Yes, 17 - I did let slip an opportunity there. But it certainly crossed my mind. I promise, Korkie and Grievous will meet again.

Chapter 12: Trouble Magnets

Grievous lumbered with asymmetric gait across the polished floor. His body rattled with coughs so forceful they nearly brought tears to his eyes. The lonely sixteen hours in a poorly-insulated escape pod had done little for his lungs.

"You are not dead, then, I take it," Sidious drawled. "As the rebel media have speculated of you."

Grievous gave a deep bow.

"As they have speculated many times before," he told the Emperor, rising. "Their optimism is amusing."

Sidious tutted.

"Amusing, is it?"

The Sith Lord rose from his chair.

"Ought I be amused, General, when my chief enforcer returns from battle against a squad of disorganised Twi'leks boasting a makeshift leg, raging pneumonia and not a single scalp to his name? After losing three fighters, six officers and a freighter of weapons?"

Grievous shook his head.

"The Twi'leks were no issue, my Lord. Mace Windu and his rogue clone troopers were in attendance."

"I'm aware."

"But it was not Mace Windu who severed my leg, my Lord. It was another Force-sensitive."

Sidious became very still.

"Another?"

Grievous smiled. The Emperor would forgive him his failures for his intelligence.

"The child of Kenobi lives, my Lord."

The Sith Lord's grotesque countenance creased into something resembling a smile.

"The child of Kenobi," he repeated, amused. "The child of Kryze, also, you recall."

"Yes, my Lord. He carries the Darksaber."

Sidious cackled outright now.

"As presumptuous and self-important as his parents, then."

He strode, soundlessly, to the window and gazed out through deep space. Grievous followed him, the delicate clink of his clawed left foot against the glossy floor at odds with the off-key jangle of his right-sided replacement.

"They are likely still in the Ryloth system, my Lord," Grievous supplied. "Our fighters inflicted heavy damage upon Windu's ship."

Sidious nodded vaguely.

"I have been meaning to visit Ryloth. Their freedom movement has grown larger than I will tolerate."

Grievous's cough turned into a splutter. He had presumed that the Emperor would send a few of his Inquisitorial freaks in the boy's pursuit. But perhaps even he had recognised their limitations. Or had become bored of lurking in the shadows.

"You will attend at my side, General," Sidious went on. "We will make a public appearance with Senator Taa. We will bring Ryloth back into line and secure its valuable resources for a prosperous Empire."

"And Windu?" Grievous pressed. "The Prince?"

Sidious's voice dripped with disdain.

"They cannot wound us, General. If they could, I would have eliminated them personally already."

He gave a tight-lipped smile.

"Any bleeding-hearted Jedi who may stumble upon our swords, General, will be considered a mere bonus."

In all of Korkie's travels of the post-Republic galaxy, he'd never been a place that felt like Ryloth's second moon.

There was action here. Purpose. A brazen willingness to fight, palpable in the Force. Korkie saw squat storehouses loaded with vulture droids and space mines, and watched the mechanics in their workshops repairing a fleet of droid tri-fighters that could only have been stolen from Imperial pilots.

Pok received guarded welcomes from each Twi'lek they passed. The grins and calls of congratulations for securing the Imperial weapons freighter invariably faded as the trailing crew of Korkie, Windu and the Faulties came into view. The armour worn by the rogue clone troopers was a distant cry now from the uniform of the Empire's stormtroopers or the Grand Army of the Republic before them; they walked unhelmeted, their armour heavily dented and scratched, and painted with each trooper's preferred colour and markings. Nonetheless, in a planetary system that had fought first to resist Republican occupation and now against an Imperial protectorate, the clones were obviously unwelcome, and their brown-cloaked leader less so.

"When I asked for explosives, Pok, I didn't mean the sort that will blow up our own movement!"

Cham Syndulla, amber-skinned and towering, was somehow even more commanding in the fading afternoon light than he had been in the neon HoloNet broadcasts of the Clone Wars that had declared him 'The Hammer of Ryloth'. He emerged from a makeshift office, map in hand, and gestured irritably at the guests.

"I got you the good sort too, boss," Pok reassured his leader. "A whole Imperial freighter of them. But I wouldn't have made it back without help."

Cham sighed.

"What do they want?"

"Just to repair their ship. Then they'll be on their way."

Cham fixed Mace Windu with a look of heavy disdain.

"That's what they said last time. Remember?"

Mace dipped his head in apology.

"Times have changed, General Syndulla. We will not interfere with matters on Ryloth, I assure you."

Cham gave a curt nod, but his accusation softened to curiosity.

"And what do you interfere with now, Master Windu?"

Mace shrugged.

"Imperial plans. Where I can."

"Where you can," Cham repeated, with a snicker. "You are appreciating, I presume, the impossibility of fighting a war on over three billion fronts?"

Mace took the jibe with humility.

"I do not have a homeworld to protect as you do, General Syndulla."

Something flickered in Cham's expression. A wave of sympathy washed through the Force around them.

"I don't blame you for never warming to that monstrous city planet," he conceded. "If you need to repair your ship then so be it. We will share any resources you require. We are not your enemies. We simply cannot afford to be your allies."

"Understood, General."

Mace bowed and Cham returned the gesture.

"And who's this?" the Twi'lek asked, straightening. "A Padawan of yours?"

Korkie remedied his slouch – the pain relief must have been wearing off, for his chest was beginning to ache – under the new attention.

"I'm-"

He realised then that he did not know what to call himself. Pok thought that his name was Ben. Mace and the Faulties knew better.

"I'm not a Padawan," he managed. "I travelled with Pok from Yaga Minor to learn the ways of your resistance."

Cham gave a faint smile.

"And do you have a name, young revolutionary?"

Korkie shrugged.

"Not one that fits me well."

How could he call himself Prince of Mandalore? Or son of Kenobi? He'd done nothing to earn those names. He felt Mace's close attention upon him.

"You can call me Ben."

Cham nodded his approval. Mace was unreadable in the Force.

"Let us feed you, Ben and company. Then we're fixing that ship and getting you trouble magnets off-planet."

Mace caught Korkie as they queued before pots of stew in the mess hall of the local freedom fighters. The second moon of Ryloth had become something akin to a pilgrimage site: a destination for engineers and mechanics, physicists and soldiers, and every other willing hand to fight the battle for their homeworld. A shanty town had been constructed at this military and intelligence base with the mess hall at its centre. It was a familiar scene, in many ways, to the bases at which he had lived and eaten with his soldiers as a general of the Grand Army. But the exhaustion, at least, was less palpable here.

"You don't go by your name anymore."

Mace watched the young man carefully as he ladled stew into his chipped mug – the Twi'leks had run out of bowls. Korkaran Kryze frowned perhaps with a twinge of pain as an orange trickle of stew spilled down the side of the mug. But he was shielding well. He licked the stray sauce before it could spill onto the floor and stepped aside for Mace to serve his own meal.

"It's not safe," he answered, off-handed. "I know I'm not as famous as you, but the patrol droids recognised me on Corellia. Nearly got arrested. I had to mess my nose up to break their algorithm."

So that was the change to the young warrior's features that Mace had been unable to place. The fine aristocratic nose he had inherited from his mother deviated now at its bridge sharply to the right. The scar overlying the damage had contracted neatly now but must have once gaped ugly and raw.

"Syndulla and his soldiers can be trusted," Mace pointed out.

Korkie shrugged.

"Yeah. I know. But it's easiest to be consistent. Not to take chances."

Mace made a non-committal noise of assent as they made their way over to a quiet table at the edge of the hall and sat opposite one another. Korkie sipped at his stew, burned his tongue with a theatrical grimace, and abandoned his pretence of calm.

"What?" he challenged. "Come on. You can't tell me you're sentimental about names."

Mace lifted his hands in protest.

"I didn't say I was."

Korkie looked at him, unimpressed by the lie.

"My dad didn't name me," he told him. "If that makes you feel any better about it. Mum named me days before he even knew about me."

Mace wasn't sure how to correct the misunderstanding. He wasn't quite sure from whence this strange sadness stemmed. It was not simply for Obi Wan's sake. For he had known Obi Wan but he had known Satine Kryze, too, albeit in a more distant manner. In many ways, the Duchess Kryze had been easier to understand than the wayward Master Kenobi. An iron-willed leader working desperately hard to hold together her fracturing people. Mace had seen that in her and admired her. And he had seen within her as well the intense love that she had for her son – the only person for whom she would compromise her political agenda on her perpetually embattled visits to Coruscant.

Although Korkie was right, of course. The name should not matter. He was thinking in absurd sentimentalities. There was no sense in being attached to a name.

It wasn't so easy, somehow, to abide by the Code anymore.

"You use the alias he used," Mace voiced.

Korkie grimaced and tried at his stew again.

"It's a common name," he managed.

He had a way of sitting and of holding his mug that would not have been out of place at a grand banquet. Mace nodded but said nothing.

"I had to think fast, you know. No time to think of something clever. Just something I knew."

Mace nodded.

"I see."

He didn't really see. He felt he had been blind all his life, with that enormous evil in the galaxy curtained and out of sight. And now that the illusion had been dropped, the galaxy had become too large and dark and labyrinthine for him to truly understand anything that he saw. Who was he to understand? Mace did not know the name he had been born with. The Jedi Order had given his name to him just as they had given everything else in his life, before it had collapsed and left him in darkness.

"Enough about all that," Korkie muttered.

The young man gave a small smile, a peace offering, and pulled a piece of flimsi and stylus from his pocket.

"Let's talk about something more interesting. I want to show you the Hidden Path."

Hera watched the teenager – for all the weapons at his belt and scars on his face, he could only have been a few years older than herself – pointing animatedly at a clumsy diagram he had drawn of the galaxy.

"We're based in Yaga Minor and are establishing routes out through the galactic north and east. We'll branch south too once we're big enough. At this stage of expansion, I just can't quite get a sense of whether it's better to blend into the crowds on the high-traffic hyperspace lanes or whether to explore the quieter routes-"

Armed with her second helpings of tonight's dinner, Hera sidled over to the table.

"What's that?"

The boy turned the flimsi face down and looked at her shrewdly.

"Who are you?"

"Why should I say?" Hera asked, as she came to sit beside him. "You didn't tell us your name before."

The blonde-haired boy rolled his eyes, aggrieved, at Mace Windu, as though this might be the former Jedi Master's fault. Hera knew that name, at least. Her father had met Windu before.

"It's Ben," the boy muttered. "If you didn't hear me the first time."

Hera helped herself to a spoonful of stew.

"You made that name up," she told him pertly.

The boy bristled.

"All names are made up."

"My mother chose my name for me," Hera protested. "She didn't just make it up."

The boy conceded the point with a twitch of his brows.

"Of course not."

He sighed and leaned back in his chair, reaching a hand to sweep the curls from his forehead. Hera caught a glimpse of a bandage just beneath the neckline of his shirt.

"What did your mother name you for, then?" he asked.

Hera could appreciate that he was least trying to be nice to her.

"She named me Hera. It means beloved."

She wasn't supposed to still feel like crying when she talked about her mother. It had already been a quarter turn around the sun and yet she felt her throat tightening and her jaw aching. She hoped the boy couldn't tell.

"That's a very nice thing to be named," he told her, with a weary smile.

Hera cleared her throat and found a firm voice.

"What did your mother name you for?"

The boy chuckled.

"Something a bit silly. I was born early. Very small."

Hera scrunched her nose.

"Your name means small? Or early?"

"No. But I'm named after a warrior in my people's history who was born very small."

The old Jedi Master was listening with quiet interest, eyes downcast to his meal.

"Was he a good a warrior?" Hera asked.

"Yes. One of the greatest."

"Then it's not a silly thing to be named, after all. Your mother was being nice."

The boy's lips creased into a smile but his eyes were sad and tired.

"Yes, I suppose that's true. She was. She always was."

Hera clinked her spoon against the inside of her bowl. It was easier to say it now, while she still felt strong enough not to cry. They might ask her later. It would be easier to say it now.

"My mother died," she stated.

Neither of the men seemed surprised to hear it. Hera wondered if it was something that Jedi could sense. They murmured their apologies.

"What about yours?" Hera pressed.

The boy rubbed at his forehead.

"My mother's dead too."

Her father always said she asked too many questions but Hera couldn't help it.

"Because of the war?"

The boy hummed his affirmation.

"I'm going to end the Empire," Hera declared solemnly.

The men nodded and gave weary smiles but did not seem to believe it.

"Guess kriffing what."

Isval strode into the General Syndulla's office to find the wide eyes of her leader's eleven-year-old daughter, a blanket draped around her shoulders.

"Pardon my language, Hera. Thought you'd be in bed. Where's your father?"

"Here."

Cham emerged from the back room, his collar fastened high against his throat, military neat as always, despite the lateness of the hour.

"Hera was just going back to bed," Cham announced pointedly, eyeing his daughter. "All this excitement with the visitors, of course…"

The child bunched the blankets more tightly about her shoulders and trooped morosely from the office. She needed a mother, blast it. But she had a soldier for a father and Isval certainly couldn't step into the role herself. None of them could. The military base was no place for a child.

"What's the news?" Cham pressed.

Isval took a deep breath.

"The Emperor's coming to Ryloth."

Cham's eyes widened but he restrained a splutter.

"Dray told you this?"

Their informant had stumbled over his words in his eagerness to convey the news.

"Yep. Said the Emperor only decided today. Grievous is coming too. It's going to be dressed up as a formal diplomatic visit to sell-out Senator Taa, but they're bringing along thousands of troopers and hundreds of ships and weapons. The size of the occupying military force is going to triple."

Cham shook his head in slow disbelief, montrals swaying.

"There's no such thing as a diplomatic visit in this authoritarian state," he muttered darkly.

"Of course not. They're coming to end us."

"Is this about Windu? Does he know about Windu?"

"Dray says it's about us. Our growing movement."

Cham was breathing heavily, restraining fury. His hand clenched the back of his chair.

"We ask for very kriffing little," he spat out. "I tried to cooperate with them. But they mine our ore, steal our spice, sell our women-"

He waved a hand in agitation.

"You know this as well as I do, Isval. They're coming for us because we are strong. Either we lay down or we stand up."

Isval felt a warmth rising in her chest.

"We stand up?"

"Why not?" Cham challenged. "We've got the mines. We've got the ships. Pok's brought us a whole shipload of explosives."

"And we'll soon have the two most important men in the Empire on our home soil," Isval added, with a grin. "What better chance will we ever have?"

Cham nodded. His gaze was distant. Isval wondered what he was seeing.

"They'll wipe us out if we don't do it," he murmured. "It's time."

"Yes, General."

"No more half measures," he resolved, his eyes finding Isval's once more. "We stay smart, but we think bigger."

"No more half measures."

Their hands found each other's and embraced with a slap. Isval's knuckles blanched as she held him with all the conviction coursing through her veins.

"We'll end them, Isval," Cham told her. "It is the only way to truly free Ryloth."

"Aye, sir. You and I."

He gave her hand one last squeeze and they released each other. There was a strange euphoria in the air around them, in the warmth that sparked between them. It faded, quietly, in their silence. Isval could not help but think of Eleni, then. She'd given her life for it but would never stand beside her husband upon a free Ryloth.

"We'll have a briefing at first light," Cham resolved, voice quieter now. "We'll sleep on it now."

"Yes, General."

Isval gave a curt nod and strode from the office. She allowed the heat to evaporate from her cheeks beneath the cool light of the stars. She bunked above Hera in the women's dormitory. The lonely child would still be awake.

Sidious had said that the remaining scattered Jedi, even the once-mighty Mace Windu, could not wound him and it was true. But there was, quietly, something about the child that disconcerted him. Obi Wan Kenobi and Satine Kryze had been, in truth, the only obstacles he had not been able to sweep elegantly aside in his construction of the Empire. Because of Kenobi he had lost Anakin Skywalker, and because of Kryze he had never found Padme Amidala and the infants she carried. He had never had the satisfaction, the peace of mind, of observing their collective deaths. And instead of a Sith apprentice at his side, he now had a Kaleesh cyborg who had lost a leg to an untrained teenager.

But it was not all so bad. The obvious inferiority of his current chief enforcer ensured that he would not fall on his apprentice's blade as Plagueis had done before him. He would continue to collect Inquisitors and the right successor would prove themselves in time. The Second Sister, already, had an admirable – and exploitable – depth to her anger. And Sidious suspected that Anakin would return to him eventually.

What was that quaint Jedi platitude?

Perhaps it was all simply the will of the Force.

Sidious took a seat at the controls of the Perilous and set the coordinates for Ryloth. He had the Force by its throat and his will was absolute.

Oh boy. Big trouble brewing.

I've had fun with the imaginings of a twelve-year-old Hera and I hope you enjoyed her first brief appearance. We'll see more of her soon.

Next chapter, Mace and Korkie practice Jar'Kai, and news breaks of the Emperor's impending visit to Ryloth.

xx - S.