Notorius JMG--Book was a dead man. He's always been a dead man. He betrayed the Emperor. ;)

Enfleurage--HEHE. I genuinely enjoy Oh Crap! Moments.

Elentari2112--Thank you very much. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Dude--Truly, it's pretty desperate. And yet at the end, Jorge Car'das doesn't seem too concerned. I wonder why?

Roosterman71--Shhhh!

Thank you all for reading. I've got three chapters to go, including this one. And yes, Roosterman, you're right. River told Vos not to save her yet.

Enjoy.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Escape From Londinum

Mal pulled his revolver. Zoe pulled her knew blaster carbine, as did Jayne. "You get one word why I shouldn't kill you where you stand," the captain said.

"Escape."

Mal blinked. "That's a good word. You get a few more now."

"Lord Vader said they were going to contain the Far Outsiders. That means they're going to destroy the whole system."

Simon rose slowly to his feet. "How can they do that?"

"A new weapon system. It's Admiral Tarkin's pet project," Car'das said. "This is going to be his proving ground for it."

"And why should we believe you?" Inara demanded.

Car'das shrugged. "I was told once by a very great leader that I have excellent insight into the hearts of others. I was pulled into this business, Captain. And this was to be my last mission. When I saw you at Greenleaf, and saw how you and your entire crew risked your lives to save those people, I realized that you were also worth saving."

He removed a hypodermic spray from his pocket. "This is bacta," he said to Simon. "It is the most potent curative agent in the galaxy." He removed a small set of electrodes. "And this is a defibrillator."

Simon stared at the man for a moment, and then took both. He immediately injected the bacta directly into River's distended stomach and then attached the small electrodes to her now bare chest. A red light appeared at the tip of each one. "How do I activate it?"

"It's already active," Jorj said. "It will continue applying shocks to the heart until it starts again, or until its charge is exhausted."

They heard a grunt and spun around to see Quinlan Vos stand from amidst the debris of the battle. He held a hand over his stomach wound and stumbled forward. "Do you have any more of that bacta?" he demanded.

Jorj nodded and handed over a patch. "It's unusual for Lord Vader to leave a Jedi alive," he noted with detached calm.

"I am Kiffar," Vos said darkly. "I can stop or start my heart at any time. Once I realized what River was trying to tell me, I knew I couldn't win. If I beat him, then everyone in this room would have died from the clone troopers. So, I let him strike a blow and stopped my heart." He put the patch on over his stomach and then collapsed to his knees by River.

"It's not working on her," Simon said desperately.

Vos put a hand on her stomach, just under the electrodes. He closed his eyes and poured the Force into her. "It's time to wake, my Love," he whispered. "She's gone. Our daughter is gone."

River's eyes fluttered open. The electrode's red lights went dark. "She's gone," River whispered weakly. Her eyes welled with tears again. "I knew it would happen. But it still hurts so much."

Vos nodded, and then pulled her into his arms. "I'm so sorry," he said to her.

"So what now?" Mal demanded.

As if on cue, the entire building shook and the report of a distant explosion reverberated through the center.

"We leave," Car'das said. "We leave, and we never come back."

Vos stood with River cradled gently in his arms. His face paled both from his own wound and the weight of her. Her bloody dress hung from them both. "Then let's go," he said.

They rushed out the same door used by Darth Vader and into a now deserted hallway. The hall did have windows, though. Through the windows they could see a rain of plasma falling on the city. Towers exploded under the onslaught as tens of thousands died.

"Even the Empire has difficulty with these invaders," Jorj muttered. "That's what Vader gets for throwing trash at them."

"What do you mean?" Vos said.

"It's been months since the Clone Wars ended. The Empire has already been producing a new type of star destroyer for peace keeping. The entire fleet here, except for Tarkin's ship, is comprised of old Clone War machinery with skeleton or droid crews. There are Venators and Trade Federation ships, but it's all old compared to what the Empire is now building."

Vos shook his head. "Venators are top capital ships."

"Not any more."

They reached one of landing pads on the edge of the tower and ran out just as a ball of plasma seared the air only a few hundred meters away. They looked over the edge of the platform as the Census Bureau building exploded.

Walsingham's hover van somehow still waited for them on the pad. They piled in and Wash instinctively ran to the pilot's seat.

"This is worse than Greenleaf," Wash muttered as he spun the van into the air. They were perhaps two kilometers away when the first plasma burst struck the capital building. All of them simply sat in stunned silence as Wash desperately flew them through the burning atmosphere of Londinum.

Vos held River to his chest as she silently wept.

"So what are you?" Mal asked suddenly of Jorj Car'das.

Car'das shrugged. "I was a smuggler until I met a remarkable man named Thrawn. I saw what real leadership was like. Through him I was recruited by Kinman Doriana and became a Sith Agent. I didn't realize it, of course, but I was serving the man who is now the Emperor."

"But you're helping us?"

"I'm working both sides," Car'das admitted with a conspiratorial wink. "About two years or so after the battle that started the Clone Wars, I was attacked by a Dark Jedi. I thought was going to die. But I was healed by a Jedi Master. I began to see things a little differently. I went independent with my smuggling business and have been very successful, but I still had this debt to pay to the Sith. I told myself it was no harm, since I was smuggling the bodies of fallen Jedi into your planetary system. Lorana Jinzler was the only exception, and frankly I didn't know what happened to her. I normally met with Kinman, who would then ship the bodies to Palpatine's front here, the Blue Sun Corporation. But the Vong showed up and changed everything."

Afolabi nodded. "Your Emperor did not plan on them."

"Not a clue. The Sith could supposedly see the future, but these Vong are outside the Force. And they made contact with the Reavers on Miranda first, so it looked just like Reaver attacks. That's how Vos got here." Car'das nodded to the Jedi Master. "He was injured by the betrayal of his soldiers on Kashyyyk and I told the Wookiees I could get him to safety. He was so badly injured it was a simply matter to sedate and detain him in a cryotank. I just loaded his tank into Kinman's shuttle when the Reavers, led by a Vong, attacked."

The van dipped abruptly and all speech stopped as Wash went into a wild series of maneuvers to avoid incoming fire. "We're coming up on the ship!" he called over his shoulder. "I don't think we're just going to be able to walk into it!"

Mal risked life and limb to unbuckle and look through the front window. "That's a lot of scared people," Mal noted. Terrified crowds broke through the fence line and easily stampeded past the bewildered Alliance soldiers and were surrounding every ship still on the field.

The captain pulled a transceiver from his pocket. "Looks like she's still secure."

"For now," Wash said.

The captain narrowed his eyes, and Wash recognized the look of a hard decision being made. "Hover over her, I'm going to go in through the bridge airlock."

"And?"

"Then I'm going to lift off and find some place to load safely."

"Sure you don't want me to do that?"

Mal looked out the window at the people pawing desperately at the hangar bays, or trying to climb up onto the fuselage. "People are likely gonna die when I lift off," Mal said. "Folks on Greenleaf had sense enough to get off when we lifted. Don't think these folks will. You want that blood on you?"

Wash paled, and shook his head.

The van came to a spot directly over the small access panel over the bridge. Mal opened the door to the van and jumped the three feet down to the deck. Around him, the air smelled acrid and bitter from the incoming enemy fire, and the smell of masses of people. The sound of their screams was as overwhelming as the reports from distant explosions.

"Help me!" one man called. "Save my son!" The man was holding up a boy of no more than five. The boy was crying for his daddy not to make him go alone.

Mal bit his lip, used his transceiver to pop the hatch, and climbed in. The sight of someone entering the ship caused a stir, and Mal barely closed and secured the hatch before a dozen people were on it, trying with bare fingers to pry it back open.

He started the engines the moment he reached the bridge. He stared down at the crowds and felt his eyes sting. He brought many of these people here. They thanked him and thought he was a hero. He was going to leave them all to die.

He couldn't do that.

He grabbed the com and switched to external speakers. "Listen up!" he shouted. The din didn't abate much, so he turned the speakers up to full blast. "I said listen up!" Those nearest Serenity fell quiet.

"I will take one hundred-fifty people on, no more, no less. I will not open my hatch until every one of you backs up to the old fence line. I will only take parents with children. If you try coming onto my ship alone, I will shoot you. Back up, or I take off right now!"

The speakers were loud enough for Wash and the rest to hear. "What is he doing?" Wash said.

"He is doing what is right," Vos said. "Land the van directly in front of the loading ramp."

The first elements of the crowd were trying to heed the captain's orders despite the heavy press of people behind them. The dropping van convinced them to move faster. Wash made sure to land with the van door facing the ramp. They all piled out with weapons ready as Mal dropped the ramp.

"That van is my crew," Mal told the crowd over the speakers. "They're ready to shoot. Now, parents with kids line up."

As Wash ran into the ship toward the bridge, Quinlan Vos handed River to Simon and moved to stand alone before the crowd. He looked at the wall of people, and the sheer power he projected made them fall still.

"You and yours," Vos said, pointing to a young couple with their kids. "You, with the boy." The father who pleaded with Mal to take his son ran forward. "You, and you. And you." And so it went. With precision and authority, Vos choose who came, and who was going to be left behind. He did not hesitate.

One man started forward and almost started a riot, until Vos struck with Force lighting. The man flew backward, dead before he hit the ground, and the spectacle further terrified those close to them to obey.

Finally, the last family entered. "No more," Vos said. "I'm sorry, but any more and we will all die. May the Force be with you all."

He turned, and everyone ducked into the ship as the crowd rushed forward. The van proved their boon, providing sufficient blockage for them to close the ramp. Before it was even closed, Wash had the ship airborne.

Vos left the monitoring of the crowd to Jayne, Zoe and Afolabi. Through the Force he checked on River and felt her presence, weakened but awake. He then ran to the bridge where he found Mal and Wash weaving their way through the darkening skies of Londinum.

Something with too many wings going way too fast zipped by the front of the ship, followed by a pair of rocky Vong fighters. "What was that?"

"An ARC fighter," Vos said. "I've flown those before. If the Vong are already in the atmosphere then we don't have much time."

Their com system pinged. "This is Alliance Orbital control issuing a general retreat order. The Imperial ships appear to be falling back. We don't have any way of defending ourselves. Any ships that are space capable should withdraw. Maybe the Imperials will have mercy on us. This is a general retreat order. All ships, fall back."

Wash pushed Serenity hard and she obeyed with finesse. Her nose climbed and she made a dash for orbit. The skies above them blazed like nothing seen before. Explosions lit the skies as Imperial ships blew up or Vong craft ruptured. The battle was so huge that it surrounded the whole planet in a sphere of ships, all of which were firing on each other.

"I'm not finding a good way out!" Wash said.

"Go way from the Vong," Vos said. "The Imperials aren't interested in wasting ordinance on Alliance ships." He pointed at a small civilian ship that was moving untouched between a pair of Venator destroyers.

"Okay," Wash said.

Serenity spun about almost on a dime and the two outboard thrusters burned at full power as the pilot shot the ship toward the Imperial picket lines. Beside them, one of the white and crimson Venators began exploding. Wash couldn't help but watch as Serenity paralleled the explosion and death of the massive ship. "My God," he whispered.

"Watch the fighters," Vos warned.

With an alarmed cry, Wash corkscrewed the freighter between a flight of ARC fighters, then dipped abruptly to avoid a Victory-class destroyer. That destroyer too began to explode, and the shockwave of the explosion threw Serenity for a loop. "Will everything around here stop blowing up?" Wash demanded.

Suddenly, they were past the picket. The Vong were quickly closing, but had not yet arrived at the point of space they emerged in. Plus the Vong were concentrating on the Imperial ships, not a featureless little freighter.

The Jedi removed the black cube Valorum had given him from his robes and placed it into a previously unnoticed slot in the nav computer. "We're on the far side of the system right now," Vos said. "We're going to have to fly a tight orbit around the sun to reach the nearest hyperspace lane. Wash, the coordinates are coming to you now."

"Got them."

With that, the worst of the crises was over. Even with a small hyperspace jump, they were still an hour away from the tightest portion of their passage by the sun. Vos crossed the pantry and saw Jorj Car'das with the people below, working with Jayne and Zoe to contain them. As he continued across, he stepped into the pantry and saw boxes piled high with foodstuffs. Somehow, Valorum had managed to get Serenity restocked.

That wasn't where he wanted to be, though. He continued through until he reached the infirmary. River was there on her back, looking up with a slightly drugged expression as her brother sat on a stool and leaned between her legs to repair the damage done during childbirth.

Vos came to her and took her hand. "Are you in pain?"

She smiled at him. "I've been thoroughly medicated. Like old times."

"She tore pretty badly," Simon said as he worked. "The baby was large." He looked accusingly at the Jedi.

Vos smiled wanly, and then turned his attention back to River. "I only understood what you wanted at the end, Little One. But I still don't understand why. We could have found another way. Why did you think we had to give the child to them?"

"She will be raised by a monster," River said, "but she will never be a monster. I saw her, Quin. I saw her. And saw what she will be. I saw that she will have a role in the galaxy. She'll be a hero. She will be a Jedi, like her father before her. I saw it." She began weeping then, gently under the calming influence of the drugs her brother gave her. "If we tried to keep her, you would have killed Vader, but then his soldiers would have killed us all. You said they almost killed you, and that they killed other Jedi. You know it's true. None of us would have survived if you killed Vader."

Vos held her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingers. "In your vision, did you see if you ever find her again?"

"It ended with her," River admitted. "I couldn't even tell if I ever saw you again."

Simon looked up then, and Vos also looked startled. "What do you mean?"

"I died," River said. "And when I did I saw things. Khaleen is waiting for you, Quin. She's waiting for you with your son. She loves you, and she's waiting for you. Just like she promised she would."

Simon saw a strange thing, then. He saw the rough, powerful Jedi master hold desperately onto River's hand while he wept.

Hours later, they emerged from their last short hyperspace jump on the edge of the supermassive star's inner gravity well. Almost the moment they reverted to real space, they saw something that wasn't supposed to be there.

"What is that?" Wash said as he looked at the nav charts. "There aren't any planetoids charted this close in."

"It's not a planetoid," Vos said. As they drew closer, they saw he was right. It looked almost like the skeleton of a geodesic sphere with several sections missing. The only intact portion was a core large enough to hold fifty star destroyers and a funnel which ran from the huge core to a massive sauce-shaped disc framed by the rest of the structure. Around it floated a fleet of ten ships larger than anything in the battle they just left.

Jorj Car'das chose that moment to step onto the bridge. "There it is, the Emperor's special weapon," he said. "Tarkin needed a proving ground for the superlaser technology, and the Emperor needs to contain the Far Outsiders. It's serendipitous for everyone except the poor people of the Alliance."

"What do you mean?" Mal demanded.

"Those shuttles you saw were allowed to leave the battle because none of them are hyperspace enabled. They won't be able to escape. They're going to make the star go nova. The Empire will contain the Far-Outsiders and anyone with knowledge of them."

As Car'das spoke, the huge dagger-like ships pulled away from the strange object and started flying along the same course Serenity was following. "We'd better hurry," he said.

"We're at full burn," Wash said. They quickly approached the object and saw that the disk that comprised the only complete portion of the skeleton was pointing directly at the star. Suddenly six green beams of energy speared out from the emitters along the edges of the disc and seemed to meet and combine at an invisible juncture over the center of the disk.

The different beams turned into a single, thick beam that struck into the heart of the star. As the crew of the fleeing ship watched, the surface of the star seemed to collapse inward around the blast.

Something happened to the super weapon. A light shone brilliantly from the center of the core. A moment later it expanded and they could all tell now that it was an explosion. The explosions continued to escalate in brilliance and size, tracing a path up the funnel from the core to the disc.

Suddenly the whole weapon evaporated in an explosion dwarfed only by the storm on the surface of the star.

"I guess Tarkin's going to have to go back to the drawing board," Car'das said.

"Something's happening," Wash said.

They turned their attention back to the star, only it seemed as if they were accelerating away from it much faster than they should have been. The bridge became deathly silent as they realized what was happening.

"It's collapsing," Mal muttered.

"The blast must have destroyed something in the interior," Vos said. "It's no longer stable. It will collapse until the surface strikes the expanding, destroyed core, and the sun will erupt in a nova. Or possibly a supernova due to the mass of this star. Everything in the system will be destroyed, and it will probably eventually form a black hole."

"More important," Mal said, "we'll be corpsified as well if we don't get outta here ma-shong."

"We're at full burn, but we're still in the star's gravity well," Wash said.

Vos viewed the instrumentation at the navigation console. "Gravity fields are fluctuating like mad. This close in we'll only have a few minutes before the shockwave destroys us."

Made tiny by distance, the ship fled the death of their star as fast as it could. They could do nothing but wait was the sun continued its inevitable collapse. The end came in a brilliant, blinding flash of light. "This is it," Vos said. "We have two minutes."

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Wash shouted, though no one actually said anything to him. Others from the ship ran onto the bridge to see what was happening. Zoe saw the approaching wall of fire and grabbed her husband's shoulder, but otherwise said nothing.

Jayne took one look, shook his head, and ran back to his bunk.

Afolabi held up his chin. "No matter what happens, it's been an honor to work with you, Captain."

Mal turned and looked the man over. "Still kicked your ass."

"You did indeed," the former Operative said with a genuine smile.

Inara arrived, and without hesitation took Mal's hand in hers.

Suddenly Wash screamed and everyone jumped. "There's an open patch. We're going to hyperdrive!"

With the flick of a switch, Wash sent Serenity spinning into hyperspace away from the exploding star.

Eight minutes after the star went supernova, the shockwave struck Londinum and Sihnon, and the fleets of ships still engaged in pitched battles. The clones manning the warships were never told that the bridges of the ships were being operated by droids, and the droids did not care about the imminent deaths. The clone fighter pilots were likewise kept ignorant. As was the case through the Clone Wars, they were considered expendable.

The Vong were caught in a pitched battle. Although they realized something was wrong, they were unable to withdrawal despite the overwhelming casualties they were inflicting upon the Imperials.

The shockwave boiled the oceans from the surface of the planets and then vaporized the soil itself; vaporized hundreds of millions, even billions of screaming, terrified people; it utterly destroyed the advanced elements of the Praetorite Vong and the combined Imperial Fleet battling them.

The shockwave continued throughout the complex, artificial system sitting on the edge of the galactic halo. Planets burned to cinders and exploded completely in a domino-line. In Shadow, Kat Reynolds and her son and daughter in law felt first a tremor, then heard an awful roar from the ground beneath them before they died.

The very last planet was Miranda. The Vong forces there detected the incoming shockwave, but even with the hours between when the sun exploded to when the shockwave struck them, they had insufficient time to evacuate the planet. The first planet in the galaxy to feel the feet of Praetorite Vong did not explode like the rest of the planets. It was far enough away that the shockwave merely boiled away the atmosphere and all surface features of the planet, while utterly destroying the worldships in orbit around it.

The last of the Vong in the system died.

Hundreds of lightyears away, an astrogation droid would note the supernova and make the calculations to predict the formation of a black hole. The gravitation distortions were already being examined and recorded, and a general article was sent across the holonet to advise of hazardous hyperdrive conditions in the outermost edge of the Unknown Regions.

Being unexplored space, none noticed. The death of an entire civilization was distilled down to a single sentence in an astrogation chart.