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The Archive lay in ruins. Smoke curled up from a dozen places as fires raged unchecked throughout the hall. Body aching, muscles weary, Cere Junda stood in the recessed pit, lightsaber still held aloft. Her nemesis loomed before her, black armor no longer gleaming after the vicious duel it’s occupant had waged against her.
Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing echoed off the ruined walls of the Archive, the hiss and whine of his respirator uneven and shaky. The crimson lightsaber hummed in his gloved hands and even though his shredded garments burned, Cere knew her enemy was far from beaten. Hefting her azure blade higher, she braced herself for the next attack.
Broken datatapes sparked and shimmered behind the Sith Lord and with an animalistic roar, he moved with surprising swiftness. Feeling the Force filling her exhausted body, Cere moved with similar speed. She parried the first strike, blocked the second and nearly collapsed as the third blow slammed against her guard. She could feel the weariness eating away at the reserves of her strength. Only the Force kept her on her feet and even that source of strength was waning.
Trust in the Force, Cere.
Cere gasped at the voice of Eno Cordova in her mind, and, following a thread of intuition, twirled to the left. Vader’s heavy strike slammed down in the space where she’d been. The Force whispered an opportunity to her and lunging forward in a perilous gamble, Cere struck at her foe’s midsection. A hale opponent would have sensed the attack and moved to parry. But, for whatever reason, be it exhaustion or the will of the Force or just plain luck, Cere’s blow struck home. The azure blade sliced through black armor, a durasteel control box and finally through pale, necrotic flesh.
A vicious roar ripped through the Archive, an animal howl of pain and fury that shook the entire chamber and nearly hurled Cere off her feet. By dint of the Force and her own indomitable will, she remained standing, muscles tensing for a retaliatory strike. Darth Vader staggered on his feet, a long, vertical gash glowing along his torso. His breathing which had already been laboured now sounded agonized.
“Most….impressive….Master Junda.”
The scarlet blade rose into a mid-guard stance and the Sith Lord took one step forward.
“But do not be deluded into thinking you have won.” The free black-gloved hand gestured and blazing piles of rubble leapt off the ground and flew towards Cere. But the Jedi Master was ready. The Force was singing to her as it had never spoken before. A touch of telekinesis redirected the first barrage, she twisted her lithe frame to the side and avoided the second. Pushing off with her feet and the Force, she catapulted above the third missile. Poised in mid-air, she angled her cobalt blade and shot downwards, stabbing at her implacable foe.
Vader raised his own blade to meet her attack, mechanical limbs moving slowly, his entire body wavering as the damaged cybernetics that supported his life struggled to maintain their function. The Force reached a crescendo all around her and as she reached the terminus of her arc, Cere stabbed with all her strength, twisting her body at the last minute to avoid the lethal counter strike. Vader’s scarlet blade grazed her arm, scorching cloth and singing skin. Cere’s blazing blue lightsaber struck home, piercing armor, metal and then naked flesh.
Abruptly the Force went completely silent, the great energy seeming to go entirely mute.
Darth Vader staggered on his feet, the brilliant azure flame of his foe’s lightsaber lancing through his heart. The momentarily silent Force screamed, a long agonized moan of pain and anguish and unadulterated sorrow. Then Cere ripped her blade out through her enemy’s uninjured side and Darth Vader toppled to the cracked stone floor, his tattered cape falling over him like a funeral shroud.
The adrenaline and Force energy drained out of Cere like water escaping a cracked vessel. Her lightsaber nearly fell from nerveless fingers and she stared at the fallen form of her nemesis, unable to believe what she was seeing. But the Force never lied and as she probed the motionless body with her senses, she felt what her eyes were telling her.
Darth Vader was dead.
The most formidable and relentless enforcer of the Empire was defeated.
Well done, Cere.
“Master,” Cere gasped. The last of her strength left her and she collapsed to her knees.
You did well, my old Padawan. I am very proud of you. The Ashla is proud of you.
The Force seemed to exhale, a long drawn out release of breath that lingered in the air. Around her, the fires began ebb and die out. Kneeling on the cracked stone of her Archive, Cere Junda just lay there, triumphant and exhausted.
“We continue to face supply chain difficulties with Stardust, my Lord. Recent kyber shipments have been delayed due to insurgent activities at several key mining sites. These delays have put us behind the latest timelines by as much as…”
Darth Sidious’s attention abruptly left the droning functionary before him. He felt a titanic shift in the Force. All of a sudden, the dark side was in turmoil, the waters of the dark ocean churning and crashing in a mighty tempest. Through the tenuous connection he maintained with Darth Vader, Sidious felt an overwhelming wave of agony and despair and with a gasp, he severed the faint bond he shared with his apprentice. Sidious felt his jaw go slack as he tried in vain to interpret the sudden maelstrom. His orange eyes shut reflexively as he fell into mediation, casting his mind into the depths of the dark side.
He didn’t feel his guards clearing the room with practiced ease, nor the affronted cries of the various bureaucrats. He saw only the ink-black darkness of the Force, cast into perfect night by his actions a decade prior. All there was now was darkness, the great shadow he himself cast as well as the lesser shadow of his apprentice and the minor shades of their Force-wielding minions.
The shadows leapt and twisted in his mind’s eye and then, all at once, the second-greatest shroud wavered and with an agonized scream that Sidious felt in his bones, withered and went out. The darkness in the Force waned and in the heart of the current, a single bright light shone with such intensity that the Dark Lord howled, echoing the wail from a moment ago. His eyes burning with pain, the Sith Lord continued to stare at the vision, refusing to look away. More lights began to shine, mere pinpricks in the ebony curtain he had woven, but they beamed stubbornly, each one shining like beacon, tearing it’s own hole in the dark tapestry until their combined light became too brilliant to endure.
With a shout, Darth Sidious opened his eyes, his entire withered frame trembling with shock. The throne room was utterly dark, the usual protocol for when he fell into such states, the umbra a comfort to his eyes after the vision he had been subject to. Closing his eyes again, he tried to concentrate and reached out with all his senses to his minions. He could feel the middling presences of the Grand Inquisitor and his curs, but when he reached for his apprentice, Sidious felt nothing.
Nothing at all.
Casting his thoughts back to the vision, he tried to recall exactly what he had seen. The shadow-second only to his own- had vanished.
Not diminished or paled.
Vanished. Entirely.
The wave of agony he’d felt from Vader flashed back to his mind and Sidious found himself calling out to his most loyal servant.
“Vizier!”
The familiar voice of Mas Amedda replied in the usual deep timbre.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Where is Lord Vader?”
There was a pause as the Chagrian consulted his ever-present datapad. Sidious kept his eyes closed, taking slow, deep breaths, trying to regain his composure.
“The Devastator arrived in the Jedha system approximately three hours ago. Lord Vader debarked with a full battalion to a remote site in the western desert.”
Sidious took in the words as his vizier continued.
“According to our agents aboard, the local garrison received a tip about multiple Jedi hiding at an old monastery near the ruins.”
“Which Jedi?”
“The agent reported Cere Junda as the primary target.”
Junda.
Sidious thoughts began to percolate. He knew of the Jedi Master. The teacher of one of his late Inquisitors and a former pupil of the eccentric Eno Cordova, Junda had enjoyed considerable success against the Empire and the Sith.
“Contact the Devastator at once,” Sidious snapped. “I wish to speak with Lord Vader immediately.”
As the Chagrian busied himself with his comlink, Sidious pondered the sudden chain of events.
Junda had walked the knife’s edge of the dark side before. In her initial escape from Nur and in her confrontation with Vader in the same place, years later. Sidious had felt the powerful pulses of darkness during those two moments. Vader had even admitted to Sidious that Junda had been a formidable foe. But there was no way a stray Jedi could have put an end to his apprentice…
Kenobi nearly did. Twice.
“Master, the Devastator has lost contact with Lord Vader.”
Sidious’s eyes opened and he looked at his servant with burning fury.
“How long have they been out of contact?”
Amedda’s sapphire complexion paled to teal and he spoke quietly into his comlink.
“Approximately forty-eight minutes, Master.”
Rage burned in Sidious’s heart and the vision of a scorched and mutilated Darth Vader, lying helpless on the black shores of Mustafar came unbidden to his thoughts. If Vader had allowed himself to be so defeated a second time…
“Order Captain Devar to send three additional battalions to the surface and to secure the site.”
Amedda was already speaking into the comlink when Sidious went on.
“And order the Eclipse to prepare for immediate departure. Admiral Kermen is to launch for the Jedha system as soon as my shuttle is aboard.”
Amedda’s eyes widened in surprise but he inclined his head in subservience. Sidious rose from his throne, his entire body quivering with anticipation and anger. Moving with swift speed that belied his age, the Emperor strode for the tower docking platform, his thoughts flying furiously.
The Stinger Mantis was lost in the blue-white vortex of hyperspace. Seated in the passenger lounge, Cal Kestis watched as their Latero pilot fussed over his Jedi Master. The young Jedi Knight was torn between fury at Bode for betraying them and giddy joy for what he’d discovered when he’d returned to the ruined Archive.
“I can’t believe it,” he said, pacing back and forth across the metal deck.
“You’re not alone,” Cere said, her voice still sounding as awed as she’d been when Cal had carried her to the hangar back on Jedha.
“How did you do it?” Cal found himself asking for the fifth time in the past hour.
Cere’s expression was ponderous now. “I…can’t explain it all,” she admitted. She looked down at her blistered hands and the dozen bacta bandages that Greez had carefully applied to her various wounds.
“He was toying with me, at first. I don’t think he viewed me as a serious threat.”
Cal’s fists clenched as he recalled his own vicious skirmish with Darth Vader on Nur, five years ago. “Yeah. He likes to do that.”
“Or he did, at any rate.” A ghost of a smile crossed Cere’s bruised face. “But after I dropped the archive shelves on him, he started taking me more seriously.”
She paused, then continued.
“He was damaged after that and…” Her voice trailed off for a moment.
“The Force was with me, Cal. That’s all I can really say. I got in one lucky strike and that seemed to cripple him. After that, I was able to get another lethal blow in and that was it.”
Cal couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “Well however you did it, it’s done now! You killed Darth Vader! With him gone…”
“There’s still a whole Empire out there,” Merrin chimed in. “And Inquisitors.”
“We can handle the Inquisitors,” Cal said grimly. Masana Tide’s decapitated head rolling on the metal deck flashing unnervingly before his eyes.
“The Inquisitors aren’t the main threat,” Cere said, lying back on the potolli-weave couch and closing her eyes contemplatively.
“The Emperor will have sensed Vader’s demise. By eliminating his apprentice, we’ve made ourselves his primary target. He’ll throw everything he has at us now.”
Cal frowned and stopped his pacing. “Then we have to find Bode and the compass. Tanalorr can hide us all from the Emperor.”
Something occurred to him and strode over to the tech drawer near the galley.
“What are you looking for?”
“I gave Bode a homing beacon back on Coruscant.” Cal fished the device out of the metal box and held it aloft. The red light was still blinking steadily.
“I think we can use this to find him!”
Cere’s eyes opened and she looked at the Jedi Knight and the Nightsister.
“Then let’s go find that traitor and get the compass back.”
A long dagger of a warship revered to realspace over the brown-white ball that was the Pilgrim Moon of Jedha. Moments after the colossal Super Star Destroyer had emerged, a sleek ivory Lambda-class shuttle rocketed from its flag hangar, a full squadron of TIE Interceptors surrounding it, their unique crimson sigils marking them as part of the Royal Guard.
The shuttle descended through the atmosphere rapidly and set down in a ruined temple in the heart of the desert. A full complement of Royal Guards filed out of the shuttle and moments later, Emperor Palpatine exited the ship in their midst. Stormtroopers were visible at every corner the room, most of them the black-armored purge troopers that served the Inquisitorious. A grey-uniformed navy captain approached the cowled and hooded Emperor and saluted crisply.
“Your Majesty.”
“Captain Devar,” Palpatine rasped, his voice strained and sibilant.
“Report.”
“My men have secured the entire base, my Lord. We have…”
Darth Sidious looked up at the nervous officer. It took almost no effort on his part to read the anxious man’s thoughts and a single image came to the forefront. A fallen black armored form, it’s cape covering it like a shroud. Sidious’s breath actually caught in his throat and he looked harshly at Devar.
“Have any others seen the chamber?”
To his credit, the captain seemed to know exactly what Sidious was referring to.
“A few, my lord. A medical team and my personal stormtrooper guard.”
“Sequester all of them, Captain Deez,” Sidious said, addressing the leader of his guard contingent.
“Captain Devar, you will go with them.”
Deez and five of his compatriots moved to obey. The remaining two scarlet-robed sentinels flanked Sidious as he treaded the path to the main hall of the fortress. He passed the armored purge troopers and came before a blown out door, the towering stone shattered into large piles of rubble.
“Remain here,” Sidious said as he and his guards entered the vast hall. He didn’t need to see the signs of battle to know that there had been a vicious duel here. The Force whispered echoes of a heated fight.
A recent fight.
Sidious sank deeper into the dark side of the Force. Shadowy whispers bade him to descend into the scarred pit in the center of the hall. A touch of the Force eased his glide to the depths and he landed with ease. More rubble littered the ground within and a flick of Sidious’s finger cleared a path through the debris. His eyes narrowed as he spotted the form he’d seen in Devar’s mind.
Pulse quickened, Darth Sidious slowly made his way toward the fallen figure. As he came to the body, Sidious could clearly see who it was. The black helmet, based on an ancient Sith war droid, was synonymous with the Empire. Sidious knew that helmet intimately. He had been the one to design the mask while his injured apprentice had convalesced in his tower citadel.
Devar’s medtechs had turned the body to face up and had taken basic readings, but aside from that, the corpse was untouched. No doubt the soldiers had not believed what they were seeing. Despite what he had felt in the Force and what he was seeing with his own eyes, Sidious himself wasn’t entirely certain. He gazed at the armoured corpse for long moments, unable to fully accept the sight before him. Finally, he sank to his knees and reached out to grasp the mask with both hands. It would have been an simple matter to remove the helmet with the Force, no more than it had been to clear the floor. But Sidious undid the seals with his gnarled fingers and with a modicum of effort, he wrenched the heavy black mask free.
A pale, scarred face looked up at him, empty blue eyes staring sightlessly at the man who had once been their master.
Darth Sidious sat in the ruins of the Narkis Archive for a long time, staring at the corpse of the man he had groomed from childhood. There was no denying what he was seeing. Darth Vader was dead.
Almost involuntarily, Sidious reached out with one hand to Vader’s forehead, caressing the flaky white skin gently as he once had on a lava shore on a distant world.
My boy.
Brushing taloned fingers along his dead apprentice’s face, Palpatine gently closed the blue eyes of Anakin Skywalker. Darth Sidious was not a being who felt regret. But for a solitary moment, Sheev Palpatine allowed himself to feel a single pang of loss for the gifted boy he had steered and guided for over two decades.
The crisp clack of boots on stone drew his attention and Sidious rose to his feet with ease and turned to face the audacious fool who had dared disturb him.
The slender pale-skinned being stood as tall as Vader had and the dark side swirled around him in icy gusts. Sidious glared at the Grand Inquisitor with contempt and annoyance.
“Welcome. Grand Inquisitor.” A tug of the Force sent the Pau’an sprawling forward on all fours.
“You are rather late, my friend.”
The dark adept sputtered as he tried to rise to his feet. Another flick of Sidious’s fingers sent the alien back to his knees with a crash.
“Tell me, my friend. What do you see?”
The silence hung in the smoky air for several long moments as the former Jedi Knight took in what he was seeing. Finally, the Pau’an looked back at Sidious, wisely staying in his prone position.
“Lord Vader…has been defeated.”
Unamused by the Inquisitor’s equivocation, Sidious snorted dangerously.
“Do not mince words with me, Grand Inquisitor. Lord Vader has been killed.”
The words hung in the air ominously.
“Killed by a Jedi.” A shout of the Force brought the Pau’an to face Sidious, the dark side clamping viciously around the alien’s body.
“But, the Jedi are supposed to be extinct, are they not?”
The Grand Inquisitor wisely remained silent as Sidious continued to rage.
“That was the charge laid before you by Lord Vader, was it not, Grand Inquisitor?”
This seemed to be an accusation that the adept wasn’t willing to let slide.
“We have killed dozens of Jedi, my Lord. The Order is a broken shadow now.”
Sidious’s temper broke and a crackling storm of blue-white lightning sprang from his fingertips. A wretched howl pierced the tepid air as the Dark Lord of the Sith vented his fury upon his hapless servant. The sudden Force storm cut off and the Grand Inquisitor crashed to the stone floor again, smoke rising off his charred black armor.
“You say that the Jedi are broken, my friend.” A fresh salvo of lightning tore a scream from the wretched alien’s throat.
“And yet, one of them was able to kill my apprentice.”
More lightning flashed in the ruined archive and the Grand Inquisitor wriggled and writhed like a beached colo claw fish.
“Clearly, Grand Inquisitor, you and your brethren have failed.”
The dark side closed around the fallen Inquisitor and he was hoisted into the air and began to gasp as Sidious’s Force Grip closed on his throat.
“Tell me, my friend, why should I forgive your failure?” The Grand Inquisitor’s only response was to gurgle and Sidious snarled, tightening his grip.
“Provide me with one solitary reason why I shouldn’t end your worthless life, Inquisitor?”
“I…will…find them!”
Sidious raised a single eyebrow, impressed despite himself.
“I will find Lord Vader’s killer, Master. I will find them and I will destroy them.”
The Force Grip vanished and the bruised and battered Inquisitor dropped to the floor, wheezing and gasping for breath.
“Do that, my friend. Find Lord Vader’s killer and bring them before me. I will teach them the folly of resistance myself.”
Turning his back on the best of his living Force-wielding servants, Sidious returned to Vader’s side. Bending down and replacing the helmet on the pale head, the Emperor lifted his late apprentice from the floor and carried the armored corpse out of the archive, leaving the Grand Inquisitor where he lay.