Star Wars:

The Clone Wars: The Lost Files

AN: Hi everyone. This is yet another fic I had worked on ages ago but had never published until now. These are not official lost episodes or anything, just an idea I had in the spur of the moment. Of course, I am still continuing with my other fanfics and my fics on FictionPress/Ao3 too still. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Episode I

Chapter I

Ruran

Never judge a book by its cover.

Panic! A Separatist Fleet has placed a blockade on the small mining planet, Ruran, in revenge for pledging itself to the Republic. Its capital city Glowirigan has been seized by battle droids controlled by Separatist Leader Conrad Van Nitius. Now it is up to Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and his padawan Ahsoka Tano to take back the planet and save its citizens once and for all…

"Now Anakin, you remember your orders, don't you? And you will obey them?" Obi-Wan asked, even though he knew his former padawan was not going to follow them, like usual.

"Yes Master. When have I ever disobeyed orders?" Anakin joked sarcastically after quickly rolling his eyes.

"I presume that's a rhetorical question?" Ahsoka said.

"Your padawan has caught on quickly. Anyway, I'm going to go now – Master Yoda has requested a meeting in the Jedi council chambers," Obi-Wan informed, and then signed off. The hologram disappeared. Immediately after, Anakin heard a beeping noise behind them. It was R2-D2, his trusty droid friend, telling them about an incoming transmission from the leader of the blockade – Conrad Van Nitius. "Thanks buddy. Patch him through," he instructed in a serious tone of voice. The droid buzzed again, and a second later, the screen above the two Jedi lit up with the video feed of the leader. He was a Sullustan, a fact Anakin found strange since most of the Sullustans he knew were kind-hearted and would never commit the atrocities that this man did. Still, it showed that you couldn't generalise all members of a species. "Ah, greetings Jedi. I've been expecting you. Let's skip the chit-chat and get down to business – turn around and head back, or we blow your little ship out of the sky," Conrad warned them.

"Heh. Please don't tell me you thought it was gonna be that easy?" Anakin replied with a small chuckle. "No I didn't and I was hoping it wouldn't be, because now I get the chance to kill you - Captain! Open fire on the Jedi's ship!" he barked at a B1 droid in the background.

"Roger Roger Sir!" the droid responded.

"So long, Jedi," Conrad taunted, and the video cut out. Nothing happened for a moment. And then suddenly, R2 yelped in distress. Six Vulture Droid fighters were heading straight for the ship, and the large Sep cruiser headed by Conrad's heavy laser cannons all pointed at their craft. "Master, what are we doing? This wasn't in the plan, right, or have I missed something?" Ahsoka worried.

"Don't you remember our earlier discussion, Ahsoka? I don't follow plans," Anakin smiked, and then fired up the ship's engines. "R2 prepare to launch us into lightspeed," the Jedi said.

"With all do respect, Master, are you insane? What are we doing?"

"Obi-Wan told us to get down to the planet's surface to meet the Prime Minister – we'll never be able to do that if we spend all day fighting these guys up here," Anakin explained.

"Then why are we going into lightspeed?" Ahsoka wondered.

"Just trust me, Snips," he reassured. Just in time, R2 beeped to let them know they were ready for the jump, and Anakin set his course for Ruran – but the coordinates were set to the exact opposite side of the planet they were positioned at now. "Oh…" Ahsoka sighed, realising that the majority of Sep ships were round this side, trying to target their ship, leaving the rest of the planet more exposed. She did wonder why the Seps hadn't realized this major flaw in their blockade. "Yeah, now you see it," her master commented.

The Vulture Droids came charging through space towards the Jedi, and the heavy laser cannons of the Sep ship were pointing right at them. "Ready… FIRE!" the B1 captain shouted to his comrades.

"Roger Roger!" The shooter replied. He charged up the cannons, and locked his target on the Jedi, who, rather unusually, appeared to be still. Nonetheless, he obeyed his instructions and smashed the button to launch the attack on the Jedi. The Vulture Droids all began firing at them simultaneously, heading ever closer to them, so much that they looked like they would crash into each other. And right when the laser was going to collide with the Jedi ship, they suddenly disappeared. "Did we get them?" the Captain asked hopefully, but the gunner droid suspected that his hopes would be let down. "Um… actually, Sir, I think they went into lightspeed and escaped…"

"WHAT?!" Conrad yelled angrily at the unfortunate result. "USELESS FOOLS! What am I going to tell Count Dooku now? He's expecting me to comm him in minutes!" he screeched, before stomping off into the nearby meeting room. "Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the ship quarters this morning…" the Captain murmured.

"I trust you have good news for me, Conrad?" Count Dooku said in an unconvincing tone.

"Forgive me, my Lord, but the Jedi… have escaped," Conrad apologised. The Count's eyes narrowed in frustration, but it was a short-lived emotion, as he decided it was time to unleash his new, secret weapon. Well, he called it his weapon, but it was really a person – "No worries, Conrad. Your failure has given me the opportunity to test my new weapon." Conrad's expression changed from apologetic to surprise. "You're not mad, my Lord?" he wondered.

"No. I've got a Plan B – a small cargo ship will be arriving at your blockade very shortly. You are to let it pass without question, and I want you to send out probe droids to track down the Jedi scum. Their deception will be their undoing," the Count jeered with an evil smile.

"It will be done, my Lord," Conrad agreed.

"Good." The Count's hologram vanished.

"I really hope you know how to get us out of here, Master," Ahsoka said, rubbing her arms in an attempt to warm up from the chilly breeze of the planet's ice desert – the Fazar – that they had landed in. The Fazar was right outside the capital city, but it was so big that on maps it almost appeared to be engulfing it, as it was all around. "Don't worry, Snips, I got this…" Anakin said, not entirely sure if that was actually true. "I'll try talking to General Kenobi, but I don't think there will be any signal out here…" he planned. The atmosphere was so cold in the desert that their ship's engines had begun freezing up, making their chances of using it to fly across the planet near impossible. "No answer… Signal's dead…" the Jedi muttered. "OK, maybe not following General Kenobi's orders this time wasn't the best course of action…" he admitted.

"You think?" Ahsoka's eyes widened in irritation, but then she realised she had snapped at Anakin and was a little embarrassed. "Sorry, Master. I shouldn't have yelled at you just then, I'm just… I'm afraid – I don't be stranded here and not be able to contact anyone to help us," the Padawan said.

"Hey, don't worry – you know we'll find a way off this rock, Ani style," her Master comforted. She chuckled – "Please don't ever say 'Ani Style' again."

"Noted. Now I think we should get moving – it'll warm us up, and you never know, maybe we'll find shelter or a way to contact the Jedi," Anakin suggested.

"What about the city?" Ahsoka questioned.

"Unfortunately, that'll have to wait 'til we find a way there. We don't really have any other choice," Anakin said solemnly.

"Wait, I could try to fix the ship. But it could take a while…" Ahsoka began to suggest, but Anakin told her it would probably be quicker for them to just stick with his plan and go on foot. "Alright…" she begrudgingly agreed. "I hope it doesn't take too long for us to find shelter though, as it's freezing out here."

"Don't worry, Snips, we'll be alright," Anakin said, before adding "Come on, let's go – we'll just freeze up if we keep standing around." He stared out at the horizon, but nothing could be seen other than the vast hills of snow and ice. "Let's go," Ahsoka said as she tapped him on the shoulder. Anakin briskly followed her, as if she was leading when it was the other way around.

It had been a mere few minutes since Conrad had ended his call with Dooku until the ship he had mentioned arrived. He was back in the main control with lots of pilot battle droids, the majority of whom were wandering around almost aimlessly. "Sir, we have an incoming transmission from the cargo ship!" the Captain informed.

"Patch it through," Conrad ordered.

"Roger Roger."

"I believe you have been expecting me…" a female voice said rather mysteriously at the ther end of the comm. "I believe so – who are you, if you don't mind me asking?" Conrad pondered.

"Count Dooku's secret weapon – that is all you need to know." The woman shut off the transmission.

"Should we let them through, Sir?" the Captain questioned. Conrad nodded his head – hopefully it wasn't an imposter, but it would be strange for the Republic to have found out about the arrival of the cargo ship, and mention the Count's secret weapon, as the communication had only really just happened. It would have been impossible to hack and listen to their call, and then send some sort of spy to their blockade in a matter of 4 minutes. It wasn't as if they could try to extract the Jedi from the planet anyway, presuming their comms were jammed if they were in the ice desert. But there were a lot of ifs in that hypothetical situation. If they were an impersonator, Conrad would soon find out.

It felt like it had been hours since they started roaming the Fazar, but in reality it hadn't been long at all. Ahsoka was about to speak when Anakin put a hand up to silence her. "Um, excuse me, but…" she began, irritated and taken aback, but Anakin told her to "Shush!" and put a finger to his lips. "Listen. Do you hear that?" he whispered to her. She stopped dead in her tracks, and looked around to see if she could distinguish what her master could hear. All of a sudden, she heard it too, and the pair realised what it was – "Probe droid…" Ahsoka whispered. It whirred and beeped, but it was rather strangely nowhere to be found, even though there weren't many places it could hide in the ice desert. Apart from a nearby pile of snow-covered rocks. The two Jedi creeped over to the stones, both holstering their lightsabers, and Anakin force-shoved the pebbles out of the way, revealing what they had thought was there all along. The probe droid shot up into the air, and the Jedi activated their sabers. Ahsoka, using a trick she had learned from her master, tried to force-pull the droid. It froze, trying to resist her powers, but Anakin joined in. Combined, the probe droid was useless and it flew towards them. It began to fire at them, attempting to stop them, but Ahsoka deflected its shots with his lightsaber, and when it was close enough, Anakin viciously sliced through it, chopping it in half. He hoped that it hadn't sent some sort of location signal to the Captain's ship, but he was doubtful. "That was nice work, Ahsoka," he complimented about her use of the force pull.

"I learned from the best," she grinned.

Conrad paced the deck anxiously, praying that whoever it was was a genuine ally of Dooku, otherwise the Count himself would be very angry. "Sir, we have received the location signal of a Probe Droid that has just gone down. My guess is that it's the Jedi that have destroyed them," Captain RT-229 theorised. Conrad stopped his nervous pacing, and strode towards the scanners to see that the Captain was right about losing the signal. "It's them, alright – no creature known to man lives in that desert." He then had an idea. "Comm that ship again – we'll soon find out if she's genuine."

"Roger Roger, Sir," the Captain chirped. "Transmitting signal now."

"What is it?" the 'secret weapon' said aggressively.

"I think we've found the Jedi, that's what," Conrad snapped back.

"Good. Give me their location," she commanded. Conrad pulled a face – he hated being talked to this way. "Listen, you may be lord Dooku's secret weapon, but I am a Separatist Leader in charge of this, and you will not speak to me in thi-" he started shouting, but she interrupted him with an unusual sentence. She simply stated, "Conrad will tell me the location now." Almost instantaneously, he was compelled to do so. He repeated the coordinates of where the probe droid's signal had been lost from the scanner screen. "Thank you. That wasn't hard, was it?" she teased, and then hung up right after. "What happened there?" another Battle Droid asked Conrad curiously.

"I'm… I'm not sure…" he stuttered in complete bewilderment.

"Master, look!" Ahsoka exclaimed statically as she spotted a large cabin, positioned rather randomly in the middle of the desert. "Think anyone's in there?" she wondered.

"Judging by some of the situations I've been in in the past, yes. But there's only one way to find out…" Anakin said and gestured to the cabin. The pair trotted over in its direction, and after another couple of minutes, they approached its main door. Directly next to it, there was a garage with a speeder in it, and a ship. But this wasn't any ship – Anakin recognised its design. It was a Nantex-class Starfighter, a Separatist ship. He turned the door handle, and it opened straight away as it was unlocked. "Get behind me, Ahsoka. This place belongs to a Sep," he warned. Her eyes narrowed in a scrutinising fashion. "What would the Separatists want with a dusty old cabin like this?"

"I don't know, but there's a Geonosian ship in the garage. Be careful and watch your back." Anakin activated his lightsaber once more, and simultaneously, so did Ahsoka. In all honesty, it wasn't just for defence, the inside was damp and most of all pitch black, so the sabers helped to light up the room. When they entered, the atmosphere was certainly an eerie one. Ahsoka paused for a second, causing Anakin to turn around. "What's up?" he murmured quietly.

"D'you hear that?" his padawan said. Anakin listened intently, and he could hear a very, very subtle whimpering. Not only that, but he began to sense an intense fear, coming from the upstairs of the cabin. Something was in here. "I have a really bad feeling about this…" he stated and shook his head.

"Sir, I have some important information for you!" R1-PT, a commander on Conrad's battleship, alerted. "What is it? Is it the Jedi?" Conrad pried.

"No. But it may be related – have you heard about the traitor?" the droid mentioned, and Conrad told him that he hadn't. "A Geonosian soldier fled the battle of Geonosis cowardly. I've just received intel from Unit RP-C5 on the ground, and he suspects he has found them. Even better, he believes he is in the Fazar – close to the Jedi." Conrad's eyes lit up.

"Yes… yes! This is brilliant. We can capture the traitor and deal with the Jedi at the same time, Count Dooku would pay us, rather handsomely. It's two birds with one stone! Comm the ship of the 'Secret Weapon' again, and update her with the new, additional assignment," he instructed.

"Roger Roger, Sir!"

Anakin climbed the stairs with Ahsoka, attempting to tread softly, although whoever was here presumably already knew someone had entered the cabin. In fact, Anakin could feel it – as they got closer up the stairs to whoever it was, their level of fright jumped rapidly. There were two rooms in the upstairs, but Anakin decided to follow where his Force sense took him and turned to the right door. Whoever it was, was right behind this door. He shoved it open, to reveal a Geonosian cowering in the room. It had a blaster in its hands, but Ahsoka noticed they didn't seem to be intending to use it, as it pointed away from the Jedi. Anakin lifted his blade, about to strike it down, when it started screaming in its native language, squirming around. That was when Ahsoka saw its wings had been removed, so it couldn't fly away. Furthermore, she had a feeling that this bug was… different to most the Republic had encountered. "Master wait!" she yelled to stop him. Anakin looked back at her in confusion. "What? He might get away!" he shouted imperatively.

"I… I don't think he's a threat. His wings have been cut off, and he's obviously hiding out here!" the padawan explained. "Yeah, hiding from Republic Forces!" Anakin replied.

"I don't think so. Looks like he's surrendering himself to me – he's not even trying to fight back, his blaster is pointing away from us," Ahsoka reasoned. Anakin stared at the Geonosian for a long while, and, after coming to the conclusion his apprentice was right, ignored his temptation to take swing at it. He retracted his lightsaber, still keeping his blade active in case the Geonosian did get up and try to hurt them. The Geonosian, much to Anakin's disbelief, lifted himself off the floor of the cabin, and began kneeling down to the Jedi in an almost worshipping manner. The shock on Anakin's face was notable, his jaw was literally dropping open. "I think… he's thanking you for your mercy," Ahsoka interpreted. "I still don't trust it though," her master muttered suspiciously. The bug mumbled something, but neither of the Jedi could understand its tongue. "We're gonna have to get a translator," Ahsoka planned. Anakin was about to say if they could get a hold of C3-PO they could understand the creature, but it started frantically pointing to the doorway of the room they were in. "Treacherous scum! I'm gonna blast ya, roger roger!" a B1 droid shouted from behind them, before realising there were two Jedi. "Jedi?! They never mentioned there would be Je-" he said, but was cut down mid-sentence, giving an electronic yelp, by Anakin. The Geonosian once again got on his knees, bowing to Anakin, thanking him for saving him. "Man, he really likes you!" Ahsoka teased. "Well, I think I get what the situation here is," Anakin realised. The Geonosian made a few more unintelligible noises, but the Jedi presumed he was confirming what they were both thinking. "The Seps clearly know where he is – maybe let's not stay here for too long…" Ahsoka planned. The Geonosian made a few clicking sounds, presumably in agreement – it seemed he could understand Basic well enough, but couldn't speak it, which was no surprise. Anakin was still unsure as to whether to trust the bug or not, but Ahsoka was willing to – she grabbed hold of him and put his arm around her shoulders to help him move more easily without his wings. "Come on, let's go," she beckoned Anakin over after she and the Geonosian had reached the door. He followed reluctantly, although he preferred to move it rather than wait for the Seps to get him.

"Very well. I will destroy the Jedi, and capture the traitor," the Secret Weapon claimed, and hung up on the battle droid who had contacted her. Months ago, Alexia had been having an ordinary day at school on Coruscant when Count Dooku's minions kidnapped her. She remembered him asking her whether she knew if she was force-sensitive, and from that moment on, she became another one of his tools. Now, however, was her chance to prove herself…