Chapter Fifty Nine

Sifo-Dyas had known the moment he purchased the clone army from the Kaminoans that he would be on the planet for the long term. As such he had purchased a small, out of the way house, well away from the rest of the population, hidden in a small valley near but not a part of one of the locals' main cities. So out of the way few of the locals even knew it was there. It was a small, bare house, where he could meditate on the Force and remain hidden, Anything else was of no importance to him.

Entering after a swift walk through the bare scrublands around his house, he entered, closing the door behind him as the lights inside the house came on automatically. Then they went out just as suddenly, plunging the house into pitch black darkness.

Wasting no time gaping around him in surprise, Sifo-Dyas twisted to one side of the doorway, activating his lightsaber just in time to intercept a few blaster bolts. Despite his dodge to one side the bolts had come straight at him, which was rather telling. "I do not know who you are, but surrender and I will merely take you prisoner without any injury. If you do not surrender I cannot promise that."

The Jedi's response was another flurry of blaster bolts.

Reaching out with the Force, Sifo-Dyas could sense movement to his right and turned quickly, bringing up his lightsaber again to deflect a few more blaster bolts. A warning of danger through his Force Precognition, however, sent Sifo-Dyas leaping away as the floor underneath his previous position went up in an explosion. A mine in my own house! This attack is no sudden assault then, but calculated.

The confines of the house worked in the Jedi's favor now, however, as he bounced off the ceiling and then off one wall, still deflecting blaster bolts with his lightsaber. They were fired with unerring accuracy, and always came at such an angle that he knew his attacker was always moving just as quickly as Sifo-Dyas, making him unable to deflect the assaults back in his direction, which he would have thought was impossible before this. Whoever is attacking me is very good.

Sifo-Dyas stood for a second as his leaping around deposited him on the floor once more, before launching himself forward, trying to close the distance between him and where he sensed his attacker was. "Whatever the Sith have paid you, it's not enough!" he shouted as he closed the distance, batting aside blaster bolts and slicing at his attacker, who ducked underneath the attack in a display of speed that Sifo-Dyas had not seen before in anyone but another Jedi. A leg lashed out, catching his own in the upper thigh, making him stumble, but he was still able to deflect and slice a vibro-knife coming towards his chest in two.

He stumbled once more, gasping in pain as a hand clamped onto his forearm before he could twist his lightsaber around once more. Lashing out with a telekinetic Force blast Sifo-Dyas hurled his attacker way, allowing him to switch his lightsaber to his other hand with which he deflected a few more plasma bolts though one of them still caught him in the side of his ankle. The human Jedi Master gasped once more, but refused to give in, using the Force to deaden the pain of his injuries as he lunged forward once more.

Just then the lights came back on as bright as ever, and despite his Force Precognition telling him it was coming, Sifo-Dyas could not stop his eyes from closing in an automatic reaction that all of his Jedi training could not overcome. He still had the Force, though, and relied on it for the next few seconds as his vision slowly cleared, but his attacker pressed him hard, blaster bolts coming out fast and furious for a few seconds from multiple sides.

Another blast of Force telekinesis hurled the attacker away to slam bodily into the wall, and Sifo-Dyas held him there, glaring at the Mandalorian warrior he had been fighting even as his Jedi training kept him calm and controlled. "You… I see… Jango Fett, why are you here? There is no bounty on my head,"

"You're a Jedi," said the flat voice from the helmet. "That's enough for me."

With a twitch of one of his wrists the Mandalorian fired off a few rockets, which smashed into the wall to one side, sending debris everywhere and forcing Sifo-Dyas to jump away, which in turn forced him to release his Force hold on the man. Jango fell to the ground, then rolled forward, lashing out with what looked like a very thin string.

His Force senses tingling, Sifo-Dyas tried to swipe at the string with his lightsaber, but Jango quickly flipped it around the lightsaber's arc, whipping it around Sifo-Dyas's forearm. He then twisted, and the mono-wire sliced cleanly through bone and tissue, sending blood everywhere.

Sifo-Dyas screamed, falling back, trying to rally his senses through the pain with the Force, but he couldn't. The last thing he saw was Jango standing in front of him, reaching out with his hands. A second later Jango crushed Sifo-Dyas throat with his crush gaunts.

Dropping the dead body on the bloody floor, Jango activated his comm. "It's done," he said flatly. "How do you want me to dispose of the body?"

"Leave it for now," said the voice of his employer on the other side. "I have droids nearby to take care of that. It's best that you remove yourself from the premises as quickly as possible. The paper trail showing him leaving the planet will be done soon. After that you can start contacting your training company and bring them in."

"I still say it was premature of you to call them in. I know I explained to them all why secrecy was important, but they'll still be twiddling their thumbs here for a time."

"No they won't. I'll have them working on combat doctrine and planning out the training. Even Mandalorians can't simply hop into that kind of work, after all."

Jango grunted at that. He wasn't much of a leader, so didn't think in those kind of terms. Still, this had been a very lucrative job for him in many ways. He now had a son to look forward to training, one he could train from birth to be a real Mandalorian without anyone else interfering, and he'd been able to kill another Jedi with the certain knowledge that his template would be used to kill still more. A win-win-win for Jango Fett.

A more paranoid individual might have wondered why he had been told about his employer's long term plans at all, given that he actually wasn't supposed to take part in the training of the legions. And if Sidious had been the one to give him his orders in person at this point, Jango might well have been safe.

But he wasn't. Plagueis was, and Plagueis hated loose ends and didn't trust anyone but his own apprentice. Secrecy, above all, had kept the Order of Two alive and growing stronger since the time of Darth Bane. Secrecy and keeping under the radar. He hadn't even trusted his padawan's pet assassin very much, which had proven to be rather prophetic given his poor showing against Windu and the fact his very existence might warn the Jedi there were still Sith around when, thanks to Dooku's failure to fall into line, the Grand Plan had taken a step back. No, there could be nothing to link the clone army to them, not yet.

When the Force Lightning came from the darkness between two boulders near Sifo-Dyas's house, Jango didn't see it coming at all. FZZZARRKKK!

"GAHAHHHH!" Jango screamed, falling to his knees and then to his armored face as the Force Lightning coruscated around his body.

Over his own screams and the Force Lightning a voice intoned, "You have done excellent work for the Sith, Jango Fett. Your genetic children will be the tool to end the Jedi for all time. Take that with you as consolation as you die."

Plagueis kept his Force Lightning going for a few more seconds after he determined the Mandalorian bounty Hunter was dead. It is best to be certain of such things, after all. Then he gestured forward, and a few black painted droids of various types moved forward to do their grisly work. One began to strip the Mandalorian of his armor, which one of the droids disposed of, as the others began their work on his body. In a few hours both Jango's body and that of Sifo-Dyas would be fertilizing a few local farming habitats.

After making certain the droids were being thorough, Plagueis turned away, walking off without further concern for the grisly sight behind him. The Jedi Master had chosen this place because it was empty of any all other life, allowing him both solitude and secrecy. That had come to plague him, and it allowed Plagueis to make certain that no one found either body.

He made two more stops before leaving the planet. First was to make certain that the training core had their marching orders and were completely cut off from any kind of hyperspace communications here. Just as he had not trusted Jango, he did not trust them overmuch, but they would perform adequately. They were surprised to not be meeting Jango, but when told he had duties elsewhere, the Mandalorians the now-deceased bounty hunter had brought together as the Cuy'val Darunderstood.

Under a Force-assisted illusion that portrayed him as a random senatorial aide, Plagueis gave them an impassioned plea that Sidious had written for him. It told the Cuy'val Dar that they would be a major part of creating a new era of order and prosperity once the clone army was on line, and they could sweep away the old corruption of both the Senate and the Jedi Order, ushering in a new era of centralized authority which would bring prosperity to all.

It was a passionate speech, and all of them bought into it, which almost made Plagueis chuckle. There would, of course, be a centralized authority. Despotisms had to be centralized by their very nature. The speech was also a front, of course, a way to grab his victims' attentions as Plagueis sent his Force powers into their minds, making them more biddable, more subservient to his orders in the future, less questioning about their role or that of the clone army they were creating.

His second stop was much faster, picking up the clone cylinder with Jango's child in it. This clone didn't have any of the modifications the others did to make them more biddable and susceptible to mental commands. But Plagueis wanted to see what could be done with a normal individual if given Sith training or possibly imbued with the Force powers of Sidious's assassin. Whatever he decided to do with it, the baby would be an interesting experiment to while away his time as he made plans to recover or turn the vergence he had created to the Sith cause.