~DAY FOUR~
After what happened yesterday, I decided I didn't want to stay on Verdara anymore.
The Force-using creature hadn't been the deciding factor.
That had been disturbing, but not completely unexpected.
I'd encountered something similar years ago.
The first creature that had hunted me possessed some strange ability to drain energy from everything around it.
This one controlled fire.
Neither ability resembled anything I'd been taught by the Jedi.
Both had worked.
And both left me intensely jealous.
I still couldn't throw a fireball.
Apparently the rotting abominations on Verdara could.
That wasn't what made me leave.
The ship falling from orbit did.
Until then, I'd intended to stay exactly where I was.
Let the undead fight.
Let them kill.
Let Raise Undead gain experience.
Let my class grow while I remained behind thick steel walls doing what a Necromancer was supposed to do.
I had more than a thousand clone bodies stored away.
Verdara offered an almost endless supply of hostile targets.
There probably wasn't another place in either galaxy where I could grind Raise Undead this efficiently.
But yesterday had changed the equation.
Something had happened in orbit.
Something significant enough to knock a warship out of the sky.
And when I checked the bombardment that morning, the difference was obvious.
The red beams still descended through the atmosphere.
Just nowhere near as often.
What had once been constant now came intermittently.
Long pauses.
Then several strikes.
Then silence again.
The fleet had become distracted.
I needed to know why.
I recalled everyone into the fortress.
The B1s arrived first.
One hundred battle droids marched through the gates and formed orderly rows in the courtyard.
Then the B2s.
Sixteen heavy frames followed behind them.
I stored each one.
One after another.
Metal vanished into my inventory until the courtyard was nearly empty.
Then I looked toward the undead.
Two hundred fifty clone troopers stood before me.
For the first time, they actually looked somewhat like soldiers.
Not living ones.
The difference was obvious.
Their posture wasn't perfect.
Some leaned slightly.
Some carried wounds that distorted the way they stood.
A few had damaged armor.
Others were missing entire plates.
But they could form ranks now.
Rows.
Columns.
Rifles held in roughly the same position.
Their new awareness had changed them.
Just enough.
And that created a problem.
I couldn't bring them with me.
My inventory accepted corpses.
It accepted droids.
Weapons.
Armor.
Ships.
Furniture.
Food.
An unreasonable quantity of junk.
But not active undead.
For a few seconds, I considered stripping them first.
Armor.
Rifles.
Grenades.
Anything useful.
Then send the naked corpses into the forest to fight until they were destroyed.
It would have been efficient.
I had taken those bodies from Geonosis and Christophsis specifically because they were useful.
They were already dead.
There shouldn't have been anything morally complicated about it.
But I couldn't do it.
These men had died once already.
Some had died beside me.
I'd taken their bodies, dragged them into my inventory, then brought them back so they could die again for my benefit.
Whatever they were now, whatever remained of the original men inside those bodies, stripping them before sending them to destruction felt wrong.
They deserved at least some dignity at the end.
I was about to issue the order when one of them caught my attention.
He stood near the back.
At first, I noticed the armor.
It was in terrible condition.
Cracks ran through almost every remaining plate.
Sections were missing from the right arm and right leg.
The chest had several deep fractures.
His helmet looked like it should have fallen apart hours ago.
Blue light leaked through cracks in the T-visor.
Then I noticed the body underneath.
I stopped.
He was taller.
Noticeably taller.
The other clones were nearly identical in height.
He wasn't.
At least three inches separated him from the men around him.
Six foot three.
Maybe slightly more.
And he wasn't just taller.
His proportions were heavier.
Broader shoulders.
Thicker arms.
Larger hands.
The body glove had split along several areas where the material could no longer accommodate the muscle underneath it.
Not battle damage.
Growth.
His forearms were thicker than the others.
His thighs visibly larger.
Even his fingers seemed slightly longer and heavier.
I walked closer.
The zombie remained still.
I looked from him to the surrounding clones.
Then back again.
Clones were genetically identical.
Minor differences developed naturally.
Diet. Training. Injuries. Environmental factors.
But this?
This wasn't normal variation.
Something had happened to him.
The more I looked, the stronger the feeling became.
Don't waste this one.
I pointed directly at him.
"You."
The blue glow behind the ruined visor remained fixed on me.
"You're staying with me."
No response.
None was necessary.
I separated him from the formation.
Then turned toward the others.
Two hundred forty-nine undead remained.
I gave them one final command.
Hunt. Kill anything they found.
Fight till the end.
The formation broke.
Small groups began moving toward the fortress gates.
No speeches.
No hesitation.
They simply marched out.
White armor disappeared into the green forest.
I watched the last of them vanish between the trees.
Then turned away.
Our new group consisted of four.
Bolts.
Roger.
Me.
And the oversized dead clone.
We boarded the Irken ship.
Roger took the controls.
The clone stood near the rear of the cockpit.
"Take us up."
"Affirmative."
The engines came alive.
The fortress dropped away beneath us.
Verdara spread beneath the ship.
Endless green interrupted by black scars. Burned sections of land. Smoke reaching high into the atmosphere. Red beams still struck the surface. Just occasionally now.
Clouds passed beneath us.
My attention remained fixed on the warning systems.
Waiting.
Target lock. Incoming fire. Some automated defense coming on and blaring.
Nothing happened.
The atmosphere thinned and stars became visible. Breaking orbit.
I finally looked forward.
It was indescribable!
Hundreds of Vederan warships filled the space surrounding the planet. Capital ships. Cruisers. Destroyers. Others were smaller.
Ships close enough that I could see weapons fire crossing between them. They were fighting.
Red plasma beams cut through space in every direction. Ship-to-ship fire.
Entire formations crossed one another while exchanging volleys.
Hundreds of fighters moved between them. From this distance they looked like swarms of glowing insects. Weapons flashed. Tiny explosions blooming for a moment before disappearing.
The entire orbital space around Verdara had become a battlefield.
And there were clearly sides.
Two major groups.
One formation concentrated farther from the planet.
The other remained closer to the upper atmosphere.
They were firing at each other continuously.
Then I noticed something even stranger.
Several dozen ships weren't participating.
They remained in their old positions.
Their weapons still pointed downward.
Every few minutes—
A red beam descended toward Verdara.
While everyone around them was fighting a civil war.
I stared through the viewport.
"What the fuck are they doing?"
Another ship exploded in the distance.
"They're going through a civilization-ending event and decided this was a good time to start killing each other?!"
Roger watched the battle without reacting.
"The Tallest will be pleased."
I looked at him.
"Roger, intercept communications."
"Affirmative."
The ship began scanning.
Static filled the cockpit.
Then voices.
Dozens of them.
Overlapping.
"...engine failing—"
"...fighters to sector seven—"
"...do not allow them to reach the Ring—"
"...we have civilians aboard—"
"...return fire—"
Roger shifted frequencies.
The voices changed.
More commands. More panic. More people talking over each other.
Then—
We found the argument.
Not one transmission.
Several.
Command channels repeating orders from the highest levels of the Vederan military.
I listened.
The situation began making sense.
Then immediately became worse.
Vederan military authority was split beneath two officers.
Both held the rank of Four-Petaled Admiral.
Effectively the two highest-ranking surviving commanders in the fleet.
And they disagreed on what to do about the Dyson Ring.
The outbreak had reached it.
That enormous artificial structure surrounding Verdara's sun.
The crown jewel of their civilization.
The place I'd seen from the planet's surface.
One tenth of it was already compromised.
Infected.
Entire sections were overrun with the same type of biological horrors infesting Verdara.
Flesh-eating organisms.
Mutated Vederans.
Things growing through corridors.
Creatures moving between residential sectors.
One tenth.
That sounded small until I understood the population.
Verdara itself had supported roughly thirty billion Vederans before everything collapsed.
The Ring?
One hundred eleven billion.
I stared at the numbers displayed by my PAK.
One hundred eleven billion people.
Living around their star.
And somewhere around eleven billion of them were already inside compromised sections.
The outbreak was moving too quickly.
That was what had broken the fleet.
One Four-Petaled Admiral had made his decision.
Destroy the Ring.
All of it.
Immediately.
No evacuation.
No delay.
No attempt to reclaim infected sections.
The structure was too dangerous.
Too populated. Too important.
So he wanted it destroyed.
One hundred eleven billion people included.
Approximately one quarter of the warships in orbit had agreed with him.
They were moving toward firing positions.
Trying to reach the Ring.
Trying to destroy the greatest structure their species had ever built before the infection consumed it.
The other Admiral refused.
Completely.
He wanted evacuation first.
Save whoever could still be saved.
Pull civilians from uncontaminated sections.
Establish quarantine points.
Abandon infected sectors if necessary.
But do not destroy the entire structure while tens of billions of people remained alive aboard it.
More than half the surviving fleet sided with him.
Half of those ships were already conducting evacuations.
Transporting survivors away from the Ring.
Screening them.
Moving civilians.
Attempting to keep evacuation corridors open.
The rest were here.
Fighting.
Stopping the first Admiral's ships from reaching firing positions.
Stopping them from destroying the Ring.
Which explained the battle surrounding us.
The smaller remaining portion of the fleet had refused both sides.
They continued the original mission.
Bombard Verdara.
Target concentrations of infected creatures.
Burn the largest nests.
Destroy anything that appeared capable of spreading beyond containment zones.
Those were the ships still firing downward.
I stood silently in the cockpit.
I looked toward the Dyson Ring in the distance.
From here, I could see more of it.
An artificial band of impossible scale wrapped around the sun.
Parts of it still reflected light. For days I'd looked up from Verdara and thought the people living on that structure were lucky. Far away from everything crawling through the forests.
I had been wrong.
Another capital ship detonated in the distance.
The flash illuminated the cockpit for several seconds.
I watched pieces of it spread across orbit.
It was the beginning of the end of their civilization.
And somewhere inside me—
Something approved.
Good job, soldier.
The thought came warm.
Proud. Congratulatory.
Like a hand settling on my shoulder after a mission accomplished.
My stomach tightened.
What have we done...?
Another thought answered immediately.
Quieter.
Human.
Horrified.
Then another voice rose over it.
We're still not done.
My jaw clenched.
They can't be allowed to escape.
Another followed.
Cold.
Practical.
Bring forth your horde.
Lay waste to them.
I shut my eyes.
That only made it worse.
We can save them.
The headache started behind my eyes.
Pressure.
A growing knot of thoughts colliding faster than I could separate them.
I pressed two fingers against my temple.
"Shut up..."
Bolts looked toward me.
"Master?"
I ignored him.
Because I hadn't really been talking to anyone else.
The argument continued. Not voices exactly. Not hallucinations. They were mine. Every thought belonged to me. Every one of them made sense from somewhere inside my head.
The Invader saw opportunity.
A civilization collapsing.
Military command fractured.
Billions vulnerable.
Enemies weakened beyond anything I could have ever accomplished alone.
The Necromancer saw something even simpler.
Bodies.
So many bodies.
More corpses than I could comprehend.
An entire civilization becoming raw material.
The thought carried no hatred with it.
The Dark Acolyte saw power.
Fear.
Chaos.
Anger.
Desperation.
A system full of people tearing themselves apart while something darker spread through every level of their society. There was something almost intoxicating about it. I could feel it. The same part of me that had smiled on Geonosis. The same part that had enjoyed watching armies collide.
The same hunger that whispered whenever I saw something stronger than me.
Take it. Use it. Rule it.
Then the other side answered.
People.
Families trapped inside that Ring.
Soldiers killing soldiers because both sides believed they were preventing something worse. Billions who had done me no wrong.
The former human in me couldn't stop thinking about the number.
One hundred eleven billion. It was too large to understand properly.
We can help them.
The thought returned.
The Invader answered.
Why?
My eyes opened.
The battle still filled the viewport.
Ships crossed in front of one another.
Weapons flashed.
Fighters burned.
Far beyond them, the Ring curved around the sun.
Part of me looked at it and saw the greatest prize I'd ever encountered.
Another part saw a mass grave that hadn't happened yet.
I swallowed.
They're not ours.
They're enemies.
They don't even know we exist.
Exactly.
We could leave.
Coward.
Survivor.
Invader.
Jedi.
Necromancer.
Human.
Irken.
My antennae flattened.
I had spent years thinking of these parts of myself like they could coexist indefinitely.
Human memories.
Irken instincts.
Jedi training.
Necromancy.
The Force.
My System.
Different pieces. Use whichever one fit the situation. Simple.
It wasn't simple anymore.
Because the situation had finally become large enough that every part of me wanted something different.
The Irken wanted conquest.
The Necromancer wanted the dead.
The darker part of me wanted to see what happened if I stopped restraining myself entirely.
The Jedi wanted intervention.
The human wanted to save as many people as possible.
And beneath all of them—
I didn't know what I wanted.
I looked down at my hands.
Green skin.
Three fingers.
Jedi robes beneath alien armor.
A lightsaber at my side.
An Irken PAK fused to my back.
A Necromancer's power running through my body.
They were all me.
That meant I couldn't blame the ugly thoughts on biology.
Couldn't blame the merciful ones on old human memories.
Couldn't blame the hunger for power on the Dark Side.
Every choice still belonged to me.
I looked back toward the Ring.
The argument inside my head didn't stop. It just became quieter.
Waiting.
Because eventually I was going to have to choose which part of myself I listened to.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
I was no Jedi.
The realization settled into me with a cold finality.
Not because I failed them.
Because they had already failed the idea of what they claimed to be.
That entire Order wrapped itself in peace and wisdom while marching blind through corruption, arrogance, and political rot. They preached detachment while serving a Senate too compromised to save itself. They called themselves guardians of justice while becoming polished weapons for a Republic already half-consumed by decay.
Qui-Gon Jinn had been the closest thing they had to a real Jedi.
And they had let him die on Naboo.
The rest?
Most of them were administrators in robes. Generals by necessity. Tools by circumstance.
And now Darth Sidious was using them exactly as they deserved to be used—like pieces on a board too arrogant to realize the game had already been won around them.
My jaw tightened.
If Sidious could use them, then so could I.
I would march beside them through this war.
Learn from them.
Take what I needed from them.
And when the time came—
I would betray them too. The thought didn't disgust me.
Then came the other lie I had been telling myself.
Human.
I wasn't human.
Not anymore.
Maybe once, in some other life, that word had meant something. Maybe there had been a family, a home, a name, a history that belonged to someone else.
Gone.
The System had erased it all so thoroughly that "human" had become little more than an abstract label attached to instincts and fragments I couldn't even fully verify. I couldn't tell you where I had lived. I couldn't tell you what I had loved. I couldn't even recall my own old face.
Whatever I had been, it no longer mattered.
This life was longer.
My Irken life had already stretched far beyond the ghost of whatever came before it, and every year had driven the truth deeper into me.
Green skin.
A PAK.
Instincts forged for conquest.
A mind that felt increasingly at home with domination, force, and ambition.
No.
I wasn't human.
And pretending otherwise was just another weakness.
The last resistance inside me came from the Jedi teachings.
From that stale little voice demanding restraint.
Compassion.
Balance.
But even that had begun to hollow out.
I did not know many dark side techniques yet.
Not properly.
Not in the refined, deliberate way Sith or fallen Jedi wielded them.
But I knew myself well enough to understand something ugly and simple:
If power stood before me—
Real power—
I would take it.
If forbidden knowledge were offered—
I would learn it.
If people had to be stepped on, manipulated, discarded, or sacrificed to reach a greater height—
Then so be it.
Not out of cruelty for its own sake.
Not out of blind madness.
Necessity.
That was the word that mattered.
I would trample whoever I needed to trample.
Consume whatever resources I needed to consume.
Break whatever had to be broken.
Because I was not building toward comfort.
I was building toward inevitability.
Toward the kind of power that made armies irrelevant.
Toward the kind of presence that bent battlefields around itself.
Toward the kind of existence that no one could command, corner, or erase.
I was a conqueror.
I felt the truth of it in my bones.
In my blood.
In the ugly hunger sitting at the center of my chest.
I might not be strong enough yet.
Not nearly.
But strength could be gathered.
Knowledge could be taken.
People could be turned into soldiers.
The dead could be turned into armies.
And if I had to become monstrous in the process—
Then I would become monstrous.
My breathing slowed.
The argument inside me was over.
Not because one side had convinced the other.
Because I had chosen which side deserved to win.
The viewport still showed chaos.
Vederan warships tearing at each other.
Plasma batteries lancing through vacuum.
Fighters dying in bright flashes.
And beyond it all—
The Ring.
Their greatest achievement.
I stepped forward.
Roger remained focused on the controls, but his optics shifted toward me.
Bolts was silent behind us.
I reached out and clapped Roger on the shoulder.
Then I lifted my hand and pointed directly toward the Ring.
"Now," I said, voice hard and steady, "let's go destroy it."
Roger answered immediately.
"Yes Master."