Chapter 15 – The General Checks In
General Grievous did come back that evening after his wild bolt out into the storm, and much sooner than Lissa really expected. He was a good soldier, after all. He knew his duties and he would fulfill them despite having just experienced one of the greatest emotional blows in his life. The only acknowledgement he would spare his physician as he came back into the tent headquarters which his droids had just finished setting up into order again was a single withering glare, and after that he turned back to the business of warfare and ignored her. Lissa retreated into a corner and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. She supposed she couldn't blame Grievous for being so angry with her. He was still outraged by her deception and betrayal of his tentative trust, and probably wouldn't start appreciating what she'd done for him until he fully calmed down and got his latest campaign over and done with…she hoped.
Night had fallen while the General had been away and the battle droids had brought over some portable lights. They cast harsh shadows and made Grievous look frightening and more skeletal than ever, and even Lissa, who was usually oblivious to the deliberately fear-provoking aspects of his design, found him scary to look at as he stalked in and out of the pools of illumination whenever he was in the tent. Apart from that one initial glare, he continued to ignore her. Whatever had woken in his mind, it was something he'd apparently wrestled into submission again and could set aside for the time being, and the woman found that encouraging, that she hadn't messed up his logical thinking so badly that he couldn't prioritize anymore. She was also encouraged by his not having arrested or just plain killed her yet. Grievous wanted more information, no doubt, and was willing to wait for the rest of it. It gave her at least a little more time to prepare herself.
Lissa tried to review and organize all the most pertinent points Grievous would want to know about in her mind, but her own thinking had grown so muddled that she couldn't concentrate and gave it up. The winds outside had eased and the showers steadied into a monotonous heavy downpour. It had also gotten noticeably warmer, the temperature rising to almost tropical levels, and between that and the constant sonorous drone of the rain and her weariness, the woman was soon nodding off again in spite of her precarious situation. She finally broke down and appropriated a couple of small tarps that had been left dumped in the tent and made herself a makeshift bed on the ground in her corner. Even thought she was still on standby (as far as she knew), she'd always been allowed to see to her organic needs. One of the MagnaGuards would wake her if she was really needed, or maybe Grievous himself would leap at the opportunity to rouse her with a swift kick to her head.
She slept badly. No matter how she positioned herself, she couldn't get comfortable. Sometimes she thought she heard the cyborg's voice raised and shouting and would come half out of her drowse, then it would fade and she'd sink back down. Later, an embedded thunderstorm drifted by high overhead, generating flashes of light so bright that they flared red right through her closed eyelids and she stirred and tossed and fuzzily wondered whether they were being bombarded again. The heat and humidity combined with her body's feverish aching and she started to sweat. She soon felt as sodden, lying there, as she felt sickly and throbbing.
Someone began tucking a wadded-up section of blanket beneath her head to serve as a pillow. It was so much nicer and softer than the scratchy harsh canvas of the tarps. Lissa opened her eyes and saw the end of a conical droid head hovering just above her face. "Trigger?" she queried, blinking sleepily.
"No, ma'am."
"Sunny!" She pushed herself up into a sitting position, instantly energized and alert. It was her battle droid all right, funny long down-face and yellow-patched body and all—what luck! For the first time since setting down on Quispamsis, she felt like smiling. "Where are the others?" she added, looking past him.
"TN4296454 is aboard Invisible Hand having his arms replaced. The other two were destroyed."
Lissa regarded the droid officer more sadly. Not that she'd ever been able to even tell her other three bodyguards apart, but…still. They'd served her loyally and had always tried to do as well as their limited programming allowed. It was more than what some living people were able to manage. A more urgent matter occurred to her and she asked, "Where is General Grievous?"
"In the city center, accepting the Quispamsisian government's surrender. His chief MagnaGuard informed me that you are free to stand down and return to the tender."
"Oh, shoot! When exactly did the General leave to do that, do you know?"
"He left forty-seven minutes ago."
"Okay, good. Get me some transport back to the flagship as fast as you can, Sunny. I have to go up to my office right away. And I need a favour from you before you go off duty yourself."
"Of course, ma'am, whatever you wish."
Sunny helped her up and Lissa staggered around for a few minutes, walking off her stiffness while they waited for transportation. It was still several hours before dawn by planetary-time, and already seven hundred hours, fleet-time. Broken sleep or not, she'd managed to rest much of the night and felt better for it. There was no question of her actually returning to the tender yet, of course. She was one hundred percent certain that Grievous would come looking for her the instant he'd finished with the Quispamsisians.
Once back aboard the Invisible Hand, Lissa asked Sunny to continue monitoring General Grievous's whereabouts and to contact her as soon as the cyborg returned to his flagship. She then cleaned herself up and made herself as presentable as she could, forced herself to eat a quick hot morning meal in the mess even though she was starting to feel quite queasy, pulled all the information and images she was going to need, and finally plopped down again, on her own comfortable office bed. No need to fear falling asleep this time—her mind, thankfully clear, was far too busy mentally organising her briefing for Grievous. Her keen awareness that she'd also be pleading for her continued right to exist and keep her position additionally helped to keep her wide awake. If Grievous didn't like what she had to say, she'd very probably be changing professions to one that involved a great deal of physical exertion and very little thought…or changing to a state that involved no thought at all.
Her personal communicator beeped. It was Sunny, warning her. The General must've already sent his reports from the planet, or intended to file them later—he stormed into Lissa's office scant minutes later, reared-up and threatening. "Show me everything," he ordered without preamble, fuming.
Lissa did. She showed him the original scans of his altered mind, the way the nodular scars had been precisely placed beneath the surface of his brain. She told him what she'd learned from the Geonosians and what the tampering had been meant to accomplish, and then showed him how she'd removed the damage done to his memory center, spaced out over three of his neural examinations. Grievous stood behind her the whole time she sat at her usual computer workstation and pulled up the requisite images and spoke. Towards the end, he placed a hand on one of her shoulders, which made her very nervous because she knew all too well how easily he could crush the bony structure of her shoulder joint with a single squeeze, but he never hurt her, just kept his hand in place, warningly. It wasn't until she showed him the last picture, the composite scan of the damage that was still left, that he exerted himself physically at all.
"So you have not removed any of the nodules from the second cluster at all?" he growled, voice rumbling unnervingly from directly behind and above her head.
"No, sir."
"Remove them now."
"I can't."
His fingers tightened, pinching her painfully. "Yes you can! You have the skill."
"No, I mean—I daren't. People would notice if you suddenly became less aggressive…don't you think?"
The pressure on her shoulder eased. After a moment, he took his hand away. "You're right," he said, his voice now sounding weary and disappointed.
Lissa kept her back turned to him and waited for his next order, for his anger to flare, for him to do anything at all. She didn't know that he was regarding her with peculiar melancholy and that the expression in his eyes in his long, masked face made him appear at that moment far more mournful than sinister. Grievous was indulging in a brief bout of rare self-pity, letting the overwhelming ramifications of Lissa's revelations wash over him instead of facing them head-on, and it left him uncommonly introspective. He stared down at the small human female whose whims had changed everything for him and found himself, for the first time, wondering what drove her decisions and sense of values or indeed, what went on in her strange alien mind at all.
"Why did you do this?" he asked at last. "What possessed you to even think of undertaking such a task?"
The million credit question… Lissa wasn't even sure anymore of how to answer. She tried, though.
"It was revenge at first, sort of," she replied. "I still resented that you'd forced me into your service, and when I saw what had been done to you, thought that undoing it might be a way of striking back at your people, the Separatists, by making you less able or inclined to want to work for them. But then I started thinking that maybe you'd been forced into their service too, and that what you did was more due to your alterations than your own personal self. After that, it just…it didn't seem right anymore, what'd they'd done to you. I was sure you hadn't agreed to it, and since you'd made me your physician by then and I was supposed to keep you healthy and this wasn't healthy, I just, well, started feeling sorry for you."
Grievous stiffened. "You—felt sorry. For me."
"Yes, sir. And when I started doing your examinations routinely and you didn't mind my scanning your brain anyway, I just…began…using the opportunity."
Grievous couldn't listen to any more. Lissa heard him abruptly stride off, muttering to himself in an unfamiliar language, presumably Kaleesh. When she turned in her seat, she saw that he'd gone to brood in front of her window. Enough starlight was shining in to dramatically highlight his white armour and emphasize the motion of his hands as he began to clench and unclench them. She watched him, feeling oddly grateful. He'd accepted everything she'd told him far better than she'd expected he would, and the sheer relief of finally having unshouldered her guilt and uncertainty and confessed her transgressions was enormous.
The big cyborg started to pace, back and forth, but his walking lacked the autonomous displacement quality of his usual bridge-pacing—it was just an expression of distress, plain and simple. Even though he so clearly did not appreciate shows of sympathy, Lissa couldn't help feeling a fresh up swell of compassion for him. She still felt responsible for him and for the obvious upset she'd caused, and her relief was rapidly giving way to new concerns for his well-being. What sort of man Grievous would turn out to be now that he'd regained all his marbles—or some of them, anyway—was still something of a mystery to her, but she did hope, quite suddenly and fervently, that he'd allow her to stick around long enough to find out.
"General? I…I want you to know that I never meant for any of this to hurt you or cause you any trauma," she said, still trying to explain herself. "I expected you to regain your memories gradually, bit by bit. I thought there was even a chance that you'd already regained them, but I couldn't tell because you're so unfr—, er, because you're…disinclined to be familiar with people. You believe me, don't you? That I never meant to hurt you?"
Grievous halted to stare at her. "If I didn't believe that, you'd already be dead."
"Ah." She swallowed, nervously. "But you're all right now, yes? Now that you do know everything? And you understand why I couldn't tell you before, tell you what I was trying to do, I mean."
The woman's transparent need to have her deceitfulness forgiven was extremely irritating to Grievous. He decided to let her squirm and simply began pacing again, without answering. Far from shutting her up, it just made her try approaching him from a different angle.
"General Grievous, if you please, could you tell me a little of what happened? Last night, down on Quispamsis, did everything just suddenly flood back for you all at once? And I saw you examine yourself beforehand. Were you surprised by your appearance, or did you know and—"
"Why are you asking me this!" Grievous interrupted. He strode with more force, almost stomping. When he whirled about to retrace his steps, the way he swung his metal haunches and long arms around warned of fresh, escalating rage. "You insisted on meddling. You got your results. What more do you need?" he snapped.
"A little more description is what I need," she persisted doggedly, ignoring his aggressive posturing. "It'd help me better understand how your mind works."
"I don't want you knowing how I think! And you are being annoying. I don't remember you being like this before. Were you always so annoying?"
"I am when it's the only way left to get the information I need."
Grievous huffed and halted again—he jammed to a stop this time. "All right!" he exclaimed. "It was—it was like waking up, what I remember of waking. Before, it was dreamlike, a lucid dream. There was the battle, I had to move you with the wheelbike, I fought the Jedi." His voice began to falter as he sought for clarity. "I can see it all, remember it all, everything I did, I just…I can't remember what I was thinking. But I must have thought. I planned all those battles. My strategies worked, I know they did. And…and what I said, I know that too. Addressing the Separatist Council…huh." He shook his head, as if to dislodge a repulsive insect that had just landed on his face. "I remember doing that, I can see it in my mind. There is just…no feeling attached, no involvement."
He paused again, to focus inward. Lissa watched carefully, noting how his expression remained sure and engrossed. He had something to access now, a full vast store of memories to sort through again instead of fractured, confusing remnants.
"Would it be similar to seeing footage of yourself?" she offered. "Maybe a record of yourself doing something you can't exactly remember doing?"
"No, I do remember it, that is the point. And it is all here, all of it available, here," he replied, tapping his own skull for emphasis. "Perhaps more like…watching someone else. You see their actions, hear their words, but you cannot know how they think and feel, not truly."
"Yes…I think I get it," Lissa mused. "It sounds almost as though what was left of your personality before represented only your surface self. Your memories from then might have been stored in a similar partial way, with nothing retained beyond the visual and auditory. I'm only guessing, though. I'm no neurologist, let alone a xenoneurologist. What about before your operation? Do you recall more from when you were fully organic?"
Grievous looked soberly at her. "I remember everything," he muttered. "Everything."
"Oh, well, good."
So—success after all. Delayed and ill-timed to be sure, but she'd accomplished what she'd hoped for nonetheless. Lissa felt the last of her misgivings drain away. She regarded the cyborg with sympathy and a certain satisfaction.
"General? Do you remember that dinner we had with Count Dooku?" she suddenly asked.
"How could I forget, even before?" Grievous growled.
"Can you recall that I asked you when you first developed an interest in flying? You began to answer me, but never quite finished."
"Yes…yes, I do remember. What I wanted to say was that a neighbour had an old swoop bike. He used to let me and my older brothers ride it, even though I was just seven and—" Abruptly, he stopped and snorted with surprise. "Why couldn't I say that before?" he went on. "It seems so clear now."
"It was blocked," Lissa said.
"Yes, I know. Still…"
He shook his head again, flicking the lower part of his face aside in irritation over his perceived inadequacies. Lissa couldn't help noticing that during the course of their conversation, he'd begun inching his way back towards her, his body subconsciously betraying his need to talk over what had occurred to him despite his pride's stubborn determination to weather his ordeal alone. She felt like calling him on it and asking him if he didn't feel a little better for having spoken with her after all, but knew he'd just get steamed and so let it go. It did help her decide he was receptive enough to address one last, rather delicate matter, however.
"General, if you're willing, there is one more thing we really ought to discuss."
"What now?" he said, shutting his eyes briefly with exaggerated deliberation before promptly stepping up behind her seat again. Lissa just swung about and brought another image up on her screen, a microscopic still this time.
"Do you know what these are, sir?" she asked.
Grievous studied the shot. "Cells."
"Yes, blood cells. Your own, to be exact."
"My cells?" he said, immediately suspicious. "When and why were you sampling my blood?"
"Er, I got this a while ago, when you were on Marku."
"Marku," Grievous echoed. His voice lowered, growing harsher as he went on. "You did it while I was unconscious. You took my blood, without permission—"
"Look, I needed it back then to run a tox screen and confirm your species ident, to better care for you. It was a legitimate need and I'm not apologizing for doing it," Lissa interjected before he could get wound up again. She hesitated a moment, then ploughed on ahead, grimly. "And since everything's out now, I guess I may as well confess that I also took a series of deep full body scans of you while you were still unconscious. They weren't necessary and I know I should have waited and asked you first, but I didn't, so—sorry. That part of it I will apologize for."
Grievous expelled his breath in a sharp, wordless exclamation, as though he still couldn't believe her gall, even after all the intervening time. "Is this what you've been hiding from me?" he demanded angrily. "In your secure files?"
"Yes."
"To—study me in secret, was that it? Like an interesting schematic?"
Lissa's cheeks reddened. "Yes, sir," she admitted.
This time, Grievous said nothing in response. He remained silent for so long that she finally risked looking back over one shoulder and up into his glowering face in a way that was almost plaintive.
"Are you—really mad?"
"I'm furious!" Grievous snapped. "Go on!"
"Oh. Um—okay, your blood. All these little circular cells here, they're all red cells, red blood cells. Do you see how most of them have these dark masses inside, the nuclei?"
"I know how a cell is structured!"
"But do you also see this very similar cell here, the one that seems to lack a nucleus?"
"Yes, and—? What is your point?"
"When I first looked at this, I didn't think there was one. I just presumed your species had a variety of red blood cell types—it's not unknown. But now that I know more about what's normal for Kaleesh, I know that you don't have that variety, or shouldn't. All your red blood cells should be of one type and nucleated. So I looked my sample results over more carefully. And I found out that that's not even a Kaleesh blood cell. It's human."
"Human? But—how—I don't understand." Grievous was not just perplexed, he was somewhat aghast. "Why is it in me?" he exclaimed.
"That's what I wanted to know," Lissa replied. She swivelled her chair about and looked up into his face again, much less timidly than before. "I had a chat with the Geonosians about it… Do you know or did you ever know a Jedi named Sifo-Dyas?"
"A Jedi? No! Why are you asking me this?"
"Because that's Sifo-Dyas's blood cell. Or it was. Apparently, you were given a transfusion of his blood during the operation to install your cybernetics. Nagas said he was simply told to do it. Can you think of any reason why anyone would order you to be transfused with alien blood, especially a Jedi's?"
Grievous could, and the realization instantly shot his ever-smouldering temper through the roof. "Dooku," he spat. "It was Dooku!"
"Really? Our Count Dooku? But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he—"
Grievous abruptly reeled backwards, away from her. He spun about, as if to march back to the window, changed his mind and whirled around again. His metal frame began shaking visibly. He gesticulated wildly and lifted one foot and slammed it back down, clutching it at the floor. "He ordered it!" Grievous cried. "He wanted to make me Force-sensitive, wants to control me! It's why he was always disappointed with me, why he wants me to be so angry!"
"Whoa— What?" Lissa exclaimed. She hadn't the slightest idea of what the man was talking about. All she did know was that whatever it was, it had so enraged Grievous that he seemed on the verge of throwing a sudden violent fit. He snatched up a foot and smashed it down again—he clawed the floor this time, the taloned ends of his toes screeching over the tiles. Lissa shrank back in her seat. She'd seen people lose it and throw some beauts before, but this was wrath of a higher order, on the scale of the tantrum he'd had down on Quispamsis, minus the broken objects and tearing around. There wasn't even any point in trying to calm him down. It seemed safer and easier to just let him vent, even if, sadly, his particular well of malice and spite was bottomless.
Her poor old floor was taking a beating, though. She'd never before seen a sentient adult actually stamp their feet in rage. It was weirdly fascinating to watch. Lissa got the impression that if he could, Grievous would be gnashing his teeth and snapping at himself.
"I will kill him for this!" the cyborg finally choked out, his voice so curdled that he was barely articulate, his hands gesturing and squeezing as though they were already wrapped about Dooku's throat.
"Sir, I…I could use some help here," Lissa interjected, trying to refocus him on the matter at hand before he lost it completely. "Why are you so sure it was Dooku who ordered the transfusion?"
"The blood! It was from a Jedi! Jedi blood!"
"Yes?"
"It had midichlorians in it! He wanted them put in me to boost my count," Grievous exclaimed. His tone turned sneering, condescending. "Don't you know? I thought you had some comprehension of physiology."
"Oh, right. Those midi-things," Lissa said. She frowned, the skin crinkling between her brows.
Grievous fixed her with a hard glare. "I suppose you don't believe in them. Or in the Force."
"Of course I do. I have to, don't I? It's just that I don't think it works quite the way you're suggesting. From my understanding, you can't just inject someone with a batch of those things and poof, make them Force-sensitive. Being able to manipulate the Force involves a natural inclination and metaphysical stuff too, and…and…" She struggled and threw a grimace in on top of her frown. "Oh, I don't know—just stuff. It's not a subject I'm real comfortable with," she admitted.
"Neither am I," said Grievous.
"Even if midichlorians were transferable, the attempt still doesn't make much sense. The blood volume in what's left of your circulatory system is so low now and your organic components so limited. I don't know where anyone thought your midichlorians were supposed to reside. And I hate to think of how many drugs they must've pumped into you to ward off rejection—that couldn't have made you a very hospitable host either." She paused for a moment to study the cyborg. Grievous stared back, much more calmly than he could have several minutes ago. "I'm surprised Nagas didn't bring any of this up at the time," she mused aloud. "Of course it's possible, from what you say, that no one really explained the intent of the procedure to him."
"Geonosians do as they're told," Grievous said impatiently. "So you do not think the transfusion affected me?"
"I don't think so. I've already run another blood screen on you since finding out about this Sifo-Dyas business. There were no human elements left, at least none that I could find, and I think now that it was likely pure luck that I found that one human cell at all when I sampled you back on Marku—human red blood cells normally don't live very long. I can run the screen again or take a new sample now if you like and test it specifically for midichlorian levels, but I doubt I'd find them elevated beyond what's average. In fact, I feel quite safe in saying you probably have an unusually low count, perhaps the lowest count of any Kalee alive right now, if only because of the organic limitations I just mentioned."
"I see…"
Lissa regarded the cyborg again. His rant had subsided completely and he'd settled once more into his usual stooped posture as if nothing had ever happened—typical. She recalled what he'd been yelling about when he first blew up.
"General, what did you mean about Dooku wanting to control you?" she asked him. "And you mentioned that he was disappointed and wants you to be angry? What was that all about?"
Grievous hesitated. Explaining it fully would mean revealing that the Count was a Sith Lord, something the woman surely knew nothing about and didn't need to know. "If I had any Force ability, Dooku would be able to sense me all the time," he allowed. "When he first began training me, he used to encourage me to try and feel the flow of our fighting, to use my emotion to direct my moves. I never understood what he was talking about and why he always seemed so displeased with me. Then he…sometimes he would make me angry."
He suddenly groaned and started moving again, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
"I am certain that he is the one who ordered the alterations to my aggression center also," Grievous continued. "Dooku is a very powerful Jedi. He is very attuned to anger. When my control is poor, it lets him monitor me, even from a distance. Can you understand that, understand what that means for me?"
Lissa did and looked sadly back at him. It was all starting to fall into place for her. She finally realized that the purpose of all the cyborg's mind alterations wasn't just to focus him on his work, but to also serve as some sort of sick psychic choke chain for his master, Dooku, to yank on whenever he wanted his pet to perform. It seemed the most petty sort of cruelty to her, a possibility that would never have occurred to her on her own. Poor Grievous…no wonder he'd so readily accepted her warning about not removing any more nodules.
"I don't know what to advise you now," she said. "I could try taking out just one of the remaining blocks to try and ease things for you a bit, but if Count Dooku is as sensitive as you say he is when he's around you…" She trailed off and shrugged, helplessly. Grievous just kept weaving, restless and driven and unhappy. He was torn at that moment between sinking into misery and exploding again over the treachery that had been dealt to him.
"They didn't even have to do any of it, did you know that?" he added bitterly. "I would have fought willingly for the Confederacy. I would have done what they wanted of me until my dues were paid. There was never any reason to alter me." His voice rose and became beseeching. "I'm not supposed to be like this! I am not a mean person. It's true that I was always aggressive and domineering and harsh when required—I am a military man, after all. But I was never bad-tempered about it—I'm not! I have a good disposition!"
"Of course, General, I believe you," she murmured. Something else occurred to her and she said, more urgently, "Sir, is there any chance that Count Dooku could read your mind? Jedi can do that, can't they? Could he find out that you've regained your personal memories?"
Grievous considered it. "I don't think he would try," he replied at last. "Dooku hates touching alien minds. And I think my implants make my mind too droid-like for him. He would never lower himself." Abruptly, he laughed, a short, harsh grunt. "One benefit of all that's been done to me."
There seemed little left to say after that. Lissa saw Grievous glance at the door and knew that he wanted to get away to mull over all she'd revealed to him. "What are you going to do, General?" she asked.
"I don't know yet. I have to think first, check on a few things." His gaze hardened and he said, with sudden coldness, "You are not to say anything about any of this to anyone, is that understood?"
"Don't worry, sir, I won't. I'm very good at keeping secrets."
"Of that I have no doubt," Grievous muttered, and with that, he turned and left.
Lissa stared glumly after him. Then she turned back to her computer and put her head down on the desk, cradling it in her folded arms, and stayed like that for a long while. The painkiller she'd taken was wearing off and her hurt leg was starting to smart again and her bruises ache, and she felt sick all the way through. When she eventually did lift her head again, her eyes were wet. "Bag that," she whispered, and savagely wiped the tears away with the back of one hand before they spilled over. Crying solved nothing and neither did self-pity, she thought. She'd done what she had of her own volition and now had to live with the results, no matter what. But that was the end of her saboteur's career. Never again would she get involved in any sort of subterfuge that affected another person directly—it was just too nerve-wracking. Her temperament was better suited for swiping information and maybe the odd office pen, nothing more.
The woman got up and found that she'd stiffened up again, and even though she was not normally given to shirking her work, decided to give herself sick leave for the remainder of the day. She also thought it might be worthwhile to finally visit the ship's infirmary for a legitimate personal reason. Neimoidians were such comfort-loving creatures…Lissa had a hunch that they had far better treatments for everyday aches and pains than just another dose of analgesics. She just hoped that the medical staff didn't bear her too much of a grudge for having monopolized their workspace so often while tending to Grievous…
She exited her battered body with the same grim fortitude with which Grievous had borne out his battered mind just a short time ago, and limped her way down to the Invisible Hand's sickbay.
TBC
