Wow. It's been awhile, hasn't it? (Deep sigh…)
My fervent apologies for the very long delay in updating this story, but there wasn't much I could do to get around the firewalls that kept intermittently crashing down on this site for years while using the one and only computer I still use to work on my fanfiction. Thanks to a few new site features, I think I can finally work around the restrictions and have a few options now even if the firewalls do slam down again, so, time to finally try completing this crazy opus, I'd say. Luckily, I kept all my Grievous files and have not lost one iota of my love for this character. I even had portions of the remaining five—yup, five—chapters already written, and will try hard to continue finishing them off now over the coming winter. And then…well, you'll see… Wish me luck with the ongoing computer woes and I do hope you'll find the eventual results worth the wait!
As for this chapter, I further hope you'll forgive my horrible self-indulgence when it comes to the primary guest star and enjoy 'hearing' Grievous utter a variant of my absolute favourite line of space opera dialog. You fellow space opera fans will know it when you read it…
THE ESSENCES OF LIFE
Chapter 20 – Patterns Of Conflict
A week after his blitz attack on Ballinex, Grievous launched the first portion of his campaign to eventually conquer Coruscant by shifting the bulk of his now massive fleet into the Expansionist space between the Rimma and Corellian trade routes and beyond. It was what he considered the logistics phase, the securing of a huge area where supplies could be stockpiled, repairs safely carried out, and replacement vessels mustered to stand ready to support his drive into the heart of the Galaxy. Although habitable worlds in his chosen new territory were few and far between, it didn't much matter when the army one commanded was largely lifeless. Barren, airless wastelands suited Grievous's droids and machines just fine, as long as the temperatures and pressures didn't get too extreme, and became temporary bases for more and more Separatist forces as the armies poured in in an almost unending stream. The few civilizations that Grievous did run across and decide to subjugate were all only moderately advanced at best and spineless to boot. Not a one offered any real fight or needed much more than a day to overcome, and the Republic's forces stayed far away, too busy elsewhere protecting more strategically valuable targets.
Even though the preliminary fighting was necessary and all his plans worked perfectly as the days went by, Grievous nonetheless hated having to dawdle over conquering such insignificant foes. There was no sport in it for one thing. For another, the lack of challenge often left him with far too much idle time on his hands, and controlling his thoughts and compartmentalizing them for later perusal was no longer easy for him. The dreadful truths he'd recently uncovered and memories of his brief wrenching reunion with his family ate at him with especial pain. Sometimes, when he stood staring out the bridge viewports with little to do, the memories welled up and got so bad that his struggles to contain them became visible as tremors which ran through his body in gusts and as a slow agonized writhe of his head from side to side. If that didn't help, he'd resort to his more usual pacing and stride round and round and up and down throughout the bridge until poor Lushros Dofine, the ship's captain, thought he himself would go insane just from watching the crazy cyborg.
Far away in the Outer Rim and elsewhere, the battles and sieges being masterminded by Count Dooku to divert the bulk of the Republic's attention and resources away from Grievous progressed with equal success, yet Grievous was not very grateful for the help. He regarded the Sith Lord's distant assistance with the same sort of mixed emotions with which he viewed the early stages of his own campaign, just a necessary phase riddled with tedium. It was a mark of how twisted his thinking had become that he even went so far as to sometimes interpret it as mere interference and he hated Dooku all the more just for stealing away and engaging all the Jedi generals and commanders which Grievous had hoped to slaughter himself.
Only one world caught his attention and demanded anything of Grievous during this preliminary period and that was the planet Chalnakov, whose system was set smack dab next to the Corellian Trade Spine itself. Its good location was undoubtedly the root reason for the Chalnakovians having more advanced technology than most of their distant neighbours and being of a disposition to try and at first resist the strangers moving into their territory. Grievous, bored stiff and exceptionally irritable because of it, responded to the challenge with horrific overkill. He ordered Invisible Hand to fire on the city from which the initial warning-off communications issued without even bothering to answer first.
His ill-tempered, instant attack was met with a long spell of silence, then came a new communiqué whose tone had much altered, pleading for a parley. The temperamental cyborg decided to humour his victims. It'd been a while since he'd staged one of his shows of power aboard his observation deck and he was in a mood to watch someone grovel. As it was, he got more than he bargained for. Much more.
Grievous kept his back turned while the Chalnakovian parley party was first brought to him and, as was his usual habit, he kept them standing and waiting for several additional beats once all were assembled before him. When he finally did turn around, he got the surprise of his life. Three Chalnakovians—humans—were standing there all right. But so was a nightmare from his past.
For an instant Grievous thought he was hallucinating; it was a Huk! Then he saw that the tall alien figure accompanying the humans had six limbs instead of only four and that its brown exoskeleton was patterned and broken into a wide palette of shades. The big dark eyes were lidded like those of a pickwit, not exposed like the eyes of a true insect. Its held-up arms ended in complex clusters of claws and folded-up digits in place of a Huk's murderous scythes. Grievous reared up furiously even so and advanced on the creature.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he demanded, totally ignoring the other members of the visiting party.
The insectoid regarded him with considerable belligerence all its own. "I am Acheta Dome," he said. "I'm here to speak on behalf of the Chalnakovians' ruling council."
Grievous recognized the name and almost jumped the alien then and there. He reined in his homicidal impulse and tried to adopt an expression of sneering superiority instead.
"A Jedi!" he spat. "I don't negotiate with Jedi. Call up the cowards who sent you and tell them to come and deal with me directly. Call them now!"
"That would be rather difficult considering that your bombardment killed the entire council," Acheta replied. His voice was clipped and high-toned, with a peculiar electronic quality to it, and his mandibles didn't move at all aside from parting slightly when he first began to speak. "I suppose hearing that makes you very happy," the Jedi added, flicking his two long antennae forward and then back, a gesture which struck Grievous as dismissive and insulting.
"It makes me ecstatic," he shot back and looked Acheta Dome over with growing disbelief, hands still twitching and clenching angrily. "I remember you now. You are the Crix general who presided over the battles at Bitvitaris and Ren-Ensafaris, the one who defeated the sepsis tanks. Well, Master Jedi, you have—"
"I am a Knight, not a Master."
Being interrupted was even more infuriating to Grievous than being dismissed or ignored. His eyes opened wider, showing the whites. One hand slipped back against the interior of his cape to grasp a lightsaber hilt. "That's it," he growled. "Prepare yourself, Jedi."
Acheta just stared back, feelers flicking again, the finger-like palps on either side of his mouth snugging up tight. "Your droids disarmed me before I boarded," he said in a condescending tone.
And there it was, the worst insult of all, one which drew attention to an error on Grievous's part in front of the General's own men; the Republicans would have been scanned and then disarmed aboard their own vessel before being allowed anywhere near the Invisible Hand, Grievous remembered too late. The horrendous affront had the curious effect of actually cooling the cyborg's rage. It was just too much. The overload flattened his emotions and he was able to study the Crix with calmer intent. But killing only the Jedi wouldn't do anymore, he decided. The punishment now had to be grander.
"I," said Grievous, "am going to level this planet."
The eldest of the three humans in the visiting party, a former secretary who'd so far been too daunted by his suddenly elevated role to do anything but cringe miserably behind their Jedi spokesperson, abruptly came to life. "No!" he exclaimed. "You can't do that!" Acheta, irritated, reached back with one of his lower arms and slapped at the man to shut him up. Grievous observed the exchange with surprise. In his experience, Jedi normally strove for calm and compassion. They weren't supposed to be whacking the people under their protection or showing any temper at all, ideally.
Acheta's antennae went back again and stayed back this time. If he did have a temper, he certainly wasn't afraid to show it. "Leave these people alone, Grievous," he said, his clipped words now heated. "If you want a fight, fight me."
"Are you challenging me?" The Jedi's unusual behaviour had so intrigued Grievous that he'd become able to regard him with some amusement. He put one hand back again, spreading out the side of his cape, displaying the lightsabers kept there in their sleeve pockets. "Then I offer you your choice. An old friend's, perhaps."
"Don't be absurd. I came here to parley."
"You're an insolent one," Grievous retorted, his momentary benevolence fading. He drew one of his weapons and activated it. He aligned the cool white blade into a perfectly upright ready position between them, his every action precise and provocative. The Jedi never wavered nor did he attempt to protect himself, not even when Grievous began angling the very tip of the lightsaber at the Crix's triangular face.
"This body I wear", the cyborg continued on with quiet studied menace, "was created specifically to enable me to hunt down and kill you scum. I am stronger than you, swifter, and more enduring. I was taught your lightsaber arts by one of your own revered Masters. Did you know all that, Jedi? Jedi Knight, not Master?"
Acheta appeared unimpressed. "I guessed as much."
"And is there any reason a Jedi Knight, not Master, such as yourself might think of as to why I should not fulfill that function and kill you right now?"
"Not really, unless it is because it is not yet my time to die at the hands of a pathetic posturing monstrosity whose soul and honour were ripped away from him as surely as was his flesh. But the Force will determine that. Not you."
The cringing secretary let out a gasp. Grievous cocked his head as if puzzled, as if the sensor plates which served him in place of his ears had briefly shorted out and he was not at all sure of what he'd just heard. But the expression in his eyes contradicted that impression. They went hard. Glacial. The Jedi gazed back serenely, the multi-faceted surfaces of his own eyes glittering with hundreds of tiny reflected lightsaber blades. He still hadn't moved. For long seconds the two of them, Crix and Kalee, stood locked in a silent tableau of mutual antagonism.
A tremor, very faint, broke the cyborg's frozen stance. He blinked, shifted his weight fractionally, and glanced to one side. His hatred had been so intensely focused that he'd almost forgotten about the rest of the people filling the observation deck. The sight of them, all awaiting his next decision, reminded him of what he represented and fractured his concentration further. His personal physician, standing far down within one of the ranks of his officers and guards, was leaning forward a little and had her head turned to watch him. She shouldn't have been doing it, ought to have kept in line and remained facing forward like the droids on either side of her, but had probably become concerned for his safety when he'd drawn his lightsaber. He could see alarm on her pale face, mixed with uncertainty and fear.
Grievous suddenly realized that he didn't want Lissa to see him kill the Crix. Not while the Jedi was weaponless.
The assembled personages waited, waited for his judgement and release. His fury burned, likewise demanding release. Grievous finally contained it by focusing on the promise of a challenging hunt and the opportunity to inflict some especially gory punishment. He stepped back, deactivating his lightsaber, although not without an involuntary shudder which betrayed how much the effort cost him.
"On the battlefield, then," he said coldly to the Jedi.
"The battlefield," Acheta agreed, and turned at once to his charges. He started pushing at the humans with his complex hands, his manner still just as pugnacious as when he'd slapped at the secretary.
"But our world," one of the badly confused men protested as he shooed them along. "The General said—"
"Never mind what he said. Let's go! The meeting's over. It was all just for show anyway."
The men went, bewildered and frightened, flinching along before their Jedi protector between the two long files of Separatist droids lining the only way to the exit. When Acheta got up to where the rows of metal faces were interrupted by a single living one, he abruptly halted.
"What are you?" he asked, eyeing Lissa pertly. "The token organic?"
Lissa was so surprised that she couldn't think of a single suitable response. She didn't realize that Acheta was a Jedi and hadn't been close enough to overhear and understand why the insectoid had accompanied the Chalnakovians or why Grievous had suddenly behaved so aggressively towards him. The only thing on her mind was a certain gladness that Grievous hadn't followed through on his threat. Acheta waggled his palps, flipped his snout the exact same way her Geonosian friends did to express amusement, then marched off. Lissa stared after him, still dumbstruck. When she turned her head back, it was to the equally surprising and rather dismaying sight of an enraged Grievous, already up close and personal and in her face.
"What did he just say to you?" he hissed.
"Er…he asked if I was the token organic."
Grievous swore out a string of truly horrid-sounding syllables and glared after the quartet he'd just sent away. The instant the visitors boarded the lift and closed the doors, he bolted forward and up the stairs to his personal quarters and vanished within, leaving it up to his EA to dismiss everybody. Lissa Veleroko hurried down to her office. She had a bad feeling that the business with the Chalnakovian party was not over.
Sure enough, she'd barely gotten inside her not so sacred sanctum and begun changing into her working outfit before Sunny came calling with the remainder of her bodyguards. They soon escorted her down to the main hold to catch a shuttle ride to the planetary surface, but it was not the General's ops shuttle—he'd already gone down ahead of them, Sunny informed her. Lissa sat on a bench seat in between a couple of the battle droids, hugging her kit in her arms and feeling very sorry for herself as they made their way down to Chalnakov. She still had the sense that things weren't going to go well, a vague premonition that was only heightened when she found herself and her party dumped out in the middle of what looked to be a typical deserted low-tech city street.
They didn't stay on their own for long, however. Grievous suddenly appeared, pacing out onto the street from a nearby side road, followed by a full entourage of his scary MagnaGuards. He glanced at her only once, then glided on down another side street and again disappeared from view. Lissa shifted from foot to foot, wondering if she was meant to keep up with him, yet Sunny and her other droids held fast. A moment later, she understood why. Grievous and his bodyguards reappeared, moved rapidly a block closer to her, then went down another side street. The logic of it, if logic there was, escaped her.
A sudden, terrific blast of light lit up the nearby skyscape, accompanied seconds later by a horrific roar and a shuddering tremor beneath her feet. The shock of it almost knocked Lissa right off her feet.
"What the hell!" she yelped. "Where did that come from!"
"Orbital shelling," Sunny informed her blandly. "From the Invisible Hand."
"The ship's firing on us? Are they nuts?!"
"Not us. The General left specific coordinates."
Another shattering bolt rained down and lit up half the sky, its impact further away this time, yet still close enough to make her eardrums thrum. Lissa thought about how easily the slightest deviation in targeting could vaporize her, and Grievous too, despite all his delusions of grandeur and indestructibility.
"Damn!" she exclaimed, and her tone spoke as much of anger and frustration as it did of fear and nerves.
Scud off the debris clouds thrown up by the giant impacts began to drift over, followed by ground-hugging billows of hot dust and soot. Lissa broke out and pulled on the full mask she kept in her tech kit for her own protection and trudged miserably on behind her battle droid escorts as they began to move out, away from the direction of the shelling. The dust clouds' energy was mostly spent and it was no worse than walking through the aftermath of a briefly whipped-up sand storm, but who really knew what kind of toxins might be in the particulate matter and gases swirling all around her? If she got ill or even just developed a nasty rash, then to hell with Grievous and his needs—she would put herself on sick leave first!
The worst of it was that Lissa had no idea of what Grievous was doing and she didn't think that Sunny knew either. From what she could observe, Grievous and his MagnaGuards were just running aimlessly around and backtracking and scouring the same small area repeatedly. There wasn't even anything that looked like it was worth capturing, just a bunch of brick-built, multi-storied block buildings with shops on the street level and residences above and streets littered with hastily parked and abandoned personal vehicles and blown-out glass from the earlier orbital attack. Occasionally, she'd catch a glimpse of a frightened face at one of the few windows left intact, which always disappeared before she could focus on them. Aside from those few exceptions, the neighbourhood seemed already dead, its residents fled. A useless prize for a conqueror like her snarly boss, in short.
And then—speak of the devil!—two luminous yellow eyes ignited within the dim haze still roiling towards her and a few seconds later the skeletal white form of Grievous came stalking out of the gloom, his face thrust forward, looking utterly enraged. He'd stripped off his cape and given it to one of his MagnaGuards, a sure sign that he was prepared for imminent action. The lightsabers it'd held now dangled at his waist, affixed there magnetically. Even though he was striding down the center of the street and Lissa was on the sidewalk, she nonetheless shrank away from him as he stomped by. The immensity of the aggression and fury radiating off him in waves dwarfed even the impact clouds and she most assuredly did not want to get in his way.
Something brown, tall, and as skeletal-seeming as Grievous came rocketing out of the dust clouds in the cyborg's wake. It leapt up, over the rearmost MagnaGuard, two shafts of light flickered downward briefly, and the MagnaGuard crumpled to the pavement. Another leap and more fiery slashes, and the second specialty droid went down to join the first. The deliverer of the destruction abruptly quit and straightened up out of his crouch to his full height. To Lissa's astonishment, it appeared to be the insectoid who'd been aboard the Invisible Hand. And he was holding lightsabers, two of them!
The remaining MagnaGuards had finally clued in and turned and were already advancing on the evident Jedi in an offensive line. Grievous, surprisingly, hung back, watching. He'd gone still and the expression in his eyes had dampened to become unreadable.
The insectoid Jedi, who was Acheta, of course, waited until the MagnaGuards were almost upon him before he leapt again, this time to one side. The droid he immediately targeted at the end of the droid line never even had time to engage him before Acheta divested him of his head with one lightsaber and slashed through his metal thighs with the other to cripple the machine. He darted again, forwards and then back, working his two lightsabers in tandem with his upper arms, gesturing with one of his lower ones, and Lissa, who was still watching the whole thing with mingled fascination and horror, could swear that she saw one of the remaining MagnaGuards suddenly slip up and stumble before he too was chopped to pieces. After that, it became a sheer melee, the Crix pressing in and moving almost too fast for the human eye to follow, the two MagnaGuards still standing getting in each other's way as they tried to focus on their opponent. Grievous continued to only watch as well, but not the way Lissa was watching...Lissa, who had her hands clapped over her mouth to hold back her occasional little exclamations of "Oh no!" or "Wow!" as she vacillated between her dismay over the MagnaGuards' demise and her amazement over the Jedi's astounding performance. Grievous by contrast remained utterly still and said nothing at all, observing with steely concentration, calculating, struggling to contain his massive inner fury.
As soon as Acheta had massacred the last of the MagnaGuards, he likewise went still and stared over at the droids' master. Slowly, slowly, he deactivated his two lightsabers and holstered them at his narrow waist, one after the other, then just stood again, impassive. Aside from his feelers, which began to switch back and forth in that taunting way.
Grievous came out of his self-imposed freeze and shifted his attention to examine the ruins of his bodyguard elite, looking from one smoking hulk to another. "You'll pay for that!" he cried at last.
"Make me," retorted the Crix, and skipped off, looking insolently back over one shoulder.
Grievous started after him with a roar. The Jedi shot off, all impertinence forgotten. He was running for his life now and he knew it.
The two of them, a brown-streaked blur of churning insectoid limbs and the charging metal ivory and gun-grey apparition, hurtled down the center of the abandoned city street. For a moment, a moment only, the Jedi appeared about to out-run his pursuer, then the deadly cyborg found his stride and Acheta's lead began to shrink. They raced on another several blocks before the Crix decided that the General had gotten too close and abruptly dashed to one side behind a parked vehicle and across the sidewalk. Grievous changed direction and darted right after him, gloating already because this he could do as well as the Jedi, dodge and swerve and duck along with the best of them. But he couldn't do what Acheta did next, lift up the outer wing covers backing his abdomen and unfurl a pair of short translucent inner wings. Nor could he beat them furiously as he leapt high up onto the side of the building fronting the sidewalk and began to climb.
No! Not fair! Grievous skidded to a halt at the building's base and snarled and slammed a fist wrist-deep into the brick exterior in his rage and frustration. Acheta's little wings beat so hard that the cyborg could hear them whir. They motored the Crix upward, putting him safely out of reach again. Grievous, also an accomplished climber, pursued grimly. It seemed that the insectoid's wings couldn't generate power enough to allow for actual flight, but their usage certainly made for an infuriating delay!
The Jedi reached the top of the building and slipped out of sight onto the roof. Grievous sensed that things were about to go sour for him. He began angling sideways as he climbed and came over the retaining wall of the flat rooftop a good ten meters away from where Acheta had climbed up. Sure enough, the first thing he saw was the Crix crouching down and intently watching his back trail, both reactivated lightsabers held low and ready for action. When Acheta saw Grievous appear too far away to take by surprise, he promptly unfolded his chitinous hind legs and stood up, disappointed.
"Very clever," he said, sleeking his antennae back.
"Always," said Grievous, hopping down and straightening out his own hard body. He advanced on his opponent, leaving his arms uncoupled but without drawing a second pair of lightsabers to fill his extra hands. Although determined to exterminate the Jedi, he still wanted to make it a fair fight in order to assert his superiority before the Crix died.
Acheta came forward to meet him. Grievous felt the hot pleasure of knowing he was about to be tested. He began to dance, weaving and circling. The Jedi danced too, but in fits and starts; his movement was all about rapid economy, otherwise he stood still. They assessed each other like that for long seconds, the Crix's abrupt motions making him seem at times the more mechanical of the two.
When they finally did clash, it was like trying to keep track of a paper cup caught up in a whirlwind, given that both combatants could move with such inhuman, almost unearthly speed. They slashed and parried and revolved slowly about one another as they fought, and Grievous's pleasure attained magmatic proportions. The sacrifice of his MagnaGuards was paying off. This Acheta Dome might have been the first Jedi he'd fought who had the physical configuration to truly challenge him at the multi-saber game, but Grievous already knew his moves; he'd watched the creature with great care while he was taking the droids out, studied him with a born predator's avid intensity. Every blow the wretched thing offered, he was able to match, and he was starting to work out his defensive tactics as well. There! Even now, another step back. Acheta was retreating, his strength undoubtedly fading. Grievous pushed in eagerly. Oh, he would make Acheta pay all right!
And then, the first stumble. Again, the cyborg pressed his advantage. Their lightsabers clashed and held for a long second, hissing and spitting sparks, as Acheta tried desperately to hold his foe off as he scrambled to regain his footing. And then—he fell. Grievous swooped in, crazed with bloodlust, almost shaking in his excitement—
—and found himself cartwheeling backwards from a sudden massive punch to his lower chest.
Grievous was so shocked that he almost lost his convulsive grip on his weapons. He wound up on his back, had just managed to lift his head when wham! A terrific blow slammed his head right back down on the ground. For one terrible second Grievous thought his mask had shattered. All he could see was white. Blinded, he rolled over and over, away from whatever had exploded in his face, until he fetched up hard against a vertical surface and leapt up again with all four lightsabers now whirling before him in pure defensive mode. His desperate action saved his life. He felt one weapon jolt with impact, took a clip on another. Furiously, he shook his head. Then he saw a blur of muddied orange, but only on the left. A streak of blue shot by. He took another hit. The Crix was still after him, trying to get past his windmilling blades. Grievous shook his head again and blinked hard, determined to restore his vision through sheer force of will.
All at once the world came back into normal focus and he saw Acheta directly in front of him. Grievous retaliated at once and drove him back, too angry to relish how easily he did so. He realized now that the Crix must've struck him on the head and tried to put out his eyes. The thought of it made him wild—his precious eyes! He slashed at the Jedi with greater and greater speed, snarling all the while, forcing him to yield.
Acheta fell back steadily, dismayed. Fighting four lightsabers at once was beyond him. He'd thought he could do it and he kept his head high and his bearing remained confident, but he just couldn't defend himself against such swift and vicious blows and strike back with any real effectiveness at the same time. What a shame that he hadn't managed to knock the bloody cyborg off balance for just a few seconds longer! He'd come so close. A single additional stab would have done it. Instead, all he'd managed to do was provoke the infamous Knight Slayer out of whatever marginal sense of honour he'd still possessed and into this terrible fit of pure animal rage. Acheta was no longer facing an opponent, he was facing a monster—a monster in whose merciless blazing eyes Acheta could see his own death mirrored and coming straight for him.
Abruptly, the Crix jumped aside and flung as strong a blow of Force-energy at Grievous as he could muster. An antenna, a chimney, even the gravel from about the General's feet, it all went flying, but Grievous himself merely crouched and crunched his talons deeper into the tarred footing until the attack blew past, then lunged forward again, more furious than ever. Acheta tried to parry. The very tip of one of Grievous's lower weapons got through and flicked over the Crix's abdomen, just behind his leg. It sliced through his exoskeleton. A brief glut of hemolymph and red blood sprayed out. Acheta leapt back and staggered, and Grievous managed to cut him again, a deep slice through one of his lower arms. This time Acheta's backwards jump was prodigious—it was all he had left. He scrambled onto the retaining wall encircling the roof, well out of Grievous's reach, and paused there, quivering with shock yet still defiant, feelers flattened and lightsabers still ablaze as he glowered down at his opponent as best he could.
Grievous stopped too and eyed his bleeding prey greedily. Restraining himself while so enraged was terrible—he trembled almost as badly as did the Crix—but he also wanted Acheta to keep fighting and prolong the bout and so allowed the brief respite to continue. He suffered, though, as only murderous driven cyborgs could suffer. And he simply wouldn't, couldn't, keep his figurative mouth shut.
"Get down here and finish it, insect," he taunted. "I thought you Jedi believed in honour."
"As if you know anything about that," Acheta retorted. "You are the epitome of everything we members of the Order strive to shed from our being, the absolute epitome. By the way, how's the eye?"
Grievous came forward a step, almost losing it. "I'll cut your heart out for trying that," he snarled with blood-curdling venom. "While you're still alive, Jedi. Alive!"
"Promises, promises."
A queer little glint shimmered its way over Acheta's own eyes. He canted his head, almost as if amused, then abruptly deactivated and holstered his lightsabers. Grievous blinked and straightened up out of his coiled crouch, startled.
"Are you surrendering to me?" he asked.
"I concede the match," said Acheta. He turned to face the cyborg and lifted a hand to his head in a little salute. "But not my life!" And fell backwards down off the rooftop.
Grievous responded with a convulsive start and leapt atop the retaining wall. Acheta was already far below him, falling in a standing position with his wings spread, using the Force to glide him safely downward. He saw the Crix reach for a band on the wrist of his wounded lower arm, fumbling for it because his injured arm was flopping.
Instantly, the cyborg dove headfirst down off the roof himself. As he began to tumble, trying to get his feet beneath him, a vast roaring pressure slammed into him from one side and he squeezed his eyes shut against a peppering spray. Something clobbered his other side, something was grabbing at him, impeding him, yet still he fell. He tried to tuck all his limbs in and duck his head, to make himself into a smaller target, but one leg seemed to be caught by the foot and remained stretched out. He plummeted further, upside-down. His extended foot got hung up again, swung his body through an arc, and he clanged against something hard, jarring himself to a stop. Cautiously, Grievous cracked open one eye. What he saw was a jumble of twisted metal rods and strapping, and beyond that, a sky partially obscured by dissipating smoke clouds. And his own left leg, snarled by its ankle in a tangle of metal cabling. He tugged at his trapped leg, dislodging a piece of roof gravel which had come to rest balanced precariously on one toe. The pebble fell and bounced off the vocabulator embedded in his mask with a little 'clink'.
Grievous exploded with an outraged bellow and a jumble of pistoning limbs. He tore his trapped foot loose, smashed aside the mangled metal parts ensnaring him, then grabbed back at them for support before he fell any further. The ground, now heaped with even more debris, some of it smoking, looked to be only a standard story or so beneath him. Grievous let go and dropped straight down and landed on a pile of rubble with a crunch and a curse.
The Crix Jedi was nowhere in sight. Then Grievous discovered that he'd lost one of his lightsabers and it was nowhere to be seen either. He ramped up his cursing to a truly hair-curling level as he began scrambling awkwardly over the shifting, uneven footing, trying to get over to the relatively clear street in front of the alleyway.
His physician was still there with her battle droids, the lot of them already beginning to pick over the littered remains of the MagnaGuards. The sight of the wrecked droids did nothing to calm Grievous's temper and he just stood for an instant, looking so steaming mad that Lissa for once felt too cowed to utter a single word, even though she wanted to, badly, after witnessing his dive off the roof and brief entanglement. He seemed okay from a distance, however, or so she thought. It wasn't until the cyborg whirled and tried to run off, stumbled, then almost fell that both human and Kalee realized in unison that some substantial damage had been dealt to his body after all.
Grievous came storming over to her, limping, several obviously sprung toes on his left foot flapping uselessly. He looked so wild that Lissa, alarmed again, stepped back in between two of her battle droids to try and maintain her distance from him. Glaring at her, he jabbed a finger down at his foot.
"Can you fix that? Fix it now?" he demanded.
Lissa glanced at the damage and shook her head, her own eyes wide.
"No. Shop work."
"Aargh!"
Grievous spun and smashed his fists down on the roof of a ruined vehicle which Lissa had been using as an impromptu table. Luckily for her, she'd placed her tools on the vehicle's hood. They went flying off and onto the ground even so, though.
He ran off again with a bad half-hitch to his gait, hindered yet determined. But not too far—Lissa saw him halt and start clambering over some of the blocks of debris that had come down beside the next building, stumbling sometimes because one of his feet wouldn't grip properly anymore. She sighed, watching him. It looked as though the Jedi had gotten away and Grievous was searching for clues to his whereabouts. Well, good luck to him, she thought moodily. The explosion had brought down a lot of clutter which had probably covered up all trace of the missing alien, and from what she'd seen, the Jedi was way too fast for Grievous to catch in his current state anyway, even if he did find him.
Grievous obsessively searched for Acheta until long after his physician and her little party had arranged for transport to ferry the damaged MagnaGuards back up to Invisible Hand and had ridden up with the last one themselves. He was still looking when the Chalnakovians formally surrendered and only gave it up when the twilight of the coming night spread another layer of grey over the dusty streets and began deepening the shadows stealing between the shattered buildings.
Grievous went straight up to the bridge as soon as he was back aboard his ship to make sure that the vessel's captain and his own EA had the business of the planet's surrender well in hand. Only then did he finally deign to look after himself and limp right back down to the Geonosians' battle duty shop off the main hangar floor. Grievous bristled at first at the prospect of being handled by the insectoids until he saw that the senior Geo in charge was Attenbro and that Lissa was also present, helping out with the damaged MagnaGuards. He calmed down even more when Attenbro called the human over and began using Grievous's repair job as an instructional session for her, so that it was just the two of them tending to him. Lissa wound up doing most of the actual hands-on work while Attenbro assisted and talked her through the procedure. Grievous watched them throughout, relaxing enough in time to enjoy the two aliens' sociable chatter. People hardly ever spoke freely when around him. His presence had a way of cowing others into silence.
Attenbro, oblivious as always to the cyborg's rotten tempers, expressed his surprise that Grievous had managed to wreck his foot without incurring more damage elsewhere. "Is the second time," he said, critically examining the sprung, broken toes on the disconnected part once Lissa had gotten it off. "The foot again and nothing else. What you do, General, to be so hard on your feet?"
"I had a close encounter with some Republic ordnance," Grievous growled.
"Having a roof blow up over top of you probably didn't help matters," Lissa added from where she was sitting on the floor in front of the cyborg's legs, holding his foot in her lap. The fact that his fury appeared to have blown over was making her feel confident again and she looked quite blissfully happy as she made a few final adjustments to his hock joint, where she'd just successfully attached the replacement. "I bet you broke it when the explosion slammed you into that other building and you got all wrapped up in that fire escape, sir."
"He get away from a fire too?" Attenbro asked, puzzled, starting to look the ruined foot over for scorch marks he must have missed. Lissa laughed, amused by the language confusion.
"No, a fire escape's a set of open metal stairs or ladders stuck to the outside of tall buildings," she explained. "People use it to climb down to the ground in case there's an emergency inside."
"Hah! Better have wings," the Aristocrat retorted, fluttering his own. He turned his attention back onto Grievous. "Why you up on exploding roofs, General? Is dangerous, no?"
The cyborg was beginning to catch something of their good humour—he must've been because thinking about his latest personal defeat no longer seemed quite so infuriating. "I was trying to kill another blasted Jedi," he rasped, his harsh voice slipping down into a snarl when he said 'Jedi'. "He jumped off the roof and that is when the explosion came."
"Oh oh. Was a hard fight?"
"Long. Not so hard." He looked down at his physician, who looked right back, smiling. His foot was still in her lap. "That Jedi came aboard earlier to negotiate on the Chalnakovians' behalf. Arrogant bloody cull… He only did it to bait me. He was weaponless, but I should have killed him then, even so." For a moment Grievous ruminated, brooding over the lost opportunity. "I will never allow a Jedi to set foot on my ship again," he concluded.
"But then you miss your fun. And the trap he set."
"Trap?"
"Yes. Is good to know he believe he must beat you like that. He know he can never win fighting lightsabers with you. Plan to blow you up instead."
Attenbro's words cast a new perspective over the cyborg's latest misadventure. It was probably true that the Jedi had doubted his own abilities, Grievous thought, else why would he have prearranged to load up a specific rooftop with explosives? The realization upped his spirits all the more. He mentally shifted Acheta Dome over onto his personal hit list for now, the Jedi whose lightsaber trophies he most coveted and fully intended to acquire someday.
The Geonosian scientist wired Grievous up to initialize the workings of his new foot and Lissa used the momentary lull to take off Grievous's faceplate for a close inspection of several severe-looking burns above his right eye aperture. She wound up having to take the mask over to a workbench to grind it clean; the marks were that deep. When she returned, she was horrified to find that Attenbro was also making use of an opportunity and had removed the cyborg's skull plate and was poking around inside, looking at his brain. Grievous stared over at her, his eyes wide open with equal alarm. If the Geo even thought of using the scanner…
"Say, look at this!" Lissa said brightly, brandishing the mask. "You actually managed to get mixed up with something that marred the surface of this duranium. I don't suppose you remember how this happened, do you, sir?"
She showed the faceplate to Grievous and pointed out the two fresh scratches diagonally etched above the one eyehole. The cyborg nodded vigorously and gestured at his head. Attenbro, his attention diverted, wanted to see the damage too. While he handled the mask, Lissa went ahead and closed up Grievous's skull again without asking, trying to make it appear that she was doing so because Grievous impatiently wanted to talk. The General played along, reaching for his faceplate, making it clear that he wanted it put back on.
"It was that Jedi," he said as soon as his vocabulator was reconnected. "He slashed at my face and tried to blind me."
"That was from a lightsaber hit?" Lissa asked, suddenly worried. She bent down and peered intently in at the eye in question. "The scratches are so even I thought it had to be from a piece of shrapnel."
"He used two lightsabers together," Grievous clarified.
"Oh. Not good. Are you sure your eye's all right?" Lissa was so concerned that she all but leaned on Grievous to get a closer view, bracing herself by laying her hands on his chest and shoulder. Attenbro watched, his expression a little smug and turning smugger by the second. Lissa had explained the human phrase 'kiss it to make it better' to him some time ago and he was sorely tempted to take advantage of what seemed like the ideal moment to utilize the saying and crack a joke about it. But the situation was just a little too potentially grave and Grievous was, in any case, devoid of any decent sense of humour. Maybe they'd cut it out of him when they'd carved up his brain, Attenbro thought. Or perhaps the Kaleesh were just humourless folk by nature, who really knew...
Lissa told Grievous that she felt the need to examine his eye more closely using the equipment up in her office. Grievous huffed and grumbled at that, but he also hopped up just as soon as Lissa stood back, Attenbro noted, and agreed to her suggestion once he'd gotten through clanking around the workshop a few times to test his new foot. The Geonosian, still smirking, accompanied the two as far as the open flight deck outside the shop. Watching his human friend boss the normally obstinate cyborg around amused him greatly.
"I'll hook him up and run a fresh diagnostic on his whole left leg while I'm at it," she flung back over her shoulder at Attenbro as she began walking away. "That'd be safest, right? Test again once he's walked a bit on the new unit?"
"Yes, test is good. First initialize, then use for practical, then diagnostic test." He looked at Grievous, who was following along beside the woman as meekly as a pet massif. "Maybe test pelvic junction too. Is look stiff to me, yes, very stiff."
The glare he got back this time told Attenbro that Lissa would like nothing better at that moment than to clobber him one. She also glanced worriedly at Grievous, but he just kept walking along, oblivious. Excellent though his Basic was, the cyborg still had trouble recognizing any sort of teasing vernacular…luckily so for his caretakers.
Grievous remained quiet and docile all the while he accompanied Lissa up to her office, his gait once again restored to its usual inhumanly precise and even rhythm. Lissa kept sneaking glances at him as they walked along. It was always novel for her to see the General so biddable, especially after so recently watching him flip out after some rather thrilling action. But that was typical for him, the crazy aggression and then…this. His passive posture as he clacked along, stooped over with his head swaying a little in time to his footfalls, reminded her of the slightly spaced aspect he sometimes adopted when she washed him down, eyes closed and too preoccupied to notice when she triggered his sweet spots. She wondered if he'd notice now if she put a hand on the back of his neck and just left it there, acted as if she were leading him along like using a handful of mane to bring along some faithful old pet of a riding mount. Nah, better not risk it. He didn't look that spaced.
He did later on, though, when she insisted on washing him preparatory to checking out his traumatized sight and doing the diagnostic on his new foot. Lissa was glad to see him behaving halfway normally again. Beneath the hot spraying water, enveloped by clouds of steam and by his own alien thoughts, he stood stock still and once again allowed himself to relax and let his physician attend to him while he mentally recharged. Was he emotionally engaged also? Did he enjoy what was happening to him and like his handler for doing it? Of that, Lissa was still uncertain. There was so much about his thought processes and personality which she still didn't understand.
There was a lot of dirt, some of which had been blasted in deep. She scrubbed at him for a long time. In addition to the scores on his mask, she found several new abrasions and scratches on the durasteel of both legs. More battle scars for the General. There wasn't much left on him which didn't show some evidence of wear.
Once he was in her office and sitting down, he confessed to her how his sight had temporarily flared out completely when the Jedi had struck him on the head, with the vision in his right eye coming back more slowly than in the left. Lissa tsked and railed after him repeatedly, muttering about certain people and their stubbornness all the while she pried off his mask and then his skull plate in order to do a complete examination of everything related to his ability to see. There was enough left of his natural organic vision that he required a regular eye test in addition to the diagnostics to be run on the enhancements, then came the part he'd subconsciously been hoping for all along, the hands-on part, her tender, gentle fingers smoothing over his lids and palpating his flesh, the only real flesh he had left, as she searched for injuries. It felt so good that he almost made something up to complain about, a bruise or a sore spot, to prolong her probing, but that would be admitting to a need, however feeble, and that was something he couldn't permit. Not yet.
Lissa ran the diagnostic to check his new foot next. As soon as she had her figures, she closed him up and started reattaching his mask, to get him ready for a bacta wash of his eyes to help clear up any microscopic damage she might have missed. Grievous regarded her solemnly as she worked. The moment he could speak again, he asked, "Are you going to check my pelvic junction also?"
Lissa did a double-take, startled.
"Excuse me?"
"My pelvic junction. The Geonosian said it appeared stiff."
Oh dear… For a few seconds Lissa didn't know how to respond to his earnest query. "He was mistaken," she answered shortly, then turned away and took an extra long time collecting his goggles and a small amount of warmed fluid so he wouldn't see the flush creeping over her face.
Grievous's new foot and his vision tested out fine. Lissa removed the bacta washing his eyes, his goggles, and then his facemask again in order to blot the skin and lids dry and administer one last inspection and a final dose of medication. The drops she used made the General's golden eyes glisten. Lissa looked into their depths with satisfaction. It was a small thing, she knew, but his eyes looked so much nicer and healthier without all that awful gummy residue he'd once suffered from before coming under her care.
Since she had the equipment out anyway and Grievous was still being so quiet and agreeable, it seemed only natural to offer to do a full bacta change to finish up his downtime. He nodded his acceptance and closed the eyes Lissa had just fretted so hard over as soon as the fluids began to flow. His long elegant face gradually tilted downward. His duranium-clad fingers curled about the padding on the armrests and his breath expelled in a little sigh. The hot new bacta solution must've reached his heart, thought Lissa, watching. Her patient was clearly luxuriating in the sensation of warmth within, one of the few genuine physical pleasures still left to him. Her observation came accompanied by a little pang. Nobody deserved such terrible sensual isolation, not even Grievous. It reminded her of her vow to try and do a better job of befriending him.
"General?" she said, working hard to keep her words as light and casual as possible. "I was speaking to your ship's captain the other day…and he mentioned using the ready room up by the bridge, that you weren't in the habit of using it yourself and had turned it over to him. Is that true?"
Grievous, annoyed, lifted his head to eye her. "Yes. And?"
"Well, I was thinking… This office hardly ever gets much use and it's also quite handy to the bridge. Since you don't have an official ready room of your own, maybe you'd like to use this place instead when you'd like some privacy, but don't want to go all the way back to your quarters. My terminals ought to give you as much access as your own. You could work here if you like."
Her last words dwindled away before the cyborg's disbelieving stare. "And what, may I ask, has precipitated this sudden offer?" he inquired after a long pause, his voice steeped as much in suspicion as in sarcasm, the cyborg's own particular brand of double-double. "Has Dofine been whimpering to you about me?"
"Oh no, sir, not at all," Lissa replied. Actually, the captain in question, Lushros Dofine, had been expressing his misgivings about Grievous from day one, but Lissa wasn't about to betray the hapless Neimoidian's trust. "He just said he was glad to have the ready room because he expects to be at battle stations a lot now that your new campaign's underway. And I thought that if he was glad, maybe you'd like some extra space too."
This just prompted another stare. But he was thinking too, probably trying to determine some ulterior motive in her suggestion, Lissa supposed rather sadly; his inner turmoil was plain to see. It irked her that she'd gotten so good at reading his expression sometimes, yet still couldn't predict his overall behaviour worth a wit. All she could do was wait and remain alert for signs of exploitable chinks in Grievous's psychological armour. She knew by now that she had some skill in appealing to the logical side of his former personality, as long as she could recognize when he was most approachable.
"You will be at battle stations also," he said at last. "I will need you focused on your primary duties at all times, not circling about me and irritating me."
"Oh, I can always focus, General. Even when it's very busy or if there are lots of other people working nearby, I can always concentrate on my own business. Having you around wouldn't distract me at all." She thought over what she'd just said and hastily amended herself. "Er, unless you wanted to distract me, I mean. Wanted me focused on you, that is…sir."
She trailed off again and punctuated her last sentence with as winning a smile as she could muster under the circumstances. Grievous appeared unconvinced, but neither did he seem all that annoyed nor impatient with her. That almost amounted to approval, for him.
He uttered another sigh, one laced with mild exasperation. "I will consider it," he said, and let his head lower again by way of conclusion.
Grievous tried hard to return to his temporary fugue while Lissa went off to study his latest readings some more. It was a state worth hanging onto, the only one which ever afforded him any sort of mental relief. There was also the vague pleasure of the fresh hot bacta creeping through his innards and the dim, equally pleasant awareness that he'd just been extended a kindness, however clumsily, and that was something he was loathe to relinquish as well. But the loss of the Jedi was still gnawing at his pride and the scope of the vast campaign before him loomed large in his mind. He was soon blinking and turning his face to the viewport and wondering whether any of his troops had managed to hunt down any signs of Acheta during their deployment. When his physician came back to unhook him from her equipment, he brusquely asked whether she had any need to detain him further, then stomped out without further ado upon hearing that she didn't. Lissa had to almost scramble to get out of his way as he swept past. The only question she wanted answered as she looked after his disappearing form was why she even bothered.
Grievous hurried over to the bridge again to check on the progress of his latest conquest. The Chalnakovians had resigned themselves to their fate and were letting his occupying forces land unopposed. The Jedi was still unaccounted for and none of the prisoners being interrogated knew of his whereabouts or, if they did, could be persuaded to talk; the trail had gone cold, the prey escaped. When Grievous heard this latest news, he went to the viewports and glared down at the world which had vexed him. He wished at that moment that the Chalnakovians weren't being so docile, that he had a concrete reason to justify simply blasting the populace and their miserable little planet into oblivion and moving on to his next target.
With his immediate duties satisfied, Grievous stood down the fighting elements of his fleet and returned to his quarters to indulge in some personal research and find out more about the Jedi who'd eluded him. The Crix's undeniable skills suggested many long years of service, yet he'd claimed he was only a Knight. Grievous perused the personnel information the Jedi Order made available to the public and soon confirmed that claim and further determined that Acheta Dome was the only member of his species currently serving. That seemed quite odd to him. The Crix had been a good combatant. One would think that the Order would be eager to seek out more such candidates. Grievous began searching through all the Crix entries in his database. He was still unsure of how Acheta had managed to knock him down during their fight and was hoping to find some answers by studying the alien's background.
He found what he was looking for in an overview written for the tourist industry. The people of the Jedi's homeworld, Gryllus, had strong warrior traditions—something he'd already guessed—which apparently spilled over into their sport and cultural festivities. One of the biggest events being touted was a colourful annual fighting tournament which featured hand combat between two matched opponents, and the promotional material included a short video featuring a couple of Crix going at it.
Acheta's secret tactics were almost instantly revealed. Crix fought in part by kicking at each other. The Jedi had never overbalanced or fallen at all. He'd deliberately dropped down onto one or both hands on one side and had slammed his freed feet upward into the cyborg's chest so fast that Grievous had never even seen the blow coming. His simmering anger rose to a slow boil as he continued to watch the battling insectoids on the monitor. Lashing out unexpectedly with one's feet was supposed to be HIS trick! He hated discovering that he'd been taken in by something so simple and thoroughly resented now that he bore a permanent reminder of the Jedi's cleverness. Irked and upset, he clicked off the footage. If he'd known the things liked to kick while fighting, he would have shown Acheta a thing or two about kicking all right. In fact, if they ever met again, he'd kick the Crix's ugly head right off his scrawny neck—that would teach him!
Grievous, still miffed, left his quarters and headed back down to the bridge. Midway there, however, he began to reconsider. The last thing he really wanted to see when in such a bloody-minded state were the twitchy faces of a bunch of simpering Neimoidians. He would just wind up snapping at them, which would make them snivel all the more and become twice as irritating. The offer of his physician's office came to mind. Yes, why not go in and check that out? It would provide him with the change of scene he craved just then without having to put up with the annoying living component of his crew.
Lissa was gone and the door turned out to be unlocked, although equipped with a monitoring reader. Even if it had been locked, Grievous would have gotten in without trouble; he had, as Supreme Commander, the authority and ability to override any security device used within his entire fleet. It was the first time he'd ever been in the office without having his physician present or close by. Curiosity got the better of him and for a while he simply wandered about, inspecting the few personal items she'd left behind (a comb in the washroom baffled him at first) and looking over what she'd left out on her workbench in the alcove. Several battle droid heads in various states of dismantlement seemed to predominate the mess and he remembered Nagas mentioning that he and his team were working on designing a new low-cost sentry biodroid, one that could better discriminate between genuine threats and false alarms than could purely mechanical units. Lissa was probably working on the brain-housing end of it, making modifications to already available droid craniums to better integrate the 'bio-matter' as she insisted on calling it.
Satisfied, Grievous turned away, but paused again when his gaze happened to fall upon Lissa's computer station. He eyed the screen, thinking over some of the data she'd shown him, the way she seemed to be constantly on the machine, the access she had…
He activated one of his comm implants and contacted the bridge officer in charge of monitoring internal security and communications. "Locate Lissa Veleroko's transponder signal," he ordered. "I need her exact whereabouts."
It took only seconds for the officer to report back. "She is currently aboard the droid tender, sir. Hangar three, section five. Shall I—would you like me to have her contact you, sir?" the Neimoidian offered nervously.
"No," Grievous said and closed the channel. He wasn't interested in talking to the woman.
Keying in a brief line of code was all the General needed to bypass Lissa's login procedure. He began scrolling through the history of all her most recent activity, especially the requests she'd made of various databases and any material saved to her personal files. Studies of the memory capacities of humanoid brains, many issued in alien languages which she'd had to run through a translator, seemed to have been her subject of choice for the past several months. Anything else Grievous opened and perused proved to be similarly legitimate and work-related, and his suspicions began to fade. It seemed that his physician was toeing the line. She might even have been researching to better understand and fully restore his own mind in the future, in which case he'd been fretting over her honesty or lack thereof for nothing. Grievous sighed and eased back out of her account and shut off the computer. He still wasn't completely convinced, but it helped.
A long stare out at his fleet through the office's panoramic viewport reignited his aggression and focused him back onto bigger concerns. He went to his familiar infirmary chair, logged onto the station there, and settled back to continue working on his plans to conquer the Corellian trade route and leave it awash in death and blood.
TBC
