AN: My apologizes for the long delay on the completion of this story. For the last year I have been setting dates, then moving them back, and further back, and I finally decided four months ago that I would get this done starting the new year! As well as having full time work, part time school, and a couple of charity organizations I volunteer at, and a nice trip to Europe last summer thrown in, I don't write chapter by chapter, but by story line from start to finish, so that means I have a complete story finished, not individual chapters like some writers. I find that allows me to provide more detail in earlier chapters to hint at future events, and I even found after putting up the previous stories that I wish I hadn't so the details could be more uniform. C'est la vie, non? I also have a significantly more complex story archetecture than the previous two. I think I counted over 18 plot lines, several of which overlap at times. I must say, I've never used three spreadsheets to write a story before. Anywho, here is the first chapter of the last story in my trillogy, From the Ashes. I hope you enjoy it.
For those of you who feel lost, Dawn of Chaos takes place immediately after Face of the Enemy, which takes place shortly after Détente's End, the two stories you'll find in my profile.
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars or anything in this story, though I did create Eriana Fostenon and Astro :)
18 Days...
Kilometres above the surface of Ossus, Jacen Solo squeezed his way into the cockpit of the Jade Shadow. While the ship normally had adequate space, several of the Jedi gathered around the cockpit to reassure themselves that Luke and Mara were alive. Jacen was glad he was still not allowing himself full access to the Force since the emotions playing across their faces hinted about how bewildered, frightened and relieved they all were. Just looking at their expressions gave him a headache.
Cighal and Tionne had immediately taken Kam into their care in the Shadow's modest med centrewhile Luke and Mara had sprinted to the cockpit before Jacen had even made it on board. Tresina and several of the children lined the main corridor, forcing Jacen to move sideways through the crowd. His Mandalorian armour and sniper rifle were cramping his movements in the tight space, so he had replaced the helmet Lanos had returned to him on his head. He felt odd that, after receiving approval from his team leader, he felt more a Mandalorian now that he was back among the Jedi than he had during the last few months that he had infiltrated the Mandalorian strike force.
Upon reaching the cockpit he found Lowbacca and Mara arguing about piloting the ship. It was Mara's ship, but she was still exhausted from being in captivity in the Sith torture chamber. Lowbacca refused to let her fly for this reason, growling insistently that she leave him to do the flying as he evaded Mandalorian ships in hot pursuit. To add to the distractions, Luke and Ben were trying to drag her back to their quarters to have some family time.
"Fine!" Mara exclaimed, seeing she was overruled. "Just let me set the course to Coruscant myself."
"Hapes," Jacen said, drawing several looks. The helmet artificially deepened his voice, startling everyone – especially Ben. "Set a course for Hapes. Coruscant is hostile."
"What?" Mara asked.
"Two days ago Cal Omas issued orders to arrest all Jedi on sight because of several diplomatic failures and some behind-the-scenes plotting on Soora's part," Jacen explained as he removed his helmet. His voice lightened immediately with the lack of voice modification technology within the helmet. "The Jedi Temple blasted off and disappeared. Either they've gone to Hapes or the Empire. Hapes is closer, but my guess is they went to Bastion for protection from Pellaeon. If we go to Hapes, at the very least we can meet up with Tenel Ka and get an idea of what's going on. Maybe even acquire another ship, seeing as our numbers are pushing the air filters."
"Wait a minute, Luke." Mara exclaimed, rounding on her husband with a look mixed with anger and disbelief. "How does the Jedi Temple 'blast away?' I thought you were building a temple, not a ship!"
Luke and Lowie exchanged guilty glances before a blaster bolt shook the ship, returning Lowie's attention to the escape from Ossus' gravity well.
"The Council decided that the Temple would be designed to be space worthy," Luke said sheepishly. "That's why it took so long to complete. There were repulsors and booster engines built into the base, as well as basic sublight and hyperdrive engines. It also had to be made structurally strong enough to survive atmospheric exit and entry, as well as the vacuum of space. We didn't want to risk another Order 66." Luke finished lamely, referring to the fateful night when the Old Jedi Order was destroyed during the Clone Wars almost half a century ago.
[The Council would only agree to use that feature if Coruscant was indeed hostile,] Lowie barked as he spun the ship to avoid several Mandalorian blaster bolts. [Being closer, Hapes does sound like the more logical choice for us.]
"Thank you," Jacen said with a polite smirk.
Mara set the course, and, after ensuring all the Jedi had been safely strapped in, Lowbacca finally engaged the hyperdrive and left Ossus behind. As soon as it was safe, Ben dragged his mom away from the cockpit, leaving Jacen and Lowbacca alone among the swirling view of hyperspace. Jacen fell into the copilot's seat like a sack of chakroot and rested his head against the back of the seat. Even to Lowbacca's weak Wookiee eyes, his friend looked exhausted.
[A Mandalorian?] Lowie asked, appraising Jacen's armour.
"Yeah," Jacen said, starting to feel a little uncomfortable in the armour. Unfortunately, he had nothing else to wear, but, as per the Jacen Solo Handbook: when all else fails, make a joke. "They ran out of fake trees and animals at the disguise shop."
Lowie chuffed with laughter, but not at the joke. [Welcome back, my friend.]
"Again," Jacen smiled weakly.
Sekava fought his way through the Sith base on Ossus, both physically and mentally. He walked past his fellow students, their lives bleeding out before him, trying to push himself to walk past them. His diminishing mental health had been further fractured by his simple defeat at the hands of Jacen Solo, who had been disguised within a Mandalorian commando team for months. Confusion rampaged through his broken mind, adding to his fury and hate. To make matters worse, a nagging little voice that sounded so much like Morris's kept saying This isn't you.
He did not know where to go. He stalked past Sith students who were screaming in pain from deep wounds, severed limbs, and those sobbing at the misfortune of their friends.
He forced himself to not care.
Crying and screaming were signs of weakness.
He would not be weak.
But part of him wanted to care.
He Force-pushed a particularly large Sith out of his aimless way and a massive hand grabbed his head. Before he knew what was happening, he was slammed against a wall and a hand was against his throat.
He tried pushing and pulling against the attacker before he realized Darth Krak was slowly squeezing his neck, making it very difficult to breathe and concentrate on using the Force.
"You failed us, Sekava," Krak said, somehow not moving his lips. "This does not bode well for your future."
It took Sekava a few moments to realize Krak had not spoken at all. Soora's face came into view, looking like someone who had eaten a thoroughly unpleasant meal and was looking for someone to vomit on.
"I'll kill Solo," Sekava choked out. "No one will stop me!"
"Solo is a much more formidable opponent than you, child," Soora said in as condescending a tone as he could muster. "You have your uses, but you will not kill Solo. That will be my joy, and mine alone."
Despite his all rage, he felt like a womprat trapped in a cave surrounded by hungry Tuskans.
"We will find another purpose for you, young Sekava," Soora chided him. "Being defeated by Solo is no large failure, so you will be kept alive to fail again another day. Go to your room and contemplate your stupidity."
Krak released Sekava, and the miserable youth disappeared as quickly as he could.
He had finally decided where to go.
Consciousness slowly returned to Tahiri as if the lights in the room had slowly been brought to full brightness. As Jacen had promised, his attack had not hurt her at all, not even leaving the lingering muscle tension that most people felt after being electrocuted with the Force.
A noise directed her attention to the entrance of a woman. It was Blade, one of the Manadlorian commandos who had been working with Jacen unwittingly.
"Good morning, Sunshine," Blade said, in a slightly mocking tone. "Have a good nap?"
In response, Tahiri Force-shoved the other woman back a few paces and kipped up to her feet.
"You were working with them!" She accused the Mandalorians. "You helped them escape!"
"Not quite, little Sith," Lanos said, appearing at the door. The Mandalorian leader's voice was inscrutable. "We didn't know he was among us, and I'm surprised you didn't recognize him with all the time you spent together. You were a Jedi, weren't you?"
Tahiri searched her memories and finally found the conversation she had had with Jacen before he blasted her. As soon as she was satisfied, the memory faded away again, leaving her only with the satisfaction that all was well.
"Solo knows tricks even Master Bulq would be fooled by, but you spent more time around him than anyone. Lie to me and tell me you never noticed odd behaviour for a Mandalorian from him. Tell me you never recognized a celebrity in your midst. Are you as much the fool I think you are?" Tahiri's eyes narrowed, deliberately provoking him.
"What are you two talking about?" Parmis demanded. "Where is Roshi?"
"You mean Jacen Solo," Lanos corrected. "He has posed as Roshi, as one of us, for months. And she knew it."
If Tahiri could see through the Mandalorian helmets, she suspected each face would look shocked from the revelation. She could sense Parmis and Squeak going over events in their heads, trying to find some justification for the accusation one way or the other. Blade was a blank slate, either too shocked to think about the situation or too firmly opposed to the Sith to take her point of view.
At Lanos's accusation, Tahiri froze. Luckily, Riina did not, and Tahiri allowed her to take control
"You dare accuse me of treason, you Mandalorian scum?" Her lightsaber flared to life in her hand and she pointed it at the offending commando. "This was your command, and you screwed it up. Your neck will be on the line."
She used the Force to push the Mandalorians out of her way and left the holding cell, pausing only to slam the door behind her to lock the commando team in.
Darth Krak and Soora Bulq walked the boundaries of the outer wall surrounding the former Sith training complex they had liberated from the Jedi. Blood stains, debris and body parts littered the ground liberally, forcing the two Sith Lords to tread carefully. As they walked, they tried to find some measure of calmness to gather their thoughts into a cohesive plan to get back at the Jedi. Soora's mind showed surprising focus, as if post-battle fury and the gore surrounding them brought him some twisted form of comfort. Darth Krak was uncomfortable, but did not allow his minor discomfort to affect his feelings.
"We need to take the politics to a new level," Soora finally said. "It is not enough to demoralize the Jedi, but we must depopularize them. They hold too much popular support. We must take away their allies before we can destroy them."
"Then the senate will be controlled," Krak agreed. "And to control the Senate, the Chief of State must be controlled. Win his favour, and he will bring support to us."
"There is some wisdom in that," Soora agreed. "Cal Omas is a fool. He still thinks a political solution can fix this. We must not allow that, but neither can we allow him to be replaced. Replacing him with a bigger fool would spell disaster for us."
"Agreed."
"I want the Mandalorians ready for battle," Soora said. "We will make fleet movements that appear aggressive to coax the Jedi into attacking us."
"The Jedi will be hard to infiltrate," Krak said, "But we need spies within their ranks. I suggest we infiltrate their closest ally – the Empire."
"Well we can't exactly infiltrate the Wookiees, can we?" Soora asked sarcastically. "The Empire will be difficult to infiltrate, but it can be done. Have our best agents find places within their fleet."
As they walked along, Krak reached down and pulled a lightsaber out of the hand of a dead former student of his. He tossed the hilt in the air and caught it.
"How should we address the escape of Skywalker?" Krak asked. "The galaxy thinks him dead, but he is obviously not. His return will be…an awkward situation for us."
"We will tell them we knew nothing of Skywalker's presence on Ossus," Soora replied. "He must have been hiding in the forest without our knowledge and stole one of our ships."
"We could go one step further," Krak said as he tossed the lightsaber hilt into the air again and catching it behind his back. "Perhaps the Jedi orchestrated Skywalker's disappearance as a sympathy ploy."
Soora smiled in a way that made Krak both afraid and satisfied.
"You are learning well, my young apprentice."
With great displeasure, Urik Ragash, or, Mandalore, as he had come to prefer, woke up in the medical bay of his command ship with a 2-1B medical droid hovering over him taking various readings of his body.
"Droid, give me my status," Urik remanded.
"Good morning, sir," the droid said politely. "You have had significant trauma…"
"Let me guess; from battle?"
"Precisely, sir," The droid said, oblivious to the blatant sarcasm. "Your foot has been reattached, and after several bacta treatments, you should be in perfect form. Please rest, sir. I was told to inform you we will arrive at Ossus in several hours."
Perfect form, Urik thought as he closed his eyes and started to plot. A second defeat at Fett's hands…I must ensure nobody learns of this.
Tahiri marched down the abandoned hallways away from the secret holding area in search of Soora Bulq with hardly an ounce of desire to find him. As much as she did not want to tell him about Luke's escape, it would be better for her to get it over with as soon as possible – especially if she could pin the escape on the Mandalorians. She rounded a corner and entered a courtyard littered with bodies. Many were dead, but some moaned in pain or screamed. Their calls for help tore at her heart as they begging for medical assistance. Only a handful of droids tended the injured, moving methodically across the battlefield to treat those most in need. The sight of the injured Sith students stunned her, but not so much because of the gruesome display of injuries. She had seen much worse during the Yuuzhan Vong war. What surprised her was that she was sufficiently distracted in her thoughts that she had not heard the screams or felt the pain of these people until she saw them.
And, although her heart ached to stop, she could not help them for fear of losing her cover.
She spotted Soora and Darth Krak walking back into the compound through a damaged section of wall about a couple hundred metres away. She rushed past the unfortunate victims of the tentaratek attack as they reached toward her, begging for her help.
"Master Bulq, an unfortunate situation has arisen," Tahiri started, earning her an angered gaze from her master.
"Unfortunate?" He sneered. "More unfortunate than half our ranks being torn to shreds by raging beasts? More unfortunate than Jacen Solo stealing our Jedi captives? Tell me, child, what could be more unfortunate than that?"
"That would be the unfortunate situation I was referring to," Tahiri said, surprised Soora had already known about what happened.
"Good," Soora said. "Otherwise I might have reason to kill someone else. Whose failure is this?"
Tahiri's heart jumped at the question. She could blame the Mandalorian commandos and protect her cover, as she had initially planned, but Jacen had asked her to protect them. Since the Mandalorians really had no part in what happened and she could not live with herself for hanging them for her plans, she could take the blame herself and risk her untimely execution.
"Master, I believe we are all at fault," She said in sudden inspiration. "We both know how deceptive Solo can be. Many people were fooled by his plot, myself included."
"Indeed," Soora said in a contemplative tone. "But you were closest to him in this time. You will be punished."
She tensed, gripping the lightsaber hilt hidden under her cape, waiting for her master's lightsaber to slash toward her and for the battle she knew she could not win…
"The Mandalorians will no longer be yours to play with," Soora finally said. "They will be reassigned. It will be your duty to explain that to them. That will be your punishment."
Soora turned and walked away, leaving Krak and Tahiri looking at each other with confused understanding. They both turned away from each other, knowing full well what the other was thinking.
He's losing it.
Steaming hot water pounding on flesh could wash away many things. Blood. Chunks of flesh. The smell of carnage. Even the grit under fingernails.
What would not wash away, however, was what haunted Hashi the most. Every time she closed her eyes she found herself leaning against the shower wall as the hot water beat against her flesh. These were the moments that trapped her conscious mind as unwanted images and thoughts came to her, keeping her locked in a battle for her own sanity, questioning the beliefs that lead her here.
Some things were trivial, like why the Jedi decided to install basic water showers instead of the newer sonic showers, or how much water had been used while she leaned there for the short eternity she had unconsciously created. With clinical detachment, she absently thought that such thoughts were her mind's defence against the other thoughts that preyed on her like a pack of hungry sand panthers.
Other things of slight importance, like why Sekava resisted her advances, or how much she wanted to be in his arms, popped into her mind as well.
Then there were the thoughts about the battle.
Battle.
No. It was not a battle.
It was a massacre.
Every time she closed her eyes she saw the Terentateks charging through the Sith ranks, stampeding or slashing apart her classmates with little regard for their own safety. She saw her own futile attacks bouncing off the thick armoured scales of one of those great beasts as it slashed Lord Oueyta in half with a single swipe of its massive claw, taking her closest friend away from her forever. She even saw the sight of the defensive wall that she slammed into face-first when the Tentaratek's leg caught her by surprise and sent her soaring across the battlefield. But worst of all was lying on the ground, stunned from the impact, watching Oueyta's remains being trampled by the Terentatek and being unable to do anything as the beast leaned over to sniff her own petrified form. At that point she had not known whether the residual shock of the impact or the fear of the beast's drooling mouth full of razor-sharp teeth had kept her paralyzed. It did not matter. All she remembered was the beast running away, leaving her feeling hollow and confused.
Somehow she had stumbled back to her dorm, past the dead and dying bodies of her classmates, too stunned to stop to help them. Somehow she had ended up in the shower with the water on high heat, ripping off her soaked and stained clothes as she tried to cry and strip and scream away the images of the massacre that seemed to be playing like an endless holohorror right before her eyes.
The sound of her outside dorm room door clicking shut did what the steaming water had not. Her mind snapped to awareness, and she looked through the semi-etched transparisteel shower stall at the half-open door that closed off the refresher area, but could not see who had entered. Using the Force, she called her lightsaber, still attached to her discarded clothing, to her hand. She detached her lightsaber from the belt and slowly crept out of the shower.
"Who's there?" She demanded. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself to protect her modesty, and opened the door further.
"Sekava!" She exclaimed. "You scared me!"
She let the towel drop away to expose herself.
"I could use some cheering up," she said playfully. "You look kinda down, too."
Sekava responded by activating his lightsaber and slashing at hers in one fluid motion. She gasped and jumped back against the shower stall as her destroyed lightsaber clattered to the ground.
"It is your fault," he growled. "You made...distracted...let him get away!"
"What are you...?" Hashi attempted to ask, but she found herself slammed against the transparisteel half a metre off the ground.
"You make me weak," Sekava growled with vivid anger. "I must end you. He tells me to. He makes sense. You do not."
"Who?" Hashi's question was never answered. A slash of red sent half her head one way, and the rest of her body collapsed against the shower stall. If the body had lived even a minute longer, it would have seen Sekava clutching onto it dearly, crying to himself and asking it where he went wrong.