Disclaimer: Still not George Lucas or Disney. Sorry to disappoint.
A/N: Sorry about the wait. I didn't expect it to be this long, but I had a standardized test to take, followed by preparations for family being here for Christmas, followed by Christmas and family being here. At this point my introverted self has been forced to socialize for so long that she just wants to crawl into a cave for a month or so.
Just to clarify about this AU one last time for everyone: The Phantom Menace happened business as usual, but the mission to Ansion (The Approaching Storm, anyone?) went long and Obi-Wan and Anakin weren't available to guard Padmé. Some other Jedi (who knows who, who cares?) took the job, and Anakin and Padmé met only a few times over the course of the war. They've met each other enough times for Padmé to recognize adult Anakin, but other than that they have no relationship to speak of; they don't even know each other well enough to be friends.
About the state of the galaxy: the Republic and CIS (Separatists) both still exist under an uneasy truce, while systems such as Mandalore remain neutral. It's pretty much the wartime boundaries without the war. Although in reality most systems are just looking to their own interests rather than trying to support either failing government. Since there is no Empire, the Alliance (formed through the influence of the Senators from that deleted RotS scene) is not really rebelling against anything, rather they're a vigilante organization trying to support and clean up the Republic. In addition, in this chapter you'll see mentioned the Dark Zone, which is where the "snake" (commonly refers to Palpatine) has taken his closest supporters along with the clone and droid armies that were both secretly under his command during the Clone Wars. He hasn't moved, but no one is quite strong enough to attack him, and no one really knows what he's doing in there...
Thanks to Lord Lelouch, Jedi Master Misty Sman-Esay, ambre, JACarter, and sodorland for review and encouragement! (Any questions I haven't answered are things I want you to wait to find out :D )
II: Fate
Kyella found her voice first, calling over to one of her teammates on the other side of the bridge. "Jaat! Jaat, are you seeing this?"
Her young male Twi'lek friend – from the same university, even – called back with controlled panic lacing his thick accent. "Yes, I see it, but look again! I don't know about you, but I also see the fighters behind it!" He slammed a palm down on a ship-wide comm. "Unfriendly fighters spotted! Gunners to your stations, now!"
Padmé could see the anxiety in Jaat's expression as his skin fearfully paled from deep cerulean to a sort of sky-blue. Rather than try and find what he was looking at with her own sensors, Kyella settled for practically launching herself across the bridge toward his seat, with Padmé right behind her, along with Captain Reddins, who had already confirmed Jaat's hastily-given order to the rest of the ship's crew.
"Are our shields up?" Padmé asked the captain tersely when he reached them.
The middle-aged Corellian nodded gravely. "We came in wary, of course, but to be honest, the Star Nymph's shields aren't particularly strong to begin with. She may be an escort-class ship, but she's not the most well-made one I've commanded. And as you know, my lady, we were expecting to be fighting perhaps a few clones on the ground, not working clone fighters. I mean, by my word, it's been five years! How on earth do they still have fuel?"
"They'd have to have left their ships' engines stone-cold for months and months at a time," Kyella said, brows furrowed in confusion as enemy proximity claxons began to blare around them. Reddins left them to command the navigation crew and gun batteries. Zips of yellow showed where the two outdated but perfectly flyable old Naboo N-1s they had brought with them had left the ship's small hangar bay. The fighters had been a donation from the current Queen of Naboo, who had conveniently "lost" them while they were being moved to be recycled for parts.
"How do you know Palpatine hasn't just established a new base here?" Jaat asked skeptically. "In five years he's done nothing but maintain his defenses. There's got to be some sort of resources or civilization in the Dark Zone – even if he hasn't got Kamino or cloning technologies, a droid factory's not so hard to build – and even though this is still solid Seppie space, we're not all that far from there, just a few sectors away."
Kyella shook her head vigorously. "I was just explaining to Padmé that the drift pattern of the debris from when the station was originally destroyed is undisturbed. They must have come from the moon…"
She trailed off, a thoughtful look on her face, similar to the one she had worn when they had first noticed the hyperspace ring.
"…because of debris and dust!" Jaat was saying. "I think we need to get out of here, and fast, and make sure they don't track us back. Then, if we really must come back, we come back with a real X-Wing squadron in addition to the ground troops. Better yet, we drop an anonymous tip with Republic military intelligence – or Separatist, or both – and let them handle it."
"No," Kyella breathed, and Padmé had turned to ask her what she'd realized when a huge blow knocked them both off their feet as if to prove Jaat's point.
"You see?" he cried, back in panic mode.
The captain appeared at Padmé's side the next moment. "I'm sorry, my lady, but we're going to have to fall back to a waypoint and call a full fighter squadron." In the background, she briefly caught Jaat smirking at an increasingly worried Kyella as they picked themselves up off the ground. "These ARC-170s are still armed with proton torpedoes, and possibly other firepower, used to destroy the mini-stations. We don't know if these two unfriendlies are the only two, our shields can't stand up to torpedoes and the like, and the N-1s aren't as maneuverable as an ARC-170, not to mention they only have forward guns."
Padmé sighed and nodded. "I hate to leave with them knowing we were here, but you're right. We don't know what we're up against. Fall back to the first station in the row for now, but tell communications to be ready to call for backup. We're heading back out as soon as we can."
"No! We can't leave!" Kyella's uncharacteristically defiant proclamation rang out across the bridge, cutting through the hubbub of the attack. Padmé turned to see her with her back to them, still standing straight and stubborn, eyes glued to Jaat's sensor screen. "We have to get down onto the moon."
"Are you crazy? Why in hells would we want to do that? We'd get blown up from the sky by those fighters!" Jaat cried.
Kyella spun to face Padmé and the captain, pointing at the screen. "Don't you see? The debris is undisturbed! There's nothing else here, no sign of an enemy base. Those fighters are war-era, unmodified, and you said yourself, Captain, that they still have their arsenals from their last mission. Well," she said, correcting herself, "technically, it was their second-to-last-mission. They stayed here because their final mission – Executive Order 66 – is as of yet unfulfilled. That Jedi is still alive!"
Everyone stood in silence for a couple moments as Kyella's desperate eyes begged for some kind of reaction.
The captain moved first, heading over to the head communications officer and ordering the confused man to try to remove their long-range communications equipment from its station. Padmé braced herself against a railing as the captain moved from communications to navigation, and upon his order the Star Nymph made an about-face dive for the moon's surface, the beleaguered N-1s following a bit behind while trying to hold off the clones. A lucky clone shot had one of them down in the next minute, and a torpedo blast slammed into the rear of the ship even as they broke into the lower atmosphere.
One of the pilots swore loudly as the starboard engine became unresponsive. Padmé found an extra seat and strapped herself securely in place as the bridge crew struggled valiantly to pull the Star Nymph up out of its steep dive. The navigator had had the foresight to take them in over a broad grassland area, rather than forest or mountains, and with a bone-jarring jolt they slammed into the moon's surface and slid, bumping over every little ridge and gully, for at least ten minutes before they came to a complete halt.
Though the clone fighters were, strangely, nowhere to be seen on the still-working scanners, Captain Reddins ordered the quick evacuation of the ship, and the little crew began to take stock of injuries and what supplies were still usable. Of those who had been inside the ship, there were only a few minor injuries – bruises, mild concussions and the like from those who were thrown about the ship during the altercation. Fortunately, the swoop bikes to be used by the field agents had been in secure storage, and all but one were still operable.
A wide swath of breathtaking multicolored forest skirted the foothills of a towering, outswept arm of one of the moon's many mountain ranges. As soon as the assessment was complete, the captain ordered the crew to begin ferrying themselves and the supplies to the cover of the woods in shifts, abandoning the Star Nymph to hide from the enemy among the trees.
Padmé frowned up at the glowering clouds that had begun to gather above them after the crash landing and hugged her arms about herself, shivering in what would have, on Naboo, been a late-autumn chill. She tried not to think about the second N-1 pilot, still unaccounted for and likely blown right out the sky protecting them, as she buckled her blaster holster around her waist and mounted a swoop behind one of the field agents.
Alliance members had died in the line of duty before, of course. The danger of missions in a shattered galaxy was directly related to their importance – and all Alliance missions were extremely important. One or two of the fallen she had known by name.
But this was the first true armed field mission Padmé had accompanied her troops on, and so it was with a heavy heart she remembered that it had been at least five years – at least since the tumult of the Clone Wars – since someone had died before her eyes to protect her or while following her orders.
She had had half a mind to have stayed crouched behind the Star Nymph with a blaster pistol, ready to defend her people against the laughably more powerful clone fighters until all her crewmen and friends had reached the relative safety of the forest. But the logical side of her, which had ruled her since the end of the war, reminded her that she was more-or-less the heart of the Alliance. The safety of her as their leader was more important, strategically, than her grief over a few volunteers.
As rain began to pelt her face as they sped across the prairie toward the mountains, Padmé idly wondered if she had been cutting herself too far off from emotion, if more indulgence in feeling some time back would have helped her to keep the tide of grief at bay a little while longer. But it had been loosed by the pilots' deaths – the pressure that had been building in her for some time now that had found her sleepless at night and distracted from her daytime duties by old memories.
Then she realized something else and this time, she couldn't stop her tears, though they were more-or-less hidden by the rain.
This wasn't the first time someone had died for her. But it was the first time it had happened on her birthday.
The little band stopped in a small but sheltered clearing some way into the trees. The agent she was riding with – Harker, she thought his name was – frowned in concern and helped her dismount the bike when she made no move to do so on her own. Standing there, getting dripped on by trees, she tried desperately to come to her senses and help her people set up camp.
Something warm draped across her shoulders, and with a jolt Padmé realized Harker had fetched her a blanket and was leading her to where the others had already started setting up a shelter.
It was hearing Jaat and Kyella's incessant bickering that brought her back to herself, at least a bit.
"And how do you suppose we find this Jedi, eh?" Jaat snapped as he struggled to drape a massive tarp across the lower branches of two tall conifers.
"Well, we've got the ship's long-distance comm," Kyella said as she inspected tent stakes to see if they were well-anchored in the rich earth. "When we call for backup, we'll send for a ship that has a powerful bioscanner in addition to an X-Wing squadron. Problem solved."
"What, and we sit here till then, hoping those fighters don't decide to firebomb the woods?"
"I assume the captain will have us move to a more remote position at first light tomorrow."
"Great. More walking. More rain. More wet. Just what I wanted."
"You signed up for this job, Jaat – Padmé!"
Kyella hurried up to them and took Padmé from Harker. From the look on her face, Padmé could tell the young woman knew she'd been crying. Her big eyes widened in concern. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, just a little tired." She moved to take the blanket off. "Just show me where you need help," she said, but her voice was weaker than she would've liked.
Kyella's face set and she moved the blanket more securely around Padmé's shoulders. "Oh, no you don't. You just rest." Her expression softened. "I know it's been years since you've seen a field mission," she said, low enough that only Padmé could hear.
Reluctantly, Padmé let herself be led into one of the tents and sat down, leaning against a large, smooth tree trunk. She let her mind wander as more of the crew arrived and the camp took shape around her despite the cold and the rain. She idly traced designs in the bark with a finger, feeling herself become sleepier and sleepier until the bark felt almost warm beneath her hand.
The Jedi. She thought about what she knew about Jedi and wondered if the castaway would find them before the Alliance reinforcements arrived.
And then she thought about home, and about something that had been bothering her since they landed.
A lone Force-sensitive on a lonelier world, lost. Her finding them, quite by accident. A downed ship. Repairs to be made. Memories of naïve idealism randomly coming to the forefront of her mind.
There was something about this that felt like déjà vu.
There was something about this that felt like fate.