719"How did I get stuck on sniper duty?" Obi-Wan grumbled, looking at the weapon in his hand in distaste. "Need I remind you, I'm a Jedi, not an assassin." Obi-Wan arched an eyebrow, and shot her a pointed look, his mouth tilted in a grimace.
Padme sighed, knowing how Obi-Wan felt about blasters of any kind: Uncivilized, random, needlessly catastrophic. But, it was Captain Rex who answered for her. "Because, General, my team is going to go in with our Assassin, Nightblade, here," Rex jerked his head toward Padme, "And make sure she doesn't get overwhelmed. If we have two people charging in with lightsabers blazing, the Empire is going to direct a very keen interest on this unit. And, we just don't have the manpower for that yet, Sir." Obi-Wan still didn't look happy about it, but he sighed and nodded his head in acknowledgment of the truth of Rex's statement.
Padme understood Obi-Wan's reservations: As a Jedi, he wasn't fond of taking human lives. To be honest, she wasn't either. But, this was war, and war was not kind to soldiers on either side of the battle. The time had long since passed for negotiations. The time now was for what her late husband would have referred to as "aggressive negotiations."
Seeing that Obi-Wan still wasn't happy, Rex sighed. "If you incapacitate them so they can't run, my men and I will finish them off, General."
"But…" Obi-Wan started, and this time Padme cut him off.
"Obi-Wan, listen to me. These Imperials are slavers. Cruel ones at that. The people we're saving down there are slaves. We are here to help them...and take down this Imperial operation at the same time. This is the only way these people going to be free." Not to mention, some of them might actually join the still fledgling rebellion, making it stronger. She would do what she had to do to get into the compound, help Rex's team free the slaves, and then complete her assigned mission to assassinate the Colonel who had command over this outpost.
She also had been given her own, specific orders: Leave no witnesses. Period.
Making sure that her mask was firmly in place over the lower half of her face, and that her black hood was snuggly over her head, she peeked her head over the cliff side to look down into the mining complex. The complex was backed up against the cliff side, with three massive, thick walls surrounding the rest of the complex, guards walking the tops of them, faithfully guarding the entrance down into the mines.
She pulled back, glancing back at Obi-Wan and Rex, and the men Rex had brought, all dressed in black like the three of them, getting the gear ready for them to rappel down the side of the cliff once the distraction was set off. "The bomb is in place?" She whispered, her eyes meeting Rex's. The clone grinned, a humorless grin, a wild glint in his eye. There was a reason why he'd served so well under Anakin—Anakin had told her so many impressive stories about the man, that when the Rebellion had assigned him to help her on this mission, she was almost eager to finally work with him.
Too bad he didn't know her true identity...or that she had been Anakin's wife. Only Obi-Wan knew. It would have been nice to talk to someone about her beloved late husband who wouldn't get closed off and automatically remind her of what had happened to him. As far as Rex knew, she and Anakin had both died during the Purges. She wondered what he would say if he knew that the Rebellion's assassin that he would be fighting with today was his former general's secret wife and the ex-senator from Naboo.
"Everything is in place." Rex assured her with with a nod. "When we're ready to rappel down, I'll set it into motion." He shot a look at Obi-Wan. "This is war, General. People die. Let's make sure that tonight, it's the bad people who are the ones dying."
Obi-Wan sighed, getting into his position, the long-range blaster with its highly illegal scope attached, in his hands. "You don't have to worry about me, Rex. I'll make sure you're covered while you're above ground. But, once you're below," he shot Padme a warning look. "Be very, very careful. Watch each other's backs down there."
Padme said nothing, understanding that the warning was primarily for her. She didn't need to tell Obi-Wan that she would die before letting herself fall into the hands of the Empire. She wouldn't give the Emperor any reason to suspect that the assassin he would come to hate and fear was, in fact, the wife of the man he had destroyed.
Making sure that Anakin's lightsaber was clipped to her belt, she began to strap herself into the rappel gear, her body tight with anticipation. As soon as that distraction went off, they would have very little time to make it down the cliff before the Stormtroopers realized that it was a trap.
When Rex was sure that his team was ready to go, he met her eyes, pulling out a small detonator. "Ready, Nightblade?" He asked, his voice low, but his eyes sparkling in the moonlight with an almost wild eagerness.
"I'm ready. Let's go." She replied, moving herself into position. The other rebels did the same. She glanced one more time at Obi-Wan, but he was focused on the targets below him.
There was a pause, and then…
A massive, fiery explosion, rigged on the far side of the compound went off. It lit up the midnight sky, an orange plume of fire rolling upward in a huge pillar of flames, and as Padme moved, rappelling quickly down the cliff side as quickly as it was safe to do so, she could hear the shouts and screams of alarm. Moments later, a repetitive, high-pitched alarm squealed from speakers throughout the complex, summoning forth more Stormtroopers out of the belly of the mines.
By then, they had already reached the ground, ducking for cover behind supply crates. "This is your first assault mission, isn't it, Nightblade?" Rex asked as Padme peered around the edge of the crates, watching the Imperials running with their blasters drawn towards the gates of the compound.
An image flashed through her mind: The Battle of Geonosis. Being outnumbered. Fighting side-by-side with Anakin and the rest of the Jedi, sure that the end was near. "It isn't my first battle, no." She replied softly, turning back to look at the rebels. "Are you ready?"
"Nightblade," Rex said seriously, "We were born ready." Fighting back a smirk, Padme nodded, pulling the lightsaber from her belt and igniting it with with a snap-hiss, the brilliant blue blade shimmering in the dark of night. As she did so, she watched as Rex drew his attention to it, his eyes lighting in recognition, and she inwardly cursed herself. Of course, he would recognize Anakin's lightsaber. He had only seen it used almost every single day during the Clone Wars. But, though he flicked a questioning look at her masked face, Rex said nothing, and Padme didn't have time to consider the implications of Rex's realization. Instead, she took a deep breath, focused her energy, and turned the corner and charged.
The troopers didn't even know what hit them.
Her lightsaber sliced with precision, skill, and strength through their white armor like paper, and she cut down the first few with no resistance. Blaster fire erupted from the rebels at her back, taking others nearby down. She moved quickly with agility and speed, moving onto the next target before the one she'd just cut down had hit the ground. By the time the troopers had turned around to attempt an offensive, the rebels had already cut down a sizable number of them.
Blaster fire began to rain back, and without even flinching, Padme easily slipped from an offensive to a defensive position, using the lightsaber to skillfully deflect the bolts back to their owners with ease. Obi-Wan's rather rigorous saber training was paying off—her body practically moved of its own accord, fluidly, gracefully, like the saber was an extension of her body.
What she lacked in Force-sensitive abilities, her team made up for in their natural, ingrained abilities. Rex's men picked off troopers as they came running back through the relatively narrow gate. Any troops that were missed would shortly crumple to the ground, incapacitated, from Obi-Wan's sniper cover above them. Those troops were quickly finished off by either Padme's saber, or one of the Rebels.
As the battle above ground began to dwindle, Padme turned her attention to getting below ground. "Rex." She barked through her mask, "I'm going below."
Rex took out another trooper. "Alright, I'll get some men and cover you." He glanced over at her, and she swore she could read the suspicion in his eyes. As a soldier, he likely hadn't given more than a passing thought to Padme's identity: It hadn't been important to the mission. But now, after having seen the lightsaber up close…
Well, she would have to worry about that later.
Now, she had a job to do.
She whirled, sprinting across the compound for the tunnel leading down into the mines. A few emerging storm troopers were rushing up to meet her, blasters drawn. "Over there!" One said in his almost mechanical voice, and he opened fire on her. Without slowing, Padme deflected the bolts, though she wasn't quite as adept to move them back to their original origin while running.
Obi-Wan took care of that. One blast to the trooper's leg, and he was down with a shout of pain. Padme didn't let the other trooper recover enough to try to shoot at her: She leapt onto him, her legs wrapping around his chest plate, and using her other hand, she whipped out one of the daggers hidden in her form-fitting armor, and stabbed it into the space between the trooper's neck and shoulder plate.
Blood sprayed out in a gush. The trooper gurgled, choking on his own blood as his body tensed, and he dropped to the ground. In one fluid movement, Padme released her hold on him, falling to the ground in a roll, igniting the lightsaber again to decapitate the trooper Obi-Wan had taken out, finishing the job. She was back on her feet in a flash and sprinting down the ramp a split second later, Rex and two other Rebels hot on her heels.
"Well," Rex muttered under his breath, "Looks like you didn't need much of our help."
"Nonsense," Padme said as she switched her dagger for her blaster, taking out yet another Imperial. "I can't take on an entire compound by myself."
"I don't know about that," Rex muttered. As they left the winding ramp and emerged into the open cavern, Rex began to rain heavy blaster fire upon the guards that were left. "Be careful not to hit any of the slaves, boys!" Rex shouted to his men.
"Yes, sir!" They acknowledged.
Padme wasted no time in pressing forward. Though the mask that covered the lower half of her face filtered out smoke and toxins, it did nothing to suppress the thick, pungent stench of human excrement, urine, and filth. All around them, far outnumbering the guards, were slaves, humans and aliens alike, who had been rounded up and subjugated by the Empire from across the galaxy. All of them wore filthy tattered rags for clothing. Many of them were shoeless and were nothing more than skin and bones, their skin so coated with dirt from mining all day, that they hardly looked like living beings at all. As she ran past, swiftly killing the guards that were futilely trying to keep her from freeing them, many of the slaves looked at her with a mixture of awe and fear, or wariness, as if they couldn't quite believe that their salvation was at hand.
A mental picture of the dear young boy she had met in Watto's shop all those years ago on Tatooine flashed through her head, and she pushed the image away stubbornly. Rex and his men would help free them now that she'd cleared the path of Imperials. She refocused her attention. She had to get to the command center and carry out her orders.
If she didn't, none of them would be leaving this planet alive.
As she left the noises of the main battle behind, she found herself running through twisting caverns, lit only by flickering torchlight. She hardly slowed down. These caves had been mapped out even before the Empire took them over for their own purposes. She had memorized the entire layout before they'd even arrived on the planet. She knew where to go, even if it was pitch black. A few more turns, and she was finally approaching a set of crude, metal doors. The command center. She placed a gloved hand on the handles and pulled.
Locked.
As if that would stop her.
Igniting her lightsaber, she lunged forward with purpose and dug the weapon into the thin metal, the blade slicing through it easily. As a result, it didn't take long for her to cut out the locking mechanism, and she kicked the door open.
Blaster fire erupted, though there were only a few high-ranking imperials who were cornered in the room. Four, to be precise, she thought as she deflected their bolts easily. She took out two that way, advancing her way in, the rest of the laser bolts deflected so as to destroy various instruments that were around the room.
As she got close enough, one of the Imperials turned, pressing frantically on a comlink. "Where's that back up, where—" she twirled in an arc and sliced her lightsaber clean through him, cutting him off. His body slumped onto the control panel, lights whirling with various alarms as she turned on the last Imperial.
Her target. The Colonel.
He was visibly shaking, still pointing his blaster at her, but he was no longer firing it. "P-please," He uttered, "Have mercy!"
"Your people had no mercy on these slaves," She snarled, "Your people had no mercy on the Jedi you murdered, or any of the other countless innocent lives across the galaxy killed in the name of the Empire! Why should I show you any mercy?"
He didn't answer. He couldn't answer. She watched the realization that he had no good answer to save himself with fall over his expression, and the blaster clattered to the floor, useless. The fight was over, and he knew it.
Advancing on him quickly, she stabbed the lightsaber through his gut without another word, and as she watched pain contort and twist his face, his mouth opening in a wordless scream of agony, she slashed the blade upward to his chest, stopping right below his heart, before yanking it back out with tremendous force and sheathing the blade.
The Colonel fell to the floor at her feet, staring up at her, the light fading from his eyes. She paused, watching, something inside her, something she had thought died two years before, stirring within her. Was it guilt? Was it a sense that all of this, what she was doing for the Rebellion, was wrong?
No, she decided, shaking her head and stepping over the body to approach the beeping control panel. The Empire had created a government in which violence was the only way to lift their ironclad control and evil oppression of the galaxy. Maybe someday the galaxy would go back to a time when peaceful negotiation could solve their problems. She hoped so, but that day was not this day. In the meantime, she would do what she needed to do to help the Rebellion destroy the Empire.
Fingers running over the controls, she killed all the alarms, plunging the room into silence, before she opened up the Mine's video feed and began to systematically delete all of the footage. Her comlink beeped.
"Yes?" She answered, holding the comlink with her free hand.
"Is it done?" Obi-Wan's voice asked.
"It's done, but they called for backup. We need to finish freeing the slaves and get everyone out of here. Are those transport ships ready?" Done. The footage was erased. Anyone coming to help would find no visible proof of who exactly had attacked the complex. She turned and began to jog back toward the cavern.
There was a pause, and Padme wondered if Obi-Wan was worried about the backup, or if he was digesting the reality in which she had become someone different. "They're ready. You're all clear for now, but I'll keep an eye out for backup."
"Alright. I'll see you soon. Nightblade, out." She shut the comlink off as she entered the cavern, rushing through the cavern tunnels to join Rex and his men freeing the rest of the slaves.
Vader had been on plenty of battlefields in his lifetime. As of late, he had been the driving force behind the death and destruction left behind after a battle. But today, as he strode down the ramp of his personal shuttle and took his first look at the mine, he almost swore.
The stench of death was staggering.
The complex was littered with the bodies of Stormtroopers, even from the outside. The unit that had responded to the mine's call for help was in the process of pulling the bodies into a mass pile, ready for burning. As much as Vader despised places like this, places that used slaves, he still clenched his jaw in anger at seeing so many of the Empire's men dead.
With a quick look around, Vader did not see any Rebel bodies. That was most displeasing.
"Lord Vader," An officer greeted him with a sharp salute, and though he did not show any outward sign of fear when looking upon the Dark Lord, Vader could sense his fear permeating through the Force. "Thank you for your swift response."
Vader rolled his eyes, though the gesture was lost behind the mask. "Show me the bodies." He snapped, getting to the point. He didn't particularly like getting interrupted in his own duties with a distress call from a slaver unit complaining about an attack by a Jedi.
"Yes, Sir!" Vader could see the sweat running down the man's temple as he turned and led Vader to the far end of the compound where another row of bodies had been laid out. Vader clenched his fists: If his Master would let him, he would destroy these slavers himself. Vader despised slavery: It was the one aspect of the Empire he truly hated, and it was something that he had been trying to convince Darth Sidious to get rid of since he had become his apprentice. To no avail.
Yet.
When the day came, for come it would,Vader averred, he would exact vengeance upon any world who had partaken in slavery. Starting with Tatooine.
Clearing those thoughts from his head, Vader stopped at the row of bodies. They ranged anywhere between regular Stormtroopers to two higher ranked officers.
Including the Colonel.
Immediately, Vader identified the tell-tale marks of a cauterized saber-wound. Many of the men had been completely severed, their limbs grouped together with the respective bodies. Some of them had blaster wounds in their legs, just like the Lieutenant on Lothal.
It was the body of the Colonel that gave Vader pause, however.
The Colonel had been initially stabbed in the gut. Even now, the man's face was frozen in an expression of terrible pain. If Vader concentrated enough, he could almost feel the man's terror still lingering in the Force, though it had been over twenty-four hours since the man had died. But, what bothered Vader the most was that the blade had then been dragged up into the man's chest. A most painful death indeed.
A painful death that was certainly not the Jedi way.
Stretching out with his senses, he tried to find any trace of the Force. Unlike before on Lothal, there was a faint signature this time, but it had been well-guarded. He couldn't identify the trace, other than…
He glanced up at the cliff. It came from up there, from the top.
"The Colonel." Vader's voice rumbled through the mask, "Where did he die?"
"The control room, sir." The officer replied.
Did the Force-wielder leave the cover of the cliff? Vader wondered, turning back to the bodies. Somehow, he didn't think they did. "Do not follow me." Vader ordered, turning and heading towards the entrance to the mines.
"Y-Yes, Sir." The man's first hesitation since Vader had arrived. Impressive. Had he questioned the order, he would have found himself dead.
Vader entered the cavern below. There were a few Stormtroopers dragging more bodies to the surface, but other than that, the mine was empty. The slaves, Vader knew from the report, had been freed and had escaped. Though Vader would never admit it aloud, he was almost glad that they had made it out.
His suspicions about the Force-sensitive individual were correct: They hadn't left that cliff. Whoever had killed these men with the lightsaber, it hadn't been the Force-wielder. The pathetic excuse for metal doors had a large hole where the door handles had been, the edges of it melted. Vader knew from his own experience that cutting through doors that thin would have taken mere moments with a lightsaber.
He used the Force to push the doors open with a bang, making another officer at the control panel jump around in surprise, his face paling at the sight of the Dark Lord. "L-Lord Vader," He stammered, moving to attention, "I was just checking to see if we could pull the security footage…"
"And can we?" Vader interrupted, though he was hardly paying the man any attention. He was reaching out through the Force, looking for another Force-signature…
There was none. Again.
"N-no, Sir," the man reluctantly admitted, flinching. No doubt he had heard of what happened to those who displeased Vader. "All footage has been erased."
So. The assassin didn't want to be identified. Not surprising. If the control panel was only looked through by the Imperial officers, the assassin might have gotten away with it.
But, Vader was no simple Imperial officer with a rudimentary knowledge of electronics. "Get out." Vader snapped at the man. The man flinched and hesitated, as if deciding on whether or not to insist that the control panel was, indeed, a dead end. Not wanting to repeat himself, but also not wanting to deal with yet another dead body, Vader casually shifted his cloak, revealing the lightsaber attached to his belt.
That's all it took. The man nodded. "Yes, My Lord." He said with a salute, and headed as casually as he could out of the room. The moment he passed Vader, though, he could hear the man's footsteps quicken. A wise decision.
Vader approached the control panel with a sigh, his eyes already taking in the damaged circuitry. Though the world had changed quite a bit over the years, one thing always remained blessedly the same: Electronics. Sure, the technology updated frequently, but Vader knew how to work it as if it were a second language that he was fluent in. It came as naturally to him as...well, the Force.
The control panel was no different. It didn't take long for Vader to figure out where the backup storage was, and he was quickly able to pull the backup video feed.
He paused, debating on watching the footage here and now, but with each passing moment, more and more questions would arise from the clean up crew above. It was already a shame that there were so many witnesses to this...mess. If he were to wipe out the entire troop…well. He could. He had done so before. But, Sidious was getting tired of Vader's mass destruction of their own troops. They still had to recruit new troops, and it would be hard to do so with stories of Vader killing entire platoons, running around the galaxy.
No. The Emperor was already going to have an issue with the rumor of a successful Jedi attack on the mining compound. Vader knew that if his focus wasn't finding this assassin before, it certainly would be now. The longer he waited to contact the Emperor to discuss these findings, the angrier the Emperor would be.
So instead, Vader copied all of the footage to a data rod. He would watch it in the privacy of his own quarters on board his ship, the Executor, he decided. He would make his plans from there. And, when he found this assassin, and find them Vader knew he would, then he would be sure to make them a public example for the entire galaxy to see for what they'd done today.
The message would be clear. Attack the Empire at your own peril.
Aw yeah, another chapter done! Sorry for the late update. If you don't read my other story, I had a rough week battling a bad case of the flu. Now I'm back in business and ready to go! So I hoped you enjoyed this action-packed chapter. Battle scenes are hard to write, and therefore take me a bit longer because I have to map it all out in my head before I write it down. Hope you enjoyed it!
As for when Vader and Padme meet...you'll just have to see! I don't do spoilers, and right now things are still so new in this story that I don't want to give too many hints at when things will happen. I will say though that I doubt this one will be as long as my other story...I maaaaay have just jinxed myself there.
The song for this chapter is "Escape from the Embassy" by John Powell from the movie The Bourne Identity.
Review!
Love,
Sarah