Knightfall: Part 5
Padmé Amidala, the senator from Naboo, barely struggled as she was half-dragged through the halls of the senate. Around her right arm was the strong hand of the Sith known as Darth Vader. Inside of her mind raced all of the possibilities of what could happen: she would certainly be the Sith's hostage as they escaped the capital. After that, she didn't know. Hopefully, they would let her go. Realistically, she would be just another corpse in the hands of Vader.
She gasped as she saw the new monstrosity ahead of her. The face that haunted more nightmares of civilized sentients than perhaps even Vader's. Grievous. She struggled to free her self from Vader's grip, scared to death at the thought of being left in the care of the former Kaleesh warlord. Vader at least, she thought, had shown the capability of restraint in the past. "I said not to do anything stupid!" Vader cried out, yanking her violently towards the metallic beast. Numerous body parts that had once belonged to clone troopers littered the hallway, evidence of the butchery capable of the CIS military leader.
"Keep our escape route clean, general," Vader coolly said, knowing that he was essentially all but ordering the death of an allied sentient but simply not caring.
"It will be done, Lord Vader," Grievous said with a bow, removing the four lightsabers from his cloak once again.
As the two Sith and their hostage left the hallway for their shuttle, Grievous prepared himself to hold the line. Each of the lightsabers he wore was a trophy of war: the first blue and green blades coming from the first Jedi he had killed on Geonosis, the yellow-bladed weapon the "gift" of a recently knighted Jedi on Belderon, and finally the other green blade: pried from the severed hand of a Jedi Master named Merrick Fionst just a month previously. He twirled the extinguished blades in his four arms and prepared for the attack that was about to come.
"Master Ti," Obi-Wan said as he bowed in greeting of the Togruta Jedi Master as she reached his position. Taking a different entrance than the main one, the brown-robed woman had avoided much of the CIS-related commotion upon arriving.
"Are you the only one left?" she asked with her deceptively soft voice, the naturally sharp points of her teeth showing.
"Master Yoda is with the senators," Obi-Wan explained. "Siri is dead, Master K'Kruhk is injured, but stable." He mirrored Shaak Ti's action by removing his own lightsaber from his belt. "As to those assigned to neutralize Palpatine, Master Windu is dead, as is another."
"I, too, felt his death," Shaak Ti replied. "Hurry, we must go and prevent their escape." She jogged off through the corridors of the senate hall, Obi-Wan quickly following her.
They stopped a minute later when they saw the mangled bodies of the clones that Grievous had killed. Then they saw Grievous himself, four lightsabers blazing. The two Jedi barely had the time to ignite their own lightsabers before the mechanical general vaulted to their position. A heavy metal leg slammed into Shaak Ti's chest, throwing the Togruta Jedi back several meters and leaving Grievous and Obi-Wan alone for the five seconds that it took for her to get back to her feet.
In those five seconds, Obi-Wan drew upon as much of the Soresu knowledge that he had absorbed in the Jedi temple to deflect and dodge the four blades arcing towards him at superhuman speed. Ducking the upper slashes mere milliseconds before he moved his own blade to parry the attacks that the mechanical general made with his lower set of arms.
Obi-Wan struck back towards Grievous as well, sending a diagonal slash up towards the "groin" of his opponent. One lightsaber parried, and another aimed for Kenobi's neck. Obi-Wan backed away as the slice nearly took his head off. Shaak Ti bounced into the fray now, her senses completely restored. She aimed several graceful strikes at various locations of Grievous' body while dodging and deflecting the lightning fast attacks of her enemy. Obi-Wan followed her example and pressed his assault as well.
Grievous slowly backed away, his droid-enhanced brain doing all it could to help him win the fight. When trained by the Sith, he had always been told to rely on the element of surprise to help him win combat. Now that element was almost used up.
"Keep her here," Darth Vader ordered the droideka in the shuttle as the transport landed at the base of the Jedi temple. The droid clicked a positive response and armed the four blasters on its arms. The droid aimed at Padmé Amidala and waited.
Darths Sidious and Vader walked out of the transport, the robe of each Sith blowing silently in the soft wind, their lightsabers in their hands. A snarl at the statues of the four Jedi fundamental in founding the temple, a silent dare for the spirits of the Masters to stop them before their insidious task could be started. The gatekeeper scrambled for his lightsaber as the two Sith marched towards him, their gait slow and seemingly uncaring. He barely had time to ignite his now-drawn blade before Vader decapitated him.
"What's our plan of attack, Master?" Vader asked as he ripped the cortosis gates from their hinges.
"Kill as many as we can, Lord Vader," Sidious ordered. "Their best are either out in the field or still in the senate building. It should be simple."
With these words spoken, the two Sith calmly marched into the temple and then began their work. Teenaged Padawans raced to warn the older knights in the temple only to be slaughtered before taking two steps. With these victims, the next Jedi purge began…
Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti were deep into the Force when the tsunamis of death cascaded over them. The shock was almost enough to drop them out of their combat awareness, yet they remained in control of themselves. Lightsabers flashed in the artificial lighting as the three combatants struggled to finish each other off. The two Jedi slowly forced Grievous backwards, the fearsome general now reduced to three lightsabers thanks to Obi-Wan. The duel continued, with both Jedi doing their best to block the rapidly incoming attacks. Then, Obi-Wan saw an opening. Shaak Ti had just blocked two left-handed slashes headed her way and held them there as the droid warrior attempted to push the three lightsabers into her neck. Grievous raised his remaining right arm to decapitate the Togrutan Jedi and Obi-Wan's blade was there to intercept the metallic wrist as it moved down. The yellow blade deactivated as it flew through the air, and Obi-Wan twisted about to get in a good attack.
With a lunge, Obi-Wan's blade found the weak spot in Grievous' armor: the bottom of the two metal "ribs" that protected the bag containing what remained of the general's vital organs. There was resistance as the blade forced it's way under the plates but soon a howl of pain erupted from Grievous' vocabulator as the tip of the blade poked the bag. The general brought one of his remaining 'sabers towards Obi-Wan, forcing the Jedi to dodge out of the way, his blue blade still partially embedded in Grievous' chest. Obi-Wan dodged another slice as he removed the second lightsaber from his belt. He ignited the borrowed weapon, the pink blade shimmering into existence right before blocking one of Grievous' blades.
Shaak Ti shifted aside as a kick headed her way and then brought her own lightsaber down upon it, nicking the lightsaber resistant metal before it could be withdrawn. She tilted her head away from another slash, making sure that her tall montrals weren't severed. Obi-Wan tried to get in close to Grievous and push his own blade deeper into the chest, but was forced to fall back as Grievous kicked at him.
By a strange twist of the Force, Grievous backed away once again and found something unexpected: one of his own lightsabers. He grasped the hilt in his foot and then mentally powered up the repulsorlifts in his legs. Hefting the new blade with his foot, Grievous arced all three of his blades towards his opponents.
Obi-Wan leapt over the low blade and then closed in on Grievous. With his left hand he meagerly managed to push the embedded lightsaber only a centimeter more, still not enough. Now it was time for the two Jedi to back away as the droid general pressed his suicidal attack.
Then the idea came to their heads. Concentrating on the lightsaber planted firmly in Grievous' metal ribs, they both telekinetically shoved the lightsaber deeper. The tip of the blade punctured the bag of organs and lit the oxygen-rich atmosphere. Flames spouted from what remained of Grievous' organic parts as he burned alive. The cyborg general flailed his arms and dropped the three lightsabers he was wielding. Within a minute he had fallen dead on the floor of a senate hallway.
"We must hurry to the temple," Shaak Ti said, a hint of sadness in her voice. "They're being slaughtered in there."
"I'll contact Master Yoda," Obi-Wan said as he pulled his own lightsaber from the charred metal skeleton of Grievous. "He might want to go to the temple personally." Shaak Ti nodded at his suggestion and then began heading off towards her airspeeder.
Darth Vader's head throbbed from the impact of a particular heavy Holocron in Cin Drallig's training room, fortunately the only lasting injury he had sustained during his battle with the temple's senior lightsaber instructor. The room he was entering was almost as wrecked as the sparring room. The once great temple library was ransacked. Lightsaber burns wreaked havoc across rows of datapads and dead Jedi littered across tables and on the floor. All but one of the nineteen bronzium busts of Jedi Masters were desecrated, leaving only a single Umbaran head remaining. Vader wondered why his Master had chosen not to destroy that particular bust.
Vader took a moment to view the Jedi bodies as he walked across the floor of the library. An elderly woman in golden-colored robes lay on the floor, a lightsaber hilt in her hand. If Vader remembered correctly, she was the one in charge of the Jedi archives. By her side was a middle-aged man, gaunt and bald. A thin strip of leather covered his eyes. He was dead as well.
And then, despite everything that Vader had done and seen, the "parade" of bodies began to become more and more disturbing. Younglings, all of them younger than their species age of sexual maturity. Each on slain with a lightsaber. Palpatine himself was standing over a black-haired human Padawan, slain just as Vader had entered the room.
"Master, why the younglings?" he asked. They were slaves, he thought, just like he had been. "They could have been allies."
"They were far too indoctrinated into the Jedi way, Lord Vader," Sidious simply said as he closed his lightsaber down. "They would surely turned on us."
"What of the other Jedi that joined our cause in the war? They were far older than these," he said, motioning to the bodies on the floor.
"There are some special occasions, Lord Vader," Sidious lectured as he inspected the single lightsaber slash in his robe. "They were not one of them."
"Yes, Master," Vader reluctantly assented.
"They would have only become threats to us in the future," Sidious continued, walking out of the library and into the main hallway. "We must leave here now," he said suddenly as an icy cold hand grasped at his heart. Someone immensely powerful was headed towards the temple now, and Sidious knew that facing this Grand Master would mean his death.
The two Sith Lords swiftly walked out of the building, ignoring the surviving Jedi as they emerged from their hiding places. Now, the survival of the Sith Order was more important than even them.