Halcyon 🪐⋆｡°✩ Paul Arteides ✩⋆｡°🪐 / A Star Wars Story

2.

The Jedi Temple's hanger was bustling with preparations. Besides the usual functioning of the hanger, there was an extra buzz for the new mission that was set to be underway.

Clones and maintenance workers loaded two carrier ships with supplies. Emergency medical kits full of bacta gel was rolled up the landing ramp, as well as crates of blasters and launchers were secured on-board.

The mission wasn't expected to be an ambush or a battle, but the crates of weaponry and rations were loaded as such. The clones of the 501st army did as they were told and didn't question the nature of their supplies. But onlookers, such as Ahsoka Tano, couldn't help but voice her concerns.

'Don't you think this a bit overkill, Master?'

'When you're dealing with the Great Houses, it's better to be overkill than stranded with nothing.'

Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at her Master beside her. Just a Padawan learner, the Togruta didn't see the need for all the cargo. 

The mission was a peace-keeping one, just like the Jedi used to specialise in. It should require only one team of clones and their Jedi general, but Grand Master Yoda allocated not one general, but two with the 501st clone legion.

Anakin Skywalker stood in his armour with a stiff expression. Recently made general of his own army, Anakin was assigned to this mission alongside his ex-Master, Obi-wan Kenobi. The two men were opposites in their leadership and methods of de-escalation, but it's what made them right for the job.

Anakin was tall with broad shoulders and sandy hair. The tips were beginning to curl around his ears and his blue eyes were light, but full of emotion. It wasn't in the Jedi code to act on emotion, or to form attachment, but Anakin wasn't one for following rules. And even though Master Mace Windu, a vital member of the Jedi Council, never favoured the Skywalker's trait, he couldn't deny that Anakin almost never failed in his missions.

'So, we're going to Arrakis, where the Harkonnens have just massacred the Atreides, to settle the conflict with the Fremen and the... Harkonnens?' Ahsoka said, drawing out her sentence with a tone of confusion. 'Am I missing something here? Haven't the Harkonnens just committed a war-crime?'

Anakin didn't know how to answer. When he was called to the meeting room, the mission's debrief sounded ridiculous and backwards.

'Gather information, you must. Defuse the situation, and report to us, you will,' Grand Master Yoda had informed.

In his small, domed chair, Master Yoda peered at the assigned generals. Coruscant had heard about the tragedy on the Outer-Rim and was looking to the Senate for the consequences to be laid. But it seemed that the conflict had been handed to the Jedi Council, and not with the intent to punish the Harkonnens for their crime.

The looks the green man received were ones of confusion, as they had heard about the massacre of the Atreides on Arrakis. Yet, they were being sent to the desert planet to make peace between the new colonisers and the Indigenous Fremen.

Anakin Skywalker didn't know what to think. He had become a Knight in the previous year and spent most of his time fighting battle droids. Negotiations weren't his speciality, nor was the act of letting criminals get away with their crimes.

It also didn't thrill Anakin to hear that Arrakis was covered in a sand. His home planet of Tatooine was also a desert, but the memories that it held were painful and difficult to reminisce.

When Anakin was assigned the mission, all he could think about was the sour events of his past, and the death of his mother. Aside from the Council's strange decision to send a party to Harkonnen-operated Arrakis, Anakin was dreading the planet for his own reasons. But as a Jedi, Anakin couldn't voice these concerns, as emotion and attachments were forbidden according to the Jedi code.