Summary: Two shots changed the galaxy. Two shots destroyed the two of the three heads of the Eternal Empire. With it comes renown, a death sentence from the Empire, and a broken family. With the Eternal Empire forced to regroup the corruption eroding the Republic from within will be purged and the brewing war between factions stamped out. All it takes is a bit of luck, a would be senator, and the daughter of a crime lord.
Warnings: Knights of the Fallen Empire spoilers, major character death, divergences from canon, mild language.
(Darth Marr's Flagship)
The alarms on Darth Marr's flagship wailed in Emeldir's ears, drowning out coherent thought in a swirl of shrill shrieks and the crunching of metal failing under fire. He slammed into the control board, the one thing that could potentially salvage the ship's power, and save every life on board, and took to the buttons and levers with a fevered intensity. Marr's looming presence took to the parts he couldn't reach.
"The power core is strained." There was a loud crash as another barraging attack slammed into the Destroyer and Emeldir flinched, slamming his hand against the warm metal of the over heating controls and biting back a curse. Time was quickly running out, time they needed to get the vessel back online. They needed to work fast. "We can recharge the shields, but they aren't going to do much good."
Muffled voices blurred in his ear, the earpiece the only connection he had left unsevered to both his crew and fellow captain that he had already sent out of the system, set loose after he had released a jammed locking clip from his ship. He had promised he'd be right behind them. If he could get these shields reset, if they could escape, if, if, if. Only ifs. The static of a sudden holo transmission from the bridge refocused him on the rapidly crumbling ship and he continued to work quickly, even as the soldiers on the bridge all shouted;
Enemies are on the bridge, enemies-
It cut off with with the roar of blasters firing and he could feel Marr' s gaze burning into his shoulder. His work slowed, his hands stilling on the buttons until he brought his eyes up to meet Marr's, or where they should be beneath his mask. Marr had stopped working. Why had he stopped working? The sith lord's expression was unreadable beneath the cold metal and he desperately wished he could find some sliver of the fear coursing through his own veins. Anything in his eyes, his voice, his stance. But it was all hidden beneath heavy plated armor and voice modifiers. If he could hear, see, something then maybe he wouldn't feel like such a coward, maybe he wouldn't feel cornered and alone as he tried to will the ship back to life.
"There are basic back-up controls." Marr rumbled, pausing to rest his hands on the edge of the control board. "But the enemy has us surrounded and our options are limited." There it was, the quiet resignation in his voice. He felt his stomach plummet, though he had wished for a sign seconds ago the resignation could only mean one thing, one fate waiting to meet them and it's confirmation drove an icy claw though his heart.
"If this is the end of the line for me then I'm saving as many lives as I can before it's lights out." The shaking in his hands had stilled, replaced by a cold numbness spread from the ice pick lodged in his heart and his fingers skimmed over levers and buttons until he found the one that could broadcast his voice over the entire ship. It sounded hollow even to his own ears. "Listen up! The enemy has us surrounded, shields are failing. Evacuate now while you can."
The ship was failing, its final breaths spent dispelling its inhabitants. With an enormous roar, metal siding crashed to the floor,ripping tubing and wiring down with it in flames. Emeldir lifted his hand from the button, dropping it back onto the metal with a rattling breath. Their exit was gone. They were trapped. This wasn't how he had wanted it to end.
"So be it." Marr murmured, clasping his hands behind his back and standing tall, facing the collapsing interior of the ship like a stoic statue. The flames reflected red and gold off his mask, the destruction shown clearly as in a mirror.
"Emeldir what's going on?" Risha's panicked voice crackled through his earpiece, the sound grainy and quiet from the damage it had already received. In the background he could hear captain Taqq as well, unintelligible words in the catastrophically loud ship. "You need to get out of there!"
Their voices had been a constant babble, threading uncomprehended in the mad rush of fighting and running. It seemed cruel, that now his wife's words would be spoken in sheer panic, replacing the goodbyes they had said just before he had stepped off the Phoenix.
The rush of air pushed back from another strip of metal plating that had collapsed. "Deryn c'mon answer me!" His hand paused by his ear, hesitating for a moment before he removed the earpiece and bowed his head, squeezing the small device in his fist until he felt the small pieces break. His eyes followed the broken bits as they tumbled to the floor from his palm. Their goodbyes had been said with the reassurance that he would return, the only lie he had told in five years that he wouldn't be able to make up for. The shattering of that promise, the last moments of a Republic aligned smuggler failing to save an Imperial war vessel was not something his crew or Risha needed to hear. They did not need to hear the fear stealing his breath as he locked his hands behind his back in a mimic of Marr's stance.
Maybe he was saving himself, taking away listening to listening to the panic coating Risha's voice, maybe it was him that did not want his crew to hear his final moments, if the sound would have even carried.
Marr was silent, facing death as if it was an old friend. Whether for the mercy of his crew or himself, Emeldir's crew did not need to hear him folding in the shadow of death, the soft, shaky words of an old Coruscati lullaby he remembered from troubling nights in his father's soothing voice when he was a child falling from his lips. The words had been a comfort when his world had burned once before, when the Empire had laid waste to his homeworld.
The smoke swirling around him, choking his lungs and raking its ashy fingers through his hair was so similar...but now there was no escape, no savior fleet to sweep in with rescue and supplies. No hero to come in promising everything would be okay, that it would safe now. Not this time, not when he was supposed to be the hero in this story, the one giving the promises, the one failing to keep them.
Familiar words fell in a rasping hoarseness, rising and falling with his erratic heartbeat as his voice and pounding blood racing to block out the sudden roar of a hundred turrets firing at once and the thundering rumble that shook the entire ship. The final siege snapped the flagship, it's last groaning cry accompanied by the crack of it's metal bones and the flames turning everything brilliant with white, red and gold even behind Emeldir's tightly closed eyelids.
In the unexplored depths of Wild Space an Imperial warship splintered, bleeding flame. An indomitable fleet stood silent witness to it's last struggling moments, the only ones to see it's blazing death among the glittering stars.
-
( Unknown Shuttle)
Time was fluid as Emeldir floated in the blackness behind his eyelids. A moment felt like an eternity but the three days it took for sensation to return to him felt like the blink of an eye. Sensation returned slowly, first in the sensations of cool filtered air and icy sheets beneath his back. The steady beeping of machines and the low hum of an engine came next, weaving through his languid thoughts and lulling him back into the memories of home, his ship sailing among the stars that shone with endless possibility.
Vision returned next in a violent burst, assaulting his eyes with pristine white and the blinding intensity of fluorescent lights.
This wasn't home, screamed his scattered thoughts. Home is warm and comfort, safety and protection.
This, this was a cruel mockery being made of his readily made sacrifice. He did not spend precious moments signing his own life away to save others only to find himself bound, tied in a position that left his shoulders screaming and his arms cramped. No, this wasn't what his sacrifice has been made for. He had given his life so that others could continue on. Each breath he took here was proof he was alive, proof that what he had done hadn't been enough. If he had been taken how could the thousands of Imperials have escaped?
"You are awake, good."
His widened eyes slowly drifted up from the metal bindings crushing his hands together at the wrist to the man that had suddenly filled the doorway. The white of his robes blended seamlessly into the sterile room around him, drawing Emeldir's look directly to the gleaming orange of the man's eyes, burning like the flames that had torn across his eyelids moments before he had fallen into nothingness.
"I trust you can walk?"
His voice was mechanic, distorted by the half mask he wore. Emeldir suppressed a shudder and fixed his eyes on the wall behind the man, jaw set. "I can do more than walk." he snapped, voice wavering. His eyes fell from the wall to the mirthless eyes of the man shrouded in white, then to the floor.
"Walk with me." It was not a request. The man pivoted, glancing over his shoulder as two guards took either one of Emeldir's arms, just above his elbows, and hauled him to his feet. Emeldir grunted, stumbling as his legs protested the sudden weight. The cold of two blasters pressed close to the small of his back pushed him along just a few steps behind the man in white. At the end of the hall towered Marr, stoic as ever and when he spoke it was in the same measured tone that had accepted their end on the Destroyer.
"What empire have we entered?"
The man strode forward several paces, deliberately drawing out the silence until he faced them again with his hands folded neatly in front of him. "I am the one that will ask the questions, you will be the ones providing the answers."
"We will tell you nothing." Marr growled with nothing more than a single look shared between he and the smuggler. There was no question, they would not yield to the man. Not even if it meant they're their death.
"Oh you won't need to speak to give me the answers I need."
The thinly veiled threat sent a shiver down Emeldir's spine and his fingers twitched for the protection of a weapon. But there would be no weapons, there would be no fight. He was at the mercy of this masked man, with defiance as his final stand and shield.
(The Spire)
It wasn't until an automated voice spoke from the cockpit of their shuttle that he learned the man's name. Prince Arcann, final docking sequences initiated.
Prince Arcann. The name was not familiar to Emeldir, not from any textbook he had ever read or any noble family he had encountered. With his back to the interior of the shuttle, his face turned out the window towards the stars as they made the jump from hyperspace, he realized they weren't in any space he had known before. They were lost and no one would find them. Defiance was a hard shield to wield when he realized they were alone.
Each step down the hallway felt leaden, with each fall of his foot on the floor a heavier sense of dread seemed to wrap tighter around his heart. His eyes were fixed, unseeing on the floor in front of him, each movement stiff and robotic even as his thoughts raged and thundered like a storm. What would happen to them, how he could escape, where they were, who they were with. His mind could not give him answers, only scraps of ideas and slowly mounting panic.
"We recovered records from your ship's computers, or what was left of them. Fascinating reading." His heart skittered and he gasped out a breath like he had been punched in the gut. They couldn't have destroyed the Phoenix, his ship couldn't be gone. That would mean his crew was…
Eyes refocusing into silver daggers he glared up at Arcann only to find him looking at Marr. A second, halting breath was forced out at the realization the records from the Destroyer had been found, not those of his own ship. There was still a chance his crew was out there, still a chance they were safe and far, far away from him. That was all he asked for. The sudden movement drew Arcann's attention to him and the procession halted.
"And you," Emeldir's glare was met with an unreadable emotion caught between neutrality and amusement. "You're just one person-a criminal from what I can tell. Yet you still managed to influence a galaxy wide war. I'm impressed."
The amusement stirred the smallest sparks of his defiant shield. He pulled at his restraints, stepping into Arcann's space until he was yanked back by guards. "Then you've acquainted yourself with my reputation?" His voice dropped to a growl. "Loosen these restraints and I'll remind you-." A swift jab with the end of a blaster rifle to the back of his legs ended his threat, buckling his knees and dropping him to the floor in a mockery of a bow with one swift motion. Arcann's stare bore into the top of his bowed head, a low laugh following as the fight was forced from Emeldir by the press of two blaster rifles between his shoulders.
He remained pushed to the floor, knees beginning to smart against the hard tile as another figure strode down the hallway towards them, black and gold robes swishing around his feet. The conversation was hushed enough that Emeldir could only grab every other word until the prince's voice rose. Either stubborn defiance or a hysteria fueled testiness brought an unbidden smirk pulling at his lips.
"It seems like your followers aren't as convinced about your invincibility as you are." A swift cuff on his head followed and he hissed out a swear, ducking his head further as Marr's voice mixed with the ringing in his ears.
"Is this why you brought us here, to bicker with your soothsayers?"
"Enough." The feet moved from Emeldir's vision and he was roughly pulled to his feet, shoved forward until he nearly fell. Marr's shoulder caught his, mask unreadable as ever.
"You're taking us to your master."
"I am taking you to my father, Valkorian." Arcann spat over his shoulder, motioning for the guards to push them along. Always two steps behind. "The Immortal Emperor of Zakuul."
"Ah, an emperor. Just what we were searching for." Marr's voice was a satisfied murmur just behind Emeldir as they were brought to the gilded doors of a lift. The two men shared a final, knowing look before they were shepherded in. They may not have failed their mission. This could be what they had been searching for all along.
Arcann stepped in just after them, golden light of the lift fading into the shadow of his mask as the doors closed.
"You will not find what you wanted here."
The throne room was nothing more than a viewport lined hallway set in deep tones of gold and blue, with a metal throne sitting at the top of a carved dais. Guards armored in cloaks of rich browns and expressionless masks stood motionless on either side, staves glowing blue in their hands. None of them moved a muscle through their silent march down the hall, broken only by the patter of their footsteps and the harsh sound of Emeldir's breath in his ears. On the throne an old, weathered man was hunched over, draped in heavy robes adorned in the same colors as the room around him. Arcann took to a knee in front of the man, bowing his head. The rows of guards followed their prince, dropping to the floor and bowing their heads low. Only Emeldir, Marr, and their guards still stood tall.
"His Glorious Majesty, Immortal Master, protector of Zakuul. Emperor Valkorian."
"Welcome." The single word froze the blood in Emeldir's veins, bringing his eyes to the emperor as he straightened. His voice was as deep and cold as the space and stars around them. Commanding full attention with every syllable, carrying a threat in every word. At his side Marr shifted, tilting his head.
"A new name, a new face. These are not enough to hide from us."
Emeldir tore his eyes from Valkorian, shifting to the expanse of black covering Marr's eyes, "Marr?"
The mask turned ever so slightly to look down at him, the shift in the voice barely perceptible. "I would recognize his presence anywhere. The Sith Emperor."
Valkorian brushed the title away with a wave of his hand, pushing himself into a standing position. "That was a distraction, a means to an end." He spread his hands wide, taking the steps from the dais with a deliberate slowness until he was mere feet away from them. Arcann stood, clasping his hands in a stiff, formal stance behind his father.
"You claim to have come all this way to find me. Here I am. What do you want?"
As if startled from a trance Emeldir stepped forward, breaking from the shadow of Marr. When he spoke the anger torn from memories of Ziost pushed through his fear and was palpable in every syllable. "I want you to answer for Ziost, for the war. All those lives lost because of you!" He was not expecting Valkorian to laugh, humorless and low.
"The fate of your Core Worlds and their people are no concern to me." He covered the ground between them with several more calculated steps until he was close enough for Emeldir to try and take a step back. He was pushed forward by the wall of guards, and forced to meet Valkorian's fierce, orange gaze.
"You say you know me." He directed his words at Marr, though his eyes remained fixed on Emeldir. "If that is true then you know the extent of my power. Whatever you came here to do, you know deep inside that you will not succeed."
With a wave of his hands, attention still fixed solely on Emeldir as he spoke, Marr's cuffs were broken. Marr rubbed his wrists, uncertainty written in the way he stood, balanced between defiance and curiosity. "You do not need to stand against me. Instead you can kneel."
Free from his restraints Marr was able to stalk forward with a violent shake of his head. "I will never again kneel to you!"
Several guards tensed, settling into an attack stance. Holding up a hand Valkorian stilled their attack. His focus had shifted from Emeldir, turning fully now to Marr. Curiosity and a mild amusement flitted across his wrinkled features. "You would rather die than acknowledge my superiority?"
"I will not kneel." With the violence of a raging storm Marr pivoted, reaching out with his hands and calling on the Force to knock guards aside long enough to call a glowing blue stave to his hands. Several attacks, both with weapon and the Force took out the guards that rushed to subdue him, neutralizing their threat almost immediately.
Emeldir flinched back, flinging his hands up to cover his face as best he could when a sudden flash of light burned across his eyes. The smell of ozone and burned flesh assaulted his nose and he recoiled, blinking rapidly to clear his vision as another voice silenced the noise around him.
"Clear the room! Everyone out!"
A woman, no older than he was strode down the hall, guards fleeing in her wake. Emeldir sucked in as deep a breath as he dared, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin even as his legs began to feel weak. Valkorian was standing, hand held up as though he had just swatted down a fly. This man had taken Marr down with barely a wave of his hand, he had no fighting chance. "Marr gave your people real leadership, more than you ever did. Killing him will not make your people love you."
"I do not want their love." Valkorian dismissed, walking up the stairs to pace along the short width of his dais. "Marr was bound by ancient dogma, I think you are different." He paused, fixing Emeldir with the stare that rooted him in place. "You alone have merited my full attention. We are alike, you leave your mark on the galaxy wherever you act, just as I do."
Goosebumps prickled along Emeldir's arms but his voice was steel. "I am nothing like you."
A broad sweep of his hand accompanied Valkorian's pacing, gesturing towards to stars around them. "Look around, Zakuul is poised to become the greatest civilization in history. I have forged this empire to put all my others to shame. To last an eternity."
That wasn't possible, an unheard of civilization wouldn't be able to overtake the Republic or Empire. No empire would be strong enough to take them both on. But Valkorian spoke with certainty, spoke as though he could feel the ashes of Coruscant and Dromund Kaas beneath his feet.
"The Eternal Throne commands a fleet more powerful than any ever built. It has the power to reshape this galaxy in any way I choose. We choose." His voice was imploring, dripping with the falsified sound of unsaid promises. The distance closed between them, even as Emeldir took several steps back, pulse pounding around the undeniable sense of wrongness creeping on his mind. "I will share all of this with you." Valkorian extended a hand, tilting his head. "If you will only kneel."
Around the knot constricting his throat Emeldir spat, "You are a monster, I will never join you!" For a brief moment Valkorian's face fell before it hardened into a mask, turning his back on Emeldir with a flick of his hand. As Arcann moved towards him, Emeldir heard the same words that had sealed his fate on Marr's ship, an eternity ago. "So be it."
So be it. He clasped his hands together as best he could around the restraints, bowing his head and closing his eyes, an image of the final moments of the Destroyer, set in silence instead of the crescendo of the ship's final heaving breaths. Footsteps halted in front of him, the hiss of a lightsaber tensing his muscles. He waited for the first flash of pain as the energized blade hit him, waited for the nothing that would follow.
"You came here to defeat him, this is your chance." Arcann's voice was soft, barely above a murmur. It was enough to snap open Emeldir's eyes, finding his hands free and grappling with the familiar grip of his blaster as Arcann charged towards Valkorian's turned back. Years of battlefield experience kicked in, numbing Emeldir's racing thoughts into one goal.
Survive.
It took only a few strides for him to cover the distance between him and a fallen guard's shield. It was heavy on his arm, but a first defense should Valkorian turn his deadly lightning on him. The emperor was holding Arcann at bay easily, a single hand raised to form a shield that the lightsaber bounced harmlessly off of, over and over. They circled the foot of the dais, exchanging words Emeldir was not privy to hear.
A sudden flash broke out again and Emeldir threw the shield up in front of him, ducking his head. But it did not touch him. Ozone filled the air and instinct pushed him forward, forcing his hand to drop the shield, clasping his free hand on his blaster. The hiss of a blaster bolt mixed with Valkorian's words snarled at the smoking body of his son. "That is why you fail."
Shock stiffened Valkorian's body, seeming to freeze time. Another blaster bolt ripped them back to reality, hitting Arcann's motionless body. Smoke began to curl from Valkorian as he stumbled forward, a vortex beginning to swirl around his body, pulling at Emeldir's hair and clothes. His blaster clattered to the ground, fallen from a lax hand as his eyes widened. Instinct took control again, mechanically turning his body and sending him sprinting down the hallway as fast as his muscles could stand. Just as silence had pushed him into the throne room, Valkorian's deep laugh chased him out.
Three final words nipped at his heels, swirling around him like wisps of spirits as he smacked the panel that would close the door, pounding across the floor until he slammed into the ornately carved lift gates.
So be it.
Frantically he slammed his hand against the lift button, other hand pressed against the doors. As soon as the doors slid open wide enough for him to fit through he fell in, fetching up against the wall and gripping the bar like a lifeline as he swung his hand around for the button that shut him inside the soft golden light. His breath wheezed in and out of his lungs, turning his thoughts into incomprehensible wisps of garbled escape plans and warnings. His hands shook until he gripped the bar he leaned his weight on hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
Marr was dead. Arcann was dead. The emperor was...dead.
He had to get out. Here he was trapped, weaponless, powerless. He had no way off, no way to leave this spire in the midst of the stars. Unless…
Arcann's shuttle. That was his way out.
The lift doors slid open with a quiet ding. Stretched before him was a desolated hallway, bare and devoid of life as the space around him. Already the guards must have been called to the upper level, already they could be invading the throne room, finding the bodies of their prince, their emperor and only a single prisoner. He needed to get out. Now.
Instinct did not need to guide him this time. Emeldir raced through the twists and turns of the Spire with reckless abandon, following the way he hoped he remembered. When he intercepted three guards he did not pause, slamming through them with a burst of speed and a throwing of his shoulder. He barely heard the sound of their cries, or the firing of their blaster rifles. His feet pounded an uneven rhythm on the floor, his hands pumping at his sides knotted into fists as if that would cling to the last shreds of energy that dripped from his neck and brow in rivulets of sweat.
He had to be close. He was rapidly fading, each step becoming heavier than the last and each breath burning through his lungs like acid.
There.
Overriding the security measures on the airlock was nearly impossible as his vision blurred and his hands refused to cooperate. He could hear the shouts of guards coming closer. "Come on, work, work." He panted, letting out what little breath he had regained when the access light flashed green and the airlock hissed open on quiet hinges.
Cries demanding his surrender pounded Emeldir's back as he whipped through the archway, holding the doors just long enough to meet the eyes of the first guard to round the corner. He was gone before their first shots hit him, glancing off the sealed metal of the airlock's durasteel plated doors.
Arcann's shuttle did not know the difference between the prince of Zakuul and the dirty smuggler that took hold of it's controls. With the practice ease of many years at the helm of starships, Emeldir activated the ship's engines, released the lock tethering him to the Spire and punched the button to shift into hyperspace as soon as it was clear. While the escape from the throne room had been all primal driven fear and adrenaline, sound and light, the ship was numbness, pristine white and silent. So silent. Even the siignals were jammed, the holoterminal in the corner of the bridge yielding only white noise when he plugged in various frequencies he knew. He could not stay in this ship.
Without thinking he plugged the coordinates in for Rishi. He had contacts on Rishi, friends he had made in the weeks he had spent planetside. There he would dump the ship, get an untracked ride to the Republic Fleet. There he would be safe, there he could contact his family, get home.
Sweeping the vessel for bugs and dismantling what he could of the tracking and identification system stole the last of Emeldir's energy. With the heat of the refresher water-scalding hot to burn any trace of the Spire from him-still clinging to his skin he sat down in the pilot's chair,injecting just enough to a sedative he had found to quiet his thoughts into his leg and let his eyes droop.
(Coruscant-Three Months since the defeat in Wild Space)
Fading light of Coruscant's day bathed the hangar in rich gold highlights and deep blues in shadow, reflecting off the metal hull of the freighter sitting in the center. The ramp was down, a woman standing on it with her hands grasping the struts on either side. Her hair was loose, tangling around her shoulders, her eyes blazing like fire.
"You will not touch this ship!"
Across the hangar, cast in the shadow of the ship another woman held up her hands. "I'm not here to touch the Phoenix."
"Yes you are!" The woman's voice broke and her hand released one of the struts to cover her mouth. "You won't take it." she repeated, voice thick. The hand remaining on the strut tightened, knuckles bleaching white.
"I will not take this ship, I promise." The second woman stepped out of the shadows, hands still held up. "But it's been months, Risha. Emeldir had things in order if this were to happen and he wanted me to take care of it."
Risha did not budge from her spot blocking the ramp, though tears gathered in her eyes. He had things in order in case this happened. "Of all people, Taqq, I thought you would be the last one to give up." Though tears may have slicked her cheeks, her words were sharp as knives. "This is Emeldir's , our ship and he is not dead."
"You saw Marr's ship, Risha. You heard his comm-"
"I heard his comm disconnect, I saw Marr's ship fall. We didn't find him." Her mouth thinned to a line before she spoke again, scathingly. "You are just as bad as the others, giving up so easily."
Taqq stopped in her tracks, brows drawing together before she exploded. "Has it ever crossed your mind that we can't all afford to entertain the delusion that he's still out there?" Her shout echoed off the walls of the hangar. "Or maybe that I have been searching just as hard as you have? It isn't working anymore!"
" Rielay, get out." The tightly controlled words echoed just as the captain's shout had.
The smaller woman recoiled, the angry lines of her posture slumping. "What?"
"Get out." Spoken matter of factly, eyes devoid of the swirling emotions from minutes before as though as wall had dropped between them. "And you will not touch his ship, you will not lay your hands on anything he called his own. Not while he still lives and my name stands next to his under ownership of this ship."
"Risha, please." Taqq reached out, looking as though she wanted to say something else before she drew her arm back, hugging it close to her as she seemed to collapse in on herself. Risha watched, biting hard on her lower lip as the captain trudged from the hangar, bowed and silent. Just like all the others she had turned her back on Emeldir as soon as things got complicated. Just like the others she lost interest after instant gratification was not gifted.
Good riddance, Risha thought even as her eyes began to burn again, even as her breath started to hiccup. Fine. A few steps brought her into the ship, untouched since it's captain had departed deep in Wild Space except for the removal of crew belongings when they left. If she let her mind drift enough she could almost trick herself into believing he was in the engine room, or the bridge doing repairs or plotting their next adventure. If she was lucky she could hold the illusion until she picked up her datapad to respond to another failed attempt to locate him or when she returned to their apartment, lonely without his life and energy.
She scrubbed a hand over her eyes, sitting down on the couch situated in the lounge and drawing her legs up under her. If she was unlucky the very same illusion would haunt her, his voice just real enough to sound like he was in the room, the urge to tell him something dogging her thoughts constantly. Every day was an if.
Against her knee her datapad buzzed, lighting up. Closing her eyes she shoved it away, tensing when it clattered to the floor. From there it continued to buzz,a hollow noise against the metal of the floor. When she finally broke and picked it up several messages had been sent, all from an unknown source.
-Sunbird
A single word, enough to make her heart stop and her inhaled breath stutter.
-Phoenix
Two words, insignificant to outsiders. Callsigns when names get too hard. Sunbird and Phoenix, Risha and Emeldir.
Slowly, as though moving through syrup she responded a single word of her own.
-Deryn?
The response was almost immediate, shoving all the air out of her lungs.
-Drayen
-Coordinates transferring Please bring me home.
Location sensors in the device immediately translated the coordinates as the Republic Fleet, only days away from Coruscant. Her reply was instantaneous.
-Of course. Three days, max.
She expected no reply, the messages had to be coming from a public terminal and those always had lines long enough to wrap around the entire galaxy and the waiting people were impatient and irritable enough to send a pack of rapid nexu running with their tails between their legs. It didn't matter, her heart sang from the few typed words and she fired off five identical messages before flying onto the bridge and bringing the engines roaring to life.
-Deryn is alive. Coruscant: one week. Never doubt me again. -R