CHAPTER 6
The silence of the rycrit field was a memory.
Theed screamed.
By the time Queen Amidala returned to Naboo, Kaito Kageyama had already spent weeks inside the Trade Federation's shadow economy.
He knew the shape of it now. Not every detail, not every route, but the structure. He had followed the tributaries of fear from burned farms to collection points, from sealed courtyards to armored transports. He had cut open cargo holds and found families stacked like freight. He had disabled convoys, freed who he could, and watched the system absorb the losses without slowing.
The machine adapted.
Freeing people was triage. Necessary. Incomplete.
Information was the only thing that could end it.
Which was why, when the city began to thunder with the sound of open rebellion and Naboo starfighters screamed overhead, Kaito did not rush toward the palace.
He stopped.
He sat cross-legged in the shadow of a collapsed colonnade beneath the palace district. Blaster fire echoed across marble plazas above him. Rain hissed against scorched stone. The air smelled of ozone, smoke, and burning metal.
He laid his asauchi across his knees.
The blade was plain. Unnamed. It had followed him across worlds without ever answering him.
His head throbbed with the persistent ache of incarnation. Nerves that should never have existed complained about heat and humidity and fear. His left arm burned with a colder rhythm, the lingering echo of Plagueis's poison pulsing beneath the skin like a foreign heartbeat.
He breathed anyway.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
He let his reiryoku settle into the unfamiliar architecture of flesh. He did not force it. He did not flare it. He coaxed it into stillness and let Naboo's living lattice exist alongside it.
The planet sang beneath the stone. Wounded. Patient. Enduring.
It reminded him of Soul Society.
"You do not demand a name."
The meditation hall had been cold. Ancient stone. Incense burning low and steady.
"You listen."
Kaito had knelt for hours with his asauchi laid carefully before him, waiting for something that never came. Others spoke of inner worlds, of spirits that tested them, taunted them, named themselves in riddles or fury.
He had known only silence.
"If you cannot hear it," the instructor had said, voice tired with repetition, "it is because you are still too loud."
Kaito rested two fingers against the flat of the blade.
"If you are there," he thought, steady and deliberate, "now would be the time."
At first, nothing.
Then something brushed the edge of his awareness.
Not a voice.
Not a word.
Depth.
The sensation of standing near something vast and unseen, of feeling the pull before seeing the tide. His reiryoku stirred, and something else stirred with it. A second axis of awareness, subtle and immense, brushing against his own.
The Force.
He knew the word now. Had heard it spoken by Jedi, by soldiers, by civilians who treated it like weather or luck. An energy field that bound the galaxy together.
But this was not borrowing power.
It was attention.
Kaito frowned slightly.
Zanpakutō spirits were said to speak clearly once they chose to answer. They tested. They challenged. They named themselves.
This presence was diffuse. Patient. Waiting.
"Are you my blade," he murmured softly, "or something else?"
No answer came.
Only the sensation of falling without motion.
If you cannot hear it, you are still too loud.
Kaito released the question.
Not the vigilance. Not the mission.
He centered himself around a single truth.
Children had been taken.
Time was running.
The whisper receded. Not gone. Simply waiting.
When he opened his eyes, the ache behind his temples had dulled. His reiryoku flowed cleaner. The cold burn in his arm settled into something manageable.
Centered.
That would have to be enough.
The Zygerrian liaison's townhouse stood untouched amid the scars of Theed, an obscene island of opulence and profit. Two Gamorrean guards at the door died without understanding what hit them. The asauchi whispered through armor and flesh. The lock sparked and failed.
Inside, incense burned thick and cloying.
"The east valley shipment is loaded," the Zygerrian overseer snapped into a comlink. "The Profit's Lash departs at nightfall. Tell the Viceroy his premium is—"
Kaito crossed the room.
The blaster never fired.
He slammed the Zygerrian's wrist into the desk. Bone cracked. The weapon skittered uselessly away.
"The children," Kaito said evenly. "Lot numbers. Timetables. Hand-off points."
Pain became language.
He hated how fluent he had become.
The dark side poison in his arm pulsed in cold resonance with the suffering he caused. For a moment the whisper returned, closer now, attentive.
This way.
He ignored it.
Information spilled.
Lot 17.
Ord Mantell.
Seventy-two hours.
Processing windows. Security codes. Ship identifiers.
The ledger closed.
When it was done, the Zygerrian sobbed, broken and empty. Kaito took the data chip from the console.
The Zygerrian looked up, hope flickering.
Kaito saw Mara's face.
The abandoned tooka doll.
The blade fell.
It was not mercy.
It was erasure.
His hands were clean. His spirit felt anything but.
The route to the palace was a gauntlet of fire.
Trade Federation droids had fortified the avenues leading to the central complex. Destroyer droids rolled into firing positions, shields flaring. Infantry units formed disciplined firing lines between shattered fountains and overturned speeders.
Kaito moved with Naboo guards as they advanced, not leading, not following. He let visible targets draw fire. He struck from angles the droids did not prioritize.
His asauchi did not clash. It severed.
One cut to a control nexus. One precise strike to a stabilizer joint. Droids fell in pieces, collapsing into useless metal as blaster bolts screamed past him.
A droideka tracked him, shield flaring. Kaito slid beneath its firing arc and drove the blade through the projector housing. The shield collapsed. The droid followed.
He did not fight like a soldier.
He fought like a correction.
By the time they reached the palace steps, the ground was littered with smoking wreckage and the air shook with distant artillery as Gungan forces engaged the main droid army outside the city.
Inside the palace, resistance intensified.
The hangar bay was a choke point.
That was where the darkness waited.
Black robes. Red and black tattoos. A double bladed lightsaber igniting with a scream that made the air recoil.
Darth Maul.
The whisper surged, sharp and undeniable.
Recognition.
Not admiration. Not alignment.
Predator acknowledging anomaly.
Qui-Gon Jinn moved instantly. Obi-Wan Kenobi followed. The clash was brief and violent, sparks flying as blades met. The duel broke apart as blast doors slammed shut, sealing Jedi and Sith away from the rest of the battle.
Qui-Gon's voice carried once through the sealing doors.
"Go."
Kaito obeyed.
The throne room was not ceremonial when Kaito entered it.
It was a battlefield.
Blaster fire cracked across polished stone. Smoke clung to the vaulted ceiling. Naboo guards advanced in disciplined lines, returning fire as battle droids fell back toward the dais. Sparks leapt from shattered columns. The air rang with shouted orders and the hiss of cooling metal.
Queen Amidala stood at the center of it all.
She did not hide. She did not crouch behind cover. She stood flanked by Captain Panaka and her guards, issuing calm, precise commands as if the palace were merely a louder council chamber.
Kaito moved along the periphery, cutting down droids that threatened to flank her position. His blade took an arm, a leg, a head. Metal struck stone and slid.
When the last droid fell, the sudden silence was almost painful.
Nute Gunray and Rune Haako cowered near the throne, hands raised, eyes darting.
Kaito closed the distance in three steps. He pressed the asauchi to Gunray's throat.
"The transports," he said quietly. "The prison barges."
Gunray broke instantly.
Data flooded the console. Panaka ordered the Viceroy restrained as Naboo guards secured the room.
Profit's Lash.
Ord Mantell.
Docking clearance active.
Queen Amidala met Kaito's gaze briefly. There was no approval there. Only understanding.
Then the Force shifted.
Not violently.
Quietly.
A stabilizing presence vanished from the world.
Qui-Gon Jinn was dead.
Kaito felt it as absence, like a load-bearing pillar removed from reality itself.
Moments later came another rupture. Rage. Defiance. Then finality.
Darth Maul was destroyed.
Obi-Wan returned later, hollow-eyed, newly knighted in grief.
The Queen reclaimed her world.
Kaito stood apart, the data crystal cold in his palm. His war had not ended.