Chapter 10: Riviarly
Barriss' POV
After Vader's order of hunting down Darth Maul, she had gone to the most logical place she could think of that would hold some information of his whereabouts, Dathomir. As she touched down onto the surface of the planet, she looked out the window to take in the sight before her. Dathomir was a strange place, thick white fog floated above the ground making it hard to actually see any ground and the trees that were there, were rotting away or dead. The sky was a misty kind of pink and she could already hear strange wildlife outside. As she stepped off the ship, her foot bumped against something, she had to look hard through the fog to recognise it as a dead nightsister. She remembered hearing about the stories of the massacre that took place here during her days as a Jedi, she remembered overhearing Obi-Wan's conversation with Yoda about what happened here when he came back from his mission of trying to find out anything about Darth Maul who had recently been revealed to still remain alive.
Barriss made her way into the Nightsister cave where she found a similar scene to the forest. Buildings broken apart, dead bodies laid on the ground and even some battle droids from the Clone War. A rather large hole in the middle of the cave, which she assumed was once a pond but the water had dried up, drew her attention as she thought she heard whispers coming from it. She stepped closer to it only to jump back as a green misty gas arose with a booming voice asking, "WHO ENTERS THE CAVE THAT WAS ONCE HOME TO THE NIGHTSISTERS"
Thrawn's POV
"Lord Vader, you will be happy to know that in our travels through hyperspace, I intercepted a rebel message coming from the planet of Onderron" Thrawn said as he walked on the bridge to the position of The Emperor's right hand, "Grand Moff Tarkin's fleet is only a few parsecs away and is on the move now to destroy them" he finished rather pleased with himself.
"And tell me Grand Admirial" Vader started emphasising the last two words, "how would you have happened to intercept a rebel message, we are in hyperspace after all and for all my years in The Empire I have NEVER heard of anyone intercepting messages in hyperspace. And even if you did, how could you have cracked the secret so quickly and not shared it with your superiors?" Vader said.
"Well Lord Vader, I have known the secret to do so for quite some time now and had shared it with The Emperor himself. I only trusted him as I did not want this secret to fall in to the wrong hands." Thrawn said knowing he had won this battle.
Kanan's POV
Kanan walked down the narrow hallway of the bunkers hoping to find Rex in his room and fortunately he was. "Can we talk?" Kanan asked standing outside the door looking at a saddened old clone. "Sure, and before you say anything, I want to apologise for earlier today when I snapped at you about not saving Ahsoka" Rex said as he signalled for Kanan to enter. "Hey, don't stress, we all have our moments" Kanan replied as he sat on a chair opposite Rex's. "Now, what's going on with you two?"
Rex gave a big sigh as he looked up at Kanan, "She's claiming that Vader is Anakin, the Jedi I served during The Clone Wars, and I just don't believe it. I mean, how could she think that a hero like him could fall down such a dark path?" Rex said getting slightly angry.
"Look Rex, I know it must be extremely hard to believe but she's not lying. Back on Malachor, me and Ezra saw what happened. It really is him, Ahsoka had to deal with that in the moment and still try to survive. Like you, I don't know how or why he's gone down this path but that's for you and her to discover." Kanan said hoping Rex would see where he's coming from.
"Mind if I cut in?" Ahsoka said, standing at the door