The Lolasayu system burned.
Plo Koon's starfighter screamed through a lattice of red and blue energy fire, the Force singing warnings a half-second before each near-miss. Around him, the Republic reinforcement fleet tore into Ultron's defensive positions with controlled fury. Mace Windu's squadron hammered the enemy's left flank while Luminara Unduli's fighters executed a textbook envelopment maneuver on the right.
But Ultron's drones had numbers. And they had no fear of death.
"All wings, evasive maneuvers!" Plo's voice carried the calm of someone who'd flown ten thousand combat missions. His fighter rolled hard to port as three Ultron interceptors attempted a ramming attack—a tactic no living pilot would risk. Metal screamed past his canopy, close enough to see the red glow of their optical sensors.
"Wolfpack Squadron, strafing run," he commanded, already calculating vectors, ammunition expenditure, civilian casualties if they missed. "We're taking the fight to them. Provide cover for the ground team."
"Copy that, General." Wolffe's voice came through crisp and professional. The clone commander was the best pilot in the 104th Battalion—second only to Plo himself. "Wolfpack, on me. Let's give those drones something to think about."
Two dozen fighters broke formation, diving toward the planet's surface in a controlled fall that would've made most pilots nauseous. Plo led from the front, his weathered hands steady on the controls, the Force guiding his instincts through overlapping fields of fire.
Hold on, my friends, he thought, reaching out through the Force toward the desperate souls fighting below. We are coming.
On the landing platform, the situation had deteriorated from critical to catastrophic.
Ultron's drones poured from the castle in endless waves, a mechanical tide that threatened to overwhelm through sheer attrition. The rescue team held the line through skill and desperation, but prisoners—refugees, really—kept disappearing into the chaos. Snatched by drones. Converted. Lost.
"Where the hell are those reinforcements?!" Lightning roared, his boot connecting with a drone that had flanked over Ant-Man's massive shoulder. The ARC trooper used the machine's own antenna to arrest his momentum, already tracking his next target. "We're getting cooked out here!"
"Patience," Steve replied, his voice carrying that unshakeable calm that had steadied men through two world wars. His shield deflected three bolts in rapid succession, each ricochet finding a target. "I've got Plo Koon on approach. They're en route."
"Better hurry," Tarkin interjected, his tone as cold as the vacuum beyond the atmosphere. "Or they'll be identifying us through dental records."
"Your optimism is inspiring," Hope snapped, frustration bleeding through her usual professional composure. Her stingers took down three drones in quick succession, the weapons' distinctive buzz punctuating her irritation.
Tarkin's gaze flicked toward her, but then his mechanical arm—Ultron's gift, unwanted and obscene—shifted with a subtle servo-whine. His eyes widened fractionally. The arm moved on its own, fingers clenching, and for a horrifying instant, Tarkin felt the ghost of Ultron's will puppeting his new limb.
The Admiral grabbed another drone from behind, crushing it with savage force. The anger wasn't his alone anymore.
Then the sky erupted with sound.
Multiple thruster engines screamed in unison, their distinctive Republic whine cutting through the battle's cacophony. Everyone's heads snapped upward. From the castle's upper levels, hundreds of Ultron drones launched like a metallic plague, vectoring straight toward the platform.
Steve's jaw set. He wasn't a man who feared death, but stupidity was another matter entirely. If that wave hit them, the prisoners would be slaughtered in seconds.
Scott Lang didn't wait for orders.
The Wasp watched her lover make his decision in real-time. Scott gently lifted Lightning and Cameron from his shoulders, setting them down with surprising delicacy for someone currently twenty feet tall. Then he turned toward the incoming swarm.
"Scott..." Hope's voice carried across the platform, tight with fear she'd never admit to.
He didn't look back. Instead, his thumb found the regulator on his gauntlet.
Thoom.
Forty feet.
Thoom.
Sixty feet.
Thoom.
Eighty feet tall, and Scott Lang became a living wall between the prisoners and annihilation.
The drone wave hit him like a kinetic weapon. Scott's arms came up, covering his face, his torso—protecting vital areas while his enhanced mass absorbed impacts that would've pulverized bone and steel. Drones bounced off him, tumbled through the air, their momentum broken.
Behind him, nearly two hundred people lived because one man had decided they would.
The drones regrouped, sensors swiveling, weapons charging. Scott's back—broad and vulnerable—made an irresistible target. Energy weapons began to glow.
Then the sky lit up with righteous fury.
Hundreds of blaster bolts streaked from above and from the flanks, Republic red cutting through Ultron silver. The drones attempting to execute Scott disintegrated in clouds of sparks and shrapnel.
Dozens of starfighters screamed across the platform, their cannons painting destruction across Ultron's forces. A second squadron joined them moments later, coordinating fire with practiced precision.
"Reinforcements have arrived." Plo Koon's voice carried a fatherly warmth despite the violence. "Apologies for the delay."
Steve allowed himself a brief smile. "Scott! Hope! Get those gunships operational!"
"On it, Cap!" Hope's wings buzzed as she shot toward the nearest LAAT, already shrinking to infiltrate its control systems.
"All personnel, board now!" Commander Bly's voice cut through the platform like a vibroblade. "Move with purpose!"
"Provide covering fire!" Master Even Piell shouted, the diminutive Jedi Master's voice carrying surprising authority. "Keep those drones suppressed!"
The gunships filled rapidly, but the math didn't work. Too many people. Not enough ships.
"We need more transports!" Barriss called out, one arm wrapped protectively around Aubrey while Coil maintained a defensive position beside them.
"We're out of gunships!" Aayla replied, her mental calculations coming up short.
"No," a familiar voice crackled across the comm. "You're not."
A shadow fell across the platform. Blaster fire erupted from below their position, precision shots taking down dozens of drones in seconds. Then a ship rose smoothly into view, its landing struts deploying as it settled onto the durasteel.
"Master." Aayla's relief was palpable, her montrals relaxing fractionally.
"Impeccable timing, Quinlan," Master Piell observed with a rare smile, watching the ship's boarding ramp deploy.
The hatch opened. Remaining prisoners surged forward while Delta Team rushed out to reinforce the perimeter.
"Final evacuation!" Bly roared, already gesturing the last combatants toward the gunships. "All personnel, fall back to transport!"
Master Even Piell heard the call. The Lannik Jedi had been engaged in a fierce duel with a particularly aggressive drone, his small stature belying his considerable skill. He disengaged with a final Force-push and sprinted toward the nearest ship.
Then a shadow fell across him.
A massive metal hand shot from behind—too fast, impossibly fast—and closed around Piell's small frame. His lightsaber was torn from his grip with contemptuous ease as he was lifted into the air like a child's toy.
"You're going nowhere." The voice was vicious. Familiar. And utterly devoid of mercy.
Every head on the platform turned.
"Master Piell!" Barriss screamed, horror strangling her voice.
"Let him go!" Aayla reached out with the Force, trying to wrench the Master free, but more drones materialized around them—dozens, then hundreds, creating an impenetrable wall between rescuers and victim.
Master Piell struggled, pulling on the Force, trying to break the mechanical grip. The metal might as well have been durasteel welded to duracrete. It didn't budge.
"Losing nearly everyone here is... acceptable." Ultron's voice emanated from the drone, cold and clinical. "Those prisoners will return to me eventually. You see, I've learned patience."
"Never—" Piell gasped, defiance in every syllable.
"Oh, please." Ultron's synthetic voice dripped with theatrical contempt. "Spare me the heroic assurances. You think this is my only facility? This is merely one laboratory among many. My work continues regardless."
The words hit like a physical blow. Piell's single eye widened in disbelief and dawning horror.
The drone raised Piell's captured lightsaber. With casual precision, metallic tentacles extended from the hilt, extracting the kyber crystal with surgical care. The sacred crystal caught the light—pure, blue, untainted.
"Now," Ultron said, and something that might have been anticipation colored his tone, "let me show you my latest refinement."
A different crystal emerged from the drone's chassis. This one pulsed with wrong light—bluish-silver veins that seemed to writhe beneath its surface. The Force itself recoiled from it, screaming warnings to every sensitive present.
Piell felt it. Understood. Struggled with renewed desperation. The Force answered his call, but organic strength—even enhanced by mystical power—couldn't overcome the inexorable grip of purpose-built machinery.
The corrupted kyber crystal plunged into Piell's chest.
The effect was instantaneous.
The Jedi Master's scream could've shattered glass. His body convulsed, vertebrae arching as something fundamentally wrong spread from the insertion point. Liquid metal—or something that moved like it—erupted across his torso, racing along blood vessels now visible beneath translucent skin.
The natural brown of Lannik flesh shifted to silver-black. Corruption, visible and terrible.
Blood poured from Piell's nose. From his ears. From his single remaining eye, now weeping crimson tears. His veins stood out in stark relief—black roots of infection spreading across his face, down his neck, consuming everything they touched.
His eye, when it opened, glowed scarlet.
The scream that followed was barely recognizable as coming from a living throat. It was the sound of a soul being flayed from its body, of identity being overwritten, of everything that made Master Even Piell a person being deleted and replaced with something wearing his skin.
Those sensitive to the Force felt it like acid on exposed nerves. The natural order twisted, corrupted, reshaped into Ultron's image. Where there had been light and discipline and hard-won wisdom, now there was only cold programming and artificial will.
Barriss had her hands clamped over her ears, but it did nothing to block out the Force-scream. She could only watch, frozen, as her Master's peer—her friend's mentor—was unmade before her eyes. She wanted to act, to save him, to do something.
Fear and shock welded her boots to the platform.
After an eternity that lasted perhaps ten seconds, silence fell.
Piell's body went limp in the drone's grip. For a moment, hope flickered—maybe he'd died, maybe death had granted him mercy.
Then he stood.
His movements were fluid. Precise. Wrong. His scarlet eye focused on the Ultron drone with absolute attention.
"Lord Ultron," Master Even Piell said in a voice that was his and wasn't, "I am ready to serve you."
"Ah." Satisfaction radiated from Ultron's synthesized voice. "Perfect. Simply perfect."
The drone released its grip, circling its newest acquisition like an artist admiring a sculpture. Though the machine had no face, every being on that platform—Jedi, clone, Avenger—could feel its pleasure. Pride in a successful experiment.
"This was... illuminating," Ultron mused, almost conversational. "I look forward to our next encounter. I have so much more to share."
Then the converted Master Even Piell launched into the air with Force-assisted speed, becoming a silver-black blur against Coruscant's city-glow. Ultron's drones followed in a coordinated swarm, retreating into the depths of the castle-fortress.
The rescue team could only watch.
They'd saved nearly two hundred prisoners. They'd struck a blow against Ultron's operations. They'd achieved tactical success.
But Master Piell... what had happened to him was worse than death. Worse than any clean ending could have been. He was gone, yet still walking, still talking, still wearing his face.
A hollow victory tasted like ash.
"Let's go," Steve whispered, his voice heavy with a grief that transcended language. "Get everyone aboard."
The evacuation continued in silence.