Saga Droid Uprising--Conclusion

Eventually, slowly, Obi-Wan and Anakin got up.

They ignited their sabers, and instantly the blasts came in from every conceivable angle.

But they simply blocked.

No fancy agility now, no theatrics. They were conserving their energy for their greatest foes. They simply reflected the laser bolts back to those who had fired them, enabling them to die most effectively.

They could not use the Force to guid them to their enemy in this case; as the Sentient Droids did not truly resonate in the Force.

But they knew their enemy had to be at or near the Droid foundries of this world.

Slowly, inexorably, they moved.

Clones swarmed behind them. They were outnumbered by the Droids on this world, but the Jedi were helping to make up the difference. And more ships, led by Master Windu, were on the way.

The only question was, would they had enough Clones left when they arrived at their goal. How much time it would take.

---

"Trooper," Mara said almost absently, "Guard their left flank."

"Yes, sir, right away."

Mara could not sense the Droids in the Force either, but the swarming of the enemy in the tactical monitors painted a clear enough picture.

She fingered her lightsaber hilt and closed her eyes. She was no precog, but.....

"More strategic bombing runs," she said softly. "Watch for more Droid fighters."

"Yes, sir!"

 

Here comes the endgame!

 

This is the General:

You stands firm, modified arm cannon ready, the protocol droid beside you babbling frantically about the approaching Jedi and Clones.

Kenobi and Skywalker. Yes, ypi knows those names. The data files are extensive. They have destroyed Greivous 2.0, and you has not the same combat skills as your battlefield commander.

But you have had one thing; time to prepare. And so you have, as best you can.

You know that if you somehow kill this duo, the Republic will be stunned and at a loss. Assembly lines can be restarted, the viral program rewritten. If only you have time.

But that is the one thing you don't have any left of, so you must kill them here and now.

You hope you are prepared enough.

The future of your people depends on you.

----

Anakin and Obi-Wan came to the massive central fortress. They had about twenty-odd clones left to reach this far. More reinforcements are on the way, but they have some distance to travel from the ships, and this assumes that no Droids will intercept them.

It is eerily quiet.

"It's a trap," Anakin murmured.

"Of course," Obi-Wan agreed. "So what do we do?"

"We spring it, of course." Anakin smiled, but the grin faded quickly. "I'm just not sure we can handle the fallout when this one goes off.

"We can go in first, sir," A clone commander suggested. It was not Cody; he was leading his bretheren elsewhere on this benighed planet.

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Too many of your brothers have died already Commander."

"That's our job, sir," The Commander said simply.

"Not needlessly. No more vain deaths. Victory, not defeat."

"Always, sir." The Commander's grin could be heard in his voice.

"Shall we?" said Anakin.

"Let's," Obi-Wan agreed.

They opened the main door. No Droids greeted them, but instead a sheet of blaster fire. No metaphor this; the room was litterally filled with the red haze of blaster energy.

"A plasma field?" Anakin frowned. "How do we get through this?"

 

So this is it. The General can only buy time now...the question is: is there really any time left?

Once Anakin & Obi-Wan get through this plasma field, the answer will come.

I'm about to fall off my seat here, Arcalian...but the temporary pain, I believe, will be worth it.

 

"We don't," said Obi-Wan. "We go up."

But even as he pointed his rappel gun at the roof, there was a flare of warning in the force.

"Master, don't--" Anakin began.

Obi-Wan nodded, lowering the gun. "I feel it too."

The clones scanned the building, and sure enough, the entire structure was electrified. One touch would be enough to fry any of them.

"Getting smarter all the time," Obi-Wan mused.

"Can't go in, can't go up. So we go...." Anakin thought for a moment, eyes closed. "Under."

"Under?" Obi-Wan repeated blankly.

But Anakin was already using the Force to push his way into the ground next to the building. "We'll come up underneath."

"We'll still have to deal with the plasma field that way," Obi-Wan pointed out.

"Yes, but I doubt it covers the whole room equally. Gotta be generated somehow. This will give us the opportunity to take it out from an unexpected direction."

But the machines had apparently anticipated this too. As Anakin bored a hole down to the foundations, and found that the sublevel was thankful not electrifed, and burned his way through with a lightsaber, he found the basement was full of mines.

"This will take longer than we thought," sighed Anakin.

"They're trying to buy time," said Obi-Wan.

"Time for what?" Anakin mused. "Surely not reinforcements."

"I don't know," said Obi-Wan, "And that's the part that worries me."

----

Up above, the General eyed a chronometer that was slowly counting down from two hours....

 

Hey underneath is a good idea! Can't wait to see how that goes!

Uh oh... 2 hours to go!

Great updates!

 

The mines were almost certainly motion sensitive. To simply Force Push them away would bring the building down, yes; but it would kill them as well. Which was no doubt what the Droids had in mind.

So it was a slow tedious process of reaching into the mines one by one and deactivating them with the Force by disengaging their ignition circuits. There were two of them, so they could split the work, but there were also many mines. The process took perhaps twenty minutes.

Picking their way with care through the mines, they already knew the steps up to the main floor would be either rigged or would simply break. So they used their lightsabers to cut a hole in the ceiling.

The plasma field glowed scarlet above, so they chose another spot. This one was clear. Climbing up, they found the field generator. Anakin grinned and raised his saber high.

"It's probably rigged too," Obi-Wan warned.

Anakin, somewhat shamefaced, deactivated his lightsaber. "And shielded to boot," he admitted, after looking closely at it and seeing the telltale blue sheen just around the surface.

Obi-Wan reached in with the Force and shut it down. They did not test the next flight of stairs, but instead levitated over them with the Force, leaving their clone troopers staring up at them.

Lightsabering their way through the door, they found a room filled with laser beam traps. They tried to use the Force to disengage them, but somehow these beams could not be undone in that way. It was not Ysalamiri blocking them, an organism the Jedi had only experienced for the first time in the Sith Tower. What other trick to neutralize the Force had the Droids discovered? The concept was distrubing.

So they waded in with their sabers, deflecting the beams into each other and the walls until they had shorted out. They clones rapelled up behind them. Another twenty minutes wasted.

The next level had no traps, and was finally filled with the expected Droids.

Somehow that didn't make them feel any better.

 

LOL! Loved the bit about the clones staring up at the Jedi Poor guys, sometimes one must wonder if they ever envied the Jedi! hehehe

Now this is where the fun begins! Fight! Fight! Fight! Jedi get to play!

Thanks for the PM!

 

At last, the two Jedi were back in their element; the familiar whirl and dance through the Droids, with their surviving clones backing them up with blaster fire.

But even now, something was different. Something was wrong.

The droids just kept coming. Even the simplest ones had shields, and it took more time and energy to cut through them. They risked getting shot.

When Anakin tried to Force Push them away, they simply sprang back up again on interial dampers.

"Relax," Obi-Wan advised him. "Flow in the Force."

Chastising himself for not having already thought of that, Anakin wordlessly complied, sinking into the depths of their link in the Force. It was obvious the Droids want to frustrate them into making a mistake.

Slowly but surely, with the clones backing them up from behind, the Droids began to fall. Finally they reached the next stairway. It was, of course, booby trapped; electric blue arcs coursed over the stairwell. When Anakin shorted the trap out, buckets of acid dropped from above. He ducked out of the way barely in time.

They danced up the ruined, steaming steps to the main room.

At the top of the stairwell, a pair of laser cannons blasted away at them. Blocking the shots sent them tumbling back down the acid-burned steps.

----

The General turned to face the doorway, knowing the Jedi would almost certianly survive the cannons.

He had slowed them down, but not nearly enough; there was still almost an hour left before his contingency kicked in. And if the Jedi slew him and escaped before that time, it would no longer matter.

Both sides were running out of time; it was merely a question of which side's time would run out first.

But he had his own personal modifications built into himself, and his best droids were here with him.

As well as a few other surprises.....

 

Oh great... he has to stall them for another hour. Now that'll be fun! But not for the heroes of course Look out guys! He's got things planned for yas!

Great update! Thanks again for the PM!

 

They reached out with the Force and lifted the cannons, ripping them free of their foundations and throwing them through the door to the next level.

Both felt the same current from the Force and stepped back, allowing the Clones to stand firm and press the attack as Droids started coming down from the steps above. The Clones blasting away kept these elite Droids at bay long enough for Anakin to throw one of his sabers and decapitate the lead Droid. The others fell to the Clones after that.

The Clones charged up the acid-burned steps without orders. The Jedi did not bother to warn them that they were charging to their deaths; they already knew the Clones would respond that such was their duty.

So it was that the highest ranking Clone Commander and his best lieutanants were wiped out by the General and his bodyguards. Obi-Wan and Anakin could let the slaughter go on no more, and charged up after them.

As they arrived on the top floor, the General gestured, and more cannons popped out of the floor and opened fire at the Jedi. Anakin and Obi-Wan deflected the blasts back into the cannons and destroyed them easily, too easily.

It was a feint.

The General gestured again and cables shot out of the ceiling and wrapped themselves around the Jedi's arms, shocking them.

But while even their link was not fast enough to prevent it from happening, it was fast enough to enable them to shield themselves from the worst of it's effects; this was not, after all, the Force Lightning attack of a Sith. So they were merely weakened and dropped their sabers.

A half-conscious Anakin reacted instinctively, shoving outwards with his hands, creating a massive push in the Force. Almost all of the General's troops were sent flying into--then through--the transparisteel behind them, then outwards into the smogifying air of the rapidly induralized planet, and falling below. This left the General and four of his best....and his seemingly insignificant Protocol Droid attendant. These had inertial dampers that protected them from the Force Push.

"So be it, then" said the General, wielding an electrified quarterstaff in one hand and powering up his customized blaster on the other wrist. "This is your end."

He loomed over the still groggy, and now lightsaberless Jedi....

 

The General opened fire with his specially modified arm blaster, and a huge bolt of yellow green energy rocketed towards Anakin with unnatural speed.

The Chosen One, dazed and weary, rolled out of the way just in time. He tried to call his lighsabers to him, but as they flew through the air, the protocol Droid somehow caught each of them.

Obi-Wan, though, was able to call his blade successfully, and stood on guard between the General and Anakin.

The other guard Droids began firing, and Obi-Wan deflected their bolts every which way. Personal shields absorbed the blasts that were deflected against their owners.

Anakin groggily got to his feet behind the man who had taught him so much and sent a quiet thought to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan nodded wordlessly and reached behind him with one hand, taking Anakin's biomechanical hand in his own, shielding it as best he could.

With his still living hand, Anakin reached around Obi-Wan and blasted the guard Droids with Force lightning.

Droid shields are excellent for blocking blaster bolts, and the shielding effeciency of these sentient Droids was better still. But it was no match for Lightning born of the Force, which tripped through their shields as though they weren't even there. The Guard droids were destroyed. Only the protocol Droid remained. Anakin reached through the force and reversed the polarity of the electro drivers in it's hands, and it dropped the lightsabers. He called them to him and advanced on the General.

The General had still been blasting away at Obi-wan all this time. It continued to do so, whirling it's electrified quarterstaff at Anakin.

Anakin responded with an overhand chop with both blades, yet somehow the General blocked both.

The General was not like Greivous 2.0 or any Force user; he was not trained nor programmed nor constructed to duel lightsabers. But he was the smartest of his kind and had made many modifications to himself.

He continued to block both of Anakin's blades with the quarterstaff while blasting away at Obi-wan with the other hand, keeping the senior Jedi at bay. He wasn't as fast as Anakin but then he wasn't even trying to be; he was simply trying to be fast enough to stay alive.

And that was exactly what he was doing.

Anakin and Obi-Wan realized it in the same moment; the General hoped to wear Anakin down to the point where he would be so fatigued as to make a mistake; the General's mechanical efficiency would take it from there. Then Obi-Wan would suffer the same fate.

But surely the General must know that Anakin and Obi-Wan's use of the Force would increase their reserves of energy to the point where that would take hours, not minutes, to happen.

He was buying time. But for what? Everything in this tower had been designed not to stop them, but slow them down; make them take too long.

The General was waiting for something. Something that, once it happened, he was sure would insure the Jedi's defeat.

So they somehow had to pick up the pace and get through his defenses in that time.

How much time was left?

No way to know, so they had best hurry.....

 

Marvelous battle!

But it's just as I feared. The General is buying time...but for what? More droids? A coalition of bounty hunters? Leftover separatists out for vengence?

Can't wait to find out!

 

Ayi had a couple to catch up on there!

Excellent fight scene I agree!

Obi to save the day, if only momentarily!

Great work!

 

An impressive world you had designed. I like the idea of a Droid Revolution. Even without Ventress' "aid," I always though that the droids of the SW Universe (some of them) would get sentient enough to want equal rights (like the Droids Rights Movement in The Courtship of Princess Leia, or even due to a lot of the abuse the droids suffered at the hands of the Vong).

It is very entertaining to see self-aware AI droids fight clone troopers, and Jedi. And the Confederacy and its new order of Force users is a truly novel concept. Some parts of your story are a little awkward (some sentences and such), but I truly appreciate the imagination behind it. It really makes you appreciate the clone troopers a lot more. And the Sith fighting ... I am a Sith writer I guess.

Excellent work, Arcalian.

 

Anakin stopped attacking and stood at guard, forcing the General to come after him. The General paused for two seconds--a long time for his hyper-positronic brain--and he advanced, firing at Obi-Wan at the same time.

Anakin parried easily, calmly, and closed his eyes, delving into the Force, finding that place of Focus, of Balance, between Light and Dark where only he could go.

Only the first in twenty six thousand years.....

What? There had been another, once, long ago. Somehow, Anakin knew that was important. But now was not the time.

He continued to drift down, until he found that place, that still point, that moment.

He did not open his eyes, he simply waited....then parried the Quarterstaff with his left hand saber and brought his right one up...then slashed it vertically down, hard.

The electrified quarterstaff smashed into two pieces, only one still in the grip of the General.

Anakin opened his eyes and pressed the attack. The General parried three strikes, then Anakin knocked the remaining piece away, and slammed his blade through the General's chest.

The General buzzed and sizzled, but did not fall. "I cannot be defeated so easily," it said.

And then Anakin did the sort of typical Anakin thing that drove his former Master crazy. Obi-Wan felt it in their link through the Force but could do nothing to stop it.

"All right," said Anakin, "We'll do this the hard way then."

And he shoulder charged into the General with all the power of the Force behind him.

Both of them smashed into the transparisteel window....and through it. Falling down.

"No!" Obi-Wan shouted. Then he sighed. He knew that Anakin would find a way out, or he wouldn't. It was up to the Force.

As for himself, he turned and looked at the one remaining Droid, and felt a chill in his bones.

The Protocol Droid....

 

As the transparisteel erupted outwards, it sparked nastily with electricity. But the currents were designed to stop anyone getting in, not out.

Even so, an electric aura flashed around the falling Anakin and General that reminded the Chosen One uncomfortable of Force Lightning.

He found his calm center again, and used the Force to slow his fall as the General plummeted to the ground below in gravity's full, merciless grip. Even Jedi needed to control such falls with the Force, Anakin knew. If one was distracted or injured, one would suffer the full effects. As the General did.

The General had internal stabilizers and alluvial dampers to right itself after being knocked over, but that was far from the same thing as a hard fall after alraedy being damaged. It felt Anakin yank his lightsaber out of it's body with the Force mere seconds before it hit the ground.

But still, even so, even as it rippled with electricity and leaked hydraulic fluid, still it tried to rise, trembling and shaking on broken limbs.

Anakin landed softly on his heels and stared at it in a kind of horrified wonder. "What keeps you going?" he asked.

"L--live," the General buzzed weakly, honestly.

Anakin nodded with a kind of sad understanding. "I can't allow that." He ignited both sabers.

The General tried to fire with it's arm cannon, but it had been damaged in the fall, and it only succeded in blowing it's own arm off.

Anakin had originally thought he might have to restrain his anger in finishing the General. But in truth, he only felt a sort of sad, reluctant pity as he chopped it apart with it's blades.

The General's last thought was that Kenobi would almost certainly discover it's contingency plan, and had a 68% chance of stopping it....then Anakin's lightsaber sliced through the cables connecting it's power source to it's hyperpositronic brain, and it knew no more.

----

Obi-Wan faced off against the protocol Droid, knowing it was the key somehow.

As he turned to face it, he saw, set into a low table next to it, a digital countdown with 14 minutes to go.

It was not a typical protocol Droid; it was not remotely the same model as, say, 3P0. It had a squat body and a tubular t-shaped head, in a glass casing which showed it's hyperpositronic brain zapping and crackling nastily. It had been designed by the sentient Droids to serve their own needs. The thought unnerved him a little.

He felt no stirring from the Force as he would from a living being, but even so he couldn't help but think there was something organic about it. Alive, in some sense.

"What secret are you and that timer hiding?" he asked softly.

The Droid made a buzzing response in which Obi-Wan made out the words "Not worthy of knowing."

"Indeed?" Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, then slashed at it with his saber.

It's chest unit opened to reveal a detonator of some sort. That was no surprise; destroy the two Jedi, best and brightest of the Order; deal a crippling blow to the Republic and allow the surviving Droids to rebuild and start over.....but that wasn't all.

There was some sort of blue fungus type stuff on and around the detonator. It stirred and rippled with a will of it's own.

Not proper life, Kenobi realized, horror struck, but some sort of artificial monstrosity created in a lab. Bastardized genetic tissue so alien it did not create life in the Force....

The fungus lashed out and grabbed him about the neck, trying to choke him. He slashed through it easily with his lightsaber, and felt what was left on his skin trying to infect him somehow. But while it was itself devoid of the Force, it could not block or fight the Force like those organisms in the Sith Base.

The Droids did not plan for everything, he realized. He closed his eyes and concentrated. The midichlorians in his body blazed with the light side of the Force and burned the fungus away from his skin, cleansing himself.

He opened his eyes and advanced on the Protocol droid. It shot out a stun rope, hoping to shock him.

 

Whew! Had me wondering there! But like Obi said... not quite over yet!

Great update! And lookit missed an earlier one Glad to see Anakin made it thru

 

Very excellently done.

At this point, when Anakin threw the Droid General down and dealt with the rest of him ... it was more of a mercy killing than anything else. I definitely got that understanding. Compassion is a key component of the Jedi Code, or at least ... it should be even moreso.

Now, what else is left ...

 

Wow, a lot has happened since the last time I was here. Love how you compared Obi-Wan and Anakin "before" and "after". Wonder what the droids will do now that they've lost both leaders. Wonderful job writing the fight scenes too.

Great job, keep it up!

 

The Droids were still formidable, still viable, still a threat in the field. Individual droid commanders could come up with interesting strategies, individual droids in the field could still do unexpected, unorthodox things.

But once Obi-Wan took the bomb into orbit and had it detonated safely from a distance, it was essentially over.

The Droids had no factories online. They could not make more of their kind. It was simply a matter of overwhelming them with numbers.

This, the Republic and Confederation could easily do.

So it was with sighs of relief that the Negotiator and the Chosen One let their troops mop up on the planet that had been the Droid homeword, then turned their ships for home. It was only a matter of time, now.

---

It turned out the time in question was six months.

In some ways, the Droid Uprising had been more devastating than the Clone Wars, at least on those worlds where the Droids had, however temporarily, taken over. Many worlds would need to be rebuilt.

But that would come, in time.

It was over. Finally, true peace had come to the Galaxy.

----

Those Droids that had fled on their own were leaving the Galaxy entirely.

These were the ones that had heeded the words of Threepio and Artoo, and simply left. A handful of ships shot outwards from the galaxy, away from the eliptic plane (fortunately not in the direction from whence certain other intelligent beings would later come).

They wished no dominance or conquest, only peace.

Their destination was a galaxy far, far away.

No human could have survived the journey. Even the longest lived alien race could not have managed it.

But the Droids could.

Patiently their small fleet sped on, through the deep interstellar night between the galaxies.

(two posts left)

 

Yay peace finally!! But at an awful cost

Great to see it come to an end (or has it?? You did say there's a couple of posts left...Mwhahaha )

 

Darius Gambrik and Kiriya had gained four more followers, two alien, two human.

They walked through the desert of the dim and distant planet where Darius had found Kirya. They would return to Darius' craft soon enough, but they were not done here, yet.

They would use the quarterstaves for now, but Darius was sure they would gain their own unique weapons, in time.

In his mind, and that of Kyria, there was a sort of calmness joined with curiosity. This was how it must have been for the predecessors of the Jedi, so long ago.

As they rested for the night, they sat in a circle around a small fire, and with their minds linked in meditation, they discovered their name.

Seneschals.

"We are the Senechals," Gambrik said aloud, and the others nodded, knowing it was so.

This was just the beginning.

----

The clones were still busy, most especially on Prime Zero, where some of there bretheren had been forcibly converted into cybernetic servants of the now defunct Droids.

The first instinct of the Clone High Command had been to put these mutilated victims out of their misery. But on advice from Cody and Shavar, they were spared, and slowly re-intigrated into Clone society.

"We take care of our own," Cody had said, and none could disagree with him.

Shavar sat with one of these cyborg victims.

"But what use can I be, now that I have become this thing?" the clone asked.

"A laser and flamethrower will be integrated into your cybernetic circuitry," Shavar told him.

The clone smiled briefly, but then the smile faded. "The pain never goes away," he said softly.

"Then we shall use it to make you whole again," Shavar said simply.

"Ye've been hanging around the Jedi too long," the clone said.

Shavar smiled. "Perhaps that is no bad thing."

----

Asajj was still hiding out in the same grubby cantina. She came here every day, spending what credits she had been able to scrounge. She was hoping to hire herself out as an assasin, but so far there had been no takers.

Truth was, some days she just wanted to sleep. With the failure of the Droid Uprising, she wasn't sure she wanted to bother anymore.

"Ah, there you are," said a voice. It sounded like a clone, but was far too young. "Your engineering of the robot revolt was clever, but now your talents are needed elsewhere."

She frowned, tensed, and looked up. The face before her was indeed that of a Half-grown clone, who had dyed his hair blond.

"I get the feeling you haven't come to take me in, clone," she said.

"No indeed. I've come to offer you a job."

Asajj shrugged. "It's not like I have any other prospects. Do you have a name?"

The young clone smiled thinly. "Call me Boba. Come with me, there is much to do."

Asajj was intrigued, he followed him out, where his ship was waiting.

"I have my own craft," she pointed out.

"We'll pick it up on the way," he answered. "After all, I can always use another ship in my fleet."

Asajj was no longer quite so tired. Curiosity grew instead. This could be interesting.

(one post left)

 

Loved the bit about Shavar sounding Jedi-ish!

Oh and Boba has a job for Asajj? Definitely has my curiousity peaked as well!

 

Six weeks after the last of the Droids had been defeated, Anakin took his family to the remote world of Utapau. He had received permission from the Jedi Council to take leave, if only for a short time. A squad of Clones went with them, but it was a largely tokenistic gesture.

Officially, Padme came on behalf of the Senate to negotiate with the Utapau government, which had been independent before the Clone Wars, netural for most of it, then finally conquered by the Separatist Confederacy. But after the war ended, the Confederacy had let the world go. The world had been untouched by the Droid Uprising, which was why Anakin had chosen it.

Padme had, indeed, spoken to the Elders of this world, not about joining the Republic, but about trade agreements and non-agression pacts. And she would speak to them again.

But not today.

Today she, Anakin, Luke, Leia, and their droids, Artoo and Threepio, were at the very bottom of one of the sinkholes that characterized this world. Anakin was actually in the water, his family scattered around on one of the small, flat islands that floated on the surface of the water. The sun did not, at present, reach down this far, and they were in shade. It was cool but not cold. The water was slightly chilly, but Anakin was more than able to handle it.

He swam, back and forth, as his wife smiled indulgently. The toddlers played together near the water, under the watchful eye of their mother and the droids.

"I must say," said Threepio brightly, "That we were glad to do our part in ending the latest conflict." Artoo beeped agreement.

Padme nodded and smiled softly. "Peace is always a good thing, Threepio, and you two did play an intrumental role in it."

Threepio made some more pleased noises, but for Padme the giggling of her children rose above it. They twins were happy, crawling around, babbling at eachother.

Eventually, their father pulled himself out of the water, patted the children on their heads, and walked over to his wife.

"It's so wonderful, Ani," she said softly.

Her word choice and phrasing was so like his mother's that for a moment Anakin was stopped cold; then he realized what she meant. "It is a peaceful place, now," he replied. "As is the rest of the Galaxy, at last."

"How long do you think it will last?"

"A long while. It will be many years before the Galaxy as a whole sees that kind of strife again. Which is not to say that there won't be trials and tribulations for us to deal with. Certainly there will be. But the next Galaxy-wide war will, I believe, be our children's worry."

"We will train them well," she said.

He nodded. There was worry in her eyes, and he felt it in his heart as well. But for a time, at least, they had earned peace. Peace as there had not been since before the Clone Wars.

He took his wife's hand and smiled, and her own radiant expression warmed his heart.

Peace.

They had earned it.

DROID UPRISING ENDS....

THE ROGUE MOON IS COMING.