Future's Sacrifice – VII
Darrik's eyes caught the slender form of Cyrinity zooming across the room a split second before she hit the floor. She collided with a medical table just a few feet from where Avvin sat cross-legged in his battle meditation, and this dislodged a viewscreen on the table and sent it tumbling to the ground.
Brenden came sprinting towards her and kneeled over her motionless figure, his face the portrait of fear. Darrik came up fearfully beside him, watching him hurriedly checking her neck and wrist for a pulse.
"Oh, my!" Threepio was the first to speak as he came waddling towards Cyrinity and the two men, with Artoo close behind him.
Brenden let out a sign of relief and choked out, "She's alive, she has a pulse…" He then looked down at her face and whispered, "Cyrinity, can you hear me? Are you alright?"
A few moments scathed by in silence, and then Cyrinity blinked her eyes open.
"I wouldn't exactly call this 'alright'," she mumbled through her bleeding lips, her mouth crooked. She tried to raise her arms to get up, but then thought better of it and slowly lowered them back down to her sides, wincing as the scar from her shoulders expanded from the movement.
Brenden grimaced at her effort, and then carefully lifted her head and placed part of a chair comforter under her lekku. "Try not to move too much," he said uneasily.
"I'll keep that in mind," she replied weakly, her voice serrated.
"And… we'll get you out of here, somehow," Brenden promised. "Just… just try to hold on for right now."
Cyrinity smirked back at him with a slight chuckle, her eyes meeting his.
The crackle of lightsabers colliding together suddenly drove the two men and Cyrinity's attention to the long row of bacta tanks.
Just entering the bacta tank row, Darth Reszrinn could be seen dueling ferociously against the three remaining Jedi Masters. The three Masters were being steadily driven back as they fought against him, despite Avvin's battle-meditation. Even Kendal was having a hard time countering Reszrinn's merciless thrusts and lunges as the Sith Lord lashed out murderously towards them. The Sith Lord's lightsaber style was shifting between double-bladed and single-bladed frequently, now, and it seemed the more he fought the faster he became.
A few more long moments dragged by in the vehement duel, and then Reszrinn swiftly backed away from the Jedi Masters. He brought his lightsaber down to his side and deactivated it.
"Enough of this," he hissed in an almost whisper, his voice rabid.
Then, with an upward wave of his hands, the three Jedi Masters were suddenly lifted into the air. They hung there, suspended, arms and feet flailing out as they struggled against the Sith Lord's merciless grip.
Reszrinn let his lips curl up into a sneer once more, and then he clenched down on both of his opened hands. The moment he did this, the three Jedi Masters let out a scream of what could only be called agony. The Jedi's bodies writhed as the Sith Lord force crushed their figures, literally imploding the Jedis' bodies into themselves. The Jedi on the far right of Reszrinn let out a strangled gasp after a few seconds, and then crumpled under the weight of the Sith Lord's force crush.
Reszrinn let out an icy laugh as the crushed Jedi collapsed to the floor, dead. He then turned to the two remaining Jedi Masters. "And to think that you actually thought you could kill me. The force is what I command, and with it I am invincible. I would have thought that at least you, Master Sundair, would have learned that by now. But it doesn't really matter that you do or don't, because the outcome will be the same… I will win."
The two suspended figures glowered back at the Sith Lord with an intensity that could melt carbonite, their bodies still writhing back and forth from the pain of the force crush.
Then, with a sneer, Reszrinn pulled one of his hands back and held it beside him. An electric crackle of bluish black lightning began to form within his hand, and it began to expand. Reszrinn held his sneer of contempt with satisfaction as the sphere of lightning formed, and his eyes only seemed to become more villainous as the swirling vortex began crackling outward around his hand in an uncontrolled manner.
Then he tightly closed the hand, with the lightning still crackling out between his fingers, and he dropped the two remaining Jedi from their force crush.
Kendal dropped to the floor in a daze, along with the other female Jedi beside him who wielded the cyan double-bladed lightsaber, and they both began gasping back air into their nearly crushed lungs. They both laid there with their backs to the ground for a few seconds, panting, and then Kendal managed to turns his head up towards Reszrinn.
The Dark Lord of the Sith smiled, the kind, polite smile of someone about to kill you, and then opened his hand. The bluish, black electricity held within erupted from his hand and, as it was doing this, Reszrinn pushed his other hand forward, palm outward, and created a force push against the expanding lightning.
The resulting blast was an explosion.
The force push, crackling with lightning along its borders, slammed outward, away from the Sith Lord in all directions. Kendal and the other female Jedi Master were instantly flipped up into the air and hurled backwards as the lightning fueled force push collided with their figures. The two Jedi were thrown down the entire length of the bacta tank hallway, and they hit the thick durasteel wall near Cyrinity, Darrik and Brenden with a resonant thud as the twisted metal formed a crater against their forms.
Each row of bacta tanks that the two Jedi had been flung down shattered as the electrified force energy wave passed over them, and this sent a flood of blue bacta liquid expanding across the entire flooring of the bridge. Computer terminals and medical tables went flying as the wave passed over them, and the entirety of the bridge erupted into chaos as the electricity crackled across the walls and zapped everything as the wave progressed onward.
The electrified force energy wave even hit Darrik, Brenden, and Cyrinity, sending the three of them whirling through the air for a short distance before they collided with the wall. Avvin, who was still battle-meditating, abruptly lost his concentration and came back to reality as the force energy wave hit him. He was lifted up from his cross-legged position, and then slammed into the wall behind him with in a loud thud that resonated across the durasteel. Likewise, the bacta tank that Amirrya was being held in shattered as the wave hit it, and her limp form flew out from within the fractured tank to impact against the wall a few meters away, the oxygen mask tearing away from her face.
Then, when the electrified energy wave reached the end of the room, it buckled the walls outward slightly and then fizzled out into nonexistence.
Darrik was the first to open his eyes after the energy blast, and he found himself lying head-down amidst the bluish bacta liquid. The lights above him were dim and flickering constantly, and in some parts of the room they were nonexistent.
Darrik dragged his head to his side and quickly spat out the sickly-sweet tasting bacta that had flooded the ground. He found himself starring at Amirrya's limp form just a few meters away, with Cyrinity and Brenden just behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the two perforations in the durasteel wall that marked where Kendal and the other Jedi had collided against it.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Darrik lifted himself up off of his stomach and stumbled up into a standing position. Around him was the decimated scene of the bridge, with traces of lightning still crackling over things such as shattered bacta tanks and computer terminals. Some of the crosswalks that crisscrossed above him had fallen to the floor, and others were precariously hanging on by just a few rivets, their frames twisting back and forth above him.
Darrik quickly stumbled through the bacta towards Cyrinity and Brenden, his legs wobbly due to the lingering effects of the lightning.
"Brenden, Cyrinity!" he shouted as he came next to their figures, his eyes darting back and forth between them. Cyrinity stirred slightly, and then opened one eye. She was lying in the pool of bacta on her side, with one arm scrunched up under her head and the other caressing the vertical lightsaber wound along her torso.
"That… did not feel good," she muttered, her face streaked with pain.
Brenden then moved next to her, and he slowly stumbled up out of the bacta, dripping the blue liquid into the shallow pool at his feet. He shook his head from side to side to get the liquid out of his hair, and then bent down next to Cyrinity. "Hey, are you alright?" he asked worriedly as he noticed her pained face.
"Again, not what you would call 'alright' at the moment."
A splash of water sounded behind the three of them, and they all turned their gaze towards the sound. Avvin Corrind strode determinedly through the bacta that smothered the ground, his tight brown leather-like shirt drenched in the sickly-sweet blue fluid. His face was resolute and purposeful as he came up to them, and his eyes took in the whole scene in a single sweep.
"Cyrinity, who's left?" he asked in an almost hoarse voice, his tone somber. "I sensed some of the Master's… fates, but it was unclear as to exactly what happened."
Cyrinity carefully picked herself off the ground and, with the help of Brenden, positioned herself so that she was sitting down in the bacta with her arms spread out supporting her. She then tilted her head up to look the Grand Jedi Master in the eyes and said sadly, "Master Kendal Sundair, Master Salina Kelrune, and myself were the only ones still alive before this explosion." She turned her head around and spotted the perforations in the durasteel wall. "But I'm not sure if-"
She was cut off as a chunk of durasteel fell out of the farther of the two perforations, and then Kendal emerged from the twisted metal crater. His tan shirt was tattered from the long duel with Reszrinn, and small scars traced across it where the Sith Lord's lightsaber had come too close. Kendal jumped down the two meters to the ground, but then stumbled as he landed in the bacta and an arc of lightning crackled over his right leg.
Avvin and Darrik raced towards him, and when Kendal regained his footing they were both by his side.
"Here," Darrik said as he put his arm across Kendal's shoulders and helped balance him as they stood there in the bacta.
"Oh, I'm fine, really; just a little Sith Lightning, nothing I can't handle," Kendal responded in his usual sarcastic voice. His face then sobered as he turned to Avvin. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "We tried our best, but even with the battle meditation, he was too strong for us."
"Don't be sorry, my old friend," Avvin said solemnly. "Besides, we're not out of the game yet."
A grinding of metal-against-metal sounded from the other perforation in the wall, and everyone turned their attention to the other twisted crater. A sudden force push erupted from the crater, and the intertwined durasteel exploded outward, falling back against the sides of the wall. The Jedi Master with the cyan double-bladed lightsaber, Jedi Master Salina Kelrune, slowly stepped out of the hole and dropped down a few feet to the bacta-flooded floor. Her light blonde hair was strewn down in an unkempt manner, and her pale yellow shirt was crisscrossed with shallow, dark slashes from the Sith Lord's lightsaber.
Salina raised her ragged face upward and nodded towards Avvin, her breath coming in long gasps. "Master Corrind," she finally panted out, her voice soft.
"Master Kelrune, I'm glad you're still alive," Avvin responded, relieved. He then gazed around him, and visibly winced as he caught sight of some of the dead Jedis' bodies that were pushed up against the wall or lying head-down in the bacta liquid.
"I'm…," he started, and then raised his chin up to meet everyone at eye level. "I'm sorry that my battle-meditation has done nothing to stop Reszrinn, and I am sorry for all of the good Jedi who have been lost today. But, if we do not defeat the one who killed them, then their deaths shall have been in vain. We can not let Reszrinn leave this ship alive, no matter what the costs; else he could cause millions more deaths across the galaxy in his strive for power and revenge."
"We understand," Kendal said, catching Salina's eye to make sure they both agreed. "Shall we start to evacuate the ship?"
Avvin twitched his mouth for half a second, and then replied, "Yes… we'll need to get everyone off in case we don't make it out of this alive…" The Jedi Grand Master then turned to Darrik and said, "Darrik, get those droids of yours' to access the ship's computer and issue an alert to abandon ship. If worse comes to worse, then we will have to self-destruct the Ecliptic Sun to keep Reszrinn from getting off alive."
Darrik nodded his head tersely, his mind barely taking in the full implications of the order. He then spun around in order to find the two droids, and spotted Artoo a couple of meters away near the wall, trying to roll through the bluish liquid toward a pile of rubble and loose pipes.
"Artoo," he called out as he trudged up to the little astromech droid. "I need you to access the ship's computer and send out a red alert out to evacuate the ship."
Artoo responded with a loud twitter of beeps, and then rolled off toward one of the bridge's few upright computer terminals. Darrik watched him go for a second, and then turned around to the pile that Artoo had been heading towards. He saw a golden metallic arm sprouted from the debris that was waving back and forth in a frantic motion.
"Master, is that you?!" Threepio called out shrilly, though his voice was muffled beneath the rubble. "Oh, it is you, master! I'm so glad you're here! I seem to have lodged my head into an awkward angle between a few of these pipes, and I am unable to properly-"
"Ahh, Threepio," Darrik cut, shaking his head in as he grabbed the droid's metallic hand and hoisted him from the wreckage. "All better now?"
"Oh, yes master; thank you very much. I was beginning to wonder if I had been forgotten and was going to be left there for-"
"Okay, Threepio; can you do me a favor," Darrik interrupting the droid.
"Why, certainly, master. Anything that you would deem worthy for me to perform I would gladly accept as an act of-"
"Good, can you go check on Amirrya and make sure she's alright?" Darrik asked as he gazed over at Amirrya's limp form. She was on her back, facing head-up in the bacta, and her chest was rising in a constant pattern that indicated she was still breathing.
"Of course, master. I am, after all, versatile enough in medical procedures to properly-"
Darrik stopped listening as he stepped away from Threepio and walked back towards Cyrinity and Brenden.
"How are you doing?" he asked Cyrinity, who was leaning back down against the floor with Brenden's support.
"Not at my best right now…" she said softly. "I think I might be able to walk some, but-"
"Darrik," Avvin suddenly called out tersely. He was clustered around Kendal and Salina, and the three Jedi Masters all held their lightsabers deactivated at their sides. "I need you to get Amirrya and everyone else as far away from here as you can. When Reszrinn gets here, I don't want anyone being caught up in the fight; especially not Amirrya, if what he has said is true."
"Yes sir," Darrik nodded towards Avvin, and then said, "And may the force be with you… with all of you."
"And may the force be with you, too," Avvin returned the parting, and then the three Jedi Masters turned back to face the wreckage of the bacta tank hallway.
Darrik looked back at Brenden and Cyrinity as they lay slouched against each other. "Brenden; think that you'll be able to carry her?" he asked quietly, indicating Cyrinity.
Cyrinity's eyebrows perked up at this and she said, "You know, I may be injured, but I can at least walk to the-"
"Yeah," Brenden cut her off as he placed his arms around her body and carefully lifted her up off of the bacta-flooded floor. Cyrinity's face contorted as pain arched up her shoulder, but she held on to Brenden's grasp and looped her arms around his neck, not interjecting again.
"Okay, come on," Darrik said, and turned around towards Amirrya. She was lying just as she had been a few seconds ago, and Threepio was bent over her checking her vital signs. Darrik slowly trudged through the bacta towards them both, with Brenden and Cyrinity close behind him.
"Oh, Master Fate!" Threepio exclaimed as he turned around and faced Darrik. "The young woman, Amirrya Bray, does seem to be in a kind of Jedi stasis, as Master Avvin Corrind said earlier. She appears relatively unharmed by the recent electrified shockwave, and her breathing is that of someone within a deep sleep. There are no broken bones or deep scars besides those that were already there, though she was slightly cut around her arm by the shattering of the transparisteel of the bacta tank. I think that if she is able to-"
"Threepio," Darrik cut in briskly, "You and Artoo meet us by the main viewport, at the control section, once Artoo is done issuing the abandon ship command, okay?"
"Yes sir, err, wait… The abandon ship command?! Oh, dear! But sir, we don't have a reliable means of transportation to-"
"Okay, Threepio?" Darrik asked again, more forcefully, his head tilting slightly to the side as he said it.
"Err, yes sir, though shouldn't we be evacuating, too, if we are issuing an abandon-"
"Okay, let's go," Darrik called over his shoulder to Brenden and Cyrinity. He then knelt down beside Amirrya and carefully placed his arms into the bacta liquid and under her lightweight figure. Her lithe form pressed against his as he lifted her up, and then Darrik began walking determinedly toward the control section of the bridge, where the viewport and most of the bridge's computers were located.
Amirrya's head was bent down toward Darrik's chest as he carried her in his two-armed grasp, and one arm waved freely behind her while the other was propped up against Darrik's side. Her front and back were soaked from the bacta, and her hair was sprung out in a wet whoosh across her shoulders. Darrik kept trying to focus on the here and now, but his attention kept drifting back to what had happened to Amirrya and how she could have survived so much dark side energy being transferred through her.
Could she really have turned to the dark side after going through all of that? Well, she's been in Reszrinn's captivity for nine years, if what he said is true! Anything could have happened. I just hope that… Darrik stole a look at Amirrya's face as he walked. Her eyes were closed, her eyelashes sprawled out beneath her eyes, but he could sense an inner turmoil within her, radiating outward in the force.
Abruptly, Darrik's foot lifted out of the bacta and he looked down. He was at the main viewport, the section of the bridge where most of the computer terminals and controls for the bridge were located, and the incline that raised this control section up above the rest of the room had stopped the flood of bacta from overrunning everything. Darrik hurriedly continued on until he came to an open space near the viewport, and then set Amirrya down on the dry decking. Brenden came up behind him with Cyrinity, and he likewise set her down a few feet away from Amirrya, near the transparisteel of the viewport.
As Darrik stood back up, his gaze met the outside of the viewport. The remains of the moon that the Ecliptic Sun has hit hours earlier had blanketed out into a massive grey dust cloud by now, and this consumed half of the entire ship in its misty embrace. The bright green planet of Acchrin was barely visible through the haze, and small chunks of what was left of the moon could be seen floating idly through the dust cloud.
Darrik slowly turned his attention from the viewport and looked around. Surrounding him was an arc of computer terminals and controls for the Ecliptic Sun. Past this was a cleared isle for walking down, and a few meters past this the decking sloped back down into the bacta liquid that covered the rest of the bridge.
Threepio and Artoo then came into sight as they trudged through the bluish fluid towards Darrik. They came up onto the incline, and Darrik asked, "Artoo, did you get the command to evacuate the ship sent out?"
A high-pitched, resolute beep sounded at this question, and Darrik took it for a 'yes'.
"Okay, good. Threepio, you and Artoo make sure Cyrinity is taken care of. Try and get her a bacta patch or something, if you can."
"Of course, sir." Threepio bowed and took off with Artoo toward Cyrinity as Brenden came up beside him.
"Is he there yet?" Brenden asked as he gazed toward the three Jedi Masters who stood clustered together, still facing the remains of the bacta tank hallway.
"No sign of him yet… Reszrinn should probably have gotten here by now, though."
"Do you think he, um, got himself killed in the explosion, or something?"
Darrik gave Brenden a humoring expression as he rolled his eyes. "With someone this powerful, I seriously doubt that they would be stupid enough to get themselves killed like that, though I guess we can hope. Unfortunately, though, I can still feel something dark in the force, somewhere." Darrik gazed around for a second, and then focused his attention back on the three Jedi Masters. "I just hope it doesn't come to having to self-destruct the Ecliptic Sun…"
Suddenly, the three Jedi Masters' lightsabers sprang to life, and they each stretched into their own fighting stances. Their gazes, however, were darting around wildly, as if searching for their opponent.
"They must have sensed something," Darrik whispered to Brenden from their crouched position behind the arc of computer terminals.
Another long second passed by, and abruptly a section of the crosswalk that was situated directly above the three Jedi Masters shot down from its anchorage and came crashing towards them. The three Jedi all dived in different directions as the durasteel walkway crashed into the bacta below and caused a shallow splash to erupt away from the point of impact.
The Jedi quickly gathered themselves up off the floor and peered upward toward the multiple crosswalks that crisscrossed above them. Then, in unison, the three Jedi Masters leapt into a force-assisted jump and disappeared from view as they entered the tangle of crosswalks above.
