Chapter 56

Shatterpoint

The three Jedi climbed the back side of Mount Tantiss. It wasn't particularly steep or treacherous, as far as mountains went.

"Above us," Master Sifu-Dyas said, "There will be an opening. A hole in the back of the mountain. I have seen it in the Force."

The cloned Jedi seemed to have recovered fairly well from the shock of finding out that he was not, in fact, Master Sifo-Dyas. Ahsoka spared a glance over at him as she was picking her way around a rock outcropping. She could have used the Force to hop over it, but she couldn't see how loosely packed the soil and rocks on the other side of it were. She didn't want to risk an avalanche.

Not that any of the Jedi would be severely inconvenienced by it, of course. But the noise would have caught someone's attention.

Sifu-Dyas seemed to be focused on the mission. Just like any other Jedi in his situation would have been. His own emotional turmoil came second. The duty at hand came first.

Ahsoka wondered what little surprises may be lurking in the flash-learning that the cloners had used to make him believe that he actually was Master Sifo-Dyas. They clearly hadn't focused on copying the man's memories entirely.

She wanted to find the men responsible. From what Master It'kla had explained, it seemed likely that the cloners had access to either detailed brain scans of Master Dyas... or they had Master Dyas.

Or his body.

Ahsoka wasn't sure which option was worse.

"There it is," Master It'kla's voice was soft, but could be heard even over the high altitude wind whipping by the three and parting around the mountain.

Ahsoka clambered ahead past the two older Jedi. It looked like there may have once been a door there, but it had been blown entirely off its hinges. The door itself was nowhere to be seen, and the twisted girders that remained may have once been a door frame, but they were too badly bent to be sure.

"What happened here?" she asked. Then something caught her eye. She kneeled down to look at a large chunk of broken white plasteel.

It had once been a clone trooper's helmet. Now it was nearly flat. Something had torn it open, and from the looks of it, simply peeled it off like the rind of a fruit. The inside was stained a reddish brown.

"A Jedi gone mad happened here," Sifu-Dyas said. "He killed everyone in the facility."

"I can't even imagine how much power it took to do this," she said, poking at the former helmet. "It wasn't just pulled off or blown off... it was bent, ripped, and flattened."

"Now you see why I'm glad to have help," Dyas said, with a wry raise of his eyebrow. "The amount of torque it would take to do that is incredible, even for a Force user."

"Yeah, that's a lot of... force." Ahsoka stood up and stepped over the broken helmet. "I can't really say I'm looking forward to this."

"Whoever built this place left several hidden back exits for easy escape. This was one of them." Sifu-Dyas strode down the corridor into the heart of the mountain. "This leads to the emergency shuttle hangar. From there we should be able to access the rest of the base."

There wasn't much light down the corridor, so Ahsoka turned the light amplification up on her visor. She leaned over to Master It'kla and said, "Sorry gramps, I've only got one night vision visor."

"I will rely on the Force," Ylenic said, "and of course, my sense of smell."

"I'll let you know if you're about to stub your toes," Ahsoka said as she followed him down the dark tunnel.

The tunnel took a few twists and turns, seemingly at random. Eventually they found themselves in decent light again. The end of the tunnel narrowed, and they all had to duck down.

It looked like the tunnel had been disguised as an air vent in the shuttle bay. The grating had been torn and tossed aside, much like the helmet they had found earlier. The metal hadn't been cut, just pulled apart so hard that it tore in two.

Light streamed in through a bent hangar door. There weren't any ships in the shuttle bay. What little had been inside was strewn around. Large kegs of fuel slugs lay in random positions on the floor. Crates had been torn open. A set of large transparisteel tubes that looked like bacta tanks had been broken and shattered across the entire far wall of the room, the shards of transparisteel sticking into the wall in some places.

Ahsoka whistled in amazement. "Somebody threw a big temper tantrum here. Ooh... watch out."

"For what?" Ylenic asked.

"There's a little two or three centimeter lip on the grate there. You could have stubbed your toes if you weren't careful."

The older Jedi shook his head, although Ahsoka was fairly certain that she saw a bit of a smile in the muscles around his eyes.

"So," she said to Sifu-Dyas, "have you managed to foresee where we're going to find this crazy Jedi?"

"No, nothing that specific. I do feel we need to go down. Deeper into the mountain." He pointed to a turbolift door that looked, surprisingly compared to the rest of the room, intact. "It appears that there is still power to the turbolifts here."

"All right, but if the crazy clone cuts the power and we fall to our deaths, I'm going to be really annoyed," she quipped back.

She'd been away from her crew too long. When she was with people she knew and trusted, she could joke in situations like this. Skywalker, Jyssa, Arc... despite how the Jedi forbid attachments, she couldn't help but think of them as family.

The turbolift doors closed, and either it didn't have inertial compensators, or they were broken. Ahsoka felt her stomach lurch upwards when the rest of her lurched downwards.

Despite its speed, the turbolift kept going down and down. After the first hundred meters or so, Ahsoka lost track of how far it felt like they had gone. "How deep does this place go?"

"It takes up almost half the mountain. It is not a small base," Sifu-Dyas replied.

Finally, at what Ahsoka thought was about a hundred and fifty meters below where they started, the turbolift came to a halt and opened its doors.

Ahsoka looked out into the room. It was huge, not quite as broad as the Senate chamber on Coruscant, but far taller. Like the Senate chamber, the center was hollow, allowing the Jedi to see the multiple identical lower levels.

And filling every level were row after row of large glass tubes. The closest few had humanoid figures in them.

"Those weren't bacta tanks in the hangar bay!" Ahsoka gasped. "Those were cloning tanks!"

Master It'kla placed his hand on the nearest one. The figure of a young human floated inside. He looked familiar to Ahsoka, but she couldn't place his face.

"Not the same as the Kamino cloning facilities. I believe these are spaarti cylinders," Master It'kla said. He turned to Sifu-Dyas. "I suspect that you, my friend, were grown in a device much like this one."

The furry Jedi master spun around suddenly, his lightsaber appearing in his hand. He sniffed a the air with his large nose. "We are not alone."

Ahsoka spun around to see a cloaked figure standing behind them.

"You brought a ship to me. Finally. A ship. I can leave this place," the figure said, in a voice all too familiar to Ahsoka.

"Oh no," she said, "Oh no..."

The figure stepped out and screamed, "Where is it? I need to leave this place. I have a mission. They tried to make me stay. They tried to make me think I wanted to stay!"

When he yelled the last word, he clenched his fist. Ahsoka heard a tube somewhere in the huge room shatter. Even from here, she could feel the anger, the confusion, and the sheer, raw power of the Force coming from the clone.

The room was silent for a moment, except for the sound of gurgling fluid draining out of the broken tube.

Sifu-Dyas raised his lightsaber in front of him and activated it. A black blade shimmered into existence in front of him, only visible in the dim room around the edges where faint hints of violet and blue were visible to the eye for flickering moments. "You will not leave this place," he said. His face and voice had a placidity that Ahsoka had seen before on the faces of other Jedi who had given themselves to the Force, and were ready to die to do their duty.

She pulled her double sided lightsaber out and ignited it as well. A third blade ignited, and in the corner of her eye she could see the green glow of Master It'kla's lightsaber.

The man in front of them threw back his hood, revealing a dark-skinned face. He was younger than Ahsoka had ever seen him before, and the right side of his face was marred by what looked like a blaster scorch. He still had hair, unlike the original that Ahsoka knew so well, although it was just a few weeks worth of stubble on his head. The lightsaber in his hand was all too familiar, and when it ignited, the violet blade hummed at a pitch just lower than her own blades.

And then the clone threw back his head, and laughed. "Do you really think that three Jedi can take on a Jedi Master?"

The voice was the same. The crisp pronunciation and strong voice that Ahsoka had always associated with the council's second most powerful member seemed out of place against the manic anger radiated from the clone.

Where the cloners had found the lightsaber, or the hurrikaine crystal to replicate it, was beyond Ahsoka's guess.

And how the cloners thought that they would be able to control a clone of Mace Windu didn't speak highly of their forethought.

Sifu-Dyas struck first, or at least he tried to. He lunged forward with a Force-enhanced leap, striking down with his dark saber. The Windu clone brushed him aside with Force telekinesis as if he were nothing. Dyas flew to the side, crashing into another spaarti cylinder hard enough to knock it loose from its moorings. It crashed onto the ground, spilling fluid and a clone wearing nothing more than nutrient tubes onto the ground.

Ahsoka used the Force to scoop up several bits of broken transparisteel and fling them at the clone while she darted forward. With the same kind of practiced ease and casual power she would have expected from the real Mace Windu, he effortlessly intercepted the shards of transparisteel with his saber. There were a series of hisses and pops as each piece was turned into slag, then the blade continued its powerful swing towards Ahsoka. She barely managed to deflect it with her own green blade and duck under it, trying to catch the clone's legs with the blue blade from the other end of her saberstaff.

The clone pushed away from the ground with the Force and did a tight flip over her, freeing his blade from hers when he leapt up and slamming it back down when he landed. All Ahsoka could do to avoid it was to push back as hard as she could with her legs and skid along the ground away from the clone.

Master It'kla stepped forward, and swung at the clone. The clone easily blocked the attack, and knocked the Caamasi Jedi's saber away. He spun to face the older Jedi, and the two traded several blows. Master It'kla was slower, and more sure of himself. But the Windu clone radiated power and strength, and his swings grew faster with each strike.

Sifo-Dyas leapt back into the fray, and the clone was forced to divide his attention. A snarl came across his face, pulling the puckered blaster burn open. But the clone didn't seem to care about the pain. He lashed out with the Force, knocking both the Jedi back.

Ahsoka separated her blades and tried to strike from behind, but the clone whipped around in time to swing his blade across her field of view, trapping both of her blades to the side with alarming strength.

While still entangling her blades with his own, he easily ducked under a strike from Master It'kla, then took a quick and unexpected step to the side to deliver a powerful punch to Sifu-Dyas' ribs. Ahsoka heard the whoosh of breath leaving Dyas' lungs, and while he was distracted, the Windu clone lashed out with the Force, knocking Dyas aside again, but grabbing at his lightsaber hilt.

Ahsoka lashed out with her own Force abilities, trying to knock the clone off balance, to keep him from getting the second saber.

But his fingers wrapped around the hilt. The near-silent black blade swung at Master It'kla, powerful enough to make him stagger back even though he blocked the blade. Now the clone turned back towards Ahsoka, with a blade in each hand to match the two that she wielded.

She managed to free her green primary blade from Windu's violet one and block the first blow from the dark saber. She'd seen the real Jedi Master use his Vaapad style saber technique before, but never with two sabers. And never with the level of anger and passion he had now. Every moment was a brutal display of raw speed and power. Every movement was either to strike at her, or move one saber into position for the next strike while simultaneously striking with the other.

Ahsoka block blow after blow, just defending. She blocked, ducked, dodged, flipped, and used everything she could just to survive the onslaught. With every strike, the clone's speed intensified. With every strike, the anger in his face grew. With every strike, what little shreds of self-control the clone seemed to have were torn away.

She was given a split second to regain her footing when Master It'kla attacked the clone again, and this time the clone lashed out with pure Force energy. Lightning flew from his fingertips, and Master It'kla was thrown backwards over the edge.

He turned back to Ahsoka, who prepared for the next onslaught. She blocked his first strike, then his second was intercepted.

The clone looked over in surprise to see Sifu-Dyas, holding his ancient vibroblade. The two clones looked into each other's eyes, one showing confusion and surprise, the other showing placid strength.

And Sifu-Dyas drove the blade into the other clone's chest. The Windu clone coughed, then fell to the ground. The mad clone alternated between laughing and choking, until he fell silent.

Author's note: Wow... I think this was my longest chapter yet. As much as I love cliffhangers... this episode had to play out to the end. There was literally no good place to stop it, other than right when I revealed Mace Windu, which would not only be an EVIL cliffhanger to leave the readers off on until Monday, but not a good place to start the next episode, or I could have stopped it shortly after the fight scene started and had it spill over to the next episode. But that would make the structure of the next episode a little weird. So I just had to finish.

It was also one of the most emotionally draining to write, mostly because when you write a character you're connected to, you can't help but feel a little bit of what they're feeling. And going toe-to-toe with even a cheap copy of Mace Windu is still not easy.

Up until this episode, I don't think I've had a chapter that was more than 2,000 words. They were all between 1k and 2k. This episode had two over 2k. I don't know if I'm just writing more, or if I just happened to have an episode that needed a little more detail and a little more action. :)

I hope everybody's enjoying this so far. We're getting closer to the end of season 1 of Exile's Journey. Depending on how many more storylines I need to fit in, I'm shooting for somewhere between 20 and 24 episodes in a season, just like a normal TV show.

Thanks for all the reviews, favorites, and follows! Knowing that people are reading and enjoying is helping to inspire me to write more. :)