The Endar Spire Pt. II

Cade finally came to a halt from his running, panting heavily he leaned against the wall for support. "So what now Cade?" he said to himself. Just moments ago Trask Ulgo, Captain with the Republic fleet and the only real friend Cade had in what seemed like years, had sacrificed himself in order to buy Cade time to escape the ship. The answer for what to do was obvious, escape the ship and not let Trask's sacrifice have been in vain, but that small fact did nothing to quell the feeling of uselessness that continually welled up in him. The sudden crackling of his personal comlink snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Come in, come in! Anyone on this frequency please respond." after taking a moment to compose himself Cade brought the comm up to his lips and spoke.

"This is Cade Marek, who is this?" There was what sounded like a sigh of relief on the other end.

"Thank goodness you're alive, it seems you're the last surviving crewman of the Endar Spire I'm going to guide you out of here." Cade let out a relieved sigh of his own, grateful he wasn't the only one to get out of this alive.

"Ok so what's the situation from here to the escape pods?" "Not good I'm afraid," the survivor said after a moments pause, "The Sith have concentrated themselves between you and here in an attempt to stop any survivors. Apparently they haven't noticed me yet but I don't know how long they'll stay ignorant." Cade slumped on the wall a bit.

"So what you're saying is I'm going to have to fight through a blasted battalion to get out of this?"

"Not necessarily," the voice said. "You're near a storage room right? There should be a stealth field generator in one of them. These Sith seem to be mostly raw recruits, they don't have the experience to detect you." Cade acknowledged the message and looked into the nearest door to him, and was surprised to find it was indeed a storage room. He looked around and quickly found and put on the belt-like stealth field generator and started back down the corridor. It wasn't long until he saw the first group of Sith troopers, luckily, just as the survivor promised they seemed oblivious to his presence. He snuck past the first couple of patrols with relative ease. Then he came to a door in a nearly deserted hall, and as quietly as he could typed in the key code. The door opened revealing two sword wielding Sith. One of them jumped with surprise and raised his blade.

"What was that! he said obviously scared.

"Calm down Aaron probably just a door malfunction." the other trooper said calmly, walking to close the door again. "This whole scrape heap is falling apart." Cade took a deep breath and inched into the room. The two Sith didn't notice his entrance and were in fact having a conversation over their headset commlinks instead of guarding the room or investigating the door glitch. Cade continued on, walking between the two soldiers, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. Until that is Cade bumped into one of the Sith, knocking him off balance. Cade froze immediately, stunned by shock, fear, and cursing his own carelessness.

"Jones! What in blazes was that!" the younger Sith said helping up his partner.

"It seems as though we're not alone here Aaron, keep sharp some Republic scum thinks he can sneak by us." Aaron stiffened slightly and looked around nervously.

"How many of them are there? 3? A dozen!" he said, his voice getting shaky.

"Probably just the one." Jones said methodically scanning the room looking for the tell-tale shimmer of the stealth field. Suddenly Jones's head came to a stop right where Cade was standing still frozen in place by his own fear. "There you are you cowardly bastard." the Sith said raising his sword and then bringing it down in a massive hammer blow. Cade barley managed to dodge the attack but still felt the blade bite into his shoulder, then go down further to destroy the stealth field generator. Cade rolled backwards to avoid a follow-up attack, got to his feet and drew his own sword. Cade parried the next volley of savage blows before returning the favor with some of his own. The older Sith was experienced but still to slow and tired to withstand a full attack. Soon enough Cade's sword found a gap in the man's armor and severed his carotid artery, he fell to the floor gurgling on blood and soon fell silent. Cade then turned his attention toward the younger soldier. He must've been just a new recruit, instead of backing up his superior he tried desperately to exit the room but apparently didn't know the key-code to open the door. Finally seeing there was no way out he got his sword and furiously charged at Cade. Cade easily side-stepped a sloppy thrust and caught the man's wrist in his hand and with a swift pull and twist broke the soldier's wrist. The man screamed and dropped his weapon, then was knocked unconscious from Cade's round-house kick, leaving the Sith wounded but alive. "Hopefully you won't make me regret sparing your life." Cade said before walking out of the room and toward the next one.

"So far so good Cade." the voice over his comm said. "Just one more room to sneak by and we're out of here." Cade activated the comm.

"Ummm...actually there's been a change in plan." Cade said as he opened the room only to find it was empty.

"What do you mean?" the voice said, sounding concerned.

"I got in a bit of a scuffle in that last room and the stealth field was destroyed." Cade said finally noticing the pain in his shoulder from the sword wound, he put his hand over it and pulled it back only to find it was covered in blood.

"Oh that's just great," the voice said. "well you're going to have to fight your way through them then. There's a full squad of four troops and a squad commander here." Cade winced as the pain in his shoulder increased.

"Yeah that's not going to work either. I'm in no shape to fight them. I'll try to find something in here I can use against them." Cade said walking over to a computer terminal attached to the wall.

"Well whatever you do you better hurry. The Sith have found me, they're trying to force the door open!"

"Right, I'll try." Cade said and quickly got to work on the computer. Going through function after function he finally found a camera feed. It was a live video feed that allowed him to see all five Sith one of which was trying to weld his way thought the blast door. Cade looked around the room and found something that gave him an idea. "That could work." he said looking at a power conduit in the corner of the room. using some hacking skills he sent a power surge to the conduit, overloading it's capacity and ejecting a huge charge of electricity that arced to each of the soldiers. Cade canceled the video feed and cautiously walked into the room. Only to be greeted by smoldering and twitching bodies. By the time he made it across the room the door was opened and a man wearing a bright orange flight suit and wielding two blaster pistols stepped out.

"You made it just in time!" he said. "Come on this ship is done for!"

"Good idea," Cade said. "I've had enough of this place to last me a lifetime." With that they both boarded the last escape pod and launched toward the planet.