The Bad Company's cruiser, Resolute Dawn, cut through hyperspace like a blade drawn in silence.
Inside, the ship lived in its usual rhythm: the low mechanical thrum beneath the deck plates, the filtered hiss of recycled air, the distant clank of armor lockers opening and closing, the murmur of clones off duty and never truly at rest. It was not the serenity of the Jedi Temple or the GAR Barracks in Coruscant. It was not supposed to be. It was the kind of peace that only existed between operations, brittle and temporary, made of routine, energetic drinks, dark humor, and the faith that the men beside you would not freeze when things started going to hell.
Will stood in the forward command compartment with one hand resting on the edge of the tactical holotable, his cloak hanging open just enough to reveal the layered clone armor integrated beneath his Jedi attire, not going off of his attire until the end of the war. The green shoulder markings of Bad Company were scratched now, more than before. Fresh scoring on the forearm plate. A burn along the side of the thigh guard. The war wrote on everyone eventually.
Rift stood opposite him, helmet under his right arm, the other hand tracing a route line over the holo while Spark adjusted comm frequencies with the sort of muttered swearing that meant he was happy. Burner lounged against the side console with a caf in one hand and a detonator component in the other, which was, unfortunately, normal. Doc was reading through casualty summaries from the last campaign with the grim intimacy of a man who remembered every name even when he pretended he didn't. Frost remained near the rear bulkhead, half in shadow, the stillness of a sniper making him look less like a man and more like a statue in the room. Brick was sitting on an ammo crate too small for him, cleaning a blaster carbine like he was petting a dangerous animal he trusted anyway. And Jackal was not visible, which meant he was either exactly where he needed to be or had decided visibility was for amateurs.
Will had been aboard long enough to feel the old, familiar split happening inside him again.
Temple silence in one half of the mind.
Shipboard practicality in the other.
And between them, the grinding truth that the Jedi Council still hadn't called him back about the deeper investigation into Sidious, the hidden sanctum, or the rot in the Republic. They had taken the information. They had nodded in grave little circles and spoken in measured tones. They had assigned committees and specialized reviews and quiet internal studies.
And then, because the war never asked permission, they had sent him back to the front.
He had obeyed.
He was still obeying.
That did not mean he liked it.
In fact he hated it, even if hate could lead to the darkside.
A chime sounded from the command console.
Spark glanced up. "Priority holo incoming. Triple authentication. Jedi Council channel, Senate encryption, Naboo diplomatic layer. That's... the last one is unexpected."
Rift looked at Will. "You want privacy?"
Will shook his head once. "No. Let it in."
Spark sliced the channel through. The room lights dimmed slightly as the holoprojector rose from the table and assembled three figures in blue static shimmer.
Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Master Mace Windu. Senator Padmé Amidala of Naboo.
The seriousness in the room sharpened immediately.
Kenobi looked as composed as ever, though the tightness around his eyes gave him away. Windu stood as rigid as law carved into stone. Padmé Amidala, even in holo distortion, looked like someone holding herself together by discipline and anger.
Will straightened. "Masters. Senator."
"Knight Kriss," Windu said. "We have an urgent assignment."
Which meant disaster. Jedi never used that tone to discuss tax policy.
Kenobi stepped slightly forward in the projection. "There has been a severe escalation on Naboo. Gungan Minister Rish Loo has been exposed as a traitor working with Count Dooku to sow conflict between the Gungans and the Naboo humans. He manipulated tensions between the two peoples and helped engineer a Separatist incursion."
Padmé took over, voice steady but edged. "Boss Lyonie was incapacitated, and Jar Jar Binks temporarily assumed leadership among the Gungans. General Tarpals gave his life during the battle, and the Gungans succeeded in capturing General Grievous, according to the reports."
Burner mouthed, Jar Jar? and then visibly thought better of saying it aloud.
Will kept his face neutral. "And Skywalker? He was assigned to be there, if I'm correct."
He remebered it from the 3 days ago, when he last spoke with Anakin.
Kenobi's expression darkened by a fraction. "Anakin pursued Rish Loo to a hidden Separatist position and was captured by Count Dooku. Dooku has proposed a prisoner exchange: Skywalker for Grievous."
A silence fell over the compartment so abruptly it felt physical.
Will looked from Kenobi to Windu, then to Padmé.
He did not miss the way her shoulders stiffened at Anakin's name. He did not miss the small, almost imperceptible delay before she resumed the neutral expression expected of a senator.
Ah.
Interesting.
Windu spoke. "We are authorizing the exchange publicly to preserve the appearance of good-faith negotiation. Privately, you are to proceed to Naboo with Bad Company, infiltrate the detention site, recover Skywalker, and, if an opportunity presents itself, capture Count Dooku."
Burner almost laughed into his caf. Not mockingly. More the reflexive disbelief of a man hearing someone say, while you're there, feel free to bag one of the most dangerous bastards in the war.
Will asked the obvious question. "What's the timeline?"
Padmé answered before either Master could. "Very short. Dooku is controlling the pace. He wants Grievous back quickly." There was just a hair too much force in that sentence. A hair too much investment. "We can stall him, but not for long."
There it was again.
Not just concern. Not simply political urgency.
Personal fear, wrapped in senatorial posture and trying badly to pretend it had no pulse. I can feel it in the Force. The masters needed to be idiots to not understand what was going on, but again, maybe I can be being a little harsh, but I think just Master Kenobi, Master Plo, and Master Ti, are not complete blind idiots in that council, and the rest are just too blind in the Force too see it.
Will glanced sideways and saw Rift's eyes cut briefly toward him. Spark had already noticed too. Spark noticed everything that smelled remotely like gossip or espionage. Burner was trying so hard not to grin that his whole face looked like a structural problem.
Kenobi continued, either oblivious or very committed to not showing that he was not oblivious. "The holding site is believed to be one of Dooku's covert facilities on Naboo, likely tied to the same old hidden networks used during the recent incursion."
Padmé's mouth tightened. "If you can free Anakin before the exchange is completed, Grievous remains in Gungan custody and Dooku loses his leverage."
"And if Dooku's present?" Will asked.
Windu's answer was immediate. "Take him, if possible."
If possible. The Jedi version of perform a miracle if one happens to be lying around.
Will bowed his head slightly. "Understood. We'll move now."
Padmé looked directly at him. Even through holo grain, her expression shifted for the briefest instant—formal composure cracking just enough to let something more human through.
"Bring him back," she said.
Not bring General Skywalker back.
Not rescue the Jedi prisoner.
Just that.
Bring him back.
The silence after it lasted less than a second.
But in a room full of soldiers and spies and one increasingly difficult-to-fool Jedi Knight, less than a second was all it took.
Kenobi's face did something microscopic and deeply pained.
Windu remained unreadable.
Will inclined his head. "Yes, Senator."
The transmission ended.
The blue figures dissolved, and the room was left with the soft hum of the cruiser and the sudden weight of shared understanding.
No one spoke for three whole seconds.
Then Burner said, "Oh, they are absolutely fucking."
Doc made a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh. "Straight to the point, huh?"
Spark whirled in his chair. "No, no, no, let's be analytical. We're professionals. There are stages to these things."
Rift pinched the bridge of his nose. "I already hate where this is going."
Brick looked up from his blaster, interested in spite of himself. "You saying actual romantic entanglement? Or just mutual staring?"
"Mutual staring doesn't get that tone," Spark said with the confidence of a man who had never once shut up long enough not to notice subtext. "That was full-body panic wearing a senate dress."
Burner raised a finger. "Counterpoint: maybe they're secretly married."
Doc barked a laugh. "That escalated fast."
"Look at the evidence," Burner insisted. "She says 'bring him back' like she's talking to a husband coming home from a stupid speeder accident. Wich I could bet General Skywalker really had at least once."
"Or a lover," Spark said. "Maybe not marriage. Maybe ongoing illicit passion. Nights of forbidden passion."
Brick frowned. "Can you make that sound less creepy?"
"No."
Rift looked at Will. "General. Please tell me we're not doing this."
Will crossed his arms over the clone-plated chest beneath the tunic and allowed himself the faintest, driest hint of a smile. "We are absolutely doing this."
The room lit up.
Burner slapped the holotable. "Yes!"
Doc groaned. "Maker save us."
Spark was already opening a notepad. "All right. Wagers. Categories are: secret marriage, active courtship, formal engagement, occasional reckless hookups, emotionally constipated mutual yearning, or—"
"Divorced," Brick said unexpectedly.
Everyone turned to look at him.
Brick shrugged, defensive. "What? People can have history."
Burner stared. "That is deranged and somehow impressive."
Rift muttered, "I command clowns."
Will leaned on the table, because he was, against every better instinct he possessed, enjoying this. "Fine. Put me down for married."
Spark's jaw dropped. "You too?"
"Senator-level concern, personal wording, and Anakin's general inability to be subtle when it comes to things he thinks he can hide? Yeah. Married."
Doc snorted. "I've got formal relationship, not marriage. No way they've managed paperwork without someone noticing."
"Counterpoint," Spark said, tapping the air like a lecturer, "the one thing the Republic has more of than corruption is paperwork. Best place to hide a marriage is inside ten thousand forms."
Burner pointed at him. "He's right, and I hate that."
Frost, from the back wall, said quietly, "Not marriage."
That shut everyone up again.
Will looked at him amused. "You have an opinion?"
Frost shrugged one shoulder. "If they were married, General Kenobi wouldn't look that tired. He'd look resigned. Different expression."
A beat.
Then even Rift laughed a little.
"Fine," Will said. "Put Frost down for secret affair."
"Secret affair with deep feelings," Spark clarified as he entered the wagers.
"Can we please focus on rescuing General Skywalker before he finds out we're running odds on his love life?" Rift asked.
Burner grinned. "Absolutely. Right after I put five credits on 'reckless but committed.'"
Jackal's voice came from somewhere nobody had seen him enter. "No divorce." He was standing in the rear hatchway, seemingly having materialized from the cruiser's own shadows. "They still smell too new."
No one even questioned how he'd reached that conclusion.
Spark slowly added another line to the tally. "Jackal says 'new but serious.'"
Rift closed his eyes for a moment, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in despair. "Briefing room in ten," he said. "Bring your weapons, your brains, and whatever dignity remains."
Naboo looked almost obscene in its beauty.
Will stood on the bridge as Resolute Dawn dropped from hyperspace and the world resolved below them: green, blue, gold, and elegant in a way war had no right to touch. Lakes caught sunlight like mirrors. Plains rolled beneath scattered clouds. The architecture visible from orbit still carried that soft grandeur Naboo was known for—domes and terraces and pale stone lines shaped by people who had once believed beauty itself was a kind of defense.
It was not.
Below that beauty, politics festered.
Below that beauty, Gungans had bled to stop Grievous.
Below that beauty, Anakin Skywalker was chained in a hidden prison while Count Dooku played games with leverage and lives.
The bridge lights dimmed as the tactical hologram expanded over the central pit.
Spark highlighted the target zone. "Likeliest holding site is here. Rish Loo's covert facility network ties into older Naboo substructures—buried service halls, ancient foundations, ritual architecture repurposed by Separatists."
"Translation," Burner said, "old creepy hole in the ground with modern guns."
"Accurate enough," Will replied.
Rift pointed to the terrain. "We insert here. Forest ridge on the east side. Low signature approach. We avoid the formal exchange route entirely."
"Dooku will expect Jedi," Frost said. "He may not expect us."
"He'll expect something," Will said. "Assume traps."
Doc folded his arms. "What's priority?"
"Anakin first," Will said. "Dooku second. If both are possible, we take both. If not, Skywalker leaves breathing."
Rift nodded. "Bad Company knows the drill."
Will looked around the bridge at his people. At the men who had fought beside him through enough impossible odds that the impossible had started to feel like a scheduling inconvenience.
"Quiet insertion. Minimal signature. No heroics unless I specifically authorize your stupidity."
Burner lifted a hand. "How specific do we need to be?"
"Painfully."
"Understood."
Jackal, already in partial field kit, spoke from the edge of the room. "If Dooku is there, he'll have layered exits. Nobles always do."
Will turned toward him. "And if we cut those exits?"
"Then he'll turn the room into an exit."
That sounded very much like Dooku.
Will nodded once. "Good. We account for that."
He reached down and checked the curved hilt of his green saber where it rode high and concealed, just behind the fold of his cloak. The custom basket guard was retracted into the hilt casing for now, hidden and compact. The blue shoto-pike sat lower along his spine, quieter, easier for infiltration.
Makashi to meet Makashi, if it came to that.
And if it came to that, there would be no room for doubt.
They went down in a modified stealth shuttle under the cover of diplomatic movement connected to the prisoner exchange.
Naboo's air felt cleaner than Coruscant's the instant the hatch seal cycled and the first hint of atmosphere touched the cabin filtration system. Fresher. Cooler. Full of water and plant life and the kind of peace that made violence look especially obscene when it arrived.
The insertion point was a woodland rise overlooking a low-cut basin of stone and marshland where old Naboo architecture had collapsed into layered underground chambers. From above it looked like a harmless piece of preserved countryside.
Spark's scans said otherwise.
"Power signatures below," he whispered over the comm as they disembarked and moved into the tree line. "Shielded chambers. Internal life support. Three, maybe four occupied sectors. Security net is subtle—motion and thermal, not military-grade perimeter grids. They don't want to advertise this place."
The ground beneath their boots was damp with recent rain. Moss clung to old stone. The trees here were taller than they looked from above, their roots breaking through ancient Naboo foundation work in elegant, stubborn violence. The whole landscape felt layered—beauty over burial, serenity over secrecy.
Will moved at point with Rift a half-step behind and Jackal somewhere forward of both of them in ways the eye couldn't comfortably explain. Frost had already ghosted wide for overwatch. Brick carried compact gear only, shield collapsed. Burner and Spark moved in the center with Doc. They looked, in those first silent minutes, exactly like what the Bad Company had become: not a conventional GAR unit, not a Jedi escort detachment, but something in between. A knife the Republic didn't admit to forging.
The entry route Jackal found was not the obvious one.
It never was.
A partially submerged stone culvert hidden beneath hanging roots and algae-slick rock led into a drainage channel older than the modern facility and newer than the ancient ruins. Someone had adapted historical infrastructure because secrecy loved old bones.
The passage smelled of damp mineral, plant rot, and filtered machine air leaking from deeper within.
Jackal crouched at the threshold, fingertips touching the stone. "Two sentries ahead. Separate alcove. Not droids."
Rift signed silently: soft and fast.
Will drew the shoto-pike but did not ignite it. Quinlan was not here—this was Bad Company work and a targeted extraction, not a broader covert audit. That absence sat strangely with him after some time working together, but there was no room for it now.
They slid into the culvert.
The passage narrowed, forcing them into single-file movement. Water lapped quietly against the lower stone shelf. Above them, roots had punched through the ceiling in places, hanging down like old veins. The filtered hum of hidden machinery grew stronger the deeper they went.
At the first chamber break, Jackal stopped and gave the smallest hand signal.
Will moved up beside him and peered through the fractured stone archway.
Two guards. Human mercenaries, not battle droids. One seated on a crate with a long blaster across his lap, bored and underestimating his employers. The other standing, chewing something and glancing every few seconds toward a sealed inner door with the twitchy vigilance of a man who knew important things were happening nearby but had not been told enough to understand them.
Will touched two fingers to Jackal's wrist, then pointed once.
Jackal vanished.
The standing guard barely had time to stiffen before a gloved hand clamped over his mouth and a vibroknife kissed the side of his neck—piercing it, warning his body that death was in its best interest. At the same time Will slid in low, crossed the distance to the seated guard, and drove the butt of the unlit pike into the man's solar plexus. As he folded, Will caught the rifle before it hit stone and followed with a sharp elbow to the temple. Down. Than he quiclky ignited and turned off the lightsaber, killing the man.
Doc and Brick moved in immediately to secure the perimeter.
No alarms.
No wasted motion.
They pressed on.
The interior architecture shifted as they went, from culvert tunnel to utility corridor to something more deliberate. Smooth Naboo stonework reappeared beneath modern paneling. Hidden power conduits ran behind ancient decorative reliefs. The result was uncanny: aristocratic elegance amputated and refitted for clandestine war.
Spark knelt at a side junction and spliced into the local grid with a compact slicer probe. "Security feed looped," he whispered. "We have maybe six minutes before anything smart notices patterns. Less if Dooku personally checks the system, which I assume he does because he enjoys making everyone miserable."
"Route?" Will asked.
Spark projected a tiny tactical map into the air between them, dim enough not to throw light down the corridor. "Holding chamber here. Interrogation room adjacent. Main exchange prep route on the western axis. Large command signature in this sector—could be Dooku, could be an expensive chair."
Will studied the projection.
The likely chamber sat beneath a broad vaulted room with two probable exit corridors and one vertical shaft leading to a private landing platform.
As Jackal had said, nobles always built exits.
Rift leaned in. "We cut the west corridor and shaft access. Force him inward."
"Or force him to improvise," Frost murmured over comms from aboveground overwatch. "Movement on the upper terrace. Multiple droid signatures. Magnaguards."
Will's jaw set.
That tracked. Dooku never went anywhere without elegant overkill.
"All right," Will said softly. "Phase one. We ghost to holding. Free Skywalker. If Dooku's not there, we exfil. If he is there…" He looked at the map again. "We take our shot."
Burner, to his credit, kept his voice low despite the obvious delight. "Finally. Something rude."
They moved.
At the next turn, the corridor widened into an access gallery lined with Naboo statuary—old queens and scholars in carved pale stone, half-hidden behind modern surveillance nodes and emergency shutters. The juxtaposition made the place feel obscene. Culture repurposed as camouflage for torture.
Will's hand tightened around the pike.
Farther in, they found the first droids.
Two B1 units at a service nexus, one leaning on the wall as if boredom had somehow become structural support.
"Why are we guarding a hallway?" one complained in that flat, miserable drawl only B1s could make sound both idiotic and relatable.
"Because the tall human with the scary face said to," the other replied.
"Which one? There are several."
"The one with the cape."
"Oh. Right. I hate caped people."
Will almost smiled.
Then Frost whispered, "Take them before they say something prophetic."
Rift and Brick moved together. One hand over vocabulators, one compact shock strike each. Both droids slumped into a pile of cheap metal regret.
Burner looked down at them. "See? Even in enemy infrastructure they're unionizing against management."
Doc shoved him lightly. "Keep moving."
The holding corridor lay beyond a circular door keyed to a local override. Spark sliced it in ten seconds flat, muttering at the craftsmanship.
"This is Naboo security architecture retrofitted by Separatist arrogance," he said. "No one's standards align and it offends me."
The door opened.
The room beyond was dim and too clean.
Anakin Skywalker sat chained to a restraint frame anchored into the floor, wrists manacled high enough to pull strain through the shoulders and keep the body tired. He looked like hell in the way Jedi often did after refusing to break—blood dried at the lip, bruising along the jawline, tunic slightly torn, stance slumped but not surrendered. Even half-exhausted, there was a contained violence in him, banked and furious.
The moment he saw the door open, his body changed. Not fully upright—he was too drained for that—but alert, alive, ready to hit first and ask questions later.
Will stepped in before any clone did and cut the nearest restraint with the blue blade.
Anakin squinted, then barked out a breath that was half laugh, half disbelief.
"Kriss?"
"Hey, Skyguy," Will said. "You look like shit."
Anakin rolled his head once as feeling began to return to one arm. "Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you."
Brick and Doc moved in immediately, scanning for injuries while Rift and Jackal covered angles.
Doc's medscanner flicked over Anakin's torso and neck. "Bruising, exhaustion, electrical burn residue, dehydration, probable rib stress. He can move, but not totally straight."
Anakin winced as the second restraint came off. "I can move enough."
"Yeah, and I can dance," Doc muttered. "Doesn't mean anyone wants to see it."
Will knelt just enough to lock eyes with him. "Can you fight?"
Anakin's answer came too fast. "Yes."
Doc answered at the same moment. "No."
That would have been funny if time weren't trying to kill them.
Will split the difference. "You can walk and maybe kill one idiot. After that, we reevaluate."
Anakin smirked despite the bruises. "You really have become a general."
Before Will could answer, every instinct in the room went rigid.
The air changed.
Not because of sound.
Because of presence.
A measured, elegant malice moved in the hallway beyond the chamber like a man entering a ballroom he already owned.
Rift's blaster came up.
Jackal vanished fully into side-shadow.
Will rose slowly, turning toward the door just as a voice drifted in smooth and amused through the chamber threshold.
"My, my. I had hoped for Skywalker's rescue, of course. But this…" Count Dooku stepped into view with the unhurried poise of a man who had never once in his life believed himself second-best in any room. Cape dark, beard immaculate, expression touched by aristocratic disappointment and the smallest hint of entertainment. "This is an unexpected refinement."
Two Magna Guards entered behind him, electrostaffs lowered but ready.
The corridor lights threw silver across the curved hilt at Dooku's belt.
Makashi written in flesh and memory.
Anakin, despite the strain, tried to straighten. Fury lit his face instantly. "Dooku."
Dooku's eyes drifted to him, dismissive and almost fond in the worst possible way. "General Skywalker. You remain impetuous. A pity. It so often interferes with your potential."
Then his gaze shifted to Will.
Ah.
There it was.
Recognition. Assessment. Curiosity.
"Knight Kriss," Dooku said. "I have heard a great deal about you. Coruscant whispers are such industrious little creatures."
Will kept the blue shoto-pike low at his side, still active but compact, while his other hand remained free. "And I've heard enough about you to know talking won't improve my day."
Dooku's mouth twitched into a smirk. "Direct. Youth so often mistakes brevity for strength."
"No," Will said. "I just don't like listening to traitors pretend they're philosophers."
Rift looked very carefully at nothing, as if suppressing approval.
Dooku seemed to savor the insult rather than resent it. "How spirited."
His eyes lowered, finally registering the details that mattered: the clone armor beneath the Jedi cloak, the posture, the hand placement, the hidden weight line at Will's hip.
A curved-hilt user recognizes another.
The understanding between duelists flickered there in a second and sharpened the room.
"You favor Form II," Dooku said.
Will did not deny it. "Among other things."
"Mm." Dooku's gaze lingered on the line of Will's shoulders, the balance of his stance. "And yet you wear yourself like a soldier. How terribly modern."
Anakin, leaning now against Brick for a fraction of support he would deny under torture if asked, muttered, "He really never shuts up, does he?"
Dooku ignored him.
Will could feel the chamber's geometry now. The sight-lines. The positions. Jackal somewhere unseen, holding breath and opportunity. Rift with a probable line on one Magna Guard. Brick ready to become a wall. Doc already calculating how much violence Anakin could survive on the way out. Burner and Spark still back in the corridors, waiting for the signal that quiet had died.
This could go ten ways.
Nine of them were ugly.
Dooku took another step into the room. "I assume your little company is elsewhere in the facility. Ingenious, if predictable. You rescue Skywalker, perhaps seize me if fortune smiles, and depart before the prisoner exchange reveals itself a farce."
Will's mouth curved just slightly. "You say that like you're offended we planned ahead."
"I am offended by mediocrity," Dooku said. "This, however, is almost flattering."
He drew his saber with that elegant economy only true Makashi masters carried. The red blade came alive in a single clean line, the sound sharp and contained rather than wild.
The chamber changed with it.
Red reflected off polished Naboo stone and modern restraints.
The Magna Guards shifted.
Anakin pushed himself off Brick's support out of pure stubbornness. "I can take him."
Doc grabbed a fistful of his sleeve and yanked him back with surprising strength. "The kriff you can."
Will made the decision before the debate could become stupid.
"Rift," he said without looking away from Dooku. "Get Skywalker out."
Anakin snapped, "I'm not—"
Will cut him off. "You're moving like a man held together by spite and bad choices. That gives you maybe thirty seconds of heroics. I need you alive longer than that."
For once, the mention of bad choices did not improve Anakin's mood.
Dooku observed the exchange with quiet satisfaction. "An accurate assessment. Perhaps there is hope for you yet, Knight Kriss."
Will's left hand drifted back, finding the hidden green hilt.
"You don't get to grade me," he said.
Rift understood instantly. "Bad Company, exfil package," he ordered into comms. "Condition Black. General stays."
Brick's jaw tightened. He hated leaving someone behind. Hated it like doctrine. But he also obeyed when it mattered. He hooked an arm under Anakin's good side.
The first Magna Guard started forward.
Jackal struck from darkness like a knife made of beskar.
He came from above and behind the droid, dropping from the chamber's decorative archwork where he had somehow climbed and waited without making a sound. His vibroblade slammed into the Magna Guard's photoreceptor cluster in one brutal thrust, not enough to kill the machine immediately but enough to blind and stagger it. The droid shrieked metallic static and wheeled, electrostaff slashing air.
Rift fired twice. Frost, from some impossible angle outside the chamber proper, fired once. The second Magna Guard jerked under converging impacts and spun toward cover instead of advancing.
The room fractured into motion.
"Now," Will said.
Doc shoved a stim patch into Anakin's neck before the man could object. "For the limp, General."
Anakin snarled but his eyes sharpened immediately as the chemical hit bloodstream.
Dooku's smile faded a fraction. "How tiresome."
Will took one step forward into center line.
Then another.
He thumbed the green saber alive.
The blade emerged with a cleaner, fuller note than the blue pike—a long emerald arc of controlled power. At the same instant, the custom mechanism in the hilt released. Metal unfolded from the emitter housing in a fluid, spring-assisted bloom, the basket guard projecting outward around Will's hand in a stylized cage of polished phrik and alloy. It locked with a quiet sequence of clicks, forming a protective shell around the fingers and knuckles while leaving the wrist free.
Dooku's eyes narrowed.
There it was.
Recognition not just of a fellow curved-hilt practitioner, but of innovation within the language of Makashi. Classical fencing logic translated into lightsaber design—hand protection, angle denial, rotational leverage, line dominance.
A duelist's answer to a duelist.
Will let the blue shoto-pike go dark and clipped it freehand to his back mount in one smooth motion, never taking his gaze off Dooku. Green blade now forward, elbow soft, feet settling into the elegant asymmetry of Form II: narrow profile, lead shoulder slightly closed, weapon line extended with intention rather than show.
The stance was not dramatic.
That was the point.
Makashi was not spectacle.
Makashi was conversation at knife range, where every wrist adjustment was grammar and every step could become a lie.
Dooku shifted in response, red blade angled high in a one-handed guard that looked almost relaxed and absolutely lethal. His curved hilt seemed a natural extension of the wrist; his centerline remained calm, aristocratic, contemptuous.
For one impossible second, in that hidden Naboo chamber with wounded Skywalker being dragged toward the exit and Bad Company fighting droids in the periphery, the war narrowed down to a duel line.
Dooku's voice came low and appreciative.
"Oh," he said. "Now this may actually be worth my time."
Will exhaled once through his nose and felt the harmonic settle—not the acrobatic beat-skipping of Ataru, not the broad certainty of battlefield command, but a tighter, finer alignment. Pulse. Breathing. Distance. The shape of Dooku's front foot. The slight angle of his shoulder. The probable first probe. The likely feint to wrist or throat, because Dooku respected openings too much to waste them.
Behind him, he heard Brick hauling Anakin toward the corridor. Heard Doc swearing at the other Magna Guard. Heard Rift covering retreat. Heard Jackal repositioning in silence for the single instant that might matter later.
Good.
Let them leave.
Let the room simplify.
Will lifted the green blade half an inch and let the basket guard catch the chamber's light.
"Come on, then," he said quietly.
Count Dooku smiled like a blade being drawn.
And the first movement of the duel began.