He saw the blood first—that was not a good sign.
Scanning the darkening horizon, Anakin at last saw the Viceroy's abandoned ship. That meant he was on the right track; he knew which way to go from here. And then, as he rocketed across the landscape on the flying machine, Anakin looked down and saw, for a split second, long streaks of vermillion sliding down the rusty brown of the rocks. His heart seemed to stop.
Anakin landed immediately, but still couldn't see Ferus anywhere. Judging from the long streaks upon the crags, Ferus must have hit something up at the top very hard and then come rolling down, leaving a sticky trail in his wake. Anakin called Ferus's name once, twice, desperation clear in his voice, but received no answer.
He kept walking. The high, narrow walls reminded him of Beggar's Canyon back on Tatooine, but there the cliffs were relatively smooth and linear—here, they looked more like fossilized piles of mud that had been stacked upon each other until they reached a height of at least twenty feet. He kept walking, and did not have much longer to walk—without warning, Anakin turned a sharp corner and saw his friend's body before him.
He's dead, came the immediate, choking thought.
Ferus was dead, had to be dead. He lay facedown in the sand—blood was soaked into his hair and pooled around his head, which had suffered a long, ragged gash that stretched from one ear to the back of his neck. His breathing fast and shallow, Anakin eventually regained some presence of mind.
"Ferus?" He touched his friend's shoulder, with no response. "Ferus, please!" When at last it occurred to him to take Ferus's pulse, he was granted with some hope: through the pale skin, blotched with red, could be felt the faintest throbs of life.
Somehow he managed to lay Ferus's limp body across the flying machine. Hot, sticky blood managed to get everywhere as he did so, under his fingernails and streaked across his face, until he looked nearly as bad as Ferus himself. But Anakin forced himself not to think of it, think only of getting Ferus back to where he could be healed.
Though he forced the machine to its limits—flimsy as it was, after such hard riding it had begun to falter—the ride back home seemed interminable. Cramped fingers held a death grip on the steering lever, with Anakin's other arm wrapped tightly around Ferus's chest. Every few moments came one of absolute, terrified certainty that he would drop Ferus, that he would lose his grip, that they would both fall to their deaths—but somehow none of that ever happened, and they landed minutes later at the Jedi ship.
To Anakin, mentally exhausted, it felt that he drew on his last reserves of strength to deliver Ferus safely to a bed, check on the Viceroy who was locked in a back room, and then find and activate the med droid on the ship. The droid moved with quiet steps to where Ferus lay, still and ashen under the blood.
"The human has sustained a serious head injury," it said, for Anakin's benefit, in that soft and vaguely female voice that was supposedly so soothing. For his own part, Anakin didn't feel much better upon hearing it. "Several minor abrasions on the rest of the body as well…" One metal arm came up and began feeling with an expert touch around Ferus's torso. "…and two ribs cracked."
Anakin groaned. "Will he be all right?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
"It will be impossible to tell until I can examine the wound further," replied the droid. "A blow to the head like this, depending on the depth, can be fatal."
Anakin thought he might faint, or throw up, or both. Until now, he had not thought otherwise than that he would stay here until Ferus woke up—his mind would not let him dwell on the alternative—but suddenly Anakin found that he could no longer bear the sight of his friend's brutally torn flesh. He stumbled out of the room, feeling as though he was about to suffocate.
Guilt threatened to overwhelm him—guilt that he had not managed to catch his friend, that it has been his piloting that had caused Ferus to fall—and there was guilt for leaving Ferus behind, but no regret. Choices like this, the Jedi Council emphasized, tortured the soul and should never be made; but if you had to make them, the mission came first, always, always.
Determined to have something to do besides pace nervously, Anakin went to the refresher. There, he stuck his hands under the flow of water from the sink and scrubbed as hard as he could at the blood caked under his nails, staining his hands.
It took much longer than he would have thought to remove all traces—it seemed that every time he turned to leave, Anakin caught sight of another crimson streak in the mirror, on his arm, on the back of his neck, on his cloak. Dear Force, there was so much of it—how could Ferus conceivably survive when all this blood had left his body? How could there be any left? Anakin scrubbed furiously; the horrific idea of being covered in his best friend's blood had finally begun to permeate his thoughts, slowly cracking the wall of Jedi calm.
Night had fallen on Geonosis. Anakin returned to Ferus's room, but only for a moment. After being assured by the med droid that there was no change, he found another room with a sleep couch in it and forced himself to lie down. It was a long time before he could make his eyes close—when they did, the thought, "Please let Ferus be all right, don't let him die, let him be all right" repeated itself in his head like a chanted prayer until he finally fell asleep.
It was several hours before Anakin woke again, and then it was a few minutes before he remembered with a thud what had happened the day before. He couldn't decide whether it would be preferable to stay here, not knowing but still hoping, or go to Ferus's room and find out for sure. After a few minutes of torn deliberation, he chose the latter.
The med droid was in the hallway outside Ferus's room, in standby mode. When Anakin's footsteps could be heard, it powered itself up again and walked toward him.
"How is he?" asked Anakin.
"Quite well," replied the droid breezily. "The wound is superficial, though it would appear otherwise at first. The human is awake, if you would like to—"
Anakin had already stridden past the droid and into Ferus's room. Upon the sight of his friend sitting up, a good amount of synth-skin plastered to the back of his head, Anakin's knees went weak. He had not realized how great his fear was until he was relieved of it.
"Don't do that again," he moaned, sagging against the doorway. "You have no idea how scared I was." Pulling up a chair, Anakin sank into it. "So how are you, really?"
Ferus shrugged a shoulder, smiling faintly. His wounds had been tended to, but there was still quite a bit of dried blood in his hair, a disconcerting contrast against the dull streak of gold. "I feel like krif, honestly, but I'll live. Did you find the Viceroy?"
Anakin nodded; Ferus, the faultless Jedi Knight, dedicated to a fault. There was nothing unusual about that, but this was the first time that Anakin could actually understand Ferus's concern, rather than marveling at it.
"He's on the ship right now," Anakin told him.
"Did you interrogate him?"
Anakin blinked. "Interrogate him? Why would I do that?"
"He might know where some of the other Separatist leaders are," Ferus pointed out.
"I didn't think of that," Anakin admitted.
"I'd do it," said Ferus, "but the way I look now, I'm probably not all that intimidating."
"You scared the krif out of me, anyway," Anakin muttered under his breath. In a normal voice, he continued, "Well, do you want me to get it done now?"
"Sometime before he's permanently jailed for high treason would be nice," said Ferus sweetly.
"I can do that."
Neimoidians as a rule were not difficult to work with—they were fearful, stupid creatures, brave only when they had thousands of soldiers between themselves and the enemy. This one was no exception; as soon as Anakin entered the room, Gunray's black eyes opened wide and he jumped to his feet.
"Sit down," Anakin preempted him. "I won't hurt you. I just want to ask you some questions."
The Viceroy sat again on the bed. "Anything I can do to help the Jedi would be my honor," he said primly, as though he had planned this meeting. No doubt he knew that a lighter punishment would await him back on Coruscant if he cooperated. Anakin remained standing.
"How long have you been on Geonosis?" he asked, without preamble.
"Months—ever since the Supreme Chancellor's downfall." He spoke Basic with that odd accent that all Neimoidians had, replacing "th" with "d" and rounding all vowels. Anakin had been planning to continue with this line of questioning, but at Palpatine's name he decided to go about this another way.
"Did you know he was a Sith Lord when you were working for him?"
"We knew."
"And was General Grievous aware of that?"
"I do not believe so."
Krif. Anakin had been hoping for something on which to convict Grievous, but whether or not the Viceroy was lying, he could prove nothing. It was such an ambiguous answer that the Force held no hints for him, either. Anakin gave up and returned to his original line of questioning. "Why did you hide when Palpatine was killed?"
"Without his protection, the Trade Federation was defenseless against the Senate."
"What made you choose Geonosis?"
"It was not our first choice. We had originally gone to Mustafar, with Count Dooku."
"And Grievous?"
A split-second hesitation, then: "No."
He was lying, but it didn't matter. Technically, Anakin's mission to Mustafar had been before Grievous's supposed change of heart, and so could be easily dismissed by the Senate. "Do you know where Count Dooku is now?" Anakin asked, declining to press Gunray into telling the obvious truth.
"No. We have not seen him since Mustafar." Anakin could sense truth in that, and bewilderment, as well, which was interesting.
For the first time, then, Anakin suddenly noticed the constant usage of plurals. That could have been important. "Where have you been hiding all this time on Geonosis?" he asked.
"In the caves, and in some of the abandoned hives."
"But you didn't have sanction from the Geonosians, correct?"
"They never allowed us sanctuary—not after Grievous became leader of the New Alliance," the Neimoidian muttered. There was an understandable amount of bitterness in his tone. Again, the plural caught at Anakin's attention.
"Us?" he repeated swiftly, throwing caution to the winds. "Then there are more Separatist leaders hiding here?"
Throughout the interview, Gunray had begun to visibly relax. At Anakin's words, he immediately grew alert, quivering. "I never said such a thing!" he cried. "No, no, it is only myself!"
The vehemence of his denial proved to Anakin beyond a shadow of a doubt that his hunch was correct. Thank the Force that Neimoidians had no brains. All Anakin said, however, was, "All right, then. Thank you for your cooperation, Viceroy", and then left the room in a calm manner that belied his triumphant mood.
"Well, you were right," Anakin said a few moments later, sitting again beside Ferus's bed. "Not only that, they're actually hiding here, on Geonosis."
Ferus looked at him incredulously. "What, all of them?"
"At least one, maybe more."
Shaking his head, Ferus started to laugh, then ceased quickly as an expression of pain crossed his face. "That's unbelievable," he said. "They must have known this would be the first place we would look."
"I know," Anakin agreed. "That's what makes it so—"
"Don't say weird," warned Ferus.
"Well, it is, isn't it?" Anakin persisted. "I mean, we know they're not exactly the brightest species ever to crawl out of the primeval muck, but even the Neimoidians must have realized that the more of them that hid here, the greater chance that they would all get caught. Plus, it's not just Neimoidians that made up the old Separatist leadership—Shu Mai was in it, and she's very intelligent."
Ferus gave him a look of pained patience. "Is there a point to this, or are you just rambling because you're bored?"
"You are not being helpful."
"Well?"
"This planet, of all planets, doesn't make any sense. It's such a terrible place to hide that you'd almost think they wanted to get caught."
"Could you hand me that pillow?" asked Ferus, pointing. "The one on the floor."
Anakin, who had been expecting a bit more of a reaction, grumpily tossed the pillow onto his friend's stomach. When at last Ferus had arranged the cushion to his satisfaction, only then did he respond. "You know you're insane, right? Why on Avon would the Separatists want to get caught?"
"Well, they wouldn't, obviously," argued Anakin. "But up until very recently, they worked for Palpatine, and then for Dooku. They're not so very competent, and besides, they've all been labeled criminals. He can't use them anymore—the easiest way for Dooku to get rid of them would be to let them get captured."
This was so very interesting that Ferus propped himself up on his elbows, though he winced with pain as he did so. "But Dooku can't have just given up!" he protested. "You know the Sith: they'll do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal. He wouldn't just throw away his most powerful servants like that."
Anakin's expression was serious as he replied, "Not unless he had someone even more powerful working for him now, so that he could afford to throw them out."
Ferus looked at him askance. "You mean Grievous, don't you? Anakin…"
"Oh, come on!" demanded Anakin. "You know just as well as I do that Grievous lives and breathes Republic hatred. You know what he's capable of, and you know what he's done! Do you really believe that he's changed so dramatically at such a convenient time?"
Ferus was quiet for a moment. "No, I don't, really," he said finally, his voice slow. "But the Senate trusts him, and maybe that's all that matters. You have to admit," he continued loudly, as Anakin opened his mouth to interrupt, "that his moves up until this point don't seem to make any sense unless he's really decided to give peace a try. Grievous himself might not have changed, but he's smart enough to see that he'd get a better deal living off the Republic rather than fighting it. If he defects now, he has nothing to gain."
"Maybe," Anakin said grumpily. It made sense—everything Ferus said made sense, on a general basis—but it still didn't feel right. He let the subject drop. "How are you feeling?"
"A little better. Why?"
Anakin stood. "We need to start looking around Geonosis for the rest of the Separatist leaders. Gunray's scared enough of Dooku that he won't tell us anything about their location—he won't even confirm that they're here. So you should probably let me know when you're feeling all right."
Ferus made a face as he lay back down. "Thanks for your concern," he said sardonically.
They returned to Poggle the Lesser when Ferus had recovered sufficiently to leave the ship, but the Geonosian knew nothing other than what he had already told them. That meant that the Jedi had to start from scratch, investigating places where the Separatist leaders might be hiding. After Anakin had informed the Council of their decision to stay on Geonosis for a while, they began their search in earnest.
The good news, bewildering though it happened to be, was that they were much more successful than either of them would have originally guessed. Upon their arrival at the only place Anakin could think to look at first—the hangar that Dooku had used over a year ago—they discovered Rune Haako, Gunray's lieutenant, hiding there with a small bunch of bodyguarding battle droids. One by one, all but a few of the old Separatists were found hiding somewhere on Geonosis, with an ease that shocked both Jedi.
The bad news, though, was that while this was all excellent for the Republic and certainly not very difficult, it was taking Anakin and Ferus a long time. They had planned to return to the Temple after about two weeks on Geonosis—three, if Gunray had proved particularly elusive. But what with the travel time of going all across the planet, coupled with the Jedi's reluctance to leave in case they missed one or two, kept them on Geonosis for nearly four months. Finally, when they were fairly convinced that they had gone over every single rock on this planet, the Jedi left for Coruscant, carrying with them several more political prisoners than they had originally intended.
Upon breaching Coruscant's atmosphere, there was a short debate as to who would report to the Council, and who would take the prisoners immediately to the Galactic Prison. Anakin originally wanted the latter job, but then remembered the disproportionate amount of red tape that was often necessary in situations like this, and changed his mind. So instead, Ferus simply dropped him off at the Temple on the way.
As soon as his feet hit the familiar stone, Anakin felt as though he had dropped a burden. He had missed this place, more than he had known until now. If only Ferus didn't have to be busy for the next few hours…but then again, better him than me. From the hangar, he made his way to the Council Chamber.
Even as he approached the door, he knew Windu could sense him, and felt his Master's consent, and so he entered. With this sort of warning, the Council was quiet when he came in.
"Master, I've just returned from Geonosis," Anakin said, bowing. "I'm pleased to report that our mission was extremely successful."
Windu inclined his head in greeting. "Did you find the Viceroy?" he asked. Anakin was unable to keep from grinning.
"Not only that," he said, "but we found four other members of the old Separatist leadership, as well."
Every back in the room straightened. "With him on Geonosis, they were?" Yoda demanded. Anakin nodded, deliberated for an uncertain moment, then plunged in.
"They were," he said, and then listed their names. "And despite the fact that this is marvelous luck for us—forgive me, Masters, but I can't help feeling it's too easy."
"Mm?" Yoda sat back in his chair, his hands resting on the head of his cane, but his eyes remained alert. "How so?"
"The Separatists are useless now from almost every perspective," said Anakin. "With a few exceptions, all of them lost their fortunes when their cause was defeated—the Neimoidians on the leadership lost their Trade Federation. They have no more power in the Senate or anywhere else now that they've become wanted. They were the Sith's servants, but the Sith can no longer use them."
"You think they were planted to keep us off the track of something else?" questioned Master Koth.
"Maybe," admitted Anakin, not wanting to lose himself on another "Grievous-is-obviously-up-to-no-good-can't-you-see-that?" rant. After all, the Council agreed with him. "But at least Dooku wanted to get rid of them. He could have killed them, of course, but this way we're satisfied, at least temporarily."
The members of the Council looked at one another, communicating wordlessly. With a bond such as they formed, even the Force was hardly necessary for them to understand what another was thinking. After so many years together, in this room they seemed to move and think as a single organism, rather than twelve separate ones.
"It is a valid and possible point," said Windu finally. "But in any case, it is a good thing that we've managed to capture so many of them, regardless of whether or not we were 'allowed' to have them. You have done well, Anakin—and give Master Olin our congratulations, as well."
He bowed, again, and then left the room.
Author's Note: If you'll notice, I changed the title of the story, as well as the summary. The title has always bugged me, but the summary especially needed to be modified, since it no longer encompassed the story's real topic. Hopefully "A Legacy of Strength" isn't too cheesy.