“Lance.
Come here.”
Master Jocasta Nu waved him over, a restrained warmth in her smile.
Cere and Gwell both turned toward him at once, nodding.
“Thank you, Lance,” Gwell said.
“Master Jocasta Nu told us it was your warning that gave us this much of a head start,” Cere added.
Lance stepped forward and bowed to the three of them.
“It’s my duty.
I only wish I’d sensed it sooner.”
Jocasta Nu set a hand on his shoulder, her voice low.
“Don’t carry that weight, Lance.
This isn’t on you.
You’ve done more than enough already.”
She said nothing further on the matter, her expression settling back into something grave as she turned the conversation toward the situation at hand.
“The Temple will fall.
That much is certain.”
Her voice stayed calm, but underneath it sat something unshakable.
“The Order may vanish from this galaxy tonight.
But as long as one spark survives, it will be rebuilt one day.”
She’d understood the shape of this a while ago.
What she was calling Project Spark was simply the last flame she had left to hand off.
Two old women without much time remaining, carving out a path for children too young to walk it themselves.
Right now, though, she looked anything but tired.
She looked certain.
She met the eyes of the other two and began handing out assignments.
“We split into three groups.
Cere, you take the Padawans through the hangar and get them out.”
Then she turned to Gwell, something almost fond flickering across her face, the two of them for a moment looking like they’d slipped backward a few decades.
“Old friend.
This one’s mine.
Don’t you dare steal it from me.”
A faint smile, equal parts humor and pride.
“I need you to take the archives that matter and get out of here alive.
Find somewhere hidden and start rebuilding what we’ve lost.
What the Order has learned across its whole history cannot be allowed to disappear, and it absolutely cannot fall into their hands.”
Her tone had the finality of something already written down as a will.
Cere and Gwell both opened their mouths to object.
She raised a hand before either could speak, then turned to Lance, her expression graver than he’d ever seen it.
“I need you to protect something.
Something that may be the key to rebuilding everything we’ve built, someday.”
He didn’t hesitate.
“You have my word, Master.”
“There isn’t much time.
Everyone, move.
We get one chance at this.”
A pause.
“Engines ready.
Go the moment the window opens.”
“May the Force be with you all.”
Cere and Gwell left to organize the evacuation.
Jocasta Nu held Lance back and led him instead toward a hidden vault buried deep beneath the Temple.
Inside, the room was thick with old machinery, rows of stone pillars standing in silence, their surfaces carved with the same intricate patterns he’d seen etched on holocrons.
Odd relics lined the walls on every side.
One caught his eye immediately: a rifle nearly a meter and a half long, its body a dark, patterned mix of silver and ivory, bronze filaments woven along the barrel.
Ancient work, clearly.
He’d never been down here before, and it showed in the way his eyes kept wandering.
Jocasta Nu walked ahead of him, her voice quiet.
“These hold sealed holocrons.
Most carry knowledge from Sith who lived a thousand years ago, too dangerous to leave unguarded.
The pillars themselves keep the dark side contained, so it can’t bleed out into the rest of the Temple.”
She stopped in front of one and pressed both palms against it.
The Force poured out of her, and the carved lines lit under her hands, spreading across the whole pillar in a wash of light.
Stone ground against stone, and the pillar split open down the middle, a holocron rising slowly out of it to hover in the air between them.
She caught it gently and held it out to him.
“This holds records on tens of thousands of Force sensitive children across the galaxy.
Guard it with everything you have.”
“If it comes down to it, destroy it before you let it fall into the wrong hands.
What happens if it doesn’t get destroyed in time doesn’t bear thinking about.”
He took it carefully, cradling it in both palms.
“They’ll have to go through me first.”
She shook her head.
“Your life is worth more than this object.
If you truly can’t protect it, destroy it.
That’s the only acceptable outcome besides keeping it safe.”
She glanced once more around the vault, something like regret passing behind her eyes, and then, almost without meaning to, her gaze settled on the rifle.
It was built to fire using a lightsaber crystal as its ammunition, powerful enough to do real damage, though every shot came at the cost of the blade itself.
She took it with her as the two of them left the vault.
They’d barely cleared the stairs when the sound hit them, explosions layered over screaming, blaster fire tangled with the hiss and clash of lightsabers.
The Temple had fallen.
Something cold dropped through Lance’s chest.
He hadn’t expected Anakin’s forces to break through this fast.
His hand found his hilt, and he started forward, but Jocasta Nu caught his arm.
Remember your task, Lance.
Get to the hangar.
I’ll buy you the opening.”
She was already moving before she finished the sentence, blade lit, vanishing into the chaos ahead.
Lance watched her go, and for a moment something hollow opened up in his chest.
If I were stronger.
Stronger than anyone here.
Could I have held this together?
Could I have saved more of them?
He pressed a hand against the holocron tucked against his chest and made himself let the thought go.
There wasn’t room for it right now.
He called on his talent, and Force Augmentation doubled his body’s output in an instant.
He moved through the corridor like a blur, cutting down anything that stood between him and the hangar.
These were soldiers he’d fought beside.
Men who’d sworn themselves to the Republic, some of whom had bled next to him on other battlefields.
Now they were trying to kill him.
Hum.
The blade swept clean.
There was no hatred in his eyes as he moved, only something heavier, something closer to grief.
For half a second he saw them again, the way they used to be, covering each other’s backs, grinning after they’d made it through another campaign alive.
The image tore apart the instant his blade cut through it.
He raised his eyes and let the hesitation go with it, leaving nothing behind but cold focus.
Not even the best of them could slow him down.
A bolt shot toward his back, closing fast.
He didn’t turn.
His blade swept in a single fluid arc, timed to the fraction of a second, and sent the bolt straight back where it came from.
The trooper who’d fired it took it in the chest and dropped where he stood, a scorched hole smoking through his white armor.
But the fight kept coming.
More troopers poured in from every direction, closing the space around him.
This was where every hour he’d spent training paid off.
A lesser Padawan, even a Knight or Master without real command of a blade, would have been cut apart under fire like this.
Lance wasn’t.
Form III had become instinct by now.
His blade moved in an unbroken rhythm, blocking, deflecting, redirecting every bolt that came near him, his footwork carrying him through the chaos like water finding the shape of the ground beneath it.
Wherever he passed, troopers dropped, clean and fast, one after another.
Ordinary soldiers would have broken and run by now.
These weren’t ordinary soldiers.
The chips in their skulls had already stripped fear and doubt out of them completely.
Nothing remained but the mission.
Execute Order 66.
Eliminate every Jedi who had betrayed the Republic.