Precipice by shadowsong26

Original Author's Notes: As with last week's update, any tactical/action/military/combat errors are mine, not our narrator's.

Part 4: Commander

Commander: Chapter 3

Also, as a quick note: this arc is a slightly different structure/timeline than the last couple. In-universe, at least, everything moves fairly quickly. The next couple chapters are going to be more or less simultaneous with this one; all taking place over several hours/maybe two days on the outside. The arc as a whole takes place entirely during Founding Week, six years after ROTS. So, a little closer to Aftermath, in terms of how to think that through? I'll do my best to make the order of events, in the different threads in different parts of the galaxy, as clear as possible, but just wanted to let y'all know.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and I hope you're still enjoying the ride!

~shadowsong

The mission had, at least so far, gone remarkably smoothly. Rex and his General had encountered minimal resistance breaking into the base; the code keys were right where they were supposed to be; and General Skywalker had had no trouble at all in spoofing the security systems on their way in. They had, it seemed, reset since then, but that wasn't much of a problem. And apart from that, it had been like clockwork, every step of the way.

Rex didn't trust the quiet. Not one bit.

And maybe that was just paranoia-it was hard not to fall into that pattern as a guerilla soldier working side by side with two of the most wanted men in the galaxy, up against a juggernaut war machine with practically nonexistent support of their own. Or maybe it was just this karking week- Empire Day -getting under his skin like it always did.

Well, all in his head or not, things were going entirely too damn well, and every instinct Rex had was screaming, "Trap!"

Relax, he told himself, holding as still as he could while the General hotwired yet another inconveniently reactivated security grid blocking their exit route. We're not clear yet. There's still plenty of time for something to go wrong.

"Got it," The General finally said, shoving the wires haphazardly back into the wall and picking up his lightsaber. "Come on, quickly; it'll start up again in a minute or so."

Rex nodded and fell in behind him, careful to step only where he stepped-the floor was unlikely to be further trapped, not now that the main sensors had been cut off, but better safe than sorry. "They're getting smarter," he said, when he heard the faint hum of the system re-engaging behind him.

"It was bound to happen sometime," he agreed. He paused for a split second at an intersection, then took the right hand path.

That turn, and the next several, went contrary to what the map Rex had memorized earlier would have suggested, but he trusted his General to lead them out the right way. Far more than he trusted the map.

The quiet was still getting to him, that was all.

After an increasingly tense-kriff, had it really only been a minute?-the General paused at a blank space in the wall. "D'you hear that?"

Rex cocked his head, listening-blaster fire, up ahead. A familiar sound; he felt some of the tension drain out of his shoulders. Well, that explains why we had so little trouble. Garrison's busy shooting someone else. "Huh," he said. "Looks like someone crashed our party."

"Yep." He grinned a little, slightly feral. "What do you say we return the favor?"

So, clearly, Rex wasn't the only one bothered by how easy this had all been. Plus, this week-General Skywalker was always spoiling for a fight. Every kriffing year, he went looking for one. Something simple, something he could win, something that just might keep him from thinking too much.

"Well, sir," he said. "Seems only fair. You want to go in quiet?" Which wasn't the best word for it- nothing Rex's General did was ever quiet-but it was the easiest shorthand for 'do you want to be an Obvious Jedi or am I lending you a gun?'

He considered a moment. "To start, at least."

He nodded, and passed him a pistol, before making sure their stolen keys were still secure.

General Skywalker gave him another quick grin and a brief salute, then started off down the hallway again, picking up speed as he went; Rex was, as always, half a step behind.

They reached the main entrance of the base and found the source of the disturbance outside. It turned out to be what looked like an offworld team-professional, but not very well organized; likely assembled for this specific job (whatever it was; it didn't much matter to Rex at the moment) and intending to scatter after they finished it and got paid. They had probably had the same idea he and the General were operating under; taking advantage of the numerous distractions the anniversary provided to make their move.

Under normal circumstances, Rex and his General would probably have left well enough alone at that point; they would have retreated, using the cover the mercenaries were providing to complete their own mission and get away clean. Most of the time, they couldn't risk getting involved-not when it was just the two of them, and too damn much to lose. And, barring immediate and obvious evidence of misconduct, they couldn't afford the luxury of confirming that an unknown third party shooting at stormtroopers was an actual ally, and not an underworld opportunist or a Shadow Collective affiliate or the like.

But today-today, there was a crew of what looked like civilian maintenance contractors, locals, cut off and pinned against the opposite wall by the firefight. They'd found themselves some cover, at least for now, and no one was shooting directly at them, but there way no way to know how long that would last.

Besides. It was too damn close to Empire Day. And the General wasn't the only one spoiling for a fight.

General Skywalker wasted no time, firing off a shot at the nearest stormtrooper, dropping him and drawing the attention of the rest of the garrison and their attackers.

Rex was right there with him, letting off a few bursts of suppression fire and looking for the clearest path to reach and extract the trapped workers.

And then the General grabbed him and yanked him back, a split second before the ground where he'd been standing erupted in a burst of rock dust. Caused by, he quickly noted, a blast from one of the turret cannons on the wall behind them.

"Well," Rex said, "looks like we got their attention." Cannon's a bit much, though. On the other hand, the fact that we came from inside the base probably made that gunner extra twitchy.

"No kidding," he said. He sounded pleased. Somehow, Rex wasn't all that surprised. "So, options?"

Cautiously, Rex poked his head out and fired off a couple shots, in case anyone got any bright ideas about approaching them, and took a quick look around. "We can probably get across-especially if we stick close to this wall, unlikely they'll risk trashing their own base. Problem is, once we get to the workers, only thing we could do from there is blast through the wall and make a run for it."

"Which would put us right back in range of the cannon, with a lot less cover," General Skywalker finished for him. "Kriff. Was hoping you'd see something I hadn't."

"Sorry," he said.

He shrugged, and fired off a couple more shots of his own. "It is what it is."

He nodded. "So, we're taking out the cannon, then?"

"We are taking out the cannon," he agreed. "You got a couple charges on you, I'm guessing?"

"Couple being the operative word," he admitted. There was always a balance, especially now that their team was so small, between stealth and armament. And, the goal for today's mission being what it was, he had leaned more towards the former today. Three or four extra charges would've been nice right about now, but there was no real help for it at this point.

"We'll make it work." He frowned down at the pistol in his hand. "...eh, screw it." He tossed the gun back at Rex and pulled his lightsaber out.

Saw that coming, Rex thought. Going in quiet, even metaphorically, never lasted.

"Right," General Skywalker went on. "Best approach would be…" He trailed off, tilting his head; brow furrowing a little in concentration.

"Sir?" Rex prompted after half a second. He picked off a stormtrooper who was trying to circle around and flank them. Idiot, he thought. Don't they teach their shinies how to move quiet in armor anymore?

"I...sense something," he said slowly, eyes drifting half-shut. "Something I haven't felt since-"

Abruptly, he cut himself off and, grinning like the madman he was, vaulted out from behind the cover they'd found, right into the hail of blasterfire.

Rex swore and tried to catch him and pull him back, half a second too late. He missed. By a very wide margin.

"I hate it when he does that," he announced to the uncaring sky.

But there was nothing for it but to follow, as he always did. He checked first, to get an idea of where he was heading and how hard it would be to catch up-particularly given that it was a little harder for him to just vault out from under cover without promptly getting himself killed.

With the ease of long practice, he immediately picked out the lightsaber in the-

Wait.

No.

He picked out the lightsabers. Plural.

There was his General's blue blade, gliding through the smoky air with brutal efficiency, and…

The other two were white; the colors were wrong, but the patterns-he knew those patterns.

Commander Tano was alive.

Commander Tano was here.

He dropped back out of sight again, heart pounding. It wasn't...it wasn't panic this time, not like that market years ago, when he'd first reconnected with the General, but it was-it was something. More like the swamp, where he'd met General Kenobi again, maybe. He wasn't sure if that was because-six years ago, it had only been his General, not the others; and the Commander had left before that anyway. She'd been safe. Or she should have been.

Or maybe it was just time and repetition that made this...less difficult.

Or maybe he just didn't have the adrenaline to spare for anything other than the fight spread around him.

Focus, he told himself sharply. There would be time enough to unravel all of that later. Right now, the Jedi- his Jedi, both of his Jedi-were in the thick of things. Drawing all kinds of unfriendly attention. He had to pull himself together and go back them up, like he was supposed to. Like he had promised his General-and himself-he would.

On the other hand…

They were drawing all kinds of attention. Which left him a clear shot at the damn cannon.

That was a better plan. Especially given he wasn't sure how the Commander would react to seeing him, and pushing that button in an active combat situation was a bad idea.

So, that decided-and not wanting to lose the opportunity-he struck out; staying low to the ground and close to the wall.

He traded a couple shots back and forth along the way, with the few stormtroopers who seemed to have noticed what he was up to, but made it to the corner directly under the cannon turret intact.

Scaling it was actually less of a challenge-the angle where the walls met gave him about a half-meter space where he wasn't a particularly easy target for anyone on the ground.

So, he reached the top without dying-always a plus-shot the trooper who was manning the turret, then hauled himself up and placed his charges. Strategically. With any luck, they would do the job.

That done, he turned to jump back down off the wall, only to be met by a sentry, and greeted with a sidearm in his face.

Rather than drawing his own weapon, he reached for the stormtrooper's, knocking the muzzle away from his face before the shot went off. Idiot. Blasters are distance weapons. What are they teaching you?

After that, it only took a few seconds of grappling to drive the other off the wall, but that ate up his time to get clear the way he'd wanted. He dropped flat, covering his head and neck as best he could as the cannon exploded behind him.

It wasn't as bad as he'd thought. The relatively small explosion probably helped there, minimizing the shrapnel. A few small pieces of hot metal landed on his arms and back. Enough to sting in the moment, and probably hurt like hell later, but not to do serious damage.

Ears ringing, he pushed himself back up and gave a quick salute to the General on the ground, letting him know he was all right.

Skywalker nodded, and-the Commander caught his eye, too. She flashed him a familiar, bright, pointed grin before diving back into the fray, and Rex felt an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders.

Because the message there was clear-she didn't hate him, either.

And that was a boost that he needed, especially this week, as he got back to work himself.

From that point, it was clockwork again-and, this time, it didn't feel like the calm before the storm. It felt like-it felt like coming home.

Of course, what else could it have been, but clockwork? Against the three of them, especially with the mercenaries thrown into the mix and throwing them further off their game, a provincial garrison like this one didn't stand a chance.

Rex stayed up on the wall for the rest of the skirmish, covering his Jedi from above. Would've worked better if he'd had a rifle, instead of his pistols, but he did all right. For their part, the Jedi got to the workers, and cut through the wall, and extracted every last one of them alive.

It had turned out to be a good day. A very good day.

Rex caught up with them as the extracted workers were scattering, probably (not unwisely) unwilling to be caught with a pair of Jedi, no matter the gratitude they owed.

But there wasn't time for a proper reunion yet. The three of them kept moving; better to put as much distance as possible, as quickly as possible, between them and the base. And then, finally, the General slowed, and stopped, still a few klicks away from the Waterfall.

Once he did, the Commander didn't hesitate, but flung her arms around her former Master, holding him tight.

She was almost exactly as tall as he was now, Rex noticed. A reminder, one less painful than most, of how much time had passed. Of how much everything had changed.

The General clung just as tight.

"You're alive," she breathed. "You're alive, I didn't-I wasn't-I didn't know if it was real or…"

"Wishful thinking?" he finished for her.

She nodded, and drew back-only to pull Rex in for a rib-crushing hug, too. "I missed you," she said. "All of you. So much."

After a startled, awkward half-second, he hugged her back. "Missed you, too, Commander."

Rex got the distinct impression that the only way General Skywalker could have been happier would be if General Kenobi and Leia and the Senator were here, too. The General positioned himself between the two of them, putting an arm around each of their shoulders. And, for a moment, they stood there like that, unmoving, and that was enough. Better than enough, in some ways. Anything else would be...overwhelming.

Eventually, the General broke the silence. "I'm sorry I didn't-look for you," he said. "We decided...back at the beginning, there was some discussion, and we figured it was safer not to."

She nodded. "I didn't even know where to start looking," she said. "And I...I wasn't sure if-" She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I've-I've done all right. But it's been...lonely, a little."

"Not anymore," General Skywalker said, firmly. Then paused. "If-I mean, if that's what-"

"Don't be stupid," she said. "Of course it's what I want. I just...there's something I need to wrap up first."

"What?" he asked. "...wait, you weren't with those people attacking the base, were you?"

"Them?" She shook her head. "No. I've been-I mostly work by myself. Or I have, until now, anyway. I was meeting a contact of mine, when I heard the shooting and went to investigate." She paused, then winced a little. "My, uh, contact here is a forger. I was picking up something he made for-well, I'd bring you with me to the dropoff, but…"

"No, I get it," he said. He seemed more than a little disappointed. Or resigned, maybe. That was a better word. "We've been...pretty scattered, too. Safer that way."

"Yeah, exactly," she said. "But it won't take me long, I promise."

"So, we'll meet you after," Rex said, softly. "Not here, we made a little too much noise, I think."

"Nice to know some things haven't changed," she said, grinning. Then her smile slipped a little. "Is...is it just the two of you, or…? I mean, is Obi-Wan…?"

"He's alive," General Skywalker said, quickly.

"Oh, good," she said, leaning against him a little, slumping in relief. "And he's all right?"

"Yeah, last I saw him," he assured her. "Which was four days ago. He's not here with us, he had his own mission. A contact of his asked for help with-a weapons shipment, I think?" He looked to Rex for confirmation, who nodded. "I'll contact him. He can meet us when he's done. All of us."

"Yeah!"

"Tell him the Cinna rendezvous," Rex suggested. "It's a decent midpoint between here and where General Kenobi's working, and not far from the farm."

The Commander blinked. "The farm? What farm?"

Anakin grinned at her. "That's where my daughter stays, while I'm in the field."

"Your-you have a daughter?" she said.

He nodded. "Her name's Leia. She's almost six, and she's perfect. I don't-uh, I don't have a picture on me, in case I get captured, but back on my ship-or, I guess, at Cinna..."

"Right, sure, but-I get to actually meet her, right?" she interrupted. "Your daughter? I can't believe you have a daughter. I mean, I can, but-I do get to meet her?"

"What? Oh, obviously," he said. "We'll go to the farm, all of us together. After you finish your drop and we meet up with Obi-Wan." He smiled again, a softer smile. "It'll be...wonderful."

"It will," she said. "...um, where's Cinna, exactly? I don't think I know that system."

"That's 'cause it's not a system," Rex said.

"It's more like an inside joke," the General said, with a slightly sheepish smile. If Rex remembered right, this particular one involved a bar fight, a Quarren accountant, and fourteen and a half shuura fruits. "That's the safest way for me and Obi-Wan to set meetings when we run separate missions. References no one else can understand. I'll give you the coordinates." He had a pen-a physical pen, with physical ink-on him. He always did, for the letters he wrote to the Senator. Also seemed to be useful for situations like this. He took her hand and scrawled the numbers on it.

She was, apparently, still able to parse his terrible handwriting, because she studied her hand for only a few seconds before nodding. "Okay, got it," she said. "Give me a day or so?"

"It'll take us at least that long, anyway," he said. "I backtrack a lot, unless there's an emergency and I need to get somewhere on a tight deadline. I like to be sure no one's following."

"Besides, we don't know how long it'll take General Kenobi to finish his mission," Rex said.

"So, I guess-if I don't see you there in two days, I should worry?" she asked.

"Sound about right," the General agreed.

She hugged them each one more time, hard. "I'd better go, then. The sooner I drop this off, the sooner I can get to Cinna."

"Yeah," he said, then repeated, a little softer, "Yeah. Hey, Snips?"

"Yeah?"

"It's-good to see you again," he said.

She nodded. "Yeah. May the Force be with you, Master."

He bowed silently, and she returned the gesture, before slipping off, heading to her ship and the end of her mission.

As she disappeared from sight, Rex thought he heard the General murmur, "Right at this moment, it is."

Darth Specter had, for his entire life, known the value of patience. He was a thief, and a hunter, and a Sith Lord, after all.

And, ever since he had first learned that Anakin Skywalker was alive, he had spent every free moment studying and tracking every halfway-credible rumor, every known move the Jedi made. Watching. Waiting. Cultivating that patience as he stalked his ultimate prey.

Humans, he knew, were creatures of habit. More importantly, humans were fond of patterns. And it had taken months of research, tracing, connecting the tiniest of threads, but Specter had finally, only six weeks ago, put together a model for how Skywalker navigated. How often he dropped out of hyperspace on trips to reorient and backtrack, by what degree he changed his vectors-it wasn't Skywalker's home base, but it was the next best thing.

All Specter needed was a starting point, and an initial hyperspace vector, within an hour of when his prey began to move, and he could intercept him on the first or second redirect.

And now? He had it.

There had been a convergence of assaults on an Outer Rim base mere hours ago. Skywalker, bold as brass, had been involved. Had drawn his saber. Had allowed himself to be caught on camera again.

And, twenty minutes ago, his ship had left the system. And Specter knew the direction he had gone.

He could not let this opportunity pass him by. It might be years again before he had another.

True, it was Empire Day, and he technically had tasks to complete here on Imperial Center, but what did that matter? It was a waste of his talents, and everyone's attention would be on the little girl, anyway. And initiative, when successful, had been rewarded in the past.

Besides. When he returned in triumph, to lay Skywalker's head and saber at his Master's feet, all would be forgiven.

More than forgiven. His Master would finally be pleased with him. Proud of him.

Specter grinned to himself, as he darted out of the palace towards his personal ship, one shadow among many.

He knew Skywalker's migration patterns now. He knew exactly where to intercept him. It was only a matter of time.

I have you now.

Victory was within his grasp.

And through victory, my chains are broken.