Chapter Text
“I’ve uploaded the map into the lower sections of the temple for you. Take the rest of the Padawans and initiates, and follow it. You will find Jedi Guardians to lead you the rest of the way out of the temple and into the city. The Shadows will get you off-planet from there, and help you stay hidden in the galaxy. If I could impose on you to check on the Corps. We gave them an evacuate-and-hide order, but we’re not sure if they received the messages or not. I’ll upload a list of their main outposts to you. We will hold the line here while you get the young ones out,” Jedi Othel’s tones are even and measured as he gives Rex his orders, the sounds of blaster fire echoing distantly in the halls of the temple, further, then closer, then further again.
Senior Padawan Lisara bursts into the garden below Rex’s high vantage point, an entire squad of clones hot on her heels, intent on her death. She spins and brings up her lightsaber, desperately deflecting blaster bolts into the trees around her.
“Respectfully, sir,” Rex starts to reply, distractedly, when he sees his opening.
He lines up the shot and takes it.
The bolt fells the senior Padawan like a popper takes out an SBD. She falls bonelessly to the grassy ground.
The clones stop shooting. They look around, a surveillance pattern. No other Jedi around them.
Mission accomplished.
Rex watches coldly, clocking the process once more as that fucking eerie jolt slams through the clone squadron that had cornered the Padawan alone in the gardens, rippling through them, taking their postures from wrong and mechanical to something more familiar. Something aching and painful.
He doesn’t need to be linked into their coms to hear the shouts of denial as the brothers below wake back to the world around them at the death of the Padawan in front of them. Their mission fulfilled, the parameters of whatever the fuck was programmed into them fulfilled: all Jedi in range dead.
Buckets come off, and Rex coolly shoots one panicky brother who looks on the verge of doing something regrettable.
The squad medic darts forward for the Padawan, heedless of the danger even as the others reflexively take cover from Rex’s sniper fire.
His relieved shout echoes through the others, relief and hope and shock loud and clear on all the faces Rex can see clearly through his scope, when the medic finds the pulse at the neck of the brave Padawan who volunteered for that particular ruse.
Good.
She was just stunned, of course, like the vod, but Rex gladly slides his finger off the switch that would have made the bolts fatal, relieved not to have to take them out to protect her, if it didn’t work.
Rex sends Crik the signal to move forward; approach with caution. Below, the squad reacts perfectly to his appearance, placing themselves defensively between Crik and the Padawan, blasters coming up in her defense.
Hands up, quickly explaining what little they knew, Crick talks them down, painting the slash of red across their foreheads that they had quickly adopted as a visual marker for those who had been snapped out of … this, this madness.
The squad’s lieutenant is carefully cradling Padawan Lisara as she starts to stir. Gingerly, like he’s not sure if he wants to hold on tighter or leap away from her. She’s not their padawan Commander, Rex doesn’t know what happened to their commander, or their General, can’t ask that question yet, but she’s still a Jedi, and he breathes out a relieved sigh as, like the others before them, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad shows no signs of renewed hostility as she comes awake, blinking at them warily, before trying a tentative smile on the clones around her.
Rex turns his head away as the lieutenant pulls her tight, his shoulders shaking even as she touches them gently. Rex lifts his scope out of the way to look at the Jedi standing beside him at the overlooking window.
“With all respect, sir,” Rex repeats, finally able to turn his attention to the Jedi’s words. “Get kriffed.”
Jedi Othel chokes, startled out of his fucking stupid noble sacrificial ploy. Really, it was a good speech. It might have worked on a shiny. But Rex has been serving with General Sk— General Kenobi for most of the war. He knows to shut that self-sacrificial bullshit down fast.
“That’s an order, captain!” The Jedi commands, voice wavering, and kriff, has this General ever even been on the battlefield? Rex looks at him again, squinting a little. Scarred and weathered, silvered hair parting oddly over a scar that carved up the left side of his face and stretched onto his scalp. No, that wavering in his voice isn’t fear, it’s age.
Kriff this with a karking lightsaber.
“It’s technically ‘Commander’. And respectfully sir, right now I outrank you.” It’s the boldest lie he’s possibly ever told, but he’s not sure that this Jedi knows that, and Rex is damn good at bluffing when he has to be. “The 501st doesn’t leave people behind. A third of my men are still in the grips of whatever the kark this is. Who knows how many more of my brothers are as well, and since this seems to be targeting the Jedi, you know they’re going to come here. That’s a death sentence, trying to hold the line here. Enough Jedi have died today. So what we’re going to do, is keep playing very careful, very dangerous tag with them to give whoever is watching the illusion that the battle is continuing while the evacuation completes, and then you’re going to help me wake the rest of them up, and then we’re all getting out of here. Is that understood?”
The Jedi gives him a long look that says he both saw through Rex’s bluff, and will go along with it.
For now.
Kriff, he better watch this one. If this starts to go badly, Rex has the feeling he’ll find himself unconscious over someone’s shoulder being hauled bodily out of the temple whether he likes it or not.
Rex grins, a grimly amused thing.
They understood each other, then. If Rex has to drag Jedi Othel out of the Temple by his silvered hair, he’s coming with them.
“But, sir?” Rex says, grim and implacable before Othel can make the call to spread those orders. “Tell the defenders to aim to kill if they have to. I know my brothers, sir. They’d rather die themselves than wake from this to find out they killed their Jedi.”
Rex can’t even contemplate what is happening in the rest of the galaxy, if this is as widespread as it seems to be. He’d tried to get a message off to Cody, but the whole kriffing planet is locked down. Barring a miracle of the Force, no reinforcements are coming. And no guarantee that when they showed up, they’d be on Rex’s side. Judging by the grim looks on the faces of many of the older Jedi, the news in the Force from the rest of the galaxy was both unhelpfully vague and very bad.
Hold fast, Cody. He thinks. You better be alright, you stubborn bastard. You and that damned General of ours. I’m coming, as soon as I can. And I’m bringing guests. Including a Jedi as stubborn as you and Obi-Wan combined. You’ll like him, I think. Your scars even almost match. Just hold tight.