“Have you heard the news, Master Aurtera? They say that Coruscant’s planetary shields are about to fall. After months of siege, the CIS is near victory.”
“Enough,” Master Aurtera said, although she was slightly disturbed by the clone commander’s words.
“We have our mission here in the mid rim,” she said, “And we have to stay focused on that, not on the Separatist push all the way to Coruscant. There are still… Pockets of resistance across the core that are holding back the last Separatist advance. It is now when things are the most dire that we must fight the hardest to push them back. How long before we drop out of hyperspace until our target system?”
“Of course, commander. About seven minutes. We believe we should outnumber them. With our Kyber Crystal Sieger class cannon on this flagship as support, and defended by our larger fleet, I believe that our forces will have a decisive advantage. For once.”
They dropped out of hyperspace, and stopped to gather their fleet of hundreds of ships. Surveying the Separatist fleet gathered around the planet opposite them and just now slowly shifting into a defensive formation facing them.
“Master Aurtera, we’re receiving a transmission… Directly from Coruscant. It’s the highest priority possible to be shown to all command staff,” the Republic military officer assigned to her shouted out as he inspected his console in confusion. She frowned and swept over and inspected the panel.
“Directly from Coruscant? Are we sure it’s legitimate?” she asked, suspicious of the message that was suspiciously high priority to be shown to the whole command crew while also marked as top secret enough that most of even this command crew likely didn’t have clearance to have it be shown to them.
“That’s what it says, Ma’am,” the officer said helplessly, “All the verifications came back clean. As far as I can tell it’s real.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Directly from Supreme Chancellor Mas Amedda’s office, Ma’am.”
“Very well,” she said, “Put on the central console. Let’s us watch it then.”
After a few moments, a large hologram of Mas Amedda appeared in the center of the room, staring into the mid distance.
“Officers and loyal soldiers of the Republic,” Mas Amedda said gravely, “Execute Order Seventy three. This Republic is at great threat from within and without. Our enemies are too strong, too many. Only you can make sure that this great Republic survives, and ensure that our great democracy shall rise again from the ashes. I leave this last order to you, my loyal soldiers. Burn this galaxy to the ground and make sure that the Separatists rule nothing but ash and dust. Every planet of the Republic that will fall into the Separatists hand without our righteous intervention. If… If I must fall then let the flames consume the galaxy. Let it all burn with me. That will be all. I leave to you my legacy. I will be remembered, I will not be a footnote in our history, but a blazing scorched mark that will be remembered forever......”
Mas Amedda’s speech grew more and more maddened until towards the end he had a crazed and desperate look in his eyes. The expression was frozen on his face for a moment in the hologram before the message ended and the hologram disappeared.
“Order seventy three…” the clone commander muttered, his tone oddly flat and emotionless.
“Commander, do you know what this order is?” Master Aurtera demanded, “What is the meaning of that strange message? Has Coruscant fallen?”
“I… don’t believe so, Ma’am?” the military officer said as he studied from the console, “Our messages updated as of a few hours show no sign of the CIS breaking Coruscant’s planetary shields. Has the Chancellor gone mad? Why would he think we would do something like that?”
“I don’t know,” Master Aurtera said thoughtfully, “Perhaps he truly has gone mad? I’d heard that he’d fallen into… Various vices, and disappeared from the public eye for the last few years, only kept in office by the emergency powers act extending his term indefinitely until the end of the war. He might have finally cracked under the pressure… Commander, what do you…”
She turned, only to hear the hiss of the door closing as the clone commander left the bridge while she was distracted.
“Commander? What…" She turned back to the man she was talking to before, "Anyway, obviously we aren’t following those orders. Halt our course, I want to send a message back to Coruscant and get confirmation on our real orders before we engage with the enemy. I don’t want to be forced into an engagement if our orders will have changed in the meantime.”
“Of course, madame Jedi. Bleeding off our speed now. Separatists appear to be holding position around the planet. Waiting for us in defensive positions.”
The fleet slowly came to a stop in the black void of space as they waited for a reply to their message back to Coruscant for clarification on what was going on.
An hour later, Master Aurtera looked up from her discussion with the rest of the command crew.
“Where is our clone commander?” she asked, “He has been gone for quite some time now,”
“I’m not sure,” the man she’d been speaking with said, “I believe he mentioned something about following orders? He seemed rather out of it when I saw him twenty minutes ago in the hallway.”
“Orders? What orders?” She asked in confusion, “I’ll go speak with him myself.”
She left the bridge, nodding to the six heavily armed clones who had taken position just outside of the door. Perhaps that was it. The clone commander was increasing security after it appeared the situation in Coruscant was about to become more unstable with the Supreme Chancellor obviously going mad. There would likely be unrest among the crew when they heard the news. She should have thought of ordering him to do so earlier.
She turned the corner and saw one of the normal clones holding out a communicator and showing three more a holographic message. She went to look away before a trickle of familiarity washed over her. Was that… She changed direction and started walking towards the four clones. They noticed her, and quickly the one with the communicator shut it off and slipped it into a pocket in his armor.
“What was that?” she demanded, “Why are you sharing classified messages in the middle of a open hallway? Or at all? That message is for command crew only. There is no need to cause a panic before we know what is truly going on back at home.”
“Of… Course, Master Jedi,” the clone who had held the communicator said stiffly, as if he was slightly drunk, “Message must be shared with… All authorized personnel. Good soldiers… Follow orders.”
“I… See,” she said and eyed the four clones standing there as stiff as a board and staring at her through their armor, “I will speak with your commander,” she decided, “He will decide how to punish you four and whoever gave you that message. Now what are your identification…”
Her head snapped around as she heard the sound of screams and blaster fire echo from the hallway she’d just come from.
She reached into her robes and pulled out her lightsaber and dashed back to the command deck. She entered the room and looked around in shock as she saw the clones charging into the room and opening fire on the surprised crew. Nearly half of the surprised bridge crew were already gunned down, even as the others dived behind their consoles or cover and pulled out their small blaster pistols as they tried to respond to the complete ambush.
“Cease fire! Cease fire, what are you doing?!” Master Aurtera shouted as she unsheathed her lightsaber and held it out to rest right against the neck of the nearest clone’s armor. The clone ignored her blade and kept firing.
“Stop!” She shouted again, only for the clones to fire again as one of the command crew slipped out from behind the console. The man just barely managed to scramble back before a clone’s blaster bold seared a hole in the floor where their head used to be.
“Arrest them!” she shouted as she heard the pounding of feet coming down the hallway from all directions. The clone commander was standing at the door along with an assault squad of his clones just in time to stop the traitors.
“Commander, place these men under arrest immediately,” she demanded while not letting her eyes leave the clones that had now lowered their weapons, having seemingly finally noticed her presence for the first time.
The commander didn’t respond for a long moment as she kept her lightsaber held against the neck of the clone in front of her unmoving. She glanced behind her to where the commander and the squad of armed clones remained motionless by the door, “Commander?”
“Open fire!”
She only had a moment to widen her eyes before all the clones lowered their blasters and fired at her as one. She dashed to the side with her Force abilities, using her lightsaber to block the blaster bolts that came too close and deflecting them to the side and into the wall of the room.
Their blaster fire cut down their fellows that she’d just been standing in front of, sending their bodies to the floor dead without even a flicker of hesitation in the firing squad’s stiff body language.
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“What is this?!” she shouted, “Commander, what are you doing?”
“Good soldiers follow orders!” all of the clones chanted in unison before raising their weapons and firing at her again. She dodged again, and after grappling in indecision for a painfully long moment, started deflecting the blaster bolts back at the clones instead of at the nearby wall.
She moved forward, dashing side to side and reflecting the errant blaster bolt that managed to come close to her back to sender.
In only seconds, nearly the half had fallen dead to the floor, killed by their own shots.
The clone commander took a step back and said something as he raised a hand to the side of his helmet. He gestured to the side before fleeing to the side and out of sight of the door.
Master Aurtera, her lips now in a tight thin line moved forward to the remaining half of the clone squad that was still trying to actively kill her.
She raised a hand and with a burst of the Force sent half of the remaining squad falling back to the ground. She burst forward in one giant leap, and then she was among them. In a series of precise strikes with her lightsaber, she eliminated the five remaining clones. She stood there panting in exertion over their bodies and looked from side in the apparently abandoned hallway. She turned back to the ravaged command deck scarred with giant plasma marks and destroyed console from the brief battle.
“What’s going on? Activate the ship’s security systems. I want to see why the clones have betrayed us,” she said briskly as she walked back into the room.
The command crew seemed hesitant for a moment, glancing at the dead bodies of their companions in shock.
“Move! Now!” She demanded and they sprung into action and started getting to work on the few consoles that were still functioning, even if their screens were cracked and flickering in some cases.
“Ma’am…” One of the female technicians said, “It’s… We’re recording blaster fire all over the ship… Let me… Oh Force, they’re slaughtering them!”
“Who? The clones?”
“T-The clones. They’re killing the rest of the crew ma’am. I can see them through the cameras, the clones are almost right outside the main barracks now. They’re basically unarmed in there!”
“Seal the doors. Activate the defensive turrets in the ceilings,” Master Aurtera said, “There’s at least one in every hallway. That should hold them for now. Set it to lethal shots, and to target the clones based on their armor.”
“I… Right. Sealing the doors now.”
There was a heavy series of thuds across the ship as all of the blast doors between sections shut all at once as the woman tapped at her console.
“Targeting on the turrets will take a few minutes,” the woman muttered, “They’re meant for droids, not our own clones… I’ll need to program a workaround… Most of its hardcoded, but there might be a way to get around it and have it target the traitors...”
“Get on it then,” Master Aurtera said before turning to another man furiously tapping away at a half destroyed console to her left, “Stevens? What about their movements? What are they doing?”
“All over, Ma’am. Besides… Targeting the rest of the crew... they’re trying to seize critical systems. Engineering and the reactor core crew seems to be holding well from what I can see. The Clones have tried to subvert controls of a few systems already, but we’ve got override control from here. We’ve shut them out of most of the main systems for now. It would take them a few hours to bypass our authority over anything as critical as life support or gravity. There’s… Movement! All the clone squads in our section of the ship, enclosed in the blast doors. They’ve gathered and are coming here all at once.”
Master Aurtera firmed her resolve and brought her lightsaber to a guard position as she stepped back out into the ship’s hallway.
“I’ll hold them off,” she ordered, “Keep working on those getting our defensive turrets online. Seal the blast doors and don’t let anyone through at any cost. If the clones seize the bridge, then this ship is lost. As well as the Sieger weapon class cannon on it.”
“I… Of course Master Jedi, best of luck,” one surviving officer said before seeming to seize command through the chaos of activity.
“Jenson, get off of that!” he shouted, “Help Tessa with turrets, we don’t care what the long range scanners say when the traitors are on our kriffing ship! And seal the doors, like Master Aurtera ordered! You-”
The doors sealed behind her with a hiss of air and the sound of the chaos inside the bridge cut off.
Master Aurtera took a long deep breath as she heard the pounding of feet from all directions charging towards her. She was still breathing a little heavy and her chest burned a little from her sudden exertion of intense battle from before. Against this many, potentially hundreds of clones in this section of the ship alone? This was a suicide mission.
She just had to buy the crew some time to activate their other defenses to help deal with the clones. She could only do her best for now.
Why had to clones betrayed them? So suddenly? It made no sense. She’d fought alongside them for years, and then they just do this out of nowhere?
The pounding of feet grew closer and she tightened her grip on her lightsaber. Here it came.
On either side of the hallway, groups of clones appeared and raised their weapons but didn’t fire just yet.
One of the groups fell back to the sides, although she could see the nose of their blasters poking around the corners. They were giving a clean line of fire for the clones on the other side to fire freely upon her without hitting their own allies in the process.
The clone commander came to the front, his distinctive orange stripe on his white armor reminding her of which one he was.
“Master Aurtera,” the commander shouted, “Surrender now. We have orders from the Chancellor to seize control of this vessel by any means necessary. We need to to accomplish our new mission. Surrender now and you will be placed under arrest and possibly pardoned by the Chancellor for your crimes at a military tribunal.”
“Why are you doing this, Commander?” she shouted back, “This isn’t like you! We’ve fought together for years. You’d take the Chancellor’s orders over your own common sense? The Chancellor’s orders don’t make any sense! Stop this now, whatever is happening. You surrender yourselves for judgement as traitors.”
“Good soldiers follow orders,” the clone commander shouted.
“Good soldiers follow orders,” the rest of the clones chorused as one.
The clone commander raised his hand, “If you will not surrender, then you are an obstacle to our mission! I’m sorry, Master Jedi. I wished that it wouldn’t be like this, but you give us no choice!”
He lowered his hand decisively to point it at her, “Fire!”
She jumped up to the ceiling with a Force enhanced jump and the majority of the blaster fire flew right below her. In mid air she used her lightsaber she blocked a few errant bolts that managed to get closer, although she was in an awkward enough position in the air that she wasn’t able to reflect the shots back.
She landed on the floor, but the blaster fire just kept on coming as she tried to block and dodge as best as she could with all of her might and skill in the Force in combat both. One bolt landed directly on her shoulder and she grimaced and stumbled slightly from the pain before leaping full force into the wall nearby. Just barely dodging another barrage of blaster fire that tried to exploit her sudden weakness.
Even as her injured shoulder screamed in pain, she pressed a palm against the wall that she’d just painfully slammed into with her good shoulder. In a desperate pulse of the Force she sent her self flying to the other side of the hallway, arcing through the air just as more blaster bolts landed the space that she’d just evacuated. She arced through the air, and another blaster bolt brushed by her forehead and blinded her briefly as her head suddenly felt like it was engulfed with flames.
She flipped in the air, finishing her motion of her leap despite her blindness from the close call with the blaster bolt. She landed with both feet braced against the far wall and pushed off with another blast of the Force to go flying back the way she came.
The blasterfire suddenly grew more intense as she flew through the air and used the Force to instinctively block a few blaster bolts that almost hit her dead center. But three of the shots passed right over her thighs and torso, carving painful burning lines across her flesh.
She landed against the far wall, this time clumsily. She fell to the floor, her body trembling from exertion as her burned legs betrayed her and gave out under her weight as she tried to stand and leap away again even through her blindness.
She fell back onto the ground, and reflexively blocked one last blaster bolt aimed at her even as she dropped. But then she hit the ground and the sharp impact sent her lightsaber rattling from her limp hands. She used the Force to draw the blade back towards her, but she already knew it was too late. The opening was too large as she lay there on the ground. Any second a blaster bolt would come and strike her before the lightsaber could fly back into her hand…
But the blaster bolt didn’t come.
She sat up and wiped her face as her blurry vision suddenly sharpened despite the main and heat still infusing her whole body.
She squinted as she saw a circular object rotating above her and releasing periodic bursts of plasma every few seconds.
She saw up and slumped against the wall and chuckled to herself weakly. They had done it, they’d activated the turrets in time. She was saved.
— — —
“What’s the situation?” she asked, even as the medic soaked another bandage in bacta and started wrapping it around her burned head.
“We have control of our ship,” the current admiral of their fleet told her, her having been in no condition to lead for the last few hours, “And about sixty percent of the others in the fleet. We… were able to warn most of them before the clones were able to fully act and spring their ambushes.”
“And the remaining forty percent?”
“Either destroyed after they fired on us and were warned of the consequences, or fled into hyperspace. We were lucky. Our Kyber Crystal cannon was able to make short work of the ships they managed to seize control of. It’s the only reason why we defeated them so decisively. ”
“And… the Separatist fleet? What has their response been?”
“Demanding our surrender of course,” the admiral said, “We're heavily damaged and outnumbered at the moment, our formations a complete mess... But they haven’t made any moves towards us so far. And the military channels are in chaos. Coruscant has actually dropped its planetary shields voluntarily. All the clones have gone crazy and are going on rampages through military structures and civilian cities both across the whole galaxy. Most worlds and military fleets weren’t nearly as lucky as we were, and the clones are rampaging freely with no one able to stop them in many places. The CIS is stepping in to fight off the clones alongside what normal Republic non-clone forces we have left to put an end to the chaos.”
“I… See. And our orders? What has become of the Chancellor?”
“Unknown. Things are still in chaos. For now… All we can do is wait until we’re ordered to do otherwise by somebody not working with the Chancellor.”
Master Aurtera sat back in her bed and let the medic tie off the bacta soaked bandage in place before leaving again.
“So, an end to the war,” she whispered, “One last round of suffering and death across the galaxy, caused by another madman, before it’s all over.”
“So it seems,” the admiral agreed, “Now, I must go off to my command. I wish you well on your recovery… We would have lost this ship and subsequently the fleet to the clone traitors without your efforts. I have never been one to think much of the Jedi… But thank you for saving all of our lives. My life on that bridge.”
“Thank you. I did my duty, and I’m glad that all these burns were worth something at least,” she said and gestured to her other bacta soaked bandages covering her other wounds.
“For the Republic,” he said. She paused for a long while before nodding back.
“For the Republic. In whatever it may take by the end of this.”
