She kicks at the jammed cockpit release lever, rancid chemical smoke filling the small space, trapping her like a spider under a glass. Nothing happens, the metal wedged too tightly from the hit to give. A panicked, half-formed idea hits her and the slaps her hand down against the emergency eject. Bolts blow out of their sockets under compressed air, one flying inwards instead of out, bludgeoning her across the jaw. She barely has time to spit blood before the ejector fires, and she's thrust up ten feet from the burning fighter. For a disconcerting, peaceful moment she hangs in the air, and then plummets back down, still strapped into the pilot's chair.
It doesn't matter that she lands awkwardly, watching her own leg trap and fold under the chair as it rolls with her. Hands scrambling for the harness, she ignores the twisting. The straps pop free and she rolls, not letting herself scream as the foot she pushes off the floor with buckles twice before co-operating; there's no time to heal it, no spare thought to grasp for comforting energy. She grips the comm on her collar hard enough for her knuckles to whiten.
"Get them off the ground." She calls into static, repeating herself when the field marshal protests. She tells him to leave the dead and wounded or unaccounted for, while she's making best limping speed through the chaotic hangar. A trooper takes her hand and helps her up onto the central elevator platform, and she watches as another fighter careens into the hangar, hitting her own wrecked craft.
On the way up to the battle deck, lights and deck markers flash past her. She takes the offered kolto, her hand gripping the trooper's shoulder as he doses her through a gap in the armour on her thigh. She can feel his pulse beating, his fear, his adrenaline, right from the toes of his boots to the tips of his bright red hair. He tightens the strapping on her boot, a makeshift splint, and speaks.
"They won't get here, ma'am... will they."
He doesn't look up. He doesn't need to. Her mouth opens to respond, to comfort, to reassure. But she can't reassure a man that knows something hopeless.
"No." She pulls her hand away from his shoulder, only to grip the collar of his uniform and force him to look her in the eye. "But if we're going to win this war, we win it here and now without them."
She lets him go when the elevator stops, and she leaves him staring on the platform, making for the blast doors and the battle deck beyond them. Every step she takes closer, there are thousands of lights and voices out in the vacuum snuffing out one by one, or tens at a time. Voices she knows. They make her stumble and stagger for a handhold when a face in her mind blots out, then another, and one more. She makes herself keep walking, though her gait's like wading through mud now, until she finally reaches the doors.
When they open, she stops. There's organised panic laid out in front of her, and the view from the bridge when she gets there... more red and bright than black and stars. Officers show her stats as she passes, call out statuses and conditions. The fleet's too depleted. Too many dead. Revan's not going to make it.
She knew this plan was a diversion- a hoodwink. Give Revan time, distract the enemy fleet. She'd fought to lead it, shouted Alek down until he backed down. Because she'd thought it would be fun. She sees now what they mean when they say that war isn't glorious. A half-destroyed troop transport drifting past the viewscreen, red Republic uniforms visible through the breach in the hull; that isn't glorious. She feels it now, the weight of it, pressing down like a desert full of sand and every grain is screaming. The Force has never felt like this. She only knows it needs to be brought to silence.
As she turns her head, the Iridonian is there. He's bandaged and bruised, and a stained medical wrap covers his arm. She can't remember his name, and it takes her a few seconds to recall their talk and their plan. She reaches for her comm again.
"Are they off the ground, captain?" Her voice feels far away, like someone else, as she meets the Zabrak's eyes.
"Only thirty percent, ma'am! They've got aerial cover; they're ripping our transports to—"
She shuts off the link.
The Zabrak moves over to the console, signalling to the ship's pilot. She keeps her eyes on him, and only at him. He opens the security casing and preps the sequence.
Her lips press thin, her eyes watering.
She takes a last, deep breath.
She nods.