So, hello again! I can't believe I've actually gotten this far with the story. 11 Chapters! And, to add to that, 42 reviews! Some of you may recognize the numerous mentions of that number in this story, and a few of you may know why :) It's not like it's a secret or a riddle or anything. But, that doesn't matter, I'm so glad I've reached that number and that you guys like it so far!
Disclaimer: I don't have any rights to Star Wars. It would have been really awesome to look at anything bearing its awesome symbol and say, "Star Wars, I am your creator," but, alas, I'd be lying.
Chapter Eleven:
It was not dark, despite the lack of illumination, just as it was not light, despite the looming radiance. It wasn't there, but it was everywhere—constant, yet perpetually halting, as absent as it was present. In contradiction it existed, yet a contradiction it existed not, all the same—balance.
All forces—positive and negative, chaotic and orderly, calming and turbulent—existed harmoniously, ideally. The absolute value of each was the same—opposite ends of the spectrum, each equal in their own right pressed overbearingly upon one another in the desperate fight for dominance. Neither won; their destructive interference brought high to low, frequencies and wavelengths mixing as they observed perfect harmony, equaling zero and infinity simultaneously.
A clearer picture one cannot paint—there is as much clarity as there is obscurity, here, now, yet everywhere, every when.
'Has it been yet long enough?' called a thought through the void, which existed just as it did not, packed tightly within itself. The voice was tranquil and furious.
Another thought answered that one, though it was as identical as it was disparate. 'The time—or so they perceive the passage to be—has not yet dawned upon this one.'
42.
Holly set Xenon onto her shoulder as she raced down the corridor after Luke. Something was wrong, she could tell; the ship jerked left and right at odd intervals, not the usual swaying or humming she had grown accustomed to over the course of the ride. She could hear voices before she had even turned the final corner to the cockpit, hear Han sending steady yet pressured orders to his Wookiee copilot. She overtook Luke and Obi-Wan as she raced towards the cockpit, frantic to know what the complication was.
"Han, what's wrong?" she demanded in a wary, slightly frightened tone once she flung herself into the cockpit. Han and Chewie were tense as they sat stationed, and the former's head shot back and forth frantically as he fought to control his ship.
"….out of hyperspace into a meteor shower. Some kind of asteroid collision—it's not on any of the charts," he informed in a rushed voice.
Holly lodged herself between the two chairs—yet still well out of their way—as she struggled to make out what was happening beyond the glass, squinting. All she could see were vague disturbances. She dug into her pocket and extracted the two halves of her glasses, holding them to her face.
There were, indeed, massive rocks—they looked to be barreling towards them, though she knew that it was truly their ship rushing closely past them. They were in some sort of asteroid belt, it seemed, though why had it not come up on their charts? It wasn't as though it could have been hiding; where was Alderaan?
Luke and Obi-Wan were not far behind. "What's going on?" came the quick, equally curious voice of Luke behind her.
"Our position is correct," Han confirmed Holly's thoughts, but that didn't settle her. "Except….no Alderaan."
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Where is it?"
"An entire planet can't have disappeared!" Holly protested. "You must be in the wrong place! No technology is completely foolproof; your scanners may be messed up."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, kid," he said to Luke. "It ain't there, and I know this region, Holly. These aren't faulty scans. It's been totally blown away." "What?" disbelief and awe were both equally present in Luke's voice behind her. "How?"
Luke was right behind her, and she felt him lean forward, as if that would warrant a better view. She was preparing to shy away to the right to allow him more space when she felt his hand on the shoulder of hers over which he was peering. She met that hand with a chary glance, surprised at the gesture and unused to the contact. He didn't seem to notice, however, as he continued to stare out of the cockpit; Holly didn't bring attention to it, assuming that it had been a somehow habitual reaction.
"Destroyed," Obi-Wan said behind them. "By the Empire."
Holly's head whipped around in surprise, but what was even more shocking was finding his face unceasingly serious. How—the Empire can't just some in and blow up a planet! That's only possible in the Hitchhiker's Guide, with the Vogons who, should she mention, were not there!
It seemed she wasn't the only one disbelieving. "The entire Starfleet couldn't destroy a whole planet," Han argued. Holly caught Obi-Wan's raised eyebrow as he said this. "It'd take a thousand ships with more firepower than I've…." He was interrupted by the loud, rapid beeping of an alarm, signaling Han-knows-what else coming to make their day even more confusing.
"There's another ship coming in!" he declared. Han did know what else it was.
"Maybe they know what happened," Luke said hopefully just as Holly asked, "Are they the enemy?" They glanced towards each other, each noting the drastic difference in reactions, and she was oddly more aware of his hand on her shoulder (which he still didn't seem to notice, by the way), before Obi-Wan responded with his astounding intuition.
"It's an Imperial Fighter." Holly glanced back to the viewport, adjusting her grip on the glasses frames held in front of her eyes. There was something flying ahead of them—they had all but cleared the asteroid field, and the 'Fighter' flew swiftly before them, dark and looming, like a secret dreaded spy.
"It must've followed us!"
"No," Obi-Wan disagreed with his young pupil. "It's a short range fighter."
Holly's eyes narrowed. "But that means….well, there aren't—"
"There aren't any bases around here," Han stated, finishing her statement for her. "Where'd it come from?"
"Sure is leaving in a big hurry," Luke snapped, irritated. "If they identify us, we're in big trouble!" What he so irate because of Han or the Fighter? Holly couldn't decide; he disliked both, it seemed.
"Not if I can help it. Chewie, jam their transmissions!"
"It'd be as well to let it go," Obi-Wan pointed out, indicating its retrieving form, which was hardly more than a dot in the distance. "It's too far out of range."
Han protested stubbornly. "Not for long."
They all felt the Falcon surge forward with a sudden burst of speed. Holly felt her body rock back, and she was now thankful for Luke's hand on her shoulder, steadying her unintentionally. She sent him a small nod of thanks, and he smiled slightly, as if just now realizing he still rested his hand there. He awkwardly pulled it back.
The old man's voice was speculative as he watched the small but threatening craft. "A fighter that size couldn't get this deep into space on its own."
"He must've gotten lost, been part of a convoy or something." Luke's tone made Holly think of it as a little duckling straying too far from the line of its mother, an odd image for something that's supposed to be menacing.
"Well, then, he ain't gonna be around long enough to tell anybody about us," Han decided.
The balance was thrown off in Holly's two unequally placed lenses, though she did her best to hold them steady. Nonetheless, she could easily see what Luke meant when he next spoke. "Look at him; he's heading for that small moon!" For there, in the distance, was a celestial object growing ever closer, at first hardly brighter than the stars that were its background, but it soon came into clearer view to Holly. It wasn't quite a 'small moon' anymore.
"That's no moon," Obi-Wan's calming tone was not without heed. "It's a space station."
"It's too big to be a space station," the pilot disagreed. Holly tried ever harder to make out any more details in its surface—as they got closer, she could see Obi-Wan's doubts. The faint contours (well, faint to her, at least) were much to symmetrical to be any believable planet or moon, though Holly couldn't imagine any man (or alien)-made object being of such immense size.
"I have a very bad feeling about this," Luke muttered as he stared, wide-eyed, and the space-station-moon object. As they soared ever nearer, Holly could tell that it was too exact, too parallel to itself to be a moon. Obi-Wan was right.
"Turn the ship around," he stated in a heeding tone, promising that something bad would undoubtedly happen if that precaution was not taken.
"Yeah, I think you're right," Han declared. "Full reverse. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power!"
The speed at which they were gravitating forwards did not slow. Rather, they seemed to gain speed. Holly's heart thudded in her rib cage. It was as if no other point in her unbelievably fantastical journey up to this point was as real as it was now, for the terror that surged through her was enough to make her wish for a quiet, short, and pitiful existence back in the deserts of Tatooine.
"Tractor beam," she muttered, thinking back to all the previous perils she'd witnessed on the screen of her laptop back home. Funny, all of those seemed woefully insignificant when she thought of how menial they were while she was here, now, in an equally menial and insignificant world—but the only difference was she was actually there.
"Why are we still moving towards it?!" demanded Luke, his panicked voice sound in her ear.
"We're caught in a tractor beam! It's pulling us in!" Holly having uttered her two cents too low for anyone to hear, Han informed the others in the crowded cockpit what was happening.
"There must be something you can do!"
Han shook his head violently and reached behind them to mess with controls above their heads. "There's nothing I can do about it, kid, I'm at full power. I'm gonna shut down! They're not gonna get to me without a fight," he gritted out, concentrating hard to set commands into the ship's central computer.
The space station was enormous, that much was apparent; completely spherical, it had nothing to a planet or a star, so far as Holly could tell, but that fact did not take away from the sheer terror it evoked in her. Just sitting there, obviously threatening and evil—far larger than any man-made object she had ever seen or heard of—it was the type of thing you'd see and then immediately turn away from. That course of action, however, was eliminated. It had a tractor beam. It was pulling them in.
Holly gulped.
Obi-Wan warned Han, "You can't win, but there are alternatives to fighting."
They all stared ahead, eyes wide with fear and anticipation. Holly was sure that even Chewie, with his usually expressionless face, would feel a wave of nervousness as they all gazed towards the looming station. Despite not even being the size of a planet, it was far beyond being as scary as one tenfold.
"Just what are you suggesting?" questioned Han.
42.
Obi-Wan's plan, while not entirely foolproof, was brilliant. It was much better than anything the others could have come up with. As for Han, he suggested taking a blaster to each and every one of them; it didn't take much intellectual prowess to see the holes in that plot. Luke agreed with whatever Obi-Wan said, nearly by default—Holly didn't know if he was so eager to agree anytime or just with something actually worthwhile, but she supposed that it didn't matter. Anything was better than her suggestion of fake mustaches, noses, and glasses to disguise themselves. It wouldn't have worked on R2 and Xenon anyway, though she did think that it would go nicely with Chewie's complexion.
"Be serious for once," Han sneered good-naturedly but also warningly as they all made for the corridor nearer the entrance. "Come on, I've got the storage units over here."
So they chose to bravely run away. Or, rather, bravely stow away.
As they passed the central room, they rounded up the droids. Xenon was already on Holly's shoulder, chirping wildly. He could sense the danger, it seemed, and wasn't hiding the fact. Holly tried to shush him quietly as they rushed through, though it was to no avail.
"Wait—Han, wait!" she said quickly, darting across the room and coming to a halt at the round table that had, until recently, been the home of a game of sci-fi chess. She searched frantically for a moment before spotting her denim bag on the floor, right where she had left it. Holly dove for it, swinging it around her shoulder as she turned back to the waiting group. "Sorry."
"Hurry up!" Luke urged, egging her on as they all raced down the corridor. Han led them through different passageways, turning sharp corners quicker than Holly could even register their directions. "Where are these things, Han? It's like we're going through a maze!"
"It's just near the entrance," informed Han, lowering his voice. Sound carried well in the Falcon. "I just need to stop by something first…" As if on cue, he came to a stop near a wall panel. It was beeping leisurely, being one of the only thing that operated that wasn't rushed or scared out of their wits right now. The droids were fretting, and Holly was sure that she wasn't the only one hearing the thudding of their own heart.
He pressed in something that Holly couldn't even hope to identify. "What did you do?"
"I'm adjusting the logs," he answered her. "I need to buy us some more time….and a better cover….say we abandoned ship, oh, before we even left Tatooine's orbit. I've only got one escape pod, anyway, though there's room for three. That'll throw them through a little loop, make them believe we're just a bunch of floating junk." Smart.
"Good thinking," Obi-Wan praised. "But me must hurry—I sense danger very near."
"You got it," Han nodded as he did something akin to 'closing out of tab', or at least, that's what Holly gathered from it.
Their roundabout trip continued, except this time, they seemed to be backtracking. Holly couldn't possibly remember the rout, though she supposed that was fair, since she didn't exactly try to.
Soon, however, she felt something different, not really pertaining to the whole 'run for cover' situation at all. There was something just...off. Out of balance. It was then that Holly realized that the familiar chirping, familiar buzzing that she had actually grown to find comfort in, wasn't there anymore. She couldn't hear Xenon, nor could she feel him sitting there on her shoulder, shifting from foot to foot to foot to foot to foot to foot to foot to foot anxiously. "Xenon?!" she shrieked in a whisper, suddenly halting and spinning around.
She could see him—he was surprisingly far away, sitting in a corner, just sort of waiting. Holly had no idea how long he'd been there, or when he'd even crawled from his shoulder. "Xenon!" she called, shoving past 3PO, who had been lagging behind, to reach him.
"Holly?" a frantic voice called out. Holly registered somewhere in the back of her mind that it was Luke, who must have been the first (besides 3PO) to notice that she was gone. Holly dove for Xenon, but he darted away.
He wasn't running from her, it seemed. He didn't look as though she were his enemy. Rather, Holly thought he looked as though he were running towards something, something in the other direction. "Xenon, what are—where are you going?" she hissed, trying to get him to come back. He didn't stop his departure, however, and kept racing down the corridor. "Xenon, no! Come back!" She had no choice but to follow him. Well, she actually did have a choice, she just chose to ignore the other options.
"Holly, where are you?" Han called, panicked voice louder than it had been. Holly was out of sight now, trying desperately to get to her little bug. She knew that it was so incredibly stupid, to jeopardize everything for the sake of her droid, but there was nothing keeping them from going on. She'd catch up, right after she—oh, damn, Holly interrupted herself.
Xenon had turned another corner, and Holly swore both to herself and him as she followed. "I'll be there in a moment!" she called back to Han and the others before speeding up and making a grab for Xenon. "Go ahead, I'll be there right—oh, Xenon, just stop, will you?"
She hadn't stopped once. Xenon hadn't stopped. Holly could hear Han and Luke shouting for her behind her, though they tried to keep their voices down, and it was perhaps a combination of this fact and the growing distance between the two parties that stood as reason for the sound to stop reaching Holly's ears. She could hardly hear them anymore, just faint calls. All that she could distinguish was her name.
"Never mind, Holly, just find somewhere to hide, quick! And air vent or something!" the loudest call yet was the last that she heard. Xenon halted ahead of her, turning back and staring just a moment before racing back to Holly.
She watched, enraged, before scooping him up into her hands. "Xenon, you—you…." She muttered lowly. Holly stared around her, a new panic setting in.
Oh, my God, she thought. She was lost. She was an idiot, and she was lost. Holly had stumbled blindly down the corridor away from them, not knowing how to return, not knowing if she could. She hadn't known anything, because she hadn't thought. All that she had wanted to do was retrieve her bug, though in retrospect, that was such an idiotic, shortsighted, and rash decision. Why had she done that?
Han's last words rang through her mind suddenly, and she was snapped back to the reality of the situation. Hide…they must be boarding! Oh, Holy Hufflepuff, she needed to hide, quickly. Holly knew that she didn't have time to get back to them, especially if they were near the entrance.
Her eyes scanned quickly over the panels in the wall. Air vent, he had said. Air vent….That would be up high, she assumed, looking at the padded paneling there. Up high—she was short. She'd need a ladder with how short she was.
Holly mentally slapped herself. Now isn't the time for panicked hyperbolic rambling. She bounced on the balls of her feet as she shoved Xenon ungracefully into her hoodie pocket next to the parts of her glasses, reaching up and sliding her finger beneath the metal panels.
They budged with only a bit of pressure. Understandable; there had to be a way to access it for maintenance and repair. Holly wasn't a novice at the use of air shafts for hiding and travel, either, for she had seen it done loads of times in Star Trek. And of course, that makes you an expert, a cynical part of her sneered.
It wasn't actually so high that she couldn't reach it. Holly shoved a few panels aside, resting them against the interior of the air vent. It was made of sturdy material, as was the entire ship, so the framework supporting her weight wouldn't be the issue. The issue would be fitting inside it.
Han knew how big she was, and he definitely knew how big the air vents were. She didn't think he'd suggest it to her if he though it impossible to climb into. So, Holly gripped the edges firmly in her sunburnt hands and placed a foot against a section of wired wall, somewhere that she wouldn't end up ruining by hoisting herself up, and kicked off.
Holly hadn't been a professional mountain climber or anything, but she had climbed her fair share of trees. Once both her feet were off the ground, she swung a knee up to hook around the edge. It was incredibly painful as the side dug into her skin, but Holly was thankful for her long jeans to provide some protection. The next part was trickier: wiggling and adjusting her body, she managed to lodge her torso in the vent, though that took much time and much painful metal digging into her ribs to achieve. Next, there was just the simple matter of inching forward far enough to get her legs in.
The side pressed against her hips uncomfortably, but it wasn't too much to bear. What was the most difficult was then sliding backwards, just so she could replace the paneling. What use was hiding in the air vent if anyone passing by could clearly see where she had come in from?
Once the panels were replaced, Holly was shrouded in complete darkness. Cool air pressed against her face, smelling musty, but not moving. Just existing in its stagnant state. It made her feel even more cramped. She wasn't claustrophobic, however; she actually preferred closed-in spaces. It was just that, in most cases, she wasn't hiding from a task force of aliens who were set on killing herself and her friends along with her.
Holly only hoped that Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids had made it in time. Everything was silent now—even the air was not moving past her now, despite the fact that this was an air vent; as it turned out, powering down included shutting off life support systems as well. Because of the growing silence, which left a heart-racingly suspenseful ringing in her ears, Holly was sure she'd be able to hear any blaster fire. After all, they couldn't be that far; Holly had doubled back a bit after retrieving Xenon….
Speaking of, the little bug was still in her pocket. And she was laying on her stomach. Nearly exclaiming aloud, Holly raised herself slightly from the bottom of the shaft and dug in her pocket—thankfully, Xenon had curled himself into his protective shell. He was much stronger this way, more compact, with less appendages to be crushed. His fragile legs tucked within the outer shell, Holly sighed in relief and placed him back into her pocket. Only, this time, she put him in the pocket of her jeans. She may not have been in the best of moods with Xenon at the time, but she didn't want to crush him.
Her glasses were poking into her stomach, but she hardly even noticed that. The adrenaline causing her blood to pump stopped it from hurting quite so much, although it also meant that her heart would beat nearly twice as fast. Holly was sure everyone (her new friends, new enemies, even her old family back home) could hear the thud of that damned organ against her ribcage. She quickly shoved her bag in front of her, way out of sight in the darkness, to allow herself more room.
Holly strained to hear anything happening beyond. That was a good thing, she supposed, because if there was something that happened, she would have heard it. Han and those Stormtroopers hadn't exactly been quiet when they skirmished at Mos Eisley, and the sound would undoubtedly reach her ears. They couldn't have been that far away from her, could they?
Her muscles were tense as she waited with baited breath for something to happen—the silence was disconcerting. While Obi-Wan's plan to hide right below their enemy's feet had been better than the rest of them could have done, she could now see the obvious cons that would be brought into light only after the plan had been enacted. Her mind reeled through the possible outcomes, and Holly didn't know whether it was because of true probability or just plain pessimism that none of the outcomes were good.
Possibility one: they'd search the compartments. Unlikely, she assumed, because the only reason Han even has those units is because people don't usually look in them. But then again, he's not usually smuggling for the Imperial Military, is he?
Possibility two: they would have dug themselves into a hole out of which they can't climb. So, the guards don't search the compartments and they're relatively safe, for the time being. What did they think the Empire would do then? There were probably guards stationed outside the ship anyway, even if their searches had turned up negative. How would they ever hope to evade their watchful eye? And even if they could, they'd never escape any tractor beam, let alone any on this station.
Possibility three: they have scanners, something like infrared goggles that can sense the human's body heat. The droids would be safe enough, but the men….would the scanners be able to pick up their heat through the metal? Likely. They'd be doomed….would the Empire kill them, then, once they're found?
Holly shuddered at the thought. Though there were an infinite amount of worst case scenarios that she could theorize, Holly forced herself not to think of everything bad that could, and undoubtedly would, happen to her friends soon.
Holly's heart had not calmed, but she was growing accustomed to the constant state of tension. She was beginning to think that, perhaps, nothing would happen. Maybe there hadn't been anybody at the station after all; it was just a default precaution for the tractor beam to reel in any passer-by ships. Maybe they were all on holiday.
Yeah, likely.
Just then, there was a sound to cause her ears to perk up and her head to turn ever so slightly. It was the sound of running boots, thudding noisily against the metal floor. This ship was obviously built for neither comfort nor homeliness, merely for convenience, and there were no sound-canceling systems installed. Holly wasn't surprised.
She completely stopped breathing as the sound of booted footfalls grew ever louder, echoing through the nearly empty halls. Holly's wide eyes shot left and right in the darkness, trying to see if there was any way possible that they could see through the paneling. There didn't seem to be, and she listened to their speech in anticipation.
"This corridor's clear," came the voice of what she could only assume was an Imperial Guard. "You, check the next corridor. You two follow me."
She heard the footsteps going in different directions now, all away from her. She let out a quick breath, trying to keep it quiet, but Holly didn't know exactly how well she did. Yet, when she though that the worst was beyond her, she heard a parting comment from one of the troopers:
"Do you think the scanners will turn up anything?"
Her breath hitched again as she awaited the reply, strung in suspense. "I'm not sure," his comrade replied. "I don't even know why this one has such tight security. I mean, it's a piece of junk!"
Why was everyone dissing the Falcon? This thing was awesome! They didn't know how to appreciate things.
Their conversation grew muffled as they strode out of earshot. Holly was frozen, staring straight ahead, as if it would help her see. She didn't want to see, though—seeing would mean light, and light would mean that the panel was taken away. That would mean that someone had found her—she'd be captured, she knew it. All Holly wanted to do, now, was curl up in a corner, out of sight and out of mind, until this was all sorted out….until they were ready to get out of here.
But where would they go? Alderaan had been destroyed, apparently. How was that even possible? She knew that the Vogons did it in science fiction, but this wasn't science fiction anymore. It was real.
For her, at least.
Why couldn't she have gone to a completely safe world where nothing abnormal whatsoever could even entertain the possibility of happening? Yeah, that eliminated nearly everything she knew about (fictional or otherwise), but at least she'd have survived the week.
Han was real. Obi-Wan was real. Chewie, R2, and 3PO—they were all real. Luke was real, and he was possibly one of the most unusual of all of them, even if that was only because he was the hero. But if they were real, that meant that all of those on Alderaan were real, too. Every voice of terror that Obi-Wan felt through the Force was real.
And they were all dead.
She would be too, soon, Holly just knew it. Dead and gone—her stupidity had gotten her into way too much trouble. Neither Han, nor Luke, nor Obi-Wan, nor Chewie (well, maybe him), nor the droids especially would have run after a bug. Some stupid decision that was indeed—Xenon could probably have hidden safely. Holly hardly had a chance.
Why had Xenon run, anyway? Holly fished him out of her pocket as silently as she could, and after listening closely a moment to make sure she couldn't hear anyone around, whispered to him quietly, yet harshly.
"What did you do that for?!" she demanded of him. She couldn't see him, and he couldn't see her, but she knew where she was, and although it was quite in vain, she fixed him with a scathing glare. She was not happy with her droid now. "Do you know how much trouble you've gotten me into?"
He didn't reactivate immediately. She knew that he could hear her; he had done so before while in this state. So, why wasn't he answering? Was he mad at her? Maybe he had run off, thinking that this would be a good time to escape his (from his point of view) tyrannical rule. That was ridiculous; he had not shown any sign of distaste before. Did he not want to make much noise, or was this just the silent treatment? Holly hadn't done any wrong unto him, after all—it was Xenon who ran off to begin with.
Which brought her to another question: Was it, perhaps, some danger that he sensed that made him race off were the others much worse off than she was now? If so, how would Xenon know? And, to further negate that, he had looked as though he were running towards something rather than from it. Holly couldn't even explain to herself why she had that impression; she supposed that there were noticeable signs of purpose that she just couldn't put words or reason to.
Well, if Xenon wouldn't answer her….how would she ever know? Even if he did answer, she couldn't speak his language. She entertained the highly improbable possibility that he could write it out, but then she remembered that he didn't know her language.
And, after that, Holly remembered that she was currently squeezed inside an air ventilation shaft, just waiting for the "scanners" to arrive, so it wasn't likely that she'd ever write anything again.
Pity. She did have nice handwriting.
Holly's muscles had just begun to relax ever so slightly when, once more, the sound of footsteps berated her ears. She let out a shuddering, fearful breath before remaining completely still, shoulders stiff, as if that would stop her lungs from wanting air. She quickly shoved Xenon into her pocket, yet it was a harsh movement that she would have rather not needed to make. However, if Holly was captures, she'd want to have Xenon stowed away out of sight.
The footsteps sounded different this time. They weren't as….methodical, as steady as the others had been. The owners weren't marching, that much was obvious; and she could tell that there were more than one. Were they the scanning crew? Could their scanners penetrate whatever was blocking her from them?
Holly didn't have time to postulate the nature of these visitors. Her thoughts were cut short as the sound of metal clashing against metal reached her ears from the outside. It was getting louder, closer; they were ripping away the panels, and soon they'd reach hers—soon, they'd find her and she'd be captured and shot and oh, God she was scared….
Light flooded the ventilation shaft, sharp and bright against Holly's eyes. They were wide with terror and alarm as she stared, unblinking, at the raised gunpoint of a white-and-black armored trooper, like a deer caught in a car's headlights.
Oh, blood and bloody ashes, she was dead. Or would be soon, at any rate.
42.
So! I've introduced something more to this story...shouldn't be too hard to guess what. It'll come up more. Not sure when or how often, but just enough to serve its purpose.
And thanks to the wonderful people who took the time to review:
Himeno Kazehito: I'm glad you liked that one and hope this chapter is up to par as well. As for Yoda...I'm looking forward to that, too. It'll be a bit of a challenge, but still fun!
SecretaryOfHell: Yeah, Luke had always been one of my favorites. And, thank you; I do try to keep Holly in her character, and I'm glad you think it's realistic.
myharlequinromance321: Thanks! Characters, to me, are as important, and sometimes more important, than the world they live in...that's why I've spent so much time on that aspect. Hope you liked this chapter!
Guest: I do completely agree with your argument. While Holly believes in God, however, it is not to her as the Force is to Obi-Wan, for example, in that she did not dedicate her life to the studies of God. Part of her character is that she thinks things through, when she takes the time to dwell on the aspects of religion. And, another thing; Luke doesn't quite know as much about the Force as the audience does, and he certainly doesn't know as much as Obi-Wan, so some things he says will be wrong and it's a challenge the characters will have to work through. (Hopefully they'll be a bit more clear when they get to Yoda). Thanks for reviewing; I do like when people point out things the disagree with! It kinda lets me know more.
EGGS: Thank you! Yeah, Vader is basically the face of Star Wars. She'll recognize him, certainly, and it'll be interesting to see if he lives up to her expectations...
Well, before I sign out, there are a couple of things I'd like to mention. First, I may have to change points of view in the next few chapters to relay the story better and more completely. Just a warning.
And, another thing; when I first began the story, I set the characters, genre, et cetera, for the entire trilogy, Episodes IV-VI. I didn't know it would be this long, though, and I'm wondering; should I separate the three movies into different stories or keep it all in the same fic? If I separate it, I'd have to change a couple of its classifications, but everything it already says will come up in the next movie, or in the time in between. Anyway, I just wanted to know your thoughts. Should I separate it?
Thanks for reviewing, following, and favoriting! Have a nice day.