The Weaving Force: Chapter 38 (Patreon)

Chapter 38:

Komari Vosa:

Their sensors were rudimentary on this station, little more than an antenna amplifying their ships' innate sensor sweeps.

But it was enough to detect the ship translating  out of hyperspace into the system.

“He’s here,” breathed Vosa, spreading her senses out to feel for her old Master’s presence. It suffused the space beyond the station, and was drawing closer.

She marched over to the console. Opening the link to the probe droids hovering out in space, she saw the ship approaching like a tiny speck of dust in the black, growing larger and larger.

“Allow him passage,” the Sith whispered behind her. “Do not allow your mongrels to disturb him until I say so.”

Komari felt her lip curl, anger and fear making her stomach churn with disquiet. “You’ll have your talk, Sith,” she promised.

Whatever the old darksider wished to say to Dooku, it would be of little import; once they were done and the stubborn fool threw whatever the Sith said back in his face, she would be free to give Dooku the death he so richly deserved.

The Sith didn’t answer, and, soon enough, Dooku’s ship was on its final approach. It touched down by hangar bay three.

The ship, now that she got a good look at it, was a utilitarian thing. Not something she would ever picture her Master willingly stepping foot in, let alone using.

But, regardless, when the loading bay ramp opened, it was indeed her Master the holo pics showed her, stepping out of the confines of that plebian-looking vessel.

The ramp shut behind him.

A dozen blasters were trained on him from multiple angles, unseen, as her men remained hidden… or as hidden as they could be from a man like Dooku.

Still, there was something odd in the Force, a feeling within the vessel that filled her with… cold.

“Bring him to us,” she ordered.

Two of her men stepped out of the shadows, weapons held but not at the ready.

Her former Master followed them without a word.

Komari turned, looking at the Sith. “Do you feel that?”

The old man drew his lips into a thin, angry little line.

“Search that vessel,” he demanded.

For once, she was not disinclined to obey the order.

Something was wrong here.

(X)(X)(X)

Dennis:

The ‘plan,’ such as it was, was simple.

Land, let Dooku go over and distract the head honcho, while he, Militia and Rugess quietly set off a handful of electronic warfare ‘bombs’ into the systems, scrambling as much of the assassins eyes and ears so all of their ‘backup’ could arrive ‘safely’ rather than arrive with a million guns on them.

Simple plan.

There were only two ‘relatively’ minor problems with said plan.

One, the Vista only had a single entry ramp. So, when they stepped out, if these assassins were even halfway competent, they’d see them and call in for backup of their own.

Two, neither he nor Miss Militia knew how to hack anything worth a damn, so their designated hacker for this job… was Rugess.

Rugess, who was currently doing the Bith equivalent of hyperventilating.

“Listen to me, Buddy; everything’s gonna be just fine,” Dennis reassured his friend. “Me and Miss M will be with you every step of the way.”

In response, Rugess let out a rapidfire babbling string of words that vaguely resembled a sentence questioning the majority of his life choices. Which… hey, fair enough.

“Dennis-”

Miss Militia’s call made him look up to peek out of the viewport, through which he saw a squad of men approaching, weapons drawn and ready to search the Vista.

They’re not getting on my ship again! he swore.

He hadn’t exactly been thrilled at some of the… liberties the Count had commanded the repair crews undertake with his ship (no, Vista did not need a fucking library), but there was one particular addition he could, in fact, get behind.

Reaching over, he pressed a very large red button on the control pannel.

Seconds later, four automated defense turrets folded out of their hidden compartments on the ship’s exterior.

The assassins had a split second to realize what exactly was about to happen before they were diving for cover as fast as they could.

(X)(X)(X)

Dooku

The mask was stifling.

Ironic, considering the  apparatus’s entire purpose was to allow one to breathe on a station with little to no oxygen, but “stifling” was the most prevalent sensation.

The assassins marched in lock step ahead of him. Their force signatures were wild, untrained… but there was sensitivity there. Crude and untested, but present all the same.

There were many such signatures here. The teeming mass of them made it difficult to determine how many were on this station, but there were more than he would have thought possible if he did not sense them first hand.

A hundred? Two hundred? And that was merely the force sensitive assassins. Far greater were those that were dead to the force.

The Bando’Gora, like many problems the Republic and Jedi were too complacent to deal with, had become strong in the absence of true authority in this galaxy.

The two men escorting him stopped. From memory, Dooku recognized this juncture as the entrance to what must’ve been a loading bay. The room beyond was wide and spacious, meant to fill hauler crates for shipping.

He spread out his senses.

It was not Komari he sensed.

Beyond the door was… dark. A black void in the Force, a ring of black barely containing the burning fury of what Dooku knew in his heart to be what he’d been searching for.

Sith.

He felt the presence crash over him like water on a rock, finally revealed after all this time. In spite of himself, he felt his body stiffen, a chill crawling down his spine before he could tamp it down.

The door opened.

‘Welcome…’ the voice hissed from the dark. ‘-my old friend’

(X)(X)(X)

Miss Militia

Hannah had been in many firefights, both as a protectorate hero, and here in this galaxy as a private citizen.

She sometimes feared she was desensitized to it. That it’d almost become rote and routine when it shouldn’t. She could almost find a rhythm in the ebb and flow of combat.

Her breathing was loud in her ears. Her helmet and mask felt oppressive and claustrophobic. She had to recall her training, to focus and remember the drills on fighting with gas masks.

Without oxygen, her power couldn’t use firearms - not enough air to ignite the gunpowder - so she was reduced to using ‘blasters.’

Luckily, Mandalorians had blasters with… a bit more kick.

She ducked out of cover, leveling her shot. The blast exploded out of the barrel, the bright yellow beam punching through a durasteel crate and cracking into someone’s side. He went down with a choked scream, a smoking hole in his ribs. As a responding hail of blaster shots rang out, her power warped into a beskar shield; the massive slab of exotic steel taking the shots with barely a sliver of feedback onto her.

She counted the seconds. Most Blasters couldn’t fire for more than a handful; the heat would warp the barrels.

Two- Three- Fo-

Three and a half second bursts.

The first and second rifle stopped. She heard the whine of the third beginning to charge up as the Beskar shield twisted and warped into a pressurized grenade launcher.

With a hollow thunk, the cylinder flew out of the barrel and clattered to the floor amidst the assassins. One of them tried to kick it back, and with barely a flicker of thought on her part the fuse was suddenly much shorter.

The blast was muffled; the lack of air gave the sound waves little to move through. She barely felt the concussive wave even as the man’s leg was blown off. His body sailed through the air in the slightly reduced gravity before it smashed into a distant console.

She leapt to the side, behind a derelict loader droid. The sound of the blasts smashing into its side was most audible through its chassis due to the thin atmosphere. Flashing sparks of its destroyed insides played with the shadows of the hangar bay.

“Dennis!” she hissed. “How much longer?”

“Working on it!”

She heard the distinctive but near-vacuum-muffled chirp of his own blaster. Had one of the attackers slipped past her? Or was there another group?

She barely heard the heavy footfall to her left, ducking just in time as a vibro-sword swung and gouged through the steel where her head had been resting a split second earlier.

The grenade launcher shifted, her own blade forming in her hands as she parried the follow up strike, still kneeling. Her foot lashed out, cracking along the inside of the assassin’s knee and knocking him off balance. He shifted his grip, looking to parry a follow up swing, but her sword turned into a wrist mounted punch-knife mid swing and slid between the chest and faceplate right into the man’s neck. Her power twisted and warped again, becoming a beskar javelin that she threw at another attacker rounding the corner just in time to get the green lance of steel through his eye and fall over dead.

Her power reformed, twisting back into a blaster as she heard the distant hiss of the hangar bay doors open orders being barked out and a lot more footsteps rushing forward.

“Dennis!” she snarled-

“Got it!”

(X)(X)(X)

Taylor:

Of all the places to pick a fight like this… it had to be a derelict mining station with little to no gravity and zero atmosphere.

A place where bug life would be- practically non existent. And even the bugs I brought with me wouldn’t do much more than die uselessly within a couple of seconds. Even without the issue of lack of oxygen for them to breathe, the temperatures would practically flash freeze them.

I wouldn’t be without ‘tools’ the Force was a powerful tool indeed; but I was hardly thrilled about the prospect of going into a fight with one hand tied behind my back.

Or the fact that I’d be fighting in low gravity, something I was entirely lacking practical experience in.

Sure; the Jedi had training simulators and such; but I knew damn well that a simulation wasn’t the same as the real thing.

In short; she was not looking forward to this.

“Any word yet?” She called, there was static for just a brief second on the line.

“Not yet.” Vicky answered her. “Relax Tay. We’re just beating up some badguys. Nothing we haven’t done before.”

No it wasn’t but unlike Vicky I couldn’t fly in zero gravity and I was gonna have most of my abilities stripped from me. So I felt I was a bit entitled to being on edge right now.

I didn’t argue the point though; I didn’t need Vicky to worry about me and act stupid while we were fighting.

I turned my attention back to the holomap of the station.

The Asteroid was hardly a symmetrical surface but if I had to peg a shape to it I’d roughly describe it as a ‘star’, or perhaps a long armed ‘t’ shape.

According to the schematics we had access to there were seven hangar bays. Between Dooku, Obi-Wan, Master Plo, Vicky and my own ship we could cover five that still left two hangar bays unaccounted for which meant reinforcements could come in or escape. I was more worried about escape honestly; because if things went south it’d be easy to hide a lot of bombs as a last ‘fuck you’ and escape on a ship as they blew up. That prospect became a bit less appealing when you yourself had to blow up alongside your victims.

“Think Dooku’s got the right idea?” Vicky suddenly asked. “I say we should have just gone in full bore. Best defense is a good offense n all that”

“Really living up to the stereotype Vicky.” I drawled.

“Hey; Tell me I’m wrong!’” She challenged.

She wasn’t.

I understood Dooku’s caution, but I also understood the thought behind Vicky’s proposed tactic.

Show up together, land together and fight together; hit them hard, hit them fast and keep hitting them before they could get their bearings in one big ‘push’.

Simple; but simple was its own strength in a fight.

Dooku’s plan had us arriving from multiple angles at potentially different times it added to the enemies confusion but also potentially our own; and could place some of us in dangerous situations if we got surrounded and cut off.

From what I could tell; it counted on the ‘inherent superiority’ of individual Jedi to overcome enemy opposition.

I could make a list of idiots who wound up very very dead relying on ‘inherent’ anything; let alone ‘superiority’.

Both plans had their risks and advantages; the biggest risk with Vicky’s being that they could run away and blow up the station behind them; But Dooku’s plan was much harder to get a clean ‘break’ from.

Once we were ‘in it’ we were ‘stuck’ in it.

Still, the plan was much more comprehensive than Vicky’s “rush in and hit really hard:

Everyone had their jobs.

Dooku and the assortment of Jedi Masters + Vicky following in after him would be the primary heavy hitters of this confrontation. Anakin, Obi-Wan and myself would escort three astromech droids onto three different hacking points to shut down the hangar bays, make certain the  Bando’Gora weren’t playing sabotage and generally use anything and everything we could in terms of the stations infrastructure to cut off, isolate and turn the resistance into much smaller more manageable pieces.

Once the primary ‘bulk’ of the enemy forces were dealt with Master Plo and Piel would make their way to the primary control center and Master Gallia and Yaddle would move towards the engineering deck to reach the primary generator. Dooku and Billaba would proceed to take down any remaining stragglers.

So it was comprehensive.

But as the saying went, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face.

Another line on the holo went green.

“Vicky!”

“I see it. That’s our cue!”

(X)(X)(X)

Komari Vosa

As Komari approached the hangar bay where apparently a small war had broken out the lights of the station flickered; the thrum of power cutting off through the station; including artificial gravity for a moment before it reasserted itself. Her feet touching the ground again.

“What just happened!?” She barked into the comms, demanding an answer.

“Systems scrambled! Some kind of junk datapacket!”

Not her Master’s style. Not unless…

‘He called for help’ The realization almost felt like a punch to the jaw.

Her Master, prideful, arrogant Dooku had called for help!

She ground her teeth together, fists clenching tightly as rage burned like a furnace in her heart.

Like firecrackers in the dark she sensed them, slipping into the system, they were like bonfires in the force.

Masters. Jedi Masters.

She rounded away from the hangar bay, they had very little to work with and even less time to prepare.

She opened her comm link.”All Bando’Gora! Prepare to engage!”

“Ma’am, what sectors?”

“All of them!”

(X)(X)(X)

Taylor:

Slipping in system out of hyperspace, I piloted the ship as best I could through the void; I wasn’t the best pilot, but I sure as shit could do well enough to not crash ‘half the ship’

As I activated the ship sensors, I immediately saw three other vessels translate in system; the presences in the force shining like beacons.

Master Gallia, Vicky, Master Plo, Billaba, Piell, Obi-Wan and Anakin.

And there- on the surface I felt the signature of Master Dooku surrounded by hundreds of tiny candles and… something else.

I felt…

I felt myself stiffen, surprise cutting through me.

It felt like… Vicky? Me?

Parahumans?

The Force hummed around me at the deduction. I felt it to be true.

Right on cue, the comline bloomed to life.

“Tay-” Vicky’s voice crackled through the line. “Tay do you-”

“Yeah.” I answered her before she could finish the question. “I feel it.” My features grew serious and stern. “Focus” I demanded. “Whatever, or whoever’s down there we deal with it after the mission!” I demanded. “Don’t get sloppy!

“Right… yeah. Of course you’re right”

She cut off the line and by her voice I knew she’d keep her head in the game. Vicky had her moments but I could trust her to be smart.

She’d be fine.

I flicked the line open to Anakin and Obi-Wan.

“Kenobi, Skywalker!” I called. “I’m with Master Yaddle, making my way to hangar bay five, confirm your approach.”

“Confirmed Padawan Hebert.” Obi-Wan answered me. “We’re headed for Hangar Bay one. We’ll meet you at the lower decks”

I heard the bleeping chirp from R2, Anakin’s astromech as I turned my head towards Master Yaddle.

“Are you sure you can link up with Master Plo and the others?” I found myself asking.

Stupid question. Yaddle could handle herself better than half the members of the council.

Still… I’d rather the woman not be hurt.

The diminutive Master nodded, smiling softly, though a troubling disquiet lingered behind her eyes, as though she could sense something down in the asteroid below. “Yes… Hurry we must. A darkness I sense surrounding Master Dooku.”

I wanted to insist she be careful. But I didn’t; this wasn’t the place for an argument and it would only disappoint Yaddle and distract her more than she should be.

So I shut my mouth, rechecked the seals on the space suit I’d need to wear before securing the helmet over my head; sealing the airtight locks with a pressurized hiss as the ship swooped down and into the asteroid Hangar Bay.

(X)(X)(X)

As the Joker would say "And here, we Go"Next chapter's gonna be loaded. POV's from Taylor, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Vicky, Plo Koon and Dooku incoming. All with Lightsaber's lit and swinging :D

I'll also remind everyone there is a discord to discuss the Patreon chapters freely without fear of spoilers here:https://discord.gg/77CsRYp9