None of the men in either squad knew anything about welding.
Oh well. Anakin had thought he might as well ask.
Rex would have had some choice words for him about leaving this kind of preparation until — he checked his comm — three minutes before landing in hostile territory. Obi-Wan would have acted disapproving, but Anakin had always suspected he didn't actually care that much. He would rag Anakin incessantly after the fact, of course, but in the field Obi-Wan had always been very hands-off. "Make it happen," he would say, and then just expect Anakin to come through.
Sergeant Appo was neither Rex nor Obi-Wan, so he and Attie had to suffer in silence more or less. Most of the shinies leaked distinct flavors of dubious interest into the Force as they watched Anakin use his lightsaber to fuse a gravity well to the back of an AT-RT scout walker. Lightsaber welding was efficient, but messy. He wasn't sure he would be able to cut the gravity well off again without destroying it.
Dogma, who was going to be driving the walker per Anakin's orders, had his face set somewhere between a wince and a scowl. Appo, Attie, and the two or three other veterans just shrugged. "Looks good to me, General," said Tripwire, the senior bomb disposal expert.
"Thanks, Trip."
"Looks like it's going to go about as fast as a turtle on two legs," said Appo. "Sir."
Gravity wells ranged in size from about as small as a droideka in its rolled-up position, to as large as a small freighter. They were used mainly for salvage, attracting all the free-floating debris nearby to one place where it could be either towed away for cleanup, or sorted through for valuables. There was a theory that on a much larger scale they could be adapted for warfare too, capturing ships and even messing with hyperspace travel, but for something like that a gravity well would have to be massive. So far no one had been able to stabilize a big enough model to test those kinds of applications.
This was one of the smaller models, droideka-sized, and round in shape. It was domed on one side and nearly flat on the other, and Anakin had soldered the flat side to the AT-RT walker. It was a little... unbalanced looking.
"It's fine," Anakin said. "It only needs to walk as fast as you can run."
Attie cocked his head. "That's true."
A burst of chatter on the comm in Anakin's ear made him pause. He listened, then said, "Okay, Dogma, fire the walker up and see how it handles the extra load. The rest of you, get ready. We're approaching the asteroid."
"Yes, sir," Dogma said in a tone that meant, Do I have to?
"Do it," Appo told him. "Check your suits, boys. I don't care if you've done it four times already — do it again. There's always some idiot who gets his lungs sucked out his mouth 'cause his vacuum seal went bad."
Anakin was pretty sure that had never happened, but the shinies looked suitably motivated as they began to double-check their gear. He headed for the cockpit, listening to the pilots' comm talk in his ear and finally bounding up behind them so suddenly that they jumped.
"General! Uh— we're approaching—"
"I know. Any likely landing sites?"
The asteroid loomed large out the viewport, and its uneven surface was reflected in a three-dimensional, blue holodisplay in front of the copilot. A spot was highlighted in red, and the copilot pointed to it. "Yes, sir. This is the origin point of the transmissions we got from the relay station on-planet. Surface scans show that the entrance to the mining complex is also pretty much here."
That was a good sign. It would be great if they didn't have to go too far into the mines to find the station's databanks and communication apparatus.
"The closest landing site we can find that's big enough and flat enough to accomodate us is here," the copilot went on, lighting up another red spot on the hologram asteroid. "It's about a fourth of a mile away."
"Not bad."
"This side of the asteroid is pretty featureless, though, General," he said. "Whoever's manning that station will have us in their line of sight the entire time."
"Can you tell if they have any long range defenses?"
"Scans are inconclusive. Red Squadron could take a run at 'em, and see what they show us?"
Anakin shook his head. "No. If you do a flyover on your way to the landing site, how close could you drop me to the station?"
The copilot and pilot looked at each other, and the pilot shrugged. "Right on top of it, if you want, sir."
"Not that close. Here?" Anakin pointed to a spot just beyond the station's red dot, between it and the landing site.
"Shouldn't be a problem."
"Great. Do it," he said. "Then proceed with the landing, but don't get cozy. Stand by ready for takeoff until you get the final all-clear from me."
"You got it, General."
As Anakin jumped the stairs back down to the main bay, he switched to open comms and listened to the noise coming from Ahsoka's squads. Her pilots were already making their landing approach, so all seemed to be well there, although she was slightly ahead of him. That was bad for two reasons. First, the relay stations would start their self-destruct at nearly the same time so, if Ahsoka's station clocked her presence too early, Anakin's squad would start losing time while they were still in the air. Second, falling behind right away wasn't a great start to this race.
It was time to get moving.
Dogma had the overburdened scout walker gingerly mincing along the length of the troop carrier, while the other clones heckled. As he dragged the second gravity well out from where it had been stowed against the back wall, Anakin watched his progress. "Seems like it works," he said to Appo, and dropped the gravity well back onto the deck near the bay door with a heavy clang.
"Well enough," Appo agreed. "Sir, the gravity well is meant to attract things to itself, right?"
"Yep," said Anakin, and then raised his voice to call out, "Everyone strap down! We are about to depressurize!"
Personnel safety harnesses lined the walls and Attie quickly had the men strapping themselves in. The cargo straps were made for speeder bikes, not scout walkers, but Dogma and a few other clones seemed to be figuring something out. Anyway—-
"What were you saying, Appo?"
"Are we doing a jump, General?"
That hadn't been what Appo was going to say earlier, but Anakin answered the question. "I'm doing a jump to a forward position. You will land as planned and make your way to meet me as fast as possible."
"Yes, sir." Appo hesitated. Checking his own enviro-suit's seal, Anakin glanced at him expectantly. "About the gravity well— Since it attracts things to itself, won't it attract us?"
"No," said Anakin. His suit was fine, life support systems functioning and seal airtight. Unclipping his 'saber, Anakin double-checked its vacuum seal as well. He would never live it down if he let his own 'saber malfunction through laziness after getting on Ahsoka to check hers.
When he looked up, Appo was still waiting, radiating doubt. Right.
Anakin knew the gravity well would work as he expected it to. He was no physics expert; the Jedi Temple's science curriculum was mind-numbingly thorough, but most of the time he just knew how things would work, and wasn't sure how to explain it. When they had made him do classwork, half the time he was coming up with the right answer and then losing points for not being able to show his work. He didn't intend to spend an hour mathematically proving the behavior of gravity.
"Look," he said, "trust me, Appo. If this doesn't work, I'm gonna be the first to find out. If I end up stuck to the well, you have my permission to change the plan."
"Yes, sir."
The co-pilot's voice in Anakin's ear was counting down to the drop point, and an alarm suddenly shrieked, announcing imminent depressurization. "See you on the ground, Sarge," said Anakin, nodding at the safety harnesses, and Appo saluted. He strapped himself in, and Anakin scanned the bay one last time.
Everyone was good. The AT-RT was secure.
"Approaching drop," said the co-pilot. "Fifteen seconds."
He switched to open comms. Ahsoka was landing. On his gauntlet, Anakin started an eight-minute countdown, and then switched back to the pilots' channel. Time to introduce himself to the droids down below.
"—Nine, eight, seven—"
The tall, narrow bay door began to open, and all the air in the bay disappeared into the vacuum outside. The dormant gravity well at Anakin's feet was sucked against the opening. On the ground, the door would fall down to serve as a landing ramp, but for a jump it retracted up from the floor, giving Anakin just enough room to step through it and out into space.
"—Four, three, two—"
The gravity well began to float, as the ship's artificial gravity lost its grip on everything inside the bay. It bobbed, suspended on the border between the ship and open space. Anakin gripped one of the safety harnesses attached to the wall and gently kicked the gravity well out of the ship.
"— One—"
He planted his feet against the wall and pushed off, following the well into space.
The troop carrier was gone in an instant, shooting by him and away towards the landing site. For a moment, Anakin oriented himself; though there was no real up or down in space, the asteroid was a huge, unevenly-shaped mass below his feet, and he was traveling parallel to it in the same direction he had pushed off in. The heads-up display built into the helmet of his enviro-suit had been activated by his separation from the troop carrier, so he had an overlay of information coming to him from the ship's scans. The gravity well was beyond him, also still moving in the direction he had kicked it. It was already an awkward distance away.
Honestly, this was way more annoying than a regular, low atmosphere jump.
He could use his emergency air propulsion system to try to chase the gravity well down, but there wasn't a whole lot of air in that thing. It was meant to be used in emergencies, not as a jetpack. Wasting it right out of the gate would be stupid. Instead, Anakin reached out in the Force.
Though he was in space and space was nothing, he was not alone. The Force was in all things, but also between all things. Anakin could feel the bright spark of living energy in the retreating troop carrier, the subsiding disturbance it left behind in its wake, and the ponderous movement of the asteroid beneath him. It was quiet, without the usual background hum of ever-present life, but that only made things stand out more starkly.
Gripping the escaping gravity well with the Force, he slowed its movement and began to reel it back towards himself. His own constant movement was a problem too, but there was an easy way to fix that. On his gauntlet, Anakin tapped the command to remotely activate the gravity well.
Appo was right about one thing — the gravity well sure did suck Anakin toward it. But there was also something much, much more massive caught in its expanding field.
The well generated a gravity field within the range of strength most common on inhabited planets. In effect, it became the "ground" that things would fall towards. This tended to work great for salvage in space, but not so well near planets, huge ships or other things that had enough mass to interfere with the gravity field. Anakin landed on the well on hands and knees, and tried to ignore the random bits of debris that came with him, little pieces of rock and metal falling on him as if dropped from a great height.
The well was moving in relation to the asteroid, but the shift was sluggish; he couldn't tell whether they were ever going to hit the ground, or whether they were just going into orbit.
Anakin reached out for the impression the hulking mass of rock below left in the Force, and yanked.
The asteroid was bigger than Anakin, bigger than the gravity well so, instead of moving it — they moved. The well lurched straight towards the asteroid, picking up speed until it was dropping like a stone. Just for kicks, Anakin stood up on the well, feet toward the rapidly approaching ground, and rode it down like a rocket.
This was more like it.
Just as everything was about to end in a messy impact and debris crater, Anakin thrust hard in the Force against the asteroid, killing most of the fall's momentum and cushioning the landing. He did not want to end up floating here with useless, shattered pieces of a gravity well. It still hit pretty hard, and he landed beside it in a crouch. Pulling his lightsaber, Anakin stood and surveyed his position.
In all directions, there were rocks. The terrain was pockmarked and rough, but in the distance Anakin could see the troop carrier on the ground. They had landed successfully, so that was good. Orienting himself so that their landing site was at his back, Anakin scanned what was in front of him and searched the Force. The red light of the transmission origin point blinked steadily on his HUD, overlaid on what seemed to be, in the real world, just another ridge of rock. He could see tracks from some kind of landing vehicles left in the dust, but nothing immediately jumped out as an obvious old mining facility.
Experimentally, he ignited his 'saber.
For a long moment, nothing happened and Anakin watched the wasted seconds count down on his HUD. They had guessed eight minutes, based on the self-destruct protocols of the on-planet Separatist relay stations, and other wider experience with Sep defenses, but that was still just an educated guess. They could have more time than that, or possibly much less.
Then, the Force shuddered, and Anakin moved.
A flash burst in his vision, but he had already flicked his 'saber around to reflect the blaster bolt harmlessly into the ground. Where had it come from? He heard nothing but the buzz of his comms, the eerie silence of space muffling every noise. Anakin waited, loose and relaxed, and the next attack was five shots in quick succession, seeking to overwhelm his defense. Guided by the Force's warnings, Anakin caught each bolt.
It would take a lot more than five shots to overwhelm him. But where were they coming from?
Two more shots, two more blaster bolts deflected, and Anakin had spotted the source. There was a blaster cannon mounted recessed into an uneven hill, in front and to the right of him; it was a heavy cannon, powerful but relatively slow to recharge after a salvo. Ideally, whatever droid was manning it would keep shooting at him, providing a lovely distraction, until the men arrived. One nice thing about droids — they were pretty limited, straightforward thinkers.
Given the location of the cannon, Anakin was able to pick out a door the exact flat gray color of the surrounding landscape set into the same hillside. The transmission point would be somewhere beyond it, inside the facility.
Over the next several seconds, Anakin played a snapfish game with the gun. Essentially, it was the most basic version of similar games played at the temple to train younglings in Force reaction, with the minor upgrade of trying to send each attack right back at the cannon. Ideally, he would disable it himself before the clones even arrived. Four more shots later, though, the gun was still operational.
Either it was pretty well shielded, or Anakin was being an uncharacteristically bad shot today. It didn't matter, luckily. He could keep this up indefinitely, so there was no real danger from the cannon regardless.
As the gun fired again Anakin tensed, but then let his 'saber drop. The shot had flown ridiculously wide. Had the droid gunner malfunctioned? Then he turned, tracking the shot, and saw the troop of clones formed up behind the scout walker, jogging in a tight formation toward his position. They had covered over half the distance already.
The gunner hadn't malfunctioned. It had chosen a different target.
A frisson of warning in the Force, and Anakin leaped into the air, flipping and catching with his blade the shot that would have flown over his head, toward his men. When he landed, Anakin adjusted his stance and breathed out evenly, narrowing his focus to that threatening hillside.
It would only take a few well-aimed shots to devastate the clone squads, as closely grouped as they were. The droid had reevaluated its strategy unusually quickly when it discovered its first approach wasn't working. Anakin could keep intercepting the shots, but there was little room for error when you were leaping fifteen feet into the air. If the shots came too close together, he'd be in trouble. He also didn't know exactly how far his gravity well's field extended; if he managed to jump completely out of it, he'd go off flying into space.
"No danger from the cannon," Anakin repeated mockingly to himself. That had lasted for about two seconds.
He switched to the pilots' comm channel. "General Skywalker to Red Leader."
"Go ahead, General."
"I got a minor problem down here, Red Leader. Do you have a minute?"
"Absolutely," said Red Leader. "What can we do for you?"
"Well." On his comm, Anakin selected the coordinates of the cannon's hill marked on his HUD. "I've got this blaster cannon."
"See it. Say no more, General."
As Red Squadron synced to his command frequency, they showed up on Anakin's HUD as green dots in the corner; each one was tracked by a coordinate number that rapidly changed as the ships streaked toward his location. He listened to them as they formed up for a strafing run, and turned to clock the clones' progress. They were close, but not close enough.
While his back was turned, Anakin felt the telltale prickle of warning and leaped just as the gun fired again. Three shots this time and, spinning in a blur of light, Anakin intercepted all three. He hit the ground, ready to spring up again in a split second. Hopefully the droid would be dumb and not realize that if it began a constant barrage there was no way he could keep up. Given its already-surprising adaptability, though, that hope was too thin to be comforting.
Red Squadron was close; the scout walker and the fighters would probably arrive nearly simultaneously. In the meantime, Anakin settled into his stance. Good thing he was the official Jedi Temple distance leap record-holder.
When the walker finally clattered up beside Anakin, it was weirdly silent. Those things always made noise, but not here where there was no atmosphere.
"Appo," Anakin said with relief, positioning himself just in front of the walker. The attacks had continued to come, but as the clones approached closer to his own position the interceptions had become easier. Nothing had gotten past him yet. "Hold here for a minute. Red Squadron is about to take this gun for us."
"Yes, sir," said Appo, giving the hand signal for freeze to the squads behind him. "That was some firework show over here."
"I didn't expect them to target your approach," Anakin admitted.
"We made good time anyway."
Maybe, but they only had just under five minutes left on the countdown.
Red Squadron appeared overhead, an abrupt entrance without the warning noise of their approach. Red Leader made a low pass, firing on the hillside and raining down silent bolts of bright plasma. From their uncomfortably close position, Anakin and the men could see the Separatist blaster cannon firing back, but as fighter after fighter blew overhead the destruction on the hillside became impossible to distinguish. The last few fighters followed up the strafing run with concussion missiles that impacted the ground near where the cannon had been mounted, sending up massive plumes of dust and debris that just hung there, not coming down again.
There was no time to find out whether they had been successful.
"Go!" said Anakin, leading the dash to the door with one eye on the hillside, in case the cannon had somehow survived, and one eye on the countdown. Four minutes.
Dogma followed in the scout walker with its gravity field, the walker's retarded pace still easily equal to that of a running clone trooper. When they reached the door, Tripwire stepped out from the line and rigged it with charges. It looked like the original door that the miners had installed, so two ordinary detonation packs were enough to do the job.
"Stay here, and be ready," Anakin told Dogma. "You're our only chance for a quick exit."
Dogma nodded, and the door blew.
A chaotic scuffle happened over a few seconds as two B2 battle droids met them at the entrance, and the men turned them into scrap metal. Bounding inside, Anakin overtook Appo. He sensed nothing, no living presences, but that didn't mean there weren't infinite amounts of droids waiting for them.
The main corridor continued up ahead into darkness, and two smaller passages branched off perpendicular to the main one, directly across from each other.
"The data center is here," Anakin said, pointing to the left, toward the flashing red marker on his HUD. "Appo, take your squad and go ahead. Attie, you take the data center and I'll take the other passage. We need to find the detonation charges. Eyes up, but be fast. Three minutes and thirty seconds."
"Yes, sir!"
Anakin moved, knowing that half of Attie's squad would follow. Once they left the immediate entrance, the gravity well's influence faded, and the corridors became a nearly zero-g environment. It was not exactly conducive to extremely fast movement; even Force-enhanced muscles were useless with nothing to push against. The corridors were helpfully narrow, though, and Anakin was able to make decent time pushing from one wall to the other in a zig-zagging motion. Most of the clones behind him were doing the same or using their emergency air propulsion systems, their helmet lights filling the passage with a wildly disorienting light show.
They should have worn jetpacks anyway, Anakin thought. Switching momentarily over to Transport Two's comm channel, he heard Ahsoka's squads still trying to deal with the blaster cannon. Not good — they were running out of time — but Anakin couldn't do anything about it at the moment.
At the end, his corridor split into two rooms. Both doors still had power, and the first one opened on what looked like long-deserted equipment storage. Several small, magnetic-rail transport carts were stacked against the back wall, and the rest of the room was full of canisters. They were probably empty canisters, but if they did happen to be full of explosive gas this might be a perfect place to rig a charge.
"Joc, search this place," Anakin said to the clone trooper floating just behind him.
"Yes, sir." Joc and five squad-members pushed into the room, looking for anything likely to blow them up.
Anakin pushed off the doorframe, crossing the passage to the second door. When it opened, he found himself staring out at the surface of the asteroid. There had once been a room here, but now there was only a hole with half-shattered rock walls, full of what no doubt would have been a suffocating amount of floating dust and debris. This, Anakin guessed, was the result of Red Squadron's bombardment. The blaster cannon and its mounting seemed to have been hit directly, since he couldn't find any recognizable trace of them. He did, however, find the gunner.
A partially dismembered tactical droid floated there, its limbs ripped off and flung away, but its photoreceptors still lit with power. "Jedi General Anakin Skywalker," it said.
"That's me." Anakin gripped the doorframe and reached out with his 'saber, slicing the droid's head in half. Nobody needed even a partially functional tactical droid running around. It made sense now, why the droid had been able to change strategies so quickly; any B2 would have wasted hours firing at him before reevaluating its threat response protocols.
Pulling back into the corridor, Anakin palmed the door shut and then stabbed the control panel to keep it that way.
"Appo?" he said into his comm.
Appo's voice came back, immediate and brusque. "Nothing yet, General. No droids, no bombs. There's a whole complex of tunnels down here. Searching everywhere is going to take time."
Sithspit. "Attie?"
"We've secured the data center, sir."
"Have you extracted the communication data?"
"Not yet, General. I have Zero working on the self-destruct program."
"You found it? Can you shut it down?"
"No. It's encrypted — too complex to break in the time we have. He thinks he can isolate the frequency it's using, though."
If he could do that, he could jam the signal and keep it from detonating. It was the best chance they had; at this point, Anakin had to either order an immediate retreat or tie their fate to that of the asteroid. Any longer, and there would be no time to even try to escape. "We're all in Zero's hands, then," Anakin said. "I've got nothing on my end."
"Copy, sir."
Joc came shooting out into the corridor, hitting the opposite door and righting himself. As the other clones followed him, Anakin raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Anything?"
"Nothing, General," Joc confirmed. "Some of the canisters are full, but there's no ordnance in there. Just a lot of old equipment."
Great. The countdown read two minutes and four seconds.
"Back to the data center," said Anakin.
There was nothing else they could do in the time they had left. Either Appo's men would find the detonation charge, or Zero would jam the self destruct signal, or this would be their last two minutes. This time they all used their emergency air propulsion. No sense in saving it at this point.
They made it back to the main entrance and landed back on their feet in full gravity before Attie's voice came over the open comm.
"Frequency isolated. Self-destruct neutralized. We're good, General."
The clones' collective relief flooded the Force like a sudden exhale. Anakin took a breath before responding. "Copy, Attie. Get that data and let's get off this rock. Appo, report back to the main entrance."
"Gladly, sir."
"Yes, sir."
Joc, Ross and the other clones had relaxed. There was nothing for them to do now except wait for the slicers to finish their work. Although the immediate threat was over, Anakin wasn't quite as at ease. He walked toward the entrance where Dogma and the scout walker waited, and flipped over to Transport Two's comm channel.
Ahsoka and her squads were breaching the door of their comm center, but the original, estimated eight-minute countdown had already run out. When Zero had isolated the self destruct's signal, he had synced their info-displays to the real countdown, which had actually been about ten minutes. Ahsoka had one minute and forty seconds. Stepping outside, Anakin nodded at Dogma but barely saw him as he listened to Ahsoka's men destroy the droids that met them inside the door. They had to assume their station had a tactical droid as well — was it still intact?
On command channel, Anakin said, "General Skywalker to Commander Tano. Be advised we found a tactical droid in charge of our station's defense."
"Good to know, Master," said Ahsoka's voice. "We'll keep an eye out for one."
One minute and twenty-five seconds.
This was bad. It had taken Anakin's squad two and a half minutes to neutralize their self-destruct. Could Ahsoka's men do it in under a minute and thirty, with a tactical droid lying in wait for them? All of Anakin's senses were focused on the tiny comm in his ear, relaying the orders Ahsoka's clones were giving and receiving while the seconds ticked by. His own breathing was loud over the sound of their voices, and the Force pulsed as close to him as his own heartbeat. Two facts were very clear.
The asteroid could not be allowed to blow.
Ahsoka did not have enough time to stop it.
"Ahsoka, withdraw."
"Withdraw? Master, we can't," said Ahsoka.
They were still on command channel, so Anakin spoke to Rex and Fives as well as Ahsoka. "You've run out of time. I am ordering you to withdraw."
One minute and fifteen seconds.
"We don't have time to make it back to the transport. We have to do this!"
"You have jetpacks!" Anakin said. "Get off the asteroid!"
"Master—"
"Now, Ahsoka."
She said nothing, but he heard her order Transport Two to take off. It was Rex who came on the comm and said, "Copy that, General."
Switching back to open comm, Anakin found it filled with the noise of the order change. In one minute, twenty men launching from the asteroid's surface with jetpacks would still be close enough to be killed in the blast. It would explode, shredding them with shrapnel and ripping apart the nearby shipping lanes a few minutes later.
The asteroid could not be allowed to blow.
Anakin took two large steps and then leaped straight up, as hard as he could. It might not have been a record-breaking jump, but it was enough. He shot into the dark sky, and when he escaped the gravity field the effect was instantaneous. His flight stabilized, and he glided unmoored into nothingness.
Ahsoka's asteroid was out there somewhere. He could see the scattered bodies of the asteroid field, and a planet in the distance. If he wanted to find her he could pinpoint her location on his HUD, but seeing Ahsoka as a little green dot was not his goal.
Closing his eyes, Anakin relaxed. His motion, the turning of the asteroid, the bright life-signatures of his clones growing more distant — everything fell away. In the Force, everything was connected, but not all things were connected equally. The pull connecting Anakin to every one of his men was strong; his connection to Rex was stronger. His connection to Ahsoka was a living, burning tie that made all of these look like nothing.
She was easy to find, easy to orient to, despite the miles separating them. The Force was not a holpad that let him look out of Ahsoka's eyes, but he was there with her all the same. He could sense her fear and frustration, and above everything her overwhelming focus. Nearby, Anakin could feel her clones. Fives was the closest, just as focused as Ahsoka. Below them was the asteroid, a dark mass of rock, devoid of life but ringing with mute danger.
There was nothing — no movement Anakin's expanding senses could find, except the ponderous turn of the asteroid itself in space and— there. Something tiny, but not living. Where was the danger? It was small, not moving, poisonous and burning there inside the massive rock. Its imprints were everywhere in the Force, like the ripples of a stone thrown into a pool of water, the kind of silent shout that warned him of incoming blaster shots, but enormous, rebounding in every direction. Anakin found the warning's nexus, and gripped it tightly.
The asteroid could not be allowed to blow.
He held the danger, controlling it, forcing it to bend to his will. Even when it fought him, suddenly rising up and resisting him with powerful blows. It tried to break his grip, pummeling him with a torrent of unrelenting energy, crashing through him again and again like waves, but Anakin held on. He would not be disobeyed. He was scoured and shaken by the rebelling blast, but he would not be defeated.
It lasted for an infinite age, until suddenly the danger vanished. It winked away like a flame going out, and Anakin was alone, exhausted.
The asteroid, when he looked for it, was gone. Ahsoka was somewhere — he could feel her vivid light, but couldn't find her. All around him, there was only nothing. The danger was gone too, though, so really, nothingness couldn't be so bad.