I guess I can't argue with you there. I didn't know anyone lived on Endor until I came here all those years ago!"

Torano slapped his friend on the back. "Trust me, my friend. You will be safe here."

But Rhombulus was not so easily convinced. More news of Jedi survivors being discovered and executed reached Shri'gaa Outpost, and Rhombulus found himself wondering just how many Jedi could possibly still be alive. What if he were the last one?

Bounties were posted by the Empire, offering a monetary reward for any information regarding "fugitive members of the traitorous Jedi Order, wanted for conspiracy, treason, attempted murder of Sheev Palpatine, and other crimes against the Galactic Senate."

"No one will believe that," Rhombulus said to Torano when one such poster somehow materialized on the front wall of the Outpost's vegetable distributor. "The Jedi have always been about peace and protection! Surely someone in the Senate is against Palpatine! The Jedi have helped so many of their worlds, and some of the Senators directly!"

Torano grimaced. "I'm afraid the new Emperor has almost unanimous support. He's somehow managed to convince everyone that the Jedi are evil."

Rhombulus shook his head. "There has be someone who can help, before it's too late and the Empire manages to hunt us all down. There must be someone in the Senate we can trust."

Torano sighed. "If only Senator Amidala had not unexpectedly passed away. She was always an advocate of the Jedi Order. She never would have stood for this. She would have helped."

"Yeah...She would." Rhombulus pondered the issue, trying to think of any senator he had ever been in contact with during his tenure as a Jedi that might be able to help him. He was drawing a blank, though, unsure that any of them could not be easily swayed by Palpatine.

"What about Senator Eclipsa Butterfly?" his left hand suggested.

"Hey, Yeah!" agreed the right snake. "She has a niece that's a Padawan, doesn't she?"

Rhombulus perked up. "That's right! Padawan Star Butterfly is Senator Eclipsa's niece! There's no way she would believe the Jedi were traitors! I can't believe I didn't think of that!"

Torano put a hand Rhombulus's shoulder. "My friend...Senator Butterfly is missing."

"Missing?"

"She disappeared not long after the purge."

"What? Why?"

Torano shrugged. "I do not know. I only know she has not been in contact with anyone with in several weeks and no one knows where she is. And, I'm afraid, the Empire has posted a bounty on her, as well."

Rhombulus's heart sank. "She must be on the run, too. They probably think she knows something since she had family in the Order." He dejectedly kicked at a pebble on the dirt road. "Well, maybe I should still try to get in contact with her. Strength in numbers, and all that."

"But how will you even be able to connect with her?" Torano asked. "No one knows where she is."

"Hmmm...Is there a long range transmitter here?"

"Yes, of course, in the communications tower." Torano pointed to the tallest building in Shri'gaa Outpost, a cylindrical duracrete tower with a domed top and a number of varying antennas bolted to the roof. "But what will that do?"

"During the Clone Wars, Senators were given an emergency comm frequency that only the Jedi also had to call for help in the event that the Separatists attempted an assassination or kidnapping or something like that. I can use that frequency in reverse to send her a coded message." He glanced skyward and sighed. "I hope she's okay, wherever she is."

As they walked to the communications tower, Torano was struck with a worrying thought. "Um, Rhombulus, if you're using an emergency frequency that all the Senators have," Torano said slowly, "won't other Senators receive the message, too?"

"Yeah, but they won't know how to decode it, so they won't know who sent it or where it came from. I'll use a code that only Eclipsa knows."

This did not put the Quarren man's mind at ease. "I hope you're right, because you could be putting a lot of people in danger if you're wrong."

"Don't worry, it'll be fine."

And so, Rhombulus sent out a coded message on the emergency frequency channel, hoping that it would reach Senator Butterfly.

As it turned out, there was no reason for Rhombulus or Torano to fear at all. The Senate's newly minted distrust of the Jedi Order was the catalyst for the installation of a frequency jammer being installed on Coruscant to prevent any fugitive Jedi from utilizing the emergency channel for their own nefarious purposes. Not a single one of the Senators received Rhombulus's coded message.

But, even so, news still spreads quickly, especially when there is a reward at stake and one of your neighbors has already heard stories of what the Empire will do to those who defy the wishes of the Emperor. Unbeknownst to the Jedi Knight and his friend, the Empire had already sent a spy in the form of an very unsuspecting protocol droid on board a supply freighter to verify the claim that a Jedi Knight was hiding out at Shri'gaa Outpost on the forest moon of Endor several planetary rotations earlier. And when the claim had been verified, Lord Vader himself was the one who picked up the mission.

And so, a few hours after sending their message, Darth Vader's Star Destroyer appeared in the sky over Endor, and the Quarren named Torano had told his friend Rhombulus to hide. The Jedi had taken up residence in a rickety wooden abandoned shack in the middle of town, watching as the Imperial Stormtroopers roughly searched the place, looking for him.

He felt like a coward. How could he, a Jedi Knight, sworn to protect the innocent, be hiding like a frightened animal while the people of the little outpost were terrorized by the very beings that he was cowering from?

And yet, he felt frozen to the spot, unable to move, watching the stormtroopers conduct their search, feeling very ashamed of himself. He didn't even notice the pair of troopers walking toward his hiding spot until he heard them speak.

"Let's check in here," said one to the other.

"Oh, crud," Rhombulus whispered to himself. "Now what do I do?"

His left hand blinked at him. "Can't you just, like, mind trick them?"

"Oh, yeah! Duh!"

Still watching the stormtroopers through the gap between the boards of the shack wall, Rhombulus raised his snake hands and focused on the trooper that appeared to be carrying a piece of scanning equipment. He whispered, "Hold on."

"Hold on," repeated the stormtrooper.

The two troopers stopped.

Rhombulus whispered again. "I'm not picking up any lifeforms in there."

"I'm not picking up any lifeforms in there."

"No need to check out this shack."

"There's no need to check out this shack."

"Let's move on."

"Let's move on."

Rhombulus waited with baited breath, hoping that the other stormtrooper would agree with the first.

"If you say so. Let's go."

Rhombulus ducked back from the gap in the wall as the stormtroopers strolled past uncomfortably close. When they'd gone, he let out a long sigh of relief. "That was close."

"No kidding!" his right snake said. "What, did you forget you were a Jedi for a second?"

This only increased Rhombulus's feelings of guilt. "Shut up!"

For twenty minutes more, the Cerulean kept a careful watch on the Imperial activities, hoping he would not be discovered and feeling the guilt eat away at him more with every passing second. Eventually, the stormtroopers began to return to Vader and the stormtrooper captain, each taking their turn informing their leaders that they had found no sign of the Jedi.

When the last of the troopers had returned and still not a trace of the Jedi had been uncovered, Vader looked slowly at the quivering and scared inhabitants of Shri'gaa Outpost. He stared at them for a moment, thinking. Just to his left, a family of three Ithorians huddled together beneath the awning of a shop that sold farming equipment. Vader pointed to them. "Captain, bring them over here."

"Oh, no!" Rhombulus moaned to himself.

The stormtrooper captain hurried over and motioned to the family with his blaster. "You three. Come on, this way."The Ithorian parents glanced at each other nervously but did not move. "Come on! Now! Move!"

Rhombulus cringed as he watched from his hiding place on the opposite side of the road. The stormtrooper captain ushered the Ithorian parents and their small child in front of Vader.

"Oh, no no no..."

With slow, methodical movements, Vader pushed back his cape and removed his lightsaber from his belt. "General Rhombulus," he called out, his words slow and loud, "your efforts to evade my troops are commendable, but you will not evade me. I know you are here, and very close. I can sense your presence. If you do not surrender yourself to me, I will begin executing the residents of this outpost." There was a panicked murmur from the people within earshot. Vader slowly placed the emitter of his lightsaber against the left temple of the Ithorian child in front of him. It's parents gasped. "Starting with this child."

The child's parents pleaded no, but the stormtrooper captain and another trooper pushed them back. The child stood frozen to the spot, too young to comprehend what was happening, but terrified just the same.

"You have thirty seconds," Vader added.

Rhombulus's hands looked at each other, then up at him. "Well, we had a good run," said the left snake.

"What?"

"We're not just gonna let that little kid, die, right?" asked the right snake.

"There's gotta be something we can do!"

Vader's electronic voice reached Rhombulus's ears. "Fifteen seconds."

"Then you'd better think of something fast," left snake said.

Peering through the gap in the wall again, Rhombulus scanned the surroundings outside the shack as quickly as he could, looking for anything that might help him turn the tide. There were at least fifty stormtroopers. When he had defended Shri'gaa Outpost from the pirate band, he'd only been up against fifteen, and none of them were a Sith Lord.

He had no choice.

"Five seconds. Four. Three. Tw-"

There was a loud crash of splintering wood as several boards from the side of the shack snapped and exploded from the building as the hiding Jedi blasted a hole in the wall with the Force.

"STOOOOOOP!" Rhombulus stepped carefully through the hole in the wall as every stormtrooper's blaster turned on him. "Stop! I surrender!" He fell to his hands and knees. "Just don't hurt the child."

Vader lowered his lightsaber from the child's head and slowly walked toward the Jedi, who hung his head in shame and would not look up at him. "I knew you would not let a civilian die. Your compassion is your weakness, and it will be your downfall." He waved over the stormtrooper captain, who was followed by several other troopers. "Execute the Jedi immediately."

This caught Rhombulus's attention. "Wait, what?"

The captain stepped forward, three other stormtroopers lined up on either side."Alright, boys. Ready?" All seven stormtroopers raised their weapons and brought them to bear on Rhombulus."Aim."

"Been nice knowing you," Rhombulus's left hand said.

"Fire."

Seven bolts of energy left the barrels of seven blasters and struck Rhombulus in the head. Those same seven lasers ricocheted off at seemingly random angles as the massive crystal that made up the Cerulean's cranium deflected them.

"Oh, yeah," said the right snake hand. "Forgot. Crystal Head deflects lasers."

Instantly imbued with determined inspiration, Rhombulus leapt off the ground into the air propelled by the Force before the stormtroopers had a chance to react. His lightsaber flew into his hand, the azure blade igniting before his feet touched back down again directly behind the seven stormtroopers.

"Stop him!" the stormtrooper Captain yelled as Vader calmly observed.

With lightsaber clasped firmly in the mouths of his two snake-hands, Rhombulus quickly dispatched two of the stormtroopers before any of them even had a chance to open fire. His head able to deflect any blaster bolts that struck it, he only needed to protect his body, twirling his lightsaber around to counter as the dozens of stormtroopers around him sent laser fire at him from all directions. Six more stormtroopers fell to deflected blaster fire, two from shots that merely bounced off of his head, and he cut down three more nearby with his lightsaber.

Then...

"Hold your fire!"

Rhombulus, too, froze as the stormtroopers ceased their attack, surprised that the command came from Darth Vader.

"You will not be able to overwhelm this Jedi with blaster fire, and your numbers are already being reduced," he calmly informed his troops as he stepped slowly toward Rhombulus. He held up his lightsaber again. "I will handle this myself." And the crimson blade of Vader's new lightsaber flashed to life.

Rhombulus gripped his lightsaber tighter in the mouths of his snake hands. "You don't frighten me."

"I'm sure." And Vader swung his blade forward in an opening attack.

During his time as a General during the Clone Wars, Rhombulus never once crossed blades with General Grevious. He never encountered Count Dooku, nor did he ever face off against Asajj Ventress. The only blade-to-blade duels he was ever involved in were for training or practice against other Jedi. And so, when he brought his lightsaber blade up to block Darth Vader's initial attack, the ferocity of the blow nearly knocked him off his feet. He stumbled backwards, desperately trying to regain his balance, and by the time he did, Vader had stepped forward and was already swinging his blade toward Rhombulus's head for a second time.

Acting entirely on instinct, Rhombulus ducked backwards, the menacing red blade passing inches away from his face. Quickly, the Cerulean Jedi took a few hurried steps backwards away from his opponent to regroup. He carefully adjusted his grip as Vader strode toward him, better prepared for the next strike.

Vader attacked again, and this time Rhombulus's counter was sured up. The blow did not knock him for a loop and he earned an opportunity to bestow a counterattack. Vader blocked it as if the strike came from a weak old man and sent another parry in Rhombulus's direction.

Their motions grew faster, the humming and crashes of their weapons growing in speed and intensity. Block, block, strike, counter, block, over, under, strike, block.

With each defended attack, Rhombulus's ferocity multiplied, his confidence growing. He was learning Vader's form and strengthening his stance. He felt as though each forward motion of his lightsaber came closer to finding its mark.

He spun around a full three-hundred-sixty degrees to build up some momentum in his blade.

But when he came back around, Vader's lightsaber was waiting for him, and Rhombulus found his midsection impaled on the crimson blade as Vader's free hand caught his lightsaber hilt and stopped its trajectory from colliding with his shoulder.

Lightsabers of red and blue extinguished simultaneously as Vader switched off both. Rhombulus slumped to his knees, stunned into silence, before crashing to the dirt road on his stomach, his body feeling as though it were burning from the inside out.

The residents of Shri'gaa Outpost gasped. The small Ithorian child Vader had threatened began to cry. For several agonizingly long moments, they watched as the Sith Lord stared at Rhombulus dying on the ground. Then he motioned the stormtrooper captain closer. Vader handed the Jedi's lightsaber to the captain and returned his own to his belt. Turning around, he spoke loudly to no one in particular. "For aiding a fugitive and conspiring against the Empire, the inhabitants of Shri'gaa Outpost will be executed immediately."

Every stormtrooper still standing instantly located the civilian closest to them, blasters pointed at every one before the innocent people even knew what was happening.

Rhombulus lay on the ground, paralyzed, the dark eye inside his crystal head unable to look away. He heard the screams and the blaster fire, saw Darth Vader standing just in front of him observing, and there he lay, helpless.

"This...is...all...my...fault..." he groaned.

And then, Rhombulus breathed his last, as his hand-snakes did the same, and the very last thing he saw before he closed his eye was the Ithorian child and its parents collapsing to the ground in a hail of lasers.

Eclipsa Butterfly had been on the run for weeks. Her ship, the Meteora, was very easily identifiable as hers, and it seemed that every planet she traveled to hoping to hide, there were Imperial troops who were on the lookout for her LA-3500x "SkyCruiser" yacht.

Several times, she'd accidentally skirted close enough to be fired on by Star Destroyers, and she'd been shot at by stormtroopers two times more. Unable to find a safe place to land, Eclipsa had no way of resupplying or refueling. Now theMeteoria was running on fumes and the pantry had run out of food five days ago.

The ship was in orbit around the gas giant of Noctu operating in low power mode while Eclipsa tried to decide on her next move.

"Perhaps it would just be easier to turn this ship toward that big ball of gas and give it full throttle," she said to herself, leaning against her elbows on the small table in the lounge. Anything she said was spoken only to herself. She was the only one on board. She didn't even have a droid to keep her company. "Certainly would be easier than starving to death."

A soft beeping caught her attention. The alert came from her commlink, lying on the cushioned bench seat across from her.

But my commlink is set to receive no transmissions.

Driven by curiosity and fear that her commlink would somehow allow her position to be tracked, Eclipsa bounded from her seat and snatched up the device. She quickly pressed the "disconnect transmission" key, but the commlink still chimed. She pressed it a few more times, but there was no effect.

"What in the galaxy...?"

She examined the commlink closely. Near the bottom of the small cylindrical device, a square-shaped blue light slowly flashed on and off. That meant she had received a communicate that was only readable.

Now even more curious, she hurried back to her seat at the table, picking up her datapad and connecting the two devices. A message in code appeared on the datapad screen.

"Who could this be from?"

The cipher for this message was one she knew well, and she quickly decoded the message:

SENATOR BUTTERFLY: IN NEED OF YOUR ASSISTANCE. JEDI ORDER NEAR TOTAL EXTINCTION. HEAR YOU MAY NEED HELP, TOO. COME TO SHRI'GAA OUTPOST ON ENDOR. IT IS SAFE. IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS LOST MOTH.

JEDI KNIGHT RHOMBULUS

Eclipsa was stunned. In spite of all of the Empire's actions, a Jedi was still out there, and looking for her?

No. It was probably a trap, set by the Imperial Army to capture and/or execute her.

But what if it isn't...?

A rush of thoughts flew through Eclipsa's mind: Her lack of supplies. Her likely-dead niece. The evil Sith Lord who now ruled over the galaxy. The Jedi Order, maybe still clinging to life, who could put an end to Palpatine.

A sigh escaped her lips. "Well, I can either die of starvation or by firing squad, and firing squad will be far less unpleasant. And if I'm really fortunate, it will actually be Master Rhombulus waiting for me."

She shut down her datapad and made her way to the cockpit, grabbing her wide-brimmed hat from where she had left it on the empty copilot's seat and pulling it onto her head. Her hyperfuel was still holding out, and there was just enough left in the main reactor fuel tank to get her to Endor.

Without a droid, Eclipsa had to program the navicomputer herself, but she'd done it enough times now that the calculation did not take long. Before long, all was ready. She took a deep breath. "Alright, my love," she said to her ship, giving the controls a gentle pat. "Here we go." She put her hand to the hyperdrive lever. "Let's hope we aren't walking right into a trap."

And she made the jump.

Hey, check it out, this chapter actually has some Star Warsing in it!

I really enjoyed writing this chapter despite none of the main characters being present. Maybe I just needed a break from them.

Also, I named Eclipsa's ship Meteorabecause Meteora herself does not appear in this story, and neither does Globgor. I was able to make so many characters from SVTFOE fit not only into the Star Wars universe, but also into the story that I wanted to tell, but I couldn't make Globgor and Meteora work.

Well, I mean, I could have, but it would have required the inclusion of an event that I really didn't want to include, so I figured I would just leave them out and name Eclipsa's ship after her daughter that does not appear.

Next: The Crew Splits Up