Chapter Sixteen
The Emperor was caught off guard by Tremayne being thrown around and beat up like a rag doll before Arden even entered his bridge but not helpless. After all, he was the most powerful Sith Lord in history and the most likely to be unrivaled for all time as he liked telling himself. As the power of Arden's telekinesis throttled Inquisitor Tremayne unconscious, his lightsaber rolled next to Sidious. Smiling, the old man called it to his left hand with the Force and let his own saber slide from its place of concealment in his right sleeve.
Then, when he and Arden would both know that Inquisitor Tremayne would not be intervening in this fight, he saw the door to his bridge slide open to reveal the woman. "I am most impressed that you would return with a traitorous Grand Admiral to stop me now," he said. Indeed he was, he had been more expecting Arden to work alone or only with Hoar and not in cahoots with Demetrius Zaarin. "Save your breath while you still have it, Emperor Palpatine: you'll be needing it," she replied to him.
She unclipped both her lightsabers and ignited them, the green and orange blades hissing to life for the first time since her mission to Bunduki, six months before. Sidious smiled again and ignited both his lightsaber and Tremayne's, prepared to face Arden Lyn as an equal. But when she attacked first, the ferocity of the attack was hard to keep up with even for Lord Sidious of the Sith. He was amazed by the speed of the spinning of her blades and the power of the slashes and stabs she sometimes threw.
No doubt, she had been a great fighter in her day and an impossible adversary for most Jedi to overcome without the slightest bit of cunning. Which was why he tried his best to disarm her but first kicking her and then catching her off guard with a barrage of stabs, spins, and twirls of both his blades. But she easily recovered from the kick in time to deflect one of his slashes and hack at him with one of her blades, quickly forcing him on the defensive for a few seconds. The Dark Lord of the Sith easily recovered from this, dodging her attempt to trip him and jabbing both blades at her simultaneously.
It was when she dodged this and replied with a kick that didn't miss that he began to get a clearer idea of her fighting style. He hadn't doubted that she was a master of Terras Kasi due to her time training other students in it but she was much like Maul in her passion and aggression. Sidious remembered destroying Maul with relatively little effort and vowed to do the same to Arden Lyn now. Nonetheless, Arden surprised him in how she held him literally pinned down on one knee with solely the strength of her arms bearing her blades to cross with his when he attempted to slash from underneath.
It seemed apparent to Sidious that the strategy he used to defeat Darth Maul on Mandalore after dealing with his monster brother Savage Opress was not going to work on Arden Lyn. So instead, he resorted to a high kick to her pelvis from his bent foot and free himself from the crossing. Arden temporarily stopped to heal the pain in her pelvis and lower abdominal region before she continued. He wondered why such a hesitation would exist in her but he didn't really care for that much at all.
Until she came back with an attack even more ferocious than her last one, he was more than willing to overlook her moment of hesitation. The ferocious agility and power of her lightsaber attack was actually more than enough to disarm him of Tremayne's lightsaber. Then he managed to destroy the green blade she wielded by slicing the hilt in half, forcing her to resort to just one lightsaber. But her skill with just the one was equal to, if not better than, her skills in Jar'Kai lightsaber combat.
He recognized mastery of Shii-Cho, Ataru, and Vaapad as well as expertise in Niman, Makashi, and Shien. And when he managed to gain the upperhand in offense for a brief moment, he saw mastery of Soresu as well which indicated to him a very educated woman in lightsaber technique. Her usage of Vaapad alone reminded him of Master Windu, the inventor of the style, only with more agility, power, and grace than the foolish Jedi had had. True that Windu had been able to defeat Sidious with this form all the same but Sidious had allowed him to in order to complete Vader's metamorphosis.
He was not about to allow Arden Lyn, a user of Vaapad and other forms of saber combat who likely learned it from someone who knew them as he did, to beat him with it this time. But his curiosity for knowledge compelled him to see if he could distract Arden Lyn and weaken her ferocity. "You are skilled in the way of the lightsaber for a twenty-five thousand-year-old woman. Did you learn Vaapad from a Jedi who knew it when you were reawakened?" Sidious asked.
"Depa Billaba was my apprentice in exchange for tips on lightsaber combat, now stop talking and keep fighting!" Arden answered. Now Sidious knew: this Arden Lyn and the one who had apprenticed Depa Billaba during the Clone Wars were one and the same. This had been an ally of Maul's Shadow Collective and helped them repel General Grievous on Mustafar before disappearing. "You know Arden, it was I who killed Darth Maul and Savage Opress, twenty-one years ago on Mandalore," he mocked with a smile.
"It was a man named Darth Sidious, do not try to fool me!" Arden shouted. Then she continued her barrage of Vaapad and Sidious merely laughed. "You foolish girl, the public knows me as Emperor Palpatine but my true name-the name of the Sith- is Darth Sidious. Yes, I killed Maul and Savage on Mandalore before seeking you and your apprentice out with the help of Admiral Thrawn," Sidious said.
Arden tried her best to shut off what he was saying about the events of the Shadow Collective's downfall but he knew that she had sensed no lie in what he said. "Thrawn would have sold you out to me because he knew then as he does now that I could destroy him with my pinky if I desired. He wanted you so you could help fulfill his own ambitions but was more than willing to let me have you. You have served me well Arden Lyn, whether or not you turn against me now but unfortunately, your betrayal has forced me to destroy you," Sidious mocked.
"Silence, I don't give a shit about how I helped you! I am here to either capture or kill you now and quite frankly, I could have done that the very moment I met you!" she screamed. Her scream was imbued with the Power of the Force and Sidious watched as everything nearby was destroyed. At this point, his surprise began to become a distraction to him and he knew his desire to anger her worked.
However, the ferocity that she came back with after giving into her anger was more than he could take with just his lightsaber abilities and occasional volleys of Force lightning. So he deactivated his own lightsaber and levitated himself to a great enough height to begin using Dun Moch on her. However, when he threw the items that he could she caught them with the Force and threw them at another item he threw or else at him directly. "My husband tried that on me when my Force powers proved too powerful for just his sword alone, you fight just like that," she replied.
But the way she said it wasn't out of rage or hatred of any kind: it was to mock him like he had been doing earlier. Troubled, he did his best to keep up with her but she surprised him by creating green projections of her mechanical hand with the Force and using them to literally punch objects back at him. Whenever she wasn't doing that, she was trying to use the projections to grab him as though she had become a giant and was seeking to squish him. But he repelled these illusions with volleys of Force Lightning though he soon saw that these were only distractions from the real threat she created.
Using the objects he had levitated for his technique of Dun Moch, she had jumped up to where he was near the ceiling of the Majestic's bridge and tackle him out of the air. Landing near the door to exit the bridge, Sidious tried to escape but Arden used a laser from her artificial hand to stop him. She did this by shooting it at the controls that would open or close the door, frying them upon impact. "No Emperor, in order to get out of this ship, you're going to have to defeat me first," Arden warned.
Sidious tried to reach for his lightsaber since he had put it aside earlier but it wasn't in the sleeve. Likely, it had fallen out when Arden tackled him to the ground and she had then used the Force to throw it out of sight. Or worse, maybe she had vaporized it with one of the green bolts she could shoot out of her artificial arm. Nonetheless, he knew that he would have to rely on his Force powers as well as possibly his hand-to-hand combat skills.
It turned out to be the latter when Arden attacked him with a variant of Terras Kasi that he recognized and knew very well: the Variant of the Snake. She also switched off to attack him with the Variant of the Rancor but he was able to counter both with the Variant of the Absorber and Assassin. "You are gifted in Terras Kasi, tell me how many Variants do you know?" she asked, mocking him again as he had mocked her earlier. "I know them all of course!" he exclaimed, countering with her attacks with the Variant of the Ralltiir Tiger as he spoke.
However, Arden countered his usage of it with her own mastery of the Variant of the Bha'lir in combination to the Ice Tiger. Sidious desperately tried to stop her and nearly did when he caught her a little off guard by switching between the Variant of the Hrosma Tiger and Rock Lion. It was when he tried to fight with the Variant of the Gundark that she laughed and was amazed that he would go there. "You are so desperate to win that you would use one of the basic Terras Kasi forms with intent to catch me off guard?" she asked mockingly.
"I told you that I know all the Variants of Terras Kasi, I taught them to Darth Maul when I raised him," he answered, trying to keep calm. "All the classic variants, I can tell. But you do not know the forbidden Variant nor the one designed to counter it," she said. Before he could ask what she was talking about, he was introduced to the Variant of Anger which overwhelmed him immediately.
Sidious had known all the classic Variants as well as the Sub-Variants beneath those, in fact, he had been using some of the Sub-Variants before. He knew that there was the Way of the Animal, which all the Variants they had used before fit in except for the Absorber and the Assassin. The Dark Lord of the Sith also knew that there was the Way of the Warrior and the Way of Emotion. Way of Emotion was the often considered the Way that held some of the most powerful Terras Kasi Variants ever.
Unfortunately, the Variant of Anger wasn't helping to disprove that either as it seemed all his skills in the Animal Variants were coming undone before the power of this one Emotion Variant. "How in the universe is this possible!?" he demanded. "Why does everyone keep asking that whenever I use the Variant of Anger against a fellow Terras Kasi Master?" she retorted. That comment indicated that she had used it before and had plenty of time to master it to the perfection she had it now.
But then she began to do something different, she became calmer of mind and her attacks were less based on the fury of her anger- as per the name Variant of Anger- and more on tactical analysis. She introduced it as the Variant of Serenity since to wield it, one had to be very calm and cool of mind rather than controlled by raw emotion. Sidious tried his best to use the Variant of Anger, having observed similarities in it to other forms but found he just couldn't quite grasp it. But he knew it was over the moment Arden started using yet another Variant that she said she had been working.
"It's a combination of the Variant of Anger and the Variant of Serenity that allows one to remained mentally collected whilst drawing upon their anger for their strength. I have not yet given it a name yet but I think it's time I field-tested it against someone," Arden told him. There was no lie in that he sensed, she had likely worked on this during the six months after her disappearance.
To him, it was more than possible that she had discovered the Variant of Serenity whilst fighting the priests and wanted to harness both of these powerful Variants into a superform. Using the Force to amplify the strength of her right arm's punches, Sidious soon found himself running out of strength. He was having to rely more on Force Rage and Force Valor in order to keep up the fight with Arden. No, I will not be defeated by this primitive fossil from the past! he vowed to himself silently.
But as she used the superform against him more and more, in combination to her own application of Force Valor and Battlemind, it seemed as though Sidious was meeting his match. As the duel progressed in her favor, he tried to fight back with several kicks and punches related to Stava. However, Arden Lyn caught all of this and even delivered a crippling blow to his left arm which meant that it would hang limp and useless for several days. Days that he didn't have if she killed him despite her desire to capture him, one could safely add at this point in the duel.
"Even with one hand you will know my true might and you will fall today, Arden Lyn! Do not doubt this promise for a moment," he hissed. "I don't know Sidious, Palpatine, or whatever you go by. You sure look like you're approaching the end of your run to me," she retorted, smiling widely.
He tried one last desperate attempt of Force Lightning but she simply applied Tutaminis in her left hand and absorbed the Lightning before then throwing it back at him. So powerful was her application of this technique that she could absorb every last bolt of his Force Storm with one hand. With equal strength, she was also able to reflect it all right back at him with relative ease and there was little his Force barriers could do to help stem the tide much. She had been smart to cripple one of his arms with her Assassin-Variant nerve attack before he could electrocute her as it would seem.
But even when he turned to other Force Powers, she displayed prominence in abilities that he was barely a match for. He could barely deflect her application of Kinetite and Force Destruction or absorb the green beam she shot out of her mechanical arm or the green lighting from her human left one. His own application of Tutaminis fell before the might of both these powers and he knew what she was trying to do: force him to apply Tutaminis to the laser whilst she electrocuted him. He also knew, thanks to her earlier indications in her fighting, that she did this with intent to subdue and capture him alive.
The absorption of the beam itself was not without its price: the more he used it, the more it felt like he was trying to absorb the blades of lightsabers into the palm of his hand or worse. Her Force Lightning also made it difficult to hold onto the absorption as it meant he was having to shrug off a lot. During his youthful years as an apprentice of Lord Plagueis he might have been able to shrug this off with relative ease but as an old man, he found it difficult to do. Plus the woman he was dealing with, despite being older than him, was not physically more than early-thirties and much more aggressive.
"I've come for revenge against you, Sith and mark my words when I say that I intend to complete my revenge," she said. She relented in holding pressing the beam on him after that and he almost reflected its energy back at her. Instead though, he took it in and used it to revitalize his body and restore the damage her lightning and beam together had caused him. "In my prime, the duel would have long turned into my favor and you would already be dead," he told her.
"Save the youthful reminiscence for someone who's actually interested in hearing your stories and isn't trying to bring you down. I have heard enough of your talking," she ordered. Complying, Sidious made to attack her with the Variant of the Snake despite needing both hands for it. She took his remaining hand but instead of crushing it, she simply pull him close to her and tripped him off his feet.
The young woman then proceeded to grab him by a leg and lift him over her head whilst holding onto his remaining arm. "It's time this duel ended, much as I have had fun turning your own technique against you and breaking your spirit gradually. Now excuse me for breaking your body too," she said. Then she brought him over her head, raising one knee in the process and rammed his pelvis straight unto her bent kneecap.
The result was a dislocated pelvis and total paralysis from the waist down for at least two or three weeks. When Arden heard the bonecrack that confirmed his disability, she simply tossed him aside and watched to see if he had any great ideas left. But Sidious knew that he was defeated, there was no way he could keep fighting with paralyzed legs and a broken arm. "You win, Arden Lyn: take me to Demetrius Zaarin now if he is here with you," he said, accepting that he had been defeated.
Heaving the crippled Sith Lord over her shoulder like a sandbag, Arden Lyn commed in that she had succeeded and was on her way back to the ship. When the Admiral replied, Sidious knew that the traitor was excited about having the Emperor in his clutches before very much fighting was done. There will be more before the end of this stupid insurrection against my power, be sure of that Zaarin Sidious thought but didn't say.
For Arden, however, he had a different vow: one that he was more than willing to voice aloud to her. "If you should somehow escape the wrath of forces sure to come rescuing me, know that I will never cease until I have found you and killed you. You will know no peace for as long as you live and when you finally die, I will make sure that it's by my hand!" he said. "Old man, you forget who I am: as it is, I don't know peace much as I would wish it thanks to what the Jedi did to me," she replied.
Sidious had not forgotten that and he vowed to amplify the power of the demons that haunted Arden Lyn by any and all means necessary. But as he walked away, he sensed that Tremayne was slowly beginning to revive and as such, sent him a telepathic order to get the Majestic away from here. He needed this ship to live to fight another day and he needed the High Inquisitor to be able to do the same as well. After all, Vader would be arriving any minute with at least one other and he sensed that Admiral Thrawn would be coming with backup.
In the meantime though, he allowed himself to be transported aboard Haven 3, the escort-class shuttle that would taking him back to Zaarin's cruiser Glory and his holding cell from there. For all the surety of defeat that was to come for Demetrius, Sidious had to admit he had done incredibly well. He would need to insure that he could count on Vice Admiral Thrawn to stop him after this battle ended. Only cunning like the Chiss' could match this excellent, brilliant execution of military strategy and technological genius such as Admiral Zaarin had presented in this battle.
Perhaps, this would even function as Thrawn's opportunity for a promotion to Grand Admiral as he had wanted shortly after joining the ranks of the Imperial military. No doubt, Thrawn had deserved the title when he passed my test but I am glad I withheld it from him until now. He will certify having earned the title of Grand Admiral when he defeats Admiral Zaarin the Sith thought. It was an ingenious idea and Sidious hoped for a chance to exploit it for himself after this battle ended with his troops emerging victorious.
And that was certified when Maarek Stele, Vader's companion, broke through Zaarin's ranks by destroying the other shuttles surrounding Palpatine and then boarded Haven 3. Arden looked all around her, unbelieving that this militaristic failure was happening when she was so close to revenge. "I'll deal with you another time, your Highness. It would seem as though the will of the Force has handed you a good lot despite your injuries in combat against me," she said.
Just like that, she was out and away from Haven 3 in an escape pod which would have been shot down if anyone had been looking for it. Besides that, Sidious probably would not have ordered it shot out of space now that he insured Tremayne had steered Majestic out of Imperial Center's space. After Arden's escape, the battle was over in a matter of minutes with Glory making a full retreat and Maarek rescuing Sidious before destroying the shuttle he was trapped in. "You have done well, young man, be proud of that," he said as Maarek carried him away.
"I did my job my liege and no more than that," Maarek said with a smile. "You have done your job excellently and beautifully. Lord Vader was right to choose you to be a member of his rescue party," Sidious replied. Maarek chuckled and shook his head as he carried the Emperor to the safety of his Palace on the surface of Imperial Center, his domain of ultimate power and equally great defeat now.