The alarm had been screaming through the corridors for what felt like an hour now, red emergency light pulsing across the walls and floor in the same steady rhythm.
Lance kept moving, blade swinging in a constant arc, but the enemies seemed endless.
Wave after wave kept pouring in.
He broke off, doubled back to grab his Master’s holocron, and pushed hard for the hangar.
At a corner, two troopers raised their blasters a half second too late.
Lance was already on them, a blur closing the distance before either could aim.
One horizontal sweep.
Hum.
The blue blade cut clean through, and both men dropped where they stood.
No blood, just the clean cauterized edges the plasma left behind.
More bolts came at him from ahead.
A flick of his wrist sent every one of them back the way it came.
He kept moving.
Every hour of battlefield experience had burned itself into instinct by now, steady and decisive with each strike.
Force Augmentation kept his awareness razor sharp, bolts from a distance, ambushers tucked into corners, none of it slipped past him.
A cluster of troopers lobbed grenades his way.
He raised a hand and struck out with an open palm, and the Force caught the grenades midair, hurling them straight back at the men who’d thrown them.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Fire rolled upward in three quick bursts, throwing bodies and debris in every direction, the shockwave sending nearby soldiers sprawling.
He came out into a long, narrow corridor and stopped.
The floor was covered in bodies.
Knights, Padawans, younglings who couldn’t have been past ten years old.
Lightsabers lay scattered where hands had dropped them, and every face still held whatever it had been feeling in its last moment: fear, longing, pain frozen in place.
Lance could almost taste the blood in the air, that strong metallic flavour dominating his senses.
Their last cries still echoed faintly through the Force, and his enhanced senses caught every one of them, pulling at something tight in his chest.
He forced himself to stop looking at their faces.
Something cold settled into his eyes instead, and his movements sharpened, faster now, more conviction.
Without breaking stride, he reached toward one of the fallen Knights.
The lightsaber at their hip trembled, then flew loose and landed in his open palm.
He fed it Force energy.
Click.
Hum.
Two blades now, blue in one hand, green in the other, cutting down everything in his path.
The corridor stretched a hundred meters, and by the end of it he’d lost count of how many he’d cut down.
Troopers kept coming regardless.
He kept swinging.
The hangar entrance finally came into view.
Blaster fire filled the air ahead of him.
Seven or eight Knights stood in a loose line, sabers raised, shielding a dozen or so younglings behind them, barely holding a defensive wall against the volume of fire coming their way.
Their swordwork wasn’t strong enough for it, and one by one they were starting to fall.
A Padawan had both hands locked around a saber, driving it straight into the metal door in front of them, another blade cutting from the opposite side. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Someone on the other side was working with them.
Among the younglings sat a small, green-skinned child in a hovering pram.
Grogu, one of Master Yoda’s own species.
The door itself was locked.
One glance told Lance the enemy already held the control room, and told him just as clearly that this line wouldn’t hold much longer.
He didn’t slow down.
He became a blur again, blades sweeping, troopers dropping in his wake.
Gathering the Force, he drove his arm forward in one violent motion, and an invisible wave tore through the remaining soldiers along the flank, throwing dozens of them against the back wall.
A string of dull, heavy impacts followed.
Bones broke.
Nothing under that force survived it.
The moment he released it, the cost hit him back.
Exhaustion dropped over him hard, his breath going ragged.
He knew exactly what that meant: he’d pushed the Force too far, too fast.
The Jedi ahead stood frozen, staring.
Lance turned and let his eyes pass over each of them.
Most of the younglings looked back at him with something close to awe.
A few of the Knights looked at him the way you’d look at something dangerous.
He raised an eyebrow.
He’d never felt the hollowness of Jedi doctrine as clearly as he did right now.
All that talk about mercy for the wicked, about everyone deserving a second chance, meant nothing standing in a hallway full of dead children.
For soldiers who’d cut down younglings without hesitation, mercy wasn’t a virtue anymore.
Something from the dream surfaced in his mind, unbidden: kill to protect life, cut the chain of harm, not the person.
Compassion aimed at the wrong target was its own kind of cruelty toward everyone it failed to protect.
He walked up to the group, voice flat.
“Where’s the rest of them?”
One of the older Knights answered, grief thick in his voice.
“Most made it to the hangar already.
There wasn’t time for everyone.
Some are still cut off out there.
We tried to bring them all, but their offensive was too heavy.
We had to split up.”
Lance nodded and didn’t press further.
Through the Force he could feel more troopers closing in fast from behind.
Time was running out.
Just then the sealed door finally gave, cut through by the combined effort on both sides.
A glowing red-edged panel lifted free under the Force and swung aside.
Thud.
It hit the floor.
“Everyone, inside.
Now.”
Night lay heavy over Coruscant.
Three Knights stood with Jocasta Nu, all that remained of the dozen who’d originally surrounded Anakin.
Even with the numbers, none of them had been a match for him.
“Anakin.” Jocasta Nu’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried.
“It isn’t too late to stop.”
Anakin walked toward her, blue blade lit, steps unhurried and full of conviction.
“You lied to me.
The Council never trusted me.
Not once.”
She held her ground.
“Everything you’re doing right now is hurting the very people you want to protect.”
His fingers tightened around the hilt, the blade shaking faintly with it.
“You’ll never understand.” His voice dropped, straining under something enormous.
“I watched her die in agony.
Over and over.
I swore I’d never let that happen again.”
He struck the moment he finished speaking.
The dark side surged through him, brutal and burning, and his strength spiked in that same instant.
Jocasta Nu barely got her blade up in time.
The impact rattled through her wrist hard enough to nearly tear the hilt from her hand.
This close, she could see it plainly in his red-gold eyes.
Anger.
Hatred.
Pain.
And underneath all of it, a resolve that wasn’t going to break for anyone.
Whatever hope she’d been holding onto shattered in that instant.
The three Knights beside her rushed in to help, and in the chaos of clashing blades, one more of them fell.
She understood now.
There was no path back from here.
She’d never planned on one anyway.
She’d been ready for this moment for longer than she’d admit.
Using the momentum of her retreat, she pulled free of the fight and looked up.
Three cruisers hung above the Temple, an iron wall sealing off any hope of escape.
She reached out.
Guided by the Force, that strange rifle from the vault flew across the rooftop and settled into her waiting hand.
She fit her lightsaber into the weapon’s housing, locked her aim through the Force onto the thruster core of the nearest cruiser, and fired without hesitation.
Her blade dissolved into molten slag in the same instant, its energy poured entirely into the shot.
The rifle shuddered in her grip as it could barely contain what was moving through it.
A beam thick as a man’s arm tore out of the barrel and punched straight through the cruiser’s alloy hull.
Boom.
Fire rolled out from the ship’s stern.
The massive hull tipped, lost its balance, and began its long fall, tearing a gap wide open in what had been an unbroken blockade.
Jocasta Nu lowered the ruined weapon, her voice quiet.
“Now.”
Carried on the Force, the word reached every ear waiting down in the hangar.