The sound made them pause. One of them turned toward her. His rifle stayed half raised. "Commander?," he said. He looked to the Clone Sergeant. "What do we do sir, does protocol apply here?"
Scout frowned and raised her saber higher. "What protocol? Stand down right now!"
The lead trooper hesitated for a moment. Then he spoke. "You know the protocol boys, no exceptions. We have no choice."
Every soldier turned their rifle on her.
The lead trooper said one more word. "Sorry Commander."
The shots came all at once.
She moved without thinking. Her arms lifted, and the saber swung in front of her. The bolts struck the blade and bounced off in bursts of blue light. Each one hit with a hard jolt but she kept blocking, moving her wrists in a quick flourish sending a few bolts back into the walls. One blast grazed her shoulder. She felt the heat bite through her sleeve and clenched her jaw against the pain. She took a step back, then another, keeping the saber up. The clones kept firing intent on killing her as they aimed for vital spots. She turned the blade and deflected as many as she could while dodging the rest. She spotted a pipe above her and swung to redirect a shot into it. The impact split the pipe open. Steam poured out, filling the corridor.
She turned and ran.
Her boots hit the floor hard as she pushed herself forward her saber still in her hand. The sound of shouts followed her but grew fainter as she ran farther away. When she couldn't hear them anymore, she slowed down. She ducked into a side passage and leaned against the wall, her chest rising and falling in quick bursts. She turned the saber off. The darkness closed in around her. Her head dropped slightly. "What is happening?" she whispered. Her own voice echoed back at her, and she stood there for a long moment, trying to think of what to do next.
But she felt a prickling warning crawl up her spine and knew more clones were coming. She turned and ran from where she stood, her boots pounding the deck as she let the Force flow through her senses, mapping the corridors around her in her mind. She pictured the layout ahead, turns and junctions appearing like lines on a holomap, and she sensed the clones' positions, their boots echoing in her awareness before she heard them. She veered left at the next intersection, avoiding a squad she felt marching from the right.
She kept running, the Force sharpening her hearing to pick up distant shouts and the click of blasters charging, letting her dodge another group by slipping into a side passage. She climbed a maintenance ladder when she sensed patrols below. She dropped into a new corridor and paused, feeling the net tightening around her as cloned began converging from multiple directions. She knew she would get surrounded soon if she did not act.
She ignited her lightsaber, the blue blade humming in her grip, and charged toward the nearest group she sensed. She burst into a junction where six clones waited with their rifles raised. She deflected their first volley, her blade spinning to send bolts back into two of them, the shots punching through armor and dropping them. She leaped forward, slashing across another's chest, the cauterized wound felling him as she rolled under a third's fire. She came up thrusting, her saber piercing a fourth's shoulder and twisting out. The remaining two backed away while firing constantly, but she parried and advanced, cutting one's rifle in half before kicking him into the wall.
More clones poured in from side doors all of them firing blaster bolts and forcing her into a corner, her saber a blur as she blocked and deflected the bolts as much as she could. She Force-pushed one away making them stumble back, but others closed the gap, their shots grazing her tunic and burning her arm. She spun and slashed, taking down three more, but the numbers overwhelmed her, forcing her against the bulkhead, her breaths coming fast as she parried desperately.
A clone lunged with a vibroblade, and she blocked it, but another kicked her knee, buckling her leg. She fell to one side, her saber sweeping to sever his ankles, but pain shot through her as a bolt clipped her shoulder. She rose, deflecting more fire, but they circled her, rifles trained and ready to fire. She prepared to fight for her life when, when a massive Force blast erupted from the corridor behind her.
Vaylin stood there, her hand extended, the blast shattering the hallway in a wave of power that threw every clone down the passage. Shrapnel from ruptured panels shredded them mid-air, metal tearing through armor and flesh as they flew, bodies crumpling in heaps at the far end.
Vaylin grabbed Scout's arm, pulling her up. "Come with me."
Scout stared at Vaylin for a moment, confusion clouding her face as she processed what she had just seen. Vaylin had used the Force to blast the clones away, a power Scout knew the Vaylin she traveled with did not have. Her hand tightened on her lightsaber hilt, and she raised the blade toward Vaylin, the blue glow casting shadows between them. Scout knew Vaylin was responsible for Velea's death, at least the side of her that was a Sith. She did not know all the details of what happened on the Eternal horizon, but the fact Vaylin could use the Force meant this was not the same person she knew anymore. The Vaylin she trusted had no connection to the dark side, no ability to wield it like this.
Vaylin looked at Scout and sighed. "Scout, it is not what you—"
Scout slashed at her before Vaylin could finish, the blade cutting through the air where Vaylin stood a second before. Vaylin dodged to the side avoiding the slash as easily as breathing. "Scout, stop," Vaylin said. She caught Scout's wrist in her hand and held it, stopping the next swing cold.
"I am not the Sith you think I am," Vaylin said.
"Liar," Scout said loudly. .
"It is complicated, but I need you to trust me," Vaylin said. "We are all in great danger here. Not just us, but Aubrie, Zule, and Master Fay."
Scout frowned. She knew it would be unwise to trust a Sith, but this was still Vaylin, and part of her wanted to believe her. The person who had traveled with them, shared meals, fought beside them was the person before her, that this could not all be a lie. She extinguished her lightsaber, the blade retracting with a snap.
"Okay," Scout said. "... I will trust you."
Vaylin let go of her wrist and nodded. "Come on."
Scout walked with her down the corridor, her steps matching Vaylin's quick pace. "Where are we going?"
"To find the others," Vaylin said.
Scout nodded. "We will have an easier time if we go to the main sensor room."
Vaylin looked at her and smiled a little. "I am glad you said that. I was not sure where to start with finding them." Vaylin could sense the others on the station through the Force, but she struggled to find their exact locations. The dark presence of her old master clouded everything, making it hard to pinpoint friends.
Scout glanced at Vaylin as they walked. "How are you able to use the Force?"
"Can we speak about this later?" She asked.
Scout refused. "Tell me now."
Vaylin sighed as they moved through the corridors. "Fine... long story short, On Teth, my mind was close to breaking. The Vaylin you knew was close to disappearing and being changed into Darth Tenebra forever."
They ran into more clones then, a squad turning the corner with rifles raised. Vaylin raised her hand, and the clones lifted off the ground, their bodies slamming into walls and ceiling before dropping in broken heaps, necks twisted at wrong angles.
She continued without stopping. "I used a very intensive neurological treatment. After it ended, it combined both of us. So I am now one person. Both Vaylin and Darth Tenebra, and neither of them."
Scout listened, her mind piecing it together. She understood the idea of two sides merging, but uncertainty lingered. "Do you still want to hurt Jaden?"
"No... while I may have wanted to when I was Darth Tenebra it wasn't anything personal, it was just my old master manipulating me, I've never truly wanted to hurt him.." Vaylin shook her head. After a moment, she spoke again. "And for a while I thought about leaving after it happened. But I cannot bring myself to do so. Despite combining with my darker half, I still care deeply about all of you."
Scout smiled at that. She put her hand on Vaylin's shoulder. "I am glad you did not leave."
After a while of walking they finally reached the main sensor room. Vaylin raised her hand, and the door ripped open with a screech of metal, panels bending outward. They stepped inside, the room filled with consoles and screens flickering in the room. Scout rushed to the terminal in the main sensor room and started pressing buttons to access it, but the screen kept showing error messages that blocked her every time she tried a command. She knelt down and opened the panel under the terminal with her hands, pulling out wires and looking at the circuits inside until she found the security bypass she needed. She connected a red wire to a blue one and twisted them together, then pressed a small switch she saw hidden behind a cover, and the terminal beeped as it let her in. She stood up and typed fast to get to the security logs, her fingers moving over the keys without stopping until the files opened and showed her what she wanted.
Vaylin watched her and asked, "What did you find?"
Scout didn't look away from the display. "Someone did this on purpose. They overloaded a bunch of systems, probably to make it look random. That's what caused the first explosions. They also cut off all comms. No one can send out a distress call and it seems that a special protocol has been activated, it's the reason why the clones have been attacking us. In order to stop anyone from getting their hands on experimental weapons the clones are ordered to kill everyone on the station."
Vaylin crossed her arms and said,"So? What now?"
Scout nodded and scrolled through more files, her face getting tighter as she read. She stopped and looked at Vaylin. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"
Vaylin raised an eyebrow and waited.
Scout tapped the terminal and brought up a new screen. "The station is in full lockdown. Every ship is held down by mag-clamps. But in lockdown, they don't just hold the ship in place. They act like energy sinks. If you try to start an engine, the clamps pull the power out before it can fire. You could sit in the cockpit all day and nothing would happen."
Vaylin looked at the diagram. "So even if we get to a ship, we're stuck?"
Scout nodded. "Unless we find a way to shut down the entire docking system manually. And even then, we'd have to do it fast."
Vaylin frowned and said, "That is a problem."
She then asked, "What is the good news?"
Scout looked at her straight. "That was the good news."
Vaylin sighed. "What is the bad news then?"
Scout typed again. Another window popped up, this one full of system alerts. "The first explosions didn't hit anything important right away. They were aimed at secondary systems under the main grid. That caused power surges in the primary lines. Which caused more failures. The chain reaction is still going."
Vaylin's mouth opened, but nothing came out. Scout pressed another key. A warning filled the top of the screen in bright red. The words blinked over and over: GRAVITATIONAL CONTAINMENT INSTABILITY DETECTED. Gravitational containment failure.
She looked at Scout. "Does that mean what I think it means?"
Scout gave a slow nod. "If we don't stop this soon or get out somehow, the containment field will collapse. Gravity will do the rest."
Vaylin went quiet. Then she started biting her thumbnail, eyes scanning the room. "How long do we have?"
"I don't know. Could be an hour. Could be ten minutes. There's no countdown yet."
Vaylin lowered her hand. "Start looking for the others. We need to regroup."
Scout nodded and opened the camera feeds. She clicked through one view after another, searching every hallway and bay she could. One of the feeds showed movement. She zoomed in.
"There," she said.
The camera showed Aubrie, Master Fay, and Zule running through a corridor. Scout leaned closer, watching them glance over their shoulders. Their expressions weren't just scared they were running from something.
Scout pointed at the screen. "What are they running from? Clones?"
She zoomed the camera and saw the floor behind them tear up in long lines. A cloaked figure walked after them, his hand out as the metal ripped apart.
Scout swallowed. "That's not a clone."
Vaylin felt anger build inside her. The room groaned as metal bent around her without her touching it. Her anger pushed out and made things move.
She looked at Scout. "Come on. Let us go."
_____________________________________
Aubrie ignited her lightsaber and slashed through the first clone who rounded the corner, the blue blade cutting across his chest as he fell. Zule followed right behind her, her saber humming as she blocked a bolt from another clone and thrust forward to pierce his armor. Clones poured in from side passages, their blasters firing in rapid bursts that forced Aubrie to spin and deflect, sending shots back into their ranks where one hit a helmet and dropped the shooter. Master Fay moved with them but kept her lightsaber sheathed as she did most of the time, her hands raised as she pushed clones aside with invisible waves that slammed them into walls and cleared a path.
Aubrie's heart pounded as she parried another volley, her arms aching from the constant motion while she backed away from the advancing group. "What do we do? There are too many we can't keep this up!"
Zule decapitated a clone who got too close and kicked his body into the others to slow them. "We need to get to the ship and try to contact Scout and Vaylin."
Aubrie blocked a shot that grazed her shoulder and winced at the burn. "We can't, we have to find Scout first. Something is interfering with the ships' engines they won't start and I have no clue as to why."
Zule swept her saber to take out two clones' legs and stood over them as she shouted back. "We cannot look for Scout if we are being followed. We need to deal with the Sith first or he will hunt us all down."
Aubrie deflected bolts into the ceiling to bring debris down on a cluster of clones and create a barrier. "We cannot do that Zule I told you it is suicide. He is too powerful I saw what he did to SD8 and the others and to me..."
Zule pushed forward with a series of strikes that cut down three clones in quick succession. "Running will not save us. We will face him eventually."
Aubrie's voice rose in panic as she parried and retreated. "Facing him means we die now. We need a real plan, we can't just go in winging it."
They argued louder while fighting, their sabers clashing against blaster fire, clones falling around them but more replacing the losses. Master Fay raised her hands and sent a wave that bowled over a line of clones, giving them space to breathe. She stepped between Aubrie and Zule. "Stop this. Fear and anger will not serve us in this situation. They cloud judgment and lead to mistakes."
Aubrie deactivated her saber for a moment to catch her breath, her chest heaving. "What should we do then Master? We cannot beat him. He is too powerful."
Master Fay met her eyes steadily. "Power is not always everything. Come with me. I have a plan." She turned and led them down a side passage, away from the clones who regrouped behind. Aubrie and Zule followed, reactivating their sabers to cut down any clones who pursued.
They reached a cargo bay, the doors sliding open as Fay waved her hand. Inside, crates lined the walls, and shuttle parts sat in disassembly. Fay closed the doors behind them and sealed them with another gesture. "From what I remember the last time I was here, these cargo bays are on separate systems. They are designed to be disconnected from the station to prevent a possible containment leak."
Zule smirked as she wiped sweat from her brow. "You are going to jettison him into the sun."
"Indeed," Fay said.
Aubrie approved of the plan and nodded. "It could work. We lure him here and detach the bay."
Fay told them to take her hands first. "I need to hide us all from his senses."
...
Darth Sidious walked down the corridor while he killed anyone who crossed his path. He raised one hand and crushed a technician's throat from a distance, the man's neck snapping inward as his eyes bulged and he dropped choking on blood. Another engineer ran at him with a tool raised, but Sidious gestured and the man's body twisted until his spine broke with a crack, limbs flopping useless as he fell. A clone fired a blaster, the bolt flying toward Sidious, but he caught it in his palm and sent it back through the clone's visor, the helmet exploding outward in fragments as the body slumped. He stepped over the corpses without slowing, his cloak trailing behind him as he moved.
He stretched his senses out to find the fleeing Jedi and felt them still running ahead. He grinned, teeth showing in the red light, and went faster, his steps quickening as he pursued them through the twisting passages. He turned corners and passed more bodies, engineers and clones scattered like broken toys. He sensed the Jedi leading him somewhere specific. He followed without hurry at first, then increased his pace when he realized they headed to a cargo bay.
He reached the entrance and stepped inside, looking around at the large space filled with numerous crates stacked high and large shelving units lining the walls. He walked further in, his boots echoing on the deck as he scanned the area, sensing the Jedi hidden among the shadows but unable to pinpoint them exactly.
He began to talk. "You have managed to hide yourselves from me. That must mean you have a very skilled master if she can conceal you all in the Force."
He paused and turned slowly, eyes narrowing as he searched the crates. "But it is not enough. I can sense your fear. It clings to the air like smoke. You tremble behind your barriers, thinking it will save you. It will not."
He laughed, the sound echoing off the metal walls. "Come out, little Jedi. Face what you cannot escape. Your lightsabers will shatter against me. Your bodies will break like the bodies I left behind. I will peel your minds open and watch you scream as I take everything you hold dear."
He walked deeper, passing a row of crates, his hand trailing along one as he spoke again. "Think of your friends. The ones still running. I will find them next. I will make them beg before I end them. And Jaden, ah, Jaden. That boy thought he could hide in the Unknown Regions, playing explorer with all of you. But I know where he is. I know every step he takes. When I finish here, I will go to him. I will break him slowly."
He stopped in the center of the bay, turning in a slow circle. "Attack me. Show yourselves. There is no purpose in cowering, I will find you." Silence answered him. He waited, sensing their restraint, their refusal to rise to the bait. He grinned wider, but they did not move. Instead, they slipped out through a side hatch he had not notice. The door sealed behind them with a lock clicking into place. He turned as the bay shuddered, mechanisms activating beneath the floor.
The Jedi had locked him in and set the cargo bay to jettison into space. He laughed again, raising his hands to stop it, but the detachment sequence began, the bay separatingily separating from the station with a groan of metal. He stood in the center as the walls pulled away, the void of space opening before him, the sun's light pouring in as the bay drifted free. "You think such a simple plan can defeat one such as myself..." Sidious cackled as he reached out with the force.
...
"That's right! You kriffing bantha pot hole!!!" Zule shouted and cursed uncharacteristically as she watched the cargo bay jettison into the sun through the viewport. After which she laughed and relaxed slightly. Aubrie felt a sigh of relief leave her chest. Master Fay stood beside them and exhaled slowly. The bay drifted away from the station and tumbled toward the star. It looked like the plan worked. The Sith was gone. Though truly Master Fay felt that this was too easy and that she shouldn't yet relax.
And only a few seconds later she was proven right.
The bay stopped. It hung in space for a moment and then started moving back toward the station. Aubrie panicked. Her hands shook as she stared at the screen. Zule got angry. She slammed her fist against the wall. Master Fay tried to push the bay back with the help of the girls. They raised their hands together and focused. They pushed with everything they had. The bay slowed but kept coming. The Sith overpowered them. The bay reconnected with a loud clang. Master Fay's eyes widened. She turned to the girls. "Run right now."
A moment later the door exploded outward forcing Master Fay to protect both of the girls. She used a force bubble around them. The force of the explosion threw them all down the corridor. They landed hard. Aubrie rolled to her feet. Zule stood up fast. Master Fay rose slower. She looked at them. "Find Scout and leave the station. I will handle him."
Aubrie begged her not to. "You can't Master... he's too strong, you are going to your death."
Master Fay put her hand on Aubrie's head. "I am a Jedi Master. Do not think me so weak that I cannot deal with a Sith."
"Now go," she said.
Aubrie refused. She shook her head and drew her lightsaber intent on standing with her and fighting against the Sith Lord. Hoever Zule wrapped her arms around her and dragged her away. She pulled Aubrie down the corridor. Aubrie looked back and shouted to Zule to let her go and that they needed to go back.
Master Fay stood alone as the Sith walked toward her. He laughed as he came closer. "Perhaps if you had used them both as a distraction you could have scored a lethal hit upon me," he said.
"Perhaps that is your way Lord of the Sith," Master Fay said. "But it is not mine."
She unclipped her lightsaber and once she did her presence in the force exploded outward. It battled against the Sith's darkness making the air feel heavy between them as Dark and Light clashed in the corridor .
(AN: Master Fay fighting against Darth Sidious, pretty exciting. I wonder how the legendary master measures up to the Lord of the Sith. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)
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