The Wolf Pack

Chapter 69

Assassin probes had always proved difficult to deal with, the spider-like design gave it too many limbs for one single person to deal with, even a Jedi master would have had to give it their undivided attention in order not to get killed. Kriari was by no means a weak person, in fact she was amongst the few padawans who still remained from the time the war started. She had lost as many fellow younglings as she had Masters.

When the war had first started, most advanced younglings had been made into padawans due to a shortage of Jedi. Now, of those who had started their training back then, only her, Ahsoka and Barriss remained. The rest of them had been made Padawans later on, Which is why so many of the Padawans she had been seeing around had been so young.

The Republic was failing to protect their clones, the Jedi were failing to protect their young, the Galaxy was tearing itself apart from the inside and here they all were fighting a war that made no sense with conservative cult members, children and slaves. All of it to prevent a corrupt government from falling apart at the seams.

The Grand Army of the Republic, everyone.

Kriari was not sure why she even bothered at times, and then she remembered her attachments, her family, her friends, her lover. She remembered that without them in it, her life would be empty, devoid of life and color and joy. So she kept fighting, for them, not for the Republic, not for the Jedi Order.

She kept fighting, she slashed and stabbed and tore. She ducked, she dove, she dodged as she tried to take the assassin probe down, not only because it had already killed two men, but also because it could kill way more of them if she didn't. And by "men" she meant the clones and the Jedi, Kriari couldn't care less if any of the senators died. It would be a pity if any of the crew perished, she would probably be sad, but not enough to risk losing any of those she cherished. Yes, Satine was admirable in her own way, but Kriari wouldn't mourn her, not when the woman had proved she would rather let her loved ones and culture die than betray her ideals. Satine was very much a Jedi in that sense, and Kriari did not appreciate the irony.

Everyone around her started moving in tandem, Anakin had had enough time to study her and the probe's moves and could now join his fellow Jedi without being in each other's way. The clones had started firing the second their Commander had started moving, but even with seven people on it, the assassin probe was proving it was worthy of its name.

Kriari did not know how but she suddenly found herself disarmed and with a droid on top of her. Both her hands were occupied trying to keep two of the probe's spider legs from piercing through vital points in her body while the rest of her was straining to hold the weight of a droid actively putting all of its weight on her. It was only when the probe pointed two other legs at her head that her mind instinctively reached for the Force.

In her panic she managed to lift the droid several inches off her, but before she could even think to move, she was being dragged from her left foot from under the probe and out of reach. She did not immediately attack because she recognized the hand holding her ankle as human before Cody's signature reached her through the haze of battle.

Kriari wasted no time, and as soon as she was clear, she unsheathed her vibroblade from the small of her back and Force pulled her lightsaber to her. She crouched there, waiting for an opening in Skywalker's dance with the death machine, and leaped when she found it. It took two Jedi and five clones to take the thing down, and the Force damned thing had been so persistent that when Rex caught it under his boot, he fired at it for a little too long even after it was dead.

But the damned thing had some juice left in it.

Separatists sure were't fucking around when they designed these fuckers, because as soon as the main body was down, several little spider droids came out of it's hull like the world's largest geonosian spider after you stepped on it. To see the very same situation they had all gone through in Geonosis upscaled in such a measure was not only shocking, it was a clear play into traumatic events they had gone through. The separatists were not just trying to kill them, they were making sure that if they did survive, their psyche wouldn't. It was cruel, infuriating and inhumane. Fortunately, Skywalker's astromech made quick work of the little menaces, and soon, the cargo hold was quiet once again.

The silence was a bit too loud for Kriari's liking, she could not help but still hear clanking, she could still hear the shots being fired and the clone's boots as they marched and then ran through red dirt. She could hear the pained yells of men who had been abducted into geonosian caves never to be found again, not that anyone had gone looking. She could still see green parasites and brown eyes rolled all the way to the back of clones' skulls. Kriari could still feel the fight leaving her as her allies, her friends, had grabbed her and forced a parasite up her nose, she could still feel Wolffe's Force signature dying as he lay motionless in the snow.

Kriari was not in the cargo hold of the Coronet anymore, she was in her own custom designed hell that the war had made for her, and all she could see was Redeye's motionless body on the floor, limbs twisted in ways they shouldn't and a thin river of blood bisecting his chest armor.

She felt someone take her hand and put it on something solid, it was a little bit cold but hard and enduring. Someone was calling for their Commander quite insistently, why wasn't their Commander answering? The person calling seemed a little distressed.

"Kriari!"

She finally took her eyes off Redeye's corpse and looked in front of her.

Cody had taken his helmet out and was looking at her as if she had been on the verge of death. His hand was holding hers on top of his chestplate, where his heart was, and next to her, Skywalker had a hand on her shoulder.

Kriari's awareness hit her like a ton of bricks as she managed to ground herself in this reality. She could sense Cody's heartbeat under his armor, it was beating a little faster than usual, but it was quite normal after combat. She could also feel Anakin's use of the force helping her remain here and not wherever her mind had been taking her. Rex looked quite concerned to her right and the rest of the men had formed a perimeter around them in case they were attacked again.

"Are you back with us, Kid?" asked Skywalker as he removed his hand.

He looked more concerned than she'd ever seen him and even in the haze of her slowly recovering psyche, Kriari realized that even if they had their differences, even if they didn't really know each other, Anakin still cared.

"I think so," she said as she nodded to Cody and took a deep breath in. "I apologize, gentlemen, I don't know what came over me."

"The war haunts each of us in different ways, Commander Foreas," Said Anakin, trying to show her, and the rest of the men around that even in her moment of vulnerability, Kriari was still every bit the soldier they all were. "Some of us are just better at hiding it."