Macabeus stirred the pot he was working on. The recipe was a classic among his home. Thinking about his home made his mood sour. But that faded the moment that she saw the Torgrutan asleep on the couch.
His past was a dark one just like hers. They had met during the siege of Mandalore. She was leading the clone forces and he was frozen in carbonite. A squad of the "Mauldalorians" unfroze him in the hopes that he would fight by their side.
He was uncertain which side to be on for a few minutes but when he saw the frontlines he knew. He was ready to kill any and or all aliens he saw once. A scar from his past but something about her stopped him.
He could see her using her swords to protect her men that was all he needed. She was protecting them at the cost of her own safety. That told him which side he was on. The squad that unfroze him was quickly dispatched and he made his way to the front.
That was where he turned the tide of the battle by flanking the Mauldalorian's position with a hip fired mass driver auto cannon. Three rounds chewed the position into blood and armor. The clones thought about firing on him but the fact that he was in the middle of killing a squad of enemy forces with his bare hands made them wait.
Once he made it to the clones Macabeus introduced himself to the leader. Or he tried to, he couldn't remember his own name. Most likely a side effect of being in stasis for as long as he was.
Instead he awkwardly stood in front of Captain Rex for a few seconds before skipping introductions and getting down to the matter at hand. " a smaller force coming from the east." Macabeus explained
With that the 332nd was ready for Gar and his men, killing them quickly and returning to Ahsoka. That was when he got a clone protocol book. He was reading it during the tank ride back to the base.
He finished when they reached the venator. He followed Rex mostly out of instinct. When they reached the bridge Ahsoka wanted to know who the new person was but before she could ask Rex's comm unit signaled it was the chancellor. "Execute order 66"
Just as the order was given Macabeus was moving. His left hand drew a mass driver pistol and killing while his right wrapped around the helmet of Captain Rex. while Rex was reaching for his pistols Macabeus swept out the captain's inside leg. As Rex was thrown one way Macabeus cranked the helmet the other way snapping the man's neck with a disturbing crackle.
Ahsoka was turning to face the sound of the mass driver when crossfire shot at her, taking out her left shoulder. He would have finished her but Macabeus was faster, killing him and Kix with his pistol.
She was badly injured from the shot. It was closer to her artery than the one she received on Onderon. She made it a few steps towards Rex's body before she passed out from shock. Macabeus acted fast grabbing her and Rex's helmet. Linking his comms to the helmet's frequency he carried the wounded woman to the med bay narrowly avoiding the clones he saw along the way.
Once inside he went to work. He wasn't sure how to use most of the tools but a few things were the same as wherever he came from. Using clotting gauze and a bandage he filled and covered the wound.
She was coming too just as he finished. She reached for her weapons but he had already taken them from her. "Who are you? Why did you kill my men?" she barked.
"Order 66," he answered her, tossing her the copy of the codex he was given. "Captain mentioned that you where one of these Jedis"
Reading the order Ahsoka was horrified. She had spent years of her life fighting alongside the clones and she had never asked them if she could read their codex. And right there in black and white was an order to kill any Jedi encountered on sight.
"need to go," Macabeus growled hearing footsteps approaching.
"Who are you?" she asked again, still trying to take in everything that was going on.
This time he remembered his name. Though whether it was out of some manner of muscle memory or because he was recovering from his status he didn't know. " Macabeus Bethel need to move?"
Ahsoka held out her hands waiting for her weapons. Instead he tossed her one of his pistols. "need to get rid of these," he said holding up her weapons. The footsteps were closer now and Macabeus was getting restless.
She wanted to argue but if order 66 had been given then it made sense to not be seen using the weapons most known for being those of the jedi order. She was about to speak when Macabeus opened the door surprising the squad and killing most of them before they could turn to face him. The one that did was only able to start swinging his rifle before he was dropped with a ferric tungsten round that passed through his head.
The sight made Ahsoka drop to her knees and vomit. These were her men but she knew that crossfire and Kix had tried to kill her. She had no idea that they would so quickly turn on her and now she watched as a squad of them were ruthlessly massacred.
She didn't know when Macabeus picked her up in a fireman's carry and ran through the halls. He was looking for something but she couldn't ask what. When he found a clone that seemed to be guarding a room alone he set her down just out of sight around a corner and approached the clone.
It was one of the men he had meet on mandalore. "What is going on?" he asked hoping that word of his actions hadn't reached the majority of the troops.
"The Jedi have turned on the republic and need to be destroyed." he answered, sounding more and more like a drone than a man.
"location of armory and reactor room?" Macabeus asked, looking for information.
"This is the armory and the reactor room is… one second." he said, pulling out his holomap. "Here," he said pointing at where they were and where the reactor was.
Macabeus nodded "good get to the reactor room she will be going."
The clone agreed with him and was about to leave when he stopped. "How did you know the jedi was a woman?" just as he asked Macabeus smashed an armored fist into his throat before drawing his knife, ramming it into the clone's armpit, and then throat. Forcing the body to the ground and holding him for a few seconds before the body went limp.
Returning to the nearly comatose Jedi Macabeus snapped his fingers in her face to try and get a reaction. "Here earth to orange, you alive in there?"
When she failed to respond he picked her back up and headed to the armory. Once inside he searched until he found what looked to be some manner of remote explosive. Ahsoka was starting to move now, that was a good sign.
Setting her down he figured that he should fill her in on the plan. "Can you drive things in this hanger?" he asked, pulling up the clone's map and pointing to the tertiary hangar on the bottom of the Venator.
"Yes," she blankly answered. She was actionable but still in shock.
"drones on this ship loyal to you or clones?" he pressed.
"Me I think," she answered still blankly.
"Good get going I meet you in the hanger but first I need to visit magazine." Macabeus explained. She didn't seem to understand but that was probably a good thing for the moment.
Checking the map he made his way to the reactor room. He stopped in a maintenance room to check how to use the weapons he had taken from Ahsoka. They had a button that when pressed extended what seemed to be a plasma blade contained in a magnetic field. A swipe revealed that the physics of the blades were odd but he wasn't planning on being a master of its use, just be able to kill a few men and then leave them behind.
Deactivating them and hiding them up his sleeves he approached the reactor room. As he suspected there was a group of four clones guarding the door.
The clones were unsure of how to react to him but they held their fire long enough for him to get inside of striking range. He dropped the weapons activating them into the necks of the two nearest him before striking the other two likewise.
He dropped the weapons in the reactor room and headed for the magazine. It was comically easy to get in without being noticed. Once in he left the explosives and went to the hanger the clones weren't looking for him and that made it very easy. That being said he almost ran into trouble when a squad asked him where he was going. He told them that he was told by a sargent that the LT. was told to search the medbay.
The grunts just nodded being on the receiving end of an officer's BS more than once. The hanger was empty making it again comically easy to get to the ship that was ready to leave. Once inside he found the jedi sitting in the pilots seat still looking somewhat stunned. "Get us out of here." he ordered.
It was a matter of time before they found the bodies of the men he killed and figured out that it wasn't the work of the jedi. Once they did that the next move would be to lock down the entire ship.
The bay door was starting to close when he saw a squad of the troopers start forming a firing line on the shuttle they were in. taking his hip fired driver from his back he half opened the door and fired but not on the squad instead he fired on what seemed to be a set of fuel tanks.
The blast didn't kill them but it did disorient them long enough for him to lean around and face out the front of the shuttle they were in. a second blast damaged the door's rollers to the point that they were unable to move.
Getting back into the shuttle and closing the door he yelled. "Get out of here!" this time she seemed to listen to him and they flew through the damaged door. Moving into the cockpit he sat down at the navicomputer and thought long and hard about where they were going.
"Set course for edge of known space." he said pressing the button for the detonator blowing the entire star destroyer to hell and sending pieces down to the nearby moon.
There was a long silence before Ahsoka said. "You killed them," she sounded like she was having a hard time believing her own words.
"Yes, everyone in ship is dead." Macabeus answered plainly.
Ahsoka stood up and for a moment looked like she was about to attack but before she could Macabeus wrenched her shoulder and bounced her head off the console. He had met others. Like her before she was confused and her instincts were to protect her men but that wasn't possible anymore.
She was staggering back to her feet when he told her. "Those men would kill you if they could. They are lost. Now do not make me think that I pick wrong side". He could tell that she was tired from the whole experience. " go sleep. I navigate ."
He hoped that with the mild head trauma he just gave her and with everything she had just gone through that she would either trust him or not have the energy to fight him. Thankfully one of those thoughts was true since she silently left the room though her scowl was unhindered by this.
He sat at the pilot's seat and made sure that they were heading into what the map called the unknown reaches. or as he called them home.