**New Tython Space

The Fallen Spear**

The battle beyond the transparisteel continued, the fighters, bombers and capital ships ducking, spinning and weaving through each other like fish in a turbulent ocean. Without context, the view would have been almost peaceful.

The Dark Lord watched quietly, arms folded and eyes unblinking. He felt him out there when they arrived. His old friend, gone corrupt, abandoning the Brotherhood, abandoning him. He knew he would come. He couldn't resist the challenge, the repeat of history. Replaying the battles over Sepros, over Tarthos in his mind, he was sure that the man thought himself succesful.

There was a shudder in the ship, barely a tremor in the floorboards, but he didn't miss it. The cool lights of the Autoch ships displays cast a pallor over his half-brother's face. Fast fingers brought up statuses quickly, and the comm broke open, Fremoc's voice filing from the small spaekers.

"There's ten ....taking losses...not too bad... only a few left.... Directive?"

Muz felt along the threads of the Force, testing the future as well as the past. He looked directly at the other Keibatsu, a wordless command seeping from his mind.

"Fall back." His voice was all metal and rock, the filaments of his vocabulator lending a strange undercurrent of sound to his voice.

Fremoc's response was undoubtedly confusion, but the man knew better than to question. The response was brief. "Aye."

Shin'Ichi turned from the console, looking to his brother. "We've been boarded, Lord."

The sound of bootfalls from the corridor to the bridge resonated, slowly growing closer, ponderous. The hissing of the door opening drew their attention, Muz's saber in hand before the door even moved.

The sliding durasteel exposed the green and red armor, dual blasters leveled at the Dark Lord.

Muz let the purple plasma spill from his saber hilt. "Who hired you, Raidoner?"

The Mandalorian who had once served alongside him didn't know what to make of that, but still had an answer.

"Lots of your members have bounties. I'm just a simple man, trying to make his way in the Universe." It was only half a lie. He was hired. Hired by Kriss Klitho, who himself was hired by Michael Halcyon. But it was true. Between the Fee Kriss collected and the heads that his mercenaries were collecting planetside, they'd make a tidy profit. Most of them were criminals in the Core.

Muz didn't change his posture, didn't bat an eye. "I'm not asking again."

Maximus Raidoner wondered for a moment if he would have been better served by using a lightsaber rather than the flechette pistols, the 'jedi-killers' he had stolen from the Nephilim armory a few years ago. He had faced Muz before, in the Morph Hall, on Tarthos, on Antei. He had survived before.

"It's not your cons..."

The hum of the Lord's lightsaber interrupted the words, and Raidoner found his helmet canting forward, his eyes seeing the durasteel of the floor, the Dark Lord no longer in his field of vision. He tried to turn his head, but his neck refused. A taste of burnt air and ozone filled his mouth.

He fell down, his head laying against the padding of the side of his helmet, the HUD still twitching, analyzing. The sound of a lightsaber deactivating reached his ears, and Raidoner realized that the atmo seal on his suit had failed.

There was a loud thump behind him somewhere.

He mouthed the words, cursing the man for his Krath devilry, for freezing his form with sorcery, for burdening him with fatigue.

Muz stepped around the head, watching through the transparisteel again, his hands on the hilts of his weapons.

The commlink opened, the face of his Herald spilling from the front lines. There was only one word that his brother said, but it was enough. Enough to pay for all the blood spilled into the grass of New Tython. Enough to pay for the crystalline corpses that swarmed outside of crippled ships. The bait had been taken. Michael was only a fraction of his target.

It was proceeding exactly as he had planned.

---

**Menat Ombo

New Tython**

Shadow pushed the green armor off of him, a shockwave of Force shredding through the beskar'gam as his black-gloved hand seized the saber at his belt, a crimson blade erupting from it out of habit. He looked at the saber, then at the cooling corpse. He pointed at the swirl of black paint on the stomach, sneering at Halcyon.

"Ain't that an Arconan logo?"

Halcyon deflected another blast, watching the blast sail through the head of another battle droid, antiquated and rusted. It could have been an Arconan. The armor didn't seem to have the bloody handprint of the others, and they were known for wearing the Beskar'gam on the field of battle. He had always known that the habit would cost them one day, but they didn't listen to him, not even when he was Consul a lifetime ago.

The chirping from his belt drew his attention for a moment, his mind flipping the switch to the commlink with the invisible hand of the Force. He held his saber at guard, watching as Sadow and Tadryan alike plunged deeper through the ranks of the enemy, the rain muddying their path.

"Halc, your brother is down here. You'll want to get down here before Muz does, if you want his head."

Halcyon could have smiled.

"Roger that. Where's Muz?"

Shikyo felt the tremor of thunder, the lightning striking nearby. The tracking beacon would draw Halcyon to his location. He would love to take the kill himself, but Michael was not his prey.

"En route. His master is here, too." Shikyo's voice was sore, the throaty bellows of battle wearing on him as the heavens wept.

"That's...not good." Halcyon's response crept across the secure comm.

Shikyo smiled at the fire team that stamped toward him and Korras, the blood red handrpint across visors, breastplates and pauldrons. One of these could be his prey.

"Roger that."

---

Liu crossed himself with his saber, parrying off the Headmaster's thrust and letting a riposte snake out at his foe. The man was furious, the fire of hatred burning in his eyes seeking to incinerate his soul.

The Jedi harbored no ill will against the man. Taigikori was never his ultimate goal. He was just a bystander, a bit of collateral damage along the way of a fallback plan. The line of ruined flesh just above the prosthetic reminded him of that day, the loss of his ship, the day he faced the Lion and was allowed to live.

A mortar exploded near them, a shower of dirt and clumps of scorched grass pelting their robes. Blasts flew overhead, a protective circle cutting them off, surrounding them with a dozen dark jedi. It was odd tactics to the Jedi, his mind wondering which would take Taigikori's spot in the middle after he had dispatched him.

Taigikori pushed strength into his muscles, renewing his attack, the crimson of his blade becoming more a glowing arc than just a beam with the speed of his strokes. Liu backpedaled, his saber connecting with the strokes at odd angles, keeping the searing light from him, but just barely. The man had learned since they had dueled on Lyspair. But learned from who?

Only one man fought like this.

---

Korras widened his stance, the snapping hum of his wrist-mounted sabers erupting as they watched the last of the fire team fall. Only the one with crimson armor left standing, insignias of rank barely notable, if he hadn't studied the Mando'a with the Arconans. They knew the folly of bragging on the field. The Master at Arms glanced at the Herald, a note of recognition between them.

This was who they were sent to kill.

"Maximus is dead." Korras jeered, letting the Dun Moch flavor his words. An unstable and emotional foe was easier to kill.

Shikyo continued the verbal assault. "My brother took his head."

Words would not constrain him. The Mandolorian responded with fire.

---

The bay of the Fallen Spear yawned at the atmoshpere of the planet, the wind tearing at the Grand Master's warcoat. Black eyes regarded the land as it screamed below, the swarms of Mandolorians, Droids and the brown and black robes of the Force attuned below as small as ants.

Fremoc watched the man curiously, the wind lengthening the tears in his cloak. There was some things that he didn't quite understand, some things he wasn't sure that he wanted to understand.

Sable eyes narrowed, the ground brought into brutal focus.

One man, grey hair, simple robes.

Muz stepped off of the ship, diving toward the soil, his warcoat billowing out as he fell, the cold comfort of his sabers filling his hands.

He landed a few moments later, his sabers igniting in front of him as his boots made landfall.

"My apprentice..." Even here, he would play at peace.

Muz could play that game, forbidding emotion to taint his face. "No longer."

Eojin watched the rain slide off of his old apprentice's leather. He pushed back the hood of his robes, his eyes drilling into the fallen Jedi, the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"We're the same, you and I." He shrugged his arms out of the outer garment, pushing the cloak back. "You've killed more Sith than any Jedi ever has."