A/N: you wanted more Eriana...here you go ;) Two more chapters after this one. Then the epilogue...which I haven't decided which one I'm using yet. I have two written and...I'm honestly torn on how I'm going to end the series. Maybe I'll let you guys decide.
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To Jacen's benefit, whoever had administered the sleeping agent to him knew very little about Jedi capabilities. It was almost too easy for him to stop the flow of anesthesia inside the small device attached to his arm and pretend to be unconscious while he was unceremoniously rolled into the storage compartment on the small ship. Once placed in the compartment, Jacen deactivated the device and went into a meditative state to monitor his surroundings. The transmission between Sherdoy and Titan did not surprise him. In fact, he was somewhat relieved as he was rather excited to meet the man who had replaced Darth Krayt at the tip of the spear that was being driven into the heart of the Jedi Coalition. Unlike with Krayt, Jacen knew this new threat had to be put down immediately. After deactivating the device on Tenel Ka's arm, he meditated patiently as the ship hummed through hyperspace.
Jacen?
I'm here. Jacen thought towards the voice that had interrupted his meditation. How are you?
There was a pause. He could sense she was trying to phrase the question properly before asking it.
I didn't want you to get hurt, Jacen sent to her before she could respond. I've gone up against Droidekas. They're…
Nothing we shouldn't be able to handle together. Tenel Ka finished for him. He could sense the annoyance in her empathic thoughts and cringed inwardly. He really had no way of winning the coming argument.
You're still recovering, Jacen sent. If I ever have to choose between you and winning, I choose you every time.
I have never been won over with fancy words! Tenel Ka's thought was like a slap across the face. I am a warrior…
And my wife, Jacen interrupted. The one person I've been able to rely on my entire life, always, for anything. I can't lose you.I surrendered because I don't want our kids to grow up without their mother and I'm not going to fight a battle that we can't win.
Instead we get dragged in front of Darth Titan in shackles for him to kill at our leisure?
Six guards and a guy who sits at a desk all day? Jacen asked. We could take this shuttle in two minutes. Sherdoy is bringing us personally to Darth Titan. This is the perfect chance to cut both serpents' heads off.
After a moment of silence, Tenel Ka finally responded. This is a fact.
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When the shuttle engines finally disengaged, Jacen awoke to the sound of the storage compartment being opened. The guards jumped to attention, pointing their blasters at him ready to fire when they noticed his eyes were open.
"Oh, did I take your seat?" Jacen asked and pulled himself to his feet. He dropped the shackles into the compartment and stepped out, still at gunpoint, with his hands raised to shoulder height. "My apologies. Please, feel free."
"Put the shackles back on, Jedi scum," one of the guards said.
Jacen noticed that Tenel Ka was still locked in her compartment, and Sherdoy was talking to someone outside the ship several metres away from the bottom of the boarding ramp.
"Let's make this easier for you," Jacen said. He crushed the blasters with the Force and popped the latch on Tenel Ka's compartment. The guards drew their stun batons and tried to rush him, but he simply pressed the troopers back with the Force to restrict them to a distance of two metres from him. Jacen helped Tenel Ka to her feet, and together they looked at their ineffective captors.
"You can put those away," Jacen offered. "We'll come quietly. Please, lead on."
The guards looked at him uneasily but did not budge.
"They don't even work on me," Jacen said and yanked one of the stun batons to his hand. He grabbed it with the business end and let the coursing energy bleed back into the Force as it snapped and hissed against his skin. He deactivated it and tossed it back to the guard as Sherdoy began ascending the ramp.
"What's going on here? Why are they awake and unshackled?"
"Sir, they were like that when we opened the compartments," one of the guards said. "They're offering to come peacefully."
"We are Jedi," Jacen said with a small smile and shrug.
Sherdoy eyed them suspiciously and nodded. "Bring them."
At the bottom of the ramp, Sherdoy's guards were replaced by four Bogan warriors, each holding lightsabers at the ready. They fell in on either side of Jacen and Tenel Ka and followed Sherdoy out of the hanger bay and through the wide corridors of the ship until they reached a tram. They rode the tram for several kilometres until they exited and were escorted for another twenty minute walk to a conference room where the two Jedi were left alone.
Jacen could sense the warriors were outside the door guarding them, but Sherdoy had left. He also sensed ample surveillance in the room, so he sat on the conference table and gestured Tenel Ka to sit beside him.
"May as well get comfortable," Jacen said.
"Do you have a plan yet?" Tenel Ka asked as she took her place beside him. He naturally put an arm around her waist and hugged her closer.
"Of course," Jacen said. Empathically, he finished. I'm waiting to see what they do. You?
You got us into this, Tenel Ka thought. You get us out.
"Well, isn't this cute," a raspy voice came from behind the couple. "Husband and wife assassins. I didn't expect the Jedi to be so bold."
Jacen and Tenel Ka slid off the conference table and turned to face the hologram glowing above the projector built into the middle of the table. A figure about a metre high with a heavy robe covering his entire body held a menacing air. The hood cast his face in darkness, exposing only his goateed chin. A moment later Sherdoy appeared beside him, still holding Jacen and Tenel Ka's lightsabers.
"That's a rather menacing goatee you have there," Jacen said. "Does that mean you're the bad guy?"
"You've never thought life to be anything more than a joke, Solo," Titan said. "In the last moments of your life, I'll show you how big a joke you really are."
"Are you that big of a coward that you wouldn't face me in person?" Jacen asked.
"Better a live duck than a dead vornskr," Titan replied. "Speaking of dead vornskrs, I received a rather interesting report today about a Black Vornskr fleet amassing in the Borleas sector, poised to attack Coruscant. How strong is the Black Vornskr fleet?"
"Why would I know anything about a pirate organization?" Jacen deflected. "I'm a Jedi Master. We don't consort with pirates."
A hearty laugh came from the hooded figure. "This, from the man who married the queen of pirates?"
Jacen looked at Tenel Ka and shrugged.
"What can I say? She's cute."
"You're nothing more than a privileged brat," Titan replied in an acidic tone. "I should've killed you years ago."
"Is the fact that you're not in the room with me an indication of how much you fear little ol'me?" Jacen asked. "If you are who I think you are, you've always been one of the biggest cowards among the Jedi."
"A coward does not race toward battle," Titan said. He gestured to his left where a display activated on the wall behind the hologram. "Watch as I put down your precious pet Vornksrs."
The hologram faded as the room lurched in the familiar sensation of a ship dropping out of hyperspace. Jacen and Tenel Ka moved around the table to the tactical display. Two red triangles indicated the presence of the enormous Obsidian-Class destroyers. Around them were several hundred smaller red triangles which, under closer examination, were mostly Star Destroyers of one sort or another. Fighters began streaming out of the ships and forming up to create a line between the big red triangles and the many green triangles sitting in a scattered, unprepared enemy formation several kilometres away. Jacen began counting the green triangles and he felt like his heart was being squeezed by an invisible hand.
That's too big to be Eriana's fleet, Jacen sent to Tenel Ka. That's almost everyVornskr ship.
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"They're here."
The calm words from the ship's commander were enough to break Eriana out of her meditation, but she already knew the news before he had spoken. Jacen was on one of those ships, and with him both Tenel Ka and Darth Titan. She opened her eyes and blinked away the blurriness to allow her to look at the man who had spoken clearly, and nodded her acknowledgement of his update.
"Colonel Harrington, please use a secure line to inform Admiral Antilles that Titan has taken the bait," Eriana ordered softly before turning around to bark out more orders. "Communication, inform the Admiralty to proceed with plan beta. Get the Rancors up to the front. Ready the Archers and the Swarm. Remember your objectives, keep to them, and stop for nothing! Move, Vornskrs, move!"
As orders began flying out, the haphazardly scattered formation reorganized itself in under a minute to face the oncoming Bogan threat. Eriana smiled at the formation design of General Cooper's – made to look like they were caught unaware, ships were spread out in a way that would allow them to reorganize en mass in any direction that the enemy had chosen to approach from. Even though Eriana was quite certain that they would approach from a core-ward direction, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Fifty of the retrofitted Star Destroyers, code named Rancors, took up formation at the front of the charge and activated their shielding systems. Designed to slightly overlap with each other, they created a wall of planetary grade shields in space to protect the fleet forming up behind them from the superlaser equipped Obsidian-class destroyers. Behind the wall of Rancors were a swarm of Pirhana class assault ships and the Archers – capital ships equipped with high-powered turbolasers based on a scaled-down design of Danni Quee's superlaser that Wedge felt comfortable with granting to the pirate fleet. As the fleet had to be scattered about to provide an equal ability to react from all sides, three more waves of Vornskr ships followed the first with a similar attack pattern. At the very back amid the last of the archers was Eriana's command ship, relatively safe from the attack with a Mandalorian cloaking device keeping it hidden from enemy sensors.
"Focus all fire on the starboard Obsidian and any of the support craft," Eriana directed, knowing that Jacen was on the port Obsidian. She wanted to give her friend every opportunity to escape before slagging that ship. "Harrington, how are we doing on the Pounders?"
"Danni's still working the bugs out on the targeting system," Harrington replied. "It won't be long now."
Eriana gritted her teeth and looked up at the fleet. The first blasts from the Obsidians dissipated brilliantly across two of the shields until the generators powering them blew. One ship was saved by an overlapping shield, but the other ship took a glancing blow that ripped through the white triangular hull and breached the port power generator. The power generator exploded, shattering the hull horizontally down the middle. The ship slowly drifted into two giant chunks as escape pods poured out of it and the ships behind it made careful yet fast course adjustments to avoid it.
"Those two blasts were full power," Harrington said. "One minute and forty-five seconds are on the counter. The Rancors are dropping the wall."
Eriana turned her attention to the tactical display as the Archers began peppering the starboard Obsidian class ship – now displayed with the tag Krayt's Legacy – with their turbolasers a the Swarm of hundreds of Piranha-class ships disappeared and reappeared amid the enemy fleet. True to their names, the Archers wreaked severe damage on the Krayt's Legacy's shields while the Swarm overwhelmed Star Destroyer after Star Destroyer with an incredible amount of torpedoes and laser fire not normally seen from such a small class of ship.
"Archers, ceasefire," Harrington ordered. "Rancors, shields up. Good work taskforce one – Krayt's shields are down to thirty percent."
Space dimmed when the Archers complied with their orders, but the protective shield of the Rancors, while invisible to the naked eye, appeared on Eriana's display. She watched as the second wave of ships finally came into formation, and the third wave was nearly ready to go. With a flash of intuition, she cued the direct line to the wave commanders.
"Taskforce two and three," Eriana said. "Move to flanking positions around taskforce one. Give Krayt's Legacy all you've got. Monitor who those ships are aiming at. If they're pointed at you, keep the shields up. If they're not, give 'em hell.
The two fleets broke out to their assigned directions at full thrust, still moving far too slow for Eriana's liking. As the first fleet began getting closer and closer to the enemy fleet, Eriana watched while the Archers began picking off larger ships as the moving wall of shields allowed them to, but she clenched her jaw in agitation. The Obsidians weren't firing back. Titan was up to something. She looked up around the room and saw her staff busy at work with fleet or ship operations. Except for one person at the weapons control station – Private Kijmur.
"Kijmur, come here," Eriana called out. The young man turned and looked at her with surprise before stumbling to his feet and rushing across the bridge to her side.
"Yes, ma'am," he said with a little bit more fear in his voice than she liked.
"Titan stopped firing the big guns," Eriana said. "What do you think he's planning?"
"I-I-"
"Stop, analyse, and think about it before speaking," Eriana interrupted calmly. "I want your assessment, not regurgitated theory or the first stupid thing that comes to your mind. We have a strategy that is taking large chunks out of their fleet and can minimize the damage of their biggest guns. What would you do to stop us?"
Both fell silent for a moment while they stared at the display.
"A fleet this size needs to be coordinated somewhere," Kijmur said. "I would try to eliminate the people coordinating it."
"We're cloaked," Eriana said. "Their sensors can't see us…"
Eriana looked up with a cold realization of something she didn't plan on. The shield walls of the first and third fleets moved slightly past the direct line of sight of the Tormenter, Titan's flagship, and her heart felt like it sunk below her knees.
"But Titan can target with the Force."
A stream of deadly green light lanced at the Hunter IV from across space and Eriana found herself flying across her bridge.
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"Damage report!" Eriana shouted as she pulled herself out the pile of debris that had been a diagnostic console. She silently thanked her Jensaarai armour for taking the brunt of the impact and got to her feet. Miraculously, Harrington was still at his post.
"The blow grazed our lower port side," Harrington said. "Massive damage to the power grid. Our cloak is down as are most key systems. Life support is on battery only. Casualty reports are coming in high."
"Subspace communications?"
"Still working."
Eriana looked at him viciously. "Send in the Pounders."
Harrington nodded and relayed the message.
Eriana pulled herself back to the console and found Kijmur's body sprawled across it. She pulled him off with one arm and looked at the flickering display as it struggled to show her the image of the combatting fleets. To her surprise, Titan's command ship was showing shields below five percent and Krayt's Legacy was taking heavy hull and system damage. Either the display was wrong, or her Vornskrs were putting up a hell of a battle after seeing her ship get hit.
"Pounders have been launched," Harrington reported. "Also, Fleet Three's wall is now protecting us."
"Finally some good news," Eriana muttered. "What's our expected outcome?"
"Eighty percent or higher," Harrington said and looked over at her. "At least, that's what Danni reports."
"Tell the fleets to jump," Eriana ordered. "I want them out of here now."
She walked up to Harrington and together they watched as the three fleets jumped to hyperspace, leaving a few ships behind that were too badly damaged to escape. A few seconds later, the enemy fleet began to light up. Explosions flared to life as the Pounders, hyperdrive equipped asteroids, dropped out of hyperspace and slammed into the weakened shields of the enemy ships. Anything larger than a Star Destroyer found itself with asteroid after asteroid pummeling them, ripping great holes into their hulls. Krayt's Legacy took the brunt of it with dozens of asteroids slamming into its black hull before it finally exploded in the chain reaction of each of its eight power plants exploding in sequence.
Several more asteroids slammed into the Tormenter, but its shields held off most of the damage before finally collapsing under the strain. When the asteroids stopped, most of the enemy fleet had been decimated, save the Tormenter and the starfighters. Eriana retreated to her tactical display and saw a huge swarm of starfighters change their heading toward the Hunter IV, but they were still well over ten minutes away. A bleep from Harrington's console caught her attention.
He smiled bitterly and looked up at Eriana. "We just got confirmation that the remainder of the fleets have arrived at Coruscant and are setting up their assault with Admiral Antilles. The distraction seems to have worked – they only have two of their Obsidians left at Corsucant. Wedge reports it should be an easy victory."
"How much of the fleet arrived?"
Harrington paused a moment. "About sixty percent. I'm also reading minimal damage to Tormentor's superlaser. It's possible they can't fire it."
Eriana nodded and stared back at the tactical display for a second. "That must be why they're sending the fighters. What's the status of our hyperdrive?"
Harrington called up the appropriate screen and let out a deep breath.
"The power conduits were badly damaged," he said. "The drive still works but we might get half a second at most before the power grid blows out permanently. There's no way we can escape this system."
"It'll do," Eriana said. She pointed to the navigation controls. "Route whatever systems still work through that console. No arguments, just do it.
"Mishell, give me galaxy-wide to every fleet and every base," Eriana said to her communications officer. "Make sure everyone gets this. I want every single Vornskr listening regardless where they are."
Mishell briefly glanced at her leader brooding over the damaged tactical display. The displaced strands of light hair across her slightly scorched face only emphasized the sincerity in her request. As Mishell turned to activate the communication system, Eriana replaced her Bha'lir styled helmet on her head. A tone echoed through the damaged bridge over the sparks of shorting out circuitry and low murmurs between crewmembers, and Eriana cleared her throat.
"My Black Vornskrs," Eriana started. "The bravest and best pirates the galaxy has ever known. Our stand at Borleas is over. Our fleet has been broken, our teeth dulled. But I tell you our spirits have not. We are not dead yet, and this is still our battle to lose. And we will not lose! This was our chance to take a stand against the Bogan Empire, and we made one hell of a stand! Today is not over, and neither are we. In the battle before me of a fleet of over a hundred ships, only one disabled Obsidian class destroyer remains. Their fighters are closing, but this does not mean we are finished! We will still fight with every ounce of our being.
"To the Vornskrs not at Borleas, remember your friends. Remember your fellow beings. Your brothers, your sisters, your clan mates. The Bogan Empire needs to be stopped. The Bogans tell us of how great their power is, but I tell you a greater truth: you are the greatest power in the galaxy. Not because of fear or the Force, but because you fight for freedom. Whatever powers that Darth Titan wants to throw at us, nothing he will do can stand to the power of beings who fight for what is right."
Eriana looked up and saw the steeled looks of determination on every member of her crew looking back at her.
"We started out as pirates, a rag-tag group of misfits looking to make some credits. But we are so much more now." Eriana continued as she removed her helmet, exposing her face to all of the Vornskrs for the first time. "I've seen us change from pirates to patriots – people looking to fight for what is just. Trust me when I say that you all, like me, are Jedi at heart,"
She drew a lightsaber and ignited it, letting them see the yellow blade that she had made famous. "The Jedi are not just people with a mythical ability. They are the beings that see injustice and fight against it. They are the beings that take the biggest baddest assholes the galaxy has to throw at us and sends them to their knees!
"Don't live in darkness. Don't let Darth Titan tell us who rules this galaxy. The end of this war will come when our strength and our courage leads us to standing over his corpse and sending those Bogan slugs back to the hole they crawled out of. Fight on, my Vornskrs. Tell them who rules this galaxy!"
She paused and stared into the camera, letting the gravity of the situation sink in as shorted wires snapped and gasses continued to hiss in the background around her as the ship continued its slow death.
"When you fight, remember me. Remember my sacrifice for you, and live with the courage to do the right thing. The Force will be with you, always."
Eriana nodded to the communications officer, who cut the connection. She did her best to ignore the quiet looks of concern everyone was staring at her with. She took a deep breath and let the moment of melancholy pass.
"Signal the immediate evacuation the ship," Eriana barked. "All hands are to abandon ship immediately. Set escape pods to rendezvous at meeting point gamma."
"You don't need to do this," Harrington insisted. "Any of us would fly the ship for you."
Eriana put a hand on his shoulder.
"I've never ordered someone to do something I wouldn't do myself," Eriana said. "And I don't intend to start now. Reroute the systems and get your ass off my ship. That's an order."
"I must protest," Harrington said. Something in his eyes caught Eriana's attention, but she ignored it. It wasn't the time or place for that.
"We must fight on," Eriana said. "All of us, in our own ways. Regroup and rebuild. Now, go."
As everyone filtered out of the bridge, most of them shook her hand or squeezed her arm in passing. When she was finally alone she put her helmet back on and sat down at the console, strapping into the chair and preparing the ship for what she needed it to do. She finally received an all-clear signal from Harrington's escape pod and began to reorient the ship, lining it up with the massive Obsidian class destroyer looming far in front of her.
"May the Force be with me?"
She reached over, grabbed a lever, and pulled it.
The Hunter IV sprung into hyperspace for a fraction of a second, crossing the distance between its former location and the Obsidian in a heartbeat. The ship shook as the power conduits exploded and it dropped out of hyperspace half a kilometre from the Tormenter. The residual speed of the old Victory class Star Destroyer gave it all the momentum it needed to carry out its final mission.
Eriana watched as the spear-headed point of the ship dug into the side of the Obsidian and the entire ship shook with the tremors of impact. She was thrown about in the chair, feeling like she was going to be torn in half by the crash webbing for the longest twenty seconds of her life that it took for the Star Destroyer to embed the front half of itself into the superstructure of the other ship. When the tremors finally stopped, Eriana let out the breath she didn't realize she had been holding.
"Frak me," Eriana said to the empty ship. "It actually worked."
She locked down some of the controls before unlatching the crash webbing and floating out of the chair. As her stomach lurched, she momentarily reflected that if it wasn't for the lack of artificial gravity, she probably would have fallen flat on her face from the disorientation caused by the collision. She quickly double checked the seals on her suit and that her lightsabers were still in their holsters. Satisfied that she was ready, she drew her lightsabers and ignited them, then kicked off toward the front viewport.
Look out, Titan. Here I come.