Premise note: This begins sometime after the Mon Calamari arc at the beginning of Season 4, roughly two years into the Clone Wars. I operate mainly by the pre-2014 EU (Legends), so readers only familiar with TCW may encounter references to events, people, etc. that they do not recognize. See author's notes for further detail.
Prologue
"I told you this was a bad idea!" Ahsoka yelled to her master as she narrowly avoided another blaster bolt.
"You think all my ideas are bad, but they usually work!" Anakin replied in his usual cocky tone, stopping for a second to fling a piece of scrap metal back at their pursuers with the Force.
Ahsoka rolled her eyes as she thought about the events that had led to their current situation. Anakin had volunteered them for a mission to locate and destroy a possible Separatist munitions plant Republic Intel thought was hidden on Karazak in the Outer Rim. It had initially gone well, with them avoiding the local slavers long enough to find and infiltrate the facility. Unfortunately, they had, as Ahsoka had pointed out, no idea as to the layout of the plant and had quickly gotten lost in the access shafts. When they had finally found what looked like a good place to plant charges, an overseer droid had noticed them and raised the alarm.
"It doesn't matter if they normally work, only one has to fail for us to end up dead!"
"Have some faith in me, snips, I have them right where I want them." Anakin said, causing Ahsoka to roll her eyes again. Sometimes he even got on her nerves.
The two Jedi rounded another corner, only to find a dead end.
"Great, now were trapped." Ahsoka said as Anakin stared intently at the bare rock.
She looked around for an entrance into a maintenance shaft or an air vent, but the corridor they'd turned down was newly excavated, and the rock was all there was.
"Hands up, Jedi!" said the reedy voice of a Rodian behind them "Turn around slowly and drop your weapons."
Anakin surprised Ahsoka by doing as the voice had commanded, throwing his lightsaber to the ground as he turned to face their pursuers and motioned for her to do the same. She did and found herself facing at least a company of battle droids and about a dozen mercenaries, including the Rodian that had addressed them.
Giving Anakin her best 'I told you so' look, she said "Yea, right where you want them."
"Don't worry, this is all part of the plan." He responded, still smiling smugly.
Aggravated by his apparent lack of concern Ahsoka screamed "What do you mean this is part of…!"
"Ahsoka! Get down!" Anakin yelled before she could finish, dropping to the ground and yanking her down with him.
An explosion rocked the corridor, bringing down a significant chunk of the ceiling on the lead mercenaries and droids in a storm of dust and debris. Before the rest could recover from the shock of the collapse, blasterfire began pouring out of the gap in the roof of the tunnel, cutting down the droids and sending the remaining mercenaries into full retreat back the way they came.
As the dust began to settle, Ahsoka saw a squad of camouflaged Advanced Recon Force troopers repel into the tunnel. The first group set off in pursuit of the fleeing mercs, with the following group moving to aid her and Anakin.
"Are you all right, ma'am?" A trooper asked as he knelt down to help her up.
"Thank you, trooper, I'm fine." Ahsoka responded, then spat to get the taste of dust out of her mouth. She tried to wipe some of the dust off her clothes as she stood, but only succeeded in spreading the black residue around.
"General."
Ahsoka looked up to see another trooper walking toward her and Anakin, different in that he wore what looked like regular infantry armor with a few additive armor plates and visored helmet in the same camouflage pattern as the others, as well as the kama which marked him as an officer.
"Colonel." Anakin said, clearly familiar with the trooper. "What took you so long?"
"That map you gave me is a few centuries old. Cave system's change, you know."
Even through the helmet's filters, his voice sounded different from the other troopers, with an accent entirely different from the one most of the clones had, and the pitch was lower. On top of that, Ahsoka wasn't aware of any clones who rated colonel…
"Anyway, it looks like we got here just in time." The colonel continued as he stopped in front of the two Jedi. "Those clankers had you…"
It wasn't until the colonel's voice trailed off that Ahsoka realized she was staring. Worse than that, he'd noticed and was now staring back at her through his helmet's visor. Embarrassed, she quickly looked away, and Anakin interjected before the colonel could say anything about it.
"Colonel, have you met my padawan, Ahsoka Tano?" The elder Jedi asked as he stepped in between the two.
"I've heard stories," He started, then paused to remove his helmet before continuing. "but no, I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
Ahsoka had been right, the colonel wasn't a clone, though he was similar enough that most non-humans might confuse him for one. Underneath the helmet was a young, light skinned human male with close-cut black hair and brown eyes, his jaw squarer and nose narrower in a way that would make him stand apart from the troopers in the eyes of anyone used to identifying the subtle differences between human facial structures.
"Ahsoka, this is Colonel Marczak, 501st Legion." Anakin said as Col. Marczak extended his hand towards her.
"501st?" She questioned as she shook the hand he had offered. Ahsoka had thought she'd met every officer attached to legion she'd served with for years, but Col. Marczak was entirely unfamiliar to her.
"Advanced Recon Battalion." Marczak said, then clarified when her expression remained blank. "I'm in charge of the ARF troopers, so I usually operate independently of the rest of the legion."
"Oh." Ahsoka said, resolving to ask Rex more about this recon battalion, and its CO, later.
The troopers who had pursued the mercenaries into the facility returned, with one breaking off to report to Marczak.
"Ma'am, sirs." The trooper said, saluting the three officers as he approached. "We have neutralized the remaining hostiles and set demolition charges."
Marczak turned to face the trooper, returning his salute. "Excellent, sergeant. Get the boys together, we're done here."
The colonel turned back to the two Jedi, looking particularly pleased with himself, or, more likely, with his men's efficiency. Once again donning his helmet, Marczak gestured toward the opening in the roof of the tunnel he and his men had entered through.
"That's probably our best way out." He said. "Route's a little confusing, but we dropped a few markers on our way down."
The three started towards the opening, where the troopers were already checking the cables to ensure they were still secure.
"General," Marczak asked as they approached the dangling cables and gathered troopers. "what class of ship did you two arrive in?"
"Eta-class shuttle." Anakin responded. "Why?"
"Spotted what was left of it coming in," Marczak said. "someone had a go at it with a laser canon."
"Oh. You wouldn't happen to have any extra room, then, would you, colonel?"
"Of course, general." Marczak said, sounding amused.
He'd probably been expecting something like this, Ahsoka thought. Despite his piloting skills, her master lost a lot of ships.
Walking up to the hanging lines, Marczak grabbed one and held it out to Ahsoka.
"Ladies first."
Ahsoka took it from him, smiled, and began to climb.
Author's notes:
Wassup internet, Jim here, did you miss me?
Nah, I'm just goofin with you. I doubt even the people who liked the few things I wrote for this site over a roughly six month period noticed that I've been pretty much dark since then. Don't worry about it, I'm under no illusion that I'm in anyway popular around here at time of writing (8/2018).
What matters is that I'm back now, with a (sorta) new story. As the more astute amongst you who are familiar with my work may have noticed, this is a remake of Marczak, my first and so far longest story. Some of you may also recall that I "rewrote" Marczak almost immediately after the original version was back in September of 2016, and that that amounted to fixing some of the numerous typos that had slipped by my first round of editing and adding a few more scenes. I assure you that this is different, a complete redo essentially created from scratch using the same premise and vaguely the same story, but hopefully more refined than the admittedly bare-bones original.
Before anyone asks, yes, I am married to this concept, and everything Star Wars related I write will end up coming back to it. Personally, I don't think that sort of consistency is a bad thing.
You'll also notice I gave this a new title; Lives Well Lived. It probably won't start to make sense to most of you until we get towards the end of the story, but I'm fairly happy with it. Thinking of a title takes a lot of hard work, you know, especially for someone as obviously crap at naming things as I am, evidenced by the fact that I call myself Jim rather than something more creative, flowery, or symbolic like a lot of other author's on this site.
So, since the prologue was so short (about three pages in word), I'm going to publish Chapter 1 either later today (8/23/2018) or early tomorrow. After that I'll be releasing the subsequent eight chapters of Pt I (of IV) on a weekly basis, probably Wednesdays, which should mean it will all be out by the end of October. Unfortunately, I'll be going on forced hiatus after that where I won't have access to a computer, so Pt II (mostly complete at time of writing) won't start being published until early-mid April, at which point I'll hopefully resume the same schedule. Sorry, but it's a military thing so it's out of my control.
There, now that that's all out of the way these author's notes going forward are mostly going to be me rambling for a few paragraphs, so if you can skip them if that doesn't sound interesting to you. That being said, if I make any obscure references in a chapter, or if anyone asks a question, I'll attempt to explain/answer in this section. I do encourage questions, comments, reviews, etc. by the way, I'm a big boy, I can take a little criticism (unlike certain professional creative types whose names start with R- and end with -ian Johnson).
Well, now that I've officially turned anywhere up to half of you against me, thank you all for reading, favorite/follow if you liked it, and feel free to leave a review (not now obviously, wait till there's more story, but you get the point).