As a rule, destroyers do not crash into each other at speed. Not on purpose, anyway.

It happens on occasion, but for the most part, it's simply too expensive a form of warfare. A high-class destroyer can cost hundreds of trillions of credits to build, and as much to maintain even when not on active duty. Anakin's siege-breaking maneuver from last year wasn't so much colliding as a slow, careful push, and even then, some of High Command wasn't happy with the cost of repairs. He took significantly more heat when Ahsoka used the Defender as a battering ram over Ryloth. (She doesn't know, and she never will. He will not let them shame her for making the right call.)

By the time Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, the bulk of Torrent, and those of the 212th who crammed into their laarties in time have made it up to the Dominator, the sun is on the horizon of Arami from their position. Obi-Wan rushes to the war room to comm the Council for an urgent consult on long-term strategy, leaving the tactics to Anakin. Ahsoka goes off…somewhere, when he's not looking. Yularen has managed to box in the hammerhead ships and make vigorous contact using the cruiser Tranquility: Its nose is buried deep in the enemy's crumpled side. Of Grievous' remaining two-and-a-half functional destroyers' escort vessels, a good third have gotten their acts together and are focusing fire on the Tranquility. Silent explosions riddle the length of both wounded behemoths. The escape pods shoot out at high speeds, black dots where they pass in front of the planet and odd flickers elsewhere, revealed only by their motion in front of the stars. As Arami's sun slips partway behind its horizon, it softens into a brilliant corona, staining the whole scene with ethereal orange light.

The Separatist destroyers not engaged in rattling the Tranquility are focusing their fire on the Resolute, which is floating directly in the path of the other hammerhead ship and preventing its leap into the Syrvis-Arami-Gamorr hyperspace lane. Between Anakin and the Resolute lies the entire battlefield, forty klicks of debris-riddled space. Execute Battalion is on the Resolute for this battle, while Carnivore Battalion, including Torrent, mans the Dominator. A Sep escort cruiser gets a lucky hit in near the Resolute's hangar and Anakin can feel lives—his men's lives—flaring and snuffed in the Force as white-armored dust motes drift outwards, spinning slowly.

On the bustling bridge of the Dominator, Anakin barely even needs to give the order: They're already cutting across the battlefield to reinforce. They take a hit, and the entire bridge rocks. Like most of the seasoned veterans, Anakin manages to keep his feet, Force-catching a passing shiny before he can go down. "Comm the Resolute!" Anakin roars over the metal's groaning, and his communications officers hurl themselves into action.

While the ship rumbles and the connection loads, Anakin takes his chance to pop a pill from the blister pack of stims he shoved in his pocket this morning and swallow it dry. He's been awake a good fifteen hours now, and hasn't eaten in eight or so while engaging in near-constant combat. And that's not even considering the communal puking session all pilots bond over after flying rings in an Aethersprite for more than twenty minutes at a session. He could go far longer without chemical assistance if he had to, but he likes how the stims clear his mind and suppress the hunger pulling restlessly at the edges of his stomach. He has a feeling he'll need that for what comes next.

Finally, finally, they establish a clear connection, and Captain Popper of Execute Battalion looms large from the holoprojector. "General!"

"Captain, what's your situation?"

Popper glances over his shoulder, curses quietly in Mando'a at what he sees. Refocuses. "We're holding the line, but I'm worried that half-dead Sep cruiser is gonna ram us to get us out of the way."

"It's still got working thrusters?"

"Hard to tell, but I don't like the angle."

"Yeah, lot of that going around." Anakin grinds his teeth, considers. "Hold your position, we're almost there. We'll aim to take out the thrusters on that one first. Damage assessment?"

"Significant. We took two bad hits to port before we could bring her around, she's listing a bit, and we've lost an engine. The hyperdrive may also be compromised."

Shit. "Alright, Captain, we're coming up on your starboard. See if your guys can divert power from your hyperdrive to shields, if they haven't already. We'll turn this thing around in no time."

Popper smiles grimly. "I believe it, sir. Resolute out." The holocall cuts, though the line remains open.

Stars scroll past as they put on a little more speed, juddering when they take another glancing hit. Anakin grits his teeth as they pass by the remaining hammerhead ship, but at this speed and distance, they can't get a large cannon hit in without being tagged or hitting their own ships by accident; the plan is for the Renown and the Tribunal to take it down from both sides while the Dominator protects the Resolute's blockade position. The Tribunal is already firing away beneath the hammerhead's starboard side.

(Behind them, the Tranquility and its prey drift into atmosphere and begin to catch fire, haloed by the red-orange corona against velvety black backing, and stars, this war could be beautiful if it were not so ugly. Something about the way it strips the world down to its barest essentials, builds up towering institutions at a breakneck pace only to crush them again like so much scrap in the shredder.)

And then they're closing in on the embattled Resolute and the two destroyers harrying it, one on each side, and yeah, he really doesn't like the angle of the half-destroyed ship flanking the Resolute to starboard. Grievous' other undamaged destroyer peppers its port side with laserfire, mostly in vain.

"Fire!" yells Second Lieutenant Graft, first artillery officer on the Dominator, and the forward plasma cannons go off with a pulse and a roar. And again. And again. It takes four strikes and the associated cooldown periods, and Anakin has to run off halfway through to make decisions about salvaging a damaged oxygen hub, but he's back on the bridge in time for the finale. The half-destroyed droid cruiser's shields flicker into visibility one last time before shutting down entirely, and then the side of the ship ignites in a series of fireballs, quickly snuffed as the oxygen dissipates. Anakin's pulse slows.

Then the Force tightens like an indrawn breath. Popper's holo flickers back into existence. "General! It was a feint, they're ramming us from the other side!"

What? How did they manage to turn without the Resolute noticing? Shit. Shit—

From this side, they can only see the Resolute buckle. And then hundreds of lights are winking out in the Force all at once, leaving Anakin gasping like he's been punched in the gut.

/B/

The pain is indescribable. With great effort, he manages to catch hold of the bridge railing and wheeze out, "Where's the hammerhead?!"

"About to enter hyperspace, sir!"

Shit, fuck, ma'kresh al'kal—"Get us in that lane before them! Hyperspace, now!"

"Inputting coordinates!"

Gripping the railing hard enough to dent it, Anakin manages to straighten up. "And where's Rex?" he croaks out, still sounding strangled.

Rex appears at his elbow like magic, helmet under his arm and breathing heavily. "Sir?"

Out their portside windows, the hammerhead ship blurs as it zips into hyperspace and disappears. Anakin's heart pounds wildly and then an instant later, the stars streak around them and it's visible in front of them again, the size of a thumb drive in the distance but getting bigger, slowly. Too slowly.

Anakin forces his breath back under control, and the need for air fades into the heady sensation of hyperspace travel. "Rex, I need you to take over the bridge while I try something. And can you get me Ahsoka?"

"Yes, sir! Are you trying to…."

"Yeah, we're not going to get close enough for tractor beams in time. When Ahsoka gets here, tell her to join me." And with that, he drops into a messy lotus on the metal floor and falls into meditation.

It's actually easier to do this in the heat of battle. In the quiet Temple, he finds it almost impossible to meditate without something to do with his hands, but on the battlefield, with blood rushing in his ears and adrenaline making his skin buzz, it's nearly effortless to dive deep into the Force, immersing himself in its immense, churning currents. Retreating totally from the surface-level awareness that forces him to think in terms of time and space, he feels for the bright glowing pinprick of the enemy hyperdrive. Feels out the machinery surrounding it, bares his teeth in grim satisfaction.

He doesn't have the precision to just flip a switch or something, and he can't mess with their software. What he can do, sensing the Force pulsing with all the promise of his Falling, is slide his consciousness into the crevices in the machinery and pull.

The initial meditation may have been easy, but this part is extremely difficult. Outside of the range of possibility for most Jedi, and a lot more difficult for him just a few months ago. His mental grasp slipsand slides over the machinery, there's no other word for it. He needs to try something new. He needs to…get angry, maybe.

Well, that's never been difficult for him.

With the familiarity of habit, Anakin starts a tally. One by one, he counts them off, Popper and Exec and the grizzled ace sharpshooters of Sawback Squad and the shinies he met in training review last week, three of them still nameless. Good men, innocent men, their lives thrown away like so much trash. And he knows what it's like, to feel like offal for the machine, this damn sausage grinder of a universe that just crushes and crushes and crushes, like a boot on your neck, like—and these men don't deserve that! His men who are good, brave, and real, and every day he has to send them out to be killed in their thousands and it makes him need to kill something, need to tear furrows through something that doesn't run on gears and oil, the injustice of it all, the scalding heat—and the Senate and the Council on their high fucking horses looking down on their soldiers crawling in the dirt, in the blood, on his men dying, and it sends him back to a day in the hot sun and his mother on the ground, in the shadow of the man with the glinting jewelry on his clenched fingers, and feeling the air crackle, cubic tons of invisible lighting and the atmosphere ablaze, and staring at the man with his eyes boiling in his head and praying, praying silent and frozen with all his might that the man would burst right then, would catch flame, would scream and whine and piss himself as he was crushed and boiled and torn asunder and every terrible thing—

—It jolts him back to awareness: A presence. He feels her recoil as soon as she drops into his meditation well, signature lighting up with psychic pain as she's scalded and disoriented by his storm of violent emotion. What—Ahsoka!

Shit, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck, he hurt Ahsoka!

His whole psyche thrums with panic, the heady taste of a pressure gradient forming as rage is displaced by fear. The swirling sands churn even faster around him. Thirty tons writhe serpentlike on the howling winds, higher and higher, blocking the sun, turning inward as the eye escapes him and he is plunged into the stinging semidarkness. He's hurt her, he's hurting her, because of his pathetic lack of control, because he is pathetic—he is standing before the Council and they know what he's worth, they know that he is trash, that he's disgusting, and Obi-Wan should have killed him years ago, as soon as it became clear what he is, because he'll poison her,he's already poisoning her, he's going to get her killed like all the rest—

No! No, no, no, this is not—He grasps for a mantra, any mantra, to steady him. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is—there is—there is—serenity!Fuck. Fuck. There is no passion, there is serenity. Clearly not. There is no chaos, there is—no, no, no, it's not helping, it's not helping—There is no death, there is only the Force. There is no death—there is death all around him. He is breathing it, he is choking on it, it coats his skin and clogs his pores. Sometimes, it feels like the Force itself will crumple under the weight of the deaths it is bloated with.

He makes it through three more frantic repetitions of the Jedi Code but it's not helping, it's just tinging guilt with more and more red-tinted fear. He can't make himself believe it. Because there is no peace! When, in his life, has he ever known peace?! There is no peace, peace is a lie—

Peace is a lie.

The full line floats up unbidden from the back of his memory: Peace is a lie, there is only Passion.

Through Passion, I gain Strength.

Through Strength, I gain Power.

The Sith Code isn't exactly a secret to the Jedi, but it's been years since he last thought about it.

Through Power, I gain Victory.

Through Victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall free me.

(Later, he will remember when he first learned it: fifteen and struggling through History of the Sith Wars. He remembers it because it shook him, punched him somewhere deep, to hear those ideas in that context, and because of how the two padawans nearest to him glancedat him out of the corners of their eyes when it came to the last lines, subtly, like he wouldn't notice. And he suddenly felt half the class' attention on him despite the sea of placid backs. Radiating pity, and contempt, and wariness, and…curiosity. So he sat rigid in his seat with his face completely blank and his shields tight for the rest of the class period, because leaving would be an admission of—an admission of—an admission.)

Through Power, I gain Victory. Through Victory, my chains are broken. But no, they discussed this in the diner—self-control can be a form of freedom. True self-control is the ultimate freedom; technically, "autonomy" is a synonym for self-control!

Through Passion I gain Strength, through Strength I gain Power—but not just any passion. He can feel Ahsoka's presence dithering just outside his shields, a featherlight touch, uncertain of her approach. He thinks back to his talk with Barriss: the right passion for the right moment. Passionate rage, passionate pride, passionate affection—what Ahsoka needs from him, what he really needs right now, is—is affection, reassurance.

Anakin exhales one corporeal breath and forces himself, calling on all of his mangled training, to think only of Ahsoka. Not his fear or guilt for her, not now; he can't afford to indulge himself now. He thinks of what she means to him. He thinks of a clever comeback that startled even Obi-Wan into an undignified snort, the heart-stopping sight of her sprinting across a minefield for the men under her command. Remembers her crowing in unrestrained enthusiasm the first time she managed to knock him off his feet in training. She strutted down the halls like a smug peali-hen for the whole day after, and he kept catching himself smiling at odd moments.

The sand swirls to heaven, but it does not sting. Anakin is burning with a different kind of fire. He is here, he is solid, he has a job to do. He has to give her a future, give all of them a future. Mustering all of his affection, his pride, his determination, he wraps his attention around the machinery again and pulls—and one of the metal sheets he's pulling at gives way.

Yes!

The excitement sends the storm higher. That and Ahsoka, who's now poking at his consciousness cautiously but without a hint of blame or hurt peeping past her shields. She's strong, so much stronger than he ever was. He's not going to hurt her, he has to do this for her. He would fight a thousand wars for Ahsoka and Padme and Obi-Wan and Rex, the least of them the one inside his head.

With half his attention, he does what he meant to do earlier: pulls her deeper into the Force, shows her what he's doing. Her signature reads surprise, then a hint of embarrassment, and then small hands join his on the cogs and levers, compounding his strength with a rush of peaceful affection. The tension on the machinery increases exponentially.

Together, they push, and push, and push—

CRACK-CRACK—KABOOM!

Anakin and Ahsoka withdraw their awareness from the machinery as hyperdrive energy balloons outward into the space of the engine room, snapping and crackling and tasting vaguely of mint. In the Force, master and padawan share a moment of giddy exhilaration, reveling in the relief of a hard job well done. (Through Power, I gain Victory.)

And then Anakin is jerked out of meditation just in time to smash at immense speed into a wall.

/B/

Anakin blinks back into awareness to someone shaking him.

He's on the floor. His mouth tastes tacky, and he has a splitting headache, though not, he's pretty sure, a head injury-type headache. He's overextended himself in the Force. That's Rex kneeling over him, helmet on. All around him are red flashing lights and a confused garble of noises: Clones, shouting over each other and running in seemingly every direction at once.

"...Rex?" He goes to push himself up and almost crumples when he puts his weight on his left arm. Dislocated shoulder, almost certainly. The pain clears the last of his confusion, and he manages to focus his eyes on the man in front of him. "What happened?"

Rex is grim in the Force, and—scared. Anakin has only rarely felt that from Rex. He speaks very fast. "Enemy's hyperdrive cut out, as planned. We rammed them before they could drop entirely out of hyperspace, they pulled us out with them. Most of the men were strapped in, few casualties."

"What's the issue?"

"We dropped out directly into Gamorr's gravity well."

…Ah.

Anakin levers himself to a sitting position with his right arm, his left dangling uselessly beside him. His head swims. "What are our chances of getting out."

"None."

None?! Focus. "Time to impact?"

"T-minus fifteen, give or take."

"The men?"

"Already strapped into impact harnesses, most of them. Other than a few squads I'm sending out in our small craft, the rest of them have orders to do the same."

Anakin surges to his feet. "Is that Kaminoan policy?" The familiar smoldering rage resurges to push the fear back, though it does nothing for the dizziness. "Scratch those orders, they're safer in escape pods!"

"Sir?"

"Damn cloners were cost-cutting." This close, Anakin can see Rex's eyes widen behind the visor, and he abruptly dashes off to start shouting their new orders into the ship's PA system. In his absence, Anakin wavers on his feet, and Fives smoothly appears at his elbow. He shakes him off, pushing himself into a fast walk toward the port bridge exit as Fives follows. The red flashing lights and running clones do not let up as they head into the chrome hallway; one member of command staff almost shoulder-checks Anakin into a wall, clutching a datapad to his chest. "Where's Ahsoka?" Anakin picks up where he left off, keeping the frisson of fresh fear out of his voice with effort.

"Winded, not badly hurt. Strapped her in myself, in the commissary. We heading for the escape pods?"

Anakin grunts, grips his left arm to stabilize it as he breaks into a jog. "No. I need you and Rex getting as many brothers into them as possible, but this ship wasn't built for our numbers—212th and half the 501st. Not all of us are going to get in, Rex knows that. I'm going to see if something creative can be done with the engines."

It's a testament to the understanding he's built with his men that Fives makes no further attempt to get him to evacuate. He's silent for a moment in a way that suggests listening to helmet comms, then reports, "General Kenobi was in medical when we crashed. Now getting the wounded into a pod."

"Great." Anakin breathes out deliberately, slow and controlled. "Thank you for the info. I need you back with Rex now."

"Yessir." Fives turns and books it back up the corridor, not even bothering with a half-assed salute.

The commissary is filled with silent brothers, strapped into the impact absorption seats that have folded out from floors and walls in all the residential areas. This is the area furthest from any of the escape pods; Rex must have decided this group would stay aboard for logistical reasons. Anakin doesn't envy him the decision. A pop of orange in a sea of blue and white: Ahsoka, looking bruised but mostly alright. She's trapped between Echo and Hulk, but she stills spies him as he passes the door and calls out: "Hey! Skyguy!" He senses more than sees her start to unclip her harness and backtracks to the doorway.

"Snips, get to an—" Shit, he wants her to get to an escape pod, but at this point her trying to make it there in the crush might be more risky, and she'd never agree to leave her men behind anyway. There's no time to argue. "Stay here, I'll be back!"

"I'll help you—" Echo is trying to grab her now, speaking in low tones.

"No!" Anakin casts around for an excuse. "Ahsoka, I need you here, okay? I need you to help everyone keep calm, and try to keep any debris under control when we impact. Can you do that for me?"

"I—yessir."

He doesn't have time to acknowledge her response. Anakin breaks into a run down the hallway again.

Via Force-assisted sprinting, he arrives in the engine room with eight minutes remaining before impact and immediately shoos out all of the stubborn engineers except Specialist Cheska, the stubbornest of the bunch. He's halfway caught his breath and is midway through explaining his plan to reroute power from the hyperdrive to the forward thrusters when they hit atmosphere, and both of them are thrown off their feet.

"Sir? It's about to get real hot in here, you need to leave!"

Anakin shakes his head. "We leave together at T-minus two." Then he relocates his shoulder against a wall.

This section of the engine room is on an exterior wall; they're forced to shout over the rush of air as well as Rex on the PA and the deafening creaking of metal as they scramble around the room, rerouting wires and strategically breaking coolant systems with jury-rigged code. The temperature rises steadily until he's relying almost entirely on his mechanical hand, the other slick with sweat and painful to move besides. This is purely a power change, so luckily, they can make it without having to venture far into the other two or miles of engine rooms. Even so, they barely finish in time.

"Escape pods, launch! All hands, assume impact positions! Go! Go!" Rex's voice barks over the noise of things breaking. The hull is definitely on fire by now, and the temperature is well over 310 Kelvin. Anakin grabs Cheska with the Force and pulls him into a stumbling run behind him, out of the engine rooms.

There are two impact seats saved in the nearest barracks, mostly full of engineers. Anakin and Cheska strap in with hands shaking from the adrenaline, puffing out overheated air. The stabilizer bags around their heads, necks, and shoulders inflate with some panicked guidance from their similarly immobilized seatmates. And then they wait.

(At his side, Anakin's wrist comm blinks: incoming call from General Kenobi. Squished in the stabilizer bag, he never notices.)

Thirty-four seconds later, the impact is strong enough to rattle their teeth in their heads. Lucky that no one is awake to feel it.