Author's Note

This is my own interpretation of several important events in the Star Wars universe, namingly how the Jedi discovered Count Dooku's existence, the infamous "gundark pit" incident hinted at in Attack of the Clones, and Anakin's face-off with Asajj Ventress and the progressions of the war. While I have taken several characters and situations from the Clone Wars animated series, I do not consider a cartoon to be canon, and have adjusted some events accordingly. This is quite long, but I'm rather proud of it. It's also completed, as I know that I'm terrible at updating.

PART ONE

1 Year Before Attack of the Clones

RAXUS PRIME

CHAPTER ONE

Silence, Alone

Searing ion trails exploded and tangled out across space, vaporizing particles and old ship parts adrift. The sublight engines left a superheated exhaust swath, scarring realspace with intertwined, glowing streams that vanished as quickly as they came. Below the single, tiny ship, the planet of Raxus Prime came into view, a yellow-brown orb perched on the outermost band of an old spiral galaxy. Nebulous dust hung in a haze, shimmering as the flash of running lights caught it.

Raxus Prime was not much of a galactic tourist destination. It was secluded in the uncharted space and notorious pirates of the Outer Rim, peppered with rogue asteroids and not a few black holes; the planets that were to be found were often rough and lawless, paying no heed to Republic regulations, largely in the power of petty warlords and corrupt archons. Raxus Prime was likely to be no different.

The pilot of the starfighter had not come to Raxus Prime to be entertained.

Crammed in the angular cockpit of the Delta-6, he bent over a glowing readout screen, flashing in constant transmission from the battered R4-A2 astromech lodged in the left wing. He took them in with a quick sweep of his eyes, then returned his attention to the control panel, reviewing again this mission.

Raxus Prime: outer planet, completely unpopulated on one side and strewn with seedy spaceports on the other, landscape rough with deserts and rock spires. Not rich in natural resources, it had not produced some remarkable Senator or hero or outlaw, and had no main city or dominant species that could be corralled into the Republic – nothing at all. It was ignored by most of the civilized systems, and that made it the perfect place to hide.

The young man piloting the fighter winced and resisted the urge to rub at the tight knot that had currently taken possession of the space between his shoulder blades. Instead, he continued to fly lower, barely looking at the controls, steering the Delta-6 as if it were an extension of his own body. He turned the starfighter into an effortless roll, accompanied by a strident squeal from the astromech, to avoid the ancient sentinels sending out pulses of search energy. They were likely useless scrap, left over from a miner or two who had decided to try his fortune before leaving disgruntled. Still, the young man could take no chances.

Here, from this perspective, he did not seem particularly striking. There was little room in the Delta-6 cockpit, and so his long legs were folded back nearly in half, sheathed in knee-high leather boots banded with iron at the top. His trousers were rough and black, and his tunic was black as well, unremarkable, with a leather vest over it. His utility belt was hung with the standard gadgets – comlink, breather, food bars – and something not so standard.

A thirty-centimeter titanium cylinder, flaring slightly at the bottom, studded with buttons and swathed in a custom handgrip, hooked to his left side with a small wire; the young man touched it occasionally, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. He wore a plain brown cloak, its deep hood concealing his face completely, its hems trapped beneath his numb legs. Beneath it, his face was handsome enough, with short-cropped sandy hair, a strong jaw, straight nose, and sharp blue eyes. A thin braid hung down behind his right ear, tied with a scrap of colored string.

This was no hopeful prospector, deep-space pirate, or lost galactic tourist. This young man was Anakin Skywalker, and he was a Jedi apprentice, eighteen years old, coming to Raxus Prime to search for his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Anakin turned the starfighter into another graceful dive, sliding underneath a hunk of orbiting scrap. Some wrecked cruiser, he thought, as the Delta-6 screamed by almost close enough to kiss the rusting hull. His transmission screen flashed as Arfour bleated a comment, apparently alarmed by the proximity.

Few sentient species detected on the surface.

"No, I didn't think so," Anakin said out loud. "Not on this side of the planet. Not unless you want to mingle with the criminals."

With a quick change of course, he banked right and dove around a troublesome current. Superheated air rippled and split around his wings as he plummeted down into the atmosphere. "This is Raxus Prime, remember? The worthless, dangerous planet? Of course they'd send me here."

He wondered if astromechs could detect bitterness in human voices. If so, then he might have overloaded Arfour's sensors. It wasn't because of his Master – it was because he shouldn't have been in this starfighter at all. They should have sent him with Obi-Wan in the first place.

Anakin scowled, guiding the Delta-6 into a smoother trajectory as he quickly checked his front and rear readout screens. Nothing. If a planet had nothing, why would it have been so dangerous to let him accompany his Master here in the first place?

"They can't split us up," he had said to Obi-Wan, as the older Jedi stood with one foot in the cockpit of his own Delta-6. "If this planet is as boring as they say, why is it a threat to have me go?"

"That's the problem, Anakin," Obi-Wan had answered, somewhat testily. "The Council believes that a cell of Separatists has been planted there, and while sending one Jedi is quite risky enough, two, and one not even a full Knight, might be actively dangerous. They want someone more…experienced."

"They want someone who they don't think is a liability," Anakin had said. He had tried desperately to will the anger from his voice.

"That is not what I meant, Padawan." Obi-Wan had raised his hood, stepped into the Delta-6. "The Council knows your skill in battle, and if I should run into any difficulty, rest assured they will send for you."

"Am I supposed to sit in the Temple playing hologames with six-year-olds?" Anakin said, stung. "Waiting for you to get into trouble? Listening to Master Kolar review saber technique? I'm your apprentice. I should be going with you. They can't split us apart. What do you want me to do, sit and twiddle my thumbs?"

"I want you to be a Jedi," said Obi-Wan, a faint undercurrent of reproach in his voice. "And do as you are asked."

Anakin looked down, shamefaced – somehow, even the simplest words from Obi-Wan could make him feel like a child all over again. "Still," he couldn't resist, "Master, while a Jedi has an apprentice, they send the two of them together – "

"Not on this mission they don't," said Obi-Wan, kindly but quite firmly. "It is my task to locate these Separatists on Raxus Prime, infiltrate their cell if at all possible, and report my findings back to the Council. It is your task to accept this gracefully, and use your time at the Temple wisely, to grow as a Jedi and as a man."

Anakin stared at his feet.

"Don't worry," said Obi-Wan, with a touch of forced cheer. "I don't expect it shall take long. The main bulk of the Separatist army is elsewhere. And remember, they shall send you if needed."

With that, he had punched a button, the transparisteel cockpit slid closed, and Obi-Wan threw the Delta-6 into reverse and lit out backwards with an elegant inverted loop that would, and did, make Anakin jealous. He stood there watching the tiny shape of his Master's starfighter fade into the vivid bands of the Coruscanti sunset, knowing that, as always, the Jedi were right and, however little he liked it, he had to obey.

That was the last time he had spoken to Obi-Wan, over five standard months ago. The Jedi Council had summoned Anakin scarcely a week ago and told him that due to changed circumstances on Raxus Prime, his Master would indeed be requiring the companionship of his Padawan.

Anakin had pressed them for details, but they had revealed nothing. He had asked if Obi-Wan had made contact, and received a guarded allusion that equated to possibly. He had asked for news of his Master, but they had given him nothing but promises that he would be leaving for Raxus Prime within the standard week. He would be equipped with Delta-6, hyperdrive ring, Jedi astromech, and identi-card giving his name as Seetu Bagadoor, a humble junk dealer looking for left-over mining scrap. It wasn't as if anyone was likely to ask for it.

It wasn't the first time Anakin had been frustrated by the Jedi Council, and now, as he sent the agile little Delta-6 through a series of maneuvers that would have made a sky-rodeo rider proud, he thought that it wouldn't be the last. They were wise, they were Masters, and they had spent years so enveloped in quiet contemplation of the Force that they quite forgot about the rest of the world. Their physical presences, he decided, had become only a minor inconvenience, the Republic and the thorny political battles only a distraction to tranquility.

Political….political. He hated that word. More precisely, the Separatists, Anakin thought angrily as he dodged another chunk of slag. This one looked to have been a turbolaser sometime in its previous life, but now it was just a floating hazard. It always came back to the Separatists.

About a year ago, a small group of star systems, led by the Trade Federation and the very same Viceroy Gunray who had been defeated on Naboo, had announced their intent to secede from the Republic, claiming the bloated bureaucracy and corrupt legal processes were reason enough, without getting into their myriad of other complaints. The Republic had dealt with rebellions before, usually isolated and short-lived, and they assumed this would be the same.

And that had been their mistake. The Separatists had not gone away as planned. In fact, they had gained in strength, power, influence, and fiduciary support, and they had rallied more systems to their cause. Instead of disposing a minor threat, the Republic suddenly found itself facing its most serious challenger in centuries. Since the Separatists were, after all, outlaws, they ran and hid, varying their bases, planning strikes on important Republic targets, waylaying ships, and stockpiling what was, by all accounts, an impressive array of weaponry.

And so, at last, the overwhelmed Senate had begged the Jedi for help. The cosmic do-gooders, as Anakin would only dare call them in the privacy of his own thoughts, had agreed readily enough.

And now – after a long and sleepless trip, he'd tumbled back into realspace just above the thoroughly unimpressive ball of dust that was Raxus Prime. Far away, on the opposite side, there were a few faint, far-apart lights of colonies.

He could just make out the contours of the land. A jagged rock spire punched the air like a victorious fist some six thousand meters down, flashing onto his scopes as an outline in violent green. A few weathered mountains jutted out around it, and the sand was everywhere, coarse and alkaline, fouling his readout screens.

Anakin wrinkled his nose. He'd had more than enough during his childhood on Tatooine; trust the Council to pick him a place that so closely resembled it. He cut the power to the engines a few hundred meters above the ground and let the Delta-6 slide into a graceful landing that kicked up a giant, frothy spume of sand.

The starfighter whirled once and settled to a stop. Anakin punched in the landing claws, and felt the faint judder as they sank beneath the surface. Then he disengaged the cockpit, and a hydraulic hiss feathered out as the transparisteel lifted.

At once, the wind hit him. Wincing, Anakin drew his hood deeper over his face and vaulted off the starfighter onto the ground, bending his knees as he landed. Everyone had mentioned Raxus Prime's general dullness, but no one had mentioned the wind. It cut through him like a lightsaber.

Anakin screwed up his eyes. All around him, the horizon diffracted and split off, like a vast prism. Parked in the lee of a towering rock, his starfighter was the only thing man-made for hundreds of kilometers. It seemed impossible that the Separatists could have come here, impossible that anyone could be here.

Cautiously, Anakin reached for the Force. It flowed around him at once, a glittering, comforting cascade, absorbing him in its familiar channels. He searched through it for any trace of his Master. He had to be here somewhere.

There was no sign of Obi-Wan Kenobi that he could feel.

Frowning, displeased, Anakin let the Force go, and leaned back against the plane of the starfighter's wing to consider. The next logical step was to inform the Council that he had reached Raxus Prime, so he turned around, extracted the mess of communications wiring, and set up the small transmitter. A second or two later, a small blue hologram of Mace Windu crackled into view, arms crossed over a simple Jedi robe. "Anakin. You've reached Raxus Prime?"

"Yes, Master," said Anakin.

"Have you made contact with Obi-Wan?"

"No, Master."

"Have you seen any sign of the Separatists?"

"No, Master."

The smooth dark skin above Mace's brow creased ever so slightly. "Very well. You are the Jedi with the closest connection to Obi-Wan, even if you are only a Padawan. That is why we sent you. Report back when you've spoken to him."

Of course I'm the Jedi closest to Obi-Wan, Anakin wanted to shout. He's been my Master for eight years, we've only been inseparable, you should have sent me in the first place. What he said was, "Of course, Master Windu. May the Force be with you."

"And with you, young Skywalker. Be cautious. There is more to Raxus Prime than it appears, I think." With that, the transmission crackled out into blue static.

Anakin stared at it a second, then sighed and switched the holopad off. He couldn't resist a brief, nervous check around, as if expecting a sentry to leap out at him from behind one of the gnarled rocks. Still nothing.

Anakin began a scanning prowl around the starfighter, checking for animal or speeder tracks, stretching out through the Force. The Council had been sure that the Separatists had come here. Not as if they were infallible, but...

Anakin gritted his teeth. I'm a Jedi, he reminded himself, and Jedi don't get frustrated if the solution doesn't appear within five minutes of planetfall. Obi-Wan has to be here somewhere… he would have reported back to the Council if he'd left. He gets that way. Obsessed with rules.

After several hours of broadening sweeps across the sand, Anakin still had turned up nothing, and discouragement was creeping in over his resolve. This is a whole planet, after all. Maybe he's somewhere else.

Night was coming. The thick dust caught the rays of sunset and filtered them weirdly, casting twisted shadows over the young Jedi's face. The sky itself was a deep, unhealthy yellow that first deepened to maroon, and then to darkness.

By then, Anakin was back in the Delta-6, flying low with his running lights dimmed, using only his senses to scout out possible obstacles. He steered with superhuman reflexes, scraping away from rock spires instants before he would have crashed. The Force prodded his hands, guiding him true through the dizzying labyrinth. Raxus Prime was nothing if not confusing.

The planet's twin moons emerged overhead, vast sickly crescents hanging so close that it seemed they must fall. They did produce enough light to see by, dyeing shadows onyx-black and the sand and stone very white.

Anakin flew through the night, using Jedi techniques to rest the mind and keep physical weariness away. Near dawn, which heralded itself as a deepening vermilion flush far away between the mountains, he set the Delta-6 down and opened one of the small packs of food at his waist.

The sun rose as he munched. The sun of Raxus Prime, like its moons, was huge and perilously close, but its light was thickened and distorted by all the dust and rubbish in the atmosphere, not to mention the endless sand. Anakin could see the pale silhouette of the Delta on the ground, but the sun did not give nearly as much heat or light as he might have expected for a star its size. Maybe that explained why, despite its desert, this place was so bloody cold.

Here, as always, Anakin began to scan, grimacing as a wind-borne gust of sand scoured him broadside. He pulled up his voluminous hood and tried to hold it there, but searching required both hands, and it flapped like a cumbersome sail. Disgusted, Anakin stuffed it back in the starfighter and resumed his search, robeless.

There was still nothing, at least physically, but here, there was something different – a definite disturbance in the Force. The invisible miasma about him had altered subtly, the crystalline flow of energy somehow changed. He was closer than he had been, at any rate. It was hard walking directly into the wind, so he tried it at an angle, knowing that he looked ludicrous but comforted to know that there was nobody watching. He had already sent out pulses of Force energy several times, and he had felt only trackless wastes.

The Force here was attenuated, weaker than he would have liked, with so little life to feed it. He had to draw more of it that he was used to, and it was harder to do simple things such as searching and tracking. All in all, Anakin had already decided that all the reports on Raxus Prime were accurate. He had barely been here a standard day, and he hated the place.

His feet were sliding around inside his sand-clogged boots. Blast, won't the wind ever stop? Anakin shaded his eyes and peered around. Maybe it was a trap… maybe there were droids here, and they, inorganic metallic life-forms, didn't register in the Force as well.

Anakin unhooked his electrobinoculars and lifted them to his eyes. Seen through ultraviolet, radar, and infrared filters, everything in the distance magnified to sudden astonishing size, the desert seemed strange, alien, almost sentient.

He clicked through the filters, sweeping back and forth, but still saw nothing. If the Separatists were here, they were being very cautious indeed. Or maybe they already have their catch. A Jedi Master is a prize compared to a Padawan.

Anakin swallowed. He knew he was most likely being ridiculous. It meant absolutely nothing that he had failed to track down Obi-Wan in the first day. He would say I'm trying for too much.

Being separated from his Master made Anakin edgy. He had never been on a mission by himself before, and this technically didn't count. Still, he was used to relying on his Master, on his dry humor and wit just as much as his Force perception and lightsaber skills. Obi-Wan was the only living Jedi to have ever fought a Sith Lord, not to mention the first Jedi in over two thousand years to do so and win.

This was something that Anakin took secret pride in, but he and Obi-Wan never spoke of it. Obi-Wan had won the duel with the Zabrak Sith, but his own Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, had been killed. It was Qui-Gon who had taken Anakin from Tatooine, insisted to the Jedi Council that he must be trained, even threatened to flout the regulations in order to do it. But the Sith on Naboo had ended that with one thrust of a double-ended lightsaber, and Obi-Wan, keeping his pledge to his dying Master, had taken Anakin for apprentice instead.

Some days, Anakin wished that Qui-Gon had lived. He wondered if perhaps he would have understood him better. Qui-Gon had never been afraid to bend the rules if they did not suit him, to defy the Council and forge a path of his own choosing. Obi-Wan was a good Master, skilled in seemingly everything, well respected by seemingly everyone, but so bloody attendant to protocol, he should have been a droid. Anakin loved him dearly, but the traditional teacher often drove the independent pupil wild.

Arfour's faint bleeping, carried on the wind, broke Anakin from his reverie, and he lowered the electrobinoculars and turned to trudge back to the ship. Despite whatever the Council and Obi-Wan himself had said about this being a straightforward mission, relatively simple, only to ensure that any possible Separatist cell on Raxus Prime had not taken root, Anakin was not so sure. Something was wrong. There was a definite disturbance in the Force.

He reached the Delta, and swung one leg wearily over the wing. He could meditate for years, drive weariness and pain from his mind with technique after technique. Yet, he had not slept in over five standard days and he was feeling it.

Anakin cracked his knuckles, sheathed in black leather gauntlets. Then he sighed, tumbled in a rather undignified fashion into the open cockpit, and checked Arfour's message, still glowing patiently on the screen.

there's nobody here. Are we sure this is the right place?

"Yes, Arfour," said Anakin. "Unless Obi-Wan thought it would be funny to play a prank on the Council, and he's the last Jedi I imagine doing that. Maybe they wanted to cart me off, and this is a false mission to test my patience. Who knows, maybe they came up with that tactic just for me." He reached over to slap the astromech on its dome. "It's all right. Obi-Wan has to be around here somewhere."

Unless the Separatists have taken him off-planet.

"I've thought of that," said Anakin. In truth, he hadn't, but he was annoyed that his droid was suggesting something painfully obvious that he should have considered long before. "Still, though, I think I would know."

Can you feel him? For a droid, Arfour displayed a remarkable knowledge of the Force. Then again, he had served the Jedi ever since he was built.

"No, that's why I'm worried." Anakin was startled to hear himself admit it; he had barely even thought it before it came out of his mouth. "Maybe they've got him and they can't be bothered with me."

Arfour whistled reassuringly. You will find him. At least it's been easy.

"Thanks for that," said Anakin, grinning wryly. In truth, he had expected his arrival on Raxus Prime to be far more – well, dramatic. In his imagination, horde of rebels had flown out, relentlessly beribboned the heavens with white-hot streamers of turbolasers, while he, the brave pilot, had ducked them, returned fire, used all sorts of tricky maneuvers to fend them off.

Once he fought his way through the atmosphere, he would be met by an army of Separatists and battle droids, which would necessitate a quick, decisive fight and, of course, victory. After this, he would stroll into their hidden bunker, find his Master, and return to Coruscant in triumph, a hero. The Jedi Council would certainly decide it was time to raise him to Knighthood, never mind that it was unheard-of to leave the rank of Padawan before you left your teens.

A few halfhearted sweeps of an empty, barren dustball wasn't likely to earn him much, Anakin knew, and it irritated him. He stared at the horizon, eyes stinging from the dust, trying to dig through this new, weakened Force as well as he could. He was expected to keep searching, keep stealthy, keep alert.

There was so much expected of him, the latest-coming novitiate to ever join the Order at the ripe old age of nine. The Council, of course, had opposed his training, and it was only Obi-Wan's affection and loyalty to his own Master that had precipitated it.

Anakin stuffed his black-gloved fist into his mouth to muffle a yawn that threatened to split his face in half. Master Yoda had once said that all a Jedi needed was to rest in the Force, to feel the energy, the life, flowing through him and around him, making him into a grateful tool – or something to that effect.

That, too, galled Anakin. Perhaps all a true Jedi needs is the Force… but I am a man too, and men need sleep.

Still, for Yoda's sake, and for his Master, who would certainly have suggested it, he tried. The Force was no comfort, though – fragile and distorted, spread too thin across this vast arctic desert. Anakin tried to gather it up, weave it into the shimmering patterns he knew so well, to let it soothe him, but he achieved nothing.

The world around him was blurring, and another yawn nearly dislocated his jaw. Anakin, mumbling, ordered Arfour to keep a watch and to wake him immediately if anything changed. Then he tilted the pilot's chair flat and collapsed onto it, pulling his robe up over his head. He was asleep almost before he could close the transparisteel cockpit.