THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 13 – No Turning Back

The fleet sailed on for several days more after leaving Nee'port and the deceptive serenity of its passage was soon confirmed as being nought but the calm before the storm, just as most of its experienced personnel suspected. Nagas the Patriot passed on to his team that he'd gotten word that they'd soon be engaged in a long spell of fighting and advised those of his people who had the next battle duty to prepare themselves. That included Attenbro this time, one of Nagas's most trusted underlings and a friend. The Geonosian Citizen had become a friend to Lissa, too, and she was more than happy to join and help Attenbro out when he shuttled over to the Invisible Hand after supper that evening to do one last inventory of all the new kit and supplies in the Geos' workshop.

They weren't the only people taking a few extra precautionary measures. When the two arrived on the flagship, one of the first things that greeted them in the hangar bay was the unmistakable sound of General Grievous's voice bellowing away at someone. Luckily, he wasn't shouting at them. He was with a bunch of droids and some Neimoidians and several starfighters, which he'd apparently ordered towed out into the middle of the only clear flight space left on the entire hangar floor, all the rest being absolutely crammed full with row upon row of war machines all ready to roll. It was also luck—and a certain planned convenience—that the Geonosians' workshop happened to be sited at the very end right next to where said flight space was always left open. It meant that the two scientists would have access to a little unexpected entertainment as they worked away.

Attenbro, who appreciated big toys just as much as did many big boys, was intrigued enough by the goings-on that he began carrying out boxes to unpack on the hangar floor next to his shop, just so he could watch the show. Lissa followed suit, although she had more interest in watching General Grievous than in watching his machines. It was soon obvious that what the cyborg was doing was test-flying his fighters, one by one, and running the line crew through some sort of drills. He had quite the collection of personal ships, too. Lissa recognised the sleek, dull grey fighter he'd landed on Marku and the exotic fanblade Dooku had given him, and the small, more prosaic, brightly coloured one, that was a Jedi interceptor the General had captured himself and had modified for his own use, or so Attenbro informed her. She was pretty surprised to hear about the interceptor. Using an enemy's starfighter in combat didn't sound all that legit to her, but then, who would ever have the nerve to tell Grievous otherwise?

Invisible Hand's hangar bay blast doors had been partially withdrawn and the shields activated on both her port and starboard sides and Grievous was free to come and go from either direction. The point of this particular evening's flying festivities seemed to be to get in and out of the hangar bay as fast as inhumanly possible. Grievous would vault into one of his machines, blast off and out at top speed, and a minute later roar in from the opposite side and land, so recklessly that half the time a shower of sparks would spray up from one screeching landing pad or the other. The line crew was then supposed to rush forward and go through the motions of a brief inspection and refuelling and sometimes rearmament, by which time Grievous was usually out of his cockpit and down on the floor, yelling again. He was far enough away that neither Lissa nor Attenbro could ever quite make out what he was saying, but the tone of his voice and its volume always made it crystal clear that it was not complimentary.

"Poor guys," Lissa sympathized, meaning the Neimoidian crewman. "What in the world is he so mad about, can you tell?"

"Is the turn-around, is too slow!" Attenbro said in his fractured Basic. "When Grievous fights, he wants everything fast, fast. He not like the Neimoidians, don't move fast enough." Another withering string of harsh words wafted their way. Attenbro laughed. "Neimoidians never make him happy. He just like to yell at them."

Nice, thought Lissa, who couldn't help wondering which poor sap had done what to so sour him on an entire species.

On one thing, the two scientists soon agreed: The Geonosian fanblade was Grievous's prettiest starfighter. On the ground, the vessel had the vague form of a rosy-red shuttlecock with its flighted end folded down tight, an exotic design sporting a bulbous half-spherical front end holding the cockpit and then the long fuselage sweeping behind. Once in the air, its two wings would extend out top and bottom on a vertical plane until they formed a half-circular arc and it perfectly resembled its common name. Grievous always hovered the fanblade a few seconds, getting it in or out of flight mode, before he took off or landed again. This earned it top marks for making the most spectacular entrances and exits as well.

But even piloting exotic fighter craft and verbally abusing Neimoidians must've lost its charm after a while. Grievous eventually leaped out of one of his ships without flying into an immediate lather and was content to just watch as the line crew performed its simulated tasks. He even started losing interest—Lissa and Attenbro could see him looking their way for the first time all evening. It wasn't long before he came over to them.

The two civilians were currently sitting on the floor, each of them with their own data padd checklist, surrounded by a small sea of parts and doodads. As Grievous approached, Lissa looked to her Geonosian colleague, but he seemed not at all inclined to get up, so she followed his lead and stayed put. The only acknowledgement Attenbro did finally make was to just look up and say, "Good evening, General. You make lots of training today?"

"Yes." The bright yellow eyes looked them over. Lissa nodded, rather unsurely. Grievous nodded back. Evidently, he had no need of them and working on was thus okay with him. She relaxed and reached for another item on the floor, to compare with her checklist, not knowing that he was still looking down at her and at Attenbro too and thinking how weird it still was to see sentients with faceted, transparent wings and fur—on his world, the only creatures that had both traits were a lower class of animals called pickwits, a group of small evolved insect-like species. Grievous supposed he'd get used to it eventually. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd thought about such things, but seeing his two scientists together from such a strange perspective, the human with all that head hair loose and dangling down over her body as she sat sprawled over onto one haunch, the Geonosian squatting down on his hocks with those wings of his sticking straight out to clear the floor, couldn't help but draw his attention to their oddities.

Attenbro, who was just as oblivious to Grievous's musings as was Lissa, was feeling chatty and looked up again. "Is the fanblade go good for you, General?" he asked.

"Yes. It's a fine machine," Grievous replied. He fired a dark glance back at his collection of fighters. "I only wish my line crew were of equal quality."

"We maybe design you special droids for the job. Do it better."

"Anything would be better than what I have to work with now."

Lissa, listening, winced a little on the Neimoidians' behalf. She didn't think they were really all that bad, but then, she didn't have to depend on them to any significant degree. She supposed that if they were ever tardy about getting her supplies restocked or equipment serviced, that she'd be complaining about them too.

She kept an eye on Grievous while he and Attenbro continued to talk. It was the first time she'd seen him choose to interact with any of the Geonosians in a casual sense—he even looked casual tonight…no cape. Mostly, he seemed leery of the Geos, preferring to keep his relationship with them strictly professional, and Lissa really couldn't blame him. Grievous's recovery after his operation had surely been long and difficult. The Geonosians wouldn't have been either kind or sympathetic to his suffering, and he'd probably formed some very unpleasant associations, yet today, he was willing to set them aside and socialize with one of the men who'd had a direct hand in remaking him. Lissa guessed it had to do with their being on the cyborg's turf while off duty for a change or perhaps he was just plain lonely for some living company. It couldn't have been easy for Grievous, having to spend so much of his time with droids and residing on a ship with an alien crew he so clearly despised.

Lissa kept her silence until it finally appeared that Grievous was about to leave, then called, "Oh, General? Before you go, just a small heads-up on a memo I just sent you—for your diagnostic check-up tomorrow, you can come over to my office instead of down here in the workshop."

Grievous looked at her again. "You have your own equipment?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you have it set up?"

"All ready to go, sir."

"Good. Then we can do the check-up now," he decided. "Wait here. I will be back."

"Uh…what?" Lissa said to his departing back. She heard Attenbro start to snicker. "What the hell?" she exclaimed, more loudly. "Did he just say he wanted his check-up now?"

"Do it now, that is what he say," Attenbro confirmed gleefully. They both watched Grievous stride over to his starfighters and seconds later heard him lay on another round of blistering demands. The line crew started scrambling, attaching tow struts and anti-gravs to pull the fighters away. Lissa got up onto her feet as Grievous began marching back their way again.

"Sorry, Attenbro," she said. "Guess you'll have to do the rest yourself."

"Is okay." His small brown eyes rolled slyly towards the approaching cyborg. "He ask you build him accessories soon."

"Oh—shut up! You are such a swine," Lissa hissed. She said it with a big grin, though. Attenbro could be a pretty funny guy. Crude, but funny.

Instead of coming right up to them, Grievous simply swept by and commanded, "Let's go!", leaving it up to Lissa to run and catch up with him. No more following and breathing down her neck! It appeared that she'd been elevated to the status of his MagnaGuard elite, and like them, was expected to trail along in his wake right behind him…fine by her, but did he have to keep walking so darn fast?

He slowed and let her precede him once they reached the door to her office, and went at once to his big infirmary chair to sit down. His checks involved hard-wiring him to the diagnostic equipment itself and were always done with him in a seated position. They basically consisted of a thorough evaluation of the functioning of his electrodrivers and processors and his internal communications and neural net, both organic and artificial—all the different parts that coordinated to serve him in place of a full organic's muscular and nervous systems, and without which he really would be nothing but a static pile of components. But Lissa soon had him back up on his feet. She wanted to first see him tightly fold up one leg while standing on the other, then reverse the procedure, and then uncouple his arms, one after the other, while she watched. Grievous complied willingly. He supposed a practised eye might pick out some slight imbalance or roughness of action that he wasn't aware of yet.

He less understood the purpose of next being asked to turn his face away and touch several digits on his right hands together and then having to do the same while looking away from his left arms. Lissa watched again while he reintegrated his limbs, thanked him for his patience, and told him he could reseat himself.

As soon as Grievous had sat down and she'd pulled up the mobile cartful of diagnostic gear and begun wiring him up, he said, "Why did you do that, ask me to touch my fingers together?"

"Mm? Oh, it's a practical test of your proprioceptive sense."

"My what?" he exclaimed sharply.

"Your…spatial sense, I suppose you could call it," Lissa replied. "The one that lets you know where all the different parts of your body are in relationship to one another without having to look at them. You'd never be able to fight with lightsabers the way you do unless it was in perfect working order. Don't ask me to explain how it works either, unless you want me to start pulling out the microscopic schematics."

Grievous pulled his brows way down and trotted out one of his old litanies. "The Geonosians don't test me like that."

"I know. They depend on diagnostics alone. My feeling is that since it's your own Kaleesh brain that's still evaluating and acting on the data it receives, it's about time I added an organic element to your diagnostic checks. It's still possible for you to suffer from such things as mental fatigue or neurological disease and injury. Testing your spatial sense helps pick out impairments due to causes like that." Lissa busied herself with completing his connections, then added, smiling, "In humans, having to touch a specific fingertip to one's nose is a pretty good test for sobriety, too. It's amazing how difficult such a simple task becomes when you're wasted. I guess I won't have to worry about ever finding that kind of impairment in you, though."

He had no response for that and Lissa really wasn't expecting any. Her blow-up at the dinner with Dooku might've finally stirred Grievous into expressing some gratitude for her servitude and what he no doubt perceived as her soldierly loyalty to him, but it hadn't made him any friendlier. In his current state, Lissa didn't think he was even capable of friendship. His mind alterations had locked away most of the requisite emotions along with his personal memories.

Grievous sat quietly for the remainder of his session and Lissa was fine with that too. He didn't speak again until his checks were finished and she began disconnecting him, at which point he suddenly exclaimed, "Is that all?"

"Yessir. The new programmes run a lot faster than before. I'll still go over your test results in detail later on, of course, but would already have been alerted if any of the readings were off. I'm sure you're functioning just fine, General."

The cyborg remained seated, regarding her with that speculative air which always made her uneasy. What came of it this time was something she wouldn't have guessed at in a million years.

"Could you do my next bacta treatment now too?" he asked.

"Er…"

He'd just had one not five days ago! Grievous instantly picked up on her hesitation and frowned again.

"Is it too soon?"

"Um, no. No! Not at all. The more often, the better for you, actually." Lissa scrambled to make sense of his request and better hide her surprise. "Would you—like me to schedule your diagnostics and one of your bacta treatments together from now on, sir?" she tried.

"That would be convenient, yes," Grievous said.

"Ooo-kay," Lissa replied, still a little bewildered.

Grievous really hadn't had time to get very grimy since the last time she'd cleaned him up and whatever self-primping he'd done for the dinner, but Lissa started him off with a good wash-down even so, the same as always. On a hunch, she cranked the water temperature up again, and not only did Grievous slump down at once with evident relief, she could have sworn that he uttered a soft groaning sigh this time as he did so. It could have just been the whir of his servos, though.

He tilted his face into her hands again when she washed his head. He'd learned her routine and anticipated her several times more after that, twisting his neck to better expose the mechanisms before she reached for them, lifting his arms away from his sides without needing to be prompted, and Lissa began to feel absurdly touched. None of his behaviour was any more remarkable than that of millions of people who daily submitted themselves to their doctors and dentists, their hairdressers and hands-on therapists and cosmeticians, even their tailors, with equally considerate, unsolicited cooperation. But this wasn't just any person, it was General Grievous, who until a few months ago had detested the whole business of being cared for so much that he'd been compromising his health in order to avoid the Geonosians' attentions altogether. No matter what else ever happened between them, Lissa thought that this part of it was something she'd always look back on with pleasure, that she'd been able to finally break through the fearsome cyborg's wary distrust and coax his attitude around, just a little bit.

Grievous's helpful posturing even allowed her to get further in under his chest and back armour than usual and do a better job of checking the synthskin sack that housed his internal organs. Lissa'd been concerned about its integrity ever since it'd been torn open by that freak accident. She always made a special effort to feel over whatever external parts of it she could reach, using her sensitive fingertips to try and detect the slightest scratch or incipient fray on the resilient plastiform surface. So far so good… Beneath the cleansing spray of the water hose, which she kept directed over his body, it all felt as smooth as wet hot glass.

When she palpated a patch way in under his chest plate just beneath his metal armpit, Grievous extended his neck and began slowly hollowing his hunched back. Lissa regarded him with surprise. She couldn't be hurting him. All he had embedded in the synthskin back there were a few sensors apiece keyed to the usual pressure, movement and temperature settings, just enough to let him know if anything foreign was touching him. Of course that included her current hand, but it'd been a while since he'd reacted to her touch so strongly, and it wasn't even aversive exactly, not like when he'd first flinched and fussed about having what remained of his true face handled. He didn't even seem fully aware of what he was doing. He kept his eyes closed and didn't try to pull away at all, just stretched his neck out in that funny, flattening way.

She moved on and he relaxed back into his slumped pose, head hanging. Lissa was already chewing on a possible explanation and when she got around to his opposite side, took care to find and rub over the same relative area. Again his neck went out, the long face elevating into the vertical. Lissa struggled to keep her expression as impassive as possible. It was true. The Kaleesh General had a sweet spot, which had somehow survived through all that had been done to and altered in him, and stimulating it was provoking an involuntary response as surely as stimulating same on the side of a dog could make it scratch furiously with one foot and adopt a silly, lip-drawn grimace. She didn't dare let Grievous know that she knew and could only hope that he never fully realized how he was reacting—it was just too endearing, the first and only endearing trait of his which she'd ever discovered.

Her unexpected find kept her smiling inside all through the rest of his wash, and as soon as she had Grievous safely soaking away in his bacta tank, she hurried back to her office to pull and get ready all her data pertaining to her covert microsurgery on his brain. In the confusion engendered by his sudden unexpected demands, she'd briefly forgotten that this was one of his long treatments. She was going to find out in a very short time whether his excisions were healing or whether she'd just created new scars, and just the thought of it prompted a wave of sickening excitement, the same as when she'd initially decided to sabotage the Geonosians' work.

Lissa had to work at staying calm once she had Grievous out of the tank again and forced herself to give him a good long leisurely rinse and dry before popping his faceplate back on for the short trip back to her office. She got him settled in his chair, his faceplate off again and wired for remote speaking, his skull plate levered up and his head firmly secured, then pulled her screen and instruments into place and prepared herself for the moment of truth. What the scanner found in the next few seconds would determine the rest of her course of action.

What she found was nothing. Nothing at all. The spaces left in place of the excised nodules had completely closed up.

Secretive exhilaration replaced her nausea. Her hand had been sure. The healthy cells had already realigned so well that she could find no trace whatsoever of the scars' previous existence.

Lissa paused to have a swift, decisive debate with herself. There was a chance, just a chance, that the Geonosians would still buy three of the nodules spontaneously disappearing on their own. Such things happened in medicine. Tumours could shrink and vanish, scar tissue could dissolve and be absorbed. But more than half of the blocks they'd so carefully laid breaking down and disappearing…no, that they would never believe, and if they discovered what she'd been doing, that would be the end of her appointment and her life…that concern she willingly accepted and firmly put aside for the moment. Next, she considered Grievous. Had her tinkering had any beneficial effects? Impossible to determine…he wasn't talking, not yet. Had she harmed him? Would she harm him, if she carried on? She honestly didn't think so. She was just restoring what shouldn't have been taken from him in the first place…wasn't she? In the end, it was her sincere belief that she was doing no harm, not in any medical sense, that allowed her to give herself permission to continue. Lissa slaved her scanner's and laser's targeting systems together with grim determination and got straight to work.

She took out four more nodules, half of those remaining. She could spare the time—the preventative medications she'd applied had also done their job and there was considerably less degradation of the surface tissues than before. The entire organ looked better, its colour evening out and adopting the nice deep purplish hue that would have sent Lissa into a panic had it been a human brain she was looking at, but which was just right for one belonging to a Kalee. She hoped it meant that Grievous was also entering the final stage of his natural recovery, that his mind was finally physically accepting its extensive collection of implants and simmering down on its own.

As always, Grievous never felt a thing—he had no more pain receptors in his brain proper than did a human being. He never suspected anything either, not until she was almost done with him and was fastening his faceplate back into place, at which point Lissa's repressed excitement and guilt over deceiving him finally combined to alter the quality of her touch in some miniscule way. It was enough to alert his instincts, and as she leaned forward, centering his elegant mask on his head, his eyes opened and searched her own with far too much intensity.

Lissa covered by pretending to be giddily enthusiastic about the improved health of his brain's surface tissues.

"Would you like to see the comparative scans from your last two examinations, sir?" she offered brightly. The Geonosians probably wouldn't like for Grievous to see even external views of his implants, but Lissa was damned if she would withhold the images from him. It wouldn't violate anything classified, strictly speaking, and she felt he had a right to see them, the same as did any other patient. Grievous expressed interest and she showed him the final shots she'd taken after cleaning him up both times, pointing out the improved overall surface colouration and reduced inflammation about the implants themselves in the second image.

"I suspect that some of it's due to natural healing as well," she told him in conclusion. "If you were human, this is just about the stage, the twelve to eighteen month period, at which I'd expect to see a body adapt to its cybernetics for good. The adjustment is sometimes quite sudden, too. If there's been some problem with rejection, it's almost as if the flesh finally gives up and resigns itself, and after that any problems seem to resolve themselves."

"Mm," Grievous acknowledged. His gaze briefly rested on her again, still a little pensive, but no longer suspicious, and he went off a few moments later without exhibiting any further concern. Lissa indulged in a few hefty sighs of relief before she began cleaning up and resecuring her data. Even with his damaged mind, the General could be scarily perceptive at times. Now all that was left was to kick back and keep a careful eye on him, as much as she could.

She got her chance soon. Two days later, Grievous launched a major new campaign against the planet Cruysala, widely considered as one of the gateway worlds between the Mid and Outer Rims. The Republic had already stationed numerous forces on Cruysala and the fighting was fierce, both in space and on the planet. Grievous himself led the ground attack on the major governing city, where the greatest number of defending troops were concentrated.

Cruysala's technological level was modest. Lissa, deployed along with her usual battle droid defenders to accompany the General, was reminded of the very first world to which she'd been sent in her new position as Grievous's physician. Combat action was still ongoing, and Lissa's droid officer, Sunny, took care to keep her well back from the worst of it at first. Grievous and his MagnaGuards were fighting hard, engaging and killing many enemy soldiers themselves, Sunny reported to her, but she never saw any of it, just heard it and felt it, the small arms fire barking in staccato, the shells and rockets impacting in sharp explosions and distant roars that rattled the very ground.

The intensity of the nearest fighting quickly lessened. Grievous's droids had the Republicans on the run. Sunny allowed Lissa to emerge from the shop doorway they'd been using as cover and the little group stood on a ruined, deserted street, watching air battles erupt nearby as droid fighters began jumping Republic vessels trying to evacuate the remaining ground forces. They all ducked with practised speed when one air machine suddenly appeared and swooped their way, then popped back up just as fast when they saw it was just a STAP, a small, minimally armed aerial platform used by the Separatists for light patrol duty. Then Lissa's mouth literally fell open with comical shock. She'd glimpsed a flutter of grey and red cloth, a flash of bone-white armour as the machine streaked by overhead. Grievous? But how could that be? She prevailed upon Sunny to find out what was going on. If it had been the cyborg, so much for keeping up with him for a while!

General Grievous had just received word from a forward battle droid officer that Jedi had been spotted, was what had happened. The problem was that they were already out of range of any nearby ground forces and in the midst of retreating, about to board a waiting Republic gunship, and Grievous, driven by his ferocious, irrational hatred, was unwilling to trust in his air cover to intercept and bring the gunship down once it began pulling out. He'd grabbed a STAP off a droid soldier waiting for a break in the action and taken off to try and catch at least the Jedi himself.

The STAP, badly overloaded, laboured horribly beneath Grievous as he pushed it on at top speed. The platform had really only been designed for someone the size and weight of a battle droid and he was having trouble working the pedal controls with his oversized clawed feet, but still he charged on, oblivious to the machine's dangerous jittering and engine grinding. He swiftly reached and overshot the reporting officer on the ground and saw exactly what the droid had relayed mere seconds later—an enemy gunship lifting off from a narrow alley in between a partially destroyed office building and the framework of another under construction. And packed inside, standing back from the one wide-open side doorway, armoured clone troopers and several men in earth-toned civilian garb.

Grievous gunned the STAP straight through the new building's framework, dodging girders, ignoring the danger posed by his erratic steering. The gunship had gotten four stories up off the ground. A moment more and they'd be able to clear the top of the bombed-out complex behind them and angle away. Grievous fired up the STAP's two laser cannons, but couldn't target any better than he could accurately manoeuvre. All he really did was alert the occupants of the gunship that he was coming, and some of them began firing back through the open doorway, forcing him to take evasive actions.

Trying to turn the STAP made it slither sideways through the air and Grievous narrowly avoided smashing against an upright beam and then the front of the gunship itself as it rose before him. The vessel's doorway whipped past. He could see the slotted helmets of the troopers inside turning to watch him, at least two bare faces staring out. The STAP lurched again, tumbling out from under him, and with a convulsive thrust of his powerful legs, Grievous leapt off his destabilizing machine and straight into the interior of Republic gunship.

Instant pandemonium erupted. The shock could not have greater had a live nexu suddenly been thrown aboard into the troopers' midst, and just like that vicious felinoid, Grievous virtually clawed his way through the men, smashing them aside out of his way, not to kill them particularly but to get at the Jedi. Most he just flung back against the closed opposite side of the gunship. A few he pitched out to fall to their deaths. The Jedi went out too—voluntarily. All of them, three altogether, used their command of the Force to spring them over to the building under construction in a desperate effort to lead Grievous away and spare the rest of their troopers.

The big cyborg followed instantly. It was just what he himself wanted, to isolate and fight his hated enemies hand to hand. He reacted so fast that he caught the third Jedi in the very act of landing on one of the horizontal girders, and knocked him over and contemptuously slammed a foot on his chest, holding him down. The man screamed, hurt and terrified. It was a young human male and Grievous saw a thin braid plaited into his hair. A padawan! Useless! Grievous closed his grasping foot, crunching ribs, then shifted his grip to the man's knees and picked him up and bashed the struggling body down across the beam, shattering his back and stilling him forever. He let the corpse drop down to join the broken dying bodies of the clone troopers he'd thrown from the gunship.

The other two Jedi had jumped up several more stories and retreated further into the skeletal interior of the building, a grave error in Grievous's judgement. He was made for pursuits like this. The ability to climb and superb balance was built into him and part of his very nature. And clambering in after the Jedi would get Grievous away from the gunship, which was still hovering close by, refusing to abandon its two surviving officers. Grievous didn't think they'd dare fire in after him once he reached the Jedi. There'd be too much risk of hitting their own people.

Grievous leapt up a level and then horizontally, several times. He could see the Jedi standing together, resigned and waiting for him, and his excitement grew. Both looked older and experienced—another human with a bearded face and a big, furred, ursine alien which he recognized as a Whiphid. He'd already killed one just like it and happened to coincidently have that one's trophy lightsaber waiting right in his cape's weapons sheaths. Grievous felt a twinge of grim humour as he drew it and three others out for use. He wondered what this new Whiphid would think of being put to death by the blade of one of his own kin.

The Jedi came for him at once, their strategy immediately evident, trying to bracket him between them as they all clashed together on the same narrow girder. Grievous rose to the challenge. He found it an exhilarating new experience to fight in such a restricted yet exposed arena, to have to mind every step he took and administer every slash and parry with exquisite care and timing. The Whiphid turned out to be a defensive fighter and oddly hesitant. Grievous could have held him with one lightsaber even under his current difficult circumstances, and had no trouble at all keeping him back with minimal effort using two blades. He concentrated on the human male attacking from his other side. The padawan Grievous had killed must've been his. The man fought with an enthusiasm rare in a Jedi, his grief transmuted into uncommon rage. It made him a very sporting opponent and Grievous passed up several opportunities to wound him before finally spearing him through the heart, as a good foe deserved. He toppled off the beam still wearing an expression of righteous anger. Now it was just the confident Kalee and the hesitant Whiphid.

They both first paused momentarily, as if by mutual consent. Grievous slowly deactivated three of his weapons, one by one, and returned them to their pockets. He kept out only the green lightsaber with the oversized hilt, the one he'd taken from the Whiphid Jedi he'd slaughtered on Hypori, and when he brandished it before him, Grievous saw the alien's narrow eyes widen as if in unhappy recognition. Kin indeed, Grievous thought with malicious pleasure. This new Whiphid's lightsaber was green too and styled very similarly. Perhaps the two had even made their weapons together, in friendly rivalry.

Grievous pressed a fresh assault. With the other Jedi out of the way, he could come at his last opponent face-first, as he preferred. Wind whistled through the framework of the building, billowing out his cape, snatching at the Jedi's long fur and hooded cloak and skirt. Above and beneath them the main battle continued to grind down at a distance removed, its action seeming almost inconsequential, dream-like. The Jedi fought back hard. He was strong, but lacked the aggression to utilize it fully. Grievous could tell he didn't want to fight and had no taste for it. For this one, combat was just a necessary duty. And as they continued to feint and thrust and stab, the cyborg just toying with his foe the whole time, something else occurred to Grievous, the strangest sense that he'd done this before, elsewhere, and that it'd been just this easy. The notion distracted him and he swung further than he intended to, the tip of his lightsaber slipping down past the Jedi's block.

A sudden fireball exploded between them, shocking and blinding enough to halt them both. Grievous glanced over at the still-waiting gunship. Had they gotten desperate enough to take a potshot at him after all? He refocused on his opponent. The Jedi had inexplicably deactivated his lightsaber and was looking down at his still outstretched sword hand, his wide toothy mouth partway open in surprise. Or rather he was looking at what was left of his lightsaber—the Whiphid was holding nothing but a partial hilt, with smoke and sparks pouring out of its truncated end. Grievous had, for the first time, slashed right through his foe's weapon and activated some explosive reaction in doing so. He hadn't even known that lightsabers could explode, and from the look on the Jedi's short-haired face, he hadn't expected it either.

It was very rare for the cyborg to be caught off guard during combat and it was the Jedi's lucky day in that this was one of those occasions. He recovered first, dropped his ruined weapon, and bolted.

Grievous started and went after him. The Jedi was already three girders and a level's distance away—bulky or not, he could move! Grievous saw at once that he was trying to get to the exterior of the building's framework, for another pickup by the gunship, and he used his own speed and agility to cut him off. It took only four jumps. The big cyborg ran swiftly along the last beam until he'd intercepted the Whiphid's retreat, and the creature stopped and faced him, still a leap away on his own girder. Undeterred, the Jedi's already slitted dark eyes narrowed further and his under-slung chin lifted defiantly. Grievous slid the two big forward talons of both feet down over the edge of his support, anticipating that the Whiphid would try to Force-push him off the framework. Then he came under fire.

It was from the remaining clone troopers, standing in the open doorway of the Republic ship, hovering in perilously close and making full use of their opportunity to target him with their blasters. Grievous snarled and yanked his own blaster out as he ducked and wove his body without shifting his grip and warded off shots with his one active lightsaber. Two could play at this nonsense. If he had to, he'd jump back aboard and bring the gunship down this time, then take up the Jedi's trail and just hunt him down again.

Grievous's feet were suddenly yanked forward out from under him. It happened too fast for him to prevent himself from falling. He'd been expecting a Force-push, not a pull! Even so, his reflexes were still keen enough for him to snatch at and grasp the girder with his talons again as he plunged downward and simply swing himself around and up in a graceful backward somersault. A great mound of brown fur hurtled past above him as he turned. Grievous lashed his lightsaber out as he regained his position—too late! The Jedi was already clinging to the bottom of the gunship's open hatchway, the troopers unceremoniously grabbing great handfuls of his hair and skirt to finish hauling him up and inside. The ship rose away with reckless speed and rapidly spun, presenting its aft end, foiling the cyborg's attempt to leap back onboard or inflict any serious damage with his blaster. Grievous angrily fired after it nonetheless.

As soon as it was a safe distance away, the gunship stopped, hovered, and began turning back towards him. The General—and the escaped Jedi—hadn't achieved their respective ages without being able to recognize when they'd been fairly beaten. Grievous gave it up, crouched, and stepped off into space, dropping down towards the ground as fast as he could, breaking his fall with the occasional grab of a passing girder as the floors of the building framework whizzed past.

He dashed over into the neighbouring building with the gunship and its regrouped crew now in hot pursuit. They had time to fire a single missile after him, which exploded harmlessly in his wake, before he vanished from view, and then simply hung there in the air for a moment while they no doubt debated whether to chase him further or attempt to bring the remnants of the building down on top or him or rejoin the mass exodus still trying to flee the planet. Common sense finally won out. They lifted away. Grievous immediately climbed out of a ground window far away from the one through which he'd entered his brief refuge and stood watching the Republic vessel get away, feeling another surge of strange déjà vu as he did so.

Grievous returned to the construction site and retrieved the lightsabers from the two Jedi he'd killed. He also went looking for and soon found both parts of the ruined hilt dropped by the Jedi that had escaped him, and when he compared the damaged weapon with the similar one he was using, he swore volubly. Their styling wasn't just similar, it was identical. Blast the bloody thing—it HAD been the same Whiphid he'd left for dead on Hypori! He thought he'd slashed the creature's chest wide open, fatally wounding it, but its fur must've been thicker than he thought and it must've slipped afterwards into deep unconsciousness or a trance. I'd he'd had any inkling that it was still alive, he would have checked its eye reflex or cut it to see if it bled. Better yet, if he ever met the Whiphid again, he'd make sure to decapitate him. He'd like to see any Jedi of any species try and heal up after that.

He consoled himself with the thought that gossip about his attack on the gunship would soon be making the rounds and adding to his notoriety. It wouldn't hurt that he'd had a live audience to witness his slaying of a couple of Jedi, either. It had surely left the surviving Jedi and clone troopers dispirited, and with a little luck, their dejection would spread a long way.

Grievous checked in with his chief MagnaGuard and then, in rapid succession, with a number of his field and fleet commanders. All was progressing satisfactorily and on schedule. He called his MagnaGuards again, took a bearing, and stretched out in a leisurely, ground-covering trot.

He found them grouped together beside a newly arrived ops shuttle and temporarily stood down, having run out of things to destroy or kill. His physician and her guards had joined the squad and the woman was going over one of the combat droids with some of her equipment out. Grievous strode over to her.

"What's wrong?"

She glanced at the cyborg without seeming too surprised to see him safe and sound. "He took a direct hit to the chest. His back-up photoreceptor's broken. I'm not sure yet if the unit's reparable or salvageable."

Grievous nodded. He knew that the MagnaGuards, specifically manufactured just for him, were horrendously expensive and that procuring parts was always a concern. He approved of Lissa's frugal approach. While he stood there, she turned her attention his way and began looking him over too.

"Did you get your Jedi, sir?" she asked.

Grievous was taken aback. He had the woman pegged as a pacifist, which he could tolerate as long as she kept her views to herself and never tried to interfere with him. He'd gotten the impression she didn't want to know what he did, because it disturbed her, but supposed she might be worried about damage.

"I got two and they never touched me," he said shortly, and walked away before she could ask any more. He wasn't used to people questioning him about what he considered a very personal vendetta, his intention to do all he could to wipe out the entire Jedi Order.

The Republic army withdrew completely within the next twelve hours, abandoning Cruysala to its fate, and the planet surrendered. The native officials that came to deal with Grievous were as terrified of him as was the Jedi padawan he'd killed. They cowered before him, barely able to look him in the face, and averted their eyes from the dried gore on his lower legs. Grievous snorted at that. If they couldn't stand the sight of a little shed blood, it was no wonder they were such worthless fighters.

Grievous handed Cruysala over to a waiting private Trade Federation army and moved on to his next task, the subjugation of a neighbouring planet which the Neimoidians wanted for mineral harvesting and expansion purposes once they got their foundries up and running. The sentients on his new target were even more primitive than the Cruysalans and had barely gotten past discovering electricity. They weren't advanced enough to be useful slave labourers, yet possessed enough intelligence and natural belligerence to make real pests of themselves once the Neimoidians moved in. Grievous resolved the problem by administering a hefty dose of genocide from orbit. He never even set foot on the planet, just torched it.

Lissa came up to the bridge to observe the cyborg while he was directing his bloody solution. Grievous reacted by scowling when she first arrived, then ignored her. She soon saw that in a command scenario he was as high-strung and impatiently aggressive as ever and still resorting to bouts of mindless pacing whenever there was a necessary lull in the bombardment. Lissa was disappointed and somewhat disturbed, especially by his persistent stereotypic behaviours. She'd been hoping that in restoring his memories that she might also ease his restlessness and sleep disorders, but it seemed now that they might be connected with the tampering in his aggression center. Or his mind simply hadn't healed enough yet—it was hard to say. The Neimoidian Captain had no words of encouragement for her either. According to him, Grievous had been positively vicious as of late, treating them all as though they were nothing more than something he'd like to scrape off the underside of his foot.

Grievous was absorbed enough by his latest round of fighting that he went in for his next scheduled bacta treatment a few days late. Then he struck—for him—a gold mine. Grievous was ordered to take the Krahnzof system, a collection of planets and moons which, even though located in a sparsely settled area of the Mid Rim and supportive of only a few modest clusters of immigrant civilization, already lay far too close to the important trade route worlds Moorja and Yag'Dhul for comfort. The Republicans were rightfully afraid that the Separatists meant to use the system as a major staging area and for the first time sent troops enough to defeat the bloodthirsty droid leader—or so they thought. They still had no true understanding of their opponent's boundless determination or the depths of sacrifice and depravity Grievous would stoop to in order to gain his victories.

The campaign raged on for over a week, above and on all the major worlds simultaneously, testing Grievous's strategy severely. He was outnumbered, yet knew how to compensate by shifting his forces at a moment's notice and taking advantage of every one of his enemy's weaknesses and errors to whittle them down. His droid enhancements gave him the ability to receive, process and act on a vast amount of battlefield intelligence far faster than could a merely organic commander, and his droid soldiers, machines and vessels could receive and respond to his direct orders as instantaneously as though they were extensions of his own body. Grievous was quite literally built to multi-task. He could monitor both the big picture and individual engagements almost simultaneously and adapt his tactics to reinforce one another, and this plus the savings in time his superior communications often afforded him meant that his Separatist forces consistently outmanoeuvred their opponents in battle.

It took its toll, and Grievous didn't stay outnumbered for long. Towards the end of the fighting, when the Republicans, who'd been so sure of victory, began pulling out in defeat and dismay, he even found opportunities to indulge his personal feud. After one skirmish in space, his warships managed to isolate the enemy command ship, and when Grievous boarded he found three Jedi on the bridge. He killed them all during the course of a heated, thrilling duel. On the most heavily populated planet, he trapped five more and again outfought them all, in pairs and as a singleton, after they scattered in a vain attempt to throw him off but which served only to afford him the added enjoyment of hunting them down. He also shot down two Jedi during dogfights, one while using his trusty old Belbullab starfighter and the other after a long chase with his new Geonosian fanblade, which proved itself wonderfully agile. The unusually large number of Jedi he found in the field confirmed for Grievous how serious the Republic had been this time in taking him on. They'd thrown their best at him and still he'd managed to drive them off with a badly bloodied nose. It was a result which devastated the leaders of the Galactic Republic and stoked the cyborg General's already considerable arrogance to insufferable new heights.

Grievous's latest personal kills boosted his total to over a hundred and he achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the greatest known serial killer of Jedi in the entire history of the Order. On Coruscant, for the first time, the Jedi Council held a special meeting to discuss the threat he posed, not as a military foe, but to their Order directly. Unfortunately, no one knew quite what to do about him. It was against Jedi principles to set their own personal safety above that of the people they served. They could only hope to destroy or capture their nemesis in battle, and with more and more Jedi being sent out to act as generals for the war effort, that possibility seemed ever more likely.

The subject of their apprehension and concern had, in the meantime, taken station with his fleet above the Krahnzof system's prime planet and was maintaining a watchful eye as Separatist civilian factions began moving in. The newly captured holdings were to be jointly governed by the Techno Union, Intergalactic Banking Clan and Commerce Guild. Grievous thought their merger would have as much chance of progressing peacefully as he would have befriending a Jedi but—whatever. Most of the arriving convoys brought in supplies and even replacement warships for him, and Grievous used his brief interlude of guard duty to authorize minor repairs as well. He also found time for himself and called his physician in to administer his latest routine bacta treatment and check-up. As always nowadays, he became docile and compliant under her soft, kind hands. He was starting to think of his sessions with the woman as peaceful respites as well as just necessary maintenance.

Lissa was very, very careful this time to not do anything that would arouse the least suspicion and forewent any attempt at conversation beyond what was strictly required. As she expected, her scans of his brain revealed that his latest excisions had healed beautifully. She swiftly removed the last four nodules in his memory center with confidence and relief, then finished up with a couple of extra-thorough examinations and treatments. Her mood grew thoughtful when she worked on what remained of his true face and looked down at his closed, obliquely set eyes. The next time she saw Grievous like this, he might well be a different person.

The parts of the Galaxy that were at war held its breath, waiting to see what General Grievous would do next. Lissa Veleroko held her breath too. She was waiting for him to recover his memories and change.

TBC