Chapter Text
The turbolift door juddered partway open, then stopped with a whine.
“Thorn,” Fox said, moving forward.
The other commander joined him and together they forced the door open far enough for the troopers to exit the lift.
Only about a third of the corridor lights seemed to be working, and those flickered uncertainly. Whispers filled the silence, sibilant and otherworldly. The sound made Fox's stomach roll. He clenched his fists around the grips of his blaster pistols and led his contingent of Guardsmen down the hall.
Long gouges marred the marble walls, the sumptuous rugs covering the hardwood floors, the ceiling. Shards from priceless porcelain vases and the remnants of other works of art littered the floor.
"What happened up here?" Thorn muttered.
"That's what we're here to find out," Fox said.
The unintelligible whispers seemed to lead the clones as they crept down the hall. As Fox approached one of the closed doorways along the corridor, something skritched on the other side of the durasteel.
Fox stopped.
The sound came again sending shivers up his spine.
Fox motioned to his men. "Stay back."
He swallowed and reached for the door release. With a hiss of hydraulics, the door opened.
Nothing seemed amiss in the small aide’s office. The lights were bright, no flickering. No gouges marred the walls. The potted plants and pictures on the wall were as they should be.
Fox heard a soft sound from the closed door in the far wall. The door that led to the senator’s office beyond.
"Riot, Raze, with me," Fox said.
He stepped into the smaller office and the two named Guardsmen followed in flanking positions, blaster rifles at the ready. Fox slid a pistol into its holster and reached for the door release on the panel in the wall. Just before he pressed the button, he heard the soft skritching again.
Fox froze.
"Osik," Raze muttered.
He'd heard it too.
Fox steeled himself and punched the door release.
A wave of warm, iron scented air rolled out of the office. Even with the odor filtered through his helmet, Fox gagged. He heard Riot and Raze do the same.
The office was bathed in red. Blood spattered the light fixtures and pooled on the expensive wood of the desk. A mangled figure lay splayed on the carpet.
Fox gagged again and he cranked his helmet filters up to the max as he sucked in breaths to try and settle his stomach.
"Riot? Raze?" he asked.
"Here, boss," Raze said. His voice sounded pinched.
"Sir," Riot choked.
"Fox?" Thorn called from the hallway.
"Body on the ground," Fox said. "We'll need to have a medical team check DNA to get an identification."
"Osik," Thorn muttered.
Fox turned and gestured for Riot and Raze to proceed him out of the room.
Something tugged at Fox's ankle.
He looked down to see a pale hand clutching his boot.
With a shout, Fox pulled his leg free, staggering back a step.
Riot and Raze spun toward him, blasters up.
"Hold!" Fox ordered.
To their credit, both troopers held their fire, though they practically vibrated with tension.
Fox looked down at the form huddled against the wall. He slipped his other blaster into its holster.
"Hey there," he said gently, and knelt on one knee.
A wide-eyed Human woman stared back at him with glassy eyes. Her face and clothing were splashed with blood.
"Help me," the woman whispered.
Fox held out a hand to her. "You're safe now."
She shook her head. "No one's safe. The walls are listening. The shadows . . ." She gulped. “The shadows eat people.”
“What the haran’kar is going on?” Riot muttered.
Fox got an arm around the woman and helped her to her feet. He led her out of the office and closed the door on the grizzly scene.
"Riot, Raze, I want you to stay here with—" Fox paused, looking down at the woman.
"Halla," she said. "My name's Halla."
Fox nodded and addressed his troopers. "Stay with Halla. If we find more survivors, we'll send them here to you."
Riot and Raze nodded and stepped up so Halla was bracketed between them.
"How bad was it?" Thorn asked, when Fox rejoined his men in the hall.
"It was . . ." Fox shook his head. "Horrifying doesn't really cover it."
Thorn grunted, and they started down the hallway again.
More skritching behind closed doors.
More blood and scattered bodies.
More survivors too. Mostly senatorial aides, though Fox and his men did find senators Tynnra Pamlo and Bana Breemu, whom they sent to Riot and Raze with the others.
As they approached Vice Chair Mas Amedda's office, the whispers that had permeated the air grew to a pervasive low rumble. Fox's head hurt from the constant hissing and something about the foreign sounds made his stomach roil.
His men weren't faring much better. Jek had removed his helmet once already to vomit and Rys kept jumping at shadows.
To be fair, the shadows seemed to grow eyes that watched the troopers' progress, and wraith-like hands reached toward them from under closed doors.
Fox paused outside Mas Amedda's door. Fox had tried to minimize the impact of their gory finds on his men. He was pretty sure he was going to have nightmares for the rest of his life and he dreaded what he'd find in this office. Fox reached for the door release, but Thorn put a hand on his vambrace, stopping him.
"Let me," Thorn said.
Fox shook his head. "I'm always first." The vod'ika was implied.
Thorn let out a huff. "I got your six."
Fox nodded and opened the door. He thought he'd become hardened to being shocked and sickened by what he'd seen while searching the offices on the floor, but the sight in Mas Amedda's office nearly cost him his lunch rations. He looked away, breathing hard from the stale air in his helmet. Jek vomited again.
"Go back to the others," Fox ordered. “Rys, take him.”
"Sorry, commander," Jek rasped.
Fox grunted an acknowledgement, still waiting for his own stomach to settle. Then he looked up at the scene again.
Amedda's head and spinal column hung from what looked like a web of his own intestines. But there was no way his body had held that much volume. Something red and dripping was mixed with Amedda’s guts to extend the gloopy web from wall to wall, ceiling to floor.
“Little gods,” Thorn croaked. “What the hell is doing this?”
There was a muted roar and a thud that shook the ground.
“I think we’re about to find out,” Fox said.
They eased their way past the oozing web of viscera to the door that lay at the far end of the office, which led to Chancellor Palpatine’s suite of offices. The wall shuddered as they approached, as if something massive had been thrown against it. The door hardly moved when Fox hit the release and he and Thorn were left trying to pry it open.
“Commander Fox, help me!”
Fox didn’t think he’d ever heard true fear in Chancellor Palpatine’s voice before. Fox and Thorn shared a look before throwing every ounce of genetically enhanced strength they possessed into pulling the door open. With a screech of protesting durasteel, the door opened enough for Fox to squeeze his head and shoulders through.
The Chancellor was wielding a red-bladed lightsaber. That was a lot for Fox to take in.
But the other thing . . .
Fox couldn’t focus on the writing black mass for long. As he tried, it felt like his brain was going to melt inside his skill. The impression he was left with, as he focused on the Chancellor again, was limbs and teeth and too many eyes.
“Shoot it, commander! Shoot it!” the Chancellor screamed.
Fox reached for his holsters, but found they were stuck in the door.
“Come on, Fox,” Thorn growled, trying to shove him through the door.
The thing . . . the entity . . . whatever it was, batted the Chancellor into a wall. Then it turned.
Fox found himself frozen in that many-eyed gaze.
“Foxssssss,” it hissed.
The thing struck, biting the Chancellor in half as he started to rise to his feet.
The resulting explosion of dark energy relieved Fox of every one of his over exerted senses and he slid gratefully into unconsciousness.
* * *
“I think he’s starting to come around.”
“I’m not dead yet, Billow,” Fox rasped.
"Thanks to my expertise," the medic said.
There were relieved chuckles from several brothers.
Fox opened his eyes to find himself in one of the private medbay recovery rooms. Stone, Thire, Thorn, as well as the CMO Billow, and several other troopers were gathered around his biobed.
“Shouldn’t at least some of you be on duty?” Fox asked.
“I'm on duty. The rest of these layabouts were just worried about you," Billow said amidst more chuckles.
“You nearly died, Fox,” Thorn said.
Remembering shining ivory teeth piercing mauve brocade robes, Fox said, “The Chancellor?"
“Dead,” Stone said. “And a Sith. I think the Jedi want to make you an honorary Knight for finding and defeating him.”
Fox grimaced. “Wasn’t me. Who’s the new—?”
“That’s enough for now,” Billow said. “You need to rest.”
For once, Fox didn’t argue. He was pretty sure he could feel his spleen, and that wasn’t normal. He’d take a few hours to rest. Maybe even a few days.
The others said their goodbyes and Billow turned down the lights as he exited the room.
A soft skritch skritch came from an air vent in the ceiling.
Fox might have seen a single pair of red eyes staring back before his eyes slipped shut.
Just a rat, he thought.
He blinked his eyes open, just to check.
The eyes were still there.
As he watched, a third red eye opened above the other two.