THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 21 – No Thanks To A Jedi

Grievous continued working all night. Midway through his marathon strategizing session, he went back up to his own quarters after all, but only to access his plotting table and other visual aids. By the time people on the day shift were rolling out of their beds and chowing down on breakfast at the various messes, Grievous was just finishing up his projected timeline of his charge towards Coruscant and had, for the first time, an estimated date by which he believed he could force the planet's unconditional surrender. The thought of having the end of the war itself within his grasp at long last so stoked him that he rewarded himself with a long trot around and around his observation deck during which he stared out with avaricious glee at all his wonderful warships hovering nearby throughout. Then he hurried down to the main hangar bay to gloat some more while surrounded with legions of the very droids and new weaponry he'd use to secure his victory. It didn't even occur to him to share what he'd determined with the living members of his ship's complement, the individuals who would most welcome the war's end. Boosting the morale of the Neimoidians, any Neimoidian, was not in his job description.

As soon as he reached the main hangar bay, Grievous ducked into the Geonosians' workshop to first check on the status of the damaged MagnaGuards. A fresh crew of Geos had likewise been working all night, and much to his pleasure, he discovered that they'd already repaired two of the droids and cleared them to return to service and were halfway through finishing up with the next pair. He also found that Lissa had returned to help the insectoids—something that wasn't strictly necessary, given that his fleet had been stood down—and her diligence pleased him anew.

Lissa was also glad to see him. As soon as he was done with his quick briefing from the Geonosian in charge of the work crew, she came over and inquired how he was feeling.

Grievous insisted on leading her outside the shop and onto the hangar floor for greater privacy before he would answer her. "I am fine, thank you," he replied once there, inclining his head in an almost gracious manner.

"No problems with the eyes? Your new foot's okay, sir?"

"All is well." He was especially sure about the functioning of his new foot, given the mileage he'd just put on it up on his observation deck, and the recollection of it afforded him a rare moment of amusement. He snorted, coughed more like, yet Lissa recognized the sound for what it was nonetheless. For some reason her snarly boss had once again done a one-eighty and was in a very good mood indeed.

"I'm happy to hear that, General Grievous. Hopefully, I won't have to replace any more cyborg components any time soon, but I do believe I could manage on my own from now on. No Geonosian supervision required."

Grievous knew exactly what she was alluding to and he snorted again, this time to indicate approval.

"I agree. Tending to me on your own will always be preferable…from now on," he said.

He kept standing there, just looking at her at first, then over at the nearby ranks of droids stored in the giant hold and ready to roll out at a moment's notice. His physician just kept looking at Grievous. His attitude seemed far more chipper than it had been, not so grim. He was in one of his approachable moods all right, she decided.

"Are you here to review your troops, sir?" she inquired brightly, hoping to engage him in further conversation.

Grievous canted his head back, intrigued. In the old days, he'd indeed been in the habit of doing walkabouts before his battles, to look over the men and equipment at his disposal before turning in for one last rest. Several of his most trusted lieutenants and bodyguards would usually accompany him to talk tactics or just listen to his musings as they walked. He'd always enjoyed his informal, last-minute inspections…just the anticipation of the fighting, the camaraderie and support of his friends…

His physician wasn't much of a lieutenant and made for a useless bodyguard. But she did support him, in a sense. And finding her here in the hangar, the one person who could remove the last obstacle standing in the way of his return to Kalee once the Republic was conquered, might even qualify as a fortuitous omen. He supposed she might do.

Grievous said, "Would you care to see my newest droids?"

"Sure!"

He huffed as he started forward, the human scampering along at his side. She looked absurdly pleased with herself. Of course she'd want to see the droids, he thought, she and every Geo she worked with. They were all crazed technophiles at heart, these scientists.

The first group he wanted to look over were the Vulture droids, which were currently at rest clinging to the ceiling of the hold, the latest replacements with their shiny new paintjobs mixed in with the duller-looking, dinged-up old campaigners. Grievous motioned to the woman to remain back for safety's sake before they got too far under the nearest cluster. Vulture droids were big machines, aggressive and reactive, and weren't always all that careful around organics.

Seemingly at Grievous's behest, several of the hanging droids activated, then detached themselves and dropped to the deck and angled their wings downward into walking mode. They clattered into a semi-ring about their master, splayed their makeshift legs, and tilted their pod-like heads to regard him. Lissa watched, entranced, as the cyborg began to converse aloud with the intelligent machines in their own unique dialect, his own head raised to look into their long, gleaming, ruby-red visual sensors. At one point, all the Vulture droids inclined their head pods in unison so that they appeared to be studying Lissa and she waved at them, grinning. Perhaps Grievous was telling them about how she looked after his own droid components just as the ship's mechanics and droid specialists looked after them. Then he walked briefly right in amongst them, still speaking and slapping a hand against one towering long leg here, rubbing the edge of another there, until the apparent pep talk appeared to be over and he backed up while the Vultures lifted up to reset their legs and hovered themselves back into their standby positions.

Lissa trotted up to rejoin her boss.

"Wow! I assumed your droid comm interfaces were only programmed with the common language," she enthused. "Can you speak all of the type dialects?"

"All the ones pertinent to the droid makes under my command," he clarified in a lofty tone and straightened up and shrugged back his cape to make it drape over his shoulder pauldrons in a more flattering fashion.

They next walked past a squad of the ubiquitous and fearsome Colicoid-designed tri-fighters, then paused so Grievous could more closely examine one of the newer droid gunships that'd recently been issued to his fleet. The upgraded gunships, now completely autonomous, were even more massive than their earlier manned versions and took up a lot of space, but Grievous liked housing a few onboard nonetheless just so he could observe their operations first-hand.

"Scary," Lissa remarked, looking at the clusters of missiles attached to the gunship's expansive underside. "These are…HMPs, right? Heavy missile platforms?"

Grievous addressed a string of what sounded like the clicks and thuds of boulders knocking against each other at one of the gunships, and the gunship, rather to Lissa's surprise, clicked and clonked right back. She'd thought that the droid was offline. There was nothing about it, not even the semblance of the usual visual sensor 'eyes', lit up to indicate otherwise.

"HMPs, yes. That is what we call them," Grievous said after a thoughtful pause. "They refer to themselves as Harbingers. Harbingers of death."

"Harbingers? That's remarkable. I wouldn't have expected war droids to be so self-aware."

"They are self-aware and also proud." The bone-white fingers of his cyborg hand rubbed over the shielded leading edge of one wing, making a whispery, grating sound. The gunship rumbled again, a low guttural rattle that teetered on the verge of becoming infrasound. "You see," Grievous said. "Already he is looking forward to his first mission and destroying as many of our enemies as possible."

Lissa regarded her superior with some suspicion. It had just occurred to her that Grievous might be having his own version of a bit of fun with her. The gunship could have been cursing her out for all she knew.

"Did he really say that?" she asked. "Or are you just pulling my chain?"

"Pull your…chain?"

Now it was Grievous who was regarding his underling, the beginnings of a puzzled frown knitting his brows. Then he got it, or thought he had, and his eyes narrowed with rare amusement.

"Ah. You believe I have ensnared you. Enslaved you with a collar and a leash, to be my pet."

Lissa, surprised again, felt safe enough to indulge in a chuckle at his unexpected response. She was sure that he'd think she was laughing at the cleverness of his quip, not because he'd once again totally misconstrued her meaning.

They moved on. A new all-black shape began standing out amidst the more prosaic designs as they walked along the mechanical ranks. It was low-slung, short-winged, and quite small, and had a peculiar oily sheen to its exterior. Lissa thought that it must be a new autonomous fighter droid of some sort, all curves and very elegant, and couldn't resist stopping and running her hand over its gleaming pointed nose.

"What's this? It's beautiful! Stealth technology? Is this a surveillance droid?"

"Stealth technology, yes. But not a surveillance droid," Grievous replied.

His physician bent down to look under its nearest wing tip. She could see a long slot, otherwise its surface, top and bottom, seemed virtually unbroken. There weren't even any of the usual sensor eyes to be seen.

"Can it carry a payload? But it can't carry much, can it? I'm not seeing many attachments for missiles or the like."

Grievous continued staring down at her. His eyes narrowed.

"He does not carry missiles."

"Oh? What then?"

"He is meant to move over the enemy at night, slowly and in secret, and distribute chemical and biological weapons."

Lissa frowned and took her hand off the droid at once. Grievous lowered his head, his eyes glinting.

"You don't like my new friend?" he asked quietly.

"I like him fine. It's a beautiful droid. I just don't like what you're planning on using him for."

They regarded each other with equal measures of stubborn disapproval for a minute. On this day, it was the big cyborg who capitulated first.

"Huh," he remarked, and turned and walked off, leaving it up to Lissa to trail along in his wake. His physician kept following along, subdued. She wished she hadn't had to disagree with him over the new droid and sour his mood, but sensed it would have been worse if she'd pretended otherwise. Defiance was still something he found easier to handle than lies and pretence, at least when it came from her.

Eventually they walked onto that part of the bay floor where Grievous kept his personal fighters. The three of them were all still there, parked next to one another, the long grey one, his captured Jedi fighter, and the Geonosian fanblade, which still looked like a rosy-red shuttlecock to her. Lissa remembered the day when she and Attenbro had watched General Grievous test-fly all three machines, over and over, and how he'd chewed out the Neimoidian line crew. That had been an entertaining day, except maybe for the Neimoidians who'd been the targets of all the verbal abuse, and she couldn't help smiling a little to herself at the memory. Grievous saw the look of pleasure come over Lissa's face, misinterpreted its cause entirely, and felt a glut of bile rise up.

"I suppose this one is more to your taste," he exclaimed, his tone harsh and accusatory, sweeping one arm out to indicate the Geonosian ship. "No mind of its own. Not made for war."

"It's a vessel, not a droid," Lissa admonished mildly, ignoring his sudden spat of temperament. "You can't compare the two. But yes, I do like your fanblade. It's pretty. I like almost everything designed by the Geonosians, they've got great aesthetics. I imagine the handling's quite a bit different from your usual one-man fighter, though."

Grievous blinked. "Yes," he admitted. "It is, a little."

"That's likely because the designers are themselves natural fliers. I think folks like them have a better, more instinctive understanding of aerospace principles than do people like, well, like me and you."

Returning to a subject she could genuinely enthuse over seemed to mollify the ill-tempered General. He responded in kind, his nastiness falling away.

"Yes, the handling is very light, yet tight. Abrupt, almost," he said. "It is possible to pause a fanblade in the air and even fly backwards, if you know how. Very different than my Belbullab."

"Belbullab… That's your big long grey fighter, right?"

"Yes. My Soulless One. I have had it since the start of the war."

Lissa fought hard not to smirk at that one. Soulless? Had he honestly just said that his starfighter was soulless? Well, that was revealing. She wondered what he'd think if he knew that her Geonosian friends usually referred to his Belbullab as the Lead Sled.

"How do you like that Jedi ship you captured?" she asked, to divert herself from adding a lame remark which would just wind up pissing him off again.

"Of moderate use. Not much weaponry. They are more transport than fighters."

"Figures. That's exactly the sort of thing that'd suit a Jedi."

Grievous blinked again. "Perhaps…"

He stood for a moment saying nothing more, still regarding his physician. She was looking at the fanblade again. On an impulse, he stepped closer to the machine, reached for the control to work the cockpit canopy, and opened it up, then stepped aside a little and eyed her again. Sure enough, she skipped right up and started gawking around inside without even waiting for a proper invitation.

"Who-ah…amazing visibility! It must feel like you're sitting on the edge of space itself when you fly."

"Yes, it is this pedestal seat, the controls set to either side and low in the front." He leaned in beside the woman, partially into the cockpit, and motioned with one hand. "Can you fit in there?"

"In the space behind the seat, you mean? Sure!" And as slick as could be, she squirmed in without a second's further delay, bending her body easily. "Do you want me to check one of the access panels for you?" she added, thinking that he'd just asked her to climb aboard because he was too large to fit behind his seat himself and wanted something looked at without resorting to the Neimoidian techs.

Not even close. Lissa had no sooner propped herself to peek out from behind the pedestal base and appreciate the forward view from an even better perspective than Grievous too hopped inside and seated himself. The bubble canopy came down and she heard it start sealing itself.

"Hey!" she exclaimed.

The cyborg ignored her. Instead he activated the starfighter and it started to whine, then lifted up. Lissa scrabbled at the floor and the seat itself, but there wasn't anything to grab and she didn't have enough room to even rise to a sitting position; all she could do was lie there, hugging the pedestal base with her whole body.

"General Grievous!"

This time she got back something that sounded like a low, half-strangled chuckle. Seconds later he was punching the little fanblade out through the nearest partially open hangar bay door and Lissa saw for herself what it felt like to be exposed to space with only a few centimeter's worth of high-tech transparisteel between her and certain death.

"Oh geeze oh geeze oh geeze," she muttered to herself, although she also couldn't stop herself from staring at the vast armada of spaceships suddenly spread out all around them.

But Grievous wasn't interested in demonstrating his acrobatic skills or shaking her about like a rag doll as she'd feared, he just wanted to show her a few more droids. "There. Can you see those vessels?" he asked. "The ones that look like AGDs?"

"AGD…uh…air ground destroyer, right," she answered shakily. "I see them."

"The originals were exclusively droid-manned. These are the upgraded version and need no crew at all. They are war droids themselves, entirely autonomous."

"Oh! Um…they're big."

"And very lethal. Let me show you the advantage not having to go through a crew can offer."

"Uh. What?"

The AGD closest to them, one of a little flotilla of eight, all at once broke away and streaked towards a Trade Federation ship off their port side. Lissa gasped and held her breath. Grievous was commanding the droid AGD, of that she was certain, although she didn't know how exactly he was doing it. Then the thing unloaded a massive blast at the hapless Trade Federation vessel and for a terrible moment Lissa thought the Federation ship had had its bridge blown to smithereens. But no, whatever the AGD had fired at it had detonated well short of its target. The only thing created was a spectacular explosion which had briefly hidden the other ship. They must've experienced some buffeting, though. The targeted vessel was beginning to turn away and a high screaming voice suddenly filled the fanblade's cockpit.

"General Grievous! General Grievous! Help! Your AGD has gone berserk! It is attacking us! It is—"

"Hold your position and end this transmission!" Grievous shouted right back. "The AGD is engaged in a targeting exercise. Do not move and you will not be damaged. Grievous out!"

And then, just to prove his point, he ordered the AGD droid to fire again, and again a huge explosive cloud blossomed right in front of the Neimoidian ship. This time they held their station, exactly as demanded, and Lissa, who was still lying there in the fanblade and now appalled, could only imagine how terrified the Neimoidian bridge crew must be of their Supreme Commander that they would rather hold their ground and chance accidental obliteration than face his wrath. Twice more the droid AGD fired after that, this time to either side of its target, and at last Grievous seemed satisfied with its performance and called it off. Slowly, it swung about and returned to its original position amongst the other AGDs. Grievous followed at an equally leisurely pace in his fanblade. And then—he laughed.

"General Grievous! General Grievous! Help us!" he mimicked in a weird falsetto voice and laughed some more before adding, in his more usual tone, "What utter cowards!"

Lissa lost it. It was either that or be horrified, and the cyborg's sudden show of unexpected humour reminded her too much of the same sort of cruel joy expressed by a malicious little boy, cackling as he pulled the wings off whatever passed as flies on his home planet. She snorted, coughed, gave up trying to hold it in, then guffawed right along with her crazy boss. It was the most obvious evidence yet that he still possessed a sense of humour…a nasty, inhuman sense of humour, yet humour nonetheless. It was a good thing, she supposed.

The Invisible Hand took center stage in what she could see of the view ahead and began to grow larger. It looked as though her weapons tour was over and they were returning home. She cast her gaze upward, but couldn't see much of Grievous himself, just parts of his legs and feet thrust out to work the controls set forward on the cockpit floor and one of his arms stretched out almost over her head to handle the additional controls on one of the slanted banks on either side of the pilot's seat. He sounded approachable…informal…had even laughed, for goodness' sake…

Perkily, knowing full well that she might be about to swat a hornets' nest, she asked, "General? Why do you dislike Neimoidians so much?"

Grievous scowled as he considered her question. If he'd sensed the slightest bit of disapproval or censure he would have exploded with righteous anger, but she seemed genuinely curious. "Their Viceroy, Nute Gunray, insulted me," he admitted grudgingly at last. "He tried to give me orders when we first met, the way he would speak to a battle droid."

"Oh. I see."

Lissa tried to picture it. It wasn't pretty. Despite herself, she began to grin.

"And that's all he did," she added with a certain wonder, and Grievous, always hyper-sensitive, instantly detected the insincerity in her tone and shot back a fiery retort.

"He thought I was a droid! Isn't it enough?" he cried.

Dead silence this time. Grievous canted his head to one side, trying to see the woman's face, but she was scrunched in too far behind his seat. His inability to assess her expression just made him madder.

"Well?" he demanded hotly.

"All right."

"All right what?" After such an admission, Grievous felt he deserved a lot more. As for Lissa, she was still having a hard time not laughing aloud at the enormity of his pompous wounded vanity.

"I'm all right with you disliking Neimoidians, General, and that you believe you have reason to do so."

"So you are saying you like them," he snapped back, not at all taken in by her diplomatic phrasing. "Think they are acceptable, by human standards."

"I like some of them. A couple of the doctors, one of the mess crew. Your Captain, Lushros Dofine…I think he's a good man. A nice man." She paused and grinned again, broadly, before adding, "I'd date him, if Neimoidians were into such things."

Grievous instantly scowled again. 'Date' was one of those ambiguous human terms he absolutely loathed. He'd learned it could mean anything from wishing to simply enjoy another being's company to wanting to have sex with them, and either extreme was equally repulsive in his mind if it involved Neimoidians. He pulled his brows down even further, realized that Lissa probably couldn't see his face either from her low perspective, and voiced his disgust instead.

"Ugh," he said, and that was the last word he had to say about that subject.

The fanblade slipped through the force field encasing the open hangar bay on the Invisible Hand mere moments later and Grievous parked it in the exact same spot from which they'd departed. Lissa wriggled out backwards with relief as soon as he popped the canopy; she was getting stiff from having stuffed herself into the restrictive space. Grievous climbed out more slowly and wound up standing before her, using his relaxed pose, not confronting her exactly, yet seeming to need some sort of closing acknowledgement. Lissa found herself happy to provide one.

"Well, that was—different," she said, looking up into his face. "Thank you for taking me along on a review of your troops, sir. I can assure you that I've never experienced anything quite like it."

Her words seemed to please him. He jacked his head up and tilted it, in an almost cheerful manner.

"Yes, and I appreciated your company," he responded, a reply which absurdly pleased her in turn. "But now I think you should join your Geonosian colleagues, to help them finish with my MagnaGuards."

"Oh yes. Of course, sir!"

"We will be very busy soon. I'll have need of all my forces then," said Grievous.

"We'll all be ready, sir," she assured him, and he nodded his head, dismissing her, before turning away to return to his bridge. Lissa watched him glide off before she herself returned to the Geonosians' workshop. She could swear he had a bit of a spritely spring to his gait, but that might have just been wishful thinking.

Lissa came away from her latest interaction with General Grievous feeling quite elated. The way he'd spoken to her, his pride in showing her the new droids, even their unexpected flight and his show of humour, mean-spirited though it had been…it was the most normal-seeming behaviour she'd ever seen him exhibit. His mind was still healing, she was sure of that now, and the man he'd once been was emerging bit by bit. It made her promise to him, to finish fully eradicating all the damage done to him by the Separatists once his duties were over, easier for her to bear.

Yet in other ways, the ways which capitalized on his talents to wage war, he was still a monster. His next campaign, one of several operations he'd just been working so diligently on all night long, was designed to overcome a complex of worlds centered about the planet of Duro, and he launched his multi-faceted attack only two days after his seemingly friendly last encounter with his personal physician. Many of his new targets were civilian in nature and scantily defended. But that was the point. Grievous intended to spread as much dread and panic as he did destruction this time.

Several memorable atrocities soon occurred during the weeks-long offensive and news about it was allowed to spread far and wide. The new plague droids successfully sowed their biological payloads and millions of people became infected and died. Other whole populations were slaughtered by more prosaic means, freeing up ever more space and materials to appropriate, and hundreds of thousands were forced into slavery. The worst event was the massive orbital bombardment of one of the Core Founders, a planet called Humbarine. This battle, such as it was, was recorded and broadcast live via the HoloNet, and billions upon billions of viewers were able to watch as Humbarine, an ecumenopolis not so different from Coruscant itself, was gradually reduced into a hellish inferno, its very crust set ablaze and melting. Even Supreme Chancellor Palpatine forced himself to watch, his eyes glistening with tears throughout. Or at least that was what those standing near him and sharing in the horror at the time thought was shining in his eyes. What they were really seeing was the gleam of avarice and sadistic glee, and they would have been horrified ten times over had they known that what they observed in the eyes of the secret Sith Lord was being reflected at that very moment in the golden orbs of the very being overseeing the destruction. For Grievous, too, was watching, watching first-hand from the bridge of his command ship as it unleashed round after round into the burning world beneath him. He knew full well that what he was doing would turn him into the very avatar of terror for every mewling, cringing citizen left in the Republic.

Not all of the worlds and colonies which the Separatist forces approached during the campaign tried to defend themselves. A number of them simply surrendered, and Grievous, for the most part, accepted their decisions. On several occasions, during the confusing aftermaths of such capitulations, he dispatched Lissa to get out several more personal messages for him, which she always managed to do without attracting any undue notice. What her boss didn't know was that for the first time his go-between sent out several messages of her own as well and it was very fortunate for her that Grievous was too distracted by the fighting to dwell on how exactly she achieved her tasks. And so she kept her secrets just as Grievous kept his, and as far as she was concerned, never the twain would meet…

Overseeing such a complex campaign meant that General Grievous spent most of his time aboard Invisible Hand with little opportunity to directly indulge his bloodlust, yet another reason Lissa was relatively free to pursue the more furtive requests he made of her. It wasn't until the Separatists had won almost all their objectives and carved out another huge swatch of new territory for themselves that the antsy cyborg felt safe in temporarily relinquishing his command to his immediate subordinates and personally joined in on a mopping-up ground battle still underway on one of the few remaining planets that had offered any resistance. It was a Loyalist world, full of humans and near-humans, some of them rumoured to be important politicos with ties to those in power on Coruscant. The sort of folks who might try and pull in some favours as they desperately tried to flee, in other words.

Grievous's hunch was almost immediately proven correct even as his own ops shuttle was still descending to the planet's surface. They almost collided with several large vessels taking off from a spaceport with reckless speed, the three of them scattering to the winds the instant their respective crews recognized the ops shuttle as the enemy; Grievous had to content himself with ordering in some Voodoos and Vulture droids to chase after those. He also directed another squadron to concentrate on disabling any likely looking escape ships left on the ground. With luck, the remaining escapees and their—possibly?—Jedi rescuer or two would then be trapped and offer some decent sport.

The shuttle landed next to a terminal building and Grievous and a quartet of his MagnaGuards sprang out, eager to hunt. A quarter of battle droids disembarked too, much more slowly, followed by one very dispirited-looking human woman. Lissa was already thinking that it was shaping up to be a repeat of the slaughter on Oronaciem all over again and she was in no mood to see any more death firsthand. She tried concentrating on the flying droids streaking intermittently over the spaceport even as she let Sunny and the others hustle her under cover. They were still beautiful, efficient machines and pleasing to her eye, no matter what they'd been programmed to do.

The spaces inside the building they entered all seemed to be deserted and Sunny kept trying to hurry Lissa along. The General and his guards had already run on far ahead, the battle droid told her. He missed out, Lissa thought. It's too late and everyone already got away. She trudged on more cheerfully. If the whole terminal had already evacuated it would also mean that her services wouldn't be needed at all and this whole exercise would be for nought.

A sudden low crumping sound and its attendant brief vibration underfoot ruined her hopes. Someone was fighting back after all…or were they? Lissa had caught a glimpse of a Separatist fighter firing at something on the tarmac far away from the terminal just before she'd gotten inside and it was possible that they were still just destroying vessels left behind. She wound up asking Sunny about it, whether he knew either way, but the droid had no answer for her; he just wanted her to hurry, hurry, hurry. Before long they left the spaces clearly intended for passengers and entered a service section, the sort of area typically closed off by doors marked by some variant of 'employees only beyond this point'. Murderous cyborg generals and their lackeys only, Lissa thought as they passed through yet one more lettered door and grinned tightly to herself. Sometimes all you could do to cope was get a little loopy…

It turned out to be the last thought she could remember having afterwards. A massive impact all at once crashed down behind her from above, destroying the corridor she'd just walked down, the blast off it flinging her forward. Lissa went down—again—and this time there was no bouncing up from it the way she had on that ridiculously named planet Quispamsis. For a long minute she just lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, her hearing dulled as if she were underwater. Her guess—although she would never know it—had been correct. A Vulture droid outside had just nailed another escape ship, a shuttle already lifting up into the air and whose dying pilot's last inadvertent act had been to steer his fragmenting vessel straight into the roof of the terminal building.

Lissa abruptly regained her senses, yet still couldn't seem to make herself move. Tendrils of dust swirled above her and the air tasted and smelled terrible. The weird sensation of being underwater continued. All she could hear were low ticking sounds. Then two droid feet stamped down close to her chest, the droid's body seeming to stretch very far above them, and a conical yellow-marked head came down out of the dust swirls. Lissa knew that head. And the way he was peering at her put everything into sudden, blessed perspective.

"Sunny," she murmured, and successfully reached one hand in under her waist to dig out an annoying piece of debris which she was lying on.

Several more of the battle droids strode up, none of them seeming damaged, standing by. Lissa started to go through the slow routine of checking her own self out, flexing her limbs one by one, working her back and neck. No bad pain, not yet, and just a few trickles of blood from cuts. She still felt a little dazed and didn't trust herself to get up fully just yet, but did manage to sit up okay. One side hurt while she did so. She felt it gingerly. Ouch. Still, her rib cage felt intact. She'd live.

Sunny leaned down further, taking one of her arms pre-emptively, ready to help her up when she felt capable of standing. But then he jerked away again—how weird. Even weirder, he fell down himself. The lower part of him fell down. Lissa blinked, trying to process what she was seeing. Then Sunny's head came down right in front of her and the other battle droids started coming apart. A pair of trouser-clad legs waded in amongst the disintegrating machines. She heard low hums, saw flashes of blue light. Seconds later, a pair of humanoid hands replaced Sunny's metal hands on her arm.

"Ma'am? Ma'am? Are you all right?"

The woman stared up into the boyish face of a fellow human. As soon as he saw that he'd gained her attention, he started trying to get her up.

"It's all right now. You're safe. And I still have one last shuttle standing by under cover," he said. "We can still get away if we hurry."

Lissa felt stunned all over again. What the hell! she thought, and made a sudden convulsive lunge to her feet, not even needing the young man's assistance. Sunny and the others lay in smoking pieces all around her. The corridor behind her was blocked by massive pieces of rubble and twisted metal, also smoking. She stared helplessly at her hapless rescuer, a rescuer with a lightsaber now tucked into a belt tied about his tunic waist.

"Good! Can you walk, do you think? Do you want me to help you, ma'am?"

"I'm fine," she muttered, her own voice reverberating to her ears as though uttered in an echo chamber. But she could hear again—sort of—and she could understand what had been said to her.

The Jedi took hold of her by the elbow even so and began hustling her through the service ways almost the same way her battle droid guardians had just been hustling her along through the building. She let him do it, tottering now and then, but staying upright, still trying to make sense of what was going on. The young man at her side had very short hair, she saw, and a padawan braid—he wasn't even a proper Jedi yet! But he'd rescued her even so, or thought he had, she began to realize, and was probably feeling very good about having just liberated her from imminent captivity. She glanced down at her own self, looking over her dusty, mostly intact clothing. It was true that she wore no rank badges, no symbols at all. She just made do with whatever uniform-styled jumpsuits half-way fit her human dimensions and whatever kit she carried was pretty generic too. The Jedi must've thought she was just some poor unlucky sap working in the terminal who'd gotten trapped, had seen Sunny reaching down and thought the Separatist droids were about to grab her up. Her confusion edged over into a strange sort of listless resignation. Why not let this Jedi lead her away and take her chances on that promised last shuttle, the still spaced part of her mind pondered. Technically, she was a captive, nothing but a useful slave, really. And it wasn't as if Grievous could claim that she—

The transponder!

The transponder buried in her back which would lead the Separatists straight to wherever this earnest, insistent, stupid young man was trying so hard to take her!

Lissa put on the brakes, stumbled, almost fell down. Only the Jedi's holding her up kept her from crashing to the ground.

"Ma'am? Ma'am? Are you feeling worse? Do you need more help?"

"I can't go with you," Lissa mumbled. The young Jedi began walking her forward anyway, one arm around her now. She tried to yank away from him, starting fighting with him. "I can't go with you! Please! Let me go!"

"It'll be all right, ma'am! We're almost there. We'll soon be safe."

Lissa almost groaned. "No. No you won't be. You don't understand…"

And then she heard the sound she both dreaded and expected, the sharp tak-tak-tak of metal feet on a floor, rapidly approaching. Lissa went limp again. It was too late.

"Grievous," she whispered.

The Jedi's hands tightened, clutching at both of her arms. "Grievous? You mean General Grievous? Grievous is here?" He shook her a little. "Ma'am? Did you see General Grievous?"

Then the answer to his question came roaring around the corridor intersection right in front of them, cutting them off, and the cyborg's already seething anger flared into incandescent fury the instant he saw a hated Jedi with his hands—his hands!—on his personal physician. The young man, as shocked as Grievous was, jumped back for an instant to draw his lightsaber, then stepped forward again, in front of Lissa, to protect her. Grievous responded with an unearthly snarl and stopped short and drew himself up to his full height.

"Veleroko!" he bellowed.

And Lissa…obeyed. Despite herself, hating what she was doing, she came out from behind her protector and walked haltingly towards the towering creature who'd shouted her name. The Jedi was too shocked by her action to try and stop her. He just let her go, and when she came within reach, Grievous reached out the lower half of one uncoupled arm and grasped her wrist and drew her back and in behind himself. Lissa was still too dazed to register that he did it with astonishing gentleness given his quivering rage, but the Jedi saw and it kept him rooted in place, unable to believe what he was watching. Then Grievous adjudged that his physician was safe again and let himself explode.

Lissa never saw the brief, brutal duel which followed. She kept her back turned, but she heard it…heard the handful of rapid saber blows and ripping and tearing which reduced the poor young Jedi into ribbons of flesh and blood. When it was over, she felt one of Grievous's three-fingered hands on her shoulder again.

"Are you all right?"

"There was an explosion. It threw me down." She paused, suddenly finding it hard to breathe and began gasping. "He attacked the droids…k-killed Sunny… They tried…"

Grievous just stood there, listening, until she ran out of air, then called for two of his MagnaGuards to join them. Even if Lissa couldn't talk anymore, she could still walk okay, and she eventually followed the elite droids fully out of the terminal and into the ops shuttle waiting for her nearby, feeling very meek and unhappy indeed. Grievous had declared her off-duty and a casualty. It was the first time she had failed him.

The same two MagnaGuards accompanied her all the way back up to the Invisible Hand and right up to the door of the Neimoidians' infirmary, delivering her like a package who'd been badly mishandled by a psychotic delivery worker. Once inside, Lissa soon wound up feeling sorrier for the two Neimoidian doctors who tended to her than she did for herself. Both aliens looked terrified throughout their ministrations and she could only imagine what threats Grievous must have made to them before sending her up. As she herself expected, she was not too badly hurt, just battered throughout with a concussion and some barely cracked ribs, and the last of the whirling vertigo and dulled hearing she'd experienced right after the explosion had already faded. A heavy dose of anti-inflammatories and other drugs took care of the last of the pain and she then sat for two hours in a hot bacta bath, and that was surely the best prescription of all, to just soak up the healing heat and veg out for a while, the war and the fighting and her miserable situation forgotten. She refused to think anymore about what had just happened planetside, at least not yet. Her memory of the doomed Jedi's boyish, earnest face alone was far more painful than her bruised ribcage.

The Separatist juggernaut finished rolling over their latest victims just fine without Lissa's further input, and Grievous was presumably informed of her recovery and return to active status for she never saw him again before returning to the droid tender. The vast majority of the war fleet stood down, their latest job done, and moved on. They had their sights set on several more Core worlds.

But Lissa's latest misadventure incurred its own share of repercussions nonetheless. Her own home vessel had no sooner gotten underway than she received a posting message informing her that she was being permanently transferred from the droid tender to the Invisible Hand. Nagas was saddened to lose such a valuable member of his staff, even if she wasn't Geonosian, and went so far as to voice his displeasure over Grievous's decision while he was helping her pack up. Lissa, on the other hand, never uttered so much as a peep of protest. She was thinking that her transfer was only fitting punishment for having felt glad when Grievous killed the Jedi who'd destroyed Sunny.

TBC