Chapter 46: Pawn Stars
The controls of my Delta-7B starfighter vibrated beneath my palms, a constant, high-frequency hum that synced up entirely too well with the rising headache pounding right behind my eyes. Space outside the canopy was an absolute localized disaster. Golden-white trails of proton torpedoes sliced through the dark, cutting jagged lines across the looming, irregular shadows of the Bothawui asteroid belt.
The Separatist fleet was entirely in shambles, caught flat-footed by Anakin’s genius little trick of anchoring our AT-TE walkers directly onto the space-rocks to turn them into improvised artillery. It was a brilliant tactical victory, a classic piece of Star Wars military lore unfolding right in front of me, and I could not have cared less.
I was completely ignoring the remaining Vulture droids swirling through the debris field. I didn't care about the collapsing hull of the Separatist frigates, nor did I care about General Grievous currently retreating like a beaten dog with whatever metal limbs he had left after our last little chat.
My tactical display was locked onto exactly one target: an identical Jedi starfighter painted in obnoxiously bright yellow, currently executing a series of aggressively unnecessary barrel rolls directly ahead of me.
My canon cheat sheet for this universe was screaming a loud, metaphorical alarm in the back of my mind. We were at the literal tail end of the battle, the exact moment where Anakin Skywalker’s habitual, deeply ingrained recklessness was scheduled to ruin everything.
Any second now, a stray Vulture droid was going to clip his rear stabilizers, and because the Chosen One apparently viewed basic shield management as a polite suggestion rather than a flight requirement, the resulting explosion was going to throw the Force’s favorite little astromech droid directly into the cold, empty vacuum of space.
It was like watching a toddler gleefully sprint toward the edge of a very high table while holding a priceless heirloom. You knew exactly what was going to happen, you could see it unfolding in slow motion, and the sheer, unadulterated incompetence of it all made you want to pull your own hair out.
“Delta-Three, you’re drifting out of your assigned sector,” Obi-Wan’s voice crackled over the comms, sounding entirely too calm for a man whose biological disaster of a former apprentice was about to lose a vital military asset. “Keep an eye on those trailing fighters, Ben.”
“Copy that, Master. Just... keeping a close eye on General Skywalker’s six,” I muttered into my headset, my teeth gritted so hard my jaw ached. “You know how he gets when the shiny red buttons start flashing.”
Right on cue, a lone, smoking Vulture droid swung around a massive chunk of asteroid, its laser cannons firing a desperate, blind volley as it tore through the gap. One of those red plasma bolts skittered right across the backend of Anakin’s yellow fighter. A spectacular shower of sparks erupted from his astromech socket, followed immediately by a sharp, violent decompression pop that I could practically feel vibrating through the Force.
There he went. A familiar, blue-and-white dome detached from the chassis, spinning helplessly out into the dark void of space like a discarded soup can.
I didn’t even hesitate.
I jammed the thrusters straight into overdrive, the sudden g-force slamming me back against my seat as the sublight engines shrieked in protest. I kicked the rudder pedals, forcing the Delta-7B into a wildly unnecessary, physics-defying slide that would have made my flight instructors at the Temple have a collective aneurysm.
The ship groaned, the metal frame twisting under the sheer friction of a hard drift through a vacuum, but I didn't care about the maintenance report.
I stretched my hand forward and reached out with the Force, wrapping a massive, invisible hand around the tumbling astromech before he could get so much as a millionth parsec away. It was a heavy, metallic tug, a clean and absolute grip that completely stopped R2-D2's erratic spin mid-space.
With a sharp, practiced jerk of my wrist, I pulled the little guy directly toward my cockpit hull, guiding his magnetic casters to lock firmly onto the flat plating just behind my nosecone.
Clunk.
The solid, metallic thud resonated right through the cockpit glass, followed a second later by a frantic, incredibly high-pitched sequence of angry binary beeps and whistles. R2-D2 was absolutely vibrating with mechanical indignation, his little radar eye spinning around in circles as he tried to figure out why he was stuck to a green starfighter instead of drifting off to become scrap metal.
“You’re welcome, Artoo,” I muttered aloud, even though the vacuum of space ensured he couldn't hear a single word. It wasn't like I spoke fluent binary anyway, but the sheer tone of those frantic whistles told me everything I needed to know.
The little guy was utterly pissed off, probably screaming the droid equivalent of profanity at the top of his digital lungs. I honestly couldn't blame him. If my owner kept treating me like a disposable projectile every time he wanted to pull a stunt, I’d be throwing a digital tantrum too.
“Ben! Did you see that?” Anakin’s voice broke through the comms, completely devoid of any actual panic, sounding more like an annoyed teenager who had just dropped his datapad in a puddle. “Artoo’s gone! The blast took him right out of the socket. I lost my sensors.”
I stared through the canopy, watching his yellow fighter slowly level out as the remaining droids scattered into hyperspace. The sheer audacity of this man. He didn't even sound heartbroken yet; he just sounded inconvenienced. It was a miracle the Republic hadn't gone bankrupt purely based on the number of starships and high-end droids this guy went through on a monthly basis.
“I see him, General,” I said, keeping my voice entirely flat, letting the deadpan weight of my exhaustion filter through the comm channel. “In fact, he’s currently sitting on my hull. I caught him.”
A brief, stunned silence hung over the radio. Even Obi-Wan didn't say anything for a second, probably trying to process the absolute absurdity of a Padawan pulling a mid-battle intercept on a loose astromech droid.
“You caught him?” Anakin asked, his tone shifting instantly from annoyance to a bright, almost childlike wonder. “Wow. Nice flying, kid! I knew I taught you well. Just hold onto him until we make planetfall, alright?”
I didn't even bother correcting him on the fact that Master Yoda was my actual master, or that my flying style owed a lot more to the brutal, grounded efficiency of the Emperor’s Wrath than whatever reckless, seat-of-the-pants nonsense he practiced daily.
I just let out a long, slow sigh that fogged up the glass of my helmet. “Yeah. Sure thing, General. Just try not to lose your own ship on the way back to Coruscant. Mine’s already at max capacity.”
The jump through hyperspace was a long, silent blur of blue light, accented entirely by Artoo’s occasional, rhythmic clicking against my forward hull. By the time the swirling hyper-tunnel dissolved back into the familiar, crowded traffic lanes of the Republic capital, my headache had settled into a permanent residency.
The hangar bay of the Jedi Temple was bustling with activity when we finally set our ships down on the landing pads. Clones were scurrying around with coolant hoses, fuel lines, and diagnostic pads, the heavy smell of ozone and starship grease hanging thick in the air.
As soon as my canopy slid back, Artoo disengaged his magnetic locks and rolled down my fighter’s nose cone with a series of relieved, low-pitched whistles, his little dome spinning around as he took in the safety of the hangar.
Anakin was already jumping down from his own cockpit, his long Jedi robes billowing behind him as he strode over to my pad with a massive, theatrical grin plastered across his face. He looked like he was preparing to give a grand speech to the Senate, his chest puffed out as he approached me.
“Ben, seriously, that was an incredible piece of work out there,” Anakin said, his voice booming over the ambient noise of the hangar as he reached out to clap a heavy, leather-gloved hand onto my shoulder. “Losing Artoo... man, that would have been a real disaster. He’s got memory files on half our tactical routes. The Republic owes you one, and honestly, so do I. That droid is family.”
I just stood there on the wing of my Delta-7B, staring at him with a completely deadpan, expressionless look. My arms were crossed over my chest, the black hilt of the Darksaber a heavy, comforting weight against my belt. I didn't smile, I didn't offer a polite Jedi bow, and I certainly didn't match his high-energy enthusiasm.
I looked past him, watching R2-D2 immediately roll over to Anakin’s leg and give him a sharp, painful-sounding zap with an electric interface arm, resulting in a loud yelp from the Chosen One.
“Well, your baby’s back, Skywalker,” I said, my voice dripping with the dry, exhausted sarcasm of a tired teenager. “Try to keep him inside the stroller next time.”
Anakin blinked, rubbing his ankle with a confused, slightly offended expression as I hopped down from the wing, brushed past him without another word, and headed out to find my friends. I had a severe lack of snacks, a massive headache, and a terrible feeling that the timeline was already plotting its revenge for my little piece of interstellar intervention.
…
Well.
I found them. And so much more.
The sight of the Republic logistics officer gesturing toward the shiny, obnoxiously gold astromech droid was the exact moment I realized the universe had a personal vendetta against me. I was standing in a quieter alcove of the main hangar bay, watching the ground crew pull a diagnostics cart away from the newly arrived R3-S6.
Goldie.
The literal, walking, wheeling, whatever Separatist tracking beacon that was supposed to replace R2-D2 while the little blue guy got his post-vacuum oil bath.
I leaned against a stack of storage crates, my hands tucked into the sleeves of my Jedi robes, staring daggers at the gold plating. I wasn't playing the whodunit game again. Christophsis and Sergeant Slick had been more than enough of a headache, and the absolute last thing the Republic needed right now was another active saboteur feeding our fleet movements directly to General Grievous.
Especially considering Grievous was probably still coughing up cybernetic fluid after our last encounter and would love nothing more than a solid victory to soothe his bruised ego.
Ahsoka walked up beside me, wiping a smudge of grease off her montrals, while Maris drifted over from the shadow of a parked V-wing, looking entirely too bored for someone surrounded by millions of credits worth of military hardware. I didn't even turn my head to address them.
“The droid’s a spy, we need to kill it.” I said.
“Who opens a conversation like that?” Ahsoka asked, her eyes going wide as she took a half-step back, her hands dropping to her hips. “I literally just got here. And now we’re already planning murder?”
“It doesn’t count as murder.” Maris said, a slow, wicked smirk spreading across her pale Zabrak face as she crossed her arms. “Droids aren’t alive.”
“I’m going to tell HK-47 you said that.” I said.
“Don’t you dare!” Maris hissed, her snarky, goth demeanor instantly fracturing into genuine panic at the thought of her favorite homicidal assassin droid finding out she’d questioned droid sentience.
Ahsoka sighed, shaking her head as she looked between the two of us, clearly wondering how she always ended up being the only sane person in our friend group. “Do you actually have any proof that the droid’s a traitor?”
“Of course! I saw it in a Force Vision.” I said, tossing my head back with the utmost confidence. “So, you know it’s true.”
“Ben… you kinda use that justification like a lot.” Ahsoka said, raising a skeptical brow.
“Like a lot, a lot.” Maris chimed in, nodding along with a look of malicious glee.
“What? No, I don’t?” I protested, feeling entirely targeted. It wasn't my fault that explaining the narrative construct of a self-insert cheat sheet was vastly more complicated than just blaming the cosmic space magic everyone already worshipped.
“You totally do.” Ahsoka said, crossing her arms and leaning her weight onto one leg. “Like, anytime you know stuff, you always say it’s because of a Force Vision. But I never actually see you have one. Maris?”
“Never.” Maris said.
“It… it happens in my sleep.” I said, scrambling to maintain the absolute authority of my fictional omniscience. “Look, my source is unquestionable! If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at the Force. And if you want to interrogate someone, then I nominate the droid traitor. So are you in, or out?”
Ahsoka glanced over at the gold astromech, then back toward the corridor where Anakin was undoubtedly still complaining about his starfighter's sensor array.
She let out a long, defeated breath, realizing that getting involved in one of my clandestine operations usually resulted in a lecture from the Council or an extended lecture from her master. “Anakin needs an astromech while Artoo gets his maintenance done. So… I’m out.”
“Fair enough.” I said, completely understanding the desire to avoid Skywalker's inevitable dramatic meltdown when his new toy went missing. I turned my gaze toward the chaotic Zabrak next to me. “Maris?”
“In!” Maris said, her eyes lighting up with the sudden promise of a property damage opportunity.
…
Stealing a military-grade astromech droid from the heart of the Jedi Temple under the cover of darkness should have been an elegant, silent operation utilizing our high-level Sith stealth training. Unfortunately, I was working with Maris Brood, whose idea of subtlety was just leaving fewer witnesses.
We waited until the hangar shift rotated, leaving only a few sleepy clone mechanics and a handful of automated pit droids to patrol the racks.
I slipped into the charging alcove, my fingers quickly slicing into the terminal to bypass the logistics lock, while Maris stood lookout, tapping her foot against the durasteel floor with an agonizingly loud rhythm. The moment the lock clicked open, R3-S6’s internal processor whirred to life. His golden dome spun around, his single electronic eye locking onto my face, and instead of behaving like a standard, docile protocol unit, the Separatist spy immediately calculated the threat parameters.
The little trash can let out a shrill, deafening alarm whistle and fired his booster rockets right into my chest.
I staggered back, coughing as a cloud of burning propellant filled the alcove. The gold droid didn't just trundle away; he booked it. The sheer, unadulterated athleticism of this specific astromech was genuinely terrifying. He spun on his casters, peeled out of the alcove at a speed that violated several laws of physics, and barreled straight into the Temple maintenance corridors.
“He’s making a break for the ventilation grid!” I shouted, throwing my robes back and drawing the Darksaber, though I didn't ignite it yet.
“I got him!” Maris yelled, a look of pure, chaotic joy on her face as she launched herself into a full sprint after the golden blur.
The chase through the lower maintenance levels was entirely ridiculous. Goldie was dropping oil slicks, extending a hidden buzz saw to sever coolant lines, and popping open fire extinguishers behind him to create a thick screen of white chemical foam. I was skidding around corners, my boots losing traction on the synthetic grease, mentally cursing whatever Separatist engineer had given a spy droid the agility of an Olympic gymnast.
We rounded a high-level exhaust junction just in time to see the droid use his magnetic claw to smash through a reinforced viewing window. The night air of Coruscant rushed into the corridor, howling with the distant, baseline roar of lower-level traffic. Goldie didn't hesitate. He launched himself right out the broken frame, his booster jets flaring to life to carry him across the massive chasm toward an opposing cargo platform.
Maris didn't even slow down. She fully embraced her inner (and outer) crazy side, letting out a wild, echoing laugh as she vaulted over the shattered sill and plummeted straight into the open air of the Coruscant sky.
“Maris, wait, that’s twenty levels down!” I yelled, diving toward the edge.
Mid-drop, she snapped her wrist forward. Her blue lightsaber ignited with a sharp hiss, the brilliant azure blade slicing deep into the vertical durasteel structural beam of the building’s exterior. Sparks erupted in a blinding, gorgeous fountain of white heat as she used the plasma blade as a kinetic piton, dragging her momentum to a dead halt just as Goldie’s boosters sputtered out.
With a wild, mid-air twist, she caught the gold droid by his radar dome, completely shutting off his primary drive with a heavy, telekinetic slam against the metal wall.
By the time I used the Force to safely guide my own descent down the maintenance ledges, Maris was already standing in the dark, damp alleyway of the lower level, resting her boot on the dented, deactivated chassis of the Separatist asset. Her blue blade sputtered out, leaving us in the dim, flickering neon glow of a subterranean advertisements sign.
“Well,” Maris said, completely out of breath but sporting a massive grin. “That was therapeutic. Now, where are we hiding the body?”
I walked over, looking down at the severely beaten, scorched piece of Separatist hardware. The gold plating was thoroughly ruined, scratched to hell from its slide down the building face, and the internal gyros were humming a sad, dying tune.
“That… is a very good question. We can’t just leave him here. If the Temple forensics team finds an advanced Republic asset sliced up by a lightsaber in a lower-level gutter, Obi-Wan is going to piece it together in five minutes.”
“We could feed him to a commercial garbage grinder.” Maris suggested, her eyes narrowing as she began to pace the alley. “I saw a heavy-duty industrial processor three sectors over. It handles starship hulls. It’ll turn him into a golden cube the size of a ration box.”
“No, the scrap metal registers have automated tracking for Republic alloys.” I said, shaking my head as I leaned against the damp alley wall, trying to massage the tension out of my neck. “The moment that metal gets melted down, a logistics flag pops up on Coruscant Command’s network. We’d be traced by morning.”
“Okay, plan B.” Maris said, leaning in close, her voice dropping into that intensely overcomplicated, dramatic register she used when she wanted to sound like a legendary Sith Lord from our holocron lessons. “We transport him to the toxic waste levels. Level One-Thousand. We drop him directly into an acidic sludge vat, frame Anakin for losing him during a routine test flight, and use a modified slice code to alter the hangar logs to make it look like the droid never even arrived on Coruscant.”
I stared at her for a long, silent moment. I thought about the sheer volume of paperwork involved in altering hangar logs. I thought about the absolute misery of sneaking a dented astromech through three separate checkpoints into an acidic sludge refinery. I thought about the fact that I was a literal Sith Lord with a secret galactic empire and a battalion of HK-Series units, and I was currently standing in a dark alley trying to figure out how to dispose of a trash can.
Then, a sudden, beautiful realization hit me.
“Wait.” I said, my hand freezing mid-air. “It’s just a droid, not a corpse. We don’t need to hide a body. We can just pawn him.”
Maris stopped pacing, her jaw dropping slightly as she processed the utter simplicity of the solution. “Wait. Seriously? Can you even do that with military property?”
“Maris, this is the lower levels of Coruscant.” I said, a slow, brilliant grin spreading across my face. “They will literally buy a working hyperdrive core from a random stranger if you don't ask too many questions. Come on, grab his legs.”
Ten minutes later, we walked into a thoroughly disreputable, dimly lit pawn shop tucked away beneath a massive repulsor-traffic archway. The air inside smelled of old copper, burned wiring, and grease, the shelves lined with everything from rusted blaster rifles to stolen protocol heads.
A heavy-set, blue-skinned Twi'lek shopkeeper looked up from his counter, his eyes narrowing as he took in our hooded figures and the heavily dented, deactivated gold droid we dragged onto his counter.
“No questions, five hundred credits, or we take him to the junk dealer next door.” I said, keeping my voice low and deadpan.
The shopkeeper looked at the gold plating, tapped the chassis with a hydrospanner to check the density of the alloy, and shrugged. He swiped a credit chip across the reader, slid it across the counter without a single word, and dragged Goldie into the back room to be stripped for parts.
I grabbed the credit chip, tossing it lightly in my hand as Maris and I stepped back out into the neon-lit rain of the lower levels. The stress of the timeline, the annoyance of Anakin's flying, and the sheer absurdity of the chase evaporated instantly.
“Come on.” I said, pointing toward a glowing, incredibly sketchy-looking food stall across the street that smelled of deep-fried sweet-cakes and space-spiced noodles. “The Separatist war effort just funded our midnight snack run.”
…
The delicate Alderaanian porcelain teacup in Satine Kryze’s hand was currently under a tremendous amount of structural stress. She took a slow, measured sip of her steeped tish-tea, desperately trying to project an aura of serene, flawless diplomacy, despite the fact that a stray vibro-dagger had just embedded itself three inches deep into her hand-carved, imported executive desk.
Directly across the lavishly appointed living area of the Mandalorian Senatorial Suite, the entire concept of pacifism was being thoroughly dismantled.
“Keep your stance wider, Korkie! If a Death Watch brute gets his hands inside your guard, you don't politely ask him to step back. You take his kneecap home as a souvenir!” Bo-Katan roared, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings of the expensive Coruscant apartment.
She was clad in her full, gleaming Nite Owls armor, lacking only her helmet, and was currently parrying a ferocious overhead strike from a teenager who was entirely too enthusiastic about lethal weaponry.
“Like this, Mother?” Korkie asked, pivoting on his heel with a sharp grunt. His own armor—a custom-fitted set that Satine had explicitly forbidden on three separate occasions—clanked loudly as he drove the butt of his practice staff directly into the cushions of an irreplaceable luxury sofa.
Lovely.
“I am not your mother!” Bo-Katan snapped, effortlessly catching his wrist and tossing him backward onto the plush rug with a heavy thud. She let out an exasperated, furious sigh, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. “For the last time, boy, look at me. Do I look like the kind of woman who would willingly endure nine months of morning sickness just to produce a sentimental rule-follower like you? Ask your ‘aunt.’ She’s the one who handles the elaborate family trees.”
Satine closed her eyes for a brief, agonizing moment, the porcelain clicking sharply against its saucer as she set the tea down. This was her life now. This was the magnificent, multi-layered tapestry of lies she had woven to protect her children from the brutal reality of galactic politics.
Because their father was a prominent, highly visible Jedi Knight, publicly acknowledging Ben and Korkie as her own would have ignited a political firestorm that not even her sharpest rhetoric could put out. A bastard child of the Duchess was a scandal; a bastard child fathered by a Jedi was an invitation for a civil war. So, she had claimed them as her nephews.
The catastrophic flaw in her plan, of course, was that Bo-Katan was her only sibling.
The galaxy at large, possessing a basic grasp of biological limitations, naturally assumed that if the boys belonged to the House of Kryze but weren't Satine’s, they must belong to Bo-Katan. As if they’ve never heard of foundlings or adoptions.
Most of the Mandalorian court simply smiled, nodded, and politely indulged the Duchess's elaborate fiction to her face, while Korkie himself had spent his entire life completely falling for the deception. It was an exhausting, unending cycle of dramatic irony, made infinitely worse by the fact that Bo-Katan looked like she wanted to violently defenestrate the next person who asked her about maternal instinct.
“Korkie, darling, perhaps you could take your... tactical maneuvers into the secondary corridor?” Satine said, her voice dripping with refined, strained sweetness as she smoothed down the front of her elegant, high-collared gown. “Your mother—pardon, your aunt Bo-Katan and I have pressing senatorial matters to discuss. The Republic’s new trade tariffs will not debate themselves.”
Korkie scrambled up from the rug, pulling off his helmet to reveal a flushed, sweat-drenched face. “Of course, Aunt Satine. Sorry about the desk. I’ll go work on my vanguard parries in the hall.” He scooped up his gear and eagerly jogged out of the room, leaving the heavy blast doors to hiss shut behind him.
The moment the boy was gone, Satine let out a long, shuddering breath, her elegant posture sagging just a fraction as she rubbed her temples. She looked across the room at her sister, who was currently using a specialized cloth to wipe droid grease off her gauntlets, completely unbothered by the minor structural damage she had just inflicted on a multi-million credit piece of Coruscant real estate.
“Sister, we need to talk about Ben.” Satine said, her tone dropping into a heavy, maternal register that she rarely allowed herself to use outside these private walls. “You recall how I was captured by General Grevious, and a Jedi strike team led the rescue mission on the Malevolence? Ben was the one who found me. Saved me. But the way he did it... it’s been keeping me awake for three nights.”
Bo-Katan didn't even look up from her gauntlet, her fingers tracing the sharp edge of her wrist blade. “Oh? Did the little bird finally spread his wings? I heard General Grievous ran away with his tail between his metal legs. Sounds like a victory to me.”
“He didn't just defeat him, Bo, he mutilated him.” Satine said, a tremor of profound, elegant horror slipping into her voice as she leaned forward, her fingers gripping the edge of the desk. “I watched Ben use the Force to literally crush the cyborg’s chest plates together until his mechanical lungs collapsed. And then... he used that awful, stolen ancestral weapon. He used the Darksaber to systematically sever multiple limbs while the creature was entirely defenseless. It was dark, brutal, and completely un-Jedi-like. He acted like a butcher.”
Bo-Katan paused her cleaning, her head snapping up as a slow, fierce smirk began to spread across her sharp features. Her eyes, usually cold and calculating, practically lit up with an unholy, terrifying spark of pure Mandalorian pride.
“He crushed his chest?” Bo-Katan asked, her voice dropping into a breathless, reverent murmur. “With just his mind? And then he took Pre Vizla’s sword and carved up the Separatist commander like a target dummy?”
“Bo-Katan, please, this is an absolute tragedy!” Satine cried, her hands flying to her face in despair. “The Jedi are supposed to be keepers of the peace! Ben is supposed to be learning restraint, compassion, and diplomacy under Master Yoda. Instead, he is exhibiting terrifying, violent tendencies that border on the psychopathic. I am sick with worry.”
“Tragedy? Satine, you are entirely blind.” Bo-Katan said, tossing her cleaning rag onto the floor and walking over to the desk with a swagger that made Satine’s stomach drop.
She leaned her armored hands on the surface, staring directly into her sister’s eyes with a look of absolute triumph.
“For years, I’ve had to watch you send my son—your son, whatever we’re calling him today—off to that stagnant temple of monks to learn how to sit in a circle and meditate. I thought the Republic had entirely broken his spirit. But this? This is magnificent. The kid is finally acting like a true Kryze. He’s acting like a real Mandalorian! I haven't been this proud of my boy in years.”
“He is not your boy!” Satine snapped, her composure entirely breaking as she stood up, glaring at her sister with a mixture of rage and profound existential dread. “And he is not supposed to be a warlord! He is a child, Bo-Katan! A child who is currently wandering the galaxy with a legendary weapon of mass slaughter and a terrifying lack of moral boundaries!”
“He’s a warrior who knows how to finish a fight.” Bo-Katan countered, straightening up and crossing her armored arms over her chest, her expression completely untroubled by Satine's distress. “If you ask me, he deserves a medal. Or at the very least, a seat on the clan council. If he keeps this up, the Death Watch won't even be a threat by next sector rotation. They’ll be too terrified to step foot on Mandalore.”
Satine slowly sank back into her high-backed chair, feeling a cold, hollow weight settle deep into her chest. She stared at her sister, realizing with absolute certainty that she was entirely alone in her quest for a peaceful, civilized family dynamic. The radical, violence-loving zealot she had spent her entire adult life trying to civilize was currently running her senatorial delegation, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
She sat there in a state of profound, suffocating existential dread, deeply regretting every single life choice that had brought her to this specific moment. Chief among those regrets was making Bo-Katan Mandalore's official senatorial representative to the Galactic Republic.
In her own defense, Satine couldn't exactly do it herself; she was the ruling Duchess, tied to the homeworld by an endless mountain of administrative duties. And it certainly couldn't have been Prime Minister Almec. She had needed him to stay behind on Sundari to handle... prime ministry things.
She honestly had no earthly idea what Almec actually did on a daily basis besides wear elaborate shoulder pads and sign logistics invoices, but he seemed entirely too busy to be sent to Coruscant.
So, she had chosen Bo-Katan, foolishly hoping that the clean, structured halls of the Galactic Senate would soften her sister's militant edge. Instead, her sister had turned the senatorial suite into an improvised weapons gym, and her secret son was currently restructuring the galaxy's power balance through sheer, unadulterated violence.
Satine picked up her teacup again, her hand shaking slightly as she realized that no amount of tish-tea was ever going to fix the absolute disaster that was the House of Kryze.
…
A heavy, distorted bassline was currently vibrating the grease-stained floorboards of our secret undercity safehouse. Maris had found an underground pirate station broadcasting a delightfully obnoxious blend of Coruscant industrial metal and Outer Rim synth-screams, and she had insisted on cranking the volume high enough to rattle the cheap light fixtures.
Honestly, it was a massive part of why we had rented this terrible, moisture-ridden flat down on Level 1313 in the first place. Trying to run a shadow Sith Empire from the cozy, meditative dormitories of the Jedi Temple was an absolute logistical nightmare, mostly because the neighbors there had an incredibly low tolerance for unholy holocron chanting and late-night clandestine plotting.
Down here, our neighbors consisted of an illegal spice-refiner, a washed-up bounty hunter who spent his nights screaming at his wall-vids, and a broken pit droid that randomly banged its head against the pipes. We could have blasted the Imperial March at maximum volume while slaughtering a room full of younglings, and nobody would have even bothered to knock on the door.
I sat back on a heavily frayed, structural-foam couch, my bare feet resting on a rusted ammunition crate that doubled as a coffee table. I was wearing a pair of incredibly comfortable, oversized fleece lounge pants and a faded grey undershirt—a stark contrast to the heavy, pristine Jedi tunics I had been suffocating in all week.
I carefully balanced a plastic container of dripping, overly sauced lower-level street noodles on my lap, maneuvering a pair of cheap wooden chopsticks with one hand while using my free foot to nudge a stray wire dangling from our black-market holo-transmitter.
Maris was slouched in a sagging armchair across from me, her pale skin catching the flickering green light of the stereo console as she chewed on a sweet-cake, her black-painted fingernails tapping perfectly in time with the horrific screeching of the music.
With a low, mechanical hum, the central holo-projector sputtered to life, casting a massive, flickering blue light right in the middle of our cramped living room. The industrial music didn't even drop in volume as the towering, semi-translucent figure of Aurra Sing stabilized in the beam. To the rest of the galaxy, she was a terrifyingly lethal mercenary who had vanished from the standard bounty hunter rosters.
To us, she was Darth Song, the premier enforcer and highest-ranking non-droid member of our secret Sith Council. She was currently wearing her standard combat gear, but she had a thick, dark cloak draped over her shoulders to maintain the edgy, mysterious aesthetic we had strictly mandated for all official empire business.
She still didn't know our real faces, her whole mental image of us consisted of our fully masked Sith personas, Darth Sol and Darth Nox. As far as she was concerned, she was reporting directly to a pair of ancient, terrifyingly powerful Dark Side entities who just happened to operate out of a location that smelled faintly of cheap deep-fried seafood.
“My Lords.” Aurra said, her holographic form bowing low, her cybernetic antenna twitching slightly as the deafening bass from Maris’s stereo threatened to distort her audio feed. “The transition of power in the Outer Rim continues without major friction. The syndicates on Tatooine have entirely accepted the new tariff structure. Anyone who expressed nostalgia for Jabba’s leadership has been quietly reintroduced to the local wildlife. The Rancor may be gone, but the Sarlacc is still eating quite well.”
“Excellent.” I said, speaking through a simple vocal-modulator app I had running on my datapad, which turned my teenage voice into a deep, gravelly, throat-tearing rumble that sounded like a demon gargling broken glass. I stuffed a massive clump of noodles into my mouth, chewing aggressively while trying to look imposing from my spot on the couch. “And what of our planetary expansions?”
“The garrisons on Jakku and Dantooine are fully operational.” Aurra reported, flicking her wrist to bring up a series of scrolling logistics charts that hovered beside her. “The PROXY droids are maintaining the illusion of your physical presence perfectly. The local populations actually believe Darth Sol is conducting a personal inspection of the Dantooine ruins as we speak. Meanwhile, the automated repair yards are making steady progress with the Katana fleet dreadnoughts. We’ve managed to bring three more heavy cruisers into active patrol status without alerting Republic scouting vessels.”
“Good. Keep the production lines moving.” I rumbled, swallowing my food and washing it down with a swig of generic space-soda.
I set the noodle box down and pulled up a private, heavily encrypted text file on my personal datapad—my literal canon cheat sheet for the galaxy. My eyes skimmed through the upcoming chronological events of the Clone Wars, checking the boxes I had already thoroughly broken.
I had saved R2-D2. I had completely bypassed the whole 'lost astromech' plotline. I had saved the Republic from losing its entire tactical database, and I had personally pocketed five hundred credits from a shady pawn shop. It was a massive win. I was a genius.
Then, my eyes hit the very next line of the timeline notes, and my stomach completely dropped.
The Skytop Station Raid.
I froze, my chopsticks hovering inches from my face as a cold sweat broke out across my neck. My mind raced through the narrative cause-and-effect of the original timeline. In the actual show, the entire reason the Jedi discovered General Grievous’s top-secret, heavily fortified listening post was because they were tracking R2-D2’s missing tracking beacon.
But now? Artoo was currently sitting safely in the Temple hangar bay getting a luxurious oil massage. The Republic didn't even know Skytop Station existed.
If the Republic didn't know it existed, they would never raid it. If they never raided it, Grievous would keep using that massive listening post to intercept every single top-secret Republic military transmission. The Separatists would anticipate every single clone movement, accelerating the war, and probably resulting in the catastrophic deaths of half the Jedi Council before the year was out.
My brilliant, universe-saving butterfly effect had just accidentally handed the Separatists a permanent, undetectable tactical monopoly over the entire galactic war effort.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” I muttered under my breath, completely forgetting to use the vocal modulator.
Maris stopped chewing her sweet-cake, her sharp eyes darting over to me as she noticed the sudden, frantic panic radiating through my Force signature. “What’s wrong? Did the pawn shop guy trace the credits back to us?”
“No, worse.” I said, tapping the screen of my datapad with a trembling finger as I stared at the holographic map of the galaxy. “We have a massive roadblock. Grievous has a hidden listening post in orbit over the moon of Ruusan. It’s actively spying on the entire Republic fleet network.”
“So? Let them spy.” Maris said, shrugging her shoulders with complete indifference as she leaned back in her chair. “It makes the Republic look incompetent, which helps our Sith Empire look better by comparison.”
“Maris, if they keep spying, they’re going to intercept our secret Katana fleet movements too.” I pointed out, leaning forward and glaring at her. “And more importantly, if the Separatists win the war too early because they’re cheating, the entire galaxy goes down the drain before we’re ready to take over. We need Skytop Station gone. But the Republic doesn't know where it is, and I can't exactly walk up to Master Yoda and say, 'Hey, a magical space vision told me the exact coordinates of a Separatist spy base, let's go blow it up.' He’s already suspicious enough after Toydaria.”
Aurra Sing stood silently within the blue light of the projector, her arms crossed, watching the two of us argue. She didn't say a word about the fact that her terrifying Sith Lords were currently dressed like lazy college students, nor did she question my sudden, precise knowledge of a secret Separatist military installation. She was entirely used to our bizarre eccentricities by now, as long as the credits kept flowing into her account.
I rubbed my face with both hands, letting out a long, exhausted groan. I had to manipulate the timeline back into place, and I had to do it without leaving a single fingerprint on the source. I looked up at the towering hologram of our bounty hunter enforcer, my fingers tapping a quick sequence into the vocal modulator to bring the demonic, rumbling voice back online.
“Darth Song.” I rumbled, leaning forward so the shadow of the couch fell across my face. “We have an immediate assignment for you. It requires a delicate touch. A matter of... corporate espionage.”
“I am listening, Darth Sol.” Aurra said, her eyes narrowing with professional interest.
“There is a Separatist listening post in the Ruusan system.” I said, copying the exact, top-secret spatial coordinates from my timeline notes and uploading them directly to her holocron receiver. “The Republic needs to destroy it, but they are entirely blind to its existence. I need you to leak these coordinates directly to Republic Military Intelligence on Coruscant.”
Aurra tilted her head, her cybernetic antenna whirring as she processed the data file. “You want me to hand a Separatist military secret to the Republic? Directly?”
“Not directly, obviously.” I said, rolling my eyes at the lack of imagination. “Use your underworld connections. Create a fake data-pad trail. Make it look like a mid-level Smuggler stole the encryption keys from a drunk Separatist logistics officer in a cantina on Corellia. Sell the data to a low-level Republic informant for a few thousand credits. Make sure it reaches the desk of the clone intelligence officers within the next twelve hours. It must look like an organic, sloppy leak from the Separatist side.”
Aurra looked down at the coordinates, a slow, professional smile pulling at the corner of her mouth as she realized the sheer chaotic beauty of the plan. “Consider it done, my Lord. The Republic will think they pulled off the intelligence heist of the century. They won't suspect a thing.”
“Excellent. See to it immediately. Darth Sol out.” I rumbled, slamming my hand down on the terminal to cut the transmission.
The holographic light flickered out, plunging our living room back into the dim, neon-green glow of the stereo system. The heavy industrial music was still thumping away, filling the silence of the flat. I let out a massive, dramatic sigh, slumping straight back into the cushions of the couch, and picked my chopsticks back up.
I was effectively orchestrating a massive, high-stakes military raid against a Separatist stronghold, ensuring the safety of the entire Grand Army of the Republic, all while sitting in my pajamas eating lower-level takeout noodles on Level 1313.
“You know,” Maris said, reaching over to turn the music down just a fraction so she didn't have to shout. “For a guy who’s supposedly trying to conquer the galaxy as a dark lord of the Sith, you spend a shocking amount of time doing the Republic’s work for them.”
“Shut up, Maris.” I said, shoving another mouthful of noodles into my face. “The dark side works in mysterious ways.”
…
The flickering blue light of the briefing room’s holoprojector danced across Ahsoka Tano’s eyes, but the brilliant display of Republic intelligence wasn't doing anything to soothe the sharp twitch developing in her montrals.
Hovering in the center of the dark chamber was a massive, rotating schematic of a Separatist listening post, designated Skytop Station, hanging over the moon of Ruusan.
The “anonymous underworld leak” that had landed on the desk of Republic Command twelve hours ago had been utterly flawless, giving them the exact sector coordinates, shield frequencies, and patrol rotations. It was a tactical goldmine.
Anakin was already pacing the perimeter of the holo-table like a caged akk dog, his chest puffed out, a triumphant grin plastered across his face as he rehearsed the opening lines of what would undoubtedly be a very long, very loud pre-battle speech to the 501st.
Ahsoka, however, was barely listening to her master’s grand strategy. She was vibrating with excitement, her fingers resting lightly on the twin hilts of her green lightsabers. She had already mentally grouped herself, Ben, and Maris into their usual dynamic trio. After the absolute nightmare of the Malevolence rescue, throwing the three of them into a stealth raid against a massive droid space station sounded like a vacation.
They would sneak in, Maris would make some profoundly snarky, dark comment about the interior decorating, Ben would execute some terrifyingly hyper-competent maneuver that completely broke the Separatist defense parameters, and they’d be back at the Temple in time for dinner. It was a perfect plan.
“An infiltration group, General Skywalker will lead.” Master Yoda’s raspy voice broke through the low hum of the projector, drawing Ahsoka out of her tactical daydream. The Grand Master was resting both hands on his gnarled gimer stick, his large ears drooping slightly as his ancient, heavy eyes turned away from Anakin and locked directly onto Ben Kryze. “But join him on this mission, you will not, Padawan Kryze. Remain at the Temple, you must.”
Ahsoka’s heart completely dropped, her montrals twitching violently in pure, unadulterated disappointment. She snapped her gaze toward Ben, who was standing a few feet away with his arms crossed inside his oversized Jedi sleeves, looking entirely unsurprised by the sudden benching.
“With all due respect, Master Yoda, I’m perfectly fit for duty.” Ben said, his deadpan voice carrying that familiar, exhaustion-tainted weight that usually meant he had spent the previous night doing something highly classified and probably illegal. “Grievous is down a few limbs and a lung. If we strike now, we can wrap this whole station up before the end of the rotation.”
“Fit in body, perhaps you are.” Yoda countered, tapping his stick sharply against the polished floorboards, the sound echoing ominously in the quiet room. “But unsettled, your spirit remains. Great brutality, you showed during the rescue of the Duchess. Restraint, a Jedi must practice. Heal your spirit, you must, before back to the fires of war, you go. Meditate on your actions, you will.”
Ahsoka felt a wave of profound, sympathetic irritation rising in her chest.
It was the classic, cryptic, deeply annoying Jedi Council philosophy that always seemed to target the people who actually got things done. Ben had literally saved the Duchess and Padmé, utterly crippled the Separatist supreme commander, and destroyed a massive superweapon, and his grand reward was being forced to sit in a quiet room and stare at a wall because he didn't do it politely enough.
It was completely unfair. She shot a desperate, pleading look toward Obi-Wan Kenobi, hoping the newly appointed Council member would inject some baseline logic into the room.
Obi-Wan merely let out a slow, deeply tired sigh, stroking his auburn beard as he glanced toward his own Padawan, Maris Brood. “I’m afraid Master Yoda is correct, Ben. And you won't be the only one staying behind on Coruscant. Maris and I have just received a rather urgent directive from the Temple logistics committee. A matter of internal ecology.”
Maris, who was currently leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, looking like she wanted to personally set the holoprojector on fire, raised a single, skeptical eyebrow. “An internal ecology directive? Please tell me we aren't clearing out the ventilation shafts again.”
“Worse, I’m afraid.” Obi-Wan said, coughing slightly into his hand to hide a look of profound embarrassment. “A massive, unaccountable depletion has occurred in the Temple Gardens. The local population of rare Naboo swamp frogs has completely vanished over the last month. We have been tasked with traveling to the lower-level hydroponic sectors to secure a fresh breeding population and completely resupply the habitat.”
The moment the words swamp frogs left Obi-Wan’s mouth, Master Yoda’s ears pricked up, and he turned his head with an agonizingly slow, deliberate motion to glare directly at Maris. The ancient Grand Master looked like a soul possessed by a deeply personal, unending grudge.
Maris didn't flinch.
She just stared right back at him, her pale face a perfect, unreadable mask of absolute innocence, though her Force signature flared with a sudden, wicked spike of pure mischief. Ahsoka bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing out loud.
Everyone in the Temple knew Maris had been systematically stealing those frogs for months—mostly to keep in a terrarium under her bunk or release them into the senior Knights' laundry chutes just to hear them scream—and Yoda clearly knew it too. But the Grand Master couldn't prove a single thing, which was clearly driving him completely out of his mind.
“A mystery, it is.” Yoda grumbled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly whisper as he continued to stare daggers at Maris. “Vanished, they have. Love those frogs, I do. Find the culprit, we will. But until then... help your master, you must, Padawan Brood.”
“Of course, Master Yoda. I’ll make sure we find some exceptionally loud ones.” Maris said, offering a flawless, entirely sarcastic bow that practically dripped with malicious compliance.
Ahsoka’s amusement evaporated a second later as Anakin clapped his mechanical hand onto her shoulder, snapping her back to the grim reality of her situation. “Well, Snips, looks like it’s just you and me for this one. Get the 501st loaded into the gunships. We leave in twenty.”
“Right away, Master.” Ahsoka muttered, her voice hollow.
As the briefing room began to clear out, Ahsoka walked down the grand, echoing corridors of the Temple toward the hangar bay, her boots clicking a lonely, depressing rhythm on the polished marble. She was utterly miserable.
Her thoughts turned into a swirling vortex of deep longing and intense, baseline irritation. It wasn't that she was joined at the hip with Ben, obviously. She was a professional Padawan, a commander in the Grand Army of the Republic, entirely capable of leading a legion of clones into a hostile warzone. She didn't need him there.
But Force, she missed him so much it made her montrals twitch with an actual, physical ache.
Anakin was a brilliant general, sure, but he was also an absolute nightmare to travel with when he didn't have a foil. He was already pacing around the hangar, loudly practicing his opening battle speeches to Captain Rex, gesturing wildly with his robotic hand, and adjusting his robes for maximum dramatic effect.
Going into a heavily fortified Separatist base without Ben’s crazy, mind-boggling competence felt exactly like trying to walk a high-tension tightrope over a Coruscant chasm without a safety net. When Ben was around, things just... worked out.
He had this bizarre, almost precognitive ability to anticipate every single disaster before it happened, cutting through the overcomplicated military bureaucracy with a dry, deadpan sarcasm that always kept her grounded. Without him, she was just a teenager trapped in a massive galactic war, forced to watch her master pull reckless stunts while she held her breath and prayed they didn't all blow up.
She dragged her feet as she approached the boarding ramp of the Republic gunship, looking back over her shoulder one last time toward the quiet, serene spires of the Temple, deeply wishing she was currently hunting illegal swamp frogs in a damp lower-level gutter instead of flying straight into a droid hornets' nest.
…
The smoking, sparks-shattered ruins of Skytop Station’s main control room hissed with venting coolant, but the absolute lack of an annoying, gold-plated astromech droid sabotaging their escape route made the destruction feel remarkably clean. Assuming Ben was actually right about that part, and the droid was a traitor… which she was starting to suspect he might be.
The infiltration had gone off completely without a hitch.
Rex and the 501st had pulled off a flawless, textbook breach through the lower hangar bay, entirely unbothered by the internal security glitches or sudden blast-door locks that usually plagued Anakin’s operations. The explosive charges were already ticked down to less than three minutes, and the terminal’s main core was melting into a lovely sludge of slagged circuitry.
Ahsoka stepped over the deactivated chassis of a super battle droid, her green lightsaber humming a steady, comforting rhythm in her hand as she scanned the smoke-choked exits. Anakin had already sprinted down the primary corridor to clear a path to the twilight-lit landing pad where their twilight-class freighter was idling. She was supposed to be right on his heels, but a sudden, massive spike of pure, unadulterated malice in the Force made her stop dead in her tracks.
The heavy, mechanical scraping of metal claws dragging across durasteel echoed through the vaulted ceiling, and then, a hulking silhouette dropped straight through the ruptured exhaust ducting.
General Grievous landed with a violent, room-shaking thud, the floorplates groaning under his massive cybernetic weight. Ahsoka instinctively fell into a defensive Shien guard, her green plasma blade casting sharp, jade shadows across her face as she took in her opponent.
The Separatist supreme commander had clearly undergone a thorough post-rescue overhaul; he was entirely back to stud, sporting a fresh set of gleaming, pristine chrome replacement arms to replace the ones Ben had brutally hacked off during their last encounter. His posture was rigid, his mechanical shoulders squared, and the brilliant yellow of his reptilian eyes was entirely consumed by a furious, bloodshot rage.
“General Skywalker’s little pet.” Grievous hissed, his internal vocoder rattling with a deep, menacing vibration as he unclipped four separate lightsabers from his hip, his mechanical arms splitting apart with a sequence of wet, hydraulic clicks. “The boy Kryze is not here to save you, child. I shall add your weapon to my collection before this station fractures into dust.”
With a sudden, deafening mechanical roar, he ignited all four blades—two brilliant blue, two searing green—and began to spin his wrists with terrifying velocity. The rotating plasma created a blinding, buzzing wall of absolute death, a sensory overload of heat and noise that tore into the surrounding computer consoles, sending bright fountains of white-hot sparks showering across the room.
He advanced on her like a grinding, mechanical thresher, the sheer kinetic pressure of his assault enough to back any standard Padawan into a corner of pure panic.
Ahsoka stared at the spinning wall of doom, her fingers tightening around her hilt as the intense heat washed over her face. In any normal situation, she would have engaged her standard forms, flipping across the consoles, trying to find a gap in his theatrical defense, and probably risking her life in a desperate fencing match.
But then, a clear, incredibly deadpan voice echoed right through the forefront of her memory. It was the exact advice Ben had given her during their last training session in the Temple yards, delivered with that completely flat, entirely unbothered expression of his: “Don't fence him, Snips. Seriously, don't play his game. He's a cyborg with asthma. Just cheat.”
A sudden, hilariously inappropriate wave of traditional Jedi guilt washed through her mind.
She actually felt a fleeting moment of genuine hesitation, an internal voice whispering that utilizing an absolute, overwhelming telekinetic strike on an opponent’s life-support apparatus technically bordered on picking on the disabled. It felt a little unsporting, maybe a tiny bit mean-spirited, to target a guy’s cybernetic respirator.
She shrugged it off in a fraction of a second. The man was a genocidal warlord trying to turn her into a trophy; sportsmanship was completely overrated.
Ahsoka dropped her lightsaber guard entirely, planted both feet firmly into the debris-strewn floor, and thrust both hands forward with a massive, concentrated burst of the Force. She didn't aim to push him backward, nor did she try to disarm him. Instead, she channeled every ounce of her mental strength into a precise, agonizingly tight telekinetic clamp, wrapping an invisible, crushing vice directly around his brand-new, polished chrome chest plates.
CRUNCH.
The beautiful, pristine metal armor buckled inward with a sharp, catastrophic groan of collapsing alloy. Grievous’s grand, theatrical spinning routine stopped instantly. The four lightsabers sputtered and died, slipping from his mechanical fingers to clatter uselessly onto the floor as his entire towering frame collapsed forward onto his knees.
An incredibly wet, horrific, metallic wheeze tore out of his internal vocoder, followed by a violent explosion of pathetic, fluid-choked hacking. The supreme commander was literally trembling, his mechanical hands clutching at his severely dented ribcage as his organic lungs struggled to expand beneath the crushed framework.
The look in his yellow eyes wasn't just rage anymore; it was an expression of profound, soul-deep exhaustion. He was absolutely, completely sick to death of Republic teenagers doing this to his chest. It was becoming an incredibly embarrassing, highly repetitive tactical pattern, and his organic components simply couldn't handle another trip to the medical bay.
Before Ahsoka could even think about delivering a finishing blow, Grievous released a thick, blinding cloud of emergency smoke from his shoulder vents, completely obscuring the room in a grey shroud. A second later, a pair of heavy emergency grappling cables shot out from his wrists, hooking onto the high ceiling structure.
With a pathetic, wet cough, he hoisted himself up into the darkness, retreating through the broken ductwork like a thoroughly broken, lopsided spider.
Ahsoka didn't bother chasing him.
She turned on her heel and bolted down the dissolving corridor, sprinting through the collapsing entryways just as the first major secondary explosions began to rip the station apart. She burst out onto the landing pad, her robes flying behind her, and leapt directly into the open cargo bay of the Twilight freighter just as Anakin slammed the thrusters into full throttle, lifting them away into the safety of hyperspace while Skytop Station blossomed into a beautiful, quiet fireball in the rearview monitors.
She collapsed against a storage crate in the hold, letting out a long, breathless laugh as the adrenaline began to fade, leaving her with a magnificent sense of bittersweet victory. She absolutely could not wait to get back to Coruscant, bypass whatever boring, frog-catching or meditative lecture the Council was hosting, and tell Ben that his hilariously un-Jedi-like strategy worked like a complete charm.