OOO
Chapter Nineteen.
OOO
Cold. A cold silence that somehow slithered within him, around him, through him.
Barriss didn't speak. She didn't need to. She understood. And so he understood. And the cold tendrils that snaked through the bond squeezed his gut with breathless realization that wasn't really his:
A Sith. Palpatine was a Sith. Palpatine was the Sith... And Dooku was his right hand.
The glow of the data pad still burned his eyes in the darkness, but he didn't see anymore. Barriss' breathing quickened inside him as if the bond itself breathed along with her, and his own chest tightened painfully against the wave of thoughts and feelings echoing with her voice:
'The war. All the death...' Images flashed before him. Places he had never been, smoldering in ashes. People he had never met, their faces contorted in pain. 'A lie. All for a lie.'
His fingers cramped as if he was the one clenching the controls of a Jedi speeder. 'Barriss...' But he didn't pull away from the bond. No matter how much it ached.
'All for nothing. All of it was for nothing!' Hurt. Fear. Anger. Every unfiltered thing swirling inside her passed through the bond, and twisted his stomach as if they were his own.
He sucked in a breath against the stabbing surge, and gripped the cold edge of the console as if it could anchor him against the rising pounding in his chest. "Barriss," he gasped out loud into the darkness of the room.
'You don't understand, Aiden. Everything I did, everything I saw, every friend I lost!'
The tendrils clenched his heart, and he sucked in another breath. He wasn't there; he couldn't comfort her. She wasn't here; she couldn't see what was happening to him. 'Barriss, please...'
A sudden thought flashed through his mind—the strange but soothing feeling that had caressed through the bond just minutes ago. The way the tension had drained out of him like someone pulled a cork. No doubt it had been Barriss, but how had she done it?
Another stab lanced through him, and he grit his teeth. Wing it. He braced against the pain, and touched the bond.
It throbbed like a raw wound.
He wouldn't waste her time with platitudes he didn't even believe himself. She was smarter than him, anyway. There was probably nothing he could say that she hadn't already heard somewhere. Instead, he focused on the bond. Focused on her. And he leaned into her as if she was sitting right next to him.
A jolt of surprise flinched.
He held steady, not pushing or pulling away, just... being. With as much wordless comfort as he could muster.
All at once, the surge cut off. The tendrils released his heart as if burned, and retreated back through the bond. And in their place, a strange silence emerged.
He could breathe again. That was good, at least. '...Barriss?'
He felt her release a long, slow breath, and a gentle nudge pushed at him through the bond. Not hard, but enough for him to understand the meaning.
He slowly pulled back.
She didn't speak for a long while, and he sat quietly—Probably wasn't a good idea to talk before she did. He absently skimmed Palpatine's files instead.
'We have to warn them, Aiden.' she said, finally. Her voice was quieter than before, but also somehow stronger. 'He can't get away with this.'
'And he won't.' He hoped he sounded surer than he felt. 'That's what this whole thing has been about.' He paused in scrolling through the files, and then amended, 'I mean, for you, anyway. For me it's mostly been about saving my neck and clearing your name, but you know what I mean.' He gave a mental quirk-of-the-lip. Wasn't really the right time for a joke, but it was all he could think of to try to beat back the uncomfortable weight that had settled in the bond like a dark stone.
'What's "Operation Knightfall"?' she said.
Huh? The out-of-left-field question slapped him into a dumb silence. He was about to ask, 'What the heck are you talking about?' when something—Barriss, he would later realize—pulled his attention down to the pad in his hands. Right to where he had stopped scrolling Palpatine's files. And there, buried among an eye-crossing list of file-names, was a file simply labeled, 'Operation Knightfall'.
If there had been spotlights lighting up the 'Palpatine-and-Dooku' file, there was practically a sun lighting up these words as if saying, Click on this right now.
He tapped the screen. And one by one, page upon page opened before him. Images laying out in graphic detail a series of events to occur. Social preparation. Pre-written cover stories. Falsified reports. Protocols for body disposal...
Schematics of the Jedi Temple.
A metallic sensation he had come to dread poured slowly through his gut, thick and heavy, and coated the ice that crept back in through the bond with each new image that filled the screen. His eyes widened. 'Barriss... This isn't just some power-play... He's planning to genocide you guys...'
There were kids in the Jedi Temple...
Barriss spoke through her own shock. 'How could Dak Landon have possibly gotten his hands on these files?'
He stopped short. Everything in him wanted to tell her. He had already decided to when she contacted him and found out Dooku had taken him. But this? This was nowhere near the right time. He could just picture it now: "Sorry about finding out the leader of the Republic is actually the mortal enemy you've been searching for, and not only did he arrange the entire war that's taken friends from you, but he's also planning your systematic extermination. Oh, by the way, I've been lying to you and secretly working for his second-in-command the entire time we've been running together. Whoopsie."
Yeah. That would go over real well.
He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled a pathetic breath. Soon. He'd tell her everything when the time was better. For now, he grit his teeth against the bad taste already forming in his mouth, and spoke.
'Dak was a slicer, wasn't he?' A question. Not a lie.
Somehow, that made him feel dirtier.
'I suppose...' She sounded just as lost as he felt. 'That would explain why Palpatine sent Bane to kill him... But then, why would Bane have just left the data pad behind to be found?'
He tapped his finger against the side of the pad, and focused on not thinking.
'I suppose it doesn't matter,' she finally said, and he could picture her shaking her head, that look of steely determination entering her eyes. 'We have to get this to the Council, Aiden.'
Right. Endgame. 'That would be a lot easier if they didn't make the Temple a cyber-island with no ports for outsiders to dock.'
'If the Temple was connected to the holonet, people like you would be trying to slice in every day.'
Well, yeah. He rubbed the back of his wrist across his forehead. 'Guess it's door-delivery for great justice then. How far away are you?'
'I'm almost there.'
He looked at one of the maps still glowing on the screens above him, and then glanced at the paused surveillance footage from the Lounge still frozen on another. 'Watch your back, Barriss. Bane had a heck of a head-start on you and he was tracking us the whole time. He's probably already set up somewhere outside waiting for Palpatine to give the word to kick in the door and blow my brains out or something.'
'You just worry about preparing yourself to leave, I'll worry about Bane.'
He had been prepared to leave since the moment he got here. With nothing but a stack of monitors and a data pad to keep him company, there wasn't much 'preparation' needed to just get up and go. Not much preparation for himself, anyway...
The consoles and power-conduits hummed in front of him like an ominous murmur, and he tapped a finger against his thigh. Dooku had gone to a lot of effort to bring him here. Wouldn't it just be good manners to leave something behind as a token of how much he appreciated his time here?
A bit of his old self began peaking through the cracks of the growing weight inside him, and he plugged Dak's data pad into the main console, the ease of familiarity settling in as he tapped the display.
The display flashed green with a chime, and system menus opened before him. Not bad... Let's see what we're working with.
He placed the still-connected pad on the board of knobs and switches, and knelt in front of the console, giving the front panel a hard tug until it popped out with clunk. And through the newly exposed access hatch, wires and circuits blinked and tangled in a jumbled mess before him.
His lip curled faintly.
OOO
Barriss switched off the lights of the speeder, allowing the veil of murky fog to swallow her as she glided silently into the darkest alcove protruding in the mist, and touched the speeder down slowly enough to not swirl the haze. Until she and Aiden were safely inside the walls of the Temple, the shadows were her ally.
Through the murk, the conspicuously un-billboarded tower from which Aiden's presence called to her rose up through the depths like a jagged thorn.
Bane was nowhere to be seen.
She switched off the engine, and placed her hand on her saber and communicator to keep them from clinking together as she hopped out, landing in a soft crouch and darting through concealed walkways and thick fog, her footsteps a ghost's whisper as she cut across shadows and ledges, just a wrong step away from the murky depths below as she cast her gaze through the darkness for any sign of a wide-brimmed silhouette.
Bane was here. Predatory intent hung in the air almost as thickly as the mist. Her only advantage would be he had no way of knowing she was coming.
A glint of light fainted in the corner of her vision. Twenty meters away, an empty speeder sat in the shroud of a darkened alcove, well away from any walkways—or prying eyes. The edge of the speeder protruded just far enough from the shadows to catch reflections of headlights from the passing night-traffic.
She brushed her touch over the cool of her saber, and scanned upward toward every crevice and ledge sprouting from the building, narrowing her eyes into the darkest corners. Predatory intent choked the air around the spire, thickening every breath of mist she drew in.
Bane.
She gripped her saber-hilt tighter, pulling it from her belt to remove any chance of it clinking into her communicator, and she launched herself upward, taking half the spire's length in one bound. She cleared a ledge and landed in a crouch, bending her knees into the impact to absorb the jolt of her feet hitting the durasteel—and the sound that came with it.
And there, in the shadows above her, poking out from over the edge of what must have been a service-walkway running through the core of the building like an eye in a needle, the barrel of a sniper rifle sat trained on Dooku's tower across the chasm.
Aiden was right. Bane was watching. And if he was in communication with Palpatine, then the Chancell... the Sith knew Aiden was here. And he would not sit back and do nothing while Dooku coerced Aiden into assisting an uprising within the Sith Order.
She needed to get Aiden away from here, and inside the walls of the Temple before Palpatine enacted whatever plot he had conjured to deal with Aiden and Dooku.
One final plunge, and then freedom. She released a familiar, steadying breath, and pulled the hem of her cloak's hood tighter over her eyes. 'Be ready, Aiden. This is going to move quickly when it starts.'
'I'm ready. Just putting the finishing touches on a parting-gift for Dooku now.'
With a nod more to herself than him, she crept around the spire's edge until the walkway's opening on the opposite side of the structure—directly behind Bane—hung in the mist above her.
She gripped her saber with a small breath, coiled, and launched upward in a swirl fog, landing in the shadowed mouth of the tunnel like a whisper.
Bane lie prone in the silhouetted opening of the opposite mouth of the tunnel, rifle propped on a shoulder-bag as he stared through the scope.
No mistakes. She held her breath and stalked forward, deliberate, slow steps one after the other, toe-heel, toe-heel. A single blow to the back of the head. The blunt end of the saber. No noise, no complications.
Her robes sliding over her legs as she crept sounded impossibly loud in her ears. She licked her lips and adjusted her grip on the hilt. Just one more step...
She pulled her arm back, eyes locked on the back of his head, and coiled her fingers tight around the saber.
Beep! Her communicator chirped.
Ice erupted like a jolt through her heart, and Bane whipped his head around, blood red eyes locking on hers. "Blast!" She smashed her arm down, angling the pommel of her saber straight at his temple.
His teeth flashed in a snarl, and he crashed his forearm sideways into hers, pinpricks exploding up through her shoulder as he batted her strike away from his head, the saber-hilt clanging against the side of the tunnel wall instead.
Her balance pitched with the missed swing, and he pulled a leg in and slammed the sole of his boot into her sternum.
Her feet left the ground, and her back hit the floor, vision flashing double.
'Barriss, look out!' A familiar tingle raced up her spine.
Bane swung his legs back under him, ankles tangling in the strap of the shoulder-bag, and he shoved himself to his feet and ripped his blaster from its holster. "I've had enough'a this Jedi sh—"
She clenched her fist and made a yanking motion, and the shoulder-bag tangling his ankles flew toward her hard and fast, jerking his feet out from under him.
He gave a nasally cry as his back clanged against the walkway, and a blaster shot exploded from the barrel, reverberating through the tunnel like an amplifier, projecting the ear-splitting bark across the night.
Blast! She swiped her hand viciously, and he smashed into the wall hat-first, crumpling instantly.
A thick, metallic feeling poured through the bond. 'Barriss, the sound of that shot made it all the way over here.'
Dooku... The metallic feeling only increased as she scrambled hands-and-knees to the eye of the tunnel, and peered through the darkness.
On a balcony jutting near the top of the jagged thorn across the chasm, a dark figure emerged against the mist, looking hurriedly into the night. And cold, grey eyes locked with hers through the fog.
Oh, no...
A swirl of a cape, and Dooku disappeared back inside the thorn.
'Aiden, Dooku is coming to you!' She gathered herself and lept from the eye, clutching her saber tight. Her stomach fluttered as the air whipped to a blur around her, and she angled toward the alcove below in the split-second of free-fall. There! Bane's speeder glimmered with a passing headlight, and she tensed every muscle in her body and crashed into the diver's seat, an involuntary grunt blowing past her lips.
Aiden's voice filled her mind. 'What do I do?'
She dropped the saber into her lap as the speeder powered on with a jolt, and she cranked the controls and whipped around toward Dooku's tower. 'Hide the data pad and get next to the external wall. Hurry.'
The saber sat heavy in her lap.
'How am I supposed to know which wall is the external one?'
'The same way I know exactly where you are. Focus on our bond... focus on me. And you'll know. You'll know which direction I'm coming from.' She devoured the distance to the tower, and swept the speeder to a stuttering halt parallel with a plain section of wall half-way up the tower's length. Quickly... She ripped her saber up from her lap, igniting the fog in a wash of azure, and plunged the blade into the smooth durasteel.
Darkened metal bubbled a molten gold as she urged the blade faster through the steel, knuckles white as she carved a rapid circle as large as herself until the molten edges connected at the ends like a golden ring glowing in the tower's side.
She yanked the saber out of the completed circle, and shoved her hands toward the center, fingers spread wide. Seared metal groaned once, and then gave way, grinding backward into the tower and clanging to the floor.
Through the smoldering gap, Aiden stood next to a console monitor, staring between her, the chunk of smoking metal, and finally the bubbling edges of the wall as he tucked Dak's data pad into the small of his back under his shirt. "Huh."
She gestured him over impatiently. "Come on!"
Across from him, at the opposite end of the room, the door screeched open and Dooku swept into the threshold. Grey eyes locked with violet eyes locked with blue, and her breath left her. "Aiden, go limp!"
She didn't give him time to ask for explanation before she stretched her hands toward him, clenched her fists, and yanked.
"Whoa!" He jerked violently and flew toward her, through the smoldering gap, and crashed into the passenger seat in scruffy tangle.
Dooku's saber burst crimson, and he lunged.
Cold shards seized her heart, and she wrenched the controls of the speeder around and shoved the accelerator. The speeder lurched once, swallowing ten meters of fog, and then shuddered hard as if crashing into an invisible wall, engines whining desperately even as they made no forward progress.
Dooku stood in the golden outline of the ring, saber clenched in one hand, the other stretched toward the speeder, veins popping. Grey eyes bore into violet, and faint tendrils of electricity began whipping across pale fingers.
Her eyes widened, and she abandoned the controls and lept to the rear of the speeder, jabbing the activator of her blade. "Aiden, take the controls!"
Electricity burst from Dooku's hand, straight toward the speeder's whining engine, and she planted her feet on the burning-hot engine compartment and swept her blade into the path of the lightning.
Blue arcs crashed into her saber, almost ripping the hilt from her grasp as she clenched the rapidly-warming steel with all her strength, gritting her teeth against the assault as crackling arcs whipped and flared up the blade. "Get us out of here!"
Aiden lay across the front seats, tapping quickly but confidently on Dak's data pad as he hunkered down as low as he could, and a strange smile quirked his lip. "That's not going to be a problem for much longer." He gave a final, definitive tap to the screen.
In the darkness of the room behind Dooku, the pale blue light of the console monitors cut off, and one by one, maps and video feeds dissolved away into critical system warnings casting ominous red through the shadows.
Sparks clawed from every data-port marking the consoles, running like frantic currents across the monitors and displays, and finally coalesced together into one common direction—straight toward the main power-conduit.
A familiar tingle raced up Barriss' spine, and Dooku's eyes widened.
The conduit gave a shrill cry audible even over the scream of the speeder's engine, and Dooku dropped his electric assault in an instant and gripped his saber with both hands, spinning his blade between himself and what was about to happen. "You—"
An electrical surge exploded from the conduit in a blast of whipping tendrils, lashing through the room like lightning. The crimson of Dooku's saber engulfed in blinding white flashes as he swirled the blade in a protective shield around himself, becoming nothing but a dark blur in a storm.
The speeder shuddered as he lost his invisible grip.
Now or never. "Punch it, Aiden!"
Aiden gripped the passenger seat he still hunkered down in, and knocked the accelerator with the heel of his boot as far as it would go.
The speeder jolted hard, and then launched, breaking free of its invisible ropes.
Barriss tumbled into the rear seats and landed with an 'oof'. She grit her teeth and twisted, and dug her fingers into torn cushion as she clambered back up and into the forward pilot's seat, collapsing into the broken-down leather with a fast exhale and swatting aside a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her hood.
Dooku's tower faded into the mist behind them.
"One final plunge and then freedom, huh?"
She blinked and looked at him, and he looked right back with that quirk on his lip.
It took her a moment to remember what he was talking about. But when she did, she couldn't help the second exhale that blew past the quirk forming on her own lips. "One final plunge..." she agreed.
He let his head fall back against the rest. "I like it." He breathed and gripped the pad in his lap. "I think we've earned a little freedom."
Freedom. She hadn't even realized she thought of it in those terms. But it was true enough. She hadn't been free since this whole thing began.
Aiden most likely hadn't been free for a long time before that.
"A Jedi's duty is to reveal the truth." She glanced at the pad in his hands, and then gave him a faint smile slightly more sincere than the rogue quirk he had graced her with so many times. "There is freedom in that."
His smile faltered, the mischievous twinkle that took permanent residence in his eyes dulling to nothing. And finally, he looked away. "Yeah." His voice was quiet as he watched the passing neon.
She furrowed her brow.
Beep! Her communicator chirped once more.
She flinched and pressed her lips together, and a strange pain bloomed between her temples. The accursed device itself... Who could possibly be trying to contact her? She snatched the comm from her belt as she rubbed her head, and jabbed the receive button. "Who is this?"
The face of Luminara appeared in her palm. "Barriss."
Aiden whipped his head to the transmission, and Barriss froze. "Master?..." What in the blazes...
Luminara looked at her oddly, or maybe it was just the instability of the signal that made it appear that way. "I know this is unexpected, Barriss, but a file has just been sent to the Council... and to every news service on Coruscant. A file containing footage of you. Stealing evidence from a crime scene."
The fading shards in her heart numbed over.
Luminara peered at her. "I only need to know one thing, Barriss, and I need you to answer me honestly. Did you steal Dak Landon's data pad from the police?"
It didn't truly matter anymore. She would be punished, yes, but thanks to Aiden—and Dak Landon—she now had the proof she needed. They would have to listen to her. She would not be brushed off as a foolish padawan involving herself in things she didn't understand this time.
She set her jaw against the dull throb in her skull, and gazed at Luminara straight-on. "Yes, I did, Master. And you must listen to me. I was wrong. Chancellor Palpatine is not conspiring with Count Dooku. He is Dooku's Sith master—and the one we have been searching for."
Luminara lifted a brow, and the subdued amusement that sat buried beneath the otherwise sober look of her eyes had to be a trick of the static weaving through the transmission. "Oh?"
"You don't have to believe me, you can see it for yourself when we present the files to the Council."
The humor vanished. "'We'? The slicer is with you?"
"We're on our way to the Temple now. When you make it there, everything will be revealed."
"No."
Barriss blinked. "What?"
Luminara's gaze shifted, but never left Barriss' face. "As I said, footage of you stealing evidence from a murder has been released to all of Coruscant. The CPF is currently searching the Temple for you. If you arrive there with a known associate of Dooku, you'll be arrested, and the Council won't be able to stop it.
She quieted, studying Barriss through the flicker of the transmission for several seconds, and then seemed to conclude something in her mind. "If you truly have proof that what you claim about the Chancellor is true, then you must meet me immediately." The instability of the signal knocked the movement of her lips out of sync with her voice. "I'm sending you my location now. Meet me there quickly."
Barriss furrowed her brow at the coordinates. "But, the platform I left you on... how did you get so far from it so quickly?"
Luminara looked at her a moment. And then said, "I was searching for you, of course. Now be swift." With what appeared to be some effort, she softened her expression. "And be safe."
She cut the transmission in a blur of static.
Silence filled the cockpit, and Aiden looked at Barriss. "That was... nice?"
Barriss nodded absently, the weight of the communicator sitting forgotten in her hand. "That was..."
Strange.
OOO
Darkness consumed the fog as they descended near the coordinates Luminara sent them—a smoky platform well out of the reach of the stab of neon.
Aiden rubbed his arms as they sank lower, the stale air chilling against his skin the nearer they came to the landing. Didn't really seem that a Jedi like Luminara would go in for this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but she sure found the perfect spot for it. Wasn't a soul in sight anywhere.
Guess no one in their right mind would ever come through this way if they could help it.
He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder as Barriss touched the speeder down, and there, in the obscured mouth of an alley, stood the unmistakable silhouette of Luminara. "Barriss." He gestured toward her master.
Barriss followed his finger, and powered down the speeder, hopping out in a swirl of fabric.
Into the hands of the Jedi once more... He huffed and patted Dak's data pad sitting heavy under his shirt, and then followed.
Luminara remained where she stood in the alley's mouth, halfway between light and shadow. Something about the combination made it hard to focus on her face. "Were you followed?" she said in place of greeting.
Barriss closed her eyes as she stopped in front of her, and then pinched her eyes tighter with a grimace, absently rubbing her temples as she responded, "That speeder's a lot faster than it looks."
Aiden furrowed his brow. 'Barriss, you okay?'
Luminara looked past Barriss' shoulder at the deceptively plain speeder, and something like recognition pulled at her lip. She then trailed her gaze back to Barriss' pinched face and said, "Is something wrong, Padawan?"
Barriss clamped her eyelids tighter still and then hunched over, pressing her hands desperately to her temples. "Something's happening. I don't... I don't know."
Aiden stepped to her and placed his hand between her shoulder blades. "Barriss? Barriss talk to me." 'What's going on?'
The bond flared inside him, and then lit like a flame.
All at once, she doubled over with a small cry, fingers twisting in the fabric of her hood, and icy tendrils gripped his spine as she fell into his arms, clutching at him until he couldn't take his eyes off her. 'Barriss! What's happening?' "Luminara, do something!"
Black fabric began sedately shuffling in the corner of his vision. "Be at peace, slicer, she will be fine. She is merely a victim of her own mental strength."
He held Barriss tightly. "What the blazes are you talking about?"
The black fabric swished to a stop next to them, and Luminara's oddly cold eyes stared down at him. Since when was she taller than him? "You are fortunate. Your mind is weak. It does not struggle." She shifted her gaze to Barriss. "Her mind is strong. It struggles against the illusion."
He looked at her, and couldn't stop the glare that settle in. "What illusion?"
"This one." She pulled her saber from her waist and ignited the blade, the red blade, straight through Barriss' abdomen.
The crimson shard burst all the way through and out her back, and she seized in his arms, eyes flying open impossibly wide as her mouth opened in silent scream.
The world stopped. Fire lit every nerve in his body. A liquid stream burned through his core, every muscle in his body contracting as the bond screamed inside him as if he had been stabbed right along with her. And together, they fell to the cold durasteel, shimmering eyes locking with each other. 'Barriss!' He mouthed the words desperately, lungs frozen in the pain searing through the bond from the inside out.
And there above them, staring down with eyes no longer violet, was not Luminara, but Palpatine.
Cracked lips pulled back as yellow eyes burned beneath a black hood that no longer resembled Luminara's headdress. And in a voice more chilling than the night seeping into Aiden's bones through the steel floor, he spoke. "At last we meet, my young friend."
Aiden gasped uselessly against the fire as he stared wide-eyed, unable to lift his head from the cold durasteel, and Palpatine lifted a single hand from within black sleeves, eerie light forming at the ends of his fingers. "Sleep now."
The light exploded from his fingers, and Aiden's world went dark.
END CHAPTER