A/N: Three years.

There isn't much to say…I'm torn between being super proud I finally returned to continue this story, and a little anxious as to who will still be around to read it, and what you will think of me? Although I'm not the only author to abandon a story (or twenty) already posted for publishing, I hope to one day soon be able to say I at least return for what I leave behind.

I hope this chapter brings some reader, old or new, some bright spot in their day. Merry Christmas!

That is all. :D

Thank you, dear readers!

~Marina

Chapter 24

"We need a different sort of plan," Obi-Wan insisted, frowning as he met each of his commando's faces, gathered around the hologram table. "It's one thing to jump in and fight until the death if you don't have any other options, but we DO have options. We just have very little time to utilize them."

"We do have the Cruiser, even though it's stuck in the mud," the ship's commander pointed out. "It could possibly relay some sort of signal."

"A rescue signal? Distress? Inhibitory? What kind?" Cody demanded impatiently.

"I'm not sure," Obi-Wan admitted.

"Oh! We have those fighters! We could just take out the droid control ship like they did at the Battle of Naboo!" Jael said excitedly, running up to the table as though she wanted to be part of what they were doing.

The others just blinked, staring at her for a moment.

"What?" she protested.

Cody smacked his forehead with a groan and Obi-Wan took a very, very deep breath before explaining. "When we blew up the droid control ship at Naboo, the Separatists realized that controlling the battle droids with one main ship made them too difficult to protect, hence the fact that we blew them up, so they started making droid models that did not depend on the same controller but functioned on their own."

"May I just point out that this all happened over twelve years ago?" Cody said bluntly.

"Not helpful, Cody." Obi-Wan struggled to take a calming breath and not display his frustration with the Master he'd been partnered with.

"Uh, huh," the clone replied. He shot a pointed look in Jael's direction, who glared at him in response.

"Wait," Commander Bright said, looking at a hologram of a battle droid. He pulled it up and expanded it, showing the inner mechanisms. "The technology may be twelve years old, but some of that programming may still be intact in the droid's systems. Look! It's still there!" he pointed to the sequence of numbers that represented the battle droid's original programming.

Obi-Wan, Cody, and Jael crowded around, squinting at the numbers. "Meaning?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Meaning they are still programmed to follow orders given off by certain signal patterns," Bright continued excitedly.

"And we have a ship that's good for nothing, aside from target practice, but signaling!" Cody continued, crossing his arms over his armored chest.

Obi-Wan nodded, warming to the idea. "The code must've been left so they could get them all to respond to certain orders simultaneously, in case of emergency. In this case," he gestured to the holo-board, "they could be ordered to turn on their own drones and hopefully take out quite a few of them. Who do we have that could program the ship for such a signal pattern?"

"Actually, there's a couple of the civilians, Sir, who've volunteered their services for this kind of situation," called one of the Captains, running over from another side of the warehouse.

"I'd ask you to make certain they're not spies, but we're running out of time for that," Obi-Wan replied hurriedly, feeling new strength coming into him. "They may not have enough time as it is. Get them on the job, and quickly. Bright, go with them to give the instructions."

"I'll need a sample droid, Sir, to extract the codes from."

"Oh, this is your lucky day," Cody chuckled dryly, opening a storage compartment and pulling out about eight decapitated battle droids out by their wires.

"Right," Obi-Wan replied. "Cody, come help me get the rest of the men and the fighters into formation. I'm afraid we haven't the time for anything very complicated."

In the commotion, nobody noticed Jael, who had slipped into the background as unimportant to the situation at hand. Now, she carefully took a step toward Obi-Wan.

"Sorry I argued with you," she said wryly. "You've clearly got a lot more trouble on your plate than I do."

"Since you showed up and I had to practically take you under my wing, I suppose you could say that!" Obi-Wan exclaimed heatedly, not turning around as he manipulated figures on the holographic battle formation.

Jael chose not to take offense at the barb. She couldn't help that she was a little slow on the battlefield. What she could do was try to help the General in other ways. "You have a great deal of concern for Master Skywalker," it was a sympathetic observation, not a question.

"Yeah." he still appeared focused on what he was doing.

"Do you know him well?" she pushed again.

"I trained him. He's my former Padawan."

"Then why do you worry?"

Annoyed, he turned away from the projector and faced her. "Well for one thing, he's not here, is he?" he asked.

She held up her hands in defense. "I don't know what happened to him! I'm just here to help!"

Obi-Wan sighed. "And for that, we may be dead before we ever find out! Master Orangrave," he paused, "Anakin isn't even speaking to me. I think we've had more fights with each other than with the Separatists, but it always turned out fine in the end. But this time, he's not making amends. And I'm afraid I just don't have the time to deal with the situation right now."

She raised her eyebrows. "It sounds to me like you're about to give up on him."

Obi-Wan started. He hadn't realized it himself, but that was exactly how he had been feeling lately. He would never consciously give up on Anakin, but inwardly…maybe he already had.

Now, however, it was Jael's turn to sigh. "I've always known I was meant to be partnered with Master Windu."

The younger Jedi felt his eyebrows go up. "She must've completely lost her mind."

"I've always been there for him. His entire life. And he never speaks to me unless I speak first."

Obi-Wan could feel the hurt in her voice, calm but still bleeding like an open wound. He didn't know what to say, but he REALLY didn't want to hear more about the one-sided love affair of a supposedly superior Jedi master.

"I know I'm not very smart, and that might be why," Jael continued, shifting as she spoke. "But in all I've learned about the Force while being a Jedi Master, I know what people need. Some people just need someone to love them. They might never love back. I know none of that's in the Code, but the Force itself tells me that something is wrong."

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Meaning what?"

"The Code is weakened," she shrugged. "By whom, I don't know and I'll probably never find out. But I'll smack him or her if I ever do," she added, slightly under her breath.

Obi-Wan stifled an involuntary cringe.

She turned then, and looked him straight in the eyes. "That's good that you care. You love your Padawan. He is what you have, like outsiders have family. It hurts a lot more to care about someone than it does to give up on them, just as it hurts to keep fighting rather than give in to darkness."

Immediately as she finished speaking, they both sensed the same thing at once.

"Speaking of darkness…" her voice trailed off.

Leaping up, they ignited both their sabers in a split second and stood back to back, slowly circling as their blades lit up the tent with glowing, colored light.

Something was right outside, and about to close in on them. They waited a second, then another, and mysteriously nothing happened. Obi-Wan leaned backward and the two of them exchanged glances.

Outside, the sound of blaster fire preceded several large explosions, but Obi-Wan didn't respond the way he usually would. Something was gripping him from the inside, holding him back. The sense from the Force was overwhelmingly strong: 'Don't go outside.'

(())(())(())(())(())

"Six strong heat signatures, plus one wonky-looking thing that's definitely Grievous," Padmé assessed, handing the heat-vision goggles to Typho, who quickly affirmed what she'd seen. "My whole family's in there, and Yané appears to still be alive. Let's prepare for battle."

Typho stared at her as she turned away toward their new, hijacked vehicle they'd found in the night. He'd seen her fight her way into the palace during the Battle of Naboo and argue her way through the Senate at the height of Civil War, but for all his trust in her ability to find a path to victory in the most impossible circumstances, this seemed like madness on an entirely different level. "Senator—you do have a plan, right?"

Padmé threw open the door and both of them hopped back inside, before Saché sped them away to prepare. "Let's take stock of weapons," she began, sharp eyes narrowing as she evaluated the interior of their enclosed speeder. "Tonight, we evacuate the surrounding villas. By morning, Grievous' handiwork will be untraceable and all the prisoners will be safely recovered."

Typho shrugged, reasonably convinced, but now it was Raf's turn to protest. "Much as that—sounds great, are you sure you should—I mean, with—with all due respect, Padme—"

She fixed her brother-in-law with a sideways smile. "'With all due respect' I'm six months pregnant and probably shouldn't be storming into lairs of ten-foot mechanical monsters that can wield four lightsabers at once?"

"I think we need serious backup, Padmé! There's no way Sola and the girls or your parents will come out of this alive if we do this your way. There's no way any of US will come out of this alive. This is madness!"

"I agree, if we were storming the castle, as you seem to think I'm crazy enough to suggest, but madness is more of my husband's specialty, Raf. We're doing something different, if everyone's in agreement." She grinned at each of them in turn, even little Derolf and Ahsoka as she painfully shifted her torso off the backseat to listen in. "We're going to give Grievous a taste of his own medicine."

(())(())(())(())(())

Obi-Wan tried to reach out further with the Force, hyper-aware of the darkness without and tension within the tent he and Jael stood back-to-back inside, finding themselves mysteriously alone and without the company of any black-and-white clad troops.

"We have to go out there," he hissed, still entirely unwilling to act on his own logic just yet. Part of him was horribly curious as to what was going on—the other part of him was the Force telling him 'you don't want to know'.

"No," Jael exclaimed in horror, adjusting her grip on her lightsaber handle. Her knuckles were white. "We don't go anywhere."

Just the fact that she was agreeing with him made Obi-Wan falter in his conviction. Someone as crazy as Jael would, of course, think it was a good idea to stay in the tent as their troops were possibly being slaughtered outside and the possibility of losing the entire planet was entirely immediate.

Finally, he shook off the mysterious forebodings as the noise and clashing outside grew louder. "That's enough of this," he snapped, marching toward the tent flap. "I'm going outsi—"

He stepped outside, and was immediately showered with thousands more blaster rounds than one lightsaber could ever hope to repel.

Every single one was fired by his own troops.