Bao-Dur: Echoes

During the war, it was always easy to find the General on the ground--those twin silver blades were like a beacon. No matter how much blood was spilled or how dirty it got I remember those blades shining, pure and white. Clean. She commanded us forward with them on Dxun, rallying us by holding them aloft clenched in a grimy fist. I still don't know how she survived leading that charge. Nowhere were those blades brighter than on Malachor V.

That battle was true chaos; the kind that gives prophets nightmares. We needed the Mandalorians to commit, so most of our forces were on the ground, toe-to-toe with their infantry. The General was famous by then, and every Mandalorian wanted to be the warrior who could say that he stilled the silver blades. So, our position was hard pressed. We were losing, and I wasn't always so sure it was by design.

We had to be down there to plant the device, but our orders afterwards were to fall back, lure them in with a convincing retreat. Revan wasn't thrilled about risking the General on the surface, but the Mandalorians might have suspected something if she weren't there. Plus, she was one of the only people who understood that horrible machine, our most monstrous creation. She wasn't half the tech then she later became when she was bereft of the Force and needed a focus, not to mention a way to make a living, but she'd been there for every step of its making. Even the concept for the mass shadow generator had been hers. The plan was Revan's, and the tech corps--I--figured out how to actually build the device, but the General was the one who conceived of this thing that could crush armies. Ironically, I think she wanted to destroy the Mandalorians while saving the planet itself. I think our endgame worked too well.

So it was all blasters and grenades and Force powers on the ground, her silver blades spinning as she covered our unit's careful retreat to our ship. Our fellows died around us. Part of the grand decoy. We had laid the trap, and were now baiting it with the promise of our defeat. It was to appear to the Mandalorians as if they had us, that one last hard push could chop the head off our forces and leave the bloated corpse of the Republic rotting under the light of a hundred suns.

We stayed on the ground until they made their decision. Until they committed. When they gave in to their bloodlust and their arrogance, that's when it had to happen. So Revan watched the troop movements, listened to the comm chatter, and waited for the right moment. Knowing all the while what was about to happen, that not everyone could possibly make it. Like she and I knew. Revan made the judgment, the General gave the order. But I built it. I placed it. I keyed in that activation sequence. I escaped.

No, that's not true. I didn't really escape what was wrought at Malachor V until I found the General again. At the time, I just ran away.

There was a time delay built into the device, a moment of stillness before the destruction began. We sent out a warning to our men just before we activated the device, and our unit started hauling out. We were the first away, as Revan had wanted it, but not all of the Republic forces were following. Maybe it was the confusion of battle, maybe something went wrong with the comm array on Revan's ship. I don't know--but not everyone got the order to pull out. I remember the General yelling into the comm as our pilot took us careening into the battle in orbit at full tilt, demanding that Revan give the order, then broadcasting it herself. But we could see that Revan's command ship was taking heavy fire. We lost contact.

The Mandalorians were convinced. On the surface, they too fell back to their own ships, intending to pursue and crush us, but it was too late. The first explosions bloomed on the surface, the shockwave chasing those pursuing ships beyond the atmosphere. The comm went crazy, first with voices, then static as those voices cut. Ships smashed into each other as they tried to turn and escape before getting blown apart anyway, alarms screeched and went silent across a thousand channels. And the General? I couldn't see her face, but I looked over at her just before she collapsed. How she fell reminded me of those old vids of cattle being slaughtered: boneless, like she'd taken a metal bar to the brain. I thought it--I--might have killed her. I tried to raise medbay, but then the shockwave and debris overtook us, buckling our shields. We took serious damage to the bridge. That's when I lost my arm.

I've wondered, since, if she had thought to die there. I'm glad, now, I didn't really understand what we had set in motion at Malachor V.