Rage Against The Dark Ch 5

And we reach the last of the chapters written so far for this fic.

We will see if further chapters get crowdfunded...or something.

I had fun writing this story. At first I was going to stop at ch 4. So I could have one fic at 3 chapters, one at 4, and one at 5. This pleased my OCD brain.

But upon finishing Chapter 4, I felt it needed one more to truly hit on what I wanted to achieve with this fic. So ch 5 was made.

In five minute intervals.

Over two weeks.

While I was working on the main fics.

...

I may be stupid. But hopefully it's an entertaining kind of stupid.

Lemme know if you liked!

=][=

The Resolute was big, roomy, and bustling.

It was lively, to my Force Senses it felt like a city suspended in the near empty void between Christophsis’ atmosphere and the ship’s hull.

“So, what’s the deal with them?”

I turned to look at Anakin, who was in turn intently studying the members of my ‘Command Squad.’

I looked through Former Me’s memories to formulate my answer. “I never quite fit in with the Jedi.” I said, crossing my arms and returning my eyes to the growing Resolute in the viewport. “I often ‘escaped’ to spend time in Coruscant. Ran into them in one of those excursions, they were in financial trouble, I could use the Force to cheat at gambling, one thing led to another, and we became close friends. I kept an eye on the Holo enough to figure out I’d eventually be thrown at the War, so I figured I’d bring my extremely talented friends with me.

“I have an accredited medic and battlefield surgeon, a medic who also studied logistics, a bodyguard, and the most naturally talented pilot I’ve ever met.” I said, pointing to each of my girls in turn, they didn’t notice, too busy talking about their varied experiences in the last battle. “The gas-bag’s name is Poots, I ran into him one time while exploring the lower levels beneath the Jedi Temple. He was in some kind of hibernation and seems to have imprinted on me. When I told him I was going off to war, he insisted on coming with.”

Anakin clicked his tongue. “Barring the non-humanoid, they’re all Force Sensitive.” He very pointedly did not accuse.

“So they are.” I said, not actually answering his unasked question.

He mulled my non-answer over, before handing out his verdict. “If it weren’t for them, the 501st and 212th would have suffered much worse losses.”

There is the pragmatic warrior I know and love.

“We’ll see how best to integrate them into the command structure.” Anakin said as our shuttle landed in the Resolute. “For now, we’ll draw up a training schedule for you, you seem pretty handy with a blaster, but we’ll have to see how handy you are with a lightsaber.”

I pulled the second lightsaber I’d constructed out of my belt. “Lightsabers.”

“You use Jar’Kai?”

“Yup. Right now, only with Shii-Cho and Soresu. But my plan is to become equally good with both one and two lightsabers in all the forms.”

“That’ll take quite some dedication.” Anakin said, trying not to sound impressed.

“You won’t find my resolve lacking.” I said as we stepped down from the shuttle.

“That’s good.” Anakin said, drew his lightsaber and swung it at me.

Only a last second warning from the Force let me dodge and draw my own blade, its snap-hiss sounding out just in time to parry Anakin’s follow up attack, block his third, and dodge his fourth.

By the fifth attack I’d regained some balance and didn’t so much parry his attack as force him to intercept my attack with his own.

Martial Talent feasted on his every movement, the difference between us as stark as my own against the average Initiate. Anakin matched my aggression with his own and exceeded it, both of us sabotaging the other’s efforts to build momentum as we dodged around the clones in the landing bay in the middle of our duel.

Considering that nobody panicked about the Jedi trying to kill each other, I had to assume Anakin had informed Rex and ensured he passed on the information to the rest of the crew.

Anakin stuck to a rock-solid Form V, whereas I flowed from Form III, to I, to V, to II as the duel demanded. That was the secret of Form VI, what the short-sighted called the ‘diplomat’s form.’ A true Master of Form VI was, in truth, a Master of all forms, he could be an inviolable wall one moment, an unstoppable force the next, with endless variations of everything in between both of those extremes.

Revan had been a true Master of Form VI; I was merely on the slopes of the man’s competence.

Anakin was not the force of nature that Darth Vader was, but I could see the roots of that behemoth before me. Our duel a constant back and forth of thwarting the other’s attempts to build momentum.

He ‘killed’ me twice during our duel, one of which would have bounced off my armor after boiling away a millimeter of Adamantium and giving me an opening to claim his heart.

But he only got two.

“Alright, that’s enough.” He said, suddenly dropping his guard.

I will admit, I was tempted to take another swipe at the guy for shits and giggles, but ultimately turned off my laser sword.

Anakin nodded. “You’re fairly advanced in the six Forms, and you’re a very quick learner. We’ll do this again to see how you are with a second blade, but I did notice that any time you parried with your off hand, it was somewhat weaker than your main hand. If you actually want to practice Jar’Kai, you need to get to the point where you hit as hard with one hand as you currently do with two.”

He continued, giving me pointers and efficiently laying out a training plan that was going to be punishing even with my Company Talents.

I had the feeling that he was basing the training regime off what would have worked for him, unfortunately, he was the Chosen One. A regular Initiate would not be able to keep up with the curriculum.

But not only was I an Agent, I was literally part Revan, I would do this, and I would excel.

That I had the perfect cheat sheet was going to be my little secret.

=][=

The travel time to the Teth System was almost a whole day, pretty fast all things considered thanks to the Resolute’s Class 1.0 Hyperdrive.

I used that time to get Sussurro set up at the medical deck, where her expertise both as a surgeon and as a healer was very welcome.

I unceremoniously put Iris in charge of my mail, she would take care of minor things for me and make certain only important things made it to my desk, though I did give her instructions to send ten random minor things up the chain to me. At her insistence, I also convinced the Clone Supply Officer to put the Resolute’s acquisition budget for the mess at her disposal.

Charlotte continued her pilot training, she wasn’t too far from being able to take the accreditation tests for being a combat pilot, with an innate understanding of 3D space and vectors. Some of which came from her training as an Infinite Stratos pilot, but most of it was the fact that she was monstrously talented.

Poots very quickly became loved by the maintenance crews, taking care of hours of maintenance in minutes, fixing glitches and other issues with the ship. Even fixing the clones’ armor and weapons. I also gave him a project, specifically, to modify Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor to very precise, exacting specifications and prep it for scramble. And to make me a one-use jetpack.

Aegis was the odd girl out of my retinue. Her expertise was largely unneeded while on the ship, and she didn’t have any secondary training worth speaking of. She awkwardly settled into being her sister’s assistant in her duties as my secretary, other than being my sparring partner (something she needed to improve upon before she could actually push me) she rather lacked things to keep busy with.

She really was rather down about that. Something I fixed by bending her over the table in our quarters and having a quickie. It wasn’t as satisfying as dicking her down properly, but it would do in a pinch.

The men spent the time, for the most part, sleeping. Some went over their equipment, ran drills, trained, or read up on the latest iteration of the regs. What worried me was that I saw nothing of them doing anything hobby-wise. No card games, no playing an instrument, no painting miniatures, no writing or reciting poetry.

Just preparation for the next fight. Which while commendable, I felt the stirrings in the Force of a deeper issue I would have to fix.

Once we were almost to Teth, Anakin held a meeting with all of Torrent Company, the crème of the crop of the 501st Legion. The briefing hall, while spacious, was cramped with nearly one hundred and fifty humans squeezed into it. He brought up a hologram of the monastery we were to assault.

“This is a B’omar Monk monastery on Teth, it’s currently occupied by two ‘renegade.’” He made air quotes as he spoke. “Droid battalions. They have captured a VIP, a huttlet.” An image of an infant hutt appeared next to the monastery, it looked like a particularly fat slug, with two little spindly arms and huge yellow eyes.

Uncanny.

“This is Jabba’s son, Rotta. The hutt has given us only one Tatooine planetary rotation to return it. Given that we need to factor in the travel time from Teth to Tatooine…we only have a few standard hours to land, secure the hutlett, and exfil. We’ll be deploying Torrent Company with mechanized armor support. Given the expected Anti-Air defenses that means we’ll have to land at the base of the mountain and ascend under fire, so make sure your ascension attachments in your rifle has plenty of ammo.”

“Once we’ve secured the monastery, Padawan Creed and I will take care of the search for the huttlet. Whoever is behind the kidnapping will also have some form of Commander there, most likely an organic, our secondary objective is to capture or eliminate them should it be possible. General Kenobi with his battalion, is already on his way as our backup, but with any luck we will be finished and on our way before he arrives. Any questions?”

His only answer were grim, determined gazes.

“Good, we deploy in three hours. Dismissed.”

 The men all filed out to take care of their last-minute preparations.

“Anakin, a word in private, if you will.” I said.

He regarded me silently for a few seconds but nodded and gestured to one of the adjoining rooms in the briefing hall.

“What did you want to talk about?” He asked.

“We can’t go through with this plan, sir. It’ll be a bloodbath before we even close with the droids. We’ll be lucky to only suffer fifty percent casualties by the time we get to grips with the seps. You and I will likely be fine, but the men? My command squad? They can’t keep up with us.”

Anakin sighed. “What else can we do, Rylanor? With that much AA fire, we can’t make a landing directly on the plateau.”

I brought out a small Holo emitter and flicked it on. Showing the modified specs for the Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor, or as I now affectionately called it, the coffin missile.

Anakin blinked and squinted at the beautiful monstrosity. “What…even is this thing?”

“A Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor with an engine so redlined it will give out in one hour of continuous use. Or a few minutes of being pushed to its absolute limit.” I said, lips twitching as I suppressed a proud smile. “In return; it’s even faster, its shields are stronger, it's more maneuverable, and its inertia dampeners will last just long enough to get from point A to point B while cancelling out three times as much inertia.”

He had to stop and swallow; his mouth having salivated at the prospect of the sheer lunacy of this ‘design.’ “And what’s the plan here?”

I grinned. “Fly this to the planet, crash land it on the monastery, preferably on the AA platforms, and make such a huge ruckus that the men can land unimpeded and back us up. We may still lose a LAAT-I or two to enemy fire, but it’s still less men than would be lost making an assault up a sheer cliff. I’d request my Command Squad arrives on the second wave of transports for medical and logistical support.”

“This thing is crazy. Suicidal.” Anakin said, sounding like was trying to convince himself it was a bad idea.

I smirked. “It is crazy, so crazy and illogical, no droid could ever conceive of it. Not to mention, all of the droid’s firing solutions would be based on the capabilities of the standard Interceptor. It is not something we will be able to get away with constantly, but it only needs to work once, and only someone with Jedi reflexes could hope to pull this off. The real question is, are two fighters worth more than the lives of our men?”

He looked at me. “Two fighters?”

My smirk widened. “I can’t be far from my Master, what kind of Padawan would I be? No, the real question is, are you Jedi enough to tame this beast of a ride?”

Anakin’s bloodthirsty smirk matched mine, the Force trembled with mischievous amusement at our plotting.

“You know, the funny thing is. I know you’re playing me…”

=][=

Anakin had insisted on testing my theory on the simulator before agreeing to my plan.

The end result of that testing being that the ‘rapid insertion’ would be done by him, and I. We would not have much time to work with as the LAAT-Is would be two minutes behind us.

At first Anakin had insisted on taking on all the risk on his own, but I’d informed him where he could stuff those orders. Something that Charlotte tried to do to me the instant I said the same to her. Unfortunately, she did not yet have a strong enough grasp on the Force that she could do this and survive. So she was going to insert in the second wave with Sussurro, Iris, and Aegis. Much to her chagrin.

[Do your last checks.] Anakin said as the countdown timer began for the mission.

I went through one final check, and for good measure checked the jetpack Poots had made for me.

It was quite cramped in the cockpit of the fighter. But I’d make it work.

The deployment bay of the Venator opened.

[Alright, let’s go, don’t fall behind newbie!] Anakin said, racing off into the void of space, my own ship virtually nipping at his heels.

We rocketed away from the carrier, rushing into an empty spot in the void where the navigation computer plotted was where Teth would be in a few minutes as it hurtled in its never-ending ellipsis around its parent star.

Once it passed through the space we resided in and trapped us in its gravity well, the both of us angled our fighters and gunned it, our overclocked deflector shields taking and dissipating the brunt of the heat of our atmospheric re-entry.

We couldn’t talk to each other, our utterly reckless entrance into a planet’s atmosphere surrounded us in a ball of fire so hot it did not allow communications or sensor readings.

No, the only way to know when to hit the retro thrusters was through the Force.

The stresses on the fighter were enormous, had a Forerunner Engineer not gone over it, the fighter would have sheared, shattered, burnt, or otherwise catastrophically failed. The inertia dampener became overtaxed, and I felt the meanest share of the G-forces that should have been turning me liquid as I fought the controls, turning the nose of the ship in the direction the Force asked me to.

And suddenly, from one moment to the next, we were through, having slowed down enough that the air we were pushing ahead of us caught slightly less on fire, just enough for navigation. The unwelcoming plateau of the monastery coming into sensor range.

Ruby lights flashed from the edge of the plateau, seconds later, the fighter’s computer simulated the sound of flak fire behind me.

The droids paused in their fire, likely rerunning their firing solutions, but moving as we were just under Mach Fuck-A-Duck, they didn’t have the time for a second salvo before Anakin and I were essentially at knife range.

Putting the Chosen One out of mind, I concentrated fully, using my telekinesis alongside prescience and allowing the Force to flow through me, battling the controls and holding the fighter’s frame together through a literal effort of will to flip the fighter around without it being torn apart by air resistance. While successful, the maneuver that would have had no issue in a vacuum, caused the fighter’s frame to shriek in agony.

I redlined the engines, my body crushed by twelve times its own weight, my vision darkening on the edges. The Force fortifying my body and Environmental Defense being the only things keeping me from blacking out at the stresses I subjected myself to.

The Interceptor lost speed, going from Mach Fuck to Mach Three to below Mach One. Ions being fired behind me and, as I cleared the edge of the plateau, scouring the top of the mountain, turning droids to slag and the surface to molten glass as the fighter screeched in seeming agony.

The Force screamed at me and I ejected, launching myself up and slamming open the throttle to my jetpack, feeling like I got a punch in the gut, but on my whole body, bleeding off more speed. But not enough.

With a roar, I thrust my hands down and fired off the strongest Force Push I could, the ground compacting beneath me in a line as a shockwave slammed into me from behind, heat and sound cancelling my backwards momentum and throwing me forward as the jetpack ran out of fuel and disengaged itself from my armor.

I landed in a roll, partially molten dirt sticking to my robe and armor, setting the robe partially on fire and ruining my armor’s paint job.

But I’d made it.

Cut it a little close. But I made it.

I wanted to do nothing more than to go to bed and sleep for a few days, but what I did instead was open a satchel at my waist and used a twinge from the Force to throw out an omnidirectional wave of droid poppers. Followed by drawing my Hellgun and fanning a long burst, cutting droids down before the droid poppers threw out their electro magnetic pulse, causing my helmet’s HUD to fizzle momentarily out while its cogitator reset itself.

I brought the Hellgun on a super battle droid and concentrated the pulsed beam of ruinous light on its chest until the laser drilled a hole through its chestplate and melted its internals.

Shooting done, I scooted, running past the deactivated droids to the recovering DSD1 Dwarf Spider Droid, I drew the lightsaber I manufactured in my Workshop on my off hand, placed the emitter next to the droid’s spherical chassis, and pulsed the blade on and off.

The Spider Droid seized and clattered as it fell. I used my new cover to put down automatic fire on any droid that moved.

Having, for the first time, the chance to think, I took in the tactical situation.

My fighter had turned a whole flight of Single Trooper Aerial Platforms into a mixture of scrap metal and oil smears before setting whatever remained on fire. Anakin had managed to actually aim his fighter at the large concentration of Spider Droids, neatly wiping out most of the OpFor AA-capabilities. He was currently fighting his way to scrap what few remained while weaving through confused blaster fire.

I put three round laser bursts through the droids around him, dropping four or five battle droids every three seconds. I found the droid commander and killed droids around it until it saw me, ordered me destroyed, and then I killed it, causing more confusion as most of the droids turned to me, but not all of them. A good chunk of them firing in whatever direction as they didn’t know where I was but tried to follow their Commander’s last order, the confusion of the situation causing their cheap, poorly maintained brains to suffer cascading glitches.

With the droids thus divided, Anakin and I more easily survived, he weaving through them and taking them out in melee, me hiding behind steadily hotter and more molten cover slowly turning into concealment and cutting them down, sometimes literally, with my laser rifle that could consistently take down Space Marines. Any shot that found its way to me past my cover, sparking off into golden light as my Conversion Field dissipated it.

As I began to worry that I would be overrun, my helmet’s HUD updated to show four platoons coming into range, our men had arrived. LAAT-I gunships landing in force and cutting down dozens of droids, the men of Torrent Company pouring out of the gunships and laying into the droids in a point-blank firefight, cutting down a few hundred droids in exchange for several dozen casualties.

I put away my Hellgun, drew Former Me’s lightsaber in my off hand and my bolt pistol in my right, and using the Force to augment my body, I waded into the melee, rushing at the super battle droids and taking them down, trusting the men to take down the rank-and-file droids.

It took on average two bolt rounds to take down SBDs, I ensured my every movement brought death to the enemy. With every step I took a shot, a swing, or used the Force to knock over or crush the droids as they swarmed out of or toward the Monastery.

Following a pull in the Force, I found myself taking cover beside an All Terrain Tactical Enforcer, the walking tank giving me a chance to put my close range weapons away and pull out my rifle, Iris, Sussurro, Charlotte and Aegis smoothly joined my side, the five of us forming the core of an assault force as Clones made a formation around us, any clone that fell was pulled back by Charlotte or Aegis, and under Sussurro and Iris’ ministration was quickly back on his feet and in the fight.

I found myself giving orders, coordinating squads, my Communication, Science, and Engineering Talents emulsifying with Martial Talent, my Template, and my HUD to paint in my mind a bird’s eye view of the battle, I wielded the clones like an anvil and made myself the hammer as we turned enemy battle droids into slag and scrap metal.

And between one second and the next, it was over.

I did not, however, stop shouting orders. “You, you, and you! You’re now on triage duty! Follow Sussurro and Iris, you will do as they say because they said it! Sergeants, I want a headcount, double check the health of the men, don’t blindly trust the armor’s sensors! Concentrate the wounded whenever Sussurro sets up the triage tent! Lieutenant, call in medevac! Let’s get the wounded back to the Resolute AFAP which of course stands for As Fast As Possible!” I ran into Rex whose mask was looking intently at me. “Lieutenant belay that! You work with the Sergeants for that headcount! Captain, call in that medevac under my authority if you have to but get the men evacuated! Lieutenant, why are the ATTEs just idling! Set up a proper perimeter! The hard part isn’t over ‘till we’re back in Republic Space with a few planets between us and the front lines!”

There was a constant stream of ‘Yes sir!’ following my every edict, the chaos after a battle soon became the controlled chaos of a company securing a perimeter.

We’d suffered three dozen casualties, among those two fatalities, of the thirty four wounded, six were serious though quickly stabilized by Sussurro and Iris, leaving Doc, the Clone head Medic and his seven medic trained troopers, to administer to the lightly wounded, who Sussurro and Iris soon saw to and returned to full strength through a little bit of Force Healing and a whole lot of disguised Originium Arts and healing magic.

All in all, what should have claimed the lives of  eighty-three men (it was difficult to have any wounded when getting shot also meant a several dozen foot fall to the unforgiving ground), instead claimed the lives of two. Torrent Company was down almost a whole squad in numbers for the remainder of the operation. In reality, two platoons were down one man per squad, though I had to query the Force as to who was the most qualified as there was one field promotion due to the Sergeant being among those being medevaced.

I stood back and put my hands on my hips, admiring a job well done as Iris and Doc aided Sussurro, who was busy performing a surgery to make sure the fatalities would remain at two.

“Sir, are you certain you’ve never been trained for this?” Rex asked, making me realize he was there, Anakin looking over at my girls with a thoughtful look on his face.

I had, in fact, trained under Huītzilōpōchtli in the art of leading men in battle. He was unpopular among Class A recruits because he exulted in teamwork, team tactics, and taking care of your own both on and off the battlefield.

Also bathing in the blood of your enemies which was supremely unsanitary, but we all have our vices.

I nodded at him. “I told you, Captain. I have book learning; what I didn’t tell you is that I do believe I have something of a talent at the practical application of book learning.” I turned back to my girls with healing powers, and saw that they were not only finished with the surgery, but had handed the oversight of the wounded to Doc and the medic-trained troopers. “Are we ready to secure the Monastery and the VIP?”

“Yes sir!” Rex said, standing at attention.

I raised my voice. “Alright boys! We’re doing this by the numbers! Platoons 1 and 2 you’re storming and securing! I want every nook and cranny searched and secured! Platoon 3, secure the perimeter! Platoon 4, safeguard the wounded until they get medevaced, then you’re support and reinforcement! ATTE 1, get into position to destroy anything that comes out of those doors! ATTE 2, support Platoon 3 on their patrol! My Command Squad and I will form a hard point in case of a fight, let’s go people we’re on the clock!”

The Clones scrambled to follow my orders, Rex and the Lieutenants (I would have to have a whole afternoon to get the names of all the Clones in the Legion, thank fuck for my HUD and my ability to assign nametags in my AR interface) leaning on the Sergeants and troopers to see my orders carried out.

The girls gathered up, I could feel through my bond to them that they were tired but determined to see the day to the end and show no weakness. Going by their gestures, I suspected they had formed a private comm group to communicate between themselves.

Anakin fell into step beside me. “You know, I think I see why most Knights and Masters were afraid to take you as their Padawan.”

I blinked and looked back on my inherited memories. Yeah, it checked out, turns out my jokingly calling them cowards had a grain of truth to it.

Still, I was interested to know his opinion. “Why would that be?”

Anakin’s face split into a bloodthirsty grin. “You might just be the exact kind of Jedi we need to win this war.”

I grinned beneath my helmet and looked at my ammunition indicator. I’d gone through two-hundred and twenty out of the three hundred shots worth of charge on my backpack power pack.

“Considering I constantly got in trouble for decapitating the simulated Sith in class, I’ll take the insinuation I’m weird as a compliment.” I said as Aegis stepped forward without prompting from me and switched out the power pack for me. I sent a feeling of gratitude and a mental headpat her way through our Bond.

Aegis very cutely gained a pep in her step.

“I, too, was the weird one growing up at the Temple.” Anakin said softly.

Aegis finished, the shot counter on my Hellgun resetting to three-hundred. I pulled the charging lever to make sure the capacitor was ready to fire. “Too bad we never ran into each other at the Temple, we probably would have gotten along.”

Anakin smiled softly and nodded. “I have a feeling you’re right.”

I stacked up next to the massive temple gates as the slicer squad hacked the control panel and shouldered my rifle. “Alright then Skyboss. Let’s go nab us a huttlet.”

Anakin grimaced, then successfully hid his disdain. “Let’s.”

The slicers finished their work at the control panel, and the gates squealed open, leading us into the cavernous darkness of the monastery.
=][=
Edit: Forgot to include pic of the build.