Dark Woman's words came back to me, and for the first time, I wondered if her insistence I take us all off-world was less about our avoiding danger, and more about being where we were really needed.
My conclusion might have seemed a stretch to some, but those people didn't know my mentor. She'd never coddled me, or protected me from anything she felt I could cope with, and that had been when I was an apprentice. Why should she start now?
...
"Two groups of guardian-droids actually attacked CSF officers who tried to stop them. When an officer rolled a droid-popper in among them, instead of being forcibly deactivated, their outer shells exploded off of them.
They aren't guardian-droids at all, apparently, but the police say they're as fast as they are deadly. A number of officers have been killed, and many more have been injured in a number of sectors planet-wide.
JF troopers have been called out to assist in putting the droids down, but judging by the number of emergency incident reports, things are getting worse, not better.
How did so many hostile combat-droids get smuggled onto Coruscant, Master?" The young Togruta's tone made it clear she was desperately hoping I had some answers.
"They're likely C.I.S Commando Droids, Ahsoka. If I had to guess, I'd say our ex-Chancellor arranged for units of them to be secreted in out of the way locations as part of one of his many, many contingency plans while he was still in power.
Those guardian-droid carapaces would have to be heavily lined with Cortosis to shield the droids against ion discharges, and that's prohibitively expensive." I explained. Pausing, as a terrible suspicion occurred to me.
"What important infrastructure has been bombed, exactly, apprentice, and what restricted areas are the droids trying to gain access to by passing themselves off as police?"
I wished I could be reading all of this for myself as it came in, but I was busy transmitting IFF transponder-codes to the orbital security platforms as we ascended. Not to mention keeping up with the situation in space.
In response to the attempt to prevent their approaching the planet, it seemed the two unidentified Corvettes had suddenly redlined their engines and turned toward the largest concentration of approaching JF ships.
Alarming readings coming from both ships, combined with this seemingly suicidal behavior had finally convinced the Judicial Forces it was time to light up the intruders, but that was a call made too late.
Before more than a handful of turbolaser shots aimed at the engines of the R.A.F ships could by fired by pursuing vessels, two incandescent flashes lit up the blackness.
Even millions of kilometers away, the furious flare-ups caused by two warships deliberately losing hypermatter containment in the most destructive manner possible were easily visible.
Next came the intense wash of garbage-emissions radiating outward for tens, if not hundreds of millions kilometers from what were now only two rapidly expanding clouds of ionized gases. Even at this distance, there were momentary hiccups in Seraph's communications array, and the incoming navigational data provided by her mainly organic sensor suite.
I felt Seraph's discomfort, and did my best to project soothing thoughts of comfort and reassurance that her blindness would shortly pass. The interference wouldn't last long, but for the ships far closer to the corvettes when they'd lost containment, the effect would be much worse.
Nothing that could actually harm a shielded vessel's systems, of course, but many of the vessels which had joined the attempted interdiction effort would be blinded and unable to raise anyone for maybe twenty or thirty seconds.
I remembered, belatedly, that this was part of the reason that outsized hypermatter-reactors like the ones used in the ancient Thrantas were a heavily regulated field of modern starship design.
Before Ahsoka could answer my questions, or Padme make any of a half-dozen urgent inquiries, I felt a moment of awful pain, and knew like I knew my own name that something very bad had just happened to Dark Woman. Unused to such clear, totally cut-and-dried insights from the Force, I literally choked on the sensation. Fighting to draw a clear breath of air through a throat tight with shock, concern, and yes, fear.
"Will you never learn to remain grounded in the present moment?" The question was nothing but a memory of something my Master had chidingly asked me so often before, but it helped me wrench my thoughts back to the present situation, rather than remaining fixated on something I could at the moment do nothing about.
It did nothing to change my intense desire to whip Seraph around and plunge planetward, of course. I was certain that, if I so chose, I could follow the echo of that pain like a bloodhound on a scent right to my Master. At that moment, that was something I wanted to do more than I'd wanted almost anything since ending up in this mad universe.
I owed everything about myself I took pride in to my Master. She might have been hard on me to the point of brutality, but I'd never doubted all of that had come from a place that was more than just her doing her duty by the apprentice she'd accepted.
Dark Woman knew all too well the dangers of our vocation, so she'd shown me how much she cared by demonstrating how completely intolerant of failure and weakness the galaxy was for those who dared to presume they could dispense justice and protect the weak where those were the last things the powerful wanted to occur. It felt like a betrayal, not being there the one time she could use my help.
Help I could maybe, probably provide. I knew she'd be angry and disappointed I'd disobeyed her instructions, but that wasn't what kept me from turning the ship around.
Attachment. I didn't believe in the Order's dogma with regards to prohibiting the formation of personal attachments in a Jedi's life, but there was one thing the Order, history, and Dark Woman weren't wrong about. It was the very basis for the proscription I rejected. Jedi who allowed the emotions engendered by their attachments to rule their thinking invariably, inevitably ended up doing terrible things.
That was why the Order considered it simpler and more efficient to simply ban the emotional connections that could tempt a Jedi to behave in such a way. The members of the High Council chose to believe that too many Jedi would lack the strength of character to do their duty, when doing it conflicted with the dictates of their hearts.
If I ignored the fact that my Master had foreseen a deadly peril I lacked the detailed information she possessed to measure for myself, and defied the instructions she'd given me predicated on that knowledge, I would be allowing my feelings to trample the reason that told me I had every solid, rational reason to trust those instructions. I'd be proving the Grandmaster and all those who thought as he did right.
In a tight, clipped voice, I pressed my apprentice "Ahsoka? Infrastructure and locations?" Putting the dull echo of continuing pain I was still keenly aware of aside, and doing what I'd been trained to do, rather than what I wanted.
"The explosions have all been in power relay stations, major conduit junctions, and secondary fusion or hypermatter reactor facilities planetwide, Master. Droid attacks are being reported by the JF trooper contingents stationed at primary power-generation facilities, but the troopers and ad hoc contingents of CSF reinforcements seem to be slowly gaining the upper hand at most of the facilities.
There's, uhh, the Senate Guards stationed at 500 Republica have put out a general request for assistance, because the droids there have deployed some sort of chemical weapon.
It's a greenish-white gas, believed to be Dioxis. The armor of most of the Guardsmen isn't sealed, so they've been forced back into the building, and now they're fighting in the halls.
JF troopers in sealed armor are en route, but there are hundreds of Senators already on site because of the upcoming Session, and an unknown number of representatives, aids, liaisons etc. The Temple's responding as well, but civilians panicked by the spreading gas and all the shooting are complicating the situation."
The young Togruta sounded queasy as she continued to provide updates, but her voice was admirably controlled as she rattled off information on the developing situation as it came in.
"Anakin, attacking the Republic's leadership and planetary power distribution. Those don't sound like ends in and of themselves, but a prelude to something...bigger" Padme finally spoke up. Her tone was serious, but she had that all-business demeanor that had always served her so well when blaster-bolts were whizzing by all around.
My terrible suspicion from the moments before I'd felt my Master's pain was back in force, as I grimly replied "It sounds like the prep-work for an attack, and I have a horrible feeling I know how that could be accomplished."
I opened my mouth to order my Padawan to patch me through to Admiral Dron aboard the Light of Coruscant, flagship of the JF's Sector Fleet, but clamped it shut as I saw several dozen blinking red dots appear on the nav-display.
Each one representing a C.I.S warship, and at the center of the diamond-shaped formation was a ship whose vanguard was already peeling away smoothly in retiring wings to give what would quickly become an unimpeded field of fire.
The Malevolence had come calling, and it was leading an entire task-group.
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