Anakin tinkered.
When he was upset. When he was excited.
When things went well. When things went badly.
He tinkered when he left home to join the Jedi.
He tinkered when his mom died.
Ahsoka was gone.
So Anakin tinkered.
—
He tinkered with every ship in his, well Obi-Wan's, fleet. First he just made them better, faster, stronger. More likely to keep his men alive and win the battle.
With Ahsoka gone, he wants to make them his. Make them spectacular like he tried, and failed, to make her.
Tinkering was a great distraction. When he tinkered he could forget his anger at the High Council or his disappointment in Ahsoka (really himself).
When he tinkered was also when he felt closest to the Force, the cosmic energy that connected all life, that unified all things. Climbing around the innards of a living-but-not-alive machine, like the Dauntless, was one of the only times he felt like maybe Qui-gon was right to call him Chosen. Everything was so easy when Anakin was in a machine.
—
Obi-Wan had complained about how long it took to reach systems in need out here in the Outer Rim. They needed to be faster if they were going to prevent more systems joining (really falling to) the Seps. They needed to be able to get there fast and punch hard if they were going to take back the systems that had already fallen.
So Anakin tinkered.
—
Callista Masana, the heretic Jedi, not so different from himself when it came down to it, had displayed the remarkable ability to find the Force even within supposedly non-living machines. Ahsoka had described in great detail what it felt like to be near Callista when she had become one with the Leveler. (After he'd convinced his Padawan that what Callista had done wasn't some dark ability, just rare.) Anakin had tried to figure it out himself, but with a student to teach, his own studies had been neglected. He supposed now was as good a time as any. Anakin was going to master Callista's machine-meld technique, he'd re-invent it if he had too.
He ripped off a panel under a console in main engineering and began a long crawl into his flagship's belly. Inside was a whole world's worth of supposed non-life, droids and robots, walking computers and mechanized tools. Each pursued supposedly regimented tasks, free of emotion, reason allowed only within the limits of programming. (They were more than that Anakin knew, but that's how most organics viewed them.)
They scurried past him in tunnels that stretched the entirety of the ship, accessible on every deck. If you knew the right route, one could travel from aft to stern without ever seeing another breathing being.
Anakin had spent more and more time here since Ahsoka left, learning the heartbeat of the ship. Padmé was… busy and seeing her was harder than either of them liked. Keeping it a secret was killing him.
But here among the non-organic floating city that was his Venator-class Star Destroyer, Anakin could put all that aside. He could crawl to the core and listen to its whirr and pulse.
So he did. He found a place to sit and tinker.
And let it all wash over him.
He reached out in the Force like Obi-Wan had taught him and he'd taught Ahsoka and he'd done unconsciously since he could remember. He had always been good with machines, it was part of what had caught Qui-gon's attention. That he'd built (rebuilt) an operable protocol droid and podracer. He reached out and the whirring became part of him, like his own beating heart. Like his cybernetic arm had become part of him.
The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.
His arm was the key.
When he lost his arm he thought it made him less, others in the Temple had treated him as if it had. There'd even been concern that it would affect his MDC-count. But Anakin had learned how not just to live with it, but to bond with it.
And now? It wasn't his flesh arm, and it certainly had its peculiarities, but he could feel the Force pulsing through it just like the rest of him.
This connection had served him well on Lanteeb, allowing him to save the lives of the Lanteebans by becoming one with an anti-radiation shield.
And if he could do it with some random shield, he could do it with the Dauntless.
He found a minor electrical malfunction, something that one of the repair droids would fix before any of the engineers would be alerted. But it was enough. With his hands connected to the electrical pulse of the ship he let his awareness of his mech arm expand and extend. Until the wires held between his right thumb and finger sparked to life not with electricity, but with the Force. Once that was done it was only a matter of time before Anakin could expand his awareness further and further out until he was inside the whole of the Dauntless. It was an odd sensation, beyond human certainly, yet connected, enmeshed in the creaking and vibrations of the non-breathing life aboard.
Now what? So he could become one with his ship, but what did he do with it? How did this help his people? How did this save lives?
—
Obi-Wan sat down opposite Anakin, his tray clanking loudly as he let it drop to the table. "I've been giving some thought to your problem."
Anakin rolled his eyes. Obi-Wan was always full of bright ideas. "Alright Master, what Masterly wisdom do you have to bestow on this undeserving Knight?"
Obi-Wan's eyes flashed mischievously. "I was thinking you could use some good old fashioned slavery."
All mirth left Anakin and was replaced by incredulous rage. "What the kriff?"
"A slave-rig Anakin, for the fleet. Like the Dark Force."
Anakin took a breath. Why Obi-Wan chose to make that kind of joke was beyond him, and his suggestion wasn't much better. "You want me to slave=rig the ships together like the fleet that disappeared and almost took us with it?"
"When you put it like that, not like the Dark Force. For one, I doubt the Republic will be putting in orders for droid crews anytime soon. I'm thinking if you slave-rig them, then you could do your, uhhh," Obi-Wan paused, searching for the right words. "Your melding… uhh… thing with the Dauntless and have complete control of the fleet."
"You'd give me complete control of your fleet?" Anakin nearly laughed. If there was one thing Obi-Wan liked more than his caf or flirting with anything that moved, it was being High General of the Open Circle Fleet.
Obi-Wan took a serious tone. "In dire straits, yes. Anakin, with the ships slave-rigged and you directly controlling them, we could bypass much of the Separatist jamming technology. Can you imagine how much faster the Lanteeb crisis would have been resolved if the fleet could have communicated?"
"Yes Obi-Wan, I can. Vividly." He suppressed a shudder. Lanteeb was among one of the more unpleasant experiences in a war full of unpleasant experiences.
"Well then, you should get on that."
Anakin sighed. "Master, you seem to be forgetting something. Slaving the ships is a good idea, but I still have the same problem. What do I do once I'm controlling our slaved fleet?"
"Oh right. That. You can use a Path."
—-
It was several weeks before Anakin had leave to return to Coruscant. And he felt guilty with his men still at the front. Captain Rex fighting to keep his Troopers alive. Rex assured him his leaving left the boys with no hard feelings, and they'd probably have won the war when he returned anyways. Obi-Wan had gotten wind of something he said required his personal attention, and then he'd just… disappeared.
Which was fine with Anakin. (Really it was.) Obi-Wan had given him temporary access to the restricted section of the Temple Archives. Because Anakin had to figure out what a Path actually was.
Coming to the archives for research definitely ranked as one of Anakin's least favorite activities. If things weren't all karked up he would have had Ahsoka doing the research, but they were and he couldn't. So he stood, hoping he could find the section on the Nihil crisis without asking for help. Because help meant Master Nu, and Anakin wasn't sure who she despised more, Obi-Wan or him.
But he could imagine what she might say, if she was in a helping mood.
"Focus on the information you want. Let the Force guide you to it."
Simple advice, and entirely common for a Jedi. But always useful, and always irritating.
He discovered there wasn't much in the restricted section regarding the Nihil crisis, which meant that what was in the open sections and available to all Jedi was most of the collected information on the conflict. So he set aside thoughts of the Nihil and focused instead on hyperspace and letting the Force guide him. He passed a section labeled in an archaic Basic script that seemed to speak of life and healing. He scoffed, he'd never had much of a knack for healing. Maybe he'd mention it to Obi-Wan. His former Master had an underdeveloped skill for it, one that Anakin was surprised Obi-Wan had never fostered.
He stopped when he felt the Force grow quiet in front of a small stack of holobooks. One seemed to glow brighter than the others. He grabbed it and shoved it into his satchel. He didn't need to confirm this text had the information he needed, he knew.
He could look it over on the way to Naboo. Where Padmé waited.
—
Obi-Wan knowing where he was and interrupting his leave in order to go after Ventress of all people, had not been on Anakin, or Padmé's itinerary. Especially because she was supposed to be dead. But then Ventress returning from the depths of Sithhell (actually Dathomir) to haunt them would be nothing unusual. He'd thought her dead once already, and she and Maul did come from the same witch-cursed planet.
Ventress had apparently been apprehended and brainwashed by Dooku, she broke free but she'd been injured and Obi-Wan had insisted on getting her med-evacd. And of course because the universe hated him(Anakin or Obiwan, it didn't matter) personally, she had gotten away. The shuttle she was on had disappeared with Rex and Sister aboard. Obi-Wan told him it wasn't his fault, but Anakin knew the truth. If he'd been doing his duty as a Jedi, then he'd have been there from the beginning, and Rex wouldn't be gone.
I am the Chosen One. If he couldn't keep his people safe, what did that say about his ability to help the rest of the galaxy? He resisted banging his head on his chamber floor in frustration. But meditating clearly wasn't helping right now, and it had gotten him no closer to figuring out how to find a hyperspace route with only the Force. The Nihil had done it; the book he'd found indicated that it was because the Force and hyperspace were inextricably connected. But a human's sense of it only came out in … special circumstances. Anakin was certain that war didn't count as special circumstances. The Nihil had used torture, he was sure the war was torture enough.
A short while later Rex returned, uncharacteristically quiet about what had happened with Ventress, and where she and Sister were. Anakin trusted that Rex would tell him if he needed to know. First Maul and Ventress, now Rex? All these people disappearing and returning brought her name to mind. He'd been avoiding thinking about Ahsoka, but all that had done was result in him calling her a disappointment in front of Obi-Wan; he just wanted to see her and tell her he was sorry. Where was she? Was she okay? Why hadn't she returned to him? He had failed her, but if she came back he knew he could fix it.
Weeks or months later, he couldn't tell, Ahsoka turned up knocking on their door. Anakin finally had the opportunity. He could fix his mistakes.
—
Yularen's message had been annoyingly vague, since when did that man like surprises?
But there Anakin stood, in the Command Center of the Dauntless staring, stunned, at a holoprojection of Ahsoka. His mind raced: Where had she got that armor? And were those Mandalorian vambraces? What was she doing with Death Watch?
"Hello Master. It's been a while."
Anakin was certain he short-circuited when she said she didn't have time to catch up, but she did want to come aboard. She wanted to see him. He knew it.
Her presentation of Mandalore's plight was concise and somewhat shaming. They'd left the Mandalorians to languish under the rule of a Sith Lord simply because the Senate considered them "neutral." He argued as much when Obi-Wan said helping them would cause another war.
In an attempt to reconnect with Ahsoka, Anakin brought her to the Troop Hangar, where Rex had a surprise waiting for her. He had his own too, but first alarms and then Obi-Wan interrupted.
"Anakin, Rex, prepare all forces. We're jumping to hyperspace immediately."
"Yes Sir." Rex saluted and turned to attend to his duties. "Men with me!"
"So the attack on Mandalore was approved?" Anakin asked eagerly. If so, he and Ahsoka would be fighting together again, and he could show her what he'd done with the fleet.
"No, it's Coruscant. Grievous has attacked the capitol."
"What about the Chancellor?"
"Shaak Ti has been sent to protect him, but Master Windu has lost contact with her."
Anakin felt his heartbeat speed up. His mentor was in danger and … Padmé was on Coruscant too. But Ahsoka needed him on Mandalore. His worry must have shown on his face because Obi-Wan responded, "Not to worry. Our fleet can be there within the hour."
"It can?" Ahsoka said.
"It can?" Anakin echoed.
"Anakin, this is the perfect opportunity to put your project to work."
"What kind of project have you been working on that can cut a day's trip down to an hour?" Ahsoka's incredulity was clear, and Anakin shared it.
"A dangerous one." Anakin turned to Obi-wan, just barely concealing his frustration. "Obi-Wan, you know I haven't actually tested it yet."
Obi-Wan stroked his beard. "True, but you rigged the fleet beautifully and if your state of mind after your last ship-meld is any indication, I think you'll have it figured out in no time."
"Wait, did you figure out how to do the terrifying ship-meld technique Callista did?" Ahsoka sounded (and looked) alarmed.
"Kinda." Anakin said sheepishly. "Our theory is that with the fleet rigged with slave-circuitry, I can meld with the Dauntless, boost the engine s and guide the entire fleet through a Hyperspace Path. If I can find a straight shot to Coruscant, it would drastically cut the length of the trip. The problem is I still don't know how to find one."
"That's not your only problem." Ahsoka glared daggers at Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan ignored her. "I have faith in you, Anakin." The trouble was Obi-Wan was almost always right, Anakin never failed to accomplish the impossible when Obi-Wan believed in him. Mostly because Anakin refused to fail a challenge.
"So that's it? You're going to abandon Bo-Katan and her people?" Ahsoka's alarm had shifted to anger and hurt. She had come here asking for help and been offered it, only for it to be taken away. Anakin watched his former Master and former Padawan argue over ethics and politics. But all he wanted to do was help as many people as possible. Those on Mandalore and Coruscant.
In the end Anakin suggested they split the 501st, give Rex a long-overdue promotion, and send him off to Mandalore with Ahsoka. She had looked at Anakin with a mixture of sadness and hope, the lightsabers he'd returned to her clipped to her belt where they belonged. She wished him "Good luck" and left him to once again achieve the impossible.
He decided the bridge would be the best place to meld with the Dauntless from, even though having everyone watch him while he did was thoroughly undesirable. He tried to ignore the crew's stares as he walked to the navigation panel and pressed his hands to the cool metal. Closing his eyes, Anakin shut out all distractions. The sooner they got to Coruscant and broke the siege, the sooner he could leave and go help Ahsoka. Together they'd end the war, and he could do what he'd been too scared to do on Coruscant when she left. With the galaxy safe he could do what he'd been wanting to do since Geonosis, even if Padmé was still scared. Anakin Skywalker was done with fear.
He poured all of himself into the meld and quickly felt the larger organic world fall away. Ahsoka had said Callista had seemed to disappear into the Leveler , and that it had left her disoriented after. But that hadn't been his experience, likely due to his cybernetic arm, Anakin retained his full sense of self and also he could feel what the Dauntless felt. The vast emptiness of space against the skin of her(his) hull, the repetitive clunk-clunk of droid and Clone feet against her deck flooring. The whirring crystal brains of the navigation computer as it waited for input, the belching engines that breathed fire. Anakin felt all of that and his own self, his heartbeat, the nerves of his right arm where they turned from flesh and blood to chrome and circuits.
Obi-Wan spoke and Anakin felt the navigation office next to him input coordinates for Coruscant, the press of the buttons tingled like Padmé tapping her fingers on his skin. Anakin breathed and the Dauntless breathed with him, the engines gearing up for a hyperspace jump. Melded with the ship it was a simple thing for Anakin to access the slave-circuitry he'd installed and turn it on. His awareness ballooned then as his body seemed to stretch to include himself, the Dauntless, and every slaved ship in the fleet. Anakin was the Open Circle Fleet. And that was the easy part. What came next would be much harder.
The coordinates to Coruscant danced between his brain and the NaviComp, flowing in binary and other code, intricate beyond all measure, but entirely inadequate. The start and end point were fine, it was everything in-between that he needed to change. He somehow needed to navigate the Fleet through a live Hyperspace Path with the Force, a feat that Anakin couldn't do alone, of that he was certain. He felt something in his larger expanded body send what was like a thought, the navicomp of the Pioneer , because right now he wasn't just Anakin. With the fleet slaved together he was Anakin and the Dauntless and every linked computer aboard.
He thought of Padmé and Palpatine and everyone on Coruscant who would die as a result of the Separatist attack. He thought of Ahsoka on her way to Mandalore with Rex. He thought of Thrawn who would have appreciated this performance. He thought of Obi-Wan and Ferus Olan and everyone he loved and hated and how they would all die if he couldn't stop the Sith Lord and save the Republic. He thought of every droid, and every star, and every planet he hadn't seen. He thought of his promise, to return and free the slaves of Tatooine and of every world. Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One and currently the Open Circle Fleet, thought of the Cosmos and Creation and the coordinates to Coruscant shifted as the fleet rumbled and then disappeared from realspace.
On the bridge Anakin heard whispers, awe mixed with fear. He knew that if the crew looked out the transparisteel windows, rather than the warm blue of hyperspace, they saw reddish-pink space whirling past. Alarms blared inside and outside Anakin's head. The coordinates continued to shift as Anakin shifted the fleet through hyperspace, navigating in real-time, fed by the Force. Because he was needed on Coruscant. He knew it, it was where his destiny awaited. Where the Chosen One would make a choice.
One thing that he hadn't given much thought to was the strain on the physical integrity of ships in the fleet. The hyperdrives were all operating beyond capacity, and every inch of space in the computing banks was given over to processing the live feed from the Force. Anakin navigated them around stars and active hyperspace routes, through dense nebulae and asteroid fields, pods of Purghill and larger darker creatures. Anakin's sense of passing time was karked but he could feel the ticking of every chrono aboard every ship as if it was his heartbeat. The fleet would arrive on Coruscant soon, yet it might not exist for long after. But that didn't matter because Anakin breathed and the whirling red of the Path faded and the Fleet dropped back into realspace. Chaos spread out before them.
The Battle of Coruscant had begun.
Notes:
There's a number of Canon and Legends references here, so I'll break them down.
Callista and her technopathy are from Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly, Anakin and Ahsoka encountered her in No Prisoners by Karen Traviss.
The events of Lanteeb are detailed in Clone Wars Gambit: Siege by Karen Miller.
Alpha is an ARC trooper in the Republic comic that was supposed to be carried over into The Clone Wars as the main clone character, but Lucas said no because he thought Alpha, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Artoo were too many "A" names. So they took him and made Rex, officially saying the two were not the same character despite there being no in-universe story or details that prevents that. Alpha's story is simply picked up under the new name Rex. This is important here because in the comic Obsession Alpha disappears along with a revived and brainwashed Ventress. In this story it is Rex. It is also my supposition to place Obsession after Dark Disciple by Claudia Grey as a way of explaining Ventress' resurrection prior to Bad Batch.
Hyperspace Paths are first mentioned in Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule, the Canon book that launched The High Republic series. Canon has continued to expand on the connection between the Force and Hyperspace, especially in the Thrawn books by Timothy Zahn where Thrawn expects Anakin to be able to navigate with the Force due to a coincidence involving the name Skywalker.
Finally, neither Canon nor Legends specify what ship became Anakin's flag ship after the Resolute was destroyed by Ventress' fleet, here it is the Dauntless.