Afterglow | The Clone Wars

Storm of the Republic

Narrator: "Revenge! Boba Fett, son of the notorious bounty hunter Jango Fett, infiltrated a Jedi cruiser in an attempt to assassinate General Mace Windu, the man who k*lled his father. After a near miss at Windu's quarters, Boba was forced to destroy the Jedi cruiser and escape with the help of notorious bounty hunter Aurra Sing. Now, having lost contact with Admiral Kilian when his doomed starship crashed, the Jedi search for survivors with the aid of a Republic rescue ship."

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It was inevitable that the Endurance would crash. Ninety-three perfect of the crew that boarded the cruiser four rotations ago or evacuated successfully. The other percentages were either apprehended by the invisible assassin or pulled out into space when an explosion blew open the wall. Admiral Kilian, Commander Ponds, and a clone bridge leader went down with the ship, as was customary.

The Admiral goes down with his ship.

However as Dakota hovered in her green star-fighter above the crashed vessel, it occurred to her that given the bridge was mainly intact despite the crash landing, anyone inside of it could have potentially survived and that warranted a proper search.

From the cockpit, her emerald eyes swept over the devastation below. The Endurance had carved a brutal scar across Vanqor's jagged blue-grey surface, its once-proud frame reduced to a mangled skeleton of steel.

The cruiser lay broken-backed across a canyon, its forward section buried in the rock as if the planet itself had swallowed it whole. Smoke spiraled upward in thick, black ribbons, staining the pale sky with ash. Fires burned along the gashes in the hull, orange light flickering like veins of molten lava through ruptured durasteel.

Sections of the ship had been torn clean off during descent. Shards of plating glimmered in the faint morning light, scattered like fallen stars against the dirt and stone.

Dakota hovered above it all, the hum of her fighter steady It wasn't just a crash site—it was a machinery graveyard, with half of the Venator swallowed by Vanqor's unforgiving terrain. Despite this, the bridge was perched above it all. A beacon of hope that possibly, the three command crew who chose to remain behind were still alive.

"I'm going down." She said to Mace over comms.

"I'll meet you." He said back.

Her fighter descended in a slow arc, repulsors kicking up a haze of blue dust as she set down on a rocky outcropping that jutted above the wreck. The cruisers carcass loomed ahead, still coughing smoke into the air like some wounded beast.

A second shadow fell over her canopy. Mace's Delta-7 swept in and settled neatly on the edge of the same platform.

Dakota powered down her systems and cracked the cockpit open. The hiss of pressure release mingled with the oddly quaint roar of wreckage below. She climbed out, boots crunching against the stone as she landed, needing moment to balance herself on both feet. The tang of burning fuel stung her nostrils as she pulled her gaze to the disaster once again.

A few strides away, Mace emerged from his own star-fighter. "Doesn't look good." She said to him as he approached the ledge beside her. Together, Master and former Padawan stood side by side, surveying what was left of the proud Republic warship.

"I can't believe one assassin did all this," she murmured, eyes narrowing on the torn decks and jagged openings.

Mace folded his arms, his expression granite. "Something tells me... it wasn't just one."