Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Covalent Bonds ❯ Chapter 44
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: pronker 
Non Anime: Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Action | Type: Fanfiction Sequel | Uploaded On: 10.16.2008 | Updated On: 10.17.2008 | Pages: 1 | Words: 2.6K | Visits: 134 | Status: Completed
Non Anime: Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Hentai / Action | Type: Fanfiction Sequel | Uploaded On: 10.16.2008 | Updated On: 10.17.2008 | Pages: 1 | Words: 2.6K | Visits: 134 | Status: Completed
The sonic attack that Republic forces had used against the crystal army in Alliga's noxious swamps one fortnight ago had literally shaken Dooku. The Republic's attack had failed because Grievous' mechanical competence --- Dooku refused to think 'genius' --- had foreseen a sonic attack upon his crystal constructs and had formed his MagnaGuards into a walking, clanking mobile unit of counterinsurgency. Grievous molded his MagnaGuards into walking weapons, tremendous firepower as well as the new counter-sonics weapon that had effected humiliation on some of the clone troops. A resonance engine that the MagnaGuards activated flooded the human body with electrical currents and strong vibrations, which in a relaxed setting might have been therapeutical, but with battlefield nerves promoted an accelerated rate of peristaltic action. The clone troops had scrambled for control. Even the Jedi Generals and Commanders found themselves humiliated. As a user of the Dark Side, Dooku controlled his own autonomic reflexes well, yet the effort to avoid embarrassment diverted his attention from the battle itself and the Separatists had lost a valuable staging area for their materiel. The cyborg was able to flick an internal switch and was unaffected.
Today on the more clement Rutan in the Outer Rim, Dooku's lambasting Grievous over the ambidirectional nature of the weapon emanating from the impervious MagnaGuards and the ensuing modding of the weapon ran through Dooku's head. Grievous tipped their skimmer closer to the mauve cliff wall than Dooku would have liked. The Count of Serenno said nothing, giving no hint of discomfort at the Kaleesh's daring. Is he showing off to me again? He had never spent much time with Milord Sidious and now he is living with a Sith Lord. If he is toadying, it is tedious and not useful. I need him plotting battles. Dooku had many years of maturity on Grievous and then again, Dooku was of noble heritage, which to him meant devotion to duty, the Separatist cause, the Dark Side and proper order. He found himself growing more attached to order as he aged, perhaps in response to Grievous' occasional recklessness. The living together part he despised, sporadic as it was after his escape from shoddy Jedi custody. Grievous' needs ran to lubricants and holoemitters programmed for battle planning; nowhere in his character were aesthetic considerations. There had been no time in the two months before this battle to craft a separate life.
If Dooku had deigned to thank Grievous for Dooku's rapid retrieval from the fuel-depleted Jedi transport, Grievous might have procured a more dignified craft for their campaign inspection tour. As it was, Grievous' feet clamped to the heaving deck as their craft bucked a rising wind while Dooku used the Force to secure his venerable frame to the co-pilot seat. This forced Dooku to concentrate fiercely, arms crossed, sneer in place. Grievous thought the Count missed his JediNow! auctions and his elegant home on Serenno. Wait until he sees my crystal army to better advantage. Now that the flaws have been engineered away, he'll see that any metal droids are a thing of the past, just like the B-1 droids. Roger this, heir to Sidious. "Milord Dooku, meteorology reports claim --- "
"Are you going to tell me that it is going to rain?" Perhaps he fears rust.
Don't make me change my mind back to my former opinion of you. You escaped the Jedi. Where is that brilliance now? "I would be doing Milord a disservice if I did not inform him of every possible permutation of our odds for victory."
"'Odds'? Isn't victory a sure thing?"
Where is your vision of the future? "Perhaps Milord could use the Force to see --- "
"You wheedled me into authorizing these crystal droids. With your infernal upgrading and tinkering, this battle ought to --- " Land this thing at once.
"Behold." Grievous placed their craft expertly, smoothly behind a thicket of conifers. Even the trees were one third larger than Galactic norm. The MagnaGuards in the rear seats formed a ring around the thicket. They did not get too close to Dooku after he had informed Grievous testily that he did not appreciate any more mechanicals near him than he must. The irony that Qymaen jai Sheelal appreciated in his past life sailed over General Grievous' cyborg head. "It's beyond this ridge." You wanted this planet taken because of Rutan's kudana furs. Why a Sith Lord would need furs when he could use the Force to commandeer heating units, I don't know.
This is as good a planet as any to persuade to our just cause and now I will have many of the rarest furs in the galaxy to rebuild my treasures. I deserve them. "It's raining."
"To our advantage. You shall see, Milord."
On this planet of wild mountains and broad plains with a fishing and hunting economy, Rutan's population of dark-skinned near-humans towered a full meter and a half over Dooku's powerful frame. Dooku supposed that another, lesser being would appreciate Grievous' new protective attitude and sheer mechanical strength. I am my own source of strength. I am alone since Qui-Gon joined the Force. I need give affection to no one. He pulled his hood down further over his eyes, forming a roof over the macrobinoculars as he observed at a great remove his forces' attack upon the Republic's. Down on Rutan's plains, the valuable beasts in question thundered in great herds as the battle cacophony began. Though they matched Rutan's general outsized ecology and stood nearly two full meters at the withers, from the Separatists' vantage point beneath dripping boughs the kudanas seemed one dark undifferentiated mass. No, now it was two masses, as the panicked herd split, dashing this way and that, trampling the mix of metal and crystal droids along with some clone troopers. The crystal droids reformed. The metal and clone troops did not. Dooku approved.
Through the wind and brief rain, Dooku stood, watching the give and take of the battle. Here a sortie by crystal and metal droids succeeded, there one failed. Here a clone trooper survived his squad's massacre, there an entire company of identical humans was wiped out. When the battle's tipping point was reached, Republic gunships and their missiles seemed to have the field well in hand. When the gunships appeared in support, the clone troops broke out weapons that they must have thought would overwhelm the opposition: thermal detonators. Though the Separatists' artillery took out the gunships, Dooku held his breath and Grievous fingered his lightsabers beneath his cloak as the first detonator was launched by a clone captain. Then Dooku and Grievous relaxed. All was going according to plan.
After two hours of battle, the Rutanian system's sun pierced the drained, scudding clouds. In the mud and blood of the plains, over the corpses of humans and shreds of metal droids, the sun bathed all Dooku's view in brightness. And then the sparkling began, rainbow scintillations from the reflections of the sun on crystal blurred Dooku's macrobinocular vision. Or it could have been emotional tears, because the effect of light was beautiful, a work of mosaic that he had never attempted in art classes at the Temple, or on his own as a traveling Knight, or in teaching his Padawans their lessons. This was glorious, this was the part of battle that he appreciated the most, not Grievous' maneuvering of tanks and battalions, but carnage overcome by aesthetics. The crystals moved, they seemed a rippling river of gems through which victory for the Separatists forged like a fine sailing ship. The clones' helmets took split-seconds to recalibrate their outside visual feeds, yet those split-seconds cost the lives of many armored warriors. Dooku sensed Grievous turning towards him for a look of camaraderie. The Dark Lord flung out his senses to the Jedi Knight entrapped on a small hillock below instead.
The Knight was no one Dooku had ever met, had not one bit of familiarity to his Force signature, but Dooku felt more in tune with this unknown Jedi than he did with Grievous. Their shared Temple background, their ideologies matching up until a certain point in Dooku's life, these things made Dooku curious about the Jedi's last moments. Something in the swing of the weary sword arm, the downcast mood, a sharp stab of grief over a close friend's passing into the Force alerted Dooku to the notion that this Knight had been a Master to a Padawan who had died. Yes, there, the Knight stood over a form motionless in the mud, a smaller form with outstretched arms and unnatural pose. The young one had passed and her Master guarded her until his last breath. Hope for his own life lasted until a surge of crystal overcame his resistance and flooded the scene with brilliance. Dooku peered through the macrobinoculars, tears from the lights' glare slipping down his cheeks. The crystal droids flowed over the hapless Knight, who still clung to life. His energy fading, he looked through the clear rain-washed skies towards Dooku as if knowing that greater enemies than the mindless droids observed his passing. Long blond hair blackened by the droid's trampling analogs for feet, his torso bedecked by detached crystals from the shining droids that he had dispatched, the Knight's right hand had lost its grip on his lightsaber. One minute before he heeded the call of the Force, he extended the middle finger, broken as it was. Dooku saw and approved. Beautiful.
Meanwhile, at Dex's Diner ...
"I think we're better off apart, that's all." Padme tried not to fidget. She'd rehearsed this for some time in front of the 'fresher mirror, and fidgeting gave off an "I'm not quite mature" vibe that, at twenty-eight, she knew was far in her past. She knew also that her single bodyguard was somewhere in the summer-steamy diner, but tried to forget it as she waited for Yoda's response.
"Not a surprise, this is, Padme. Distant lately, have you been." Heavy, my heart is, yet adults we both are. Survive, the first rule of Jedi combat is. And a form of combat unknown to me, this was.
Dex's Diner was quiet this time of day, right before the lunch rush. Good place for a breakup, Padme thought wryly. "Yoda, you'll always be special to me, you know that. I -- I'm ... " If I knew the Force, now would be the time to call on it.
"Padme." Why didn't this hurt more? "In different places now, our interests lie." Failed, we have, with our plan to end the war. Concentrate, I must, to aid the Chosen One's talent for wringing victory out of defeat.
Padme chewed her snickerdoodle thoughtfully, waving away WA-7 with her eternal "Warm up on that, hon?" This was going as smoothly as all such things went. He's despondent. He can't look beyond his, well, our, plan's failure.
"Ready to move on, myself, I am," Yoda prompted. Until he released his emotions to the Force, it bothered Yoda greatly that he was changing his relationship with Padme. How he would miss most things about her: her willingness to try new things, her sense of fun, her ringlets that covered half his body if he wanted. But more than that, he had appreciated her lack of gravitas. With her delegated powers, she could have had lackeys for her everyday needs, as had some Jedi in his experience who prodded their Padawans into too many chores.
Padme dropped some sweetener into her caf and stirred more viciously than she wanted to. "Well, I thought you'd at least ask us to seek counseling." She had wanted to do this in a kind way, and she had. Why did this hurt more than it should? She and Jobal had had a long --- a very, very, long --- discussion about this yesterday, not nearly as calm. Her mother had wanted her to give up serial relationships, had hinted around about it for a year and a half, and now she was even more adamant. Padme had come to realize that she wanted not someone to complement her, but to match her. Ommane had matched her in gender and Anakin in species, but Yoda had been a challenge, a match in neither. And Padme was ready for a match. I'm through with this kind of challenge. Real life is challenge enough for me.
Yoda studied a stain on the checked tablecloth. "Help, it would not. Miss you, I shall. Meant much to me, our partnership did." If next time there is, breaking up in a public place is best.
"Wait, wait. Our partnership? I only meant us. You mean, we're not working together at the Children's Museum anymore? Or on a new plan to bring peace?"
Yoda's ears with their delightfully rasping hair drooped. "Standing on its own, the Museum is. Talked about working undercover together on Nar Shaddaa, Master Secura and I have. A new approach to defeating Dooku, I need. Years it has been since intel I have done."
"Undercover? With your reputation? Your face is famous galaxy-wide, Yoda. Now Yaddle might get away with it --- "
"Impertinent, you are. Time we parted, it is." Yoda touched Padme's arm as he had nearly one year ago in this very diner, and there was no spreading tingle. Blending of the Force and state, viable it is not. "Friends?"
Padme would miss Yoda's hemipenes --- oh, what he could do with the two of them at once! --- and his cloaca's responsiveness, but being honest with herself, she would not miss the debates about the Force. They left her drained and not at all sure of herself, which bothered her most of the time. It was a stretch from perceiving that politics worked, slowly and finely, but politics worked as a process, to flogging her brain with the idea that the Force simply existed and if you had the right words or attitude, not to mention the training, the Force worked for you. It was too much trouble, too many years since her educational years had passed for Padme to submit herself to training. She realized this might be a weakness, but there it was: she was occasionally weak. It was easier to admit this than ever before, easier since Enri Etolini had come into her life. With his steady implantation into her days, she did not have to be unremittingly strong. That felt good, in a way she had not felt with Teragram or Anakin or Ommane. Or even with Yoda, or maybe especially with Yoda. He was a powerhouse of strength and she had matched him for nigh onto one full year. Time to leave.
"Friends." They bowed in place to each other and even smiled, a mere lifting of the corners of the mouth, but a smile, nonetheless.
TBC
Today on the more clement Rutan in the Outer Rim, Dooku's lambasting Grievous over the ambidirectional nature of the weapon emanating from the impervious MagnaGuards and the ensuing modding of the weapon ran through Dooku's head. Grievous tipped their skimmer closer to the mauve cliff wall than Dooku would have liked. The Count of Serenno said nothing, giving no hint of discomfort at the Kaleesh's daring. Is he showing off to me again? He had never spent much time with Milord Sidious and now he is living with a Sith Lord. If he is toadying, it is tedious and not useful. I need him plotting battles. Dooku had many years of maturity on Grievous and then again, Dooku was of noble heritage, which to him meant devotion to duty, the Separatist cause, the Dark Side and proper order. He found himself growing more attached to order as he aged, perhaps in response to Grievous' occasional recklessness. The living together part he despised, sporadic as it was after his escape from shoddy Jedi custody. Grievous' needs ran to lubricants and holoemitters programmed for battle planning; nowhere in his character were aesthetic considerations. There had been no time in the two months before this battle to craft a separate life.
If Dooku had deigned to thank Grievous for Dooku's rapid retrieval from the fuel-depleted Jedi transport, Grievous might have procured a more dignified craft for their campaign inspection tour. As it was, Grievous' feet clamped to the heaving deck as their craft bucked a rising wind while Dooku used the Force to secure his venerable frame to the co-pilot seat. This forced Dooku to concentrate fiercely, arms crossed, sneer in place. Grievous thought the Count missed his JediNow! auctions and his elegant home on Serenno. Wait until he sees my crystal army to better advantage. Now that the flaws have been engineered away, he'll see that any metal droids are a thing of the past, just like the B-1 droids. Roger this, heir to Sidious. "Milord Dooku, meteorology reports claim --- "
"Are you going to tell me that it is going to rain?" Perhaps he fears rust.
Don't make me change my mind back to my former opinion of you. You escaped the Jedi. Where is that brilliance now? "I would be doing Milord a disservice if I did not inform him of every possible permutation of our odds for victory."
"'Odds'? Isn't victory a sure thing?"
Where is your vision of the future? "Perhaps Milord could use the Force to see --- "
"You wheedled me into authorizing these crystal droids. With your infernal upgrading and tinkering, this battle ought to --- " Land this thing at once.
"Behold." Grievous placed their craft expertly, smoothly behind a thicket of conifers. Even the trees were one third larger than Galactic norm. The MagnaGuards in the rear seats formed a ring around the thicket. They did not get too close to Dooku after he had informed Grievous testily that he did not appreciate any more mechanicals near him than he must. The irony that Qymaen jai Sheelal appreciated in his past life sailed over General Grievous' cyborg head. "It's beyond this ridge." You wanted this planet taken because of Rutan's kudana furs. Why a Sith Lord would need furs when he could use the Force to commandeer heating units, I don't know.
This is as good a planet as any to persuade to our just cause and now I will have many of the rarest furs in the galaxy to rebuild my treasures. I deserve them. "It's raining."
"To our advantage. You shall see, Milord."
On this planet of wild mountains and broad plains with a fishing and hunting economy, Rutan's population of dark-skinned near-humans towered a full meter and a half over Dooku's powerful frame. Dooku supposed that another, lesser being would appreciate Grievous' new protective attitude and sheer mechanical strength. I am my own source of strength. I am alone since Qui-Gon joined the Force. I need give affection to no one. He pulled his hood down further over his eyes, forming a roof over the macrobinoculars as he observed at a great remove his forces' attack upon the Republic's. Down on Rutan's plains, the valuable beasts in question thundered in great herds as the battle cacophony began. Though they matched Rutan's general outsized ecology and stood nearly two full meters at the withers, from the Separatists' vantage point beneath dripping boughs the kudanas seemed one dark undifferentiated mass. No, now it was two masses, as the panicked herd split, dashing this way and that, trampling the mix of metal and crystal droids along with some clone troopers. The crystal droids reformed. The metal and clone troops did not. Dooku approved.
Through the wind and brief rain, Dooku stood, watching the give and take of the battle. Here a sortie by crystal and metal droids succeeded, there one failed. Here a clone trooper survived his squad's massacre, there an entire company of identical humans was wiped out. When the battle's tipping point was reached, Republic gunships and their missiles seemed to have the field well in hand. When the gunships appeared in support, the clone troops broke out weapons that they must have thought would overwhelm the opposition: thermal detonators. Though the Separatists' artillery took out the gunships, Dooku held his breath and Grievous fingered his lightsabers beneath his cloak as the first detonator was launched by a clone captain. Then Dooku and Grievous relaxed. All was going according to plan.
After two hours of battle, the Rutanian system's sun pierced the drained, scudding clouds. In the mud and blood of the plains, over the corpses of humans and shreds of metal droids, the sun bathed all Dooku's view in brightness. And then the sparkling began, rainbow scintillations from the reflections of the sun on crystal blurred Dooku's macrobinocular vision. Or it could have been emotional tears, because the effect of light was beautiful, a work of mosaic that he had never attempted in art classes at the Temple, or on his own as a traveling Knight, or in teaching his Padawans their lessons. This was glorious, this was the part of battle that he appreciated the most, not Grievous' maneuvering of tanks and battalions, but carnage overcome by aesthetics. The crystals moved, they seemed a rippling river of gems through which victory for the Separatists forged like a fine sailing ship. The clones' helmets took split-seconds to recalibrate their outside visual feeds, yet those split-seconds cost the lives of many armored warriors. Dooku sensed Grievous turning towards him for a look of camaraderie. The Dark Lord flung out his senses to the Jedi Knight entrapped on a small hillock below instead.
The Knight was no one Dooku had ever met, had not one bit of familiarity to his Force signature, but Dooku felt more in tune with this unknown Jedi than he did with Grievous. Their shared Temple background, their ideologies matching up until a certain point in Dooku's life, these things made Dooku curious about the Jedi's last moments. Something in the swing of the weary sword arm, the downcast mood, a sharp stab of grief over a close friend's passing into the Force alerted Dooku to the notion that this Knight had been a Master to a Padawan who had died. Yes, there, the Knight stood over a form motionless in the mud, a smaller form with outstretched arms and unnatural pose. The young one had passed and her Master guarded her until his last breath. Hope for his own life lasted until a surge of crystal overcame his resistance and flooded the scene with brilliance. Dooku peered through the macrobinoculars, tears from the lights' glare slipping down his cheeks. The crystal droids flowed over the hapless Knight, who still clung to life. His energy fading, he looked through the clear rain-washed skies towards Dooku as if knowing that greater enemies than the mindless droids observed his passing. Long blond hair blackened by the droid's trampling analogs for feet, his torso bedecked by detached crystals from the shining droids that he had dispatched, the Knight's right hand had lost its grip on his lightsaber. One minute before he heeded the call of the Force, he extended the middle finger, broken as it was. Dooku saw and approved. Beautiful.
Meanwhile, at Dex's Diner ...
"I think we're better off apart, that's all." Padme tried not to fidget. She'd rehearsed this for some time in front of the 'fresher mirror, and fidgeting gave off an "I'm not quite mature" vibe that, at twenty-eight, she knew was far in her past. She knew also that her single bodyguard was somewhere in the summer-steamy diner, but tried to forget it as she waited for Yoda's response.
"Not a surprise, this is, Padme. Distant lately, have you been." Heavy, my heart is, yet adults we both are. Survive, the first rule of Jedi combat is. And a form of combat unknown to me, this was.
Dex's Diner was quiet this time of day, right before the lunch rush. Good place for a breakup, Padme thought wryly. "Yoda, you'll always be special to me, you know that. I -- I'm ... " If I knew the Force, now would be the time to call on it.
"Padme." Why didn't this hurt more? "In different places now, our interests lie." Failed, we have, with our plan to end the war. Concentrate, I must, to aid the Chosen One's talent for wringing victory out of defeat.
Padme chewed her snickerdoodle thoughtfully, waving away WA-7 with her eternal "Warm up on that, hon?" This was going as smoothly as all such things went. He's despondent. He can't look beyond his, well, our, plan's failure.
"Ready to move on, myself, I am," Yoda prompted. Until he released his emotions to the Force, it bothered Yoda greatly that he was changing his relationship with Padme. How he would miss most things about her: her willingness to try new things, her sense of fun, her ringlets that covered half his body if he wanted. But more than that, he had appreciated her lack of gravitas. With her delegated powers, she could have had lackeys for her everyday needs, as had some Jedi in his experience who prodded their Padawans into too many chores.
Padme dropped some sweetener into her caf and stirred more viciously than she wanted to. "Well, I thought you'd at least ask us to seek counseling." She had wanted to do this in a kind way, and she had. Why did this hurt more than it should? She and Jobal had had a long --- a very, very, long --- discussion about this yesterday, not nearly as calm. Her mother had wanted her to give up serial relationships, had hinted around about it for a year and a half, and now she was even more adamant. Padme had come to realize that she wanted not someone to complement her, but to match her. Ommane had matched her in gender and Anakin in species, but Yoda had been a challenge, a match in neither. And Padme was ready for a match. I'm through with this kind of challenge. Real life is challenge enough for me.
Yoda studied a stain on the checked tablecloth. "Help, it would not. Miss you, I shall. Meant much to me, our partnership did." If next time there is, breaking up in a public place is best.
"Wait, wait. Our partnership? I only meant us. You mean, we're not working together at the Children's Museum anymore? Or on a new plan to bring peace?"
Yoda's ears with their delightfully rasping hair drooped. "Standing on its own, the Museum is. Talked about working undercover together on Nar Shaddaa, Master Secura and I have. A new approach to defeating Dooku, I need. Years it has been since intel I have done."
"Undercover? With your reputation? Your face is famous galaxy-wide, Yoda. Now Yaddle might get away with it --- "
"Impertinent, you are. Time we parted, it is." Yoda touched Padme's arm as he had nearly one year ago in this very diner, and there was no spreading tingle. Blending of the Force and state, viable it is not. "Friends?"
Padme would miss Yoda's hemipenes --- oh, what he could do with the two of them at once! --- and his cloaca's responsiveness, but being honest with herself, she would not miss the debates about the Force. They left her drained and not at all sure of herself, which bothered her most of the time. It was a stretch from perceiving that politics worked, slowly and finely, but politics worked as a process, to flogging her brain with the idea that the Force simply existed and if you had the right words or attitude, not to mention the training, the Force worked for you. It was too much trouble, too many years since her educational years had passed for Padme to submit herself to training. She realized this might be a weakness, but there it was: she was occasionally weak. It was easier to admit this than ever before, easier since Enri Etolini had come into her life. With his steady implantation into her days, she did not have to be unremittingly strong. That felt good, in a way she had not felt with Teragram or Anakin or Ommane. Or even with Yoda, or maybe especially with Yoda. He was a powerhouse of strength and she had matched him for nigh onto one full year. Time to leave.
"Friends." They bowed in place to each other and even smiled, a mere lifting of the corners of the mouth, but a smile, nonetheless.
TBC