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Thirty-Eight
(Inside the Fire)
A thousand points of fire glowed in the near-darkness of the Star Forge corridor overlooking the factory section, huge curving walls to one side, a floor-to-ceiling viewport at the other. The long corridor was completely filled from one end to the other with Burned Ones, each of the cultists' hands flickering with fiery light.
"Remember what happened at Alderaan," Anakin murmured to his cousin, who stood at his back with blade upraised in guard position. "They can't hurt us."
"That was just one of them," Ben murmured back.
"It's no different this time," Jenn assured them.
"If you are not part of the Fire," all of the cultists said in eerie unison, hundreds of voices joined as one, "you will be consumed by it."
And with that, they attacked. Flames roared out of the crowd at the four Jedi from every direction, surging through the ranks like a wildfire through a dead forest, but the flames did not consume the cultists, instead flowing around them like water around rocks in a streambed.
But the four Jedi were ready; they joined together in their own version of the link, wrapping it about themselves like a cloak. The inferno swirled around them like a fiery hurricane, with the four of them at the eye.
At Pyrron's direction, more and more heat flowed at them, until the plastic in the corridor melted with an acrid stench, the metal glowed red-hot, and the viewports began to bubble and crack. The heat was unbearable, like standing next to an oven going full-blast.
But still they held firm.
Finally the flames died away, leaving everything in the corridor charred black or still glowing with absorbed heat, all except a perfect circle around where the Jedi stood.
Pyrron took a few steps forward, and Ben could see two clean spaces where he had been standing, like negative footprints. Even his robe had been untouched by the inferno.
"So it is true," Pyrron mused aloud. "The four of you cannot be consumed by the Fire, yet neither are you fully part of it."
"I told you," Jenn said confidently. "Your powers can't hurt us."
"Indeed they cannot," Pyrron replied mildly. Slowly, a wicked grin came over his face. "But there are still myriads of us… and only four of you."
He raised a hand, held up two fingers together, and paused for just a fraction of a second before sweeping his arm forward. The horde charged as one, arms outstretched, a clutching, grasping crowd hundreds strong, all screaming a manic battle cry.
Ben swept out his hand and knocked back the first wave with a powerful telekinetic shove, but there were just so many of them that the horde regained the lost ground almost immediately. Along with the other three, Ben met the charge with blade spinning. Every stroke, every slash, every chop claimed another howling maniac, but there were always more waiting to take every opponent's place.
In the midst of the fighting, beyond his battle calm, Ben felt a deep, rumbling vibration in the deck beneath his boots, more than could be accounted for by the hundreds of other boots pounding along the corridor.
Suddenly the four Jedi ducked and dropped to the deck as one, only a moment before the viewport exploded inwards in a shower of shards and fire. A rushing, shrieking wind snatched some of the lighter pieces right back out of the hole, sucking more than a few gray-robed figures along with them, but the rest of the horde was too closely packed together, and were able to hold their ground.
Ben drew in a last breath before all of the air was sucked out of the corridor, his ears popping painfully with the change of pressure, but he shielded himself as best he could with the Force, using the technique Jenn had taught him to hold his breath.
Laser-cannon fire flashed into the corridor, blasting away huge swaths of the crowd. The sound of the weapons fire was accompanied by the howling rumble of the Millennium Falcon's engines, oddly muted in air too thin to carry the full volume of the sound.
Much of the horde was knocked back by the concussion, but still dozens surrounded them. Ben glanced over at his cousin, and Anakin nodded once in silent agreement.
Together, before there was a chance for argument or discussion, they turned and pushed both Corran and Jenn outside, shoving them through the empty space beyond the gaping shattered viewport toward where the Falcon hovered nearby.
Jenn was about to throw the boys outside to where she sensed Revan waiting to catch them, but apparently they had the idea first, and she found herself tumbling through the air for several long moments before she landed heavily on the Falcon's upper hull near the dorsal gun turret.
Nearby, Corran caught hold of a protrusion on the hull and stopped his slide, but Jenn tumbled with momentum, rolling out of control back toward the searingly hot engines. However, after only two heart-stopping seconds which felt much, much longer, a telekinetic grip took hold of her and she stopped.
She looked up to see Revan standing at the Falcon's top hatch, his long black hair and robe flying around him in the wind, one hand stretched out toward her. A safety line was clipped to his belt, and behind him, she saw the furry head and shoulders of Chewbacca, who steadied the cable with one huge hand as Revan made his way toward them.
Jenn clipped her lightsaber to her belt and began to crawl forward, but just then a laser blast shook the ship and the Falcon bucked like a stung dewback beneath her, tossing her several meters into the air.
In midair, Jenn managed to muster enough concentration to Force-push Corran towards Revan, who had somehow managed to stay on his feet. She landed heavily and rolled again, but managed to grab hold of a vent housing, crying out as the sudden halt in her momentum wrenched something in her shoulder.
The dorsal turret spat fire at the cloud of fighters swarming around them, the sound weirdly muted in the thin air, but Jenn could tell this wouldn't hold off the enemy for long. Squinting against the rushing wind, she looked back toward the corridor and saw the boys' sky-blue and indigo lightsabers whirling furiously, the blades' light stuttering from her point of view as dozens of cultists crowded around them.
We're going to have to come back for them on another pass, Revan shouted to her; she couldn't hear him over the roar of the turrets and the howling engines, but she could still read his lips.
Behind him, she could see Chewbacca pulling Corran inside the top hatch, and the two of them disappeared as the lift lowered.
Another jolt of enemy blaster fire shook the ship and launched Jenn into the air again, but this time she managed to direct her flight somewhat so that she tumbled toward her friend.
Revan leaned out and caught hold of her arm, then pulled her in. "Got you!"
Finally she realized why Revan had managed to keep his feet: he was wearing magnetic boots in addition to his safety cable, which was thrumming like a huge guitar string with the vibrations from the ship's maneuvering.
As the Falcon was forced to twist up and to the side to avoid being rammed by one of the fighters, Revan crouched down and pulled her with him, wrapping his arms around her back to keep her in place, and Jenn held on to her friend in a desperate hug in return, feeling the g-forces tugging her away.
When the ship finally leveled off and she no longer felt like she was about to black out, Jenn looked up over Revan's shoulder back to the corridor, which was now far above them. "They're moving," she said, voicing what she sensed.
As the Falcon was forced away, Anakin and Ben fought valiantly, striving to hold their position as they waited for it to come back on another pass, but there were just too many Burned. Back-to-back, they swept their blades out in wide slashing arcs, the bodies of their enemy piling up around them, but still the gray-robed figures pressed forward.
Finally, some of them managed to pull Ben off his feet, a multitude of hands holding him secure as still more snatched away his weapon. Anakin saw him struggling as he went down in a pile of cultists, trying to push them away with the Force, but there were so many packed bodies that there was just nowhere for them to be pushed to.
Anakin tried to come to his cousin's rescue, but only moments later the ever-grasping hands pulled him down, too. He kicked and punched, kneed and scratched, even bit fingers pushing at his face, but the weight was just too much, and he was soon buried in a squirming, thrashing nek-pile.
Suddenly the weight lessened and he was pulled upright, but forced into a kneeling position, dozens of hands and arms curled around him to keep him from moving.
Pyrron stood before the two boys, face twisted in fury, eyes gleaming with madness. "I know what you are trying to do. I have a hundred thousand eyes, and I see all that happens on this station."
Then his balled fist leaped out to punch Ben into unconsciousness, but Anakin had no time to react, for only a moment later, the fist came for him, too.
"They've got the boys!" Luke heard Jenn shout, and he reflexively turned away from the copilot's console to look through the open cockpit door.
"I sense them," Vader rumbled from the pilot's seat next to him. "They're still alive, and moving quickly; they're in a turbolift."
"Where's he taking them, up to the master control room?" Revan asked as he and Jenn entered the cockpit.
"No, they're going down," Luke said, eyes half-closed in concentration as he tracked his son and nephew. "They're headed down one of the pylons, the one Jenn and Corran just left."
"He's taken them hostage so we won't blow the charges we planted there," said Jenn, sounding both angry and frustrated. "He's probably headed all the way down to the intake complex."
"Then that is where we shall meet him," said Vader, hauling the Falcon around so hard he tipped the old freighter on its side.
"You know, from this angle, it looks like you're heading for the intake shaft," Jenn said slowly. "Even though you couldn't possibly be intending to fly the ship down the shaft while the plasma is still coming in!"
"You and Master Horn survived the same route," Vader replied brusquely, launching another spread of concussion missiles at a flight of fighters between them and the shaft.
"Barely!" Jenn exclaimed. "And that was just the two of us!"
"Some of the most powerful Force-users in the galaxy are aboard this vessel," Vader said evenly. "Working together, I am confident we can provide adequate shielding."
"For a whole ship?!" Jenn rejoined incredulously.
"I am not putting this to a vote," Vader snapped. "Make your preparations. We go inside the shaft in two minutes."
"You can do this, Jenn," Revan said reassuringly. "We can do this."
Jenn's only reply was a heavy, long-suffering sigh.
In the Belkadan system, in the tactical room of Home One just below the bridge, Malysa Kolos winced in sympathy as the Republic Star Cruiser Bulwark succumbed to enemy fire and exploded. "We can't keep this up for long!" she shouted across the holoprojector well to Ackbar.
"We must hold the line!" the Mon Calamarian admiral shouted back, bracing himself against the railing as weapons fire shook the warship. "The Imperial fleet will be here soon!"
"Admiral, more hyperspace activity!" the sensor officer called down to them. "Incoming contacts at the edge of the system!"
"The Empire?" Malysa asked.
"Negative; more Burned."
Ackbar's flipper-like hands tightened around the railing, but otherwise he did not lose his calm. "Master Kolos, can you and the other Jedi use Battle Meditation to coordinate a mass salvo?" he asked her. "Perhaps we can even out our numbers somewhat."
"The Burned are trying to use their powers on our crews," Malysa said with a reluctant shake of her head. "It's taking pretty much everything we've got to hold them off."
"I see," said Ackbar. "Very well." Consulting the tactical projection, he issued a further stream of orders, but Malysa sank back into concentration, trying to do what she could to protect their forces.
But still more of the enemy arrived every moment, and she knew they could not keep this up forever.
Back at the Star Forge, Leia gazed unseeing at the great station through the broad viewport of the Phoenix's throne room, her mind stretched out over the battle as she did her best to keep their forces coordinated despite their lack of communications.
Along with the screaming and howling the Star Forge was transmitting on all frequencies, it sent out similar waves of emotion through the Force, making it difficult to concentrate. Leia had to strike a balance, keep a light touch on the minds of their soldiers while still keeping them working in concert.
The Phoenix itself, structured as it was for amplifying Battle Meditation, made the task somewhat easier, but at the same time more difficult; the station was attuned to the Dark Side, and though Leia knew she was almost certainly imagining it, all around her there were whispers on the edge of hearing in her double's voice.
"Take them," Lady Vader's voice seemed to purr in Leia's ear. "Take their minds. They are nothing, mere tools, livestock, their only use whatever you see fit to give them. You are the true power here. They are only puppets, and from this throne you hold their strings."
Leia ignored the whispers and maintained her concentration.
"You've always been a leader," the Empress' voice said, seeming unnervingly like an actual audible sound. "Others have always obeyed when you spoke. In a way, you've always known you were better."
Her fingers tightened around the armrests of the command chair, but otherwise Leia tried not to react. However, she opened her eyes when she felt something touch her shoulder, light as a breeze, insubstantial as a bubble.
She looked up to see a twisted mirror image of herself standing next to her chair, one hand still resting lightly on her shoulder. The distorted reflection wore the dark red, high-collared, long-sleeved gown of vaguely militaristic cut Leia had seen in one of her counterpart's portraits, as if she were a hologram of the portrait itself.
Her own eyes, gleaming red-rimmed yellow instead of their normal brown, gazed back at her, the face she saw in the mirror sneering wickedly in an expression Leia had never worn herself.
"You know what I did with this station," Lady Vader said, gesturing out at the throne room with her other hand. "From this room, I held the galaxy by the throat. With the power of this weapon, I took what I wanted and destroyed all those who resisted. If… our son hadn't betrayed me, if he had taken his rightful place as a Dark Lord of the Sith, your galaxy would even now be helpless before our conquering fleet."
"You're not real," Leia said as calmly as she was able. "You're nothing but an… apparition, an artifact of all the Dark Side energy here, like in the cave on Dagobah."
Lady Vader continued as if she hadn't heard. "This station is the ultimate power in the universe - in any universe. Whoever controls the Death Star holds within their hands the lives of all other beings in the galaxy. Here, you are invulnerable, invincible, and anyone who stands in your way can be dealt with by a mere press of a button."
Leia did not answer, looking instead through the enormous viewport.
"Realize what this means," Lady Vader said, leaning closer. "No more debating with shortsighted, selfish politicians, no more struggling to get things done, no more fighting to persuade stupid beings drunk on their own power to do what they should already know to do themselves. One blast from the main weapon at even the barest fraction of its power, and the Senate building is just… gone. No more squabbling, no more headaches… only you."
"You're wasting your time," Leia said evenly.
"No, you are wasting yours," Lady Vader countered heatedly. "How much more quickly could you get things done when your will is the galaxy's command? Think what civilization could become. Think who you could become."
"You, I suppose?" Leia said, allowing a hint of derision into her voice.
The Empress spread her hands and smiled. "Of course." One hand slowly curled into a fist as she spoke. "I am who you are meant to be, who you want to be." She leaned forward slightly, her voice going low, persuasive, almost sultry. "Who you can be if you just take what is already within your reach. It would be easy, so easy… Everything you have ever desired would be yours."
Leia met her counterpart's yellow gaze coolly. "I already have everything I want," she said calmly. "It's what I'm fighting for."
She flicked her fingers at the specter in a dismissive wave, and it vanished as if it had never been.
Leia sat back in her chair with a sigh, unsure if the apparition had been some Dark Side echo of her counterpart… or just her own imagination.
Regardless, her determination had been bolstered, and she returned to the fight with renewed purpose.
Jag Fel spun his Interceptor away from a charging flight of needlelike enemy fighters, keeping one eye on his friend-or-foe tracker to make sure he was shooting at the right targets. Being completely cut off from the rest of his squadron by that awful howling on every frequency rattled his nerves, but still he pressed on, relying on his deeply ingrained military discipline.
For now, Blue Squadron was staying in three-fighter flights, just trying to stay alive until communications were restored. This was proving exceedingly difficult; already Blue Three was gone and it was just him and Zekk out here, trying to cover each other's backs. Fel had no idea of the condition of the rest of his squadron.
Green cannon-fire from somewhere off to his right alerted Fel to an enemy fighter just a half-klick or so to his left, and he angled his fighter over to lock onto it. Moments later, it was gone, nothing but a cloud of debris and fire.
As Zekk's Interceptor passed overhead, he flashed his running lights three times, their pre-arranged code for 'follow me', and swooped down and toward the Star Forge, firing his wingtip blasters at it for no apparent reason.
Fel was puzzled for a moment, but then he realized where Zekk was trying to draw his attention: two great clouds of enemy fighters heading down the massive pylons, clearly headed for the base and the strike teams gathered there cutting their way into the station.
"Damn it!" Fel said aloud in frustration. "How are we supposed to warn them?"
If only he had the Force, Fel mused, he could reach out and warn Jaina and Qeris, but he didn't-
In the middle of this thought, another occurred to him. No, he couldn't use the Force, but Zekk could; obviously what the Imperial Knight wanted was for Fel to watch his back as he attempted to reach out and warn the strike team commanders.
Fel pulled ahead so Zekk could see him and flashed his own running lights in acknowledgment, then gunned his engine and raced for the base of the Star Forge along with him.
"Change of plans!"
Qeris paused, bringing one hand up to the side of her helmet to reply. "What now?"
"The charges the droids and Master Talmak's team placed in the pylons aren't going off," Bentis replied. "We were gonna blow out a few regulators to see if it turned off the plasma stream while you two were cutting through the outer hull, but nothing's happening. Colonel LaRone says the same thing is happening over in Pylon Three."
"We can still get into the intake complex and turn off the stream manually from the console there," Qeris reminded him. "Can Blue Max open the lockdown doors?"
"Affirmative; already done. Max and HK-47 are in the other intake complex right now with Commander Solo and his sister, and now he's working on ours. YVHK-5 reports that they've got the emergency bulkheads between our complex and the rest of the pylon sealed off, but the Burned are either cutting or melting their way through. We probably have only a few minutes to disable our stream and get out."
"If even one plasma stream is still on, the shield will stay up," said Ami, not looking up from where she was cutting through the hull with her lightsaber. "Done!" she announced suddenly.
Qeris dragged her silver blade through the last few centimeters on her side, then pulled it free. She toggled her comlink again. "YVHK-5, have you cut all the way through on your side?"
"Affirmative," the droid replied. "Statement: You may enter when ready."
"All right, get clear," said Qeris.
Together, she and Ami took a step back and held their hands out toward the two-meter-square section of hull. Under their telekinetic prodding, the thick hull section slid backwards, its beveled edges still glowing red-hot in places, until finally it toppled back into the station with a loud heavy clang as it landed on the deck inside.
YVHK-5 and four of his identical comrades were waiting for them in the corridor beyond. "Report: According to YVHK-12, the enemy has nearly melted their way through the bulkhead at the top of this compartment," he said without preamble as they stepped inside.
Just then, the huge, heavy door to the intake complex slowly rumbled open with a loud whine of hydraulics, retracting with a rasping slide of metal on metal.
Qeris turned back to the boarding hatch. "Ami and I will handle this," she said to Bentis, who stood in the hatchway. "Cover our escape route."
"Got your backs," Bentis replied with a brisk nod of his black helmet, then cocked his weapon.
Qeris and Ami hurried into the intake complex, ducking under the still-opening door, and ran along the circular catwalks running around the outer edge of the enormous circular room. At the center of the room, the thick plasma stream inside its force-field was still painfully bright despite the field's polarization, so Qeris avoided looking directly at it.
Several seconds of jogging and two quick Force-enhanced leaps brought them to the complex's master console. Ami got there first, and pulled off her faceless black helmet in order to see the controls better. Her curly red-gold hair, tucked into the collar of her armor, seemed darker than normal in the harsh yellow light of the plasma stream.
"Emergency shutdown, emergency shutdown…" she muttered, eyes roving over the console. "None of these buttons are labeled in Basic!"
Qeris removed her own helmet with a quick hiss of releasing pressure and handed it to Ami, gesturing for her to step aside. "Fortunately," she said with a light hint of teasing, "I made sure to learn the relevant Rakatan symbols from Revan on the trip out here."
"Oh," Ami said, embarrassed. "Probably should have done that myself."
"Here," said Qeris, gesturing to a row of toggle switches at the right side of the console. She rapidly flipped the covers off, then pushed the toggles. A descending hum accompanied the flipping of each toggle switch as the intake systems powered down.
However, when she flipped the last toggle, nothing happened at first. Just as Qeris reached out to flip it back off and on again, the entire console turned off with an abrupt descending hum of deactivation.
"What are you doing?" Ami asked concernedly. "The plasma stream is still on."
"The console just turned itself off," Qeris said, frowning.
Ami peered at it for a moment, then drew back her leg and kicked the base of the console hard enough that the clang echoed through the kilometer-wide complex for a moment. The screens flared back to life with an ascending hum, the various readout lights glowing in stuttering patterns before steadying.
Qeris turned a wordless, wryly amused look on her companion, who shrugged and grinned. "Works on the Falcon."
"Old Imperial computers are the same way," Qeris replied with a smile as she flipped the toggle again. "It's probably why most standard-issue boots have reinforced toes."
In the center of the room, the plasma stream reversed direction and began to fall back down the shaft, flickering as it passed back out of the station.
"That's it?" Ami asked, picking up her helmet from where it sat at the top of the console.
"That's it," Qeris confirmed, reaching for her own helmet. "Let's go."
But just then, she sensed a warning tremor in the Force: her fellow Imperial Knight Zekk trying to tell her something…
In the intake complex in Pylon Three, Jacen and Jaina had shut down their own plasma stream and were almost back at their dropship when they, too sensed the warning.
Jacen raised a hand to his headset. "Colonel, incoming enemy fighters!" he said urgently, running faster.
"I see them," LaRone replied. He paused for a moment, some kind of screaming audible in the background. "I can't get through to Turc's group to warn them," he said. "There's some sort of overriding transmission on every frequency."
As he ran, Jacen reached out to Qeris and Ami with the Force, trying to warn them himself, but he received no acknowledgment.
Ahead of them, the YVHK droids filed into the open hatch, HK-47 at the rear with Blue Max slung over one shoulder by the little module's carrying strap. Jacen pushed past them, hurrying into the main compartment.
"Can you see them?" he asked as he entered the cockpit, where LaRone and Hiqs sat at the controls.
"Negative," Hiqs replied. "Everybody aboard?"
"We're on!" Jaina confirmed as she entered the cockpit a step behind her brother. "Go, go!"
LaRone reached over to toggle the intercom. "Vazkes, Grave, get ready!"
"Ready," the other two commandos replied from the turrets. As the ship lifted free in a cloud of flash-frozen atmosphere streaming from the compartment beneath them, both turrets roared to life, spitting green fire out at the incoming enemy squadrons.
Hiqs gunned the engine and hauled the dropship around in a smuggler's turn, headed for the now-inactive Pylon Two.
Through the cockpit viewport, Jacen could see the other dropship still perched on the side of the pylon, a swarm of enemy fighters headed right for it. He felt a heavy, sinking feeling in his gut as he realized they wouldn't be able to take off before the fighters reached them, and his ship was too far away to do anything about it.
Sick with horror, Jacen could only watch as a needlelike fighter accelerated straight toward Qeris and Ami's dropship.
"Back!" Qeris barked suddenly, shoving Ami away from the door.
She stumbled, nearly tripping over her own feet, but heard the explosion and saw the bloom of fire just before Qeris threw out a hand toward the door and tripped the emergency close with the Force. The concussive wave from the exploding dropship knocked them both back into the room and down the stairs, but the heavy door dropped down swiftly, drawn more by gravity than by hydraulics.
Ami rolled down the stairs, back across the catwalk, and right over the side beneath the railing, but Qeris was quick enough to grab hold of her hand. Her feet swung free over star-flecked black space far below, separated from them by only a force-field.
"Give me your other hand!" Qeris said urgently, reaching down with her armored gauntlet, fingers open wide.
Her left hand locked around Qeris' wrist, Ami struggled to pull herself up far enough to reach the Imperial Knight's other hand, and finally managed to grab hold. With a groan of exertion, Qeris pulled Ami back up onto the catwalk, where they both sat back against the railing, exhausted.
Ami looked over at Qeris, breathing heavily. "Now what?"
Though Jacen said nothing as the dropship exploded, the back of LaRone's chair creaked audibly under his clenched fingers. Jaina could see her twin struggling to remain calm, and she reached out to place her hand on his shoulder, even as sorrow welled up in her, as well.
"Wait," Jacen said thoughtfully. "Wait, she's not dead. Ami is there with her."
"I feel it, too," Jaina agreed, relieved.
"What about Turc and the others?" Hiqs asked, not looking up from his piloting. "Did any of them make it?"
Jacen shook his head grimly. "I'm sorry, no."
"Damn," LaRone muttered quietly, sinking back in his chair. After the briefest of pauses, he straightened up again, his tone crisply professional. "So what can we do to help the survivors?"
"Their plasma stream is off, but there are just too many fighters out here to try something as tricky as flying up into the intake," Hiqs said tightly, rolling them away from a burst of weapons fire. "If we had another ship, I could provide covering fire while they tried it, maybe."
Jaina looked over to see a spark of realization in Jacen's eyes, and they spoke simultaneously:
"I have an idea!"
"So, what are our options?" Qeris asked Ami. "We cannot contact the rest of our forces because the comm relay in the dropship is gone, and there is at least one compartment's worth of open vacuum between us and the rest of the station. Beyond that, unknown numbers of Burned are between us and the turbolift up to the factory section."
"Jaina brought her fighter along in case she needed it," said Ami. "It's masked and stashed up out of the way near the bottom of the factory section, but there are two problems." She tapped the side of her faceless black helmet with her gloved fingertips. "My armor has a computer link to Jaina's fighter just like hers does, but all the way down here with no way to boost the signal, I might be out of range. Secondly, I'm nowhere near as good a pilot as she is and I'd be flying by remote control. I'm not sure I could get the fighter all the way down here intact."
Qeris paused, concentrating, and a slow smile spread across her face as Jacen reached out to her through the Force and described their plan. "Fortunately," she said, "it seems you won't have to."
"Are you sure this will work?" LaRone asked Jaina as they jogged back to the airlock.
"No, but that's never stopped me before," Jaina replied with a confident grin. "I'll only be in open space for a few seconds; the autopilot recall brings my fighter straight to me, and my suit thrusters should still work in vacuum."
Jaina put on her helmet and secured it, waiting as her HUD quickly flared to life and her suit pressurized. She stepped into the airlock compartment, checking her armor seals again.
"Good luck, Solo," LaRone said as the door closed between them.
Jaina grinned. "I make my own luck."
He nodded once, then hit the button and blew her into space.
Jaina closed her eyes after the first few seconds as she tumbled, the Star Forge, the sun, and the fleet outside all blending together in a chaotic spinning jumble. Finally, her suit's thrusters fired in a preprogrammed sequence, bringing her to a smooth stop.
Out here, away from the station, everything in sight seemed to be ablaze in the light from the sun below. Her armor had strong radiation shielding, but still Jaina could feel the heat. She felt very, very small drifting out here on her own without gravity, without a ship, watching as the swarms of fighters pursued the dropship, which fired back at them in a green fury.
Her motion sensors triggered and a light in her HUD flashed as her fighter drew close. Jaina curled up into as tight a ball as she was able in her armor, linking her suit computer with the fighter, and coordinated the two so that she was within arm's reach of the cockpit as her ship slowed down. She grabbed hold of the handlebar mounted just inside the forward section of the cockpit, and when her momentum matched that of her vessel, pulled herself inside with a spin that brought her neatly down into the pilot's chair as the canopy closed around her.
Jaina's gloved hands worked rapidly at the controls, bringing everything completely back online, and she took off in a wide looping arc, crossing into the dropship's firing range for cover. The turrets' fire flashed past her, destroying a pursuing flight of fighters, and she waggled her wings in thanks, since communications were still jammed.
"Now for the tricky part," she muttered to herself.
"That's two of the intakes down," Leia said, leaning forward in her chair. She toggled the intercom. "Thrawn, do you think we can get a shot through the shield now?"
"A full-strength blast might get through, but not with enough power to destroy the station or even do any significant damage," the Grand Admiral replied. "We need the shield completely down for that."
"I don't want to destroy the whole station right now," said Leia. "Just those antennas at the top."
Thrawn paused for a long moment. "That, I believe we could do," he said thoughtfully. "We could certainly do more with communications restored. However, we would not be able to fire another full-power blast for several minutes at least."
Leia's fingers tightened on the armrests of her chair. "Then we'll just have to hope we can last that long."
Jenn kept her eyes closed the whole way down.
Even through her closed lids, she could see the flickers of light as the Millennium Falcon flew straight down the plasma intake shaft at maximum sublight, her deflectors and heat shields turned to maximum but her hull still sizzling. No less than five Jedi and Darth Vader all worked together to protect the Falcon and its occupants from the intense heat of the star-matter flowing up the intake shaft, but still Jenn felt strained to her very limits.
Her scars ached fiercely, as painfully as the original burns which had created them, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on. She focused on staying in the moment, on working with the others to shield this ship against stresses it was never meant to encounter. The heat surrounded her, until she could no longer tell whether the cockpit was actually growing hotter or if it was just the effect of deflecting so much raw energy. Sweat poured out of her, soaking her hair, running down her temples, her neck, her collar, dripping down her back, taut with effort as she leaned forward in her seat, but it brought no relief. Every indrawn breath seemed to be from a furnace, every exhalation a tongue of fire scorching her lips.
Tears joined the sweat rolling down Jenn's cheeks, tears of unbearable pain. Searing agony seemed to fill every cell of her body, worse than the flight up with Corran, worse than what she had felt at Lehon, almost worse than Malachor… but not quite.
Not quite.
From that, she drew strength. Once, during the slow recovery of the power she had lost at Malachor, Kreia had described to her how the Force enhanced certain innate abilities in those gifted with it; some excelled at piloting, others at healing, some had a rapport with living things, others an uncanny talent for finding that which was hidden, or for remaining hidden themselves. Some were born to be leaders, whether in the halls of power or in the chaos of the battlefield.
But Jenn? Above all else, her talent was to survive.
Anything the galaxy threw at her, no matter how hard she was knocked down, she kept getting back up. She always had; all her life, no matter how desperate the situation, no matter how uneven the odds, despite pain, despite sorrow, Jenn kept getting back up, kept tenaciously clinging to life no matter who or what tried to take it from her. Something in her, some small part of her deep inside knew she had to survive, that she was meant for something greater, that some nexus of future events needed her to be there.
As the Falcon continued its desperate flight, Jenn realized that nexus was now.
Her destiny, and that of the others aboard this ship, was at hand.
-/\-
Author's Note: Thanks to hairyhen for beta reading. Till next time, thanks for reading!