Guess what, I changed my mind, you get another chapter, but you ain't getting another till Tuesday. For the patrons tho, another chapter is out on Patreon, giving you access to another chapter for whatever tier you're at.
Now, thank you to those who subscribed to my Patreon. You can't really get the full shibang unless you join the discord cause thats wehre all the idea thinking thing is going on, and dm me there if you've got ideas in the chat or something.
https://discord.gg/K8pFqFexb3
P@treon is Hermit47
To find my P@treon, you gotta look it up on the site itself, a simple Google search ain't gonna lead you to me cause Im not crazy big.
...
Star Base Zahanna was even larger from the inside.
Ahsoka had thought the place overwhelming when she first saw it in orbit, a fortress of steel and shield-emitters hanging over the dead red world of Korriban like some iron moon built for war. But stepping through it was something else entirely. From the outside, the station was massive. From within, it felt endless.
Captain Rex led the way through one of the main transit galleries, his helmet hooked at his hip, Commander Bly walking beside him while Aayla and Ahsoka followed. The corridor they were in was broad enough to drive tanks through, lined with reinforced transparisteel on one side and dark armored bulkheads on the other. Through the great angled windows, Ahsoka could see the docking fields stretching away in layers—repair cradles, vehicle lifts, ammunition cranes, and rank upon rank of clone transports being emptied with tireless efficiency. Gunships hovered into maintenance lanes. Venators loomed beyond them like iron cities, some still venting heat, others already crawling with engineering droids.
Everywhere she looked, the station was alive.
Not alive in the way Coruscant was alive, crowded and bright and always straining to make itself louder.
This was a different sort of life.
Purposeful.
Disciplined.
Hard.
"Does the whole legion fit here?" she asked, still craning her neck as she walked.
Rex glanced back at her. "Most of it, when needed."
Ahsoka looked around again, trying to imagine it. "That's… a lot of clones."
Bly huffed softly, the closest thing to amusement he usually allowed himself. "That would be one way to put it."
Rex slowed slightly, as if deciding where to begin.
"The 501st rotates constantly," he said. "Some are in the field, some are in recovery, some are on station detail, some are in retraining. But yes, if the General ordered a full regroup, the station can take the whole legion."
Ahsoka frowned. "All twenty-three million of them?"
Even Aayla gave Rex a sidelong look at that.
Rex nodded once. "Not comfortably," he said, "but war doesn't usually care about comfort."
He turned them through another archway and into a wider concourse. Here, the station's scale became even harder to grasp. Lift shafts big enough for heavy walkers rose and fell through the levels. Mess halls opened off the main artery in long rows. Barracks blocks stacked upward in armored tiers, each marked with legion insignia and color coding. Training bays lined the far side of the deck, some sealed, some open enough that Ahsoka could hear the crack of stun bolts and shouted commands from within.
"This section holds a little under two corps' worth when it's at full use," Rex said. "Other sections are laid out the same way, though some are specialized. Armor crews in one quarter. Flight crews in another. Recovery wards deeper in. Munitions crews closer to the loading spines."
Ahsoka slowed to take in the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of clones moving through the levels. Some were marching in full formation. Others were stripped down to black bodysuits in training halls, sparring with shock staves or running obstacle lanes built into the station's internal frame. Others sat at mess tables, helmets off, eating in silence or low conversation. The sameness of their faces still struck her every time she saw it, but the longer she looked, the more the differences emerged—the way one trooper slouched while another stood ramrod straight, the scars, the gestures, the way they carried themselves.
It reminded her, uncomfortably, that the Jedi still talked about clones as units and assets more often than men.
Aayla noticed the way Ahsoka was looking.
"What is it?" she asked softly.
Ahsoka hesitated. "I just didn't expect… this."
Rex gave her an almost knowing look. "Most don't."
He led them down a descending ramp toward another section of the station. This one was less severe. Still military, still clean, still hard-edged—but there were signs of lived life here beyond duty. A row of grav-ball courts had been marked out in one open bay. A mess annex had been fitted with sabacc tables bolted into the floor. Along one wall, a long mural was being painted in stages—501st markings, battle honors, names of campaigns, little bits of clone humor she didn't understand.
Ahsoka stopped in front of it.
"You let them paint the walls?"
Bly snorted.
Rex folded his arms. "It's their wall."
Ahsoka turned. "I mean… Jedi barracks don't let people paint the walls."
"Then Jedi barracks sound miserable," Rex said.
That got a small laugh out of Aayla.
Rex shrugged. "The General says men fight better when they've got something that feels like theirs. So the station gives them some room for that. Extra mess allotments after campaigns. Recreation decks when training cycles allow it. Places to cool their heads between deployments."
Ahsoka looked back at the mural. There were names there. Nicknames. Symbols. Small things that made no sense to outsiders, but mattered deeply to the men who had put them there.
"He thought of that?" she asked.
Rex didn't smile, but there was something warmer in his voice when he answered. "The General thinks about more than people realize."
They kept walking.
As they moved deeper into the station, the architecture thickened. Corridors became more heavily armored. Turret housings sat recessed in the walls and ceilings. Blast doors the size of building fronts stood ready at every major junction. Every few hundred meters they passed security checkpoints, shielded bulkheads, emergency seal controls, and interior fallback lines.
Ahsoka noticed that too.
"This whole place feels like it could survive a siege."
"It can," Bly said.
Rex gave a small nod. "That was the point. If a Separatist fleet ever got bold enough to come here, the station could lock down, break their first assault, and bleed them trying the second."
Ahsoka blinked. "On its own?"
"On its own," Rex confirmed. "It's got layered shielding, overlapping gun platforms, mine webs, internal fallback sectors, reserve hangars, and enough stored fuel and food to keep the place fighting long after most fleets would have started starving."
Aayla looked out through one armored viewport toward the black around Korriban. "It's not a starbase," she said quietly. "It's a battlestation."
Rex glanced at her. "That too."
They reached another broad gallery, this one quieter. The deck lights were dimmer here, softer, and the corridor opened toward a long observation hall lined with old banners, battle standards, and the plaques of dead troopers. It felt older than the rest of the station somehow, more solemn.
Ahsoka's gaze drifted to the sigil repeated over the walls and doors here—the eclipse-like emblem with its red wound through the center. She had seen it before in smaller places, tucked into hidden compartments of the station and on sealed lifts with restricted access.
She looked away from it and asked the question that had been bothering her since orbit.
"Why Zahanna?"
Rex stopped.
It was so slight that Ahsoka almost missed it, but his whole expression shifted. The ease didn't leave him exactly—Rex rarely let himself go fully hard unless battle demanded it—but something in him grew quieter.
"It was her name," he said.
Ahsoka frowned. "Whose?"
"His mother's."
Aayla's eyes lifted. "I thought his mother's name was Shmi."
Rex nodded once, still solemn now. "Shmi Skywalker raised him. Zahanna gave birth to him."
That brought the whole corridor into a different kind of stillness.
Ahsoka looked from Rex to Bly, then back again. "What happened to her?"
Rex held her gaze for a moment. He wasn't unkind when he answered, but the boundary in his voice was unmistakable.
"That's the General's story to tell," he said. "Not mine."
Ahsoka nodded slowly. She had learned enough in the past weeks to know when pushing harder would get her nowhere.
Still, the name lodged in her mind.
Zahanna.
This station had been named after a woman the Jedi Order apparently didn't talk about, orbiting one of the darkest worlds in the galaxy, claimed by a Jedi Knight who was growing harder to understand by the day.
The thought led too naturally into the next question.
"What is Oblivion Cell?"
Rex didn't stop walking this time, but he did turn his head toward her.
There was no anger in his face. Just the sort of firm patience older soldiers reserved for the young when they stepped too close to something dangerous without realizing it.
"Kid," he said, and his voice was gentler than the words themselves, "it's best if you forget you ever heard that name."
Ahsoka frowned. "But it sounded important."
Aayla cut in before Rex had to say more.
"If it matters to you that much," she said, "then ask your master when he's well enough to answer."
Ahsoka looked between them, then nodded. She didn't like the answer, but she heard the warning in both of their voices.
They continued down the corridor in silence for a while after that. Ahsoka tried to shake the questions loose from her mind, but the station seemed built to feed them. Every sealed lift, every restricted deck, every symbol she half-recognized and couldn't name, every clone who seemed to know when not to ask things—it all made Anakin feel less like a Jedi general and more like the center of some hidden machinery the rest of the Order only glimpsed from the outside.
She walked ahead of the others after that, talking over her shoulder as she went, hands moving as she spoke.
"So if this place is strong enough to hold out against a whole Separatist fleet, what's the biggest weak point? The central spindle? Or is it the docking wheel? Because if I were trying to break a station like this, I'd probably—"
Rex's eyes lifted suddenly.
They widened.
He raised one hand fast.
"Kid—stop."
Ahsoka turned her head halfway and took one more step.
Then hit something that felt like a durasteel wall.
Only it moved.
Ahsoka bounced backward with a startled sound and spun around, hand half-dropping toward her saber before she stopped herself.
It wasn't a wall.
It was a being.
He stood nearly three meters tall, armored from head to heel in layered, scarred plating that looked as though it had been patched, rebuilt, and reforged over centuries. Broad-shouldered, massive, and utterly silent. Tubes, cables, trophies, and old battle fittings hung off him in irregular clusters. Beneath the armor, glimpses of dense flesh and unnatural structure showed through.
He had not been standing there a second ago.
At least not to her senses.
Rex stepped forward immediately, and for the first time since she had known him, Ahsoka heard something close to real caution in his voice.
"Scud," Rex said. "Sorry. She didn't see you."
Bly had gone still too, one hand hovering near his weapon without touching it.
The giant armored figure looked down at Ahsoka.
No growl. No threat. No obvious judgment.
Just a long, appraising look that made the skin at the back of her neck tighten.
Then he looked away and kept walking, his armored weight somehow making almost no sound at all.
Only when he had passed them and moved down the adjoining corridor did Rex let out the breath he'd been holding.
Bly did the same.
Aayla, who had not reached for her weapon but had absolutely been ready to, watched the retreating figure with narrowed eyes.
"Who," she asked quietly, "was that?"
Rex answered without taking his eyes off the corridor.
"That was Scud."
Ahsoka rubbed the shoulder she had bounced off of. "What is a Scud?"
Rex gave her a sidelong look. "Not what. Who. And he's a Gendai."
Aayla's eyes sharpened. "A Gendai?"
Now Ahsoka was even more confused. "What's a Gendai doing on a Republic starbase?"
Rex resumed walking, and the others had little choice but to follow.
"He's with the General," he said.
"That doesn't answer the question."
"No," Rex replied, "but it narrows it."
Ahsoka looked to Aayla for help, but the Twi'lek was still staring after the corridor Scud had vanished into.
"Gendai are extremely reclusive," Aayla said slowly. "They're a long-lived species rarely sighted. Most people spend their whole lives without seeing one."
Ahsoka glanced back. "And that one just lives here?"
Rex shook his head. "I didn't say that."
"Then what is he doing here?"
This time, Rex's mouth twitched faintly. "I told you before. Anakin attracts strange faces."
That got the barest flicker of amusement out of Bly, though his attention stayed sharp.
Aayla wasn't smiling. "Is he loyal to Anakin?"
Rex's answer came after a beat.
"That's complicated."
It was clearly all she was going to get.
The four of them moved on, though Ahsoka and Aayla both looked back once more at the last place they'd seen Scud's retreating form.
Then the station shook.
Not a little.
Not like the low constant tremors of engines and ship operations.
The entire deck lurched beneath their boots. Lights along the corridor flickered once. Somewhere deeper in the station, something heavy and distant boomed through the metal bones of the place.
Ahsoka grabbed the bulkhead automatically.
Bly's hand snapped to his blaster.
Rex straightened, instantly scanning the corridor.
Another shudder rolled through the station, this one longer, like something vast had struck its frame from the inside.
"What was that?" Ahsoka asked.
Before anyone could answer, the overhead speakers crackled to life.
Commander Virek's voice came through, calm, level, and carrying no more concern than if he were announcing a change in meal rotations.
"All station personnel, remain calm. You may experience additional tremors and structural vibration for a short time. Maintenance and systems operations are conducting a controlled test. There is no immediate threat. Continue with your assignments."
The transmission clicked off.
The corridor went still again.
Ahsoka looked at Rex. "A controlled test?"
Rex looked exactly as unimpressed with that explanation as she felt.
"I've got no idea," he admitted.
Bly frowned upward at the ceiling as though he could somehow see through layers of station and armor to whatever was happening. "That didn't sound like any maintenance test I've ever heard."
Aayla said nothing for a moment.
Then she looked toward the deeper interior of the base, where the tremor had seemed to come from, and something in her expression cooled.
"I don't think that was meant for us to understand."
Ahsoka stared at her. "That's comforting."
"It wasn't meant to be," Aayla replied.
Another faint tremor rolled through the deck—not as violent this time, but enough to make the lights hum and the walls whisper.
Rex gestured ahead. "Come on. If Virek says there's no threat, then there's no threat we're allowed to know about."
That, somehow, was not reassuring either.
Still, they moved on.
Behind them, Star Base Zahanna carried on around the disturbance. Clones unloaded munitions. Mechanics stripped damaged armor from walkers and gunships. Repair servitors climbed over scorched tanks. Stretcher teams rolled the wounded into deeper sectors of the station. Supply columns marched in perfect rhythm through the arteries of the fortress.
The 501st had come home.
And somewhere in the hidden depths of that iron city, something had begun.