"TAKE COVER!"
The cry was high-pitched and explosively loud; the screech of a helmet comm trying to compensate followed soon after it. The man wearing it had seen the rising crimson flare of the incoming cannon shell, and even without his HUD to calculate its exact trajectory he knew these would be the last words he spoke.
The warning echoed down into the gully below the lookout point where the man stood frozen in his last instant of life. There was a frantic scrambling of bodies as his fellow soldiers moved to what little cover was available, urging those already there to squeeze tighter against the rocks and mud.
All this happened over the space of a few seconds – and even so short an amount of time can mean the difference between victory and defeat in the heat of battle. But it still wasn't long enough. The cannon shell shattered on impact, tearing apart earth and plant life and clone troopers like an unruly child with fragile toys.
Ahsoka Tano felt the heat of the collision on her skin, the shockwave building in her montrals, and grabbed the two men beside her with her hands and nine more nearby with the Force. She dove down into the gully and flattened them all to the ground along with her just before they would've been hit.
She muffled a cough as settling dust and smoke found their way into her throat. Fighting against aching limbs, she lifted herself into a sitting position. She barely had a second to survey the carnage before a laser whizzed past her shoulder close enough to burn.
Cursing through the pain, she peered up over the ruined lip of the gully. Armored shapes were picking their way through the trees down to them with alarming speed. "Look who showed up to pick off the survivors," she grumbled, and snatched the blaster off her belt to return fire.
"Look alive, boys!" she called over her shoulder. "Medics, get whoever can be moved on the AT-RTs! Zee-sixers, return fire – we need cover, now! Everybody else, lock and load and wait for my signal."
This retreat bordered on suicide. Everyone down to the lowliest private knew it. But, as it often was with Anakin Skywalker's tactics, they also knew there was no better option. The odds of making it up the slope to the landing zone with a few snipers in their path were far better than taking the long way round to the easier pass against an entire battalion.
A soldier to Ahsoka's right let out a rasping groan that rose to a yell when a medic tried to move him. Her burnt shoulder smarted in sympathy, and she followed the sound of the man's suffering with her eyes. Her heart sank when she saw how many dull white and blue figures were bent at odd angles or reddening the earth with their lifeblood. They would be leaving far too many behind today.
A pair of boots squelched to a stop beside her. She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding when the aura of the person wearing them washed over her, as soothing as a cool breeze on a hot day.
"Rex, change of plans." Her own voice was alien to her, but the words, at least, sounded sure of themselves. "I'll go take care of those snipers and scout ahead. It'll fall to you to get the boys to the mountain summit in good time."
"You can count on me, sir."
"Keep a comm channel open and monitor my signal and vitals. Once I'm out of visual range I'll send you updates every five minutes."
Rex nodded and cocked his blasters. His left hand tensed halfway through the motion and went more slowly from then on. Ahsoka noticed, but said nothing. If he felt he could fight, he would fight – that was just the sort of captain he was. There was no use arguing on it, especially now, when they needed every man they had.
"Yes, sir. We'll be right behind you."
Ahsoka felt muscles shift beneath her cheeks, pulling the corners of her lips upward, but that was that was the closest she could get to a smile. Then she traded the ailing power pack on her blaster for a new one and leapt back onto the ridge.
Dodging and weaving between sniper blasts with practiced ease, she drew the Force to her to heighten her senses and make every shot count. In the past few weeks the 501st had had so many of its better supply lines cut they'd resorted to buying second-grade power packs – and stars knew those never lasted long enough to make a difference in actual combat. At least today, on this front, the enemy had inferior numbers and only one heavy cannon. If she took the advantage of the high ground away from them, those were odds she could work with.
Bidding the Force use her body, Ahsoka reached out and slowly clenched her fingers into a fist. The snipers' rifles crumpled in their hands. Though a voice in the back of her mind reminded her she wasn't fighting battle droids in the Clone Wars anymore, Ahsoka didn't even flinch as she gunned them all down.
She put on a burst of speed and made it to the small rock face the snipers had been using as cover in all of five minutes. Though she could feel no sentient life aside from her troops in the vicinity, the wounded would slow their progress. Once she left, there would be a long window for someone to get to the heavy cannons and start firing before the clones made it past.
She was not about to let that happen. Their losses were already far too steep.
Taking out the cannon was simple: one snap of the Force to crush the nozzle, and the shells would ricochet back into the machine. This done, she activated the controls to fire, and before long it was a smoldering ruin of metal and plastic.
"Rex," she murmured into her wrist comm, stretching to get a few last kinks out of her spine before the long run ahead, "next klick and a half is clear of unfriendlies and the heavy cannon is out of commission. Move out."
"Sir, yes, sir."
Brightly colored trees and flowers flashed in and out of Ahsoka's line of sight as she darted past them, her feet pounding a steady rhythm into the peaty ground. The Force gave her more energy, but as careful as she was to monitor her breathing and keep her battle-weary limbs relaxed, she could feel herself tiring.
After so many months shipboard, she was out of practice, but she gritted her teeth and summoned the strength to push on. The sooner she finished scouting, the sooner she could get back to her troops and see them to the landing zone safely.
But that was when she smelled the smoke from cooking fires up ahead.
Flattening herself against a blue tree trunk that curled upward like a fern, she shut her eyes and stretched her senses further out than she usually dared. Cooking fires, although rare when it was protocol for a battalion to be supplied with enough ration bars to feed itself twice over, were a sure sign of a camp nearby.
Her sensitive Togruta nose was already picking up the heady smell of sizzling meat – probably some native game – and she nearly whined in hunger. It had been a long time since she'd had any protein that wasn't a powdered supplement.
And yet, while her corporeal senses were delighted, Ahsoka still couldn't find any sentient life forms in the Force nearby. Had something been left to cook while the enemy went out in search of the fleeing Jedi and clones? That was unlikely. The scanners would have spotted the heat signatures before they landed.
She shook her head to herself, ready to brush it away as hunger talking. But then the smell of burning plasticoid – the same thing her troops' armor was made of – joined it. With a flash of fear, she broke into a run again, following her nose.
She didn't have far to go. The woods cleared into a small meadow just ahead, where dozens of bodies lay in heaps – blackened, burnt, burning still in slowly dying fires. Almost all wore the earth-toned robes of Jedi younglings and Padawans.
Ahsoka tasted bile and doubled over. She wasn't able to pull herself up again or so much as take another breath until she'd completely emptied her stomach.
The hand she lifted to her mouth to wipe it dry curled into a fist, pressing her lips closed against a hoarse sob trying to fight its way through. She fell to her knees just shy of the sick as the tears came, cutting lines through the coating of dust and dirt on her cheeks that toughened again as it dried.
Desperately Ahsoka grasped for her old Jedi teachings, pushing her grief for the mutilated forms lying before her into the Force so aggressively she was sure every sentient on the planet could feel it. She didn't have the energy to care in the face of so much death. These were innocent children the Empire had murdered.
The Empire. She didn't even know how the Imperial Army had found them. Had it been a stray comm signal her team hadn't encoded properly? Or was it just that the Emperor's strategists had determined Felucia was the likeliest place for the sector's dissidents to rest and regroup, and she'd simply been too blind to see it?
It had been her idea to organize this meeting between Jedi-led rebel factions. She'd hoped to give their forces unity, a sense of being part of something greater, but all she'd been able to give them in the end was unity in death. She'd brought the key military commanders, Jedi leaders, and even those merely under the protection of the Rebellion to one place. This bloodbath was of her design and execution.
Ahsoka's stomach started to lurch again at the smell. She quickly staggered past the mounds of charred flesh. Her mind was locked in a blank horror that only worsened when she realized that despite her nausea, her mouth was still watering.
Her wrist comm trilled sharply. "Ahsoka, are you there?"
Anakin. That was Anakin. Calmness began to return.
Coaxing the flames higher with the Force until they glowed as brightly as any funeral pyre from the days of the Republic, she murmured the traditional words of parting for those gone to the Cosmic Force. Staring into the roaring blaze even as the smoke stung her eyes and drew fresh tears from them, she made a silent promise to the fallen that their deaths would not be meaningless.
As she withdrew, she spotted a lightsaber half-hidden under a leafy shrub. Pushing the sacrilegious nature of the act aside, she called it to her hand and clipped it to her belt. She had all the components of her lightsabers concealed in various pockets and folds in her clothing, but reassembling them properly would take time and focus she didn't have. She hoped the saber's former owner would forgive her.
Her comm rang again as she started on the next stretch to the landing zone at a run. "Ahsoka, come in ASAP, or Force help me I'm going to send a search party!"
"I'm here." She didn't know what else to say.
"Where are you?" he asked around a heavy sigh of relief.
She booted up the comm's holographic display and checked her position on a map. "Less than a klick from the landing zone, now. I went ahead as a scout."
"How fast can you get here?"
The burning corpses slowly began to fade away at the sound of his voice. "SkyGuy, you of all people know how fast I can run. How badly do you need me?"
"The landing zone's shielding is taking a beating, but the flak is too heavy to send anyone out to give us cover fire. The only thing we managed to hold is the passage from the east, and thanks to that we're down to six squadrons against an entire legion. The odds aren't looking good."
"Since when do you care about the odds?" she joked weakly.
"Snips, this isn't the Clone Wars anymore!" he growled, deadly serious. "I've cared since our mistakes started hurting innocent people. I've cared since Obi-Wan and Cody got themselves stranded in Wild Space. I've cared since Padmé died."
Ahsoka bit her lip. She hadn't heard Padmé's name in months. Anakin never spoke of her anymore unless he was too drunk or too deeply stressed to remember how much saying it would hurt them both. And he hadn't had a drop in two weeks, which meant things were in worse shape at the landing zone than he was letting on.
"I'm sorry."
"No, I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. Just... hurry up, Ahsoka."
She ended the comm and opened another channel to Rex, instructing him to make for the path to the east double time and be ready for a fight. Then she put on a burst of speed, and before long she was close enough to feel the low hum of the shield generator resonating in her lekku. The sounds of battle followed soon after.
Just as Ahsoka reached the top of the mountain, there was a sharp pop of static that made her wince. Her blood ran cold as the enemy cannons fell silent. The humming had stopped.
It all came to her in an instant. The shield was down. The evacuation was not yet complete. Dozens of Jedi and clones were now as good as defenseless against a whole Imperial battalion. Death would be inevitable.
"Not on my watch," Ahsoka muttered, and ignited her borrowed blade.
She didn't hesitate before leaping into the fray, deflecting blaster bolts right back at the Imperial storm troopers who turned to fire at her and cutting apart the unlucky few standing in her way. When she heard another lightsaber ignite only a few feet away and felt a familiar mind touch hers, she even found it in her to smile.
The other lightsaber drew closer, and when she backed against something warm and solid, the smile widened. "Hey, SkyGuy. How goes it?"
"Oh, you know..." He flashed her a rare grin over his shoulder and shifted forward to strike. Instinctively she moved back to cover him. "The usual."
"That bad, huh?"
"Guess so. Go help get everybody here to the ships, would you? I've got this."
"But I can–"
"Go. I said I've got this."
His voice still had some of the steel Ahsoka had heard over the comm in it, though he hid it well. She knew better than to question him now, and better still than to doubt him. He was the most skilled fighter they had – more than a match for a few storm troopers with a tenth of his battle experience.
Without another word of objection, she moved around him and cut a path back to friendly lines.
"Get to your ships!" she hollered over the laser blasts. "All squadrons and Knights: protect the younglings! Get Barriss and the other Healers out here!"
Everyone sprang into action, and her eyes brightened when Rex's forces stormed through the eastern passage. But even as they fanned out around the ships to strengthen their defense, she felt her the Force curl uneasily around her.
Then, beneath the fear of the fleeing rebels, she felt the disjointed, patchwork auras that struck terror in the heart of any Jedi, and she understood. And somehow, so did Rex, because a second later his arms were around her in a grip like iron.
"Let me go!" The words came out in a screech. "They'll kill him, Rex!"
"No! You've seen how those monsters fight," he hissed. "I'm acting under his orders, because he knew what he'd have to do if they showed up. We need you!"
She didn't listen – she couldn't. Her duty to the Rebellion, to the Jedi, even her promises to the dead all fell away in a hearbteat. She broke Rex's grip, ignoring his cry of pain when she twisted his injured hand, and ran back into the fight.
Somewhere deep down, the rational part of her knew she would look back on this moment and wish she'd acted differently – if she lived long enough to remember it. But her life was forfeit if she left the man who'd become like her brother to die.
The abominations in the Force that the Empire exalted as their Elite class of storm trooper had Anakin surrounded, and Ahsoka's breath caught in her throat whenever one of their electrostaffs got too close to him. The high voltage could easily cause muscle damage, kill off nerves, or even–
Anakin yelped in pain, and his lightsaber fell to the ground. Or short out the power cells in his mechanical hand, she thought belatedly.
Before he could call it back with his left, an Elite to his left took advantage of the gap in his defenses and hit him squarely on the leg. His agony shot through the Force, urging her to make haste, and blindly she fought her way forward. She had to get to him before it was too late, before the Elites went in for the final blow–
She had almost made it to Anakin's side when an electrostaff made contact with his upper chest, right over his heart. A spasm tore through him, sending him falling back, and his name left her lips in a desperate scream.
The battlefield went quiet when he hit the ground and didn't rise again. His hair curled away from his face like a golden halo, and his wide, unmoving eyes were a mirror of the cerulean sky. He would've looked almost peaceful – perhaps like he was sleeping with his eyes open, as he did every now and then – had there not been six Elites standing around him as coldly and without feeling as smooth black stone.
Ahsoka slashed the nearest Elite in two and thrust the halved corpse aside with the Force. She dove through the opening and pulled Anakin into her arms, checking for a pulse, a heartbeat, a hint of a breath, anything...
There was nothing.
Since becoming his Padawan Ahsoka had maintained a childlike belief that Anakin Skywalker was imbued with his own special sort of immortality. Everywhere she looked there was proof of it: the impossible situations he got out of effortlessly, his recoveries from near-fatal injuries, even his renowned status as the Chosen One.
It was that fading conviction that now made her shake him as hard as she did, cry as hard as she did for him to wake up, even when she knew he wasn't going to.
I'll protect you, Ahsoka, the Force whispered to her in his voice. Always.
A blue light flashed in the corner of her eye. As she turned blankly to meet it, a burst of pain flared through her chest like a thousand tiny needles spearing her flesh at once. Then her eyes slipped shut, and cool numbness dragged her under.