Knightfalls on the Republic

Summary:

Alternative Universe. What if Anakin was born much earlier than canon and had a grandniece who will be the Jedi's Chosen One? And more importantly, what if Padmé was born Force-sensitive? First in a six-part series.

Timeline:

A very AU approach to the Star Wars…basally a reboot of my One Sith Empire and One Republic story series, because I was unhappy with all the errors that I unintentionally put in that first story. The Phantom Menace era. It will be more or less the same as The Phantom Menace with the Blockade and Invasion of Naboo with instead of being the Trade Federation that invades Naboo, it's the New Sith Empire that's been waiting in the wings for nearly a nine hundred years to have its revenge on both the Jedi and the Dark Sided Sith Order. The Planet Iownia is still a massive planetary factory capable of building a fleet of thousands of ships in under a week. The Planet Revana is still a massive planetary factory capable of cloning a batch of millions of Clone Soldiers/Troopers in nine months' time from their infancy to twenty-year-old adults (or from any time in their lives to twenty years later), as well as create Legions of Advance Battle Droid units and create weapons and armor that are invincible to any kind of attack (including Force Attacks). Oh, and Anakin/Emperor Vader gets a grandniece named Anna Skywalkers who will be the Jedi's Chosen One while Anakin/Emperor Vader is the True Chosen One.

Rating:

Rated M for possible adult themes and language later on.

Story and series-wide disclaimer:

I do not own nor do I claim to own anything except the Planets Revana and Iownia, Anna Skywalker and the plotline. EVERYTHING ELSE BELONGS TO LUCASFILM LTD. LLC. I'm just a fan of STAR WARS and thus am allowed to play in their sandbox.

Character Profile

Character's name:
Emperor Vader

Species:
Human Male

Birth year/month/date:
102 B.B.Y./2nd/23rd

Other important facts:
brilliant military strategist (can change his plans on a dime meaning he can outthink his opponents and change his attack plan accordingly); plans to wipe both the Jedi and Dark-sided Sith Rule of Two from the face of the Galaxy.

Character Profile

Character's name:
Darth Wrath

Species:
Togruta female

Birth year/month/date:
89 B.B.Y./3rd/2nd

Other important facts:
Emperor Vader's personal assassin; Emperor Vader's Wrath/Enforcer; found by Emperor Vader as an abandoned three-day-old baby.

Character Profile

Character's name:
Anna Skywalker

Species:
Human Female

Birth year/month/date:
42 B.B.Y./2nd/3rd

Other important facts:
slave owned by Watto on Tatooine in the Outer Rim; born to Shmi Skywalker and an unknown father; is the grandniece of Emperor Vader on her mother's side.

Character Profile

Character's name:
Empress Justice

Species:
Human Female

Birth year/month/date:
96 B.B.Y./9th/15th

Other important facts:
captured as a two-day-old infant by New Sith Privateers in order to train her in ways of the Gray Sith Lords.

Prologue:

The Podracer

Tatooine, Pod Racing Track, Anna Skywalker's Podracer, first lap, 32 Before the Battle of Yavin (BBY), 10 Before the Battle of Geonosis (BBG), 0 Before the Battle of Naboo (BBN), 0 Before the Treaty of Naboo (BTN)

Tatooine.

The twin suns burned down out of a cloudless blue sky, washing the vast desert wastes of the planet in brilliant white light. The resultant glare rose off the flat, sandy surface in a wet shimmer of blistering heat to fill the gaps between the massive cliff faces and solitary outcroppings of the mountains that were the planet's sole distinguishing feature. Sharply etched, the monoliths stood like sentinels keeping watch in a watery haze.

When the Podracers streaked past, engines roaring with ferocious hunger and relentless drive, the heat and the light seemed to shatter and the mountains themselves to tremble.

Anna Skywalker leaned into the curve of the raceway that took her past the stone arch marking the entry into Beggar's Canyon on the first lap of the race, easing the thruster bars of her modified Podracer forward, giving the old pieces of junk of engines a little more juice. The wedge-shaped rockets exploded with power, the right a tad harder than the left, banking the Pod in which Anna sat sharply left to clear the turn. Swiftly, she adjusted the steering to straighten the racer, boosted power further, and shoot through the arch. Loose sand whiplashed in the wake of her passing, filling the air with a gritty sheen, whirling and dancing through the heat. She ripped into the canyon, fingers playing across the controls, hands steady on the steering.

It was all so quick, so instantaneous. One mistake, one mistaken judgment, and she'd be out of the race and lucky if she wasn't dead. That was the thrill of it. All that power, all that speed just at her fingertips, and no margin for error. Two huge turbines dragged a fragile Pod over sandy flats around jagged-edged mountains, down shadowed draws, and over heart-wrenching drops in a series of twisting, windy curves and jumps at the greatest speed a driver could manage. Control cables ran from the Pod to engines and energy binders locked the engines to each other. If any part of the three struck something solid, the whole assembly would collapse in splintering of metal and a fiery wash of rocket fuel. If any part broke free, it was all over.

A sight grin split Anna's young face as she injected a bit more power into the thrusters.

Up ahead, the canyon narrowed and the shadows deepened. Anna bore down on the slit of brightness that opened back onto the flats, keeping low to the ground where passage was widest. If she stayed high, she risked brushing the cliff faces on either side. That had happened to Regga in a race last month, and they were still looking for the pieces.

It would not happen to her.

She shoved the thruster bars forward and exploded through the gaps onto the flats, engines screaming.

Sitting in the Pod with her hands on the controls, Anna could feel the vibrations of the engines travel up the cables and fill her with their music. Wrapped up her rough-made jumpsuit, her racing helmet, her goggles and her gloves, she was wedged so closely in her seat that she could feel the across the Pod's skin beneath her. When she raced like this, she was never simply the driver of a Podracer, never just an additional part. Rather, she was at one with the whole, and engines, Pod, and she were bound together in a way she could not entirely explain. Each shimmy, each small throb, each tug and twist of strut and tie were apparent to her, and she could sense at any given moment what was happening throughout the length and breadth of her racer. It spoke to her in its own language, a mix of sounds and feelings, and though it did not use words, she understood everything it said to her and her alone.

Sometimes, she thought dreamily with a hint of satisfaction as she passed burnt-out remains of Sebulba's racer with the Dug's head still imbedded in the rocky sides of an outcropping after what happened last month between the Dug and Anna when Sebulba tried to ram the girl into that selfsame outcropping only to ram himself into it instead and earning her the moniker of the Podhunter, she could sense what it would say before it even spoke.

Just then, her engines began to choke on some sand that it had inhaled. Anna groaned to herself as Watto would not be pleased with this one as they had just barely managed to clean and repaired the engines like five days before the current race began…then again they hadn't been able to post security around the shop where they had been keeping the eighty-year-old Podracer as Tatooine was an extremely unstable planet to be on. But she couldn't worry about that that at this moment in time, as she needed to concentrate on her racing through the next two laps before she could launch an investigation into the sabotage of her fifth racer this year.

As she passed the observation platform her mother was on, Anna couldn't help but think about her mother's strange behavior over the last month and a half since receiving a strange call in the middle of the night when normally she would be watching a holodrama wherein the two main characters would be forbidden lovers…but once again the girl pushed the thought out of her mind. She had a race to win.

And win she did…just barely, however, as she tied with Gasgano.

Tatooine, Mos Espa, Merchant's District, Watto's shop, 62 BBY, 40 BBG, 30 BBN, 30 BTN

"Do you have any idea what this is going cost me to fix, girl? Do you have any idea at all? Oba chee ka!"

Watto hovered before her, launching into Huttese without even thinking about it, choosing a language that offered a vast array of insulting adjectives he could draw upon. Anna stood stoically in place, her young face expressionless, her sky-blue eyes fastened on the pudgy blue Toydarian hovering in front of her. Watto's wings were a blur of motion, beating with such ferocity it seemed as if they must surely fly his lumpy little body. Anna stifled an urge to laugh as she imagined this happening. It would not do to laugh just now.

When Watto paused for breath, Anna said quietly, "It wasn't my fault. Some sand got into the engine and got glassed."

Watto's mouth worked as if chewing something, his snout wrinkling over his protruding teeth. "Are you saying that it is my fault, girl? Because if you are, you'll never be freed."

They were standing in Watto's shop in the merchant's district of Mos Espa, a dingy mud-on-sand hut fronting an enclosure packed with rockets and engine parts salvaged from scrapped and junked wrecks. It was cool and shadowy inside, the planet's heat shut out by the thick walls, but even here there was dust hung in the air in hazy streamers caught by the ambient light cast by glow lamps. The race had just ended and the planet's twin suns were slowing dropping towards the horizon with twilight's slow approach. The ruined engine had been taken apart by Anna after bringing it back to the shop, and Watto wasn't happy about the cause of the engine malfunction and was looking for someone to blame.

"Of course, I am not saying it is your fault. I'm saying that you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that I would ever sabotage my own racer." Anna said in a deadly calm voice that unnerved everyone and everything around the two even the pit droids stopped what they were doing to step back a few paces from the Podhunter's furious gaze.

Watto's expression soured up again but know that the girl was in the right.

Anna Skywalker had been a slave all her life. She was a small girl, even at nine years of age, rather compactly built, with a large mop of sandy blond hair that was tied in a loose ponytail, sky blue eyes, a pug nose, and a cold inquisitive stare learned the Hutt Overseers from her time as a Hutt slave. She was quick and surprisingly strong for her age, and she was gifted in ways that constantly surprised those around her. She was already an accomplished driver in the Podraces, something no human of any age had ever been before. She was gifted with building skills that allowed her to put together almost anything and could deconstrue just the same number of things. She was useful to Watto in both areas, and Watto was not one to waste a slave's talents. But what no one know about her except her mother was the way she sensed things. Frequently she sensed them before anyone even knew they would happen. It was like a stirring in the air, a whisper of warning or suggestion that no else could feel. It served her well in the Podraces but it was also there at other times like when she was super angry like right now for instance.

"Anna," Shmi gently scolded her.

Anna's mother had been standing off to one side of the shop before now. She took the girl by the shoulders in an effort to calm her down but unlike any other time before, where this had calmed her down, instead, Anna did something that was, in her eyes anyway, unforgivable.

She struck her own mother hard across the face making her flinch back hard. Anna's blue eyes widened even further than any human could've believed possible not just out of shock although that was a huge part of it, but also out of fear that she would be punished by both Watto and her mother. Shmi and Watto saw this though and each look at the other as if saying without words that they would leave it for the time being before Shmi took her shell-shocked nine-year-old daughter home to recover from the shock of hitting her own Mother before letting her return to work at the shop.