A/N - this chapter is a little under three quarters of the length of the first, but I felt like it was finished, so here it is - the story is no longer postponed! Enjoy chapter 2!
Darth Reinus unleashed a primal scream, raw with pain, fury, and grief. Lady Aalia was dead. Lady Aalia had been killed by Darth Vader.
"I hate you!" Reinus shrieked, and the phrase stirred long-forgotten events within Vader's mind. Painful memories of burning, suffering, dying, but then being reborn. It was the pain of the past that had shaped him into who he was today.
"That is extremely obvious, young Cai," he spat back at the Cyntian apprentice, "and I suppose I would be right in guessing that you want me dead now. But don't try, or I will kill you just as I killed your master. However, apart from that, I see no reason not to let you go. You are no threat to me."
Reinus didn't move. He held Aalia in his arms, eyes blazing with anger.
Vader turned and started to walk away, then stopped.
"Get out of my sight," he hissed, "before I change my mind."
This time, Reinus fled up the ramp, dragging the body of his master with him. The door to the control room could be heard slamming behind him before the ramp closed and the ship prepared to take off.
And as the engines engaged, and the craft shot off into the black of space, Darth Vader allowed himself a smile behind his mask. Reinus did not know it yet, but this was far from over.
Inputting coordinates and checking the automatically plotted course, Darth Reinus hit button after button. Leaving Aalia in the control room, he opened the door that led through to the cockpit - a room long disused because of the Cyntian order's growing dependence on technology.
I can do this, he told himself, I can do this.
Reinus had only ever flown in simulations, but he thought himself a rather good pilot. His top score amongst the flight cadets had shown as much, though that had been a number of years ago, and the record had since been broken multiple times by new girl and natural talent Zantie Arcani, granddaughter of none other than the famous Lady Cyntia Arcani, founder of the Cyntian Sith Order. Reinus hated the brat with a passion.
Thinking of her now fueled his anger, which in turn fueled his desire to do what he and his master had set out to do in the first place.
Darth Reinus settled himself into the pilot's seat, then looked at the empty chair beside him. He sighed, then shook his head and stared determinedly out the front window into the blue of hyperspace. Even without a co-pilot, he was going to do it. He was going to make it, and once the Weapon was completed, he would use it to blow Vader, Sidious, and their precious little Empire into smithereens.
Not far from the planet in which the Weapon was being constructed, the planet Tiran orbited twin stars Cetar and Detar. It was a peaceful scene, though somewhere on the night-time side of Tiran, one young lady's sleep was far from peaceful.
Talite dreamt of fire, destruction, an entire world exploding before her eyes. She was a little girl again, watching wide-eyed from the window of a spaceship as her home, her family - her life! - went up in flames.
"Mama!" she screamed, "Papa!"
Then, quieter, "Ryan… Anir…"
Quieter still, "'Shara…"
All at once, the scene changed but left the hopeless feeling behind as she watched this new event unfold in flashes.
A black mask - Vader's mask!
A black-gloved hand, reaching out in a choking gesture.
A blue-skinned Twi'lek lifted out of a young man's arms, clawing at her throat in desperation.
A flash of a limp blue arm, hanging over the edge of a ship's ramp.
The young man's scream of "I hate you!"...
Talite woke in a cold sweat, tears in her eyes and the echo of her own scream still bouncing around the room.
She breathed a name, the name of her former master. Then, exhausted, she fell asleep again, only to find a new horror awaiting her.
This dream was not like the others. They had been vivid, and this was blurred around the edges. She saw a small moon approaching an unfamiliar planet - no, not a moon at all but a large battle station! From the small circular indentation which she had first assumed to be a crater, a plasma cannon could be seen powering up.
Suddenly, it fired a bright beam of crackling energy straight at the planet, which exploded in a burst of light, leaving nothing behind but a field of asteroids.
Her vision started reversing through the previous scenes, like a recorded holo-show on rewind. The planet re-formed itself, the powerful plasma cannon blast retracted back into the station, and the station itself sped away and was lost in the darkness. The vision jumped, and Talite saw the young man from her earlier vision sitting in the pilot seat of his ship. The co-pilot's seat was empty, and she felt a pang of sorrow. Then the ship came out of hyperspace, and with a great sense of foreboding, Talite recognised the planet they were headed for as the same one that was to be destroyed mere moments later.
Waking with terror in her heart, she knew immediately what she had to do.
Using the Force, she tried to levitate her old lightsaber off its stand and over to her. The piece of metal shivered, bounced a few times, and fell to the floor with a clatter. Talite groaned and slapped a palm to her forehead.
I am so out of practice, she thought disconsolately, and tried again, to little effect.
Giving up, she cursed herself for wasting time and got out of bed. Snatching up the lightsaber, she sprinted through the kitchen, grabbing the emergency pack on her way and almost skidding out the front door. She clipped her saber to the underside of the pack, and ignoring the blistering heat from the dawning suns, she vaulted onto her speeder and barrelled along the highway. The speedometer never dropped below 500, all the way to the shipyard.
"Six… oh… two!" Talite panted to the security droid, breathless from her dash through the expanse of Hangar A-12 after parking and locking her speeder outside. "Really, really quickly!" she added as an afterthought.
"Madam," the droid replied calmly, "ship six-oh-two is still under maintenance, and may well be unsafe for flight. I advise you to-"
"DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A KARK ABOUT THAT!?" she shrieked, cutting the droid off. She tried to storm past it toward her ship, but it put out an arm and stopped her.
"This is a restricted area," it stated. "You must have ID. Where is your ID card?"
"Oh, of course!" Talite replied, an idea coming into her head. "I do have an ID. Just let me find it…"
She made a big show of patting down her pockets with one hand, while secretly unclipping her lightsaber from the bottom of the emergency pack with the other.
"Ah, here is…" she fumbled in a pocket for an imaginary ID card, still carefully extracting the saber without being too conspicuous about it.
"No, wait, that's not it…" she drew her hand out of the pocket and started searching through another, all the while maneuvering her lightsaber into a position where she could ignite it without slicing her pack in half.
"Ah, yes, got it now…" she told the impatient droid. She pressed the button on the saber and the blade sprung into life with a buzz.
"Here's some ID for you!" Talite yelled and swung her hand out from behind her back. She sliced the droid's head clean off, then ran full-tilt for her ship. Safe or unsafe, she had to fly.
Reinus leant back in his chair, eyelids drooping. A sudden stab of pain behind his eyeballs made him jolt upright. He swore at the control panel.
One word came into his mind without permission - "Faster!" - and then nothing else happened. He searched his head, trying to find a reason for that particular word, but nothing presented itself. After a short while, his eyes fell shut again and he slept.
Talite maneuvered her ship's controls with extreme dexterity, or so she liked to think. The truth was, she hadn't flown anything more complicated than her speeder ever since she crash-landed her ship on Tiran. Adopting a new identity and trying to settle into the Tiranian lifestyle, Talite had commissioned her ship to be repaired and then hadn't looked at it again for three years. So, truth be told, she wasn't as good as she had once been.
Wait…
A suspicious thought entered her head.
It's been three years, and that droid said the ship was still under maintenance… it can't've taken that long - could it?
She ran a safety check on all the components, and came up negative for problems. All ship's programs and digital working also drew a blank when checked for errors, so Talite pushed suspicion from her mind and plotted a course for… where, though? She hadn't thought about that.
"Damnit!" she said aloud, cursing her misfortune.
Then she decided to let the Force guide her, which would be good practice, since she hadn't opened herself to the Force for, what, three years?
That is a long time! She thought, chuckling a little before emptying her mind of everything but her goal - her ambition.
Closing her eyes, Talite took a deep breath and let it out with a whoosh. She focussed on her destination, and a clear image of the planet came into her mind. Fear started to creep in around the edges of the picture; she welcomed it, letting it focus her mind further and send the needed adrenaline into her bloodstream. Reaching her hand in front of her, she let her fingers press the keys she felt drawn to, and then opened her eyes to see what she had typed in. The co-ordinates were there, and when she ran a search, an image came up which she confirmed as the correct planet.
Well, that was easy, she thought, and let the ship's computer figure out the hyperspace route before pulling the lever and watching as the stars stretched into pinstripes in the sky. She was on her way. On her way to save her master's new apprentice, who, in her opinion, did look rather dashing, at least from what she had seen in her dreams…
Her head nodded once, twice, and then dropped to her chest in surrender to sleep.