Chapter 59

Collision Course

Ahsoka napped at the controls of the Whipclaw. After one long, draining battle with a single Mace Windu clone, she had to be ready to deal with three more. The last time she'd had two Jedi with her. This time she only had one.

And, of course, the entire police and military forces of the planet Bpfassh.

So she stole a bit of rest where she could. In the hold, Master It'kla was deep in a healing trance. He would probably wake up better rested than she would. But it was good to get a natural nap in after a long day.

The Firespray's engines lit up, and the ship lifted off hard enough to leave scorch marks on the fusionformed landing platform. The pilot gritted his teeth and muttered, "Did you really think that I wouldn't recognize you with that makeup on, Windu? I thought you were dead. I guess I'll just have to finish the job."

The durasteel armor plates weren't as sturdy as actual Mandalorian iron. They would hardly even slow down a lightsaber.

But the fact that his armor wouldn't stop a lightsaber wasn't going to stop Boba Fett.

The Slave 1 rocketed out of the atmosphere and into deep space, and as soon as it was out of the gravity well, it continued on into hyperspace. Bpfassh was not a short distance away, but the Slave 1 had just had its hyperdrive upgraded. He'd be there in no time.

As he focused on the swirling patterns of hyperspace, mentally gearing up for the fight ahead, he tried to ignore the fact that he hadn't quite filled out enough in the shoulders to fit in the armor that he'd modeled after his father's.

The First wasn't sure where it had all gone wrong.

He knew he was a clone. He wasn't the original Mace Windu. But he was the First, the most powerful of the clones. He was the one that the cloners had tried to brainwash into acting as a guardian of some hidden fortress in a mountain, away from everywhere.

But he had the remnants of memories from Mace Windu. And he did remember Windu's last pressing mission. Several Jedi from the Bpfasshi Jedi Temple had gone rogue, fallen to the dark side of the Force. He would be in disguise as a Bpfasshi, and Master Yoda would go with him to introduce him as one of their long-lost brethren. He would root out those who had fallen to the dark side, and he and Master Yoda would do their best to redeem that. Failing that, well, there was always the Citadel on Lola Sayu. Even a Jedi wouldn't be able to break out of that prison.

But Yoda was missing. The real Windu was missing. So the First had secretly cloned himself. He grew the clone quickly, and it wasn't perfect. In fact, it was very angry. All the time. But while the First kept visible and pretended to follow the orders of his cloners, the Second secretly developed another clone. Then another.

And then it had all gone awry. Days before the Fourth was ready to be taken out of his spaarti cylinder, the Third had gotten impulsive. He was exploring the facility when he should have been staying in hiding.

He'd been seen by a guard. A guard who realized that he wasn't the First, and that there was something wrong. There was only one thing that the clones could do to prevent legions of soldiers being sent to pacify or kill them.

The Second chose to take the Fourth clone out of the pod early. The Fourth was underdeveloped, and looked like a gawky teenager. His flash learning regimen had been interrupted as well, and he had difficulty speaking without a stutter. But his strength in the Force was nearly equal to that of the Second and Third.

And then the four Windu clones killed everyone in the base. The guard, the cloners, the employee who catalogued the storage units. He had given way useful information when the First used a Jedi mind trick on him.

From what the employee had told the First, it was possible, perhaps even likely, that the original Windu was dead. He had told the First that the man who owned the facility on Wayland, the man who'd ordered Windu cloned and brainwashed, was a man who claimed to be an Emperor. As an act of petty vengeance against Windu, he'd ordered troops to go to the planet Hurikaine to murder the natives who had given Windu his lightsaber crystal, and steal their supply of them.

And he had stored them in this base, along with many other trophies of his silent war against the Jedi.

The First had sworn to track him down when the business with Bpfassh was done.

But they didn't have a ship on Wayland. This Emperor had left his minions with no way to escape if something went catastrophically wrong. Which meant that the clones had no way to get off the planet either.

That changed when three Jedi came. The First didn't have time to negotiate. The dark Jedi on Bpfassh wouldn't wait. They couldn't wait. That mission was the most important thing in the galaxy to the First.

It was how he'd broken free of the mental suggestions of the cloners. Windu's last clear goal, his last clear memory. The First focused on it, used it to drive out the false flash memories.

The mission was everything.

So he sacrificed the Second. The Second had been injured in the fight to take the base. The second was angry and unpredictable. Not as impulsive as the Third, but out of all of the possible sacrifices, he was the one who would be the least useful in infiltrating the Jedi Temple on Bpfassh, and the most likely to slow down the pursuers long enough to steal one of their ships.

But the Jedi Temple on Bpfassh was swarming with Imperial troops. The First knew that they were clones, just like the troops he was used to commanding. But their armor had changed, and they not only no longer obeyed the orders of Jedi... but they immediately turned on the three clones.

And now the fighting had spilled out into the streets. He could see that the Third was starting to lose control. He was throwing chunks of building ferrocrete around, not just at police, but at everyone in sight.

The Fourth tried to stay near him, blocking every incoming blaster bolt with his violet-bladed lightsaber.

"I can't h...hold them off m...m...much longer!" he yelled to the First.

The first swept his hand in front of him, and the entire line of police officers that had been firing on them tumbled to the ground like ragdolls.

The Fourth lowered his lightsaber. "Th...th...thanks."

And then a blaster bolt hit him square in the center of his chest. The First watched in horror as the clone brother he had been trying to protect the most, the most vulnerable of all of the Windu clones, crumpled to the ground.

He heard an ear-piercing scream from across the road, and he didn't have to look to know that it was from the Third. During the time they'd spent together, the Third had done little but tease and mock the Fourth for being underdeveloped.

Now the Third screamed in anger and pain when the Fourth was hurt.

The First sank to his knees, reaching out with his arms, and with the Force.

But the wound could not be healed. The Fourth's heart beat slower, and slower, until it stopped.

Something welled up inside the First, something that he knew the fringes of. Something that he touched lightly when he used Vaapad.

Now it consumed him. He lashed out, and one of the policemen than was getting back to his feet was torn open by the sheer power of the Force.

The First took the lightsaber that had fallen out of the hands of the Fourth and ignited it. With all the power of the Force behind him, he lashed out.

Dimly, through his haze of fear, hate, and anger, he could feel the Third doing the same.

Ahsoka brought the Whipclaw into Bpfassh's atmosphere. Ylenic looked over her shoulder. He was well rested now, and mostly healed.

As they came in low, they saw that the city resembled an insect hive that had been kicked open. People and vehicles were scattering every which way. The spaceport was a mess, with panicked people trying to power up ships to get away.

"Do you think that the clones were trying to get something from the Jedi Temple here?"

"I cannot think of any other reason why they would have come here," Ylenic said, still breathing shallowly.

"Are your ribs still bothering you?" Ahsoka asked. "I don't want to push you into a fight that you're not ready for."

"My ribs are fine. My problem is one that all of my people have when dealing with fire, or in this case, Force lightning." Master It'kla took another shallow breath, and Ahsoka saw his nose wrinkle a little bit. "We have a rather powerful sense of smell. We also have fur. I have not had a chance to shave off the burned fur, and it is a most discomforting odor."

Ahsoka turned back to the mess in front of her. "I'm not sure where we can land this thing. The spaceport is a mess, and we still need to find exactly where the clones are."

A swoop, without a rider, sailed over a nearby building, then fell to the ground and crumpled like tissue paper.

"Never mind," she said, "I think we found at least one of them."

Author's note: I've been busy trying to get signed up for some classes that I needed to graduate, so I thought I wouldn't be able to finish today's chapter in time to post. Suddenly this morning I just churned it all out, finished it while I was eating an early lunch and getting ready to head to campus, uploaded it... and forgot to actually post it. I normally try to post it around 12:30 or so, just because that was a convenient time when I was working and when I wasn't. I thought I'd posted it an hour early. I ended up posting it two hours late. D'oh. :P

I will, however, be late tomorrow. In fact, I'm not sure if it will get posted until late at night, or maybe even Friday, depending on some things. Classes have started this week, and my life is a little hectic at the moment.