Yeah, yeah, I know, Im late. A lot happened in life, but now Im all set. First off, THE EXCUSES. So I kinda forgot I had finals for University and didn't study, so there was that, then I took the finals, and finally thought I was free. WRONG. I got sick, so I felt miserable and didn't want that to affect the writing/editing, whatever you wanna call it. Then I got last-minute invited on this vacation, and said yes. So now Im back. ONTO THE GOOD NEWS. 15 chapters have been edited and posted to P@treon. My username is Hermit47 on there, and you can get exclusive Discord roles to chat with me, decide stuff in the fic, ocs u want, nothing to crazy, also lemons, cause why not. Anyway, I know you're craving alot, but I got a schedule to keep now to not get overwhelmed. Starting next Tuesday, you'll get a new chapter every Tuesday and Thursday, and as I said, if you want to read ahead, go give me money. You get about 40,000 words for the 15 chapters in total, so I think it's worth it. There are tiers if you don't want to pay all that much, but Discord right now needs more people, so go join it. Also, no Thursday chapter, so this is the only bit for this week, sorry again for the delay.
Hermit47 for P@treon
https://discord.gg/K8pFqFexb3
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When the fleet came out of hyperspace, Ahsoka forgot to breathe.
The stars snapped back into place, and Korriban rose before them like a mountain in an open field.
The planet was smaller in the viewport than Christophsis had been, less immediately imposing than a world wrapped in battle smoke and burning cities, but it carried a different sort of weight. Its surface was harsh and red-brown, a dead world of canyons, shattered plains, and ancient scars that seemed visible even from orbit. Nothing about it felt alive. Nothing about it felt welcoming.
And above it hung Star Base Zahannah.
Ahsoka had expected a station.
A large one, certainly. Something worthy of a major Republic fleet. A ring station, perhaps. A central dock with support arms and a few attached repair yards.
What she saw instead looked like a war-built city that had been broken apart and reforged into a fortress.
It was not one station, but several.
A central spindle the size of a capital ship hung at the heart of the structure, armored in dark gray plates and wrapped in shield emitters, sensor vanes, and heavy batteries. Around that central spine, six vast dock-citadels were interlocked in a broad orbital wheel, each one large enough to swallow whole squadrons of Venators. Massive bridgeways of durasteel and transparisteel connected them like the ribs of some metal beast, while beneath them sprawled clusters of habitat modules, barracks blocks, repair gantries, vehicle bays, training platforms, and cargo vaults that stretched so far outward they nearly formed a second ring.
Drydock arms extended from the outer stations in overlapping layers, each one cradling frigates, gunships, transports, and mobile repair scaffolds. Whole sections of the base were armored over like fortress bastions, while others were clearly industrial—open maintenance fields where walkers and tanks could be stripped to pieces, rebuilt, and sent back to war. Defense platforms drifted in disciplined formation beyond the main structure, and farther still, mine grids and orbital sensor webs glimmered in carefully arranged patterns.
It was not elegant.
It was not beautiful.
It was practical in the way a blade was practical.
It looked built to endure a siege.
It looked built to hold an army.
It looked built by someone who expected war to last.
Ahsoka stood at the viewport with Aayla Secura beside her and Commander Bly just behind them, and for a moment, none of them spoke.
Finally, Ahsoka said what all three of them were thinking.
"This place feels…" She searched for the word and found that none of the polite ones would do. "Dark. It feels terrible."
Aayla's eyes remained on the station, her reflection ghosting in the transparisteel. "It should," she said quietly. "For Korriban is the homeworld of the Sith."
Ahsoka turned to her. "Why would Anakin ever want to stay here?"
Commander Virek, who had approached without fanfare and now stood a short distance behind them, answered before Aayla could.
"Because the General asked for it."
Ahsoka looked over her shoulder. "Asked for it?"
Virek inclined his head once. "When the Council denied him control of the system, he went to the Chancellor directly."
That hit Ahsoka harder than the sight of the starbase had.
"He went around the Council?"
Aayla's mouth curved in the faintest trace of a smile, though there was more thought than amusement in it. "His former master was Qui-Gon Jinn," she said. "Going around the Council is one of the oldest traditions in that line."
Ahsoka stared at the station again. That answer, somehow, only made the whole thing stranger.
"It still doesn't make sense," she said. "Out of every world in the galaxy, why choose this one?"
Aayla folded her arms loosely. "I don't know. But that's something you'll have to get used to with him. Anakin keeps parts of himself locked away. He always has. Even when we were younger, he carried secrets the rest of us could only circle around."
Behind them, the bridge crew was already moving with renewed purpose. Orders rippled through the command deck. The 501st fleet began to break formation in elegant lines, peeling away toward assigned berths in the vast docking lattice of the station.
The flagship shuddered gently as docking tugs took hold.
Below, in the command well, Yularen stood with his hands clasped behind his back, overseeing the final approach with the focused calm of a man who had brought fleets through worse situations than this.
Ahsoka looked back out at Star Base Zahannah.
The place was too large to take in all at once. The more she looked, the more she realized how much of it had been hidden by scale alone. Whole barracks towers sat behind shielded docking walls. Armored cargo conveyors moved in long lines beneath the outer docks. Turbolaser batteries rotated slowly across the station's spine like watchful eyes. This was not simply a supply point.
This was a seat of power.
A base from which one could wage a private war.
The thought unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.
The flagship settled at last with a heavy metallic shudder.
"Docking clamps secure," came the report from the pit.
The main ramp opened minutes later.
What followed barely looked orderly at first glance, but it was. Clones of the 501st and the battered remains of the 327th began pouring down the embarkation bays with practiced speed. Cargo loaders descended. Med teams pushed grav-stretchers toward receiving lifts. Repair crews moved to meet tank haulers and damaged gunships. The entire station seemed to wake at once to receive the fleet.
Ahsoka had just stepped onto the broad embarkation deck when a low, snarling engine note cut through everything else.
A speeder tore out from the interior lift platform. Anakin lay on the rear platform beneath a field cover, still masked, still motionless,the vehicle shot across the deck and vanished into one of the inner transit corridors.
Ahsoka's heart kicked.
"Where are they taking him?"
She didn't realize she had started running until she was halfway down the ramp.
Aayla and Bly followed, and by the time she reached the deck, Rex, Virek, and Yularen were coming down as well.
Rex caught her expression immediately.
"He's heading to the science wing," he said.
"What do you mean by science wing? Shouldn't he be heading for the medbay?" Ahsoka replied.
"He shouldn't be on this station," Virek said.
Bly, who had been quiet for most of the descent from orbit, frowned beneath his helmet. "What exactly does that mean?"
Virek's eyes followed the vanished speeder for a moment before he answered.
"It means the General has a physician here who doesn't fit neatly into any normal category."
Ahsoka looked between them. "What kind of answer is that?"
Yularen stepped in before Virek could give her another one.
"A useful answer," the admiral said, "would be this: Skywalker's chief medical authority on the station is Hego Damask."
Aayla turned toward him. "I don't know the name."
"Few in the Order would," Yularen replied. "He's a Magister Muun. Formerly attached to circles within the Banking Clan. He fell out of favor before the first battle of Geonosis and never aligned himself with the Separatists."
He glanced once toward the medical corridor as he continued.
"Skywalker encountered him some time ago. Damask proved to be a remarkable researcher." Yularen's voice lowered slightly. "He sees patterns other physicians miss."
Rex picked up the explanation naturally, as though they had all heard some version of this before.
"He helped the station's med corps cut clone fatalities during environmental hardening cycles," he said. "There were training rotations here that would've killed a lot more men without him."
Bly's brow furrowed. "Training on Korriban kills troopers?"
Rex looked at him levelly. "It kills unprepared troopers."
Ahsoka still wasn't satisfied. "Then why keep him here? If he's that valuable, why isn't he with the fleet?"
"Because he isn't a combat physician," Yularen said. "He's a specialist. A researcher. He stays where he has equipment, archives, stable facilities, and time enough to investigate what standard Republic medicine would rather ignore."
Aayla absorbed that in silence.
Ahsoka was still trying to imagine what kind of person Anakin would trust enough to leave in charge of a starbase medical complex over Korriban when a trio of droids came down the ramp behind them.
R2-D2 rolled forward first, letting out a stream of annoyed whistles at the amount of dust and traffic on the deck. K2-SO followed with his usual long, unnervingly smooth stride. HK-47 came last, copper-brown plating catching the station lights, head turning from side to side as if evaluating everyone present for weaknesses.
K2 stopped near the group.
"You should not be overly concerned now that we have arrived," he said to no one in particular.
Ahsoka wheeled on him immediately. "That's easy for you to say."
"It is also statistically justified."
She narrowed her eyes. "What does that mean?"
K2's optics dimmed and brightened once. "It means that the likelihood of the General's death has dropped to approximately twenty-five percent."
Ahsoka stared at him.
Then her voice rose an octave.
"Twenty-five percent? That's still way too high!"
R2 emitted a series of chirps that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
K2 turned slightly toward the astromech. "Your amusement is misplaced."
Then, as if helping her, he added, "For context: the likelihood of the General dying during any given battle in which he personally takes the field averages at roughly forty-two percent."
Rex folded his arms. "That's not helping either."
"It is a useful perspective."
Aayla let out a small laugh despite herself, and when Ahsoka shot her a look, the Twi'lek shook her head.
"He was always a risk-taker," Aayla said. "Even when we were younglings."
That made Ahsoka look at her more closely.
"You two really did grow up together."
Aayla nodded once, the humor fading into something more private. "Long enough for me to know that if there was a dangerous route and a safe route, he would choose the dangerous one and then somehow convince everyone else it was the reasonable choice."
HK-47 stepped forward just enough to insert himself into the conversation.
"Statement: Master Skywalker is not like other meatbags. Therefore, it is logical to assume he will survive."
That was not the comforting reassurance it might have been intended to be.
Then again, from HK, comfort never arrived in standard packaging.
The droids started to move on, but K2 stopped after a few paces and turned his head toward Commander Virek.
What came out of his vocabulator next was not Basic.
It was a scrambled burst of distorted sound—layered frequencies, clipped pulses, encrypted static folded over machine speech.
To Ahsoka it meant nothing.
To Virek, whose helmet had already sealed over his head, it clearly meant enough.
The commander stiffened, gave the smallest nod, and without explanation turned to follow K2.
Ahsoka watched them go.
"What was that?"
No one answered immediately.
Yularen looked at Rex.
Rex's expression had gone completely serious.
The admiral exhaled through his nose.
"Oblivion Cell," he said.
And that was all he offered.
He turned and walked off toward the inner command lifts, leaving the words behind him like a sealed door.
Ahsoka looked from his retreating back to Rex, then to Aayla.
"Oblivion Cell?"
Rex said nothing. If anything, his silence was more deliberate than Virek's.
Aayla's expression had hardened slightly, though not with anger. With caution.
"I've only heard rumors," she said.
"What kind of rumors?"
"The kind it's better not to chase in the middle of a military installation," Aayla answered, and there was enough firmness in her tone to make Ahsoka stop pressing—for now.
Bly, who had been listening with the expression of a man trying to determine which parts of this assignment had become strange without his noticing, finally shook his head.
"That's encouraging."
Aayla almost smiled.
"Come on," she said to Ahsoka. "If Skywalker survives, he'll wake up furious that everyone's standing around talking about him. If he doesn't, there won't be a thing we can do by staring at the medical wing door."
That was harsh.
It was also probably true.
Ahsoka cast one last glance toward the corridor where the speeder had vanished.
Then she fell in beside Aayla.
Behind them, Star Base Zahannah roared with life.
The 501st was unloading in force now. Columns of clones marched down ramps and across armored transit lanes. Damaged walkers crawled toward repair bays on grav-sleds. Gunships were rolled into service cradles and swarmed by mechanics. Crates of ammunition, rations, and replacement parts moved in unbroken lines through the vast station arteries. The 327th's survivors were being folded into assigned quarters and treatment wards while quartermasters shouted inventories over the noise of engines and loaders.
All of it happened under the shadow of Korriban.
All of it happened beneath a fortress Anakin Skywalker had claimed for himself against the wishes of the Jedi Council.
And as Ahsoka walked deeper into the heart of his starbase, with the war raging outside and something darker moving quietly within, she could not shake the feeling that she was stepping closer and closer to a part of her master the Order had never truly seen.
The 501st was home.
And home, she was beginning to understand, could be a far more dangerous place than any battlefield.