Authors Note: This is just a short interlude that will take us in the second part of the story.
Interlude
Revan's Point of View
Watching impassively as the soldiers guarding the hanger fell to the bulkhead, as dead as could be, I made a motion for Bastila to go ahead to the nearest shuttle and warm it up. That was the plan – I would weaken the bonds of the blast door to the point where a single push in the Force would be able to destroy them. The vacuum effect would give us a wild ride for a few moments, but I was confident that I would be able to keep us free from being hit by a stray fighter or a piece of debris when the contents of the hanger were sucked out into space. Of course, my plan hinged on being able to weaken the door just right, I would need to time to get onto the shuttle, center myself and be able to concentrate to keep us steady.
Of course, if I didn't get it just right, we would be screwed beyond all measure.
This was a troublesome new failsafe that Republic ships had and I made a mental note to dispatch my intelligence officers to find the manufacturer and designer of this little program – and kidnap them, or kill them and destroy their lives and all of their work. Not that I intended to be captured like this every time, but really – this was proving to be a pain, and very daunting as I took in the thick, durasteel plating protecting the gravity of the hanger, this was very taxing. Yes, once I got out of this situation, I would have all of their lives, their families and their work systemically destroyed and I would assign my own engineers to begin building a weapon that could counter this little issue – perhaps it had been useful to be in this situation.
Extending my hand and grabbing onto the blast doors in the Force with an iron grip, I grunted in part exertion and part frustration as the door refused to move, it was so damned strong. I had attempted to do the same thing, but on smaller scales and it was nothing like breaking bones or choking people. Throwing out my other hand, I gripped the same area and pressed the full weight of my strength in the Force down on it and I let out a satisfied noise when I heard the distinctive sound of durasteel creaking and cracking. I could kill dozens of people at a single time with a simple movement of my hand and it hardly bothered me, but trying to break through what seemed a meter and a half of durasteel was so very taxing to me.
The irony would be delicious if I weren't in this situation.
Feeling my danger sense send tingles down my spine, I saw the distinctive cracks forming in the durasteel and I knew what was going to happen before my brain caught up with my thoughts. That was what caused me to bolt mindlessly towards the now powered up shuttle with everything that the Force could give me to bolster my speed. Bolting up the boarding ramp, I depressed the control panel that would raise the ramp and as I watched it rise and close, I inwardly chastised myself for my foolishness. If I had only been patient, I might not have overdid it – now this ride was going to get a lot bumpier and when the vacuum effect sucked us out of the hanger and into space, I could only hope that we weren't hit by any stray debris.
"Get us up now!" I barked at Bastila as I broke out of my inner monologue. "You'll need to get us close to the door before it breaks – that might buy us a little time to get ahead of the debris."
Bastila's fingers danced across the control panel as I sat down on the co-pilots chair and buckled myself in, "Wouldn't it be dangerous to do that – what makes you so sure that the blast door won't strike us?"
"Gravity, you idiot, that's what makes me so sure that it won't strike us when it breaks," I hissed at her, feeling my own heartbeat rise as I looked out the view port.
As the center of the blast door began to break away, and we still hadn't gotten up – I quickly calculated the odds of us getting up into the air before the door completely broke away inside my head and I groaned in defeat.
"What?" Bastila snapped from beside me, obviously wanting to know why I had just made that noise.
Using the Force to shove her away from the control panel and pin her back into her chair, I held my breath as piece after piece of the blast door gave way and the pull of gravity became stronger, "It's no use, we'll never get there in time."
"I should still get the engines running!" She was obviously indignant at my actions of pushing her backwards, but the compulsion effect prevented her from disobeying.
"Shut up and brace yourself," My annoyance was not born from her actions, they were born from mine – but she was the only one to take them out on right now.
I once had the dubious pleasure of piloting a fighter whose inertial dampeners had failed in mid-battle.
I had been on a lot of wild rides in my life and all of the battles that I had fought, but it was safe to say that that particular battle had been the most difficult that I had ever fought. Having to outrun and entire squadron of Mandalorian sub-fighters in a situation where I could feel every twist and turn was something that I would never forget – well, I forgot some of it. The moment that I made it back into the hanger bay of the command ship, I vomited and blacked out – and when I woke up several hours later, I found that I couldn't walk straight for an hour afterwards. I didn't think, in my wildest dreams, that I would ever experience anything like that again, I promised myself that I wouldn't – but here I was again, doing it once again. I could note a few differences though, I wasn't in control of the shuttle – when the blast door broke away, we were sucked out in the vacuum of space faster than I could blink and we were currently spiraling out of the hanger in horribly fast speed.
"You are mad! Has anyone ever told you that!" Bastila screamed from beside me as she held onto her chair with an iron grip.
I tried to brace myself with the Force, but I was finding it harder and harder to do so, as we swung in an involuntary barrel roll, I rolled my eyes at her screaming and gritted my teeth, "You're not the first to tell me that."
And I didn't know if was a blessing in disguise that the spiraling stopped, because I was very close to vomiting, but when a loud crashing sound echoed through the shuttle from the starboard side and I was ripped from my chair, I knew it wasn't.
I didn't even have time to think of what happened before I was slammed face first into the control panel and proceeded to fade from consciousness.
My return to consciousness was marked by a pained and very loud groan.
I'd suffered many injuries in my life, but there was nothing like head injuries and though I suffered quite a lot of them in my time, I would have to say that taking header into a control panel was a highlight. Swallowing to try and wet my throat, I very slowly picked my head up and looked up through the main viewport. Though my vision was a little hazy, I was able to note that there was no debris around us and that indicated that we must have been drifting for hours. The second thing that I was able to note, and by far the most important, was the fact that we were clearly in dead space, meaning that there were no planets, no asteroid fields and no spatial bodies of any kind around us. This was trouble, I didn't remember the exact specifications on this type of shuttle, but we couldn't be able to stay on this thing for an extended period of time – not when we were missing a wing and certainly not when we didn't have a hyper-drive. Hopefully the navicomputer was still working.
Pushing myself up from the panel, I immediately hissed in pain and fell back into the co-pilots chair, grasping my ankle.
This was not good.
When I put pressure on my left ankle, the sharp pain that ran up it was nearly unbearable and it would probably take a daylong healing trance for me to able to even walk on it without falling over in pain.
"Bastila," I croaked as I lowered my leg and turned to look for her. "Bastila?"
I would forever contend that the only reason that I felt panic and fear was for the adverse side effects that the bond between us brought – the sight of her lying face down, under the control panel would naturally bring out that reaction in me.
But as I lowered myself out of the chair and got down on all fours and began to crawl over to her on my hands and knees, I knew the real reason why I was feeling fear.
And that was also not good – it wasn't good because I didn't care for my wellbeing at that point.
I only cared about hers.
Not good.
