Chapter 9: Leave it to the Professionals
It was imperative that they find Hartwald. All the places Greg and Ahsoka had bugged turned up negative. It looked as though Greg's undercover work had been useless after all. Nan figured that Count Dooku had found Hartwald already, but they needed to go to an evil place to talk to him. There wasn't anything more evil than a noncompliant printer at the rebel base. Ahsoka, Nan, and Greg had a long argument about trusting Dooku. Ahsoka was against it, Greg willing to go along as long as he could somehow take a swing at Dooku, and Nan insisted that he was their only option. Finally Ahsoka agreed. Now they had to go to an evil place nearby.
"The guy who sells us spare parts constantly rips us off," said Greg. "That's pretty evil."
"My high school," said Beck.
"Dathomir," said Ahsoka.
They went to Dathomir. It was definitely evil and was sure to piss the Count off. His dealings with the Nightsisters had caused him a lot of bother, though he did get his own back in the end. Dathomir was abandoned now. They landed near the Nightsisters' temple. Greg sniffed all over the place and came upon rusting old battle droid debris. He was puzzled but could not explain why. Nan called for the Count to appear. He took his time about it.
"Ventress was from here," remarked Ahsoka.
"Guys, guys, you want to know why Dooku fired Ventress?" Said Nan. "I know the real reason. It's because whenever he saw her, he got a huge hard-on and had to run off to a bathroom to whack it out."
"That is most decidedly untrue," said Dooku, materializing suddenly.
Ahsoka folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with a mean look. He glanced around and spat at the dirt in disgust.
"This is very untactful of you, Dr. Specious," he said. "You could have found any number of evil places that do not bring to mind the reprehensible and repellant Nightsisters."
Nan had somehow found time to make some little dolls out of dried out plant husks and she played with them, while narrating the events in a whiney voice.
"Oh no, the Nightsisters have sent an assassin after me because I nearly killed one of them. Oh, Ventress has come back to kill me and I still can't control my hard-on for her!"
"Don't forget about the part where the creepy witch mother stole his hair somehow and made a voodoo doll and nearly burned his face off!" Said Greg.
He ripped the head off one of the dolls, which was already missing several limbs. Ahsoka stared at him in surprise, but she didn't get to say anything because Count Dooku blew a fuse and yelled at them for several minutes, calling them the worst things he could think of, then going on a self-pitying tirade.
"You morons have no idea what it's like to be dead and incapable of affecting anything while idiots like Vader, Hartwald, and Palpatine get the glory you were supposed to have! I've been watching this stupid charade for years and I'm just seething with fury at how all my good work has been trampled over and my good name made a common joke. It was bad enough having to watch that traitorous bastard Palpatine take over what should have been my Empire, but then you two came back from the dead. You thought you were just having fun, making droids say stupid things and hanging my pants from a flagpole, but you hit me hard. Your stupid pranks are all anybody remembers about me!"
"That's your own fault," said Ahsoka. "Will you just tell us where Hartwald is hiding? We have bigger problems than your posthumous self-esteem."
"Is that your command, master?" Asked Dooku of Nan, making the word master sound like an insult.
"I had a few more jokes but sure, tell us already, butthead," said Nan, making the word butthead sound like even more of an insult than it already was.
"Hartwald is hiding out in his family's social gathering place, a space station called the Galleria. They rent it out for balls and conferences. Currently, it is under a tight lockdown. Hartwald has the book and I tried to talk to him, but he has created a barrier using magic of the Old Ones that I could not pass. He's also called up an army of the dead using magic from the book. I looked at the panels on the walls of the old temple and at the translations from the scientists and I'd say he has another few hours of incantation to go."
"Why should we believe you?" Asked Ahsoka.
"Aw, he doesn't have enough imagination to come up with an army of the dead," said Nan. "It's got to be real."
"Actually, he could have gotten that idea from this place," said Greg. "When Dooku ordered the Nightsisters destroyed, they called up an army of the dead."
"How can you possibly know that?" Asked Ahsoka. "That wasn't you. It was your clone that was sent here to destroy the Nightsisters. Did you read about it somewhere?"
"I…I guess," said Greg, confused.
"I think it's more than that," said Dooku. "Let me relate to you something that your clone told me. He once had a puzzling dream, which was odd because he never had dreams at all. He suspected the Jedi had gotten through to him. Anyway, in this dream, he was on a cliff when a flock of a thousand ducks swarmed around him. The ducks gathered into the shape of a giant dragon, with gaps for eyes filled in by the blazing sun. The dragon said three words, 'Redeem the time.'"[1]
"My message came through!" Said Greg. "The ducks made it so!"
"What's up with these ducks?" Asked Ahsoka.
"Oh God, please don't get him started on the ducks again…," said Nan with a groan.
But Greg did ramble on about the ducks. He told them about how, shortly after Kevin and Kate woke him from his cryogenic sleep, he started dreaming about ducks. Everybody got tired of this and changed the subject whenever he brought it up except Mila, who found it fascinating despite psychology not being her fave. Finally, after hearing about it for months, Kevin and Kate wondered if maybe the dreams had something to do with the 23 ducks that Greg and Nan had been frozen with for ten years. Mila came up with a theory that Greg's consciousness had absorbed some duck qualities while asleep. Certainly, ducks were never scared of him and he could make them sit on his head.
"That explains the ducks," said Nan, "not the rest of it."
"I'm getting to that part," said Greg. "See, Kevin was working on a time machine…"
"Oh God, please make him shut up about the time machine," said Nan with another groan.
"A time machine," continued Greg regardless, "so that he could send himself a message to tell himself to grab his favorite slippers before leaving for SCD. A time machine must of necessity transport things through time and space, so Kevin had waited ten years to build it to factor in the space component."
"I disagree about the space component, but I disagree with the time machine concept in general," said Nan.
"I had been thinking for a while about my clone," continued Greg, "and how even though he's a different person, he's still a part of myself, my DNA. I felt bad for him because his entire life was a lie, engineered by a psycho doctor and a psycho Dooku. Kevin offered to send a message back for me. It had to be brief, like, 'Grab slippers,' so I chose, 'Redeem the time.' I hoped that if anything of myself survived in my clone, he would understand what it meant."
"That didn't really happen," said Ahsoka, thinking of her encounter with the clone on Florrum.
To their surprise, Dooku said, "I shouldn't have cloned you…Greg. It was an abomination. It's just that…sometimes you were helpful."
"None of this explains how Greg can know things that happened to his clone without ever having read about them," said Ahsoka.
"There are lots of things we can't explain," said Nan.
"It's sad that he didn't understand the message," said Greg, "but then again, perhaps a dragon made out of ducks is not the best messenger. My messenger looked quite different."
"Thank goodness for that," said Nan, but they exchanged an affectionate look.
"Also," said Nan, turning to Dooku, "just to get this in the open, while we did make a fool of you and all that, we didn't kill you when we had the chance. Remember the magazine of Hutt porn the reporter found in your bathroom? It would have been very easy for us to slip some poison in it that would slowly evaporate and kill you. We were going to do that, but we wanted the porn to be found first so we could have a good laugh about that. Still…"
Dooku looked at them with a strange expression of surprise and realization.
"Before you decide that we're great guys after all," said Greg, "I was the one who accidentally released the millipede that chomped on your nut."
"What?!" Said the Count.
"We really don't have time for all this," said Ahsoka.
"Th…th…that," stuttered the Count, and he'd never stuttered before. Nan and Greg gave him their full attention.
"That was a shot below the belt," said Dooku.
This sounded remarkably like a joke at his own expense.
Ahsoka clapped her hands and said it was time to move out. Whether it was true or not, Dooku's lead was the only one they had and time waits for no duck. Count Dooku said he would meet them there.
"I feel I should mention this now," he said, "instead of you coming upon it suddenly. The Galleria used to belong to the Separatist army. Before it was reconverted, it was the prison ship End of Days."
"Ah," was all Nan and Greg could say.
Ahsoka decided not to take Ackbar or any other rebels with them to a battle of magical proportions. What was good against the living dead? Fire, probably, so they got some flamethrowers. Before they got to the Galleria, they were intercepted by an unfamiliar ship. To their great surprise, it was Kevin, Kate, and Mila. The three scientists had decided to come out and find them because, they assumed, Nan and Greg just couldn't manage without their professional help.
The ships connected and they exchanged news. Kate was not at all surprised that the universe was in critical danger. Kevin started to cry, but he stopped long enough to share his news.
"Mila and I did it."
It took Nan and Greg eight tries to figure out what "it" was, including guess such as "Did you fix the broken HPLC machine?" and "Did you remove Clare's atrophied tentacle from the ventilation duct?" because "it" just seemed so unlikely, but when they finally got it Greg said, "There really is a God. Only in a just and good universe can a little bitch like Kevin not die a virgin."
Mila hugged Kevin and said, "I don't regret any of it, not even the anticlimax."
There was no time to ponder that. They traveled to the Galleria with haste. Nan and Kate broke inside in record time. They prepared the flamethrowers, hoping it wasn't true, but all too soon they were besieged by zombies. The corpses had been interred underneath the building, in its asteroid bedrock. They were prisoners who hadn't made it to the next prison break. The scientists had brought some droids but they had developed attitudes over the years and refused to risk their lives. If the world was going to end, let it, they were not going first.
"Your clone would have known what to do with disrespectful droids," said Ahsoka to Greg.
"Crap, I knew what to do with them in the past," said Greg.
But they had to leave the droids and now they battled the zombies. Fire did stop them, but only when the skeletons were burned to dust and they were damp from the basement. The SCD scientists cleared the way for Nan, Greg, and Ahsoka to get to the main ballroom. Nan and Greg tried not to think that this was the place where they had gone to their deaths before.
They reached the barrier Dooku had mentioned and found him next to it. He was useless against the zombies. They were powered by magic older than the Sith. He suggested Nan use the Force on the barrier. She tried many tricks on it while the others kept zombies away from her. Eventually, surprisingly, something worked. Nan imagined some characters from the Old Ones' alphabet, ones that spell, "Enter," as big glowing letters in the barrier and it opened. They rushed inside.
Hartwald stood in front of the Hollow Code, which was on a pedestal. It glowed green and gold. He read an incantation from it, perspiration on his brow. Five figures lay in front of the pedestal. Greg recognized Martha, Abigail, Hartwald Sr., and two unknown guys who turned out to be former friends of Gary. They were the five sacrifices. Clearly, Hartwald's love for his sister did not extend far, or at all.
Hartwald looked up and said a word in the Old Tongue that meant Pause. Apparently the incantation could be paused. Greg took a step toward Abigail, whose face was wet from tears. She saw him but did not make a signal of recognition. Martha was gagged and unconscious. There was a bump on her head. She must have struggled. The others were either unconscious or quite out of it.
"Gary, stop," said Ahsoka. "You don't know what you're doing. That book can destroy the universe. There were some panels you didn't see."
"I know," he said. "The book told me. But that's far in the future. I'll have a long time to reign supreme before everything unravels. I suspect I'll be quite sick of it by then."
"I don't think we can reason with this nut," said Nan. "Let's just kill him."
"Let me try first," said Dooku. "Gary Hartwald, I am a spirit of the Sith and I have been sent to tell you to quit this madness before…"
Hartwald looked at Dooku and laughed so hard with his mouth open that he dribbled.
"Oh my word," he said, "It's Count Dooku! You're the best the Sith could send at me? What? Come on! Don't I deserve at least some really great and terrible dead Sith lord, one who made entire planets tremble?"
"All that's left of those great lords is a malevolent shadow," said Dooku.
"You're the shadow, you old goat. Anyway, I don't care for the Sith anymore. I follow the code of the Old Ones. They were here when the world started and they will watch it end through this book, but not before I have my day. Unlike you, Doofus, I never believed that Palpatine wanted anything other than to use me as a tool, and now I'm going to break him like a tool."
"I think he's making a pun on the word tool," said Nan.
"Ahsoka, how are those rebels of yours doing?" Asked Hartwald. "Don't worry, I'll defeat the Empire for you soon. Maybe I'll even let you live to see the rise of my new kingdom."
"Let's just get him already," said Nan.
They tried to do just that. Things went pretty fast. At first they all fought Hartwald and just got in each other's way, then Nan and Ahsoka decided to move some of the sacrifices. Greg ended up fighting Hartwald alone while they grabbed one of the associates and used the Force to move him out of the room. The place still had lots of zombies and they searched for a room they could barricade efficiently to protect the guy. They went after the second guy but Greg yelled at them to take Abigail. They did.
Greg and Hartwald battled it out. Greg ducked and dived like a snake, always one step ahead of Hartwald. The Sith (or whatever he was now) quickly realized Greg was more skilled and decided to do what Sith always do in such situations: cheat. Hartwald's gaze fell upon the device on Greg's head that kept him from going whacky. Hartwald guessed it was a medical device and that disabling it would adversely affect Greg. Greg was too fast to get a swipe at it with his lightsaber, so Hartwald just ripped it off with the Force. Greg did not pause because he did not realize what happened. He'd completely forgotten about the device over time. Hartwald noticed that three of his sacrifices were missing and used the Force to slam Greg into the wall. He ran out to find them. Greg got up, his mind heavy and muddled.
Nan ran in and moved toward the book when Greg slammed into her. She thought he was protecting her from an attack until she realized he was the one attacking her. The device was gone, she immediately realized. Greg snarled and his teeth came close to her neck. The Count, feeling quite useless because he could not do anything, stared at this with bewilderment.
"What's wrong with him?" He asked.
Nan jumped onto the pedestal with the book and explained while keeping Greg at bay with the Force. She did not have long to explain, because the Emperor and Vader decided to arrive at that time with a bunch of Stormtroopers. Ahsoka was among the corridors, helping the SCD scientists fight off some particularly, let's just say, lively undead. Hartwald ran back in, grinning. He didn't need the old sacrifices. The Emperor had brought replacements! Hartwald smashed Nan off the pedestal with the Force and started yelling the incantation again, and also summoned the zombies to occupy the Stormtroopers.
Greg ripped through several Stormtroopers, but he was still after Nan. Dooku grabbed him around the neck but the presence of the Emperor, the dominant Sith in the galaxy, or maybe the power emanating from the book, suddenly caused him to dissolve into vapor. There were too many differing forces in the room, Nan could feel it. She could feel the Hollow Code pulsating and releasing energy. Hartwald appeared to already be drawing its power, for he shot a blast of light at Vader and the Emperor. They were winded but not harmed. Greg didn't notice any of this and continued to try to reach Nan, who hid behind a stone bench. There was no time. The incantation was almost complete. Nan tried to jump over the bench and get clear of Greg, but he pinned her to the floor.
Nan looked into his eyes and realized that a mere device might not save him this time. The madness was a part of him, perhaps it was the remains of the evil General Grievous that Greg feared more than anybody else. Nan knew her friend was still in there, shocked and scared. She thought of how Jedi could connect with animals. Hadn't she and Greg once walked in her dream? Perhaps it was time for her to enter his nightmare. She opened her mind to him and was assailed by fury without pause and violence without reason. She could not feel her physical body anymore and realized that she was in danger of losing them both, but she gathered up her consciousness and pushed past the insanity. There she found Greg, panicking. She reached out her metaphorical hand and pulled them back out into the real world.
Feeling came back into Nan's legs. Clarity returned to Greg. He rested his face on her side for a moment in relief. Nan licked his nose and stood up.
"That monster will always be a part of you but you are strong enough to stop him," she said.
"No, not without you," he said.
Hartwald finished the incantation. He'd shot Vader and Palpatine a few more times until they retreated behind a wall of Stormtroopers, considering their next moves. Hartwald picked up a knife and dispatched his father and sister like they were nobodies. Then he stabbed three Stormtroopers dead. The book flashed a brilliant light. Hartwald cried out and rushed at it. Nan jumped for it too. They touched the book at the same time. The light intensified until everybody had to close their eyes. Then it closed in upon itself. When everybody could look again, they saw that Hartwald, the book, and Nan were gone.
Footnote
[1] Workaday as this sentence may be, it is also from "Ash Wednesday."