YEP, im back. It's gonna get updated sporadically, though, so expect more chapters probably tomorrow, then like none for 3 days, then like 5 in 2 days, then 20 in four hours.
P@treon is also getting updated; the chapters are massively improved on the most recent chapter, along with upcoming chapters on there, takes time to get them on here. So if u want to see what's going on, go get P@treon.
HIATUS OVER
Hermit47 P@treon
P.S. Im more invested in my Harry Potter fic currently, but for every review I get over there on that fic, I'll post an extra chapter on here for y'all until I hit 10 reviews, starting when I wake up tomorrow. Say how awesome I am and how I saved your pet chicken or something.
...
The first thing Jango noticed was the smell.
Not smoke. Not Tibanna discharge. Not scorched wiring, melted deck plating, burning insulation, or any of the familiar scents that came with a warship taking damage. Those were there, sure, layered beneath the alarms and heat and the harsh metallic tang of ruptured systems.
But under it all was something else.
Wet.
Rotten.
Alive.
Jango Fett moved through the lower corridors of the Resolute with his blaster drawn and his helmet sealed, Aiylan at his right shoulder and Ahsoka Tano just behind them with one saber in hand. The corridor lights had shifted to emergency red. Every few seconds the deck shuddered under distant impacts, and the whole ship groaned around them like some wounded beast being forced to fight with its ribs cracked open.
Ahead, blasterfire flashed through smoke.
Clone voices barked over the shipwide channels, too many at once to follow cleanly. Reports came in from deck twelve, then deck nine, then the aft service spine, then hangar bay two. Breach. Contact. Casualties. Reinforcements requested. Hall sealed. Hall lost. Fall back. Hold position. Fall back again.
Jango had heard enough battlefield chatter in his life to know when soldiers were reporting trouble and when they were trying not to admit panic.
This was the second kind.
Ahsoka was breathing harder than she wanted anyone to notice.
Jango noticed anyway.
"Stay close," he said.
"I know what I'm doing."
"That's not what I said."
Aiylan gave the Padawan a quick look through her own visor. "He says that to everyone before something horrible happens."
"That's comforting," Ahsoka muttered.
"No, it's honest."
Jango raised one hand sharply, and both of them stopped.
The corridor ahead opened into a wider junction where a platoon of 501st troopers had dug in behind portable barricades. At first glance, the clones were doing everything right. Two firing lines. Overlapping coverage. Heavy repeater set near the left bulkhead. Medical drag line behind the second barrier. No panic in the formation, no wasted movement.
They were still losing.
The intruders came through the smoke in jagged, brutal surges.
They weren't droids. They weren't mercenaries. They weren't any species Jango had seen, and that alone bothered him. He had spent most of his life in the dirty corners of the galaxy, the places where things without names tended to crawl out and ask for payment in blood. These things were new.
Tall, hard-bodied warriors in living armor that clung to them like dark crab shells, ridged and layered over muscle. Their faces were scarred, severe, almost ritualistic in their cruelty. Some carried long, snake-like weapons that moved before they hardened into staffs or blades. Others threw living projectiles that struck armor and burst in acid, venom, or splintering bone.
Blaster bolts hammered into their armor.
Some shots burned through. Most didn't.
The living plates twitched and absorbed glancing hits, deflecting enough energy that the clones had to pour fire into a single target just to bring one down. When a trooper got close, one of the intruders snapped his staff into a blade and cut through clone armor as if it were cheap sheet metal.
Jango saw three troopers die in the first two seconds.
Ahsoka saw it too.
She launched forward before he could stop her.
"Damn it," Jango snapped. "Kid!"
The Padawan hit the junction like a burst of green light.
Her saber caught the first attacker across the chest. The blow should have opened him from shoulder to hip. Instead, the blade skipped across the shell-like armor, burning a smoking line through the surface but failing to bite deep. Ahsoka's eyes widened for half a second, and the warrior used that half second well.
The snake-staff in his hand twisted, hardened, and cracked against her blade with enough force to drive her back.
Ahsoka recovered quickly, dropping low and slashing for the knee.
Better.
The strike caught softer armor near the joint, and the creature snarled as the blade burned through. But he didn't fall. He lunged instead, pain seeming to excite him rather than slow him. Another warrior came at her from the side, weapon snapping toward her throat.
Jango opened fire.
Aiylan fired with him.
Their bolts struck the second attacker in the helmet and upper shoulder, staggering him just enough for Ahsoka to duck beneath the strike. She tried to push him away with the Force.
Nothing happened.
Not nothing, exactly. Jango knew her well enough by now to recognize the motion, the focus, the instinct. The Force should have slammed the warrior back into the wall.
The warrior didn't even stumble.
Ahsoka felt the failure harder than anyone watching could have understood. Her shock flashed across her face, and again the enemy used it. He drove into her guard with animal strength, hammering her back step by step. The amphistaff coiled and struck like a serpent, forcing her to twist aside from venomous fangs before it hardened again and slammed into her ribs.
She hit the deck hard.
The first warrior raised his weapon.
"KID!"
Jango was already moving, but he knew he wouldn't make it in time.
The wall beside the junction exploded inward.
Scud came through it.
Not through the doorway.
Through the wall.
The Gendai hit the nearest alien like a falling speeder truck. His massive armored body drove the creature into the opposite bulkhead so hard the metal cratered around them. The warrior tried to stab him. The blade cut into Scud's armor, sank deeper than Jango liked, and then stopped in something that very much refused to behave like normal flesh.
Scud looked down at the weapon.
Then he grabbed the attacker by the head and shoulder and tore him apart.
Ahsoka stared from the deck.
Jango grabbed her by the back of her tunic and hauled her upright. "When I say stay close, it's not because I enjoy hearing myself talk."
"I couldn't move him," she gasped.
"I saw."
"I mean I couldn't—"
"I know what you mean."
Scud's heavy cannon came up with a mechanical whine and began firing into the junction. Each shot struck like a speeder impact, blowing chunks from the living armor and hurling the attackers backward. The clones rallied instantly, pouring fire into the gaps Scud created.
Then the Wookiees arrived.
Kharvakk and Veyrash came from the right-hand corridor, enormous shapes in dark armor, red sabers already burning. Krrsantan came with them, broader than most beings had any right to be, bowcaster in one hand and a heavy vibro-axe in the other. The sight of the three of them moving together would have scared most soldiers worse than the boarders had.
The Yuuzhan Vong did not appear impressed.
That was their mistake.
Kharvakk met one head-on. His red blade crashed into the warrior's crab armor and skated across the surface in a shower of sparks and scorched living shell. The black-furred Wookiee snarled, a deep, furious sound, and struck again with more weight. The second blow bit deeper but still didn't cut cleanly.
Veyrash adjusted first.
The pale twin shifted his blade away from the armored chest and drove it into the softer seam beneath the enemy's arm. That worked. The alien convulsed, and Krrsantan took his head off with the vibro-axe before he could recover.
Kharvakk noticed.
The next time his opponent came at him, he did not bother trying to carve through the breastplate. He caught the amphistaff on his saber, stepped into the attacker's body, and slammed one massive fist into the side of the alien's helmet. Bone and crab-shell cracked together. Another blow crushed the throat.
The Wookiees changed tactics without needing words.
Less elegance. More force.
If the blades would not cut cleanly, they would break what held the armor together.
Alpha ARCs and Nulls entered from the left in black armor, moving with terrifying coordination. They did not waste fire scattering shots across living plates. They focused. Three rifles to one target. Then five. Knees. Armpits. Neck seams. Exposed tissue where armor had to move and breathe. The first time one of the Nulls found the vulnerable gill-like tissue under the arm, the target collapsed under a concentrated barrage and did not rise again.
Jango saw it.
So did the others.
"Under the arms!" he shouted. "Joints and seams! Don't waste shots on the plates unless you're pinning them!"
The order traveled fast through clone channels.
Ahsoka was back on her feet now, angry and shaken but not broken. She moved more carefully this time, saber held low, eyes tracking the joints instead of the obvious kill lines. A Vong warrior lunged at her, amphistaff hissing. She caught the staff, stepped in, and drove the tip of her saber up into the softer armor under his ribs.
He screamed.
That one felt good.
Not safe.
But good.
Farther down the hall, something exploded, followed by a droid's delighted voice.
"Exclamation: Remarkable! These meatbags are both difficult to kill and highly unpleasant to observe. I have not enjoyed a tactical challenge this much in years."
HK-47 strode out of the smoke with both blasters firing, coppery plating marked by acid burns and carbon scoring. He put three shots into one attacker's knee, two into the exposed gill beneath the arm when the creature stumbled, and another through the mouth when the helmet shifted open with the impact.
K2-SO came behind him, one hand gripping a Vong warrior by the ankle. He swung the alien into the wall with enough force to crack both armor and bulkhead, then dropped the body with obvious distaste.
"I would like the record to show," K2 said, "that I object to enemies that bleed on the floor and continue making tactical decisions."
R2-D2 rolled between them screaming in binary, his dome spinning as he fired a shock prod into a fallen attacker's exposed neck tissue. The alien spasmed violently.
HK turned his head. "Approval: The astromech has discovered sadism."
R2 shrieked something rude.
K2 looked down at him. "That was unnecessarily graphic."
Jango did not know whether to laugh or shoot all three of them.
He settled for command.
"Skirata!"
Kal Skirata appeared through the smoke, helmet on, rifle braced, armor marked by fresh scoring. "I'm busy."
"Get the ARCs, the twins, and Krrsantan to the hyperdrive decks. If these things are smart enough to board, they're smart enough to go for the ship's heart."
Kal glanced once toward the bodies and the direction of the deeper decks. "And you?"
"I'm taking the rest to reinforce munitions and clear whatever's between here and there."
Kal's helmet tilted slightly. "You giving me orders now?"
"I'm giving you the obvious answer before you waste time pretending you don't agree with it."
For half a second, Jango thought Kal might argue out of tradition.
Instead, the old Mandalorian gave a rough laugh.
"Nulls, Alphas, with me! You heard Fett. Hyperdrive deck. If it's not wearing our armor, put it down."
The black-armored commandos moved at once.
Kharvakk and Veyrash withdrew from their brutal melee with a pair of snarls, red blades dragging across the deck as they turned. Krrsantan fired one last bowcaster shot into a wounded attacker, then followed with a growl that needed no translation. The message was simple enough.
He wanted more.
Jango looked to Ahsoka. "You're with me."
"I can help at the hyperdrive."
"You can help by not running at the next thing that ignores your tricks."
She looked like she wanted to argue.
Aiylan stepped beside her and reloaded. "He's right."
Ahsoka glared at her. "You don't have to sound so happy about it."
"I'm not happy. I'm alive."
Jango started moving before the Padawan could think of another answer.
The corridor behind them belonged to the dead and the wounded. The corridor ahead belonged to whatever had crawled into Anakin's ship.
Jango tightened his grip on his blaster.
He had fought Jedi. Mandalorians. Droids. Beasts. Criminals. Tyrants. Cowards. Men who begged. Men who laughed. Men who thought armor made them brave.
These things were different.
But different still bled.
That was enough.
Two levels below, Obi-Wan Kenobi was discovering just how little a lightsaber could mean when the enemy did not fear it.
He moved through the smoke of deck nine with Cody at his side and a battered knot of 212th troopers behind him. Rex and several 501st squads had linked with them minutes earlier, and Qui-Gon's 119th Pathfinder troopers were holding the far intersection under Commander Cairn. The combined force should have been enough to stabilize the deck.
It was not.
The Yuuzhan Vong came in waves, not endless but relentless, pushing through sealed doors, maintenance shafts, and half-melted breach points with horrifying persistence. Their armor turned glancing saber strikes. Their weapons blocked blades. Their bodies did not appear in the Force at all, which made every duel feel like fighting in a room where half the lights had been torn from reality.
Obi-Wan cut at one warrior's chest, felt the blade skid across crab armor, and immediately turned the motion into a thrust at the throat seam. That strike landed, but not cleanly enough. The warrior staggered, shrieking in a language Obi-Wan did not know, and swung the amphistaff in a motion too fast for something so wounded.
Cody put three shots into the exposed wound before it could strike again.
The warrior fell.
"Much obliged," Obi-Wan said, breathing harder than he liked.
Cody fired past him at another shape in the smoke. "Anytime, General."
Across the corridor, Qui-Gon was fighting with a grimness Obi-Wan rarely saw in him. His green blade moved with economy, not wasted on broad cuts anymore. He targeted joints, inner arms, throat lines, gaps in the crab armor. Even so, each kill took too long.
Rex dragged a wounded trooper behind cover while firing one-handed. "We're losing this deck!"
"We're not losing it," Cody snapped. "We're adjusting backward."
Rex stared at him. "That's losing it with nicer phrasing."
Cairn's voice came through the smoke, calm despite the chaos. "Fallback line Aurek-Seven is ready. If we pull them through the narrow corridor, we can reduce their numbers at the choke."
Qui-Gon deflected an amphistaff strike, pivoted, and drove his saber through the attacker's exposed armpit seam. "Do it."
Obi-Wan reached instinctively for the Force, trying to shove three Vong back from the advancing line.
The Force answered around them.
Not through them.
Loose plating ripped from the wall and slammed into the attackers instead. One stumbled. Another ducked. The third crashed into a clone and drove a blade through the man's chest.
Obi-Wan felt the death sharply.
He could not feel the killer at all.
That absence was becoming worse than fear.
"General!" Cody shouted.
Obi-Wan turned in time to block a descending amphistaff. The weapon struck his saber and held. Not melted. Not cut. Held, hissing and alive, the serpent's eyes fixed on him from a weapon that should not have existed.
For one awful moment, Obi-Wan understood why the Force felt wrong.
These warriors were not merely outside his senses.
They were a denial of them.
He stepped back, let the weapon slide, and cut low at the knee joint. This time the blade bit deep enough. The warrior collapsed, and Cody finished him before he hit the ground.
Qui-Gon moved to Obi-Wan's side as the clones began falling back by squads.
"How many?" Obi-Wan asked.
Qui-Gon's face was drawn. "Too many."
Rex shouted into his comm. "Deck nine falling back to Aurek-Seven! We need heavy repeaters and sealed fire doors behind us now!"
A clone officer answered with static and screaming in the background.
Cairn looked toward Qui-Gon. "We've lost contact with two companies."
Cody's expression hardened. "That's hundreds of men."
"No," Rex said quietly, listening to the broader channel. "It's more than that."
The truth came in fragments.
Deck twelve had suffered catastrophic casualties before sealing the breach. Hangar bay two was still contested. Aft engineering reported boarders inside the coolant control sections. Medical triage was overwhelmed. Thousands of clones across the three fleets were already dead or missing in sealed compartments that no one had time to reopen.
Obi-Wan felt dread settle into him.
Not panic. Not despair.
Dread.
Because they were killing the enemy, yes. They were learning. They were adapting. But every lesson was being paid for with men.
Too many men.
Qui-Gon looked at him over the glow of their sabers and spoke quietly enough that only Obi-Wan could hear.
"The Force brought us here."
Obi-Wan deflected another burst of living projectiles with a ripped panel from the wall. "I am trying very hard not to resent it for that."
Qui-Gon's eyes shifted toward the smoke where more silhouettes were forming.
"I know."
Then the enemy came again.
Above them, the battle in space was becoming a catastrophe measured in burning capital ships.
Anakin stood on the command deck of the Resolute with both hands braced against the holotable, listening to Thrawn's voice guide Republic fire patterns through a battle none of them had been prepared to fight.
"Shift your second cruiser line fourteen degrees starboard," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said over the command channel. "Delay the forward battery cycle by three seconds. The target vessel will open its defensive singularities against the first salvo. Strike the lower growth cluster immediately after."
Yularen issued the orders, his earlier objections buried beneath the brutal proof of necessity.
The Republic line fired.
The Chiss fired with them.
A Vong cruiser ruptured along its underside, spilling organic fire and frozen matter into space. It twisted, wounded but not dead, and one of its smaller escorts dragged itself in front of the finishing shot, absorbing enough punishment to keep the larger vessel alive.
Anakin's teeth clenched behind the mask.
"Again," he said.
Thrawn's voice remained calm. "You do not have the correct angle."
"Then give me one."
"I am attempting to preserve your left flank from collapse, General."
Anakin looked up.
Through the viewport, a Venator from Obi-Wan's support line took three successive impacts from organic projectiles that burrowed through weakening shields and punched into the hull. Secondary explosions rippled along its port side. Escape pods began launching, and then one of the Vong ships opened a gravity distortion near the crippled cruiser.
The Venator bent.
Not metaphorically.
Its wounded hull twisted under impossible stress, plating tearing loose, spine cracking as internal fires burst outward.
The ship broke apart.
No one on the bridge spoke.
Then another alarm screamed.
"Cruiser Tandem Star is gone," an officer called, voice cracking despite himself. "All hands presumed lost."
Yularen's face went white and hard. "Log it and keep firing."
The words were brutal.
Necessary.
Anakin could feel the deaths.
Thousands at once. Clone troopers, naval crew, pilots still strapped into fighters that never cleared the blast radius. Their lives vanished into the Force in a rush that should have drowned him.
But the enemy remained empty.
For every organic ship they managed to cripple or destroy, the Republic and Chiss paid in blood and metal. One Vong vessel died, and two Republic cruisers burned. Another enemy escort collapsed under coordinated fire, and four smaller Republic ships were gutted by coral skippers and gravitic strikes before they could withdraw.
The Chiss were doing better, but only because they had already learned the price before the Republic arrived.
They were still dying too.
"General," Yularen said, "if losses continue at this rate, we cannot sustain the engagement."
Anakin did not look away from the projection. "We don't have to sustain it forever."
"What do we have to do?"
Anakin stared at the organic fleet.
The Force screamed the same answer it had given since the beginning.
Destroy them.
All of them.
He reached for the enemy again, searching for presence, intent, fear, anything.
Nothing.
A blank wall of living absence.
His anger rose hot and immediate, amplified by the changes in his body until the holotable flickered under his hands. Several officers looked toward him and quickly looked away.
Ahsoka was not on the bridge to see it.
Good.
Thrawn's voice came again, still level, still precise, and somehow more frightening because of it.
"General Skywalker, if your central line withdraws now, the enemy will pursue through the gap. If they pursue, they will expose the command vessel currently screened behind the larger organic carrier."
Yularen snapped his gaze to the projection. "You believe one of those things is commanding them?"
"I believe their behavior indicates coordination centered there," Thrawn replied. "I do not yet know whether it is command, instinct, or biological hierarchy. But if it dies, the pattern may degrade."
Anakin's mask turned toward the viewport.
"Show me."
The target appeared on the holotable, marked in blue over its terrible organic shape.
A larger vessel pulsed behind layers of escorts, half-hidden in the churning violence of the battlefield.
Anakin felt nothing from it.
That made him hate it more.
"Admiral," he said quietly, "prepare the center line to withdraw on Thrawn's mark."
Yularen gave him a sharp look. "That maneuver will cost ships."
"I know."
"How many?"
Anakin did not answer.
Yularen's expression tightened, but he turned back to the crew. "Prepare central withdrawal pattern. All captains stand by for Chiss timing marks."
Outside, another Republic cruiser exploded.
Then another Chiss vessel split open under a swarm of coral skippers.
The battlefield had become a graveyard in motion, ships dying while still firing, fighters burning through debris, organic hulls regenerating through wounds that would have killed anything mechanical, and the combined fleets of the Republic and Chiss learning too slowly how to kill something the galaxy was not ready to understand.
Deep inside the Resolute, more alarms joined the chorus.
Boarders had breached another deck.
The flagship shuddered.
Anakin stood beneath red battle lights, directing a fleet that was bleeding faster than victory could justify, and for the first time in a long time, the terrible thought crossed his mind with perfect clarity.
They might lose.
The thought did not frighten him.
It enraged him.
And beyond the viewport, the void filled with fire.