Anakin Skywalker stood at parade rest on the Resolute's bridge, staring into the hypnotic blue swirl of hyperspace. Seeing it was always something he enjoyed about space travel ever since first hearing about it as a boy on Tatooine. The concept of such a marvel had captivated him, even if he thought he was never going to experience it.

The Venator's bridge hummed with the deep rumble of the hyperdrive and the whirr of the computers in the pits on either side of him. If Anakin stretched out his mind sufficiently with the Force, he could also discern the inner workings of the clone troopers operating those computers, as well as the ship's life support systems, buttressing, and weapons systems. A Jedi like Grand Master Yoda could even make out faint traces of life back on Coruscant in the galaxy's Inner Core, as well as traces from the planet they were about to land on.

Footsteps clinking on the metallic deck behind him alerted Anakin to the presence of his capital ship's Admiral. Without turning around, Anakin said, "Enjoying your tea, Yularen?"

Sure enough, a sip and a clink of china could be heard before Yularen responded in his distinctly deep, upper-crust accent and cadence. "Not as much as I otherwise would. We have no idea what we will find on Bracca."

Anakin did turn this time to regard Yularen: mustachioed, crisp, and distinctly upper-class from every assessment. He was shorter than Anakin, but most everyone else was; Anakin had hit tremendous growth ever since the Clone Wars had broken out one year previously. Anakin eyed the tea before shrugging. "Then if this is going to be your last cup, make sure you enjoy it."

Admiral Yularen merely nodded, staring into hyperspace too before speaking up again. "If I may, General Skywalker? How would a Jedi go about recommending me to enjoy something? I recall that the Jedi's mantra includes, 'There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no passion; there is serenity.'"

Anakin's ever-present grin faded into a neutral grimace. That particular line of the Jedi Code had always bothered him too. "Well, Master Fisto's known for his smile. That's an emotion. You'll see him in the briefing."

"But is he trying to eliminate that aspect of his character? Or revel in his flaw?" Yularen pressured, coming beside Anakin.

"How should I know?" Anakin resigned. He shook his head. "You should also recall that I'm not any ordinary Jedi."

"Mmm." Yularen sipped and set his cup down again. "I don't know why the Jedi keep you around if you keep providing them with such headaches. I'm not even sure how."

Anakin took a second. "I'm… not sure myself. At least being a Jedi general gives me a chance to be out here making a difference. I have the power and the position to save people, Yularen. I've…" Failed to save people before, he was about to say. What he ended up saying instead was, "...done a good job with that so far."

Yularen was musing. "Yet in order to have an incentive to save, it requires a certain connection. If we did not have the connection of love to the Republic, why would we be striving to save it? No sentient being alive is devoid of their heart."

Anakin could only nod along. "Yeah. Maybe there's a piece of the puzzle I'm missing. Maybe I'll learn it when I become a master. Gaining control, that's what the Jedi want from me, but I can only do that if they teach me."

Or maybe they had, and Anakin hadn't listened.

Or maybe they were simply… wrong.

The hiss of the bridge deck's blast door behind him made Anakin turn again. Ahsoka Tano, arms folded, stood in the doorway leading out from the bridge, her minor injuries from Concordia now gone. Ever since Mortis a few days ago, Ahsoka seemed older, more mature, more learned and hardened. She was a Jedi Anakin could now say he trusted with his life, compared to most of the first year of the war.

"The debriefing is ready," Ahsoka quietly informed them, gesturing an orange hand towards the ship's debriefing holoprojector. "We're all waiting on you."

Anakin and Yularen turned to each other and nodded.

Anakin, Ahsoka, Yularen, and clone Captain Rex were the only ones physically there around the circular holoprojector. Everyone else was a wavering blue hologram, still and silent.

Master Jaro Tapal and his Ahsoka-age apprentice Cal Kestis stood to their immediate right, along with Commander Keen of the 13th Battalion. Cal was redheaded and small, yet stood nimbly and had a fierce look in his eyes.

Master Luminara Unduli and her own padawan Barriss Offee were next, beside Commander Gree of the 41st Elite Corps. Barriss' hologram had given Ahsoka a shy grin from across the table, which Ahsoka had replied to with one of her own.

Master Kit Fisto stood alone beside Commander Nyx of the 333rd, his solid black eyes giving nothing away as they examined the planet Bracca on the holotable's center. Not even his signature smile was on, which meant things were very concerning indeed.

Finally, Master Obi-Wan Kenobi was to Anakin's immediate left, pointing at the mapped planet's surface. Commander Cody of the 212th was hovering over Kenobi's shoulder studiously. If nothing else, Anakin was happy to be on a mission alongside his former master. But the news from Bracca was grim.

"Four months ago, monthly reports stopped going out from Bracca," Obi-Wan was saying, pointing at the central hologram. "The UAC's research center transmitter stopped broadcasting altogether three days ago. Even if we could communicate with the center, we simply wouldn't have any context for what's going on down there. But we do know that the Separatists tipped off Death Watch to an experimental source of energy this lab was developing."

"So it's possible they had to deal with a Seppie invasion," Nyx suggested, his arms folded. His voice was double-filtered from his blood-red helmet and the hologram. "Infiltration missions are fairly easy for droids to carry out. Look what happened with the Senate building a little while back."

"What else would the Separatists want with a world like Bracca?" Ahsoka queried, squinting at the indistinct planet. "The lab may be doing important things. But this planet's owned by the Scrapper Guild and has nothing but junk!"

"It's located near several hyperspace routes," Master Jaro Tapal answered, folding his purple arms. "And the Republic had set up a base of operations for this tech and energy research facility many years prior, around the time of the invasion of Naboo. So many additional resources, assets, and discoveries have accumulated in that lab. This would not be the first time the Separatists have attempted to take the planet. At the beginning of the war, Jedi Knight Cyruss Okent and a battalion of clones was sent to stop a Sep invasion. We succeeded, but at the cost of Cyruss's life."

"Makes sense for the lab to be here," Cal Kestis noted by Tapal's side. "It's a junkyard planet, so no one would mind its presence."

"Bingo," Tapal congratulated with a smile. Cal looked up and smiled too.

"But what if it isn't the Separatists?" Barriss Offee wondered, casting her pleading gaze to the more senior Jedi. "What if the base is facing something worse?"

"I dunno what would be worse than Separatists," Gree grimly replied. "But if that's the case, we'll deal with it when we get to it."

"Do you think it could be the disturbance in the Force we felt a week or two ago?" Barriss followed up.

As the Jedi frowned in thought, the clone commanders gave each other side-eyes before Commander Cody spoke up. "What… disturbance?"

"Like a rock into a pond," Kit Fisto explained, "something extraordinary made ripples in the Force, likely felt by every Force-sensitive being in the galaxy. We are… not entirely sure what it was, though the Huttslayer is our prime suspect. But in the event that it, the Huttslayer, and this mission seem linked, this may turn out to be far more serious than a missing research lab."

"If this does turn out to be the Huttslayer's forces, what should we do?" Commander Keen asked, scratching at his yellow gauntlet. "When he hacked a Separatist fleet, he also hacked the troopers on board. I'm not exactly keen on facing the Huttslayer in open combat, or an entire armada of battleships."

"If such a thing happens, Commander Keen, we will simply take note of Bracca's defenses, retreat, and get Quinlan Vos in contact with the Huttslayer to negotiate," Luminara Unduli calmly explained.

"We will be dropping out of hyperspace in half an hour," Obi-Wan continued. He zoomed into the blue hologram of the planet, which now displayed the outside of the last recorded map of Bracca's UAC Research Facility. "In the event that this is a Separatist invasion, we must secure the base and its resources by any means possible. After our reconnaissance, Masters Tapal and Luminara will assist Anakin's forces on the south landing pad while Fisto and I come from the north. We then clear the base and repel the invasion from there. Assuming, of course, that it is one."

This was not Anakin's first rodeo. He had been involved in planetary invasions ever since Naboo, all those years ago. Yet something seemed… off about this one. The more they planned mini-details around the holotable, the worse it got.

When the meeting concluded and the holograms disappeared, Anakin shook his head and mumbled, quieter than Rex and Ahsoka could hear, "I have a bad feeling about this…"

Obi-Wan quietly braced his feet on impact upon the reversion from hyperspace. Space quickly turned from swirling blue to the usual speckled black.

They had approached at an angle where the planet was in their upper right field of view. This close to the brown planet, Obi-Wan could see the slight swirls in Bracca's disgusting atmosphere.

Obi-Wan stroked his red-brown beard and quickly scanned the edges of space for Separatist warships. And he wasn't sure how to feel when he counted none. They were alone. Not even the Scrapper Guild's ships were in the upper atmosphere.

So the four other Venator-class Destroyers in Obi-Wan's strike fleet were a bit overkill. For now.

On the one hand, this was no Separatist or Huttslayer invasion. On the other hand, they were now in the realm of the unknown… what could account for these peculiarities?

"Cody, have our scanners picked up anything?" Obi-Wan asked after several minutes, still looking forward.

"Negative, General," Cody reported. "The atmosphere seems to be more congested than usual, and there are strange geothermal readings all over the base's coordinates that interfere with the reading."

"Looks like we'll need to do a more close-up inspection then, won't we?" Obi-Wan rhetorically posed.

"Seems like it, General." Cody seemed resigned as he said it.

Transport in the LAAT/i gunships was never smooth. Ahsoka Tano much preferred the cockpit of her starfighter. But this ride seemed much bumpier than the others she had been in, and she was not the only one who noticed. The other troopers in her gunship had expressions of annoyance on their identical faces as they jostled about in place in the dim red light.

"Sorry back there!" Oddball called over the speaker from his cockpit. "This is a real tough soup. Hang on, we're almost in breathable atmosphere."

Ahsoka mumbled annoyedly in response right before turbulence rocked the ship yet again. Ahsoka stumbled into the trooper to her right, who absorbed the blow and settled her upright again by the hips.

"You all right, Commander?" the trooper asked, and Ahsoka recognized him in the red light as Echo. Who else had that blue handprint above his breast?

Ahsoka huffed in embarrassment and gripped the door handle tighter. "Couldn't be better, Echo."

Echo chuckled briefly. Ahsoka didn't respond.

After a bit longer without more major turbulence, Echo spoke up again. "Er, Commander. I've done some thinking. We've been together for a while now. You know by now that even though you're just a kid, the 501st would follow you into Hell. We'd just like to know, though… you think we ever will?"

"You mean Geonosis wasn't Hell?" a nearby trooper asked in incredulity. "Or Felucia?"

"You know what I mean," Echo muttered. "If we all, er… died. The war's no picnic. I think every clone knows that. One of these days, our time'll come, but I don't want to just yet. At least, not without you beside me."

Ahsoka, caught off guard by the question at first, braced herself for another bout of turbulence, then replied after it passed. "Well, who knows, the opportunity might be right down there."

"The garbage planet?" another blue-helmeted soldier reiterated. "If there's any place in the galaxy that's gonna be Hell, it's that planet."

"Or Mustafar," Echo muttered.

"I've been in Hell before," a trooper, Oz, spoke up. "I live in it. Sapper's not the cleanest bunkmate."

Plenty of clones sniggered at that. Even Ahsoka cracked a grin.

After some time in the idle din of the trooper's talk, Oddball came on again. "This is it, boys. We are now in breathable atmosphere, and…" Oddball faded away. "Oh, skrag. Does Bracca always look like this?"

That perked several heads up. Including Ahsoka's.

"Yeah, you probably want a look too," Oddball remembered. With a hiss and squeak, the gunship doors unsealed and opened the slots in the doors. Ahsoka peered through.

The navy-blue air was thick with pillars of boiling smoke and lit by orange fires on the surface racing below. In the distance, in every direction, solid walls of black clouds were pouring polluted rain onto the earth. Ahsoka felt a lump grow in her throat. Sure, the air was 'breathable,' but it was not pure. And the Force was screaming at her that something awful had clearly happened, but Ahsoka was not sure what it was.

"We're almost to the landing site," Oddball was saying. "Standby for dropoff."

The troopers quietly prepared. Ahsoka tensed.

Finally, the gunship gently settled down, and once it came to a gentle hover, the gunship doors folded back. Ahsoka hopped off and touched down on the permacrete and durasteel landing platform.

It was pockmarked with debris and residual damage from… something. Ahsoka couldn't say. Taking a look around, Ahsoka saw two more gunships unloading clones and supply crates on the enormous square landing platform. It had been built to withstand a dozen fully loaded Corellian tankers.

Ahsoka scanned the crowd of clones. Blue was the 501st Legion, her troopers. Vibrant yellow, that was the 13th Battalion under Jaro Tapal. And deep verdant green was the 41st Elite Corps, under Luminara Unduli. Ahsoka was shorter than the average clone, and couldn't see over all their heads at once, so she navigated her way through the dozens of troopers until she spotted Barriss Offee doing the same thing. They quickly united once they spotted each other, and when they came close, Ahsoka noticed Barriss looking a paler blue than usual.

"Bumpy ride?" Ahsoka teased.

Barriss twisted her face sickly and clenched her midsection.

Ahsoka gestured to the edge of the platform. "If you need to-"

"Yes! Not in front of the men," Barriss pleaded. Even her voice was weak.

"They won't mind."

"They'll laugh."

Ahsoka was about to say something, but just nodded. "Yeah. They would."

Standing in a square with Jaro Tapal, Cal Kestis, and Luminara, Anakin spotted his apprentice rush Barriss to the edge of the platform to take care of business. He smirked. Then he spotted Luminara Unduli eyeing him. He gestured in their direction. "You remember when you were like them?"

"I do," Luminara admitted, clasping her pale green hands. "Barriss still has a long way to go before she becomes the Jedi I know she can be."

Anakin nodded stiffly. He still remembered Geonosis. Luminara's lack of attachment to her Padawan had led to her almost giving up on searching for Barriss in all that rubble. Anakin could respect Luminara for many things, but her distant, cold link to her Padawan was not one of them.

Eager for something else to look at, Anakin spotted the young Cal glance over at the two girls his age. When Cal saw Anakin looking at him, Cal flushed and turned away.

Anakin smiled teasingly. "Who was it?"

Cal's lips twisted. "Still trying to figure that out." His hand rubbed on the hilt of his lightsaber absent-mindedly. "Master Skywalker-"

"Not Master," Anakin corrected. "Wait, you mean- Yeah, you were right."

Cal flushed again and nodded. "Well, uh… You wouldn't, you know, maim me if I was looking at Ahsoka, right?"

Anakin burst into merry laughter. After an awkward few moments, Cal joined too.

Jaro Tapal rubbed Cal's head in amusement. "You'll have plenty of time for that back on the Albedo Brave. In the meantime, we have a job to do."

"No, he won't have tim-" Luminara started.

Tapal shushed her with a finger to his lips and chuckled. "General Skywalker, do you have any theories as to what happened here?"

Anakin had never been on a mission with Jaro Tapal before, but he liked him already.

Turning his attention to the rest of the landing deck, Anakin studied the scene. Also on the landing deck were three ruined LAAT/i shuttles which had holes torn into their military-grade armor and scorches punctuating their interiors. Wings had been torn off, and debris of every shape and size had been scattered here and there. Stains of what could easily be either oil or blood had been baked into the landing pad and the broad bridge leading into the hangar.

"Well, whatever happened here must have been a civil disagreement," Anakin theorized, peering into the exposed side of one of the ship's worst-looking wounds. "The destruction could have been caused by the weapons on the shuttles. I don't see any battle droids."

"If a battle truly did take place here, where are the bodies?" Jaro Tapal asked, glancing at Cal Kestis. "Can you take a look?"

Anakin raised an eyebrow as Cal half-ran to a broken DC-15 blaster beside the nearest shuttle. "Sorry?"

"Psychometry," Jaro explained. "If he touches an item with a history, he can choose to see it."

Anakin hummed and put a finger to his chin. "I remember now, Quinlan Vos. He had that gift too."

"I'm proud of the boy," Tapal commented. "It's become one of his greatest strengths. He alone may help us understand what ha-"

Cal screamed bloody murder and hurled the DC-15 as far as he could. He fell onto his butt and scooted backwards, his knees trembling and teeth chattering.

Tapal was by his side in an instant. "Are you all right, boy? Talk to me!"

Cal hyperventilated for a few moments before slowing his breathing. "M-Master Tapal, I… I saw something. A beast. It was…" Cal searched for a little bit before deciding on, "...i-it came from Hell!"

"Come now, it was likely one of the planet's junk scavengers," Luminara tried to soothe.

"It... i-it wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before," Cal murmured, his eyes darting to where the monster had evidently been. "It was closing in on me, and it was all big and… Gah, I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't alone, though. They must have caused the rampage and dragged the bodies off."

The Jedi gave each other suspicious glances. Which natural predator on Bracca could do such a thing?

Luminara turned around first and glided back to her troopers, passive and serene as always. Anakin followed her with his eyes.

"Gentlemen," she calmly announced to the nearest collection of her troopers, and the green-armored clones snapped to attention. "The situation is grim. It's likely there are survivors from an attack by the planet's predators, but we're missing many pieces of this puzzle. Bookworm, I want you to research the planet's fauna. Specs, scan the buildings we come in for life signs. Melter, stay in front. Let's move."

Bookworm pulled out a datapad from his waist pack and began typing. Specs pulled down his external heat-vision visor and hooked a holographic scanner in one hand and a pistol in the other. And Melter tramped to the front, his Z-6 rotary cannon dipping to the ground.

It didn't take long for Anakin and Tapal to give similar orders to their troops. Once they did, the Jedi led the way to the bridge, which was also scorched black with flame and littered with debris and flecks of rotten flesh and blood. The gunships behind them whirred as they took off, leaving six Jedi and thirty clones alone on the ruined bridge.

Anakin's comlink chirped, and he addressed his wrist as he walked. "Obi-Wan. You're on the ground?"

"We touched down at the north hangar about ten minutes ago. Is it messy on your end too?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Anakin grimly reported. He cast his eyes about the remnants of carnage. "Think the predators got to them?"

"I doubt that's everything. There's more going on here than wild fauna. Fisto and I'll report in when we discover things on our end."

"This could be a trap, master."

"Then there's only one thing to do in response, isn't there? Spring it."

Anakin grinned. "My favorite."

The bridge came to an end, and the group came to the hangar doors. A peeled, stained old logo of the Galactic Republic was on both sliding doors, which were slightly open. Three wind-worn Aurebesh letters were painted on there too: UAC. The acronym, Unified Agency of Colonization, was beneath them in smaller letters.

With a gesture of their hands, Anakin and Luminara opened the doors wider. A tortured squeal met their ears as they slowly slid apart, making Ahsoka and Cal cringe.

The hangar was dark. Tapal reached out his hand for a few seconds, then lowered it. "The power's down. Seems like that's our first order of business."

"Flashlights!" Captain Rex ordered, turning on the headlamps on his helmet. He entered the hangar first, sweeping his twin blaster pistols side to side. The Jedi followed him, then Melter, then the other two clone commanders, and finally the rest of the clones.

In the limited beams of light, the Jedi could see more scenes of carnage and devastation; the three shuttles inside were scorched with flames and punctured with holes. Piles of rubble from the walls littered the corners and edges of the hangar. Small craters and cracks in the permacrete ground were shallow, but plentiful. Cut cables hung from the ceiling. Buttresses were partially melted, bent out of shape and twisting down. Stains on the ground glistened when a beam of white light was shone on it.

Ahsoka kicked aside a piece of rubble. "Master, I'm sensing… the Dark Side. So much hate and anger."

"I feel it too," Anakin murmured. "Keep your voice down, Sni… Ahsoka." Anakin tended to use her real name when he was being more genuine.

Ahsoka looked up, and a flash of appreciation was in her vibrant green eyes. "Thanks for, uh, looking out for me, Master. It means a lot."

Half of the enormous hangar had been cleared, and there was no sign of life yet. But there was a horrid smell wafting in the air: smoke, melted metal, and rotten meat. Fives was familiar with such a horrible scent, but he still didn't like it. Just because you were accustomed to something didn't mean it grew on you.

"Ehh," Fives grumbled, covering Echo's front as they rounded a ruined shuttle. "Think there's any survivors at all?"

"I'm not seeing anything," Specs reported to their right; he had overheard them. "Not even insects."

"Could be the work of… a Defoliator," Echo suggested.

"Yeah," Fives replied with uncertainty. He craned his head into the shuttle's exposed back and froze. "Echo. Look!"

Echo turned as well, gazing inside. Through the wreckage inside, a man's upper body and back could be seen. He was in a mechanic's outfit, slowly wheezing and gurgling.

"There's a survivor here!" Fives yelled, ushering with an upraised arm. "We need medical, now!"

Kix, the 501st medic, promptly rushed over and peered inside the shuttle's rear. "Get him out of there!" he ordered Fives and Echo.

Specs also peered inside and pointed his scanner inside as Fives and Echo maneuvered their way through knee-high metal debris. After a few moments, he scanned again, then frowned. "Scanner's not showing life," he muttered in confusion.

"Must be a misreading," Echo dismissed, bending down to grip the man. "Sir? Are you all right?"

Just more groans and gurgles. There was a piece of the ceiling pinning his side against the wall. Echo pried it off him and yanked the man to his feet.

And Fives could see that something was horribly wrong. The man's skin was dark grey, cold, and clammy. What was left of it. The entire outline of his position was brown with old blood, and half of his body was missing its skin, exposed to the air. A twisted piece of metal was embedded through the mechanic's upper back and was emerging sharply through his front. The body– he wasn't alive– hissed with a gaping mouth missing half its flesh, but filled with fangs. Its lone remaining eye glowed orange with malevolence, and a bloody pentagram was etched into its forehead.

"What?!" Echo breathed, stumbling back. Fives made a sound of either disgust or horror and whipped one of his pistols out.

The zombie, upon seeing Fives aiming a gun at him, stumbled forward while snapping his jaw. Fives fired, and a searing bolt of blue plasma ripped what was left of his brain matter out of the back of his head. He collapsed into the sharp debris and did not rise again.

Fives' pistol hand was shaking. So was Echo's leg. Specs and Kix had gasped.

"What's going on?" Anakin demanded, rushing to the shuttle's rear. "Kix, what happened?"

Kix and Specs turned to Anakin, and there must have been something in their stances that caused Anakin to fall silent. Or maybe it was Anakin spotting the undead body in the shuttle wreckage, and Fives and Echo staring down at the body.

Finally, Kix said, "General… I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it. This goes against all known laws of human anatomy."

"Try me," Anakin ordered.

"A zombie," Fives spoke. His hand finally drooped to his side, and he cleared his throat, realizing how silly it sounded. "General, this man was dead. Clearly so. But he was moving. Animated… Uh, entranced."

The rest of the Jedi appeared by Anakin's side. All of them were staring in apprehension at the zombie.

Barriss and Ahsoka had taken a step back, however, with wide fearful eyes. It wasn't too long ago that they both had had a close-up experience with Geonosian brain worms, which achieved a very similar effect. Barriss had a hand over her heart, and Ahsoka's hands hovered near her lightsaber and newly-acquired shoto.

After no one made movement for some time, Specs and Bookworm inched into the trashed shuttle. Specs scanned the body once more, then nodded. "He's right. This body has been dead for some time now. I also don't see any parasites inside him."

"Even if there were, it wouldn't be any parasite native to Bracca," Bookworm reported, double-checking his datapad. "At least, none we know of."

"This was no parasite," Luminara declared. "This place reeks of the Dark Side. Perhaps Nightsister witchcraft led to this effect."

"The Nightsisters haven't left Dathomir in ages," Tapal narrowed down, turning away. "If this truly was Nightsister work, we would need to uncover why."

Fives looked down at the sprawled body again. His blaster bolt had gone right through the pentagram on his head, and Fives could see through his head out the opposite side. The rotten flesh was cauterized, somehow making the zombie smell even more repulsive. Fives held back the urge to kick the body. He instead turned to his commanding general.

Ahsoka and Anakin exchanged looks as Anakin patted her on the shoulder. "Hey," Anakin murmured gently, but loud enough for Fives to hear. "We'll get to the bottom of this. And you can handle it. I'll be at your back."

Ahsoka managed to smile up at him. "Thanks, Master."

Fives and Echo extracted themselves from the shuttle. The news had quickly gone around to the clones about the zombie. And even though the clones had been raised and programmed to be materialistic, ruthlessly pragmatic, and immune to superstition, some of the clones began to see shadows in the corners of the hangar that had turned out to be nothing, or hear something that, on closer inspection, wasn't there.

Three more zombies were soon discovered in the dark hangar. One was stuck under a pile of sharp debris that had fallen from the ceiling. Another was strapped in the shattered pilot seat of one of the ruined gunships. The last one had been impaled through his lower gut on a twisted beam emerging from the ground, slowly wiggling around the bloodstained hunk of metal. Each of them were clammy, cold, softly gurgling, and had the same bloody pentagram inscribed on their foreheads. Each of them had also been shot on sight.

Once the entire hangar had been cleared, the Jedi led the way to the back, where the entrance to the trains was. After forcing it open and entering the station, they discovered that the blocky hovertrain was, in fact, still just sitting there in the dark station, albeit riddled with holes and blaster fire scorch marks. Bodies of engineers and clone security troopers were scattered all over the station floor, stained with old blood and rotting in the open air.

And ten more zombies were shambling sadly about on the stone deck, hissing and howling, dead-eyed, sallow-faced, lanky, nearly naked, and soaked with old blood and flecks of guts. As the Jedi and clones entered the station, all ten zombies turned, almost in unison, and began shambling towards them.

Ten precise blaster bolts later, all ten were down. The air became more still and silent.

Fives grimaced as he approached one of the fallen zombies and nudged the zombie's severed arm. He was a bald, bloodsoaked, cold, hollow object, both before and after the blasterfire, but he had once been a human. Once a person, like Fives, like all of his brothers and his Jedi generals. And this desecration of his identity, of his legacy and agency, was a horrible, horrible way to go. Fives looked on with pity, but not mercy. And he sheathed his pistols and moved on.

Fives turned, and so did his headlamps. Hardcase, one of the newest troopers Fives had seen in the 501st, was moving to the rear of the train platform, poking his Z-6 rotary blaster into the dark train gap. Hardcase made a small, intrigued sound, and set his gun down. He got on his hands and knees and reached below the train.

"Hardcase," Fives ordered. "What are you doing?"

"I found something," Hardcase said, reaching deeper. "Just gotta- ah!" He withdrew his hand, glanced at the heavy machine gun lying beside him, then snarled something and hopped into the tram tunnel. There came a kick and a stomp, and a squishy, crunchy impact. Hardcase made a disgusted sound and shortly emerged from the subway tunnel, holding something.

"What happened?" Fives demanded.

"There was a zombie stuck under the train," Hardcase explained simply. "It was in the way."

Fives glanced at what was in Hardcase's hand. It was a bloodstained, plain white Phase 1 clone trooper action figure. Fives turned his gaze back up to Hardcase's helmet, and Fives somehow just knew that Hardcase was blushing underneath it.

"And what, precisely, did you accomplish?" Fives asked quietly.

"Sir, this is an Obsidian Edition," Hardcase explained, as if it was obvious.

"You risked your life for a toy?" Fives deadpanned.

"You wouldn't?" Hardcase asked.

Fives said nothing. He just glared.

"Look, sir, this place has many secrets. And each of them tell a story," Hardcase explained, thinking on his feet. "Perhaps if we give them to the redhead Jedi as we go along, he'll make some sense of it. These toys have been guaranteed to be in contact with human hands."

It was blatant justification, and they both knew it. But Hardcase was also right. Cal's psychometry could help paint a broader picture of what had happened here. Fives nodded reluctantly. "Give it to the kid. See what he makes of it."

Fives accompanied Hardcase over to Cal Kestis as he entered the train station, just to make sure. Cal glanced up at Hardcase, then the little toy in his hand. As Hardcase offered it to him, Cal's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and a muffled thump emanated from him, momentarily startling Hardcase. A second later, Cal pulled his hand away from the toy, his eyes wide and shivering.

"It... wasn't good, was it?" Hardcase dully asked.

"...I saw a mass of people. They were trying to escape through this tram," Cal explained, glancing around at the decayed zombie bodies on the tram station. "One of the people dropped this. It was a personal item he'd brought to this facility. He was then hit by an invisible wave of energy. Everyone on the tram, everyone on the station, started convulsing. The next thing you know..." Cal gestured sadly at the zombies.

Fives turned to the nearby Bookworm, who was busy recording this as he overheard it. The man's fingers were flying over his datapad. And Fives sighed. Now Hardcase was going to actively look for toys wherever he went. If it was too risky, Fives wouldn't permit it, but this was also important.

Hardcase deftly slipped the toy into his ammo bag instead of discarding it.

By this time, everyone had entered the station and was busy either looking down with morbid interest at the zombie bodies, or discussing things among themselves.

"Where to the generator?" Luminara Unduli asked her apprentice.

Barriss thought for only a moment before answering, "Two more stops."

"You memorized the base layout, didn't you?" Ahsoka deduced while pointing at her. "Like you did with the Geonosian tunnels."

"Master was very insistent on it," Barriss admitted, spreading her arms. "Rote memorization is tedious, of course, but what else can you do? And now we have a map."

"But we'll have to clear out every station we go to," Tapal followed up. "There could be more survivors. Or enemies."

"Hehe. Or explosives!" Melter exclaimed, hefting his machine gun as he walked beside the Jedi.

The strike group filed into the train. Luckily, it ran on its own power. When Master Tapal activated the levers in the pilot box to turn it on, it did so with a grumbling protest. The clones were bathed in light for the first time since entering. And the strike group departed deeper into the base, having cleared the first room.

A/N: This was actually the first chapter I'd written for this story. But I needed to have some backstory for how the Slayer got into the SW universe, so I began writing his Florrum chapters, and things proceeded linearly from there. And now we're here. We know to not take Doom too seriously, but not the SW characters.

Also, thanks again for reading and commenting. It means a lot to know you appreciate this. My next goal for this story is to eventually have a TVTropes page about it.

Also also, Kit Fisto's one of those underutilized and underrated Jedi I wish there was more content for. When I was a kid, I saw him in the 2003 Clone Wars microseries and I referred to him as, "The green guy who swims underwater," and emulated him whenever I was in the pool. It was very epic.