“It doesn't look like much,” Wolffe said. “What could Dooku be after?”
Plo Koon tapped the edge of his deox mask with a talon. “Desevro is an uninhabited rock on in the backwaters of the Outer Rim, yet that might be exactly what draws them to it. It could be that this is ordinarily somewhere they can quietly deal with pirates, or perhaps hold an unlicensed mining operation.” With the recent success on Felucia, they'd penetrated deeper into the Perlemian Trade Route than ever, giving access to Desevro and the planets beyond.
“Or that is what they want us to believe.”
“There is little on the world Jedi or Republic archives. We will have to do some scouting.”
Wolffe would have made a face had he not been in public and without his bucket. “Let's hope we don't come in on top of them.”
Plo reacted as if he'd made a face anyway, despite Wolffe's perfect control of his face and the fact Plo wasn't even looking at him. Not for the first time, Wolffe wondered whether the deox mask and goggles impeded his vision more than he let on, forcing him to rely on the Force to compensate.
Not that Wolffe was complaining about the hand on his arm. Plo was very good at reassurance.
“It is also possible that Dooku altered the records in the Jedi Archives,” Plo then added. “Kamino he straight-up deleted, but he might have done more subtle manipulations on other entries.”
Wolffe took back every good thought he'd ever had about Plo's ability to reassure him and glowered. Plo, the traitor, merely looked inordinately amused – and didn't let go of his arm.
“We'll come in at the edge of the system and immediately go dark,” Plo ordered Admiral Coburn. “Passive sensors only.”
“Yes, General,” Coburn said and went to coordinate systems shutdowns with the bridge crew.
Plo Koon was not a member of the bridge crew, so he stayed where he was, staring at the blue-white blur of hyperspace through the transparisteel while he waited for Wolffe to arrive. It wouldn't be long: his Force presence was approaching at a steady clip. Nothing alarming being broadcast. Plo couldn't resist reaching out with a tendril of warmth, even if Wolffe didn't have the Force sensitivity to notice.
The doors opened behind him. “The fighters and bombers are prepped, sir,” Wolffe said.
“Are the men ready to crew them?”
“Yes, General.”
If there was any major action in store, Plo would like to be out in the stars himself, but for now it was better if he was on the bridge. He'd timed himself, once, and it would only take a minute or so for him to reach the hangar if he assisted himself with the Force. “Good.”
They stood in silence. Plo knew Wolffe would have a countdown on his HUD; felt the effort of stillness vibrate around him and leak into the Force. Plo let it leak over into himself and released it into the Force more properly. It was always easier to do it with secondhand emotions, but Wolffe and he were close enough Wolffe's emotions felt almost like his own.
“Realspace reentry in five,” Coburn called.
Plo gathered himself into an edge and felt Wolffe tense up next to him.
Abruptly, the blue streaks of hyperspace darkened into a star-studded blackness. This close to the galactic rim, the sky was sprinkled with few stars, distant and forlorn, with the vivid stripe of the galaxy cutting through the sky on one side.
Desevro's star was smaller than what Humans tended to pick, reddish and temperamental, and orbiting the charred remains of a neutron star. The planet itself was small and red in an imitation of the star it had orbited since the dawn of the galaxy.
The ship was silent, and in a fascinating psychological phenomenon, man was imitating machine. There was no sound across the vacuum of space, so they could chatter away as they wished, but – silence would suit his next task better.
He strode to the front of the bridge and closed his eyes. The ship and the humans in it were bright flecks of life, a warm susurration of existence, so similar on the outside but completely unique in the Force. Plo Koon gave them a fond thought and looked beyond the hull.
Vacuum. Absence. The system star, ancient beyond measure, a slumbering beast with razor-sharp fangs ready to flare. Lifeless rocks rushing around it, scarred by their mother's fury. One world that had never recovered from its oxygen catastrophe and breathed with patient purpose, life standing defiant before the star's ruddy glare and biding its time in the cracks and crevices of the rocky surface. And lurking beneath the face of a cliff-
“The Sith,” he said once he'd returned his consciousness to his body.
“Dooku?” Wolffe asked, the loud-bright alarm of every human on the bridge not quite kept out of his voice.
“No,” Plo said. “An old temple. Dooku must be trying to crack its secrets.”
“Is he in the system?” Coburn asked.
“Should we blast it from orbit, sir?” one of the shinies – Hawker, Plo thought – offered.
“We are the only presence in the system,” Plo reassured them. The temple had the feel of something unoccupied. The world was not steeped with the dark side despite the temple, which intrigued him, and he wished to examine the boundaries between structure and surroundings. “Before we do anything to the temple, however, I believe we should examine it.”
“Sir,” Wolffe scolded him.
It was nice to have someone who could reprimand him with tone of voice alone. He missed his fellow Jedi. “We'll proceed with caution.”
Wolffe had a better grasp of Jedi abilities than even the average Clone Commander and thus knew General Plo couldn't just pluck thoughts out of his head unless he was really trying and there was skin contact, so he cursed his inscrutable Jedi safely in the privacy of his mind. Not that Plo would be anything other than fondly amused if he did it out loud.
They'd landed half a klick or so away from the stone edifice Plo claimed was the entry to the Sith temple. The entry was at the apex of a V-shaped shallow canyon, carved into the rock. Wolffe didn't have much reference for Force user architecture, but while the Jedi Temple on Coruscant was impressive and awe-inspiring, it was so in an almost welcoming way. This, on the other hand, looked like it wasn't open for visitors. At least the door was at ground level – their armor had rappelling gear, but being able to just walk in gave more tactical options.
Plo led them to a stop just outside the main door and walked around doing Force things. Wolffe ordered his squad to keep watch and keep scanning. Not that there seemed to be anything left on the planet capable of moving on its own.
After a time long enough to make Wolffe's trigger finger extremely itchy, Plo came to a stop facing the temple doors. “I believe I know how to ensure the doors won't open for Dooku, but I'll have to go inside to do so.”
“Is recoding the locks of Sith temples something Jedi commonly study?” Wolffe asked. He didn't think it was, but: Jedi.
“Have I not told you about my misspent youth?” Plo replied, voice laced with humor before growing grave. “This will be dangerous in ways utterly unlike the battlefields you usually face. You are free to stay outside.”
There was no way Wolffe was going to stay out here twiddling his thumbs while his Jedi walked into a Sith temple. “Like hell you're leaving me to tell the Council I misplaced my Jedi in the ass end of nowhere. I'm coming with you, sir.”
“Me, too,” the rest of the squad echoed.
Plo inclined his head, chuffed at the willingness to follow him. “I will not order you to stay.”
“Guess I'll have to be the killjoy, then,” Wolffe said, then split the squad in half, one guarding the exit. He was wearing his bucket, but apparently hanging out with Jedi made glares visible through opaque plastoid, and everyone obeyed. Or he was just that much of a bastard that no-one wanted to risk disobeying him.
The temple doors had been carved with sigils once, but erosion had reduced them to illegibility. The entire edifice was of the same rock as the surroundings. It all looked red like half-dried blood, but outside the ruddy light of the local sun, Wolffe thought it might have been grey-brown. The star itself hung low in the sky like a gaping maw, large and close.
Plo took a moment to gather himself before reaching out a hand at the doors. The earth rumbled, reluctant to move, and Wolffe's General engaged in a battle of wills with the earth.
Perhaps there was a will for Plo to battle. One never knew, with the Jedi and the Sith.
In the end, Plo won, of course. The doors opened into a snarl.
Wolffe marched past Plo and peered in. No visible hostiles. Not that he'd expected any.
After Boost did the checking from the other side, they walked in, guns at the ready. Boost, Wildfire, and Gust had gone through enough wringers – Boost especially – not to twitch, but Hawker was a shiny and a bit too skittish for Wolffe's comfort.
Though nothing could compare to Plo actually freezing on the threshold. It was only for a moment, but Wolffe knew his Jedi in and out.
“Sir?” Wolffe asked, voice low.
“The temple has a Force presence I cannot help but be affected by,” Plo replied, slightly strained. “As it is associated with the Sith, it seeks to destroy me.”
“Let's get out as soon as possible.”
Plo made a sound of agreement. “This way,” he said in his normal voice.
Sonar probing with his helmet revealed that the paths to the left and right curled around themselves and downward into the earth, so continuing straight sounded good to Wolffe. He wouldn't object to being able to see out the front doors.
Something about the place gave him the creeps. Or perhaps it was a great many things: the narrow side passages that diminished into cracks in the stone and led nowhere, the way the passage ahead disappeared into the walls in the red gloom, the hushed lack of sound from their footsteps. The scar over his cybernetic eye itched.
Ventress had left that. She was a Sith, wasn't she? Was this place reacting to that, claiming it as its own?
The passage they'd been following ended abruptly. Alternatives opened up to the left and right, seemingly going on forever.
“Which way, sir?” Boost asked.
“We are exactly where we need to be,” Plo said. He placed his hand on the wall in front of them. After a moment, it started glowing with red sigils. A hissing noise came from somewhere.
The Force bantha shit was above Wolffe's pay grade. The General's back wasn't. “Boost, Hawker, watch the left. Wildfire, Gust, the right.” That left him watching their way out. Nothing should get past Sinker on the outside – not without lots of shooting and ample warning – but there were those twisting passages and odd paths into the rock.
He kept his blaster up. His scar ached.
“You should leave now. The door will soon close,” Plo said. The sigils were glowing in a different pattern now.
“How about you?”
“I have the Force,” Plo replied. Some strain was present in his amused tone. “I can run faster than you.”
“Yessir. You heard the General,” Wolffe ordered. “Get to the door.”
“Run,” Plo added.
Wolffe made them run. He took up the rear, Boost up front, helmet snapping to and fro, scanning for hostiles.
The corridor felt like it went on forever. Wolffe felt his heart skip a beat as he wondered whether this was some sort of Force trap for the unwary, an eternal corridor they couldn't move in, but the entrance did seem to be growing larger.
And Plo's back growing smaller behind them. The whole wall was alight with ever more rapid pulses.
Boost was almost at the door when something came out of one of the cracks, dark smoke that coagulated into a human figure. The woman's face split into a crazed grin beneath her yellow eyes. A snap-hiss lit the lightsaber in her hands, blade red like blood – like the last thing Wolffe had seen with the flesh eye he'd lost – and she raised it to strike.
Boost, Gust, and Wildfire turned to fire, but the Sith was aiming at Hawker, and the shiny had frozen in place – like so many did before dying to a lightsaber – and Wolffe could see it all play out: his little brother cleaved in half, charred flesh singing his nose, a Sith laughing cruelly as she went for her next victim-
Wolffe bodily slammed Hawker out of the way. The Sith's lightsaber hit his shoulder pauldron, melting the plastoid but not reaching flesh.
His momentum brought him to his side on the ground on top of Hawker. They'd hit Wildfire's feet, so he'd fallen against the wall. Wolffe tried to roll off and scramble to his knees, but the Sith had already raised her blade and the passage was too narrow to roll away in.
Abruptly, he was pushed out of the way; the Sith's lightsaber hit only the rock floor. Lava sputtered out of the gash as Wolffe and his brothers were flung out the closing doors.
And Plo wasn't following them. Instead, he was crossing blades with the Sith, not even heading towards the doors, and for the first time on the planet, Wolffe felt fear.
The doors were more than half shut. There was no way Plo would make it if he had to run backwards.
“Plo!”
Plo Koon parried another slashing strike. He was almost out of time.
Like hell Wolffe would be leaving his Jedi behind. He didn't have the Force, didn't have anything but his human body and the armor on him – but his armor had rappelling gear.
Long practice had given him excellent aim and long acquaintance meant he knew exactly how Plo would move. He rolled to his knees and shot the rappelling hook into Plo's belt, then engaged the motor and pulled Plo towards him.
With the armor, he outmassed Plo by a large enough margin that it was Plo moving towards him. Wolffe laughed in momentary glee at having snatched his Jedi from the jaws of death as the temple's doors slammed shut behind Plo. Then he was hit in the face with a fully grown high-velocity Kel Dor.
He hit his head on the rocks and felt the helmet seal rip. Kriff. Was the air on this rock breathable? How did Plo manage to be so calm while walking around in atmospheres that would kill him with a single breath?
His helmet resettled itself as he pushed himself to a seated position. The HUD said the air was acceptable for short-term exposure. Wolffe let himself brush that worry out of his mind and turned to the General.
Plo had fallen into the rocky ground face first. And the impact had definitely been fast enough to crack a deox mask.
“Atmo bag!” Wolffe bellowed.
He scampered to where Plo was, heart beating double-time and fear curdling his blood. He patted his belt for the spare atmo bag he carried and tried to pry Plo up without jarring his mask.
Relief felt like a removal of his armor and slackness of his limbs when Plo rose under his own power. Then Wolffe noticed how careful Plo was being, how one of Plo's hands was practically glued to the side of his deox mask, and tossed the bag over Plo's head. Sinker arrived with the helium canister, and then they pushed helium into the bag until the only thing that kept it from floating off was Wolffe holding on to it. Hopefully that'd be enough to displace all the oxygen and nitrogen and other stuff Plo shouldn't breathe.
“Status?” Wolffe asked, voice thinner than was good for his reputation.
Plo resorted to hand signs. I'll make it to the ship. At Wolffe's inhalation, he waved his hand in the cliché representation of a Jedi mind trick. The Force.
“We're going back to the ship,” Wolffe ordered. “Smooth flying, land on the pad closest to the General's quarters.”
He kept a hold of his side of the atmo bag as they rose. Plo still had a hand on his deox mask, but held on to the side of the bag with the other one. Walking to the shuttle was a harrowing passage for all that nothing went wrong. Starburst even lifted them off smoothly, and his Jedi was being reasonable and sitting down in the seats instead of trying to hang from the straps with a free arm he didn't have.
Wolffe had just told Boost to comm the ship to have Stitches at the ready when he realized Plo wasn't breathing. “Plo?” he asked. Plo was still up and holding his side of the atmo bag, and this wasn't part of the Kel Dor physiology and emergency first aid briefing Wolffe and the rest of the Wolfpack's senior officers had read, but-
Plo waved a hand as best he could while holding on to an atmo bag. The Force. Of course. Willing to mark the whole “not getting the General poisoned” issue solved for now, Wolffe leaned forward to take a look at what else Stitches should look at.
The deox mask was on asymmetrically, and there was visible discoloration around the rim. Bruises, then, and potentially damage to his tusks. Wolffe recalled only that they were some sort of sensory organ, but hadn't gotten around to asking what their input actually felt like. He hoped any damage could be fixed. There was probably a bruise from where the rappelling hook had grabbed his tunics.
Plo leaned against him. Wolffe snorted. “You're the injured one,” he quietly said. “You don't need to comfort me.”
Plo merely leaned against him more insistently. Wolffe sighed and leaned against him.
It was a law of the universe that the pile of paperwork at the end of a mission was inversely proportional to how much the mission participants wished to fill in paperwork. No-one had died on Desevro, but a near miss with death involving a General meant extra paperwork, and apparently interacting with Sith temples meant extra Jedi paperwork for Plo. Wolffe was also feeling like an overprotective mother tooka, so he'd donned a breath mask of his own and done his paperwork in Plo's office.
He still had the medical reports to sign off on, but Stitches hadn't filed them yet. Wolffe wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose, but he was wearing a breath mask and thus sighed instead. “How much do you have left? I'm waiting on the med report.”
“I only have to describe your inspired rescue,” Plo replied. The lack of distortion from the deox mask always threw Wolffe at first. “It's not every day that I get to go flying. It was quite thrilling.”
“Your mask cracked.”
Plo wrote on his datapad before replying. “Even without your fast actions, I would have made it to the ship. Due to the galactic insistence on oxygenation, I've practiced breath control extensively and can last for hours without needing to breathe. Additionally, I can use the Force to stop the motion of gases near any crack in my mask.”
For some Force-forsaken reason Wolffe actually felt disappointed at only saving Plo's life once, so he stomped on the emotion and deflected. “I just really didn't want to lose my Jedi.” He swallowed. “No clone does.”
Without the mask, Wolffe could actually see Plo smile – lips pulled back to expose the inner beak and tusks gently clacking. “Indeed. I expect that if anyone lost your Jedi, there would be hell to pay.”
“That's-”
Plo set the datapad to the side and pulled Wolffe in until their foreheads touched. “Your Jedi likes it,” he gently said.
“I'm glad,” Wolffe replied, not caring that he sounded strangled now that there were no witnesses. He ran his hands along Plo's face, avoiding the bacta patches where the mask had dug in hard enough to bruise or break skin.
Kel Dor didn't kiss like humans did, but the skin around their lips was still sensitive. When Wolffe ghosted his fingers there, Plo made a pleased noise and closed his eyes.
“You know, Wolffe, you did just rip right through four layers of robes and a belt.”
Wolffe knew – he'd been there when Stitches put bacta on the messy contusion he'd given Plo. “I suppose you'll just have to requisition new ones with rappelling hook attachment points and extra padding.”
“I believe I'll start by requisitioning you to remove my current ones,” Plo said, silver eyes twinkling.
Wolffe couldn't help but bark out a laugh. “Yes, sir.”
It took a bit of effort to get the clothes off without disturbing Plo's bacta patches or Wolffe's breath mask, but, well, they'd had a lot of practice. And there was nothing quite like the sizzle of adrenaline from a near-death experience to make a good time even better.