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Cody woke from his scheduled in-transit sleep period sufficiently early enough to be fully alert by the time they arrived at the staging point before Utapau. The short sleep period had left him with odd nightmares and a lingering unease, but he was an experienced soldier; nightmares were nothing new, so he quickly put them out of his mind, letting them fade.
He joined the general in the hangar. General Kenobi had been overseeing the preparation of his fighter, but greeted Cody as he arrived, and listened attentively as Cody briefed him on Utapau. It was a familiar process, and Cody vaguely felt like he’d already relayed this information to the general...but no, he’d only reviewed it on his own before his rest period.
With a bit of banter, the general was off to Utapau. For Cody, all that was left to do was wait for him to send back word, and they too would make the final jump to Utapau.
That wasn’t to say he just stood around, of course. Cody made his rounds, ensuring everyone was prepared and ready to go when the signal came. He expected that they would be, of course – his men were good at what they did.
It was not long before General Kenobi’s fighter returned without him. That manner of return suggested a positive on Grievous’s location, and sure enough, R4-G9 chirped and whistled at Cody, words appearing on the cockpit screen as he approached indicating that the general had made contact.
“Move out!” he announced to the men, and commed the bridge to relay the same. He boarded a LAAT along with the men, ready for takeoff as soon as the jump was finished.
General Kenobi had left a tracking signal on, so they homed in on his location. True to form, he was already fighting Grievous. And he had left plenty of droids for Cody and the troops to handle.
So the regular chaos of battle began. Cody directed the men, and took out plenty of droids himself. As unpredictable as battle was, droids individually were incredibly predictable, and he didn’t have to be a Jedi to know where they were going to fire before they did, easily mowing them down with his own well-placed shots.
There was nothing particularly unusual about this battle over any others, except, perhaps, that they all knew that this might be one of the final battles of the war. Cody could not spare much time to this thought, of course, but perhaps it did inspire some burst of energy in him as he fought his way through the droids.
A trooper he recognized as a shiny named Overture dodged past Cody, and, though of course Cody was always on alert during battle, something about it made adrenaline spike in him. With a sharp movement, Cody whirled around and pounced on the approaching droideka, taking it down before it could fire on the shiny or anyone else.
Even though it worked, even though Cody saw Overture safely get away, he had the strangest impression that he had seen Overture die. It left him with an uneasy feeling that he couldn’t afford at that moment. He shook it away as best as he could, supposing that even a clone trooper could confuse one brother for another in the heat of battle. Or perhaps it reminded him of something that had happened in his nightmares earlier.
Regardless, he had a battle to focus on, so he put those thoughts behind him.
And then a lightsaber dropped out of the sky right in front of him.
It was too much to hope that it was one of Grievous’s, wasn’t it?
Well, General Kenobi would probably be fine. He’d survived without a lightsaber before.
Gradually, the chaos leveled out – there were still droids everywhere, and noise and shouting from every direction, but they were clearly taking the upper hand. Cody was able to take up a more central position and direct the cannons.
General Kenobi commed, reporting that Grievous was dead, and that he was on his way back. Cody gave his acknowledgement, but the time for celebrations would be later, once they’d cleaned out the rest of these droids. It wasn’t long before the general showed up, mounted on some kind of riding beast that Cody was sure General Kenobi would tell him the name and habits of later.
The general gave his instructions, and Cody returned the lightsaber. He turned to relay those instructions as General Kenobi rode off, but he was interrupted by his comm chime.
Cody hesitated.
He had no reason to. Except a strange sense of unease. Even...dread.
But, as Cody wasn’t a Jedi, he doubted “I had a bad feeling” would be a good enough excuse not to answer a high-priority comm. So he answered.
He was given his orders.
The traitor had to be eliminated.
He turned to the cannon operators, and ordered them to fire.
They fired.
.
.
Cody woke from his scheduled in-transit sleep period sufficiently early enough to be fully alert by the time they arrived at the staging point before Utapau. The short sleep period had left him with odd nightmares and a lingering unease, but he was an experienced soldier; nightmares were nothing new, so he quickly put them out of his mind, letting them fade.
Or at least, the details faded. But the impression of unease the nightmares had left didn’t fade so easily. Cody frowned. He couldn’t afford distractions like this right before a battle, and he was usually better at dealing with nightmares. He decided he could take a few moments to run through some of the exercises General Kenobi had taught him.
It helped.
He joined the general in the hangar. General Kenobi had finished overseeing the preparation of his fighter, and greeted Cody as he arrived, listening attentively as Cody briefed him on Utapau...again? No, he hadn’t briefed the general yet.
General Kenobi left for Utapau. Cody inspected the troops as they prepared for the coming battle. He continued the exercises he had started earlier. R4 returned alone. They boarded the ships and made the jump to Utapau. They landed on the planet and found the general already fighting Grievous.
And so the regular chaos of battle began.
Cody had been here before.
Cody pushed aside his strange, distracting thoughts, but the unease stubbornly refused to leave him. This could very well be the battle to end the war. Cody thought that should have been encouraging.
Overture barely ran past Cody before Cody was turning around and launching himself at a droideka. It was only after it lay in smoking pieces that Cody acknowledged how strange that was. He seriously considered whether the general’s Force-related precognition had rubbed off on him somehow. Was that even possible? Cody wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think he could have known about the droideka without the Force being on his side in some way or another.
The general’s lightsaber fell out of the sky. That, too, Cody had the impression that he had seen it coming.
When General Kenobi returned after defeating Grievous, Cody briefly considered asking him about the possibility of suddenly...becoming more aware of the Force, or whatever this might be. But they were still in the middle of a battle that had to be won, so he decided he would ask later. For now, it was a distraction that Cody couldn’t allow.
General Kenobi rode off, and Cody’s comm chimed with high priority.
Cody froze. He did not want to answer that comm. He could not say why, but dread stilled his hands as he moved to answer.
He took a breath. This was a distraction, he reminded himself, one he couldn’t afford right now. So even as he dreaded what he would hear, as every instinct screamed against it, Cody slowly pulled out his comm and answered.
He was given his orders.
The traitor had to be eliminated.
He turned to the cannon operators, and ordered them to fire.
They fired.
.
.
Cody woke from his scheduled in-transit sleep period sufficiently early enough to be fully alert by the time they arrived at the staging point before Utapau. The short sleep period had left him with odd nightmares and a lingering unease, but he was an experienced soldier; nightmares were nothing new…
But this felt different. It felt like he’d been having the same nightmare over and over again – not one from previous sleep periods, but over the course of this one. And he couldn’t push it to the side with his usual ease.
Had Cody had a vision? He knew that Jedi could get visions of the future, but he didn’t know if it was possible that others could, too.
He very much hoped it had not been a vision, however. The details were fading, but one thing stuck out, and that was that they had fired on General Kenobi. Deliberately.
He’d had nightmares before where the general died, of course. But nothing like this. Never where it was intentionally at his own hands.
Cody breathed, in and out, steadying himself in the way General Kenobi had taught him. Cody didn’t have answers for such a troubling nightmare/vision, but the general might. With that in mind, Cody joined him in the hanger, and before beginning the briefing, asked him for a moment.
“Is it possible for the Force to give visions to non-Jedi?” Cody asked. General Kenobi considered the question, stroking his beard.
“I would not say that the Force gives premonitions, per se,” he answered after a moment. “But they can occur, even in someone not trained in the ways of the Force. However, premonitions are...unreliable, at best. Even the wisest Jedi may struggle to interpret them, and may end up bringing about that future solely because they saw it...or tried to avoid it.”
“I shouldn’t act on what I saw, then, sir?” Cody asked. He hadn’t gone into detail on what he had dreamed, but naturally the general could tell that it had distressed him.
“You shouldn’t act hastily,” General Kenobi said. “Be mindful of what may come to pass, but act in the moment, based on what exists in the present. And, besides, it may have only been a nightmare.”
“That would certainly be the preferable outcome, sir.”
But Cody found it more difficult to believe that it was merely a nightmare, as things progressed and felt increasingly familiar. He couldn’t recite, precisely, what had happened in the dream/vision/whatever – but he seemed to expect almost everything that happened before it did.
In the end, when he returned General Kenobi’s lightsaber, Cody told him to be on guard, and to leave quickly.
Cody’s comm chimed.
It chimed again. Cody ignored it. He would face whatever consequences later, but he knew that comm had immediately preceded firing on General Kenobi. Even if acting on a vision was a weak justification, Cody would not take the risk.
It chimed a few more times, then stopped. Cody allowed himself a moment of relief, that was unfortunately cut short by the sound of the high-priority chime again, only, from Boil’s comm rather than his own.
At this, Cody didn’t immediately know what to do. This hadn’t happened in the vision, and he had no idea whether Boil would be affected the way he had, or not. He had no sense, good or bad, of what was to come.
It was better not to take the risk, wasn’t it?
“Don’t answer that – ” Cody began to order, just a split second too slow, as Boil hit the answer button.
They were given their orders.
The traitor had to be eliminated. He had left their sights. They needed to find him, immediately.
He gave his orders to the rest of the troops.
He received back reports. They had found him. He had resisted and escaped.
This was not acceptable.
A Separatist ship took off nearby, flying away from the battle. If a traitor wanted to escape the planet, that was a plausible strategy.
He turned to the cannon operators, and ordered them to fire.
They fired.
.
.
Cody woke.
That had not been a nightmare. Cody didn’t even think that it had been a vision, anymore. Even though now, he could not possibly conceive of why he would ever turn the cannons on General Kenobi, he knew that he had done it. That he’d been intent on hunting the general down as a traitor, though he had no clear reason why he had believed the general to be a traitor. Only that that high-priority comm had done it.
He combed through the dream/memory, refusing to let the details fade as they had before. That message...he couldn’t recall it, as much as he tried, it slipped through his thoughts. But he’d still been affected, even when the message hadn’t been delivered directly to him. In fact, all of the troops had been affected, even the ones that were nowhere near Cody and Boil.
He would need to shut all the comms off.
That was going to be a much more difficult proposition. Still, he had no other solution. He just would have to convince General Kenobi of its necessity.
“Something troubling you, Commander?” the general asked, when Cody joined him in the hangar.
“Yes, sir. I have a question. And a request.” Cody explained as much as he could, how he’d been living the same moments over and over as if in a nightmare, how he’d thought it might have been a vision, but now believed to be something else entirely. And finally...the end result of that experience. In which he – and all the troops – had turned on General Kenobi without the slightest hesitation or doubt.
Throughout it all, General Kenobi listened patiently.
“Is this a Force thing, sir? Have you ever experienced this or heard of it?” Cody asked.
The general considered the question, longer than when Cody had asked about premonitions.
“I believe that there exists some literature on the subject in our Archives,” he said finally. “I do not have much familiarity with it, but I could request that information for you. However,” he gave Cody a bit of a wry smile, “if that is indeed what you’re experiencing, I doubt we’d be able to get access before the end of this repetition, so that avenue is moot. No, Commander, I think we will have to manage with our best judgment.”
“Yes, sir,” Cody said. It was about what he had expected, though it was some relief to know that there was precedent, even if he couldn’t research it at the moment. “That leads me to my request. We need to turn off our long-range comms. All of them.”
“That may be difficult to explain,” General Kenobi said. “But then, I suppose the solar storms out here can be very unpredictable.” His expression turned serious. “I trust your judgment, Commander. I know you’re aware of the liability of cutting ourselves off from outside communication, and that you wouldn’t do it without good reason. But I must caution you to be mindful – from what you’ve told me, something more is going on. Even the most powerful Sith couldn’t pull off a mind trick as strong as you describe. Whatever is affecting you, the comm message is only a trigger. The true source may lie much closer.”
“On the planet itself?” Cody asked. “A trap set by Grievous?”
“More likely Dooku, before his demise,” General Kenobi said. “But yes.”
“I’ll go through as many repetitions as it takes to figure this out,” Cody said.
“I hope it won’t come to that.”
Everything else proceeded as it had previously, the battle playing out much the same.
Once the general returned from having killed Grievous, though, things changed.
“I didn’t sense any Sith artifacts,” General Kenobi said. “That doesn’t mean that they aren’t here, however. But it may require a dedicated team of Jedi.”
“In that case, sir, I suggest we leave the planet as soon as possible.”
“Patience, Commander. We still have a job to do.”
Cody knew he was right, but he was still on edge. Still, he carried out his job as he was trained to do. The moments passed, and no chime came from his or anyone else’s comm, a fact that did provide growing relief as time continued past where he had ever reached before.
The next time Cody saw General Kenobi, the other man looked deeply troubled, his expression far away.
“Did you find something, sir? The Sith artifact that’s affecting us?”
General Kenobi jerked his head up to look at Cody. It took a moment before he composed himself enough to speak, and when he did, it was quieter than usual.
“I...no longer think that’s the issue, Commander,” he said. “This is more widespread than we assumed.”
“Sir?”
General Kenobi closed his eyes, and breathed in and out a few times before he responded.
“I felt...so many Jedi die. Many...still dying, now. All across the galaxy.”
Cody couldn’t find the words to respond. He...hadn’t considered that. But of course whatever had affected him and his brothers here could affect them elsewhere, too. If that message had been sent to all the troops...then the only ones that were spared were the ones that had been cut off from contact (whether intentionally or not). And as soon as they re-established contact…
“General, I recommend that you leave. We can handle the situation here, but we can’t safely contact anyone to find out what’s going on. We’re a danger to you until we know how that message affected us.”
“Unfortunately, I believe you’re correct, Cody,” he said. “I’ll leave you in charge here, and I’ll return when I can. If, I can.”
“Don’t worry about us, sir, we won’t let you down.”
A hint of a smile returned to General Kenobi’s face. “I know you won’t. May the Force be with you, Cody.”
With that, he left, and Cody was left to wonder. Had he ended the repetitions by saving the General, or were there still more to come? Why had he been granted a chance to save his general when the others hadn’t? Or were they, too, still stuck repeating the same moments over and over until they figured it out?
Hopefully, General Kenobi would be able to get answers out there.
Until then, Cody had work to do.