Chapter 14 – A Veil, Parted
The second year of the Clone Wars began with escalating levels of bloodshed on both sides. The Galactic Republic, which had existed for so long without maintaining any sort of major organized military body, was finally starting to learn how to best utilize its new Grand Army and associated forces. Most members of the Jedi Order had also come to terms with their new role as military leaders, despite the very real personal grief it caused many of them, and were learning to become more able commanders in the field, with much of their new knowledge coming from bitter experience. For the first time during the conflict, the Republic began scoring some real victories. They beat back a determined Separatist attempt to free the Muuns' homeworld, Muunilinst, and on nearby Bitvitaris, clone troopers led by a Jedi general named Acheta Dome defeated a droid army augmented by a unit of Melanoplian sepsis tanks, horrendously destructive machines widely held to be, until that time, unstoppable. Brentaal IV was retaken, and the twin worlds, Ete and Setera, were successfully defended against simultaneous assaults. Even General Grievous, whose normal theatre of operations did not encompass the space about those far-away worlds, suffered a rare defeat during a ground battle, which made him wild, although he was able to enact a partial revenge by killing two of the Jedi commanders involved and savagely maiming a third. It was warfare on a scale never seen before, one never even imagined. There was soon not a sector in the entire galaxy left wholly untouched by the fighting and its myriad repercussions.
One of the few people who managed to remain quite oblivious to said repercussions and the fighting itself, was Lissa. She was too involved in her own private war, the one she'd launched against the Separatists via the mind of their Supreme Commander, and as the days after her supposed triumph passed into weeks with not a single change in Grievous's behaviour yet evident, she became ever more alarmed and then quite frantic. Eventually, she got anxious enough to break her self-imposed rule of never trying to inanely chit-chat with the General and twice tried to entice him into speaking about his youth by uttering lame, painfully obvious, personal remarks about her own past during their maintenance sessions. The first time, Grievous simply ignored her. After the second, he shot back a glare of such intense irritation that it permanently axed any such future attempts on her part. Not knowing whether he'd even recovered fully at all was the worst part. She sometimes thought about getting him into the infirmary for an electroencephalogram, to try and determine whether the neurons in the damaged area were even firing normally again, but couldn't think of a single plausible excuse to do so. There was also the opposite-end possibility that the cyborg had in fact already regained everything and accepted the slow return of his memories as just a natural part of his healing—having his memories back just didn't make any difference in him. Lissa hated the thought of Grievous being nothing more than exactly what he appeared to be, just a vicious, canny, ill-tempered brute with a thin veneer of civilization about him. She would rather that her efforts had failed utterly than find out that she'd be stuck serving a man like that throughout the duration of the war and possibly beyond.
To keep herself stable during this trying period, she emulated her Geonosian friends and tried to remain focused on her work and pay as little attention as possible to the disturbing bigger picture. Work was always absorbing. Exploring her professional interests and fulfilling her obligations never failed to bring her much-needed enjoyment and satisfaction and could keep almost any unpleasantness at bay, if only she concentrated hard enough. One of her latest projects that had best kept her interest even involved Grievous—again. Mindful of his still considerable distaste for needing to use the bacta tanks, she'd been trying to come up with a procedure that would bypass the need for full immersion and finally devised something that she thought might do just the trick. She ran it past her colleagues and boss, got Nagas's go-ahead, and the General was soon served with a memo requesting his presence in the Geonosians' biodroid and heuristics science lab at his earliest convenience.
Grievous reported in promptly, for once sincerely curious about why he was being called over to the tender at all—it'd been a long time since he'd needed work of a sort that couldn't be handled by his physician or the battle shop team and the memorandum hadn't specified much. Nagas and Lissa together took charge of him and explained that they'd devised a possibly better and faster new way of exchanging his chest fluids which wouldn't involve bacta immersions at all, and asked his permission to try out the new procedure on him experimentally. Grievous frankly stopped listening after the mention of not needing to enter a bacta tank anymore. He'd never divulged to anyone how much he truly hated using the things, how entering them never failed to trigger memories of how he'd first regained consciousness in a bacta tank after his accident, utterly disoriented and in agony, and anything that could spare him having to experience more of the same was fine by him. The two scientists accepted his consent happily and led him on down to the tender's infirmary, to give the new procedure a shot.
What the pair had in mind, he found out once in the medical bay, was to hook him up to a couple of external tanks and drain his chest cavity of the old bacta while simultaneously running in the fresh fluids. Their concern revolved about the problem of the two batches mixing, rendering the whole effort somewhat pointless thereby, and their tentative solution was to try making use of basic physics and heating the new bacta up several degrees above that of the old before pumping it in through his chest's uppermost entry port. Temporarily raising Grievous's body temperature so dramatically might have adverse effects on him…it might not. The only way to find out was to actually do an exchange, and if anything went wrong, they could just abort the attempt and quickly pop him into the infirmary tank before any lasting damage was done. Grievous eyed the infirmary bacta tank in question and inwardly shuddered. He'd already had enough of it back when the Geonosians were still caring for him. He liked the look of these new, much smaller, impossible-to-enter tanks much better, just a couple of fuel containers which Lissa had adapted and stacked one on top of the other on a big industrial cart.
Grievous acknowledged the scientists' reservations and sat down in a chair as directed and watched with unusual interest as the two got set. He'd often tried to distance himself from anything done to his physical self aboard the tender in the past, but it was different with his physician present, and this was, in any case, just something related to his maintenance, not an actual unpleasant alteration of any sort. When Nagas pulled the cart up beside him, he couldn't help noticing that the Patriot was holding his head in an oddly tilted way. He presumed that the Geonosian must've injured his neck, perhaps because another droid prototype had gone berserk on him during testing, until he saw that he was only kinking up and tucking his chin whenever Lissa was right up beside him, after which he recognized the action as some sort of male display. Grievous was surprised and a little amused. From his time on Geonosis, he'd gotten the impression that male Geonosians couldn't even function as such unless they had a snootful of the appropriate pheromones. The Patriot evidently liked the way his colleague smelled today—perhaps the woman was coming into heat or something, Grievous thought. Not that he would ever know anything about that. The General's sense of smell had always been poor, even when he'd been fully organic, and now that he was a cyborg, it was nonexistent.
The two civilians kept working right through all the neck-twisting and soon had Grievous hooked up and the two main top and bottom ports on the front of his chest ready to open. Nagas worked the valves and controls on the equipment and Lissa stood by the General's shoulder with a scanner padd, monitoring his vitals. They got the exchange going and both turned to their patient at once, eager to see what would happen to him.
Grievous felt very little out of the ordinary at first until the fresh heated bacta fluid reached and surrounded his heart, then his eyes suddenly widened and his sensor panels tipped forward. Lissa slipped a hand in under one of his chest plates to check for herself what her readings were already telling her, that his heartbeat rate had suddenly shot up into a range that was actually more normal for a Kaleesh male in his age group. Fast or not, the thudding of the organ remained safely strong and rhythmic, and when she reached a little lower down on his artificial chest wall, she found to her surprise that she could easily feel the temperature change going on within. Just as she'd hoped, the warmer fresh bacta was barely mixing with the older bacta at all, just riding overtop of it as it drained away beneath, and the two fluid layers were remaining quite distinguishable right through the synthskin.
"Doing all right, sir?" she asked. "You're not feeling uncomfortable or woozy, anything like that?"
"No, I just feel very warm. Feverish."
"I'm not surprised to hear that. The new fluid's exactly three degrees warmer than your usual body temperature. It should be safe for a Kaleesh adult to run a fever that high for short periods, am I right?"
"Yes…that's all right." He sat silent for a moment, absorbing the sensations. If he were still fully organic, all the thinner-skinned parts of his body—his inner thighs, belly, groin, throat, even the backs of his stifle joints and insides of his wrists and elbows—would be furiously radiating heat by now, he thought. He'd be panting and his lips and tongue flushed a bright mulberry-red. Maybe somebody would be yelling at him that he'd had enough, to quit baking out there and come in before—
Grievous corrected himself. "No, it feels like…sun-bathing. Pleasant, almost."
Lissa cocked her head. "Really?" she said softly. She consulted her padd, smiling a little. "A bonus, then. Your readings are fine."
More than his vitals were satisfactory throughout the procedure. When it was finished and Nagas drew off a little of the new fluid now circulating within the cyborg's chest, it tested more than ninety-nine percent free of waste toxins, a better level than what they'd ever gotten from sticking Grievous in a bacta tank. The exchange had been almost perfect, despite the ridiculously low-tech approach.
"Excellent, just excellent," Nagas proclaimed, perusing the test results and Grievous's readings at the same time. "What's even better is that we'll only have to filter out the contaminants from the bacta that was actually used, not decontaminate a whole bacta tank anymore." Like most Geonosians, the Patriot was more enthused over the savings in resources and salvage possibilities than in what any new procedure or technology could actually do for a person. "And you say you are feeling well, General?" he tossed in, almost as an afterthought.
"Yes. The sensation of being over-heated is already fading. And my heart rate is down again, I believe." He glanced up at Lissa as he said this and she nodded in the affirmative—she'd been using her hand again to monitor him while Nagas was looking at her padd. The Geonosian drew his chin in (and threw in another flirtatious little head-tilt aimed at Lissa while he was at it) and managed to adopt a very self-satisfied expression.
"Then if you prefer this, General, I see no reason not to approve this new procedure. I'll leave it up to my colleague—your physician—as to how to best integrate it into your routine care schedule. The only slight reservation I still have is…your eyes. This new procedure does nothing for your eyes."
"Yes, I was concerned about that too," Lissa said. "I don't think the preventative treatments I'm using right now are going to properly replace the beneficial effects of bacta immersion, especially for the facial margins."
"Maybe we should keep to the old routine once a month?" Nagas suggested. "Try the new exchange and then the next time the usual immersion treatment?"
"That might work. And if the results are still good, I could try two exchanges and then an immersion."
Grievous, who'd been following their conversation with growing alarm and who did not want to undergo any immersions ever again, suddenly exclaimed, "Why can't you just bathe my eyes with bacta? Or have me wear goggles or wet pads?"
Lissa and Nagas gawked at him with that abashed astonishment intelligent people sometimes feel when they realize that they've missed something obvious right under their noses. Now that it'd been said, they grasped the possibilities at once and Lissa ran off to gather up a collection of different sizes and types of safety goggles from the ship's stores. Most of them were constructed to cling tightly to the face and guard against fumes as well as debris, and it was just a matter of time and trying on different pairs to find a set that fit Grievous and could hold a small batch of bacta fluid over his eyes, like water goggles, except in reverse.
They found a pair that might work and Nagas quickly drilled a small hole into the rim at the top, and they tried it with just a little bit of water dropped in at first, to check if the seal was tight. It wasn't. The water promptly ran out at the bottom and started dripping off Grievous's mask and vocabulator and all over his chest. Nagas snatched up a towel and fired it across the room at Lissa, who was standing by the cyborg and trying to use her hands to catch the spill. The Geonosian's aim was great, but the human wasn't ready. The towel hit Grievous right in the face, snagged on the upper tip of one of his sensor panels and then hung there, dangling, and between that and the goggles and his dead-pan expression, he suddenly looked so woebegone and incongruously silly that Lissa just couldn't help herself—she laughed aloud, twice, before being able to clap a hand over her mouth. Nagas laughed too, a sort of honking bray, before becoming abruptly fascinated by the control panel on their new bacta tank cart. Grievous took it all with remarkable good humour. It might have been different if he still hadn't been feeling so warm and cozy.
"Really sorry, sir," Lissa said as she detangled the towel from his head. She pulled off his inadequate goggles and blotted up the water on his chest and face. "Guess we'd better try a different pair."
"Yes, I guess we should," Grievous agreed dryly (and by that time he was dry, too).
The next set that seemed as if they might do worked perfectly. Lissa ran a little of the leftover fresh bacta fluid in to cover the cyborg's eyes, using a piece of surgical tubing poked through the hole at the top of the goggles, courtesy of Nagas and his trusty drill, then removed most of the fluid again after a few minutes by suctioning it out into a pail on the floor—primitive, yet it worked fine, and the small amount of bacta left behind was easily caught and absorbed by the towel when Lissa removed the General's goggles. She next took off his faceplate, dabbed a bit more, this time using softer and more hygienic disposable tissues, replaced his mask, and that was that. The two scientists looked at each other with satisfaction and even Grievous seemed happy, and when he left a short while later, actually nodded in curt farewell before he went out the door. Nagas at once sidled up next to the woman and patted her arm affectionately.
"You're doing a good job with him," he said to her. "He's much quieter to work on now than he used to be. But I told you that he'd listen and cooperate with you, didn't I?"
"Yes, he's gotten a lot more agreeable than I ever expected," she replied, and meant it. It was true. Somewhere along the line Grievous had stopped being horrid and difficult as both a patient and as her superior, and now just seemed damaged and different to her. She just wished she knew if her secret surgery on him had had anything to do with it, damn it!
Lissa had a few more ideas in mind about improving his care. The next time Grievous reported in at her office aboard the Invisible Hand, for a more usual session, she at once grabbed a few items she had waiting on her work table and walked up to him before he could seat himself.
"Let's go down to the medical bay for a quick wash first, sir."
Grievous stuck in his toes and looked at her doubtfully. "Are we still doing that?" he asked. Missing was the operative word and what he really wanted to know—why? Lissa put on her sweetest, most persuasive face.
"I know it's not really necessary anymore now that we're not using the bacta tank, General, but it's become such a good, routine way for me to ensure that I do a thorough and proper inspection of your externals that I was hoping you'd let me continue. And it is easier for me to spot any very small changes or damage when you're freshly clean."
She left unsaid the last part of it—besides, I know darn well you enjoy it so much that I've practically got you purring—and simply waited after that while he thought, still wearing her bland half-smile. It didn't take Grievous long to capitulate.
"All right, carry on, then," he said.
When the pair first entered the ship's infirmary, the Neimoidians on duty eyed them, but didn't leave. Lissa had been so sure she'd be able to talk Grievous into keeping to this part of his old routine that she'd already alerted the medical staff that they'd no longer have to vacate their space, just have the autopsy room cleared and available whenever the General had a maintenance session scheduled. She then went on to give the cyborg a very thorough, careful wash-down, for the first time using a bit of detergent now and then from the droid grooming kit she'd brought along to scrub clean the grimiest areas. Grievous raised no objections to this. If anything, he stood more relaxed and cooperated better than ever. And when she rubbed over one of the sensitive areas on his sides, he lifted up his head so fast and made such a funny deep rumbling sound, like a very old, seized-up gas motor trying to turn over, that it seemed impossible that he didn't realize what he was doing—yet he didn't, he continued to appear quite unaware of his responses whenever she stimulated one of those sweet spots. It still struck her as such an odd, comically droll behaviour that she'd tried to find some factual basis for it and had tentatively concluded that it must be because he still possessed the vaguely kidney-like pair of organs that would have lain beneath the spots inside a fully organic Kaleesh body. They still occupied the same relative positions within his artificial bodily cavity and Lissa supposed it was possible that touching his synthskin in just the right place was somehow being detected by these small remnants of his former self and that some mysterious triggering link had been forged by his mind and memories of happier times. Whatever the reason behind it, she still thought it an endearing quirk, albeit one tinged with wistful sadness, and witnessing it was a secret little indulgence of hers which she hoped he would never discover.
Lissa dried Grievous's body carefully once she was done cleaning and inspecting him, then offered another slight change to his routine—she wanted to try injecting a very fine spray of lubricant into his non-sealed joints and onto some of their moving surfaces to help disperse any residual moisture and guard against dust penetration. Grievous accepted her proposal instantly. Anything that bettered his ability to fight was something he much approved of, and he observed attentively, his golden eyes keen and glinting, when she lubricated his hands and wrists and then wiped them over with a shammy, speaking with enthusiasm about the good results she'd gotten from the special grade oil she was using all the while she drew his long, elegant fingers one by one through the soft leather folds. Grievous hoped she was right about the good results. He was already thinking that if he could manipulate his lightsabers even faster, he ought to be able to kill Jedi all the more easily.
As soon as the woman was done putting on his finishing touches, Grievous stepped back and uncoupled his arms and swung and stretched them to test the movement in his joints, his motions silken-smooth and more beautifully and eerily lifelike than ever. Lissa only saw the beautiful aspect. She watched the cyborg go through his abbreviated callisthenics with pleasure, happy because he seemed in such excellent working order and had taken her suggestions so well.
Doing the new bacta exchange on her own afterwards went off very well also. Grievous remained at ease now that he could undergo this vital part of his care while in her office and sitting in his familiar chair, and it was better for Lissa as well, to have all her supplies and information so readily at hand. The only disappointment from her viewpoint was that even though Grievous had been made more comfortable and seemed so satisfied, he was still disinclined to talk. Well, maybe later, she thought, inwardly sighing. There had to come a time, surely, when he'd finally let his guard down enough to start viewing her as something of a confidant as well as his physician…wouldn't he? Kaleesh were supposed to be a rather social species, and it wasn't as if he had a huge choice of other living beings to talk to…
Lissa had one last matter to address before she let him go and spoke to him about what the procedural changes in his care could mean for him personally. "It's my professional duty to inform you, sir, that you could take over doing your own bacta changes from now on, and I'd be glad to see to it that you're supplied with all the equipment and instruction to do so, should you want to do that. In fact, I'd really only need to see you once a month, for your diagnostic checks and neural examination—all the rest you could learn to do yourself. If you were a civilian client of mine, this is usually what we'd be airming for by now, that you'd eventually care for your own cybernetics as much as possible."
She paused and looked him over critically.
"On the other hand," she went on, "your design is so unique and your functioning so important that I'd much prefer you continue letting me look after everything but your everyday care. I think I'd be better qualified to spot any potential problems, given my background, and I do have a bit of history on you by now to fall back on for referral. And I…enjoy working on you, sir, I think you know that." She paused again, to take in a bit of a steadying breath. "Still, I do have to inform you that you could care more for yourself now, if you'd prefer."
Grievous met her gaze thoughtfully and weighed his two options. Greater independence and privacy versus a lessening of personal contact with the only person he knew who related to him as an individual and as a man. At one time, Grievous would have unhesitatingly chosen the former. Now, he found that he did not want to give up that contact, any of it.
"I will keep coming here," he decided.
"Oh, good," Lissa said, and if she uttered those words with an unusual, almost suspicious amount of relief, he never noticed.
The war dragged on. The Confederacy and Republic seemed to reach a sort of impasse for a time, with many battle lines remaining static. Grievous won his next two campaigns, one easily, the other after a costly struggle, but neither victory particularly rearranged the overall territorial status held by either side. The cyborg himself didn't change either, and Lissa, always surreptitiously watching him whenever she could, grew despondent and began to lose hope. She'd waited too long, she thought, or her work had been clumsy. Or the memories she'd been trying to restore had faded away beyond retrieval—memory was such a tricky thing, after all, even in a healthy mind. To add to her depression over her failure was the knowledge that Grievous now unwittingly carried her own death warrant inside his head. All it would take would be a single glitch associated with his brain implants or the Geonosians deciding to upgrade them, and they'd surely discover what she had done. It all culminated to make Lissa feel quite bitter and regretful for several days, then her logical side reasserted itself, pointed out that there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and she regained her usual positive outlook and went back to trying to make the most of things. Even if Grievous was still vicious, at least he rarely directed it her way anymore.
Two months into the second year of the Clone Wars, Grievous was tasked to take a world named Quispamsis. It was meant to be another conquest for strategic purposes and he was asked to leave the world as undamaged as possible. The Republic decided to make it difficult for him. They sent several brigades and a battle fleet to shore up the natives' own efficient, though low-tech military, and the fight was on.
Grievous again led the ground assault on the planet's primary governing city. The Quispamsisians had incorporated a great deal of greenbelt area into their municipal planning and the battle became spread out and expansive as a result. Troopers and droids alike often raced across manicured lawns as they sought to engage and destroy one another, and artillery pieces were stationed on sports fields. More mobile weaponry—gunships, hailfire and vulture droids, missile sleds—took control and delivered appalling payloads, often targeting clusters of enemy soldiers or droids. Isolated districts within the sprawling metropolis caught fire and exploded into ferocious firestorms. The leaden sky was laced with great arcs and plumes of smoke that seemed tethered to the low overcast. For hours the fighting raged on with little pattern or apparent direction to it, then the war machines and surviving men and droids began gradually converging on a vast ravaged exhibition park on the outskirts of the city.
Both sides now concentrated their firepower there. It would be their collective stand, the last one. General Grievous, who'd been directing the battle from a heavily armed and reinforced ops shuttle and sometimes dashing off on brief sorties to fight hand-to-hand whenever it was parked, switched over to using his customized wheel bike, a hoop-like personal ground vehicle ideally suited to speed him around a battlefield. Its wickedly clawed, twinned wheels could grab and roll over any flat surface and its retractable legs clamber the machine over any obstacle. A powerful double laser cannon occupied the space where a second seat had been, but Grievous rarely used it—he was far more inclined to use the bike itself to run down and crush any living foes. He left his MagnaGuard elite with the shuttle, fired up his new command vehicle, and charged off, wild with excitement and his lust to kill.
One of the people he sped blindly past in his hurry to reach the bloodiest fighting was his physician. Lissa and her bodyguards had been having a terrible time trying to keep up with Grievous. Several times, Sunny had commandeered the next available conveyance that could carry her and four battle droids and ordered it to take them wherever Grievous's shuttle had suddenly leapfrogged. They'd no sooner arrive than he'd be off again, repositioning his ship, and they'd been playing catch-up like that all through the long afternoon, an exhausting, deadly game to be trying to play in the midst of fierce combat. Lissa frankly thought it luck that they were all still intact. Shells had already landed near enough to rattle her bones twice, an enemy gunship had overflown them not ten meters away, and, most dismaying of all, a clone sniper had targeted and shot at them, and it was only thanks to Sunny's own keen aim and quick responses that the man hadn't done any real damage before being killed. Seeing her guards in action had both shaken and sobered Lissa. Sunny had expertly directed his fire at the junction of the clone's helmet and body armour, one of the few tiny areas left unprotected. She couldn't help wondering who'd programmed such lethal information into the droid's synthetic mind.
They'd hitched rides twice since then and now here was Grievous rushing off again, now completely impossible to keep up with. Even Sunny was stymied, but then he informed her that the General's shuttle was staying put and that his chief MagnaGuard had said that they should come in—the battle shouldn't last too much longer. Lissa followed her droids with a quicker step. The craziness all around them couldn't end soon enough for her.
A shell burst directly in front of them, close enough for them to feel its shockwave through the air. Another exploded off to their left, then two more. Sunny, leading, stopped so fast that Lissa ran into him. His long conical head swept back and forth, evaluating data.
"What's wrong?" Lissa asked. The other droids shifted, bracketing her, closing in to protect her. "What's going on?" she exclaimed more loudly, becoming frightened by their sudden actions.
"We're being overrun," Sunny replied, then started to run. Lissa didn't need any encouragement to join him. She stretched out and pounded along as fast as she could right behind him. The footing was bad, soft ground already chewed up by many passing feet and deep tire treads, hunks of earth, pieces of metal. They skirted a deep crater. She had no idea of where she was going. All she focused on was following Sunny.
A roaring hot gust abruptly knocked her down. She hit the ground hard and tumbled over and over. For long seconds she lay stunned, sprawled out now that she'd come to rest, until terror gripped her and drove her back up on her feet. Still a little dazed, she took several steps. Her legs worked fine—she was unhurt! A nearby structure, maybe a maintenance shed or a garage, caught her eye. She made a run for it, oblivious to everything except the promise of shelter.
A monstrous metal juggernaut streaked past right in front of her face, something tumbling, spinning. Lissa skidded to a halt and dropped down without thinking. Duck and cover, Sunny had taught her—what a joke. She peeked fearfully out from beneath her arms, which she'd clasped over her head. But that wasn't the enemy, it was Grievous! And he'd seen her. He was coming back! She jumped up just as the General finished whipping his machine around in a tight about-turn, steering it to stop sideways to her.
"Where are your guards?" he shouted at her.
"I don't know! We got separated."
Another shell exploded, its blast thundering over them. The woman flinched and shrank up next to the wheel bike.
"You can't stay here. Get on," Grievous ordered.
The cyborg was already sitting in the only available seat she could see. "Where?" she cried, almost hopping from foot to foot in her anxiety. Grievous growled and showed her where, by reaching to grab a handful of her jumpsuit above her waist and yanking her up and down face-first across his lap before roaring off.
Lissa, disoriented and unable to see a thing except the close-up edge of a metal seat and control console, banged her nose and the top of her head as the bike sped up and began bouncing hard. She clawed wildly for a handhold, but Grievous had an arm clamped over her back—all she could do was twist around, onto her side, and try to pull in her legs, which were being bashed and pelted with thrown-up debris. Grievous yelled at her.
"Stay still! Don't interfere with me!"
"I'm t-trying!"
They hit another enormous bump and the bike went briefly airborne and crashed back down, and Lissa's stomach lurched right along with it in nauseous harmony. She finally found something to grip, the cyborg's own body armour, and pulled herself up until she was plastered against his chest and could peer back over his shoulder. The wheel bike was throwing up a huge rooster tail of dirt, obscuring much of her rearward view. Barely glimpsed droids, machinery, rubble and fiery blasts whipped past on either side in a dizzying melange. Lissa clung tight for dear life, averting her face so the sensor panel attached to the side of Grievous's skull wouldn't smack her when he turned his head. She'd never been on a faster, scarier machine, not one that was ground-based, and the General was a terrible driver, reckless and speed-crazed and utterly unwilling to avoid rough ground.
The wheel bike churned and bounded up a steep slope and Grievous throttled back and pulled the machine into a sudden sideways skid. Lissa went flying—she was never sure afterwards if he'd flung her off or if she'd just fallen—and reacquainted herself with the ground with an undignified thud. She also banged her nose again, this time on something metal, dark, and upright. It was the leg of a super battle droid.
"You four! Keep her safe! The rest of you, follow me!" she heard Grievous bawl hoarsely, then came the sound of the wheel bike revving back up and multiple loud droid whirs and clanks. She rolled over just in time to watch droves of the big black battle droids, strung out on either side of her, fire up into full fighting mode and begin charging past her. Grievous led, accelerating back down the slope to rejoin the battle below.
Lissa regained her wind and jumped to her feet. And promptly yelped with pain and flailed about, which drew the four battle droids Grievous had ordered to guard her in close to provide sturdy support. The woman leaned against one of them as she bent to examine herself. Her pant leg was torn over one shin and she could see blood. Something, a sharp rock, perhaps even a little shrapnel, had cut through the tough cloth and given her a nasty gash during her wild ride. Her first battlefield injury… Thanks, Grievous, Lissa thought sourly.
She sat on the dirt and tied a quick temporary bandage over the wound while at the same time trying to watch the fighting. From her new vantage point, she could see the whole battlefield. The slope below her looked groomed. She could envision kids sledding on it in the winter, skiers zooming down, other recreational sports, and all of it about to come to an end for the Quispamsisians because it looked even to her untrained eye as if they were losing. There were just too many droids and not enough men. Grievous had brought in and stashed away far too many reserves besides the super battle droids up on the hillside and he'd ordered every last single one of them into the fray. Several great waves of clone troopers and native soldiers had indeed pushed forward, taking the ground they'd bombarded just minutes ago, but opposing them was a huge swell of battle droids, pushing back. The two moving masses of individuals began to coalesce all along their forward edges, sometimes merging, something clumping into little struggling knots. The gunships and flying droids still hovered above it all, deadly dragonflies attending a clash of warring social insects.
Lissa spotted a strange line briefly parting the ranks of troopers—it was Grievous, using his wheel bike to cut a killing swathe right through the men. He raced towards the rear of one of the Republican waves and partway there stopped his bike and leapt off, his figure distinguishable at that distance only because of the broken white dots of his armour plating. Two bars of light ignited beside him, brilliant under the dull overcast, then two more flared—he'd activated his lightsabers. Lissa, excited, heaved herself to her feet. She saw two more of the long lights spark to life, a third, and was just able to make out their owners in their subdued, earth-toned clothing. Jedi! So that was what had enticed the cyborg into the midst of his enemies! The bright beams all came together and began whirling, jerking, fitfully arcing. She could have been looking through an old-fashioned kaleidoscope, the lights were weaving through such intricate patterns. But it didn't last. One by one, three of the lightsabers extinguished. Grievous had killed the people wielding them. He turned next on the soldiers all around him and his own lightsabers began whirling again. Little bolts of blaster fire rained towards him, the men trying to stop him, but it didn't make a wit of difference. There wasn't a hand-portable weapon made that could penetrate the General's duranium armour.
Lissa clutched at one of the super battle droid's arms as she watched Grievous lunge and slash and cut through anyone that got in his way, leaving carnage behind. She'd never seen him really fight before, and it was horrifying, terrifying, and exhilarating to behold, at least from afar. He swiftly broke through to where his own troops were already fighting hand-to-hand and his strokes slowed and became more sporadic—he was running out of targets. Quispamsisians and clone troopers were going down all over the battlefield. They were becoming engulfed, their numbers dwindling, and even the air machines had stopped tearing at one another because there were only Separatist vessels and droids left in the sky. This part of it Lissa didn't want to watch anymore. She knew that Grievous didn't believe in taking prisoners and that his battle droids had standing orders to slaughter any clone troopers on the spot, even if they surrendered. Native soldiers he sometimes kept captive long enough to turn back over to their leaders, and sometimes not. It all depended on how fast their governments gave up and kowtowed to his demands.
Super battle droids weren't provided with much interactive programming and it took Lissa a good long while to make her quartet understand that it was her duty to remain close to General Grievous and that they could guard her just as easily on the fields below, now that the fighting was winding down. They finally consented to march down with her, and just in time too. The cloud ceiling began lowering rapidly even as they descended and it started to sprinkle. Lissa walked faster, ignoring her stinging shin. She'd had just about enough abuse for one day without adding a soaking on top of it.
By the time they got down to level ground, the battle was all but over. One of the super battle droids made contact with the MagnaGuards and was ordered to bring Lissa in post-haste on top of her own request—it made the rather dim machines shift into high gear at last and start hustling. The ops shuttle had moved again and it was a long walk, especially for someone with a painful, gimpy leg. Lissa was immensely relieved when she finally spotted the shuttle as well as the General's wheel bike just up ahead and surprised to find the two vehicles parked next to a large tent. The Quispamsisian military had apparently been using the portable structure as a field headquarters, and a troop of battle droids had captured it virtually intact. Grievous and his elite and some of his battle droid officers had already moved inside and the officers were going through some of the abandoned paperwork and equipment. Lissa was only interested in the abandoned furniture. She found an empty chair next to one of the center tables and sank down onto it with a groan.
Grievous had looked her over when she'd first entered, but said nothing to her. He was still too busy running his campaign and moved frequently, from the tent over to the shuttle and then back again. Lissa asked one of the droid officers for an update and he informed her that the city had been pretty much won but that they were still waiting on a space battle to resolve itself. The natives were being stubborn about surrendering. They weren't willing to give up until their very last hope was blown up, something that the fleet above was engaged in doing with alacrity. Lissa languished into a weary stupor. She was very tired, she was beginning to ache, and she was starting to mourn the loss of her own faithful bodyguards, especially Sunny.
The wind picked up and it began to rain in earnest. The big drops pelted over the canvas roof like a spray of flung stones. It sounded as if some serious weather was moving in. Lissa revived somewhat and set some of her medical kit out on the table. She zipped open the bottom of her ripped pant leg and had a closer look at her injury. Just a shallow flesh wound, thank goodness, and she already knew from her hike down off the hillside that she hadn't done herself any serious damage anywhere, although she suspected that she was going to have a nice collection of bruises. She cleaned and treated the wound, wrapped it up again, gave herself a dose of analgesics, and then forced herself to munch on some of her rations and drink some water. Nobody had said anything to her about going off duty and it seemed as if she might be standing by in the tent for some time yet.
Lissa's eyelids started drooping a little. The hard driven patter of the rain was strangely soothing. It was something she hardly ever heard anymore, the sounds of nature. Grievous came back in from being over in the shuttle, glanced at her, executed a weird little shudder as if trying to shake off the raindrops that had fallen on him, then took up station right in the entranceway and stared out. Six of his MagnaGuards were standing about the interior of the tent, patiently waiting. The battle droid officers picked over their captured materials for possible useful intelligence. It was easy to forget later how peaceful it had been beforehand, with no warnings and no hint of foreboding.
Grievous said, "The Huk won't like this weather. It might be worth delaying our attack, just to give them more time to get cold and stiffen up."
Lissa raised her head to stare at him. What had he just said?
Another strong gust rattled the tent and slapped at the entrance flaps. Lissa saw Grievous hunch and lower his head into the brief scattering of rain that blew in past him. And then—
For long seconds he stood stock still, his face tilted downward, as if studying his own feet. Slowly, very slowly, he lifted his hands before him and looked at those too, inspecting them with weird self-absorption. He straightened back up while he examined each slender, duranium-coated finger and his armoured palms. Again he stood frozen, looking outside. Then he stepped back, once, twice, and uttered a long moaning wail.
Lissa felt the hair rise up on the back of her neck and arms. It was a terrible sound, a despairing howl, an affirmation of something dying. She could hardly believe it had just come from Grievous. He spun and began gawking about, wildly, looking over everything within the tent as though seeing it all for the first time, seeming shocked and stupefied—staring at his droids, the tables and chairs, the equipment, the canvas walls themselves…his physician… And just like that, he knew. As soon as his gaze fell on her, he knew.
"What did you do to me?" Grievous whispered.
The tone of it chilled her. "General, I—"
"What did you DO to me!" he shrieked, and for her that was the worst, to hear his voice suddenly elevate into a high-pitched scream that was utterly unlike him—Grievous yelled and shouted, but he never screamed, not like this! She got shakily up on her feet and Grievous took a lunging stride towards her before pulling himself up short and glaring at his nearest MagnaGuard.
"Out!" he ordered. "Get out, all of you, outside and wait there. Now!"
All the droids did as commanded, filing obediently out into the rain to take up positions next to the tent. As soon as the last machine exited, Grievous resumed his stalking advance.
Lissa expected him to strike her and actually shut her eyes as he stormed up, but all he did was grab her clothing beneath the collar of her jumpsuit and swing her up to stand on her chair, so that he could more easily get his head close to her own. He kept hold and gave her a violent shake and snarled right into her face, "Tell me what you did. All of it! Tell me!"
The poor woman, quite terrified, could barely speak at first. "I—I took out—blocks. Scars."
"Scars? What scars? What are you talking about?"
"In your brain. There was damage. I've been taking it out—"
"Damage?" His expression abruptly altered, from rage into something stricken. He looked the way he might have had he turned to her in trust with his mask off, unprotected, and she'd whipped him across the face. "You mean, damage from the accident? I have brain damage?" he cried, appalled.
"Not from the accident, no, sir," she said miserably. "This was something deliberate, done to block your memories. Little scars. I removed them." Her voice lowered. She came near to moaning herself at what she was inflicting on him. "You have other blocks, too, elsewhere. I wasn't supposed to ever tell you or let you see…"
Grievous let her go. His hands hovered before his own face. He began reaching for his head, to touch his skull. Then his anger returned and he erupted in fury.
Lissa, still standing on her chair, was the only thing left untouched and undamaged, as if in a calm eye as he rampaged around her, roaring out vile oaths and smashing furniture and equipment with his fists. It was the first time she'd seen him lose all control of himself and it was all the more horrid because she knew her meddling was the cause of it. Somewhere within his mind a final relay had switched over and freed his memories at last, and with it had come sudden full awareness of his self and of his situation. His tantrum was all the evidence she needed to know that he didn't like it one bit.
He wound down and stood panting, breath coming hard and raggedly. "Go…" he murmured to himself. "Have to…" And with that, he whirled and bolted out through the doorway.
Lissa jumped down off her chair and ran out after him. The MagnaGuards had gone on alert. They stepped towards her, electrostaffs up, aggressive and confused. "It's all right!" she assured them. "The General's fine. He just needs to be alone for a while. He'll be back soon." The droids subsided. Lissa lifted her head and shielded her eyes with her hands, trying to see through the lowering gloom and precip. She thought she caught one glimpse of Grievous, just a flash of broken white already far away, bobbing amidst the rubble skirting a damaged building, then it vanished.
Dejected, Lissa went back inside the tent to keep dry. The droids, rather surprisingly, followed and turned to her for orders in the absence of their master and she put them to work cleaning up the mess. She watched them morosely while she waited for Grievous to return, waited for him to finish racing through the rain and the wind and the conquered city and trying to out-run his devastating discovery.
TBC
