AN: Thanks for reviewing! Sorry about the long gap between updates - now that school's started again this teacher is working her butt off, and between that and computer trouble there's little time to write.

"Defenders of the Force Episode 4: Face of the Revolutionaries"

By EsmeAmelia

Chapter 4

Mae squeezed her brother as tightly as she could. "What . . . what do you mean?"

The leader merely shrugged. "What makes you think I'll tell you?"

Mae's breath was increasing its pace despite attempts to calm herself with the Force. "Why are you doing this?" she exclaimed. "What did the Jedi ever do to you?"

The leader slowly drummed her fingers on her knee. "It's not about what they did to us personally. The Jedi failed the entire galaxy."

"That was the old Jedi Order," Mae protested. "My dad . . ."

"Yes I know," the leader interrupted. "Your father fixed all the mistakes of the old Order, of course he did. After all, he was around when the old Order was in power, right?"

Before Mae could come up with a response, her brother groaned, which took all of her attention. "Owen, Owen, are you all right?" she breathed.

"M-M-Mae?" Owen coughed.

"Yes Owen, I'm here."

"Wh-where are we?"

"In trouble."

The leader gave a slight laugh. "You consider this trouble, young Jedi? I only wish to speak to you."

Mae flashed a glare at Chon. "Yeah, well I've been spoken to more than enough, thank you very much."

Owen pointed at the leader. "Your scientist lady stuck stuff in me!"

The leader snickered as she placed her hands on the chair's arms. "It was for your own good, young man. Something big is coming, something beyond your imagination."

Mae slowly turned her head to whisper in her brother's ear. "Owen, when I say now, it's time to run."

"Think about your grandfather," the leader said in a harsher voice. "I ask you, would he have been capable of such atrocities if the Jedi had never trained him to use his powers?"

"The Jedi taught him to resist the dark side," Mae retorted, her eyes darting around the holocrons as she gently lowered Owen to his feet.

"Until he found it too hard to follow their restrictions," said the leader, stroking the chair arm. "The Jedi trained him to use his powers and then they fueled his reason to use his skills against them."

Mae squeezed her brother's hand.

"And who suffered from that?" the leader continued. "Everyone else. How long before someone else does the same thing?"

"You don't know that'll happen," Mae said softly.

The leader continued as if Mae hadn't spoken. "The fact is that no one knows what to do with Force-sensitives, not even the Jedi. The Jedi thought they could control Force-sensitives and their power, but what resulted from that? A power they could not control."

"Look, I know the old Order had some problems," said Mae, "but again, you're talking about the old Order."

"And the new one is so much better, I'm sure," said the leader. "That's how it always starts, full of hopes and dreams, but then one day you find that you're no better than the thing you're fighting against." She leaned forward, probably staring Mae in the eye through her veil. "The Jedi claimed they were pacifists, but then when the war came, who were the ones leading the armies into battle? The Jedi."

Mae took a deep breath. "Look, you can talk about the Jedi being crap all you want, but none of it excuses what you've been doing."

Owen was swaying slightly. "Mae . . . I don't feel good."

"We'll be going home soon, Owen," Mae whispered through her teeth.

"This isn't about excuses," said the leader. "This is about how the Jedi have oppressed the galaxy for generations. Under the guise of peace and justice, they seek power over everyone, both Force-sensitive and non."

"Now!" Mae suddenly hissed.

With that, she waved her arm and used the Force to knock over a row of the holocrons, and as she figured, Lee, Chon, and the leader all scrambled to catch them before they hit the floor. Distraction made, Mae ran out of the room, tugging her brother behind her.

"Where're we going?" Owen asked in a shaky voice.

"Home," Mae answered, hoping she sounded confident.

They ran back down the corridors, Owen huffing and puffing and Mae hoping she could retrace the way back to the ship. She had been blindfolded when taken from the ship to the hospital room, but she had at least some sense of what direction they were going. She squeezed her brother's hand, vowing not to let go until they were safe.

Up and down the halls, up and down, up and down, up and down, no ship. So many doors - had they gone through a door when she was blindfolded? Some of the doors had voices behind them, Revolutionaries who might open the doors and catch them.

"Come on, you two," echoed Lee's voice from somewhere behind them, "there's no need to run away."

With a gasp, Mae picked up the pace, panting, frantically trying to remember the way. She reached out with the Force, finding that nearly every room they passed contained at least one person, most of whom were sleeping, but their numbers were far greater than Mae might have expected. She suddenly felt surrounded, as if any direction would lead to an enemy.

"Oh children," called Lee, "where are you?"

"Keep up, Owen!" Mae whispered as they ran, ran, ran.

Maybe it was the Force guiding them or maybe it was sheer luck, but several minutes later Mae and Owen found the exit that led to the ship dock. The outside was dark, with fog thickening the air and making it difficult to see more than a few feet away, but fortunately the stolen government ship was the first one they ran into.

Along with Chon.

He stood in front of the ship, his hood down, his face hardly visible in the fog. Mae gulped, squeezing her brother's hand even harder, prepared to fight if she needed to. Maybe she could Force-push him if she concentrated enough, or if that didn't work, there was always a knee between the legs.

But all Chon said was, "Go!" before running off and disappearing into the fog.

Mae stared after him, her muscles tensed up, expecting him to come back, maybe with reinforcements.

"Mae, who was that?" Owen asked.

Her brother's voice snapped her back to the reality that Chon was gone and she had an opportunity to get away. "I don't really know, but come on, let's get outta here." She yanked Owen up the ramp and into the cockpit, where she stared down at the control panel.

"Do you even know how to fly a starship?" Owen exclaimed.

"Well . . . Uncle Han showed me the basics once."

"Did Mom and Dad let him do it?"

"I dunno, I never told them." She took a deep breath and sat down in the pilot's seat. "Come on, sit down."

After gulping, Owen eased himself into the seat where Mae had sat on the way here. "You sure you know what you're doing?"

"No," said Mae, "but look at it this way - either I fly this ship or we go back to the Revolutionaries. Which do you want?"

Owen groaned. "Fine," he said, folding his arms, "but if we die, it's your fault."

Mae took another deep breath before starting up the engine. You can do this, Mae. She imagined herself back in the Falcon as Han gave her a crash lesson on how to fly a starship. You're Anakin Skywalker's descendent, it's in your genes.

With hesitant hands, she worked the controls to take off and the ship came jumping into the sky, slamming Mae's seat against her body and making Owen scream in terror. Her attempt to slow down the ship only resulted in abrupt bouncing. Bounce, bounce, bounce, every bounce tumbled around the fluids in Mae's stomach and made Owen scream louder.

"Put us into hyperspace!" he cried. "PUT US INTO HYPERSPACE!"

Mae quickly punched Coruscant into the navacomputer with one hand while trying fruitlessly to steady the ship with the other. The stars were becoming visible through the viewport - that meant they were out of the atmosphere, right? Come on, set the coordinates already, dammit!

"If you get us killed, I'm never speaking to you again!" Owen screamed.

"I just RESCUED you, didn't I?" Mae exclaimed as the ship lurched into another bounce. She tried turning to the right, then the left, but each turn made the ship shake even more instead of smoothing out the flight.

"I'm gonna be sick," moaned Owen.

Finally the navacomputer set the coordinates and Mae pulled the lever to send them into hyperspace, thrusting her back against her seat and letting her exhale for what felt like the first time in a while.

. . .

Owen fell asleep soon after they went into hyperspace, but Mae was wide awake. For a while she tried to find clues about the Revolutionaries' whereabouts, but as she guessed, the ship's log had been erased. What little she had seen of the planet didn't look familiar at all and she didn't know enough about hyperspace routes to know how far it was from Coruscant.

What was the purpose of all this? The Revolutionaries had done something to Owen, but what? And why did they send Chon to lure Mae there?

Chon. Mae's mouth felt sour at the thought of him. Who was he really? He seemed sincere when she talked to him, yet he had lured her into a trap, but then he let her escape. He appeared to truly believe in the Revolutionaries' ideals and almost seemed sad at times that Mae was part of the Jedi.

Mae sighed as she drummed her fingers on the control panel. It didn't really matter who Chon was. Right now she had bigger things to worry about, anyway.

Such as how she was going to explain all this to her parents.

. . .

By some miracle, Mae managed to land the ship without crashing it, though it did skid quite a bit on the landing platform. Once she was certain that the ship wasn't going to topple off the platform, she took a deep breath and commed her mother, though not without a bit of hesitance.

Rianna's hologram appeared, looking frazzled and sleep deprived. "Mae? What do you think you're doing?"

Mae gulped and gave her mother a small grin. "Uh . . . hi Mom."

"Don't 'hi Mom' me, young lady," said Rianna. "I got your message."

Mae tried to make her grin wider. "Okay, okay, I disobeyed you, I did something dangerous, but look, I need you to come pick me and Owen up."

"OWEN?"

Owen leaned over to where Rianna could see him and waved at her. "Hi Mom."

. . .

When Rianna arrived at the landing platform, she smothered her son in hugs and kisses as if he were five years old, but the trip home was strangely quiet. Mae could feel her mother's anger hovering over her - something she would feel even if she wasn't Force-sensitive - but she lacked the courage to try talking right now.

Upon returning to the Skywalkers' apartment, the three found themselves gathered up in a group hug by Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin. A knot formed in Mae's stomach as her father squeezed her and Chewie squeezed both of them. Suddenly she was tired. Suddenly she felt like crying. Suddenly all sorts of uneasy emotions were swelling within her.

Once the family gradually released each other, Owen burst into tears, immediately stimulating his parents to pick him up and squeeze him between them.

"It's all right, honey," Luke whispered,"it's all right."

"It was horrible," Owen sobbed. "They strapped me to a bed and . . . and did stuff to me."

Rianna ran her fingers through his hair. "You're safe now, sweetie, don't worry, you're safe."

Meanwhile Mae took a deep breath. "So . . . am I grounded?"

"Course you ain't grounded," Han said before Luke and Rianna could speak.

Rianna glared at her brother-in-law. "Are you one of her parents, Han?"

Han shifted his weight from one foot to another. "C'mon, you ain't gonna ground her when she got Owen back, are ya?"

Luke said, "Of course not," while Rianna said, "Yes we are" at the same time.

"Luke!" Rianna exclaimed, still squeezing Owen, who was resting his head on her shoulder.

"She shouldn't be grounded!" said Jaina. "That's ridiculous!"

"But she still disobeyed and put herself in danger," said Leia.

Chewie roared in agreement.

Owen gave a hard sob. "P-please . . . don't fight."

With that, Luke turned his attention back to Owen, though Rianna still glared at her daughter, giving her a look that clearly said, "Don't think you've gotten away so easily - we'll be talking about this later."

"Can we all sleep together tonight?" Owen asked.

"Of course," said Luke.

"We'll stay with you too," said Leia.

. . .

On the living room floor, the Skywalkers, the Solos, and Chewie lay on makeshift beds made out of layers of blankets. Given how stressful the night had been, it was easy for everyone to fall asleep - except for Mae. She lay with the covers pulled up to her neck, trying to let her uncle's snoring lull her to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes she saw the dark tunnels of the Revolutionaries' hideout, the leader with her veiled face, Chon trying to manipulate her.

She had told her parents everything she found out about the Revolutionaries and their leader, but that wasn't much. The leader was a humanoid female and their hideout - if that was actually their hideout - was on a planet that had at least one area where it could be foggy at times, which only eliminated planets with extreme climates like Tatooine and Hoth. They would probably relocate after bringing Mae and Owen there anyway.

The Force still refused to calm her as she shook under the blankets. Her ears were tensed up as if waiting for Chon to comm again. The deep, stomach-enlarging breaths her father had taught her did nothing except make her dizzy. She had to keep turning around just to make sure Owen was still there. A silent voice seem to be talking to her, telling her that this was only the beginning, that more horror was still to come.

. . .

Back at the Revolutionaries' hideout, Chon, Lee, and the leader were gathered around in the holocron room, discussing the day's events.

"The Skywalkers escaping shouldn't be seen as a failure," said the leader in her low voice as she stared up at the holocrons through her veil. "We have the boy's blood and the results of his examinations. The next phase can begin."

TO BE CONTINUED

AN: I HOPE the next episode will be started soon, but I can't make any promises. The next episode will feature the return of an old friend, so keep checking.