Star Wars: Legacies

Anakin

    Ahsoka leaned forward, resting her arm on the back of Anakin's chair, "The signal came from that moon," she said, pointing at the lunar body orbiting the desert world.
    "Jeez, I had always hoped I'd never have to come back to this place," Anakin said, poorly hiding his disgust. Ahsoka nodded in agreement, then shuddered, "It's been 20 years and I still can't look at worms without freaking out," she recounted.
    Anakin grimaced, but it turned to a smirk, "Remember when we threw Rex off that wall?" He asked, flying towards the moon.
    She laughed and sat down in the seat next to him, belting herself in, "I know I got more droids than you,"
They were both making light of the situation but that's cause neither of them wanted to acknowledge just how horrific the First and Second Battles of Geonosis were. Anakin was at both, and had seen a lot of people die, clones and Jedi. It wasn't something he particularly loved thinking about. Both instances had been meat grinders for so many people, and he acutely remembered the pain of almost losing Obi-Wan, Padme, and Ahsoka.
    "There!" She said, pointing at something on the moon's rocky surface, "It looks like an escape pod."
    "Let's check it out," he agreed, flying forward a few more clicks before landing in front of a flight pod with the undisputed mark of the Jedi Order painted on its surface in bright red. More intrigued than ever, the two Jedi threw on their cloaks and hurriedly climbed out of their ship, at the exact same time a wonderfully familiar face appeared from inside the pod.
    "Well then, I was beginning to think you two didn't get my message," Obi-wan said, blowing a tuft of grayed auburn hair out of his face.
    "Obi-Wan!" Anakin exclaimed, rushing to his old master's side, his boots crunching in the snow, "Where's Luke and Leia?!" He asked frantically, looking around.
    Obi-Wan frowned and pulled his sleeves tighter over his shoulders, "I wish I knew, but I'll explain on the way,"
    Ahsoka frowned and folded her arms, "The way to Coruscant?"
Obi-wan shook his head, looking old and haggard in the dim, dusty light of the moon. As a frigid wind swept over the tundra, he pointed to the orange planet, "No, the way to the surface. Something isn't right, scans indicate that there is no life present on the surface of Geonosis," he explained gravely.

    Ahsoka shook her head, "That can't be right, Geonosis is chalk full of bugs."
    Obi-Wan scratched his grayed beard thoughtfully, "Precisely. I think there's something going on that we need to investigate."
    Anakin shrugged and worked his still sore shoulders, "Only one way to find out," he said, turning back on board the ship he borrowed from Padme. The three of them flew to the desert surface, old, painful memories bubbling to the surface.
Obi-Wan cracked open a canteen of water and downed it eagerly, quickly starting on another as he took a seat behind Anakin. "While you two were out I received an encrypted transmission from R2D2. All he said was Leia was in trouble and some coordinates. So Luke and I followed them to Geonosis's orbit, and there was this massive space station, it was enormous, I'd thought it was a moon at first. The plan was for me to distract them while Luke snuck in to find Leia, but the plan went awry. I got caught and barely made it into the escape pod before it got tractor beamed. I was stranded on the moon, but by the time I'd orbited back around, it had left the system. I have no idea what it is or what it's capable of, but it can't be good," Master Kenobi explained.
Anakin pursed his lips and tightened his jaw. He hoped Obi-Wan had a stronger lead on where his kids were, but something was better than nothing. When they arrived, they stepped out into the dunes, looking up at the massive structure that had once been a hive of Geonosian activity. Now, it was completely deserted.
    Anakin shook his head, "Where could they all have-" he took a step forward and heard a loud crunch. He looked down to see his boot had gone right through the skull of a decaying bug corpse. He stumbled back, trying not to lose his lunch, wrenching his foot loose of the hollow exoskeleton.
    Ahsoka frowned and brushed the toe of her boot against the sand, kicking some of it away to reveal yet another corpse. "This isn't right, don't they usually bury their dead?" She asked tentatively.
    "Yes, they do," Obi-Wan agreed, unearthing another nearby cadaver, then another. "This was a massacre," he stated.
    Anakin crouched down to look at he bug Ahsoka had stumbled upon, "They don't have any wounds though, which can only mean-" he reached into the sand to find an empty canister, one he clearly recognized as a gas bomb. He handed it to Ahsoka, who examined it closely, confirming his thoughts. "I have a bad feeling about this," he said, standing up and brushing the dust off his clothes.
    Spurred on by morbid curiosity, the trio walked into the hive, only to find more of the same. Empty gas canisters, and dead geonosians. Ahsoka looked over one contorted corpse, shriveled on its back like a dead spider, illuminating it with the ghostly glow of her white lightsaber.
    "Obi-Wan, this space station you're talking about, do you think it has something to do with this?" Anakin asked.
    Obi-Wan nodded, "I'm not certain, but if someone was trying to cover something up, genocide is definitely one way to keep it quiet."
    Anakin furrowed his brow and coughed up some of the stuffy, hot air of the tunnel entrance, when he approached a nearby window cutout. Looking out over the barren wasteland, he recognized a place all too familiar to him. "Obi-Wan, that's a droid factory," he said.
    "Impossible, the Republic destroyed them all," his master answered, strolling over to the window, only to see Anakin was correct. "These new separatists, I thought they used conscripted soldiers."
    Ahsoka joined them, squinting in the bright sunlight, "They do, but you saw the vulture droids on Kashyyyk, they're probably manufacturing battle droids as well, but for what? They can't go to war with a Republic that doesn't have a military."
    "I don't know, but I don't like it," Anakin said, narrowing his icy blue eyes. "There's something bigger going on here, I can feel it. We just can't see it."
    Ahsoka frowned and looked around, her blue eyes adjusting to the meager light. She walked over to a cavernous tunnel opening, and took a few steps inside, holding up her lightsaber for light. After a moment she turned to look at her two masters, pointing down the tunnel into the gloom with her saber, "There's something down there. I think we should check it out," she suggested.
    Anakin followed her without hesitation, like always, and Obi-Wan blindly followed him, as he had for the last thirty years. If Anakin was walking face first into a dangerous situation, you bet Obi-Wan was following him.
    The trio descended into the catacombs of Geonosis, just as they had all those years ago, during the second battle of the Clone Wars. Anakin followed Ahsoka closely as they went deeper and deeper underground, the unsettling noises and whispers put them all on edge as they stepped over the corpses of the gruesomely murdered Geonosians.
    Ahsoka rounded a corner, and walked right into something, as it nearly smacked her in the face. She screamed like Anakin had never heard her scream before, impulsively lashing out with her lightsaber as she stumbled back into him. At first he thought it was one of those brain worms they had to deal with last time, but it was merely a power cord, hanging from the ceiling.
    "Snips, it's fine, it's just a cable," he assured her.
She quickly regained her senses and shuddered for a moment, composing herself as if nothing had happened. "Right," she sounded a bit embarrassed as she brushed the dust off her robe and continued down the cave, following the cords as they met with more and more extensions until they finally arrived at a bolted durasteel door.
    Ahsoka rested a hand on the metal, furrowing her brow and brushing her fingers along the surface. "It's in there. The last person on Geonosis is in there."