Chapter 11

Karon stepped over the threshold of the doors and into the Dark Lord's chamber, hardly noticing the force hold that bent his knees and made them buckle in submission. He bowed once, then rummaged in his robes for a small object.

Instead, the Lord raised a hand and summoned the object to him. As his fingers closed on it, it caught the dim light, reflecting off of many facets and edges making it glint dazzlingly. The Rakatan Star Map.

The Dark Lord looked back to his apprentice with unsuppressed glee in his manner, though his features could not be seen. "You have done well, my apprentice," said Lord Plagueis, putting the holoprojector on the arm of his throne. "This step in my journey is nearly complete. I need only wait for your apprentice and my assassin to return with their mutual friend, and we may begin our quest."

Karon looked confused, and voiced his concern with a questioning voice. "Lord Plagueis, my master, I do not—"

"You will understand when the time is right," he said, interrupting Karon with the maddeningly cryptic response, and waving a hand in impatience. "Suffice it to say that it will help us in the war against the Republic. Traya's Purge will pail in comparison, and she will have to submit to me."

Karon opened his mouth, as if to enquire further, but then the door opened, and Karon felt that he could stand steadily again. He understood himself to be dismissed.

Kafi Morso slammed forward into the bulkhead, knocking herself silly and making her snout bleed slightly. She fell back onto her elbows, curled up, and felt her injuries. Not much damage, but a spectacularly yellow bruise, and a lot of pain. Beings ran past her in different directions while she tried to make herself as small and out of the way as possible while waiting out the sudden surge. They were all most likely on their way to assess the latest addition to the Thunder-class Frigate Sovereign Entity's lengthy collection of hits from an unseen battle. She had been working on her datapad at the time the first bolt had struck, and she had spilled her cup of navy-issue, non-depressant-based Juma all over it, shorting it and losing several months' work.

The people finally stopped panicking, and a man grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her upright.

She looked over to thank him, and saw someone she did not expect to see in the flickering, failing light of the lower-deck hallway.

"Litritch!" she exclaimed in nostalgic delight, but she had no time to say anything else as a resounding boom of terbolaser-recoil thundered through the hull.

When it had died away, he spoke in a rushed tone. "We're in a full-broadside exchange," he blustered as he walked along the low, dark corridor with muted overhead lights, hanging from the occasional blown-out conduit or circuit board "taking heavy damage. I'm to debrief you on the situation and give you your orders."

Kafi looked startled. "Can't they have somebody less important tell me this?" she asked, stumbling to keep up with his long, purposeful strides.

"They couldn't spare anyone else. The bridge has taken heavy casualties. These Sith know their stuff." He stopped and pulled Kafi into a niche as more people walked in the opposite direction. "Now listen carefully. Go up to D deck, secure an airlock, suit up for external repairs. A team is already out there, but they need all that they can get. You'll see them." He glanced around as another crashing explosion rumbled through the hull and into his rubberized shoes. "I'd better get back to the bridge. I'll see you after this is done."

With that, he continued in the other direction, leaving Kafi staring.

A ball of fire erupted from his right and enveloped him as she watched, and he was engulfed in the cloud of superheated debris and fire. But she did not rush to him, though a scream involuntarily escaped through her mouth. Air was rushing past her, bringing with it chunks of broken hull, flickering lights, and other such paraphernalia.

She grabbed a hand-railing and clung on for dear life as the heated hull was slowly torn away by the rushing air.

Then, over the massive din of decompression, Kafi registered the all-telling whirr of machinery. The closing of the air-tight hatches to the whole compartment.

She worked her hands along the railing and pressed her feet into the deck plates, willing her straining muscles to move her faster against the tide of atmosphere, for the hatches were fast-working, and once one began to close at this distance, she was doomed.

Kafi was almost a foot away from the door when it began shutting inexorably, sealing her off from freedom, and her legs pumped under her, her head bowed, and her arms worked.

Her head was through, then her shoulders, then her hips. Finally, with one last effort, her foot whipped through the small gap in the doors and they sealed seamlessly, keeping the air back from the temptation of the hull breach.

She caught her breath then ran for the lift.

When she got there, the place was empty. In this section, too, the hatches were closed, and the placed was deserted.

For a moment of panicked claustrophobia, she thought that the lift would be sealed as she got to it and pounded the touch-sensitive up button. When the lift opened up, she could barely claw her way out and into the mass of scrambling bodies in the cramped hallways. She shoved her way to the airlock station where a team of technicians started cinching her into an environment-suit immediately.

"Ma'am," one of them said hurriedly whilst tightening a glove onto her left hand, "a team's already on the surface attempting to fix the leak. They're waiting for your help. Get in, execute the fix with low-heat tools, and get out." They finished by pressurizing her suit, then smacked a hand reassuringly down on the top of her helmet and yelled, "Let's go, let's go! Double-time!"

The techs filed out, closed the hatch, and popped the airlock with a rush of wind. Kafi and her gauntlet of fixers hauled themselves out of the compartment and magnetized the soles of their suits for maximum grip on the hull.

They began their trek along the scarred and ragged surface. She could see the crew that was already out on the horizon of the lit hull, scrambling with non-thermal-based paraphernalia and covering the reactant breach with a sheet of durasteel.

The team stepped in their cumbersome suits, skipping over jagged holes and exposed framework. When Kafi looked up, she saw the Sith Destroyer through the dome of her helmet. It loomed like a dark, ragged entity of shadow, a blot where no stars were. Bristling with guns and tubes, she had enough in her arsenal to overmatch the Entity two to one.

And just as she looked back to the scuttling workers on the crest of the hull, the turrets opened up. Soundlessly, the red beams impacted, glaring her visor with a garish red light as it tinted in compensation. The cloud of freezing liquid erupted into superheated flames.

For a moment, it seemed either that everything was under control, or time had frozen, as the clear droplets floated suspended in the airless vacuum, just begging to fuel the inferno just inches away, but Kafi knew that it was only this way because she wanted this moment to last forever.

It could not. The flames, the fuel, and the lasers caused a massive chain reaction in the midst of the fixing crew. Some of them flew, their suits loosing magnetization, and were lost in space or in the ball of expanding heat. The less fortunate developed atmosphere leaks and began to flail in futility as the blaze caught on the reflective skins, using their suits as an ample source of oxygen. They threw their limbs about in agonized desperation until they were nothing more than crisped flesh and plasteel, floating up into limbo.

Kafi and her comrades were knocked backwards and they fought to keep their feet to the metal and continue walking with their load of gear.

As they finally reached the site of the explosion, they found it not too badly damaged, as the fire was sudden and quick, but the metal plate was gone, as was the previous teams' equipment, and so they started their wasted work all over again to contain the precious reactant.

Within minutes the fast-acting permacrete had been applied to the metal, bonding the plate to the hull and sealing the leak, and it was time for them to go.

Kafi and the others got to the airlock and safety, stripped off the suits, and stepped back into the ship. As they leaned against the wall in exhaustion and despair, all they could do now was to wait for their next assignment, wait to be destroyed, or wait to evacuate. Any way it went, they knew how slim their chances of survival were.

The latter came first. Grave-looking attendants ushered the techs and officers down the hall, herding them to the nearest escape pod bay.

Red lights flashed on and off and claxons screemed. The smell of fear hung heavy in the air. Kafi felt herself being pressed into the mass of sweating beings, unable to see or breathe, unaware of her position, weather or not she was close to an escape pod. Weather or not she was going to live.