"They don't bounce much, do they?" He looked up the cliff wall again, then glanced back at Skywalker. Ahsoka stood at his side as if bolted there. "Ready when you are, sir."
Skywalker had a distracted look on his face that Rex had seen before. It was like a brief trance; maybe it was Jedi meditation of some kind. Whatever it was, Rex read it as the moment when Skywalker tussled with himself, trying to overcome something within, or psyching himself up, or something where two elements of him pulled in different directions; because whatever it achieved, he came out of it in what Rex thought of as his killing-machine mode. He was unstoppable, all lethal movement, cutting down everything he came into contact with.
"A-tee," Skywalker said, "return fire."
He started climbing the vine.
A stream of blue-white bolts seared upward through the trees, vaporizing branches. From that moment, the forest was all deafening mechanical noise, and Rex's helmet activated buffers to protect his hearing. He could have switched off the audio completely and fought in soundproofed peace, but he needed to hear something of the battle environment around him to get a gut feel for what was happening. The shapes and icons in his HUD were just detail now. AT-TEs thundered and wheezed as they moved up to scale the cliff face, firing as they went.
The armored walkers, tanks in six heavy jointed legs, were built for horizontal terrain, however uneven, and perfect for it.
They could climb, but it limited their effectiveness and made them very vulnerable. Using them to scale a vertical cliff was as near to a last-resort deployment as he'd seen so far in this war.
But they didn't have time to do it by the book. They had one day.
Because some jumped-up gangster of a Hutt says so.
He put it out of his mind. All flesh and blood could do was concentrate on what was immediately in front. Rex fired his rappel line almost vertically through the tree canopy, feeling the grappling hook bite into something solid. Then he let the powered winch lift him. He became one man in a curtain of white-armored troopers ascending the steep rock face. He could see himself as a sitting target hanging in midair, or as a fast-moving weapons platform conserving his energy for the battle that was certain to be waiting at the top of the ascent. He chose the latter.
Rocks, burning fragments of droid casing, and chunks of vine as thick as a man's waist fell past him. He batted away what he could, but there was little room for maneuver on the end of a winch line.
He glanced down to see where Ahsoka was. She'd been scrambling up a vine, face set in grim, wide-eyed determination. No sign of her: his gut lurched, fearing the worst. But then he looked to his side, spotting one of the AT-TE walkers lurching its way up the vertical face like a manakur climbing a fruit tree, and there was Ahsoka, clinging to the deckhead plate of the armored walker with her gaze fixed firmly above her.
She was a smart kid. But then so were his boys, and plenty of them wouldn't be returning to barracks after this assault. War didn't care much about smart or nice or deserving to survive.
Rex stopped thinking about it. Another droid plummeted past him trailing smoke, and struck a trooper on one shoulder. The man swung helpless on his line for a moment, but hung on. If he was lucky, his armor would have dissipated the impact and he wouldn't have a fracture.
The next falling object, though, was an AT-TE.
Rex felt the shock wave from a blast above him. The next impression he had was of falling from a building and watching the walls streak by. But it was the armored walker: he hung relatively motionless to its rapid fall, senses telling him he was the moving object. He managed to swing to one side by kicking out from the cliff wall. The stricken AT-TE tumbled. It had no other route down than through the troopers ascending the cliff.
Rex couldn't divert his eyes from horror any more than the next human being could. There was always that one terrible moment when a death in all its unexpected detail grabbed his attention, and wouldn't let go for what felt like hours until he jerked his eyes away the next second. Then there was the desperate relief at not being dead, followed rapidly by equally desperate scenarios about how the guys below could have survived if ... if ... if . . .
Rex couldn't let himself dwell on it. He could hear something else, a sound his helmet systems recognized and identified as a droid STAP fighter.
And another.
And another.
They were fragile aerial platforms just big enough to carry a battle droid, not proper airframes, with narrow profiles that made them hard moving targets to hit. Their blasterfire punched into the cliff face. White blurs fell in his peripheral vision.
If any of his 501st company reached the top of this plateau, it would be a miracle. And then they still had to fight their way into the monastery.
Rex went back to concentrating on surviving the next moment, a second at a time, and hung from his rappel line spraying blasterfire at the strafing STAP fighters.
* * *
Anakin had no choice; he jumped.
Plummeting down a cliff face now infested with spider droids, he landed briefly on the AT-TE below, narrowly missing Ahsoka, and then launched himself at the first STAP fighter in the formation.
It was mainly blind instinct that made him do it. He could get killed like anyone else, he knew. But once his body had taken control like this, his brain was just along for the ride, unable to step in. As he hit the tiny platform, barely big enough to take a droid's metal feet, he smashed the battle droid pilot squarely in the chest, sending it tumbling hundreds of meters into a blurred green sea of treetops, then leaped again, onto the next STAP. The sheer inertia of his body sent the droid plummeting. He didn't even need to draw his lightsaber. Now he was fully mobile in a way that not even his Force powers could match: he could fly, not just glide.
And that meant he could stand off from the vertical rock face far enough to make a difference. The other droid STAP pilots were now in disarray, seeming not to know how to deal with an organic that could leap from fighter to fighter, and that confusion gave Anakin the edge he needed.
He checked the cliff below, felt where there were fewest of his men, where he might safely bring down tons of droid and debris, and opened up with the STAP's laser cannon. A path of pluming, flame-filled smoke ripped up the cliff face to the top, blazing a clear path. Anakin dived closer. Now he could see exactly where to place fire to clear the way for individual troopers or provide suppressing fire for an AT-TE to get a better foothold.
One simple STAP platform shouldn't have been enough to make that much difference, but he was Anakin Skywalker, and he knew without even thinking how to hit an enemy where it hurt most, and strike fear into them.
Droids did feel fear. He could see it now. They reacted to threats like a living being. They avoided damage and destruction wherever they could. That was all fear was; a safety mechanism, whether it was organic adrenaline or a computer program. The battle droids on the top of the plateau, peering down onto the GAR assault, seemed to be in chaos. Anakin swept a dozen of them aside with a raw surge of Force power. Could Rex see the path? Could any of the troopers, clinging so close to the cliff? They had no overview.
Yes, Rex could see it.
Anakin picked him out by his traditional kama, the leather half kilt worn over his armor. He was waving troops toward the smoking line. It was almost as good as a beacon. And they were close enough to the top now to use the vines rather than hang passively on the rappel winches. Anakin could do no more here. He swooped for the line of droids forming up on the plateau.
He jumped off the STAP onto the parapet, leaving the fighter to crash into the droid line. As he regained his balance, a battle droid commander stepped forward and raised its rifle.
"Surrender, Jedi."
"Bad time to ask me," Anakin said, more to himself than anything, and plunged into the droid ranks with his lightsaber. "Bad time."
There was nothing in his mind beyond his troops and that only he could save them. Save; he did so much saving now but it w
ould never be enough to make him whole. He felt his lightsaber blade slice through metal-there was always a slight kick on contact, like a drill hitting a hard spot-but he craved more. He craved destruction, not to prove to himself that he had such huge power, but simply to hold the chaos at bay.
I didn't save my mother.
He had the strength and skill to wipe out legions of droids, but he hadn't used it for the person who mattered most.
Anakin tore into droid after droid, killing on upstroke and downstroke, spinning to take out droids rushing him from behind, rolling to scythe his way through their legs. Hot hydraulic fluid spattered on his face like blood.
Why didn't I go back for my mother, when I could have done this, and this, and this?
As the surge of Force power almost squeezed the air from his lungs in his all-out effort to crush the next rank of droids, he felt suddenly light-headed, and in that second's pause he became aware of troopers fighting furiously to his right-smashing metal skulls with butts of rifles, ramming vibroblades into weak points-but he couldn't see Ahsoka.
She'd been clinging to an AT-TE. He didn't know where she was. He couldn't even sense her in the maelstrom of Force disturbances churned up by desperate combat, and when the last battle droid crashed to its knees, he steadied himself to look for her.
He was never going to lose someone he cared about again. If anyone so much as looked at Padme the wrong way, he'd make them regret the day they were born.
You can't think those things. You're a Jedi.
But I can. And I do.
Then three destroyer droids rolled through the battle debris, unfurled themselves and raised their shields. Anakin, exhausted by jungle heat and a hard ascent, raised his lightsaber two-handed, muscles screaming for rest. One droid rocked back a fraction on its gyros to fire.
I promised Obi-Wan we'd wrap this up inside a day. I promised Ahsoka I'd look out for her.
Anakin steadied himself for a split second that lasted forever, choosing between lunging forward or waiting to block the cannon round, and then the lead droid exploded in a white-hot shower of shrapnel that made him duck to shield himself with the Force. The plateau echoed as the blast bounced back off the monastery's high walls.
When he jumped up, ready to fight to the death, he was staring at an AT-TE as it clunked its way forward from the monastery walls. One cannon was still trained on the smoking spot where the destroyer droids had paused.
"Did you get hit?" Ahsoka called. She was standing on top of the armored walker, looking breathless. "Sorry."
"No, I'm fine." His legs shook with fading adrenaline. It was always like this for a few moments when the fighting stopped. "I told you to stay close, so I can't complain, can I?"
"Just watching your back, Master."
The plateau was silent now, and the remnant of 501st Torrent Company were spread out, securing a perimeter. Anakin did a quick head count. He'd lost nearly half his men.
All for a kriffing Hutt. This had better be worth my men's lives.
Rex jogged over to them, lifting off his helmet. He obviously thought the situation was under control to do that. Anakin could sense no immediate danger. Rex's HUD sensors must have given him similar reassurance.
"Fifteen wounded, sir." He didn't mention the KIAs. He wiped the palm of his gauntlet across his shaven head, looking oddly exhilarated-odd, because while his face was flushed and he was breathing harder than usual, his eyes looked distant and anguished. "I've called in one larty to casevac the injured. I didn't wait for your order, sir ..."
"Fine by me, Rex. I don't want to spend one more life on this Hutt than I have to." Anakin didn't look at Ahsoka, but he could feel her gaze boring into him, tinged with dismay. A Jedi was entitled to be less than saintly sometimes; sooner or later, she had to learn that it could be a dirty job. "Judging by the number of droids, I'd say this is an official Separatist operation, not a spot of freelance hobby extortion."
"Agreed. It's got Dooku's fingerprints all over it, sir. Explains the dead bounty hunters, too."
Ahsoka edged her way between the two men and looked up expectantly. "But the hard bit's over, right? I mean, we just crawled up a cliff under fire and wiped out a battalion of droids or something."
" 'Fraid not, littl'un," Rex said, patting her on the head. "The hard bit isn't over until we put our boots down on Republic soil again, preferably with one Huttlet on board."
Anakin kicked through the carpet of shattered droid components like fallen leaves. Some chunks of debris were still smoking. His boots came away oily and dark.
"Yes, it's definitely Dooku," he said. "Expect the worse."
* * *
UPPER LEVEL, TETH MONASTERY
Jedi were so predictable.
Asajj Ventress stood one pace back from the narrow slit of a window, but she could see the aftermath of the battle. Everything was going according to plan. Skywalker would think he'd won a magnificent victory rather than that he'd been duped. He'd encountered just enough resistance to make it look like more than a token defense, without the droids getting lucky and actually killing the Jedi. The things couldn't act. She'd had to balance the battle carefully.
I need you and your little Padawan in one piece, Skywalker.
The Jedi Council could spare the resources to drop everything for a Hutt they despised, when there was something in it for them. But Rattatak-her homeworld-could drown in blood for all they cared.
It had.
"What would you make of all this, Ky?" she said aloud. Ky Narec was long dead, and maybe that was just as well. He wouldn't want to see what the Jedi had become now. "Or me, maybe. But you'd understand why it had to be done, I know."
"Ma'am?" said 4A-7. The droid watched from the window too. "Who's Ky?"
"Nothing you need to know." She pulled the hood back and let it slide from her smoothly polished scalp. Her twin lightsabers hung from her belt. She was ready. "The battle droids have done their duty. Now it's your turn. Be convincing.'"
"That's my programming, ma'am."
The spy droid slipped away. Ventress ran through her mental checklist. All she needed was that one incriminating holocam sequence of the Jedi with Rotta the Huttlet, anything that would convince Jabba that the Jedi were behind the kidnapping to force Jabba's cooperation with the Republic-handling Rotta roughly, making him cry, anything plausible. The slug cried a lot; that wasn't going to be hard. But there would be many ways to explain that away as innocent circumstance unless she could then deliver the Huttlet to Jabba.
I still think it would be better to have the Jedi framed with a dead Huttlet. Inarguable. Case proven.
If the situation demanded it, then that was how it would have to be, and Dooku could rage at her later. All that mattered was that the Jedi be denied access to Outer Rim space lanes, and that Jabba throw his considerable weight behind the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
So I'd kill a youngling, would I?
Ventress was sometimes surprised by what she would consider doing these days, but it would have been a routine event on Rattatak; not even a minor headline, as it would have been on tidy, civilized Coruscant. Many youngsters died in the constant battles between the rival warlords. She could have been one of them. Her parents had died violently, just two more bystanders in the endless gang wars. Life was cheap on Rattatak.
It had no strategic importance for the Republic. It didn't matter to Coruscant, and no Jedi stepped in to right wrongs.
Except Ky Nerac. I'd be dead now, without him.
Yes, she could kill a youngling, if she had to. She could kill the offspring of a criminal who made part of his fortune from slavery, if it meant putting an end to the Jedi, because Rattatak knew too much about slavers, too. Jedi kept a corrupt government in power. Anything was justified. Their massive power required exceptional countermeasures. They would not concede without a fight to the death.
Fine. I'm more than ready.
The holoreceiver flickered to life, and Count Dooku appeared
as a blue ghost, elegantly cadaverous.
"Yes, Asajj?" Dooku said. "Progress?"
"It's under way, Master." Ventress snapped her two lightsabers together into one weapon, interlocking the hilts. She clutched the extended handgrip like a parade baton. "Skywalker and his party are about to enter the monastery. The droid will intercept them and make sure they perform to order."
"Be careful. They'll realize by now that this isn't a routine criminal kidnapping."
"Does that matter?"
"Not if the incriminating evidence is forthcoming, and their secret dies with them."
"I could take them now and fabricate very good evidence, Master. The longer we give them to play, the greater the risk of their escape."
Dooku considered her in silence for a few moments, stroking his fingertip down the center of his beard, apparently distracted.
"They're not going to escape, Asajj," he said at last. "You're going to deliver the evidence I need, and rescue the Huttlet. Not because you fear my disapproval, or what I might do if you fail, but because you know why the Jedi and the Republic must be stopped. You know better than anyone what the stakes are. Better than me, in some ways."
Dooku was right; she wasn't afraid of him. There was no pain he could cause her, no physical threat he could hold over her, because Rattatak had broken her long, long before she met him.
"You're right, Master," she said. "I died a long time ago. So did everything I cared about. It's only the likes of me, with nothing to lose, who'll really be prepared to tear the galaxy down and start over."
Dooku smiled. It was actually a sympathetic smile as far as she could see; he had his reasons, too, and she knew they weren't about expense accounts and feeding in the rich waters of government. Both of them had a vision of a fairer society.
"The galaxy will be torn apart by orphans," Dooku said at last. "I think that everyone I know who has the potential to bring down empires has been robbed of parents." He seemed to be talking to himself. "Carry on, then, Asajj. I'll wait to hear from you. And look out for Kenobi. He may yet show up."
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