Longing and Explosions

Title: There Goes the Atmosphere
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Commander Cody|CC-2224/Obi-Wan Kenobi

Author: missmollyetc

Warnings: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence × Mind Control × Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery × Post-Order 66 × Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD × Praise Kink × Child Death × Child Murder × Mass Death × Jedi Temple ×

Author's Note: Chapter summary in glossary, for those who would like to skip the heavier tags.

They jumped as soon as the Senator and Master Yoda had returned to their ship, but not before comms caught a civilian signal that must have been bouncing around the array grid for hours. Some being with more guts than brains in their bucket had gotten a wide aerial shot of the 501st marching up the steps of the Jedi Temple, led by what looked like a cloaked figure. It had to have been the Chancellor, using the smokescreen of a hospital bed to lead the assault himself. He was a Sith, and if everything Cody’d learned from the General was correct, the only thing Sith loved more than destruction was having a personal hand in it. It paired up nicely with the sudden ‘emergency session’ Senator Organa was called to as soon as they jumped out into Coruscant’s atmosphere.

Over the ship’s comms, Organa’s aide looked nervous, twisting the hem of her long sleeve between her fingers as she relayed the codes to get the Arrow past the civilian port authority and into Alderaan’s sanctioned airspace. The aide’s signal cut out as they began to make their approach. Cody kept his arms loose at his sides and stared out the front viewport as their side of the city came into view. He glanced quickly at Obi-Wan and then clasped his own hands behind his back. The men around them worked quietly.

Obi-Wan shifted his weight and leaned closer to him. He held up a datapad between them, and angled the screen towards Cody; a map of the area surrounding the Temple appeared. With Appo in command, they couldn’t take the chance that he’d been given the same ingress routes Cody had memorized during training. It’d taken some karking fast talking to incorporate using the service entrance Obi-Wan favored into their plans without explaining why he had a preferred side exit. Cody shifted and grasped the edge of the screen with his left hand. Obi-Wan hadn’t put on his helmet yet—Juri’s new paint job was still drying—and his hair had fallen across his forehead. Cody’s fingers twitched. If they’d been alone, he would have pushed it back into place.

He cleared his throat. “Is there an update on the route, sir?”

“I believe so, Commander.” Obi-Wan lifted his hand between them and tapped the screen twice. The map zoomed in, and then flipped vertically, showing a cross-section of the levels below Little Aldera. They’d meet there sometimes, right off the Petitioner’s Refuge; the rooms were cheap, and no one expected a Jedi outside the Temple walls that far down. The pilgrims came to the Jedi, not the other way around.

“I’m familiar with the area, General,” Cody said, as if Obi-Wan didn’t already know. “The elevators are probably our best shot. They’re faster, and no one would look twice at us.”

Cody leaned closer. He reached between them to bring the upper third underground levels into focus. He pointed at the airbus terminus that connected the 67-19 sublevels.

“I quite agree, Commander,” Obi-Wan said. He rubbed his hand down his beard. “It’s a short walk from the elevator station, and then we can use the service tunnels.”

“Thank you, General,” Cody said.

The ship adjusted course four degrees starboard, and Obi-Wan stiffened. He looked up. The men began to raise their voices over each other. Cody backed up a step and looked out the viewport.

“Do you see the smoke?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Yes, sir.” Cody widened his stance to compensate for the ship’s route as it followed the Senator’s corvette; his foot accidentally bumped into the general’s boot and stayed there. Obi-Wan inhaled sharply and then held his breath. Cody took the datapad from his hand and brought it down against his side. He tapped its edge on Obi-Wan’s thigh plate, and Obi-Wan breathed out.

Little Aldera was closest to the corner of the Federal District occupied by the Jedi; they planted their boots as close as possible to the Temple to show off how reverence for the Jedi was a longstanding official Alderaan position. Now, it was the best kriffing spot in the galaxy to watch the Temple burn. Thick black smoke from the center of the ziggurat turned even the Coruscanti air a deep grey as they flew lower; the filters must have been overwhelmed.

He grit his teeth. Obi-Wan stood still, but a corner of his mouth twitched. The Temple was constructed from durasteel, turadium, and actual stone, so for that amount of smoke to be billowing out—for any of the damage to even be visible—the 501st had to be actively infiltrating with artillery, not just heavy blasters. They were probably lucky the Chancellor didn’t think he could get away with a karking airstrike.

“The Tower of Reconciliation’s collapsed,” Tano said. Her voice shook.

“Kriffing hell,” Rex said.

“Sir, what are they burning?” Vapor asked from the comms station. “I mean…it’s the Temple.”

“I can think of quite a few areas, unfortunately,” Obi-Wan said. He bent to the deck and picked up his helmet. Carefully, with both hands, he put it on. Juri had painted a Beskaryc Kar'ta on the side. Cody held out Obi-Wan’s lightsaber; he took it and hooked it to the interior clasp beneath his kama. Obi-Wan briefly touched the butt of the DC-15s side arm blaster strapped to his right side before he crossed his arms over his chest. Cody cleared his throat and looked away.

“The security system?” Rex asked. He turned from the viewport when Tano did, and rested both of his hands on his holsters.

Obi-Wan nodded. “It’s a possibility. They could be broadcasting on our frequency with a portable array. I’d place my bet on the storage areas, though. Eighty-One?”

“Recall signal’s going strong, General,” Eighty-One answered.

“How did the Chancellor get the code to enter the system?” Cody asked. “I thought access was restricted to the Council.”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan answered. He tilted his helmet to the left.

Commander Tano turned away from the viewport and crossed her arms around her middle. “If they changed the codes after beginning the recall, we might be in for a longer fight than we anticipated.”

“And I thought the point was to avoid a fight,” Rex said.

“Let’s just say I’ve got a very bad feeling about this,” Tano said.

“Approaching vessel, approaching vessel,” — Organa’s ground staff were quick — “you are now entering restricted Alderaanian airspace. By order of the Galactic Senate, you are commanded to identify yourself or redirect your flight path. Requesting landing code and verbal identification, over?”

Cody held up his fist for quiet just as Rex did. The noise level dropped enough to hear Snag typing one-handed. With his left, Snag picked up the datapad with the script Cody had written him from the side pouch at the pilot’s station. The Senator was on their side, but not his staff, and Cody wasn’t taking any chances.

“Affirmative there, Alderaan—Alderaanian embassy.” Snag coughed and cleared his throat. “Um.”

He brought the datapad closer to his face, squinting, and Juri covered his eyes with both hands. Trip-Sevens pushed him sideways. Cody cut his flattened palm through the air, and they settled.

“This is Corvette Tantive IV,” Snag continued, a bit louder, “on approach as escort to his Excellency, Senator Organa. Authorization Lesh-Xesh-Dorn-Niner. Transmitting our landing codes now.”

There was a pause. Commander Tano adjusted her grip on her hilts, and Rex crossed his arms. Ahead of the ship, Cody saw the Senator’s transport veer left and extend their docking supports.

“Affirmative. We have received your transmission, Tantive IV,” the controller finally said. “You are cleared to land. Lights up on your docking pad now.” Her voice buzzed through the speakers, a non-human vibration in her tone. “Welcome to Coruscant. Be advised, outside access will be restricted.”

“Roger that, Alderaanian Embassy.”

As Snag initiated landing procedures, the rest of the men on the bridge crowded the front viewport. Rex glanced back to him before turning to Tano, who had reached out to the transparisteel. Cody licked his lips and put his hand on Obi-Wan’s backplate, pressing down hard. Obi-Wan leaned into the touch.

***

They parted ways on their landing pad, which was the farthest from the embassy and the closest to the civilian sectors that butted up against the Temple district. The Senator went to his emergency session, Commander Tano and Rex’s group went with Master Yoda to infiltrate through the north Temple district, and the 212th and General Kenobi went to make their way as a standard patrol. Anyone trying the front doors after an assault like that was asking for a fight, and they’d lost enough men and time just in transit.

It’d been a long time since Cody had had to infil an urban environment without blasting its walls down first. If he didn’t think too hard about the objective, it was almost like being in Squad Seven again. The men settled as they walked; Cody heard the rattle of their armor. The General was silent and still. If Cody hadn’t had him in his peripherals, it would have almost been like Obi-Wan wasn’t there at all. The AO was littered with ambush points, but not much in the way of defensive positions. Alderaanian influence in the architecture meant there was more open space than in other city sectors, but it still left too many intersections and skyways where he would have set up snipers’ nests if he’d been in charge of defending the territory.

Cody swallowed. This was what he hated about Coruscant. No matter how easy it was to be anonymous—even more anonymous than a clone could expect to be—the entire planet was nothing but a million places to die and never be found. The underground was workable, but below this level was a warren of illegally constructed shanties and low-income residential levels. At the nearest elevator station, they ran into the first remote blockade. The control banks were red-barred; anyone attempting to use one of the elevators would be trapped inside the carriage. If they sliced the controls, they’d be flagged immediately.

Obi-Wan pointed east, and Cody led the way down the side street from the intersection and around the side of a skyscraper connected to the municipal pathway. Something skittered to the left as they descended the wide, reinforced stairs at the four-way that marked the border between Little Aldera topside and Little Aldera below. They sped up down the stairs and Boil sliced the alarms on a discarded taxi at the first deserted rank station they encountered. They took it down and across, blowing through sectors with little to no air traffic. It made all the little hairs on Cody’s arms raise up. It was midday; even as far down as they were, where ‘day’ was just a brighter setting on the municipal street lumas, there should have been traffic.

The floating market in the middle of the skyway was locked down, its walkways retracted. He had Boil drive to the anchoring station nearest to the Cold Market, and then they walked the rest of the way. The streets had never seemed this large before, stalls and skyscrapers looming on either side of the skyway, empty of the noisy stinking crowds he’d pushed his way through the last time he’d walked this level. Cody led them to the open area near sector 2200/sq., surrounded by closed stalls and unsanctioned, cobbled-together alleyways. The pilgrims trying to gain access to the Temple usually wound up in different sectors of the same level, separating out by race or affiliation. The Seppie attack had left entire sectors cut off from the grid, forcing refugee populations to squeeze themselves into squares with even less karking resources.

Ahead of them, twenty cultists of the Central Isopter, wrapped from top to bottom in yellow and black mantles and wearing full helmets, walked towards them, swaying in lockstep. Cody heard a slow, droning hum in the air as they came closer. The Lens at the head of the parade held a glowing recording rod in both hands high up in the air.

“Stang,” Boil said. “This must be their own karking Galactic Fair.”

“Well, they would be out, wouldn’t they?” the General said very evenly. “A short cut, I think, or else we’ll miss our appointment.”

Obi-Wan glanced at him. Cody waggled his head, just slightly. “Lower might be busier as well. Cut across Esqual Courtyard?” Cody suggested.

“And into Dalesund’s Neck,” Obi-Wan finished. He brushed his hand down his blue kama just above his hidden lightsaber. His fingers shook against the reinforced leather. He took a breath and cleared his throat. “The Force is becoming quite insistent. We should keep moving.”

“You think everybody’s hiding inside?” Snag asked.

Cody turned down the corridor by the Kutempic stim teashop, and took point; the general stepped up to his shoulder as they wove through the piles of trash and puddles that gleamed with oil underneath the lumas. Cody’s stomach tensed. He felt warm. The neighborhoods radiating out from the Cold Market were usually where the true believers without any creds to their designations wound up. The minor rim-ward houses and their escorts usually scored apartments slightly higher up. Here, though, the hostels were always crowded and no one asked too many uncomfortable questions.

“Wouldn’t you be?” Juri said. “Look at the karking Temple, I don’t—I mean, uh…”

“Stow it, Corporal,” Boil said. “Or I’ll stow it for you.”

“Sorry, sirs,” Juri said.

Cody shook his head. They continued on through the maze of side streets and roundabouts, only pausing to consult the map on the general’s datapad when a shop appeared where it wasn’t supposed to be, surrounded by repurposed lumas. Finally, the path opened up into an interior plaza, still empty but more well-lit; the central water feeder had been turned off and empty pitchers lay on the ground.

“Fastest I’ve ever gotten through this place,” he muttered.

“You go here a lot, uh, sir?” Snag asked.

Cody readjusted his grip on his blaster and walked down the short flight of steps to the plaza. The squad’s footsteps thudded against the duracrete.

“Just a few times,” Cody said. “The lower levels take some getting used to.”

The food stalls and repair booths were all shuttered, but when Cody looked up he saw light peeking from behind the privacy shields in the windows of the hostels and apartments above before they disappeared into the constant underground fog. The nape of Cody’s neck crawled as they turned down the alleyway to the service access point. He’d never been able to hear his own footsteps on Coruscant before. Obi-Wan flipped up the top of the plasti-case covering the door lock controls, and paused.

“Yours or mine?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.

“Either might draw attention, sir,” Cody said. “But mine could take them a minute.”

Obi-Wan stepped back from the panel. Cody moved up beside him, and tapped in his access code. The door opened with a hiss and the thunk of de-magnetized locks.

Obi-Wan waved his hand through the doorway. “After you, gentlemen.”

Cody felt Obi-Wan’s heel brush across his foot. Cody held position, aiming behind them toward the mouth of the alley while the men filed past. Cody felt Obi-Wan’s hand touch the center of his chest, but when he looked down, he saw nothing. Oh. He put his own hand over his chestplate directly above the invisible pressure, and the sort of prickly heat he’d only felt when it was Obi-Wan using the Force rose up to cover his entire hand. Cody clenched his hand into a fist and the heat disappeared. He turned towards Obi-Wan and followed his general through the door.

It slid shut behind them. The corridor was high and lit by motion-detecting lumas that flared to life at their approach.

“So much for a subtle entrance,” Rivet said.

Cody shook his head. “If anyone checks, we’re just a patrol picking up…strays,” he said. “Now form up and move out.”

He resettled his grip on his blaster and moved on down the corridor. They’d have to be fast as stang to get through whatever blockades the 501st had set up to block access within the Temple. Appo wasn’t the highest frequency beam in the array, but he knew his work. It didn’t take a karking genius to think of all the vulnerabilities built into the sprawl of the Temple complex. Dozens of different architectures built over and on top of each other made almost every kriffing level its own battlespace. The Senator hadn’t said much about what he’d seen at the Temple, which meant—it meant… It could mean kriffing anything. Organa was a politician first. Even if he’d seen something of strategic importance, he wouldn’t have recognized it, but he might also just not have wanted to talk about whatever he did see. Cody’s brothers were well-trained; General Skywalker accepted nothing less, and that meant the Temple was—that the Jedi were suffering for their trust. Cody’s throat ached suddenly.

Boil took up his spot on Cody’s left. “How far below the rendezvous point are we, Commander?” he asked.

Cody glanced around at the beige walls. This was an older section of the complex. He thought back to the booklets he’d been given to memorize, full of maps so old they’d been actual hardcopy. The Ziggurat extended miles up into the actual atmosphere, but the complex around and below it was the product of centuries of construction and re-construction. Navigation was a karking nightmare.

“We’re beneath the workshops between the Tower of First Knowledge and the Tower of Reconciliation,” he said finally. “General, can we get to a hub station from here?”

Obi-Wan cleared his throat behind them. “We’ll take this passage to the left, and then the transport can carry us northeast.”

“What if the power’s been cut?” Trip-Sevens asked. “This could be emergency lighting.”

“I’ll need to get to a public terminal before I’ll be able to make a determination,” Obi-Wan said.

Cody tilted his helmet to the left. “Sir, if you use your login anywhere in the Temple, whoever’s monitoring the system will tag it immediately.”

“You brought your baffle, didn’t you?” Obi-Wan asked.

He started walking ahead, and the squad picked up his pace. Rivet turned to Cody. “You’ve got a baffle, sir?”

Cody cleared his throat. “Keep moving.”

***

They encountered no resistance as they moved through the corridors, but Cody felt his shoulder muscles tighten and throb with stress anyway. The walls turned from stone to duracrete poured murals as they drew closer to ground level. The lumas started to flicker, dimming in increasing intervals. One by one, the men’s muttered conversations fell silent, and their boots made the only noise. Floor droids blinked in their recharge stations. Obi-wan was quiet beside him, walking with one hand on his blaster and the other squeezed into a fist.

“General,” Cody said, “if the tower’s down then the system will have already partitioned itself.”

Cody kept his breathing even and his eyes sharp. They weren’t far down enough to avoid patrols now, so where were they? The Temple complex never truly shut down, with the nocturnal Jedi running classes and the civilian shifts turning over. It was always full of people, and any invasion plan had to take them into account. Even a surprise attack still left time for one of the evacuation plans to be implemented in a compound this large.

“I know the tower’s down,” Obi-Wan said crisply. “But there is still the chance that when they breached the Temple, they neglected to put up the defenses.”

Cody bent his head, lowered his voice. “Sir, it’s an automatic system response—”

“Which can be countermanded!” Obi-Wan snapped.

Behind them, someone missed a step. Obi-Wan took a deep breath and his voice smoothed. “They want us here,” he said. “They’ll make it as easy as possible for us.”

And if they had the code to send out the recall signal, they’d have the code to override the security protocols that turned every standing tower into its own segregated system in the event of a security breach. Cody clenched his jaw. He faced forward.

“This is too easy,” Trip-Sevens muttered. “Even with all this space to cover, there should still be someone patrolling.”

“Not at all,” Obi-Wan said. “They’ll be thickest around the staryards and the ground vehicles, where we’d land in case of a recall. I expect the mooring tower is quite lively right about now.”

A chill crept down Cody’s spine, tiptoeing down his bones with sharp, icy fingers. That was where he’d lay his ambush, if he’d been in charge. The security station itself was bound to be guarded, but Rex had trained Appo right. Every single docking station had to be an ambush point.

Boil grunted. “Do you think anyone’s come back?”

No one answered. They made their way upwards and in, towards the elevator stations. The mosaic of twin sunsets flaring out across the wall was damaged; the tiles crunched under Cody’s feet. He frowned. Blaster bolts scarred the hallway ahead. A brown carry-all lay against the wall, datapads spilled out across the floor; a bundle of prisht-fruit was smeared by a trooper’s bootprints. Whoever had dropped that must have made it further ahead. He moved faster, past Obi-Wan, and took point.

Obi-Wan’s footsteps began to thud alongside his own, then they fell out of lockstep, half-echoing Cody’s pace. Cody slowed and readied his blaster. The air in his helmet grew hot. Obi-Wan shuddered; he was breathing quickly, so much so that Cody could see his breastplate moving.

Rivet charged past them, slinging his blaster aside and sliding his medkit to his front. Boil ran up after him, hand outstretched. He grabbed Rivet by the shoulder, and yanked backwards.

“No, wait!”

Rivet’s front foot slipped; he wavered, off-balance.

“Hold,” Obi-Wan said, and the squad halted.

Carbon scoring blistered the sides and ceiling of the corridor, leading down past the intersection by the elevators. Obi-Wan raised both hands, unholstering his blaster as if by accident, and took a shuddering breath. The muzzle of his DC-15s wavered, pointed directly at the ceiling. The squad spread out automatically, leaving Obi-Wan in the center. Cody looked down the empty hallway through the sight on his Deece: smoke curled from a sparking, exploded terminal, but there was no movement ahead. Something high-powered had strafed a karking canyon across the ceiling, and chunks of stone lay across the flooring; he could see a shawl caught beneath the debris.

Rivet jerked his shoulder out of Boil’s grip. He clutched his medkit and pointed down the corridor. “General, if there’s any chance!”

Obi-Wan cleared his throat and reholstered his weapon. Rivet clutched his med-kit; he shook his head. Cody lowered his blaster partway, and looked behind himself. Juri had pulled out a datapad, and begun to tap at it; Snag leaned over his shoulder. Cody held his breath and strained to hear anything. Nothing. Trip-Sevens let the muzzle of his carbine drop to the ground.

“I’m not picking up any chatter, Commander,” Juri said. Snag flinched next to him.

Cody’s helmet registered a raise in temperature. His skin prickled. “Sir,” he said quietly.

“Left,” Obi-Wan said. His hands dropped. “We need to go left. Come, there’s…nothing we need to see up ahead.”

He holstered his blaster and walked past them all down the curving hallway. Cody stared down that empty smoking corridor ahead of them, and then at the carbon scoring on the wall to his right; blaster fire had melted the face off some old statue inset in the alcove there. He looked at his wrist comm and clenched his jaw. They’d agreed to go silent, just in case Appo had assigned comms staff to monitor signals inside the Temple. Juri’s backend program gave him overwatch on the 501st’s comms without being pinged on the system, but only as long as he didn’t try to do anything more than listen in.

Boil waggled his helmet. Cody sighed and lowered his arm. He pointed with two fingers down the corridor.

“You know the routine,” Cody said.

They hurried to catch up; Obi-Wan moved quickly. By the time they’d gotten halfway down the corridor, Cody could see him at the end of it, where the curve branched off into three separate tunnels, with a band of elevators at the right hand side. Obi-Wan was already at the terminal by the four doorways to the carriages. Karking hell. Cody ran up and aimed his blaster rifle at the floor between them.

“There you are, Cody,” Obi-Wan said. His voice rang out, clear and bright like a karking warning siren. “We shouldn’t split up. I’m not certain I would recognize you with that new flower you’ve painted on your visor.”

Boil snorted. Cody ignored him. He felt his heartbeat thump against his ribs, and his chest tightened. Only three of the elevators had green lights above their entrances. The fourth had an orange warning light instead.

“It’s a sunburst, sir,” he said. He reached into his utility belt and pulled his baffle from the pouch on his right hip. Obi-Wan held out his hand, and Cody dropped it in his palm.

Obi-Wan lifted the hinged prongs into place and took off the cover protecting the metal connectors. With his other hand, he tapped a key on the terminal’s pad. The public terminal’s screen brightened and asked for a login. Obi-Wan unfolded the segmented body of the baffle and jammed the prongs into the diagnostic connectors below the screen.

“It’s quite the change from your racing stripes, I will admit,” he said. He pressed the power button, and the screen blanked into a command panel. He rested his hands on the keypad as the baffle’s program flashed across the panel, and began to type, calling up another three UI panels. It would get him into the system without a specific logon, but it wouldn’t stop anyone from seeing him access it; if anyone noticed it would be just as bad.

“That was detailing, General,” Cody said. He felt his lips curl upwards, helplessly. “Not racing stripes.”

“Ink did it, General,” Snag said, a little too loudly. Juri reached over and pushed his shoulder; Snag batted him away. “It’s a sunburst.”

“I shall go as far as an Ithorian Splatflower, but no further,” Obi-Wan said.

Over his shoulder, Cody could see he was accessing the intranet. “This should get me far enough into the system,” Obi-Wan muttered.

“General,” Cody said. “What are you doing?”

Obi-Wan paused in his typing long enough to draw his hand sideways at chest height. Cody stepped back. Trip-Sevens and Juri both turned their heads away at the same time. Cody frowned, and walked over to Boil and Rivet’s position by the broken fourth elevator.

“You think this elevator just wasn’t high on the maintenance schedule, Commander?” Boil asked.

Cody shook his head. “Wish I did.”

He stared up at the orange out of service light and then down at the clean floor; no blaster burns here, but no bodies either. Whoever the 501st had been chasing on this level must have come the long way, maybe trying to hide in one of the storerooms. Obi-Wan continued to type. Trip-Sevens and Snag spread out to cover the mouth of the corridor while Juri monitored comms on his datapad.

“So where’d you get that illegal piece of osik, sir?” Boil asked. He gestured towards the public terminal.

“A baffle’s some pretty serious contraband,” Rivet added. He hunched up, and readjusted his pack.

Pretty karking easy to make, too, if you knew what you were doing, ret’lini. Cody snorted. “Found it in the bottom of my ration pack.”

Boil rested his carbine in the crook of his arm. “Glad to know something good comes out of those.”

Boil shifted on his feet. Cody’s mouth felt dry; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Pressure built at the back of his skull. They were two levels below ground level now. If their luck held, they’d avoid whatever force Appo had in place, and meet up with Rex and Commander Tano, and the Grandmaster. Cody licked his lips. He readjusted his grip on his Deece.

“You hear anything, Juri?” he called out.

“Clean up patrols operating at the front of the reception hall,” Juri said. “Sounds like they’ve—they’ve cleared most of this half of the First Knowledge Quarter.”

“What does that mean?” Trip-Sevens asked.

Juri looked up from his datapad. His helmet bobbed a little as he put the datapad away and picked up his blaster. Snag turned sideways, keeping one eye on the outer hall. “Hey, tion gar hibira?” he asked, raising his voice.

“Ne'johaa!” Cody glanced Obi-Wan’s way, but he hadn’t so much as twitched. “Juri?”

Juri looked at Obi-Wan’s back, tucked his head to the right, and crossed his arms. He turned to Cody. “Commander Appo’s ordered pyres, sir.”

Snag turned back around quickly and brought his blaster up. He smacked his pauldron against the wall he was bracing against.

“He’s a commander now?” Boil asked.

“Must be a field promotion,” Cody said. He tucked his rifle against his left elbow and breathed in and out evenly. That was to be expected; the 501st were fast workers. He looked back once at Obi-Wan, still typing.

“Kaysh jate’kara,” Snag muttered.

Cody frowned, but let it go. With one of the towers collapsed, the Temple system would automatically go into lockdown, segmenting itself into isolated pillars. Each system had its own secondary generators, and some of the workshops had limited medical facilities. Survivors could be anywhere, hiding in one of the classrooms, maybe. If they took the safest route from this section, it would be … Cody closed his eyes, trying to picture the schematic of service tunnels and workstations that lined the hallways around the Temple’s enormous reception hallway.

“Blast, I was afraid of that,” Obi-Wan said.

Cody’s eyes flew open. He turned on his heel to face Obi-Wan. “Sir?”

Obi-Wan tilted his head to the right, and stepped back from the terminal in one fluid motion. “You were right about the intranet security protocols. Speed is what matters now, Commander. I’ve rigged the elevators to activate and stop at different levels, but this one will take us to the ground level.”

The doors to all the elevators opened with soft hisses. Obi-Wan gestured to the elevator nearest to the terminal and entered. Juri took a step, stopped, and looked towards Cody. Trip-Sevens and Snag stood away from the mouth of the hallway.

Cody cleared his throat and walked into the elevator. He stood next to Obi-Wan and faced the front as the squad followed in after him. They barely fit, pressing Cody and Obi-Wan towards the back as the doors closed. The carriage didn’t shudder, but Cody felt the air pressure weigh him down as it picked up speed. In front of them, the men checked their ammo packs. Boil took off his helmet and unsnapped his canteen from his belt. Cody leaned against the wall and into Obi-Wan.

“The intranet?” he asked quietly.

Obi-Wan held out his baffle, neatly folded, in the palm of his hand. His hand wavered in the air for a moment. Cody took the baffle and replaced it in his belt pouch. Obi-Wan twitched his head back and forth slightly.

“It’s just a minor setback,” he said. “We can work around it.”

“The plan was always going directly to the—” Cody broke off with a quick glance to the side. The vod’e were right in front of them, pretending not to listen. “Of course we can, General.”

Obi-Wan turned more fully towards him. He held his hands up at his waist, stretched his fingers out widely, and began to sign. “When we meet up with Ahsoka, I can explain further. The mission is still a go.”

His signing was awkward; without gauntlets he was usually more elegant. Cody hooked his rifle to his belt. He tapped his chest with two fingers and raised his hands.

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like that explanation?” he signed back, flicking the ends of his fingers out.

Obi-Wan brushed his right and left shoulders and tilted his helmet to the right. “Because you are a very smart man, who…”

He paused, his hands freezing in front of him. Obi-Wan’s shoulders hunched, epaulet plates scraping the sides of his helmet. The temperature in Cody’s HUD went up three degrees and then plunged ten. He grabbed Obi-Wan’s right wrist.

Obi-Wan’s other hand came up and clasped Cody’s gauntlet. Cody felt his heartbeat speed up with a lurch. Obi-Wan’s grip tightened; his body moved with his breath. Cody glanced up at the ceiling. There could be a patrol waiting on the other side of those elevator doors. It could be the Chancellor himself, and a Sith would see right through their disguise. Obi-Wan shook his head and then their clasped hands; he pulled his arms backward until Cody let go.

“The Force has gone mad here,” he said, slowly curling his fingers as if they hurt him. “It can be distracting.”

Cody pressed his lips together. He couldn’t move closer; if he did he’d be between Obi-Wan’s knees, and no amount of polite backs turned would excuse that. The quiet of the elevator bore down on him. He looked down. The strap of Obi-Wan’s kama had shifted, pulled down by the hidden lightsaber. Cody reached out, pinched the strap between two fingers, and tugged it gently back into place. Obi-Wan held very still. Cody patted the leather and withdrew.

“Then the sooner we’re in, the quicker we’re out,” Cody signed.

Obi-Wan made a fist and bent it up and down at the wrist. They listened to the hum of the repulsors as the elevator rose, and the shuffling of the men’s feet, the click of their gauntlets. Cody saw Juri fingerspelling a lesh and looked away; let the men have their privacy, too.

“You know, if I had been leading this attack,” Obi-Wan signed. His head dipped down and to the left. “I would not have chosen the Reception Hall.”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice either, especially if I was trying to say I’d been attacked first.”

Obi-Wan nodded. “What self-respecting usurper attacks their enemy and leaves their own front door undefended?”

His hands began to shake. Cody reached out, and Obi-Wan jerked backwards. He leaned against the wall and tucked his arms around himself. Cody turned his head up to the floor panel; they had a level to go. The map screen inset in the wall showed they’d be coming out along the service passage that ran beside the reception hall.

His stomach clenched and held there, a tight, sour ball. He gripped his blaster. “Boil.”

Boil put his helmet back on. “Yes sir.”

Cody leaned backwards and held his blaster, muzzle down, at chest level. Obi-Wan hadn’t moved. The temperature lowered again.

“Rendezvous should be 50 feet on our right. Be ready to move,” Cody said. “Juri, I want updates on their troop movements.”

The elevator door slid open. He saw Boil put his hand on the threshold to stop it from closing. The lumas directly outside were cracked and dark. Beside him, Rivet shuddered.

Cody breathed in and out. He could hear something crackling, the sizzling hiss and pop of fried equipment. “Move,” he said.

Boil stepped out first, moving quickly and then stopping in the middle of the corridor. He raised his blaster and aimed towards the left. Rivet followed, and then the rest of the men. Cody moved in front of Obi-Wan.

“This is a trap, sir,” he muttered. “Try to play hard to get.”

He felt Obi-Wan knock the back of his foot. “I suppose fashionably late will have to do.”

They exited into the hallway, and Cody led the way down the passageway, further into the Temple. He kept his helmet steady, his eyes forward, and didn’t pause. The service corridor was pockmarked by blaster fire, and the scraped, surgical burns of lightsabers in a constrained space. Carbonized fabric and bits of armor lay on the floor. The main lighting was damaged and orange emergency strips lit the walls and flooring. There wouldn’t be blood; there couldn’t be. Cody’s foot hit a chunk of debris. He glanced down and saw charred drag marks. He looked back up.

His HUD registered fluctuating smoke levels in the air. The Temple’s filtration system would be working overtime. Cody glanced at his wrist comm, and then behind him.

“Juri?” he asked.

Juri moved up in formation and pulled out his datapad. He tapped into his program. “I’ve got movement to the east,” he said. “A patrol’s been diverted to check out one of the repair bays.”

“We could divert,” Trip-Sevens said. “Which repair bay? I had escort duty with—when Master Tan-Oshi visited and our starboard thruster got dinged at the mooring station. There might be—”

Cody felt Obi-Wan’s presence at his back, the carefully solid thud of his boots on the floor. He clenched his jaw and locked the hollow rasp of his breath behind his teeth. Civilian staff worked in the repair bays alongside Jedi. Anyone could be in there, if they survived the vod’e assigned to the engineering corps.

“The longer it takes us to complete our own mission, Private,” Obi-Wan said, in a voice so calm it could have been over the comms from a thousand feet away, “the worse it will be for everyone.”

The hallway came to an end ahead of them, with a door to their left and a corner turn to the right. Cody swallowed. It could be nothing, too. Jumpy, chipped troopers locked into their own personal S & D, firing at shadows to release the pressure in their karking heads.

“Sirs, Snag and me—”

“We’ve got our orders,” Cody said, without stopping as he took the corner. “Stick to them.”

“Like we did before?” Trip-Sevens asked.

Cody twisted around, but Boil had already stepped up next to Trip-Sevens. The entire squad halted.

“I thought we were here to help,” Trip-Sevens said. His hands shook on his Deece; he pointed it at the floor abruptly. “I thought—”

Trip-Sevens stopped speaking. Cody followed his sightline to the corner. A quarter of a clone trooper’s helmet, melted and encrusted with carbon where it’d been carved off, lay in a small, dark puddle. He couldn’t recognize what was left of the markings. Cody felt his breathing stutter and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He turned his head away.

“We will,” Boil said. He turned Trip-Sevens around to face the corridor. “But we can’t be everywhere. We have a mission.”

He pushed, gently, on Trip-Sevens’s back, and Cody turned around. The hallway before them was scarred, but clear of bodies. He kept his head up. Wouldn’t make a difference if he didn’t concentrate too hard on the debris on the floor. He walked with Obi-Wan at his side. He could hear the men behind him. Rivet was humming to himself, “The Trooper's Farewell” again. Cody’s eyesight blurred; he blinked until it cleared.

“Sir, there are patrols in a pincer sweep coming back this way,” Juri said. He held up his datapad. “I’ve got Strill and Gamma squads on the move.”

“The 501st is being supported by Spec Ops?” Cody asked. Ahead, there were doubled rows of doors. There were so many rooms in the Temple, so many beings, even as depleted as the Jedi ranks were.

“How many?” Obi-Wan asked a breath later. He raised his right hand in front of him, and tilted his helmet to the left.

Jury shook his head. “Hard to say, sirs,” he said. “I’m not getting a lot of the usual chatter. Mostly it’s just…pretty basic relay. Some of the men don’t sound so good.”

“Keep monitoring the feeds,” Cody said. He thought about the center of himself, the bright spot that no one could touch that was supposed to calm the rest of him. He felt his heart thump in his chest. “We’ll have to time our movements to their patrol patterns.”

The temperature ticked upwards in his helmet’s readout. Cody resettled his grip on his blaster. If any of the chipped clones were close enough to register that tell on their own HUDs, they’d be ankle-deep in stang before they could look for a fresher.

“A detachment’s been retasked from the pyres, sir,” Juri said. “They’re being sent north to the service entrances.”

“Karking Force kriff it,” Snag muttered.

Cody nodded. They passed two octagonal framed doors with their control panels blasted open, and cresh resh scrawled across them. Smart of the Five-oh-one to mark off their sweeps. One of the entryways had fallen into its lintel, stained with scorch marks, and Cody could have seen inside if he’d looked. Behind him, someone’s footsteps faltered. These were storerooms and waiting areas, places for people to stick travelers’ cloaks or antechambers to more secure offices. They were probably empty. He didn’t look.

The corridor lengthened ahead, four more doorways and a T-Section at the end. Three had cresh resh, and one had esk resh. At the right side entrance, just before the intersection, Obi-Wan held his left hand upright in a fist. They halted.

Obi-Wan walked past the room marked esk resh to the last door on the corridor marked cresh resh. Its controls were intact, and the green unlocked light glowed above the number pad. Cody pointed in front and behind him, and the men spread out. Obi-Wan knocked twice, scraped his gauntleted knuckles down the blank portion of the grey metal, and then knocked twice again. The sounds echoed up and down the corridor, and faded away.

Sweat dripped down the back of Cody’s neck and he twitched. Obi-Wan glanced over; Cody nodded back and raised his blaster to firing height. Obi-Wan’s left fist clenched over his hidden lightsaber. He repeated the sequence.

The door rumbled in its frame and slid back with a hiss. Commander Tano stood in front of him, wearing a short brown cloak with its hood down. Cody dropped his blaster out of her face. Her montrals barely twitched.

“Get inside,” Rex hissed from behind the threshold, covering the corridor with his blaster. “Move.”

They rushed in, blasters half-raised, and Cody felt a knot untie in his back the second the door slid closed. He dropped his blaster to the side, one-handed, and clasped Rex’s already outstretched forearm. Rex latched on tightly and squeezed his bracer so hard Cody felt the magnetic latch dig into his wrist. Cody tightened his own grip until Rex jerked his head up and down in quick nod and let go.

“We had to circle our way around Delta Squad to get here,” Tano said. She was flipping her shoto lightsaber end over end in her hand. “What bright light in the Force attached them to the 501st?”

Obi-Wan snorted. Cody turned around. The storeroom they were in was cramped, but not too bad. The containers lining each shelf on all four walls were still in their neat rows, with a few stacked on the floor. A fire had been put out in one corner, and a table and chair were overturned. Kix stood in front of them, with his back to that side of the room and a strip of linen in his hand. Vapor stood next to him, holding a datapad.

“Waiting we have been,” Master Yoda said. “Met resistance, you did?”

He was sitting on a storage container with Del and an empty shoulder pack at his side. Cody raised his eyebrows.

“I apologize for the delay, Master,” Obi-Wan said, and bowed from his waist. He took off his helmet with both hands and paused. His face twitched and then smoothed.

Cody frowned. He looked at Rex and reached up to pull off his own helmet. Rex put his hand on Cody’s elbow and shook his head. Cody crossed his arms, holding his blaster against his chest.

“I’ve been able to confirm that the Temple’s intranet security defenses have been activated,” Obi-Wan continued. He tucked his helmet under one arm. “The towers have been completely isolated from each other.”

“Blast it,” Tano said, and caught her shoto lightsaber. She slashed it through the air as if it was armed.

“What problem is this?” Master Yoda asked. “Always the plan was to infiltrate the High Council Tower. To the security station we go.”

Obi-Wan paused and glanced at Commander Tano, who stood with both fists on her hips. Cody felt a sinking weight begin to take shape in his stomach. Beside him, Rex crossed his arms. Obi-Wan had been right; Cody wasn’t going to like this at all. Obi-Wan stepped forward to where Yoda sat, followed by the Commander, who came up to stand with them in a loose semi-circle.

Cody looked around the storeroom. Most of the men had turned around to poke at the boxes lining the walls. There could be something useful in them, but he doubted it. Rex nudged him to join the Jedi. Tano stepped closer to Rex, leaving Cody to take up his space at Obi-Wan’s right. It was where he usually stood—where he liked to be—but the Grandmaster’s solemn round eyes were staring at him. He came to attention, dragging his worry back behind the yellow shield in his mind, and Master Yoda’s ears twitched. He revolved his gimmer stick around in his hands.

“Delivered safely you have been, Master Obi-Wan,” Master Yoda said, and turned his wrinkled green face. “But what need have we of this confirmation? Attacked the Temple was, and activated were its defenses.”

“But not all of them, Master,” Obi-Wan cut in. “And many of the automatic systems were overridden. I had hoped this would be one of them. After you and Senator Organa left for his ship, Ahsoka and I had an opportunity to discuss countermeasures to the loss of the Temple and its resources.”

“What countermeasures are these?” Yoda asked. His left ear was beginning to curl downwards.

Obi-Wan cocked his head to the left and then righted himself. Cody saw Tano set her shoulders back.

“We had intended to retrieve copies of certain Jedi manuscripts—our history, our maps and such—from the library’s remote stations, and then delete them from the Archives,” he said.

Master Yoda’s eyes opened wide. He leaned back in his seat and tightened his clawed hands on his stick. “Delete them?” he repeated loudly. “Delete them, say you? Our heritage this is!”

Commander Tano sliced her hand length-wise in front of herself. “But not if it’s in a kriffing Sith Lord’s hands! Think how much time we’ve already wasted, Master. If they could get into the beacon they could have gotten into the Search records by now!”

Cody rocked back on his heels. Force take those damn lists. The entire Third Systems Army had been put on high alert the last time someone had stolen the rolls of Force-sensitives too young or too politically inconvenient for transportation to the Temple. It’d been done quietly, with official word spread only at the command level, but the tension when they’d been briefed at the Temple had made all the hairs on Cody’s body stand up for two full hours.

“Which is why we thought it important to add an auxiliary branch to our main strategy,” Obi-Wan said. He spread his hands, palms up. “We had everything necessary within meters of the Operations Center: the beacon, the security tapes to locate Anakin, and the remote access to the library. At the time, it seemed quite easy to accomplish.”

He’d changed the karking plan. He’d kriffing changed the karking plan without telling Cody about it. If it wasn’t so karking typical, it wouldn’t be so blasted annoying. Cody coughed deep in his throat, and Obi-Wan let his hands drop to his sides.

Cody very briefly and very vividly imagined punching the bright yellow shield in his mind, watching his imaginary hand recoil from the force and the wavering bands of light warping in the shield as it absorbed the hit. He couldn’t accomplish objectives in the field he was unaware of, and the number of times Obi-Wan complained about General Skywalker doing the same karking... He imagined punching the shield one more time. Cody glanced at Rex; the corner of his mouth was twitching. Numa-humper.

“Did you know about this?” he asked Rex.

Rex startled. “No! No, of course not,” he said. “This does explain why Commander Tano had me pack extra datasticks into my belt, though.”

Cody rolled his eyes. “So your plan was to access the sealed library from the High Council Tower? Before or after we run into the guards Appo must have placed on every single level of that spire?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “We’d be able to access enough data to stall any attempts the Chancellor makes to use our own resources against us.

And there can’t be troopers on every level,” he said. “The Five-Oh-One doesn’t have the numbers for that, even supplemented by commandos. At most, we’re looking at a squad in the communication center, and patrols covering the ingress routes. You know those Spaarti—”

“To plan is one path, to succeed another,” Master Yoda interrupted. “Now that intelligence has been gathered, propose do you two to continue on this mission?”

He raised his bushy eyebrows, and Obi-Wan bowed his head. He stroked one hand down his mouth and across his beard. “I believe it is still possible, Master,” he said. “We are inside the trap, but that does not mean we cannot still defeat it.”

Cody breathed in silently, and clasped his arms behind his back to stop them grabbing for Obi-Wan. Karking beautiful di’kut.

“To danger you go,” Master Yoda said. “Reckless you have always been.”

Obi-Wan’s head dipped lower before he raised his face up to meet Yoda’s stare. Cody stiffened his shoulders next to him.

“The praxeum ship was blown apart, Master,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “The training cruisers were bombed in their berths.”

“I’ll go,” Commander Tano said, and took a step forward. “Masters, Rex and I will take a squad to the library to download the information, while you and Master Obi-Wan get to the beacon.”

“Splitting up is usually a bad idea, sir,” Rex said. He frowned in Cody’s direction. Cody leaned his head backwards. Karking Jedi. They must have come up with this during the jump.

Tano shook her head. “We’re running out of time and options. If we split up, we’ll be able to complete both tasks and still make it to the egress point.”

“Search the Force, Master,” Obi-Wan said. “I feel the rightness of this action in the face of the storm surrounding us. We have an obligation to protect the ones we have placed in such grave danger time and again.”

Master Yoda sighed. He closed his eyes and bent his head; a rush like air from a fireplace blew through the room. Cody shuddered and stepped back. Obi-Wan twisted his way and caught his arm as if Cody had been about to fall. His hands gripped too tightly.

“Careful, Commander,” he said. His eyes flicked to meet Cody’s and then away.

“That’s always been your watchword, sir,” Cody said.

Obi-Wan coughed a chuckle and let go of Cody’s arm. He raised his hands to adjust a robe that wasn’t there, and then wrapped them around the straps of his kama instead. “Yes, well, I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

Cody kept Master Yoda’s still form in the corner of his eye. “I suspect I’m not going to like a lot more about this day before you’re done, General,” he said quietly.

“Clever man.”

Cody shook his head. Thank the Force for helmets that hid his smile; Obi-Wan got them into even worse trouble when he knew Cody thought he was being heroic again. “Can you do that trick where you hide yourself in the Force for everyone?” he asked, and nodded at Master Yoda. “Might come in handy when we’re out there.”

“Unfortunately not,” Obi-Wan said. “It takes practice that I haven’t had time for.”

Master Yoda breathed in deeply, and opened his eyes. He stood on the storage container, and planted his stick on the plastiform cover. “To the library, will young Ahsoka go,” he announced. His wrinkled lips curled in and pressed against each other. “The Will of the Force it is, but unprotected she must not be.”

Obi-Wan’s shoulders slumped as he breathed out. He and Commander Tano grinned at each other, but then Master Yoda grumbled and their faces turned serious.

“Thank you, Master,” Obi-Wan said.

“This can work,” Tano said. “Vapor, where’s the nearest patrol between us and the library?”

“East and three levels down,” Vapor said, looking up from his own datapad. “Looks like they’ve got orders to run sweeps in the laundry.”

“I hope the steam fries their gear,” Kix muttered. He put the linen scrap in a belt pocket.

“Sounds like we’ll get a better shot now then if we tag along with you,” Tano said. “All right, who’s up for a hike?”

Del shifted his Deece in front of him, muzzle to the floor. He had the empty pack slung over one shoulder. “Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he said.

“Beviin Squad,” Rex said. “Let’s get a move on!”

Vapor saluted with his datapad, and Kix readjusted the shoulder strap on his carbine. “Sir.”

“Wait,” Obi-Wan said. “Take Commander Cody with you.”

“What?” Cody asked.

He took a step back and looked between Obi-Wan and the Commander. Rex’s eyes were wide. Cody saw Boil turn around and bump Rivet with his shoulder.

“If we’re splitting up here,” Obi-Wan said, and nodded to Master Yoda, “I think Ahsoka would be better aided by Commander Cody and Captain Rex. They’ve both been there before; they’ll get the job accomplished that much more quickly.”

“Access to the library they were granted?” Master Yoda asked. He smiled and jumped down to the floor with a grunt. “Aware Jocasta Nu was not, I suspect.”

Cody swallowed against his tightening throat and pictured his shield until it blazed in front of his eyes. “Standard geographic acclimation drills, Master,” he said.

Master Yoda harrumphed. “Enough it shall be,” he said, and walked forward, silent except for the clicking of his stick. “Come, Master Obi-Wan. To work we must.”

“Master,” Obi-Wan said. He bowed and looked over the men. “Ahsoka, do you have any objections to this slight reshuffling?”

“No, Master,” she said. Her index finger flicked back and forth from Master Yoda’s turned back to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan nodded, and she brushed her montrals back.

“I think it’s the right move,” Obi-Wan said. He looked at Cody and nodded once, his hair falling into his face. Cody held himself still for a moment and then nodded back.

Obi-Wan pushed his hair back and put on his helmet. “Adenn, on me.”

The men stood away from the walls. Juri nodded at Cody before following Obi-Wan out into the corridor. Trip-Sevens flipped his vibroblade in his hand as he passed with Snag at his side. Boil stopped. “Sir, are you—”

“I want you with him,” Cody said. “Like a shiny on a karking three day pass, do you understand me, Sergeant?”

“Yes sir,” Boil said. He paused; his hands rose, and then fell back down again. He saluted and left.

The door slid shut behind them. Commander Tano turned and went to talk to Vapor. Rex cleared his throat. Cody checked the proton charge on his blaster. A DC-17m was good for stun at close quarters; if they ran into anyone they knew, he’d have to make sure he got up good and close.

***

They waited ten minutes to stagger their departure times, listening to the comms transmissions on Vapor’s datapad for the patrol closest to them to switch shifts with another squad. Then they took the nearest exit, closer to the reception hall. Going further inside the Temple’s access corridors to double back would take too long.

Rex tapped on the lip of Cody’s bucket, and Cody turned his head.

“I don’t remember practicing for ‘protect your invisible Jedi,’” Rex muttered.

Cody snorted. They’d drilled guard details during training, how to protect the injured, how to guide a diplomatic target out of the battlespace. The Commander had agreed to stay close to the wall with the squad as an outside buffer; now all they had to do was keep up with her.

Ahead, the path branched down a wide stairway to the left; the wall ended in front of it. Tano stepped on Cody’s heel. He stumbled and looked backward. She rolled her eyes and rotated her fist in front of her chest. He nodded. Her hood was up, as if that was going to help her if they came up on a patrol that hadn’t called in yet. Her bright skin had dulled again, and her forehead markings were growing tight with strain. She traced her hand along the carved ridge of a half-melted mural; someone had slashed right through the eyes of the molded Jedi with her outstretched lightsaber, surveying…something that looked like hills. Cody wasn’t big on Jedi art.

“I can’t believe this,” Tano said. “These are lightsaber burns.”

“Might be an—an accident, sir,” Vapor said behind her.

“Even Jedi miss sometimes,” Del muttered.

Tano tapped her fingers against the wall, and then let her hand fall as they moved on. Cody turned to face the front again. There were no bodies. He swallowed. The 501st had cleared the access routes completely, but when he looked down the drag marks crossed themselves into huge swathes of carbonized debris. If it’d been him, he’d have ordered the access corridors sealed and cleared them once the main areas had been secured.

The karking library. Of all the kriffing places Obi-Wan had ordered him to, he’d sent him to the karking library while they were still burning bodies on the blasted Temple steps. As if Nomi Sunrider’s karking diary was more important than getting access to the beacon and then getting out as quickly as possible. He’d carry the karking bastard if he had to. This was—they’d never find survivors on this level. They’d be lucky to find anyone. Rex’s men were good at their jobs. They were thorough.

“Appo’s not thinking clearly,” Rex said. He walked point, both blasters in hand. “Do you think he has the Temple layout?”

Cody shook his head at Rex’s back. “Not enough time for him to memorize anything,” he said. “Vapor, what’s the field look like between us and the library?”

He heard tapping. “Nothing near us so far,” Vapor said. “The pincer sweep found nothing and returned to the command post on the fifth level. Squads are being diverted towards the Reassignment Council Tower. Sounds like an explosion went off in the situation room.”

That was closer to Obi-Wan and the Grandmaster’s route. Cody clenched his hands on his Deece. He looked out to his right and stared at the blinking holotapestries along the wall. Every inch of the Temple was covered in art and karking symbolism. If this section was anything to go by, the vod’e had taken as many chances as they could to blast the artwork as well as their Jedi. Further in was the source of that billowing coil of smoke they’d seen on approach, though it covered too much area to say what was still on fire inside the Temple proper. Roofs and ceilings could have collapsed. Obi-Wan might need to divert around the damaged areas and regroup where the patrols were still thick on the ground. He could have gone off by himself to find General Skywalker. Boil had to let him go if Obi-Wan made it an order; they could have found other survivors. Cody’s mouth dried and he swallowed. He shook his head once to clear it and glanced behind him.

“Do you think it’s General Skywalker, sir?” Rex asked, and Cody refocused. He had a Jedi to guard.

Tano shook her head slowly. “I…”

“They can’t still be fighting,” Del said. “Who’s left?”

“Shh!” Commander Tano hissed.

They all froze. Cody jerked his head to the right and tried to hear what had the Commander flattening herself along the mural. The Temple had built the reception hall with sound mufflers in the walls to keep the atmosphere serene. Rex moved up to where the wall ended, and leaned his helmet against the edge.

Cody turned to the staircase and leaned out over the steps, putting his back to the opposite wall. Rex’s squad spread out, surrounding the Commander. Cody raised his Deece and cautiously stepped down. The stairs were too well-made to vibrate.

“I hear them,” Rex whispered. He pushed off the wall. “Quick, down the stairs!”

“What if they’re going down the stairs?” Tano asked urgently, leaning towards him and swinging her arm out. Cody saw the temperature hike up one degree.

“Force take it, just move!” Rex snapped.

“We’re talking about this later!” Tano said, but ran down the steps on silent feet with Rex on her heels.

Now, Cody could hear booted steps walking closer, out of formation like a gang rather than a patrol. Karking hell, let the sound mufflers just have been blasted loose. Cody aimed for the opening to the reception hall, letting Beviin squad pass him down the stairwell and around to the next flight of steps. He saw statues tumbled to the ground, a detached spindly leg crushed beneath a bronzium arm. Vapor was the last man to go; he patted Cody’s arm after he jumped past, and Cody swiveled around to follow. They’d hide down the flight of stairs and wait for the patrol to pass or take the corridor back. If they came down the stairs, they’d have the high ground, but there would be four men between them and the Commander. Vapor had already turned the corner ahead and disappeared. Cody stepped down.

“Stop right there!” Sergeant Coric ordered.

Footsteps stumbled to a halt behind him -- at least three other troopers. Cody stopped moving, one foot on the step below him. He licked his lips and stared hard at the empty space in front of him. Coric knew his voice, they’d worked together before.

“Turn around, Trooper,” Coric said. He sounded tired, a little rough, like something had torn in his throat. He coughed harshly.

Cody straightened his back. Commander Tano was at least twelve steps around that corner. All they had to do was keep quiet. He breathed out, and lay his finger along the trigger guard of his Deece.

“I said turn around,” Coric repeated himself. “You take a bolt to the head, mir’sheb?”

Stang, stang, stang. Cody glanced down at his blaster and considered his options. He clutched his left arm around the stock of his blaster, muzzle to the ceiling, hugging it to his chest, and turned around on the higher step. He raised his chin and shrugged.

Coric was on the landing above him, three steps taller, surrounded by a trio of clones that looked like they’d been pulled out of other squadrons. Their armor was smeared with carbonized soot, and one of them had half a pauldron sheared off. Coric walked down a step, the other three spread out along the top of the stairs, aiming in Cody’s direction. The one on the furthest right shifted his weight back and forth like he couldn’t stand comfortably. The middle one kept looking over his shoulders.

“I see sergeant’s bars on that armor, vod, but I don’t recognize your markings,” Coric said. His head was twitching in a constant jerking loop. “You meeting up with your squad down there? Hunting traitors?”

Coric’s voice pushed out of his mouth like his throat was closing even as he tried to speak, like he was tearing the last word to shreds in his teeth. Cody swallowed hard. Was that how he’d sounded to Rex? He cleared his throat. He kept the temperature read out in the corner of his vision. Force help Rex keep the Commander hidden.

“Just ch—checking out a noise, sir” he stuttered, and tried to pitch his voice lower, anything to sound different.

Coric’s head twitched harder. He’d always been a good brother, steady-handed and kind. It wouldn’t matter the second he saw Tano. It hadn’t mattered to Cody.

“What’s that, plastifoil?” Coric asked.

Cody pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and clenched his teeth. “Ch—checking out a noise, sir,” he muttered again, grunting like he’d had his broken jaw sealed shut.

“Checking a what?” Coric asked. His hands shook on his blaster. “Have we met before, vod?”

Karking hell. The three men up on the landing were spread out behind Coric, two of them with a bead on Cody. The third had Coric’s back in the way. Cody felt sweat at his temples, the itch of the bandage against his scalp. His own men had put a padawan in an airlock. They’d hunted a healer in her own medbay.

Cody eyed Coric. The Halls of Healing were close to their location. He angled his back a little harder against the wall of the stairwell and let his blaster drop an inch down. All Coric had to do was try to hear him, just come closer. Rex and the Commander were the furthest down the next flight of stairs, Beviin squad after that, and Cody was in between them and Coric’s men. He felt his neck tense; his shoulders came up.

Coric stepped down and tilted his helmet back. Cody looked at the scrapes covering Coric’s armor and the sooty handprints on his cuirass. He had four lightsabers dangling from his belt, two on each side. Cody set his foot back on the step below him. The temperature stayed put.

“Hey,” the trooper on the far right said, and pointed at Cody with his blaster. Coric turned his head towards him. “Where’d you get a DC-17?”

Cody let his finger curl over his trigger.

Coric looked back at Cody. “That’s a very good point, Cerar,” he said. “That’s a commando’s weapon, sergeant. You want to tell me you were cross-trained?”

“I always wanted one of those,” the trooper said. He rocked to his left and elbowed the vod in the middle. “You think he earned that, Thirty-Three?”

“Think maybe he stole it,” Thirty-three said. He glanced over his shoulder and shivered. “Picking over our dead when he should be stacking traitors on the pyre. Maybe he’s another deserter.”

Coric stepped down again and his blaster wavered between them. Because of Cody’s angle, Coric had to shift sideways to keep Cody fully in his sights, blocking the two vod’e behind him.

“Or maybe he couldn’t tell the difference between us,” Coric said.

Cody dropped his left arm, aimed, and fired. The bolt caught Coric high up his cuirass. He staggered backwards, blaster up, his body shuddering. The other men fired, blasting chunks of stone out of the stairwell as Cody sank to one knee and jammed his finger on the trigger, firing on auto above him. Thirty-Three screamed and fell. The vod on the left strafed the stairwell, and Cody lunged to the right. He caught his elbow on the stone, and lost his balance, tucking his head into his chest as shots blasted above him.

He fell the rest of the way down, grunting as his back hit the stone stairs, and came up against something hard. He aimed back up the stairs, firing another round just as the ringing zap of blaster fire stopped. Dust hung in the air. Bodies lay splayed out on the steps.

“Stang,” he heard panted above him. “Karking stang.”

Cody curled upwards, and swung his legs, trying to get a foothold. If one of them had run for help, they were done for. Hands grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him to his feet. Cody shook them off, and lurched up the stairs, past Coric to the landing. He heard pounding footsteps behind him.

At the top, he stood in between Thirty-Three’s sprawled legs, blaster up at the ready. Vapor stepped up next to him. Cody took a deep breath and unclenched his hands from around his blaster; all four troopers were on the ground. He looked up and out of the corridor. The sound might attract someone else. His breathing bloomed condensation on the inside of his helmet. He stepped over Thirty-Three, and moved closer to the opening.

“Nothing,” he said finally, and turned to see Rex and Commander Tano and the rest of the squad on the steps below him, staring down at Coric and the others. Kix ran up to the landing and dropped to his knees. He picked up the trooper on the left’s head and studied it.

“Not him,” he muttered, and dropped him. He moved on to the next. “Not him…karking Spaarti piece of stang…”

“C’mon, Kixie, grab his arms,” Vapor said. He walked to Cody’s left, already bending down, and grabbed Cerar’s ankles. Kix slowly stood to help him.

Cody breathed in and out through his mouth. He held his blaster one-handed at his side and walked back to join in the clean-up. He bent down and grabbed Thirty-Three by the boot. A hand grasped him by the elbow.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Rex asked. He pulled Cody down the stairs to where the Commander knelt next to Coric. She gripped him on the shoulder and hip to turn him over, two bolts had cored through his backplate.

“Force take it,” she said, and sat back on her heels. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and then slapped her palm down onto her knee.

Cody breathed out and let Rex shake him hard. “Echuta!” Rex spit out. He whirled around to watch the men start carrying the other bodies down the stairs. “Del, grab the one by the wall. We’ll put them around the corner.”

He heard the clatter and thud of armored bodies being lifted, the men grunting as they carried them down the stairs. Cody held onto his blaster and stepped to one side.

“Are the rest stunned?” Tano asked. She was staring at the lightsabers on Coric’s belt.

“Yes sir,” Del said as he passed.

She sighed and nodded. Tano bowed her covered head as she stood, and Cody bent down to pick Coric’s corpse up by the shoulders. She raised her hands.

“No, wait!” Cody said. He stuck his arm out over the body.

Tano lowered her hands slightly and frowned at him. “Anyone within range to register the temperature change would already be charging in from the blaster fire, Commander.”

Cody swallowed and looked down at Coric’s body. “Sir.”

He stepped up and away as Commander Tano lifted Coric’s body from the floor, his arms unnaturally tight to his sides. Coric drifted down the flight of stairs and she followed him, both palms outstretched as she went. Cody bowed his head and took a deep breath. His back ached; if it hadn’t been for the padding around his spine he wasn’t sure he’d have gotten up so quickly. Rex slipped past him, turned, and pulled on Cody’s arm. They kept to the blaster-pocked wall as Rex’s squad walked back up to the landing.

“I’m on stun,” Cody said, as they turned the corner.

“They weren’t,” Rex said.

Commander Tano laid Coric next to the three stunned troopers on the landing below. She dropped her hands to her hips beneath her cloak.

“It won’t take them long to find them when they don’t check in,” she said.

“Guess we better pick up the pace,” Rex said. Commander Tano nodded. Her lips pressed together. She turned around to walk up the stairs.

Rex sucked in air and gripped the bottom of his helmet with both hands. “Kriffing hell, Cody. If Vapor hadn’t been waiting for you around the karking corner, I—”

He cut off, and Cody gripped Rex’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You took a karking stupid risk, and I can’t tell General Kenobi I’ve lost you,” Rex said. He shook his head. “I can’t do it. Not when we haven’t found General Skywalker yet.”

Cody grunted and stood away from Rex. He tilted his head to the left. “This isn’t—”

Rex turned back up the stairs and yanked on Cody’s epaulet, forcing him to shut up and follow. They met Commander Tano and the men at the mouth of the corridor. Vapor was closest to the wall, sighting down the scope on his DC-15x. Tano stared past Cody to Rex and moved to the side down the corridor. Rex ran up the last steps to meet her. Cody walked over to Vapor.

“Heard you were more my kind of shooter, sir,” Vapor said, and bobbled his blaster up and down a degree.

“I am,” Cody said. His heart pounded, but his voice was steady. “But this has a sniping attachment that doesn’t cost firepower.”

And after running ops with Generals Kenobi and Skywalker in Squad Seven, he’d learned the value of versatility. First chance he’d gotten, Cody had pulled every string in Special Ops he could until a commando’s weapon was in his hands. He shook his head. Obi-Wan must be halfway to the situation room by now if he hadn’t run into anyone. Hell, at this rate, he’d probably already found General Skywalker. It would be just like him.

“How’s it look out there?” he asked.

Vapor shrugged. “Clear for now,” he said. “Messy out the front. Think we’ve got a chance if we go straight, if the wind holds with the smoke.”

Cody raised his blaster and moved to the opposite side of the wall. He sighted down the reception hall and lowered his blaster. He swallowed. He sniffed and shook his head.

“Messy everywhere?” Vapor asked.

“Gar serim,” Cody said. He cleared his throat and caught Rex’s attention from where he stood whispering with the Commander.

Rex and Commander Tano came over. Cody stood away from the wall. “We need to move,” he said. “The field’s clear front and back as long as the wind through the entrance holds the pyre’s smoke. We can cut across and up the stairs on the right by the tentacle statue.”

“That’s the Commemoration of Many Hands,” Tano said. Her mouth was thin and tense. “It was a gift.”

“Yes sir,” Cody said.

Tano’s eyes flicked up to meet Cody’s and then away. She nodded once. “Let’s go,” she said. “Stay here on cover and then bring up the rear.”

“Roger, left,” Vapor said, settling back behind his sniper rifle.

“Roger, right,” Cody said, and raised his blaster. He upped the magnification on his sight with his thumb. The clean-up crews had left bodies where the toppled statues and the pillars made them hard to reach. It created choke points further down the hall.

Rex led the way, walking briskly out into the open with Tano at his back, and Del on her left. A being’s hair had whipped up over a column lying on the hall; long purple strands straggling over the yellow marble. Someone had taken some heavy pounders to the architecture; there were stress fractures in the floor where the engineers had planted them. Vapor stood away from the wall, and Cody held up his fist. He opened it and spread his fingers, tucking them down: five…four…three…two…

“Go,” he said.

Vapor burst out of cover, and Cody followed, swinging his blaster down to keep an eye down the reception hall as they went. He turned to keep pace with the group and looked to his left. They were far enough away from the entrance to the Temple that they couldn’t feel the heat from the pyres, but the smoke hung in the air anyway, thickest at the open doors.

All those bodies dragged to the pyres. Jedi burned their dead—that had to be all right. Maybe their brothers—maybe even chipped that would be a thing they did for the Jedi, even now. He looked up and saw the huge air filter grate inset high in the wall above them, disguised with carvings. Force let the wind hold.

He hurried up, ears straining for the least sound as they scurried out in the open. His heartbeat pounded blood through his veins, pumping hot enough that he felt his skin begin to tighten. He checked the temperature gauge on his HUD. No change.

They regrouped at the other side, where the stairs spiraled upwards past holotapestries that shuddered with static, turning faces and mountains and ceremonies he’d never read about into pixelated swirls. The hallways they crossed were clear, but the tech and most of the lumas were dark, as if power had been diverted from the discrete generators. Cody paused by an exposed panel. The guts had been blasted to nothing but melted chips and burnt wire.

Once they reached the classrooms that lined either side of the ruined hallway leading towards the library, Cody took point, with Commander Tano in the middle and Rex at her side. Cody tilted his head. He heard a long shushing sound echoing down to them as they walked. None of the doorways had clearance markers on them. It looked like the sweeps had missed a spot.

“Sounds like the patrols are moving further in,” Vapor said as they walked. “I’ve got at least six with orders to the lower levels.”

“Is there a karking secretary Appo kriffing missed down there?” Kix muttered.

“Karking sneaky secretary if there is,” Del said. “Force be with them.”

“Force kriffing be with us if you don’t pipe down,” Cody snapped.

Tano snorted but didn’t speak up, and Rex ignored them, walking onward. The men cut the chatter, but the silence that came with them was filled with that slow shushing noise. It paused every now and then, but always came back. Cody aimed at the doors on either side of the hallway; most of them were closed, with green unlocked door lights, but a few stood open and empty. The air was hotter up in the higher levels, with less movement. The filtration system must have been as affected as the rest of the tech.

Cody picked up the pace. He turned a corner, looked back, and frowned. They’d all begun to bunch up, pushing closer to Commander Tano. Kix was on her left now, instead of behind in formation.

The noise came again. It sounded almost like an airlock decompressing, the hush of released air and hydraulics. It halted once more, but now Cody could hear a grumble beneath it, like a…what was that? Cody turned around and kept walking. A few feet in front would buy the rest time if they ran into another patrol.

Cody frowned. It did sound like a doorway, like a door rattling in its lintel. They’d had an older Laartie with that problem; the hydraulics had worn down with time and it’d developed a rattle.

The doorway on his right shook and opened. Cody dropped back, aiming into the suddenly open room. It was a classroom, with a presentation module in the center. Nothing moved. Cody walked forward, squinting into the darkness. His foot touched something and he looked down.

He tilted his head and felt the air in his open mouth. He felt the weight of his armor and the pain in the back of his head, promising him a headache by the end of the night. He felt his skin and the curdling of his stomach.

A small arm lay across the threshold of the classroom door, its pale, tiny palm lying exposed, and little fingers curling up. The arm wore a rough beige sleeve too big for its size; the owner had been intended to grow into it. It must have gotten caught in the doorway.

He looked up and saw the shape of its owner, a blond youngling lying sprawled lengthwise. Cody lowered his weapon. There were windows on either side, the room jutted out like a balcony against the Temple. Ten little bodies were crumpled on the floor amongst the overturned classroom furniture. Broken practice sabers lay on the floor.

Footsteps thudded to his left; the commander was coming closer. He nudged the arm back over the threshold with his boot, and let the door cycle shut. Cody closed his eyes and saw lists on the back of his eyelids, all the names in the reports back on the ship. He stepped back and came to attention as Beviin squad caught up to him.

Commander Tano walked up to him. Tano’s head was bent; she drew her hood up over the striped crown of her montrals as she nodded to herself. She pressed the back of her hand to her upper lip, and then let her hand drop to her waist.

“Find anything?” she asked. “I sensed something when we turned the corner.”

“Just waiting for you to catch up, sir,” Cody said.

Her eyes narrowed, and Cody tensed. He pictured the shield in his mind going strong, and Tano sighed. They didn’t have time to search and she knew it. Cody licked his lips. Slowly, she turned and took point, leading the way.

They fell in line behind her, and marched the last few corridors to the library. Del and Vapor set up on their six, while Cody followed Rex at the Commander’s back. No one spoke. Cody kept his eyes open, but he couldn’t help seeing the path Obi-Wan should, hopefully, have taken to get to the beacon. If he stuck to the corridors surrounding the larger halls then they should be all right. Boil would back him up, and if…and if they came across hallways that hadn’t been cleared, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been expecting it. The reports had told them how many bodies had been identified inside the Temple. He knew what they’d done. His throat tightened and in front of him, Tano stumbled, but recovered before Rex did more than move his hand in her direction.

Or maybe he’d already found General Skywalker. Cody breathed deeply. It would be just like those two to find each other in the middle of chaos. If the General was still in the Temple, then Obi-Wan would find him, and if he wasn’t, then they’d find him and Rex would have someone else to poke and prod at. He glanced over at Rex, who was walking with both blasters in his hands.

The lumas flickered above them, and now, finally, came the bodies of their brothers, left where they’d fallen, twisted in their armor. He heard muttering behind him, high-pitched with tension, and then a grunt before it cut off. No evidence of Jedi, except for a couple of abandoned robes. Cody’s head ached, but his breath came easier now. Bodies on the ground up on this level meant that there was increased chance of a patrol coming their way again. It was important to keep that in mind. He looked down at his Deece and rubbed his thumb over the release that would switch his blaster from stun to full auto.

Commander Tano pointed down the hallway. “Here we are,” she said.

Cody looked along the line of her extended arm and frowned. The main library took up the entire west end of the upper level in the First Knowledge Quarter, and it was one of the most indefensible pieces of osik Cody’d ever had to memorize. Just thinking about the open balcony made his skin crawl. Most of Cody’s plans for extraction there—usually cooked up when Obi-Wan spent too long in the government documents section—had been along the lines of knocking over a few of the tables and then running really fast between the server stacks.

The entrance had been blasted open; the door lay inside where it had smashed into a display stand. Commander Tano reached the open threshold and paused. She looked back at them with her nose wrinkled.

“Almost wish I’d brought a helmet, too,” she said, and lifted the corners of her mouth into a bare grin.

“Steal me a press, sir,” Rex said.

She huffed air more than laughed, turned around, and entered the library. They followed her in. The long central hallway was a mess of overturned workstations and shattered busts. The holobookcases on both levels had been blasted to glittering half-melted clumps of silica. The balcony was listing to the floor in separate sections on either side.

“Echuta,” Tano muttered.

“I thought the library shut down at night,” Cody said. “Because Madam Nu’s a day worker.”

“She let her padawan start opening it up for limited night hours about a week before I left,” Tano said. “The nocturnal Jedi made a presentation to the Council.”

“Makes our job harder,” Rex said, and cautiously slid further off to Tano’s left.

The Commander led them a few steps further into the library, and then to a charred study carrel out of the front door’s sightline. She raised her hand to the one rack left untouched in the holobookcase and rested it beneath the charge indicators.

“Lightsabers again,” she muttered, and then more loudly. “I smell rotten plants. The labs below us have nutrient pipes.”

Kix had righted a chair that had been tossed into the display case against the wall; it listed unevenly on three legs. Vapor sat down on it, holding his datapad in front of his face. Del had gone to one knee, looking up the clear path behind the stacks to the end of the hallway through his blaster sight.

“If they’ve ruptured, the overflow should be shunted to the lower levels,” Cody said. “If you’re smelling it up here, then—”

“The programs are probably already overloaded,” Tano finished for him. She took a breath through her mouth, grimaced in a flash of teeth, and flipped open the top of a long, padded pouch on her belt. “Fierfek. All right, Rex, let’s start passing them out.”

She pulled a datapad out of her pouch, and gripped it between her hands. Rex cleared his throat, and shook out a handful of datasticks from a sack. He passed them out to his men first, two each, and then held out the final pair to Cody. He took them, pressed his thumb into the indentation near the first datastick’s unlit end, and waited for the capacity number to flash. He felt his eyebrows rise.

“How big is this list of younglings anyway, sir?” Kix asked. Cody saw him eyeing the ends of his own datasticks.

“Big enough,” she said, and shrugged. She tapped the upper right edge of her datapad and frowned as the screen flashed. “Rex and I will head to the secure section. The rest of you spread out and start collecting from any terminals you can find.” A thin, crooked smile pressed her lips against her teeth. “You don’t need logins to download in the library itself.”

Cody’s straightened to attention so fast that his spine popped. He clenched his hand around the two datasticks. Tano cleared her throat and Cody closed his mouth. He felt a light brush against his shoulder, a tiny press of slim fingers that turned the temperature up by a degree and then disappeared. He sighed. Fine. They’d split up even further.

“Anything in particular, sir?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, Rex and I can handle that between us; I’ve got Master Obi-Wan’s passwords.”

Cody clenched his jaw. His baffle wouldn’t work in the Jedi Library of all karking places. “If anyone’s monitoring the system, sir—”

“It’s closed,” Tano reminded him. “They’d have to be standing next to me in Madam Nu’s office to catch me.”

“And they wouldn’t be standing for long,” Rex said.

Cody shook his head. He opened his mouth but shut it again. They didn’t have time to argue.

“Yes, Commander,” he said. “Vapor, get your shebs in formation.”

Vapor groaned as he sat up out of the broken chair. He waved his datapad in the air. “They’ve got search parties on this level,” he said. “Working their way from the north.”

“Then we better hurry,” Cody said as the Commander and Rex disappeared up the pathway Del had been guarding. Del stayed kneeling for a moment. Then he breathed out audibly, raised his blaster ceiling-ward with a snap, and stood.

“So we’re just supposed to take anything?” Kix asked. “Everything?”

“Commander said I should grab the preloaded osik behind the reference desks,” Del said, and lifted his pack out in one hand.

Cody grunted. “Go to the medical section,” he ordered Kix, and then pointed to Vapor. “Engineering.” He winced at the spike of pain in his back. “And then take everything you can.”

Rex’s men spread out and left the study alcove. Cody stared down at his two datasticks, and then looked around without really seeing anything. The holobookcases were damaged, and no one outside this damned library had the right kind of ports to charge them. They didn’t have the time to dismantle a rack, either. He hefted his blaster. He had enough left in its chamber to take out the undamaged shelving, but no grenades to make sure—and someone might hear.

He walked behind the shelves and down the corridor formed alongside the wall. Obi-Wan’d spent hours the war hadn’t stolen from him in the archives, pouring over texts. Copying bits down when the librarians weren’t looking…making him ask involved karking questions about kriffing pre-Ruusan battle tactics so that Obi-Wan could just get down that last little paragraph. He’d never wanted to know about Lord Farfalla, and simply asking about anything ‘outside his mandate’ had made Madam Nu purse up like she’d just bitten into a gruffle, but she took a long time to make sure he knew he shouldn’t be bothering her. Obi-Wan probably had the largest kriffing collection of Jedi teachings outside of this damn building in his backpack on the Senator’s ship, whatever little that meant now. Obi-Wan would hate this, even if—especially since it was his idea.

He’d have to live to regret it, though, which he would because he had a Bothan’s own luck. And Cody would have to live to see that, which was a bit less likely if he kept wandering around without a karking thought in his head. The Archives were probably his best bet, it was the only other place in the library that required an access pass. They ran on their own closed circuit, even here, and he could blast away with another layer of walls and door surrounding him. He took up position behind a ruined display case, and made himself take stock of the alleys and passages created by the library’s inventory. Two of the holobook cases to his left had been blasted dark, and the nearest had a body crumpled beneath it. The public terminal attached to one of them had been accessed; it still had a completed download pop-up onscreen.

He slipped around the opposite end of the display case and went up the next passage, closer to the main center walkway that led to the Archive. A wrinkled male Cosian lay on the ground, his thick tail curled outward from his body and the crisped stumps of his arms slumped into his chest. Cody glanced around the floor. He saw a cane that had rolled halfway under the holobookcase, but he didn’t see a lightsaber, or the Cosian’s hands; they’d probably fallen beneath him. Cody shifted his blaster to his left, then knelt down and closed the Jedi’s wide, staring eyes with his right hand. He nudged the cane closer to the body, and stood up.

“May the Force be with you,” he muttered.

He continued forward, stepping around a pile of cracked and sparking holobooks and the armored body beneath them. No one he knew. He swallowed and cracked his neck to one side, leading with his blaster in the firing position as he walked. They had to be at the beacon by now. Obi-Wan would stop the message and retreat to a secure position. They’d meet at the ground entrance by the back end of the tower and it would be done. Cody swallowed. He looked right up the long main hallway through his sight. He saw movement on his left, swung two degrees, and caught the flash of Kix’s shoulder patch in his scope. He dropped his muzzle and stepped out.

Whoever had led the charge up from the front door had tossed the displays and the work tables down for defense first; almost everything that hadn’t been bolted down was facing towards the Archive. Dirt from the potted plants was scattered across the floor; a floor bot had activated, and Cody could see it butting up against one of the fallen busts, trying to clean the debris underneath. Not too many bodies, and those were mostly vod’e. He chewed the inside of his mouth, tasted blood, and stopped. He turned his back and walked the rest of the way down the hallway.

It was only three steps down to the Archive itself, and the doors opened at his approach. He stepped around the two bodies on the stairs, a Jedi librarian he vaguely recognized and an older padawan.

The dim yellow lights turned on as he walked inside. He automatically stepped to the side of the closing doors and put his back to the wall. The Five-oh-One had made it inside. The two long tables on either side of room had taken blaster fire, and the chairs lay smoking on their sides. The walls were lined with actual books, but half the room had clearly caught fire before the suppression protocols had activated; streaks of foam lay across the entire room. Two of the three terminals had been blasted to bits. The softly gleaming luma sconces high up on the ceiling were the only part that looked completely untouched. A Wookiee corpse lay by the farthest wall, flat on their back.

It should have taken more than a squad to put a Jedi that size down. Cody eyed the room. Maybe it karking had. He dropped his blaster to his side. In for a decicred, in for an ingot.

He grit his teeth against the throbbing in the base of his spine and moved over to the last remaining terminal in the room. The layout was exactly as Obi-Wan had described. He shoved the charred, foam-covered chair off the processing unit beneath the old-fashioned keypad, and wiped off the monitor. He hadn’t been allowed inside before, but he knew the masters Obi-Wan talked about the most; he’d start with them.

He reached out to hit a few keys, and his neck popped as he bent forward. The monitor wavered to life and prompted him for a password. He snorted. Of karking course it would in here. He took a deep breath, feeling his chest lurch under the weight of his cuirass, and closed his eyes.

The sooner he did this, the sooner they’d be on their kriffing way, and the less time whoever was monitoring the feeds would have to react to the sudden increase in system traffic. They were doing no good here; there was no one to save but themselves. He took out the first datastick and opened his eyes.

Obi-Wan’s password cleared the prompt when he typed it in. As the system cycled to the selection screen, he flicked the top of the datastick open and jammed the input into the processing unit. The Archive was set up by research subject and divided by era just like the rest of the library. Since he had master rank codes, it let him access the teaching levels and download the entire reading list, rather than be stuck downloading texts one by kriffing one. He set up a queue, and the door swished softly open behind him.

Cody whirled, drawing up his blaster, and took cover behind the closest table. Commander Tano stood in front of the closing door with her hands up. She pushed her hood back, and let her hands fall. He stood.

“Sir.”

“Even in here, huh?” she said, walking up to the table. She wrapped her hand around the hilt of her lightsaber, and looked around the room slowly. Her quick wide eyes came to rest on the body at the back of the room and lowered briefly. She grunted and then walked up the aisle created by the two tables; Cody turned on his heels to keep her in sight.

He came closer as she bent down on one knee next to the Wookiee. She pushed their splayed limbs closer to the body, and untwisted the fabric belt across their chest. Not a Jedi after all; one of the cleaning staff. Cody could see the brush and blasted cleaning hovercart behind the other table now. Still a Wookiee, though. Probably could have given them a fight.

“What’s it you say?” she murmured. “When you don’t know their names, but you can’t—you have to mourn anyway?”

Cody swallowed; his tongue felt too big for his mouth. “Ke nu ni kyr’tyli gar a ni haa’tyli taab'echaaj'la.”

She nodded. “I could never really manage Wookiee growls.”

Pinpricks of acid spit up the center of Cody’s chest; he swallowed them down. Cody closed his eyes to picture the shield in his head. This had to be just a battlefield, he had to stop letting it bleed into his head. He had to be useful. He took a step back and a big breath, and glanced at the door.

“You finished quickly, sir,” he said.

Tano stood slowly, with both hands on her knees, and brushed her palms off. She sniffed and grimaced. “I knew what I was looking for.”

She pressed the back of her hand underneath her nose, and breathed through her mouth. “Can’t believe I forgot my balmstick,” she said, still looking down at the cleaner. Her voice raised a little, wobbled only once. “I remembered to bring my karking wallet, but not my balmstick.”

Cody swallowed and nodded. He put his hand on his belt and unsnapped the top of a pouch. “You want to borrow mine?” he asked.

She glanced up at him and held out her hand, and Cody handed over his balmstick. Tano pulled off the cap and swiped the wax along her upper lip. She wiggled her nose, sneezed, and then breathed in deeply. “That should do it,” she muttered.

Behind him, the terminal beeped. Cody turned around and walked back to it.

“You’re lucky with that bucket,” she said. He heard her take another breath, and the sound of furniture being moved. “I hate the way it smells after a fight.”

“Well, now it smells like jiqui,” Cody said automatically. He set up the next series of downloads.

“And jiqui smells likes stang, but at least we can stand to have dinner before we go,” Tano said. She snorted. “That’s what Coric used to say.”

Cody paused, his hand hovering over the terminal’s keyboard. His skin prickled. He felt sweat sticking his bodyglove to his back. The screen in front of him lit up with progress bars. He heard furniture being moved again, muted thumps against the floor. He turned around and straightened his back, tensing his jaw against the strain.

Tano had picked up the Wookie’s hovercart. He watched her set it on the table, and then walk around the far table to the burned books on the wall shelving. She touched one of the spines; it crumbled under her fingers.

She brushed off her fingers as she walked towards him. She held out his balmstick, and he took it from her. Her wide blue eyes met his through his helmet, and then she looked behind him towards the wall.

“Paper books,” she said. “Did you ever see so many?”

“No sir,” Cody said.

“I guess they wouldn’t last long on Kamino,” she said. She shook her head and swallowed.

“The environmental infrastructure could probably support them,” he said. He shifted his weight from his left to his right foot and put his balmstick away. “I don’t think they’d waste the resources on it, though.”

She nodded. He stood in front of her. His back ached. “Where’s Rex?” he asked.

Tano startled a little, and her eyes refocused on him. She chewed her lower lip with the slightest points of her sharp teeth and then huffed. “He’s going through the security feeds, tying to see if he can find Anakin.”

Cody swallowed. He shifted his weight and heard his armor plates clacking quietly against each other. He turned around and faced the terminal again. He didn’t want to think about the stang that was on those recordings.

“Any luck?”

“None so far,” she said. “I…came out here to see how you all were getting along.”

Cody nodded. He went to the wall shelf on the right side of the terminal and slid open the transparisteel door covering the books. Obi-Wan had probably touched these, taken them down for his studies and held them open with one hand while he took notes with the other. Cody squinted at the titles across the spines.

“Do you want to keep these?” he asked. “Del might be able to fit a few in his bag.”

“I thought I did,” Tano said. “I thought…did you see Mistress Nu? I don’t know why, but I thought I’d find her here. I just…”

Cody turned to look at her. The terminal beeped again, and Commander Tano bent down to remove the datastick. She held out her right hand for the next and he tossed it to her.

“I didn’t see anyone I knew,” he said.

She nodded, staring down at the datasticks in her hand. She put one in her pocket and jammed the other into the dataport. “Get this done, and then blast the rest,” she said. “I don’t want anything left here for the Chancellor to use.”

“Yes sir,” Cody said. “I’m—”

She shook her head quickly, and he shut his mouth. She was right; apologies needed to wait. They switched places at the terminal. She patted him on the arm. “We move in ten minutes,” she said. “Vapor says there’s troop movement in the eastern corridors. They might be pulling out of the Engineering quarters.”

He straightened his shoulders, hands behind his back as she left, and then turned to look at the surviving books. He could blast the shelving, maybe set a charge to buy him some time; the fire suppressants had already shot their load. He set up the next round of downloads, sweeping miscellaneous files into the queue.

***

They met up at the front doors. The men were on the left with Vapor by the door controls, which glowed red, and Commander Tano and Rex further down by the overturned display case. The Commander turned towards him as he walked up and jerked her thumb over her shoulder.

“We’re taking the hallway down by the lower veranda,” she said.

Cody blinked and resettled his grip on his Deece. “By the trundle depot?” he asked. She nodded. Cody frowned. “What about the cameras? And the ground cover?”

If the inner circuit was as damaged as the reception hall, the repulsors in the trundle cars wouldn’t be able to navigate. They didn’t have time to clear a karking path. Commander Tano tugged on the tip of her left montral and sighed. Her shoulders were stiff beneath her cloak.

“It doesn’t look like the structural damage reached the inner halls in this sector,” Rex said. “We’d have a clear path for most of the way.”

“It’s worth the risk to meet up with Master Obi-Wan and Master Yoda faster,” Tano said. Her gaze flicked out behind him, forehead markings bunching up, and her upper lip curled briefly. “It’s time to get out of here.”

Vapor and Del went first, with the Commander barely behind them. Kix followed her, but when Cody stepped forward, Rex grabbed his arm. Cody stopped and leaned into Rex when Rex moved closer.

“She destroyed the Search database,” he said.

Cody leaned back and tilted his head to the left. “What?”

Rex tugged him forward to keep up with the group. Ahead, Tano was pointing down the corridor to the stairs that would lead them to the depot. Cody turned sideways to watch their six and raised his blaster. The corridor was clear. He backwalked a foot anyway, and then turned around again, stepping up to Rex.

“She didn’t even make a copy,” Rex said quietly. “And then when we separated she headed straight for the trade registers.”

Cody glanced ahead of them and stared at the commander’s back. Her central montral looked strange beneath her cloak. “What the hell was she looking for?” he muttered.

“I don’t know, vod,” Rex said. He walked quickly, with his hands clenched around his blasters. “But I think we should brace for a secondary objective.”

Cody waggled his helmet. “Tertiary.”

“Quaternary.”

Cody elbowed him. Rex spun, aiming behind them, and then turned back. They took the stairs and followed Tano onwards, skirting the service exits for the main corridors. The doors were mainly coded open and most had been marked clear. The floors were crusted; in places it stuck to his boots.

“Quaternary’s not a word,” Cody muttered finally, when they’d reached the hallway before the depot.

“Sure it is,” Rex said. He bounced on his feet as he walked, twirling his right blaster in his palm. “You just don’t know what comes after.”

“Yes, I karking do,” Cody said.

Rex waggled his helmet. Ahead of them, Cody could see the trundle cars locked into their charging docks. He took out his baffle one handed as the squad moved closer to the lineup. Tano turned half-way around and held out her hand. Cody sighed and handed it over. It was his damn baffle; he could be trusted to use it.

Tano walked to the last trundle car in the line and quickly switched out the plug for the baffle. The maintenance display popped out from the wall. She tossed the charging cord to the floor, where it retracted into the chassis, and typed in a command. The light on the charge point changed from red to green; she removed the baffle and handed it back.

“Should be fine,” she said. She looked the trundle car over. “Now, does one of you know how to drive these things?”

“Don’t you, sir?” Del asked as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

Tano shrugged. Her hands were twitching; her left went to her shoto’s hilt as she sat down on the long, barely padded bench. “Last time I rode in one of these, I couldn’t reach the pedals.”

It should have been funny, but Cody didn’t feel like laughing. He took a seat on the double bench at the opposite end of the car, facing the back, and held his blaster across his lap. His back plate hit the raised interior of the car, so he leaned forward. The men took their spots on the longer benches that lined either side of the car. Rex sat beside him. Cody looked behind him, towards the Commander, and back to Rex.

Rex rested his blasters on his knees and looked ahead. “Let’s go,” he called out. “Be ready to pile off. Vapor, keep an eye on those feeds.”

“Oya,” Vapor said.

Cody held on as the trundle car rose higher as the repulsors came online. It lurched back and then forward, out into the middle of the wide hallway. He’d been on these a time or two during visits to the Temple. They were all over, including some places they really shouldn’t have been, and people seemed to use them interchangeably, hopping on and off without even waiting for it to stop or asking where the driver was going. Obi-Wan used to jump on without even pausing a conversation, holding his hand out to tug Cody into the seat next to him.

They drove on, skirting around fallen statues and masonry debris. Cody’s back muscles twitched every time they realigned to get past an obvious skirmish. He kept his finger on his trigger guard. Rex vibrated on the bench next to him, constantly leaning forward and then back. This hallway was supposed to be for padawans and younglings going to class. He’d walked down it a few times--it’d been a short cut between briefings, and the small cafeteria down a level had had good caff and fresh bread. It was wide enough for two trundle cars operating side by side or multiple groups walking to the training rooms in this sector.

Rex grunted. The trundle car turned down the hallway, curving right. Cody swallowed and looked down the sight of his blaster. He aimed behind them. No movement, but the air quality was getting worse. He could see particles in the air.

“Commander Tano?” Kix spoke up behind them. “Did you sense something?”

Cody tensed, but didn’t turn around, since that was difficult in full armor. He tilted his head backwards instead. Rex didn’t relax beside him. The luma panels were blinking off and on, sparking in places where their protective coverings had been blasted off. It didn’t make sense that they’d only encountered one patrol. The 501st wasn’t capable of covering all the levels in the Temple at once—they would need half of the entire Third Systems Army for that—but they had to have been caught on the security feeds by now. Instead, Appo had troopers posted in every quarter except this one. It made no karking sense.

Commander Tano coughed. “I—no, it’s fine, Kix. I’m just getting a little tired. Can I borrow your canteen?”

He heard shuffling behind him and the slosh of water. Cody twitched when Rex raised his right blaster and then put it down again. Cody leaned into Rex’s side. “The Commander said you logged into the security system,” he said quietly. “Did you find him?”

Rex stilled, but Cody felt the tension in his body. Rex breathed in and out. “Saw him fighting some of the men,” he said finally, barely above a whisper. “Stray bolt cut the feed before I saw where he went after that.”

Cody’s breath left him in a rush. He leaned heavier on Rex for a moment, and then pulled away. “Stang.”

Rex nodded. “Half the feeds are static,” he said. “I think someone got into the system and turned off whatever they could access.”

He leaned forward and rested against Cody’s shoulder. Cody braced himself against the next swerve with his feet. His shoulders ached, so he shrugged them up and then down to try to stretch. He breathed in; the smoke was thick enough to see it curling like waves, even though he couldn’t smell it. The temperature dropped in his HUD suddenly, diving hard enough to make him shiver. The trundle car slowed and backed up a foot.

“Stang in the road,” Del announced. “Gonna be a little bumpy up ahead.”

“Force take this kriffing smoke,” Kix said.

The trundle car moved on. The men sounded restless behind him, their armor plates bumping up against the bench. Cody readjusted his helmet, and breathed through his backache. The air quality was getting worse; pieces of blackened fabric curled in the air, caught in the Temple’s airflow system. The ceiling arched high enough that the main mass of the smoke swirled above their heads, so he could see enough of the battlespace to make a shot count if he needed to. The 501st must have blown the backup generator in the next section. Cody followed a long snake of fabric in the air with his eyes as he settled back. It almost looked like a ribbon. The temperature dropped again. He heard the whine of overstressed fans.

Del swung the trundle car to the right. Cody braced against the side of the bench as gravity pushed Rex further into him and sighed. “One or two patrols in this sector isn’t good tactics,” he said.

“So where are the rest of my men?” Rex muttered flatly. He rocked his upper body an inch forward and then back and nodded his head. “Lined up with a corpse each for the pyres.”

“Rex,” Cody whispered.

Rex leaned away from him. A snarling guttural moan erupted behind them; the trundle car swerved. Cody jerked forward and tumbled to the ground, swinging up to one knee with his blaster out. An AV-7 lay collapsed on its side, two struts sheared off and a robed corpse draped across the ruined barrel.

“Commander!” Vapor shouted.

Tano was running flat out into the middle of the intersection, down the blasted colonnade and past chunks of fallen fancy ceiling to the wide mouthed hallway belching smoke on their left. Cody stood just as Rex blew past him after her.

“Go, go!” Cody yelled and followed him.

Two AV-7s stood at the mouth of the hallway, empty but still steaming through cooldown. They had to have been online for hours to still be that hot. The tiles beneath them were stress-cracked. He pushed his weight into the balls of his feet and sprinted down the corridor, barely listening to the shouts of the men scrambling behind him. His lungs shuddered as he dragged in air.

Rex disappeared after Tano as they took the corner, and Cody ducked past the rubble and the corpses half-smothered beneath it. He turned left and saw that Rex had overtaken her, swerving in front of Tano with arms outstretched.

“No, no, no, stop, sir, you have to stop!” Rex called out, panting. Behind him, a jagged fissure full of roiling smoke loomed like a break in the world. Tano barely paused, twin lightsabers shrieking to life in her hands, and Rex went to his knees, dropping his blasters. He held out his hands in front of him. “Ahsoka, please!”

Cody’s breath stung in his mouth. He drew a bead on Tano’s back, even as her crackling green blades swung down at Rex’s upturned helm. Too late, always karking too late—

The lightsabers halted in the air, shining in the reflection from Rex’s polarized lenses. The men ran up behind him, and Cody raised his left fist, calling them to a halt. Tano’s entire body moved as she breathed, muscles coiled so tensely Cody could the shift in her shoulder blades as she held her lightsabers in position. Below her, Rex turned his palms up in the space between their bodies.

“You can’t go in,” Rex said, voice cracking to pieces. His cuirass heaved with his breath. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please.”

Tano shook her head so convulsively that her hood fell to her shoulders. Her upraised arms shook. Rex stayed on his knees. The temperature rose ten degrees in Cody’s HUD. Rex shuddered, and the Commander deactivated her lightsabers. Her arms dropped. She swayed.

Cody turned away and stared up as far as he could to the ceiling where the smoke crawled over everything. The jewel and stone mural on the wall with its forest of trees from worlds all across the galaxy was cracked and charred. His eyes dropped downwards to where the roots intertwined into the Jedi symbol. Someone long ago had chiseled From many roots grow a strong tree beneath it. He looked to his left and shifted his weight; cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

His chin dipped as he stared forward. Bodies. His stomach roiled, bile burning up the back of his throat until he was choking and coughing. Bodies piled up to his height and above, armored and robed and burnt to cinders, flung together in death and left there. Cody turned on his heels, and stared at the opposite wall. They’d stacked the corpses along the sides of the entry hallway like they were shoring them up. He looked at the ground, flinching as his eyesight caught an upturned hand and then a lightsaber. A twi’lek knight he didn’t recognize lay entwined with a gunnery sergeant, dumped on the floor to clear a path.

“Karking Force take us,” Del whispered. “Oh, I’m gonna be sick.”

“Keep your blasted helmet on,” Kix snapped. “Don’t—oh, Force.”

Something cracked to the floor. Cody turned on his heels towards the noise and saw that Vapor was bent over, both hands on his knees and his sniper rifle and helmet on the floor. He shuddered, heaving, and Cody shook himself, clenching his hand around the stock of his blaster.

“I grew up here,” Commander Tano said. Her voice was too high and too small, like when she’d been a shiny and they’d sneak her music files and extra protein and anything she wanted. Birthborns grew so slowly. They’d wanted her to get big.

This was where the Jedi had made their last stand, cramming into this karking bottleneck six deep with all that was left of them against three karking heavy artillery cannons and their own damned men. Of course they’d been here, where the infants and younglings lived, holding out in front of those ancient blast doors until even they crumbled. Kix ran to the front and Cody tracked him automatically, down to the battered doorway where you could still see the drag marks on the floor, the slumped corpses piled up on either side of the ragged hole the 501st had punched through the defenses. He couldn’t see beyond the smoke; he didn’t want to. Kix stumbled back and kicked a blaster out from under his foot. Cody’s breath shoved its way out of his lungs, breaking out through his clenched teeth.

He turned his back on it. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out. In and out. He heard Vapor’s heaving choke to a halt. He saw the lists scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, small font, too many to see clearly, and shuddered. Cody shook his head and it felt like his brain was sloshing in his skull. The filters in his helmet did a good job of blocking the stink of a battlefield, but it didn’t matter: Charcoal and burnt fat, the tang of broiled coppery blood, and that musky perfume that leaked from spinal wounds. No one ever forgot that smell, the way it seeped into the padding of your armor and then the meat of your own body, until you could taste the stench in the back of your mouth. He opened his eyes.

Rex had stood up and holstered his blasters when Cody turned to look at them. The Commander still held her lightsabers in either hand. Slowly, one by one, she clipped them to her belt. He watched her shoulders fall and then straighten. Her central montral twitched when she shook her head.

Cody watched her breathe and stand while Rex waited in front of her. The silence felt like static in his ears. His chest hurt, his back and knees ached.

“We have to go,” Commander Tano finally said. She turned around and raised her hood with both hands. Rex put his hand out and she moved forward before he touched her.

She walked down the clearest path, her face so pale he could barely see the markings on her face. Cody straightened into parade rest as she passed. Rex came after her, almost marching. They walked away from the crèche in lockstep. Cody swallowed hard. He brought the shield up in his mind again, and focused on it tightly. The battlefield stretched in front of him as he stepped over General Jennu’s body on the way back to the trundle car. They had a rendezvous to make.

***

Mando'a:

Beskaryc Kar'ta: [BESK-gar-eesh kah-ROH-ta] lit. Iron Heart —Also known as the ‘Mandalorian Diamond,’ the Iron Heart was created sometime in 738 BBY during the Mandalorian Excision as a symbol of strength and resilience in the face of defeat. Still used by Mandalorians of all sects.

Beviin: [BEH-veen] Lance

Cerar: [sair-ARR] Mountain

Kaysh jate’kara: [Kay-sh JAH-tay-KAH-rah] lit. His/her/them destiny/good luck. fig. Good for him/her/them

Ke nu ni kyr’tyli gar a ni haa’tyli taab'echaaj'la: [kay nu Nee-keer-TAIL gahr ah nee hah-TAIL TAHB-eh-CHAHJ-lah] fig. (kaminoan) “I don’t know you, but I see you marching away.” —Created sometime during the Clone Wars, popularized during cross-battalion assaults. A conflation of the traditional Mandalorian salute to the dead: ‘Not gone, merely marching away’ and the customary funereal speech: ‘I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.’]

Mir’sheb: [MEER-sheb] lit. Smartass

Ne'johaa: [Neh-JOH-hah] lit. No speaking. fig. Shut up!

Ret’lini: [Rayt-LEE-nee] fig. Just in case

Tion gar hibira?: [Tee-ON gar hee-BEER-ah] “What did you learn?”



Chapter Summary:

Yoda, Obi-Wan, Ahoska, the 212th and the 501st infiltrate the Temple while Senator Organa is called away to an emergency meeting of the Senate. Obi-Wan and Cody split up once inside. Obi-Wan goes with Yoda and the 212th to turn off the beacon calling the Jedi home, while Cody, Ahsoka, Rex and the 501st go to the library to retrieve the Jedi Search documents to keep them out of the Chancellor's hands. While en route, Cody meets up with a chipped squad, including Sergeant Coric. Coric and his squad are killed and Cody et al make their way to the library. They each go and get separate lists from the library, and while on their way back to rendezvous with Obi-Wan, Rex reveals that Ahsoka destroyed the Search lists and then went to the Trade section. He also tells Cody that he saw General Skywalker, briefly, on the Temple security feeds, fighting men of the 501st. They discover the destroyed creche, and then continue to make their way to the High Council Tower.