AN: Thank you for the follow and favorite, Cosara Peregringale! It's great to have you on board.

Chapter 37

"Status report," Thrawn called as they dropped out of hyperspace immediately above the planet.

"Sir, their fleet is located just ahead, as you had predicted. Sensors are picking up traces of a firefight on the ground at the defensive grid. Whirlwind and Nightshade are awaiting your orders," the sensors specialist told him.

Thrawn smiled tightly. "Order them to engage-" he broke off as a salvo of laser fire cut through space around them. One of the fighters just off their starboard bow exploded.

"Sir! The defense grid is still active!"

Thrawn swore under his breath and keyed his comlink. "All ships: evasive maneuvers. Get out of their line of fire."

"Shall I begin plotting a jump, sir?" the navigation officer asked nervously as a another cluster of laserfire shot past the bridge viewports.

"Begin plotting, but do not make the jump unless ordered, Lieutenant," Thrawn told him. What had happened to Chiara and Lieutenant Kres'hast'antro? The Springhawk rocked as a laserblast caught them square on the aft deflectors. I have to give them more time, he thought. Hopefully, they had just gotten held up on the ground. He couldn't bring himself to consider the possibility that they had been killed or captured. "Helm, bring us around closer to the enemy ships and engage. Keep them between us and the planet so that they can't fire on us without risking hitting their own ships."

"Thisa! These things apparently have their own energy cells and the power grid is just for resupplying their power. Any idea how many shots these things can fire without recharging?" Chiara called over the din of the firing weapons.

He shook his head at her grimly as he continued to fire on the remaining alien attackers. "I don't know. Certainly enough to cause serious damage to our forces. Probably enough to destroy them entirely."

Chiara could see the approaching troop transports as they came over a ridge about a klik from their position. "See what you can do to slow them down, I'm going to try to find a way to disable these things." She flipped her lightsaber off and clipped it to her belt, then jumped straight up, landing lightly on the nearest gun emplacement. The sound of it going off at such close range was like a thunderclap. Ears ringing, she drew her lightsaber again and plunged it up to the hilt in the targeting electronics. The huge weapon stuttered and the barrel of the laser cannon drooped towards the ground.

Chiara jumped down and sprinted towards the next gun, repeating the process. One of the aliens realized belatedly what she was up to and fired at her. Chiara was so intent on making it to the next gun that she almost didn't react in time. The bolt grazed her torso, leaving a long burn across her ribs. She snarled in pain and kept moving, thinking only of the fact that if she didn't disable these guns, Thrawn would die.

"Captain, we've confirmed - three, make that four, of the guns have ceased firing," Thrawn's sensor officer told him.

Something must have gone wrong with the plan to destroy the power source. Still, if the guns were being taken down individually, at least that meant that some of their ground force was still alive. Despite the knot of dread in his stomach, Thrawn was willing to bet that Chiara was one of the ones still fighting, if she hadn't forgotten her promise to avoid any reckless behavior. There were nearly two dozen of the guns down there and it would take time for her to disable all off them, but at least they could avoid being destroyed for the next few minutes, they stood a reasonable chance of survival.

Thrawn tapped at his command board. "All vessels, the defensive grid is being disabled, but there seems to have been a delay. Continue with your assigned targets, but make sure to keep them between you and the surface. Fighters, attack pattern virvib lio'cvotar," he ordered.

The fighters were small and agile enough to be at little risk from the groundside weapons. They swarmed around the nearest capital ship, skimming bare meters above the hull. As with the ships that had attacked the base, the weapons blisters on these ships were so poorly designed that they could not fire without causing considerable damage to themselves. A squadron of fighters boiled out of the hangar bay to in answer to the Chiss clawcraft.

Another laser bolt from the ground canons sizzled past the bridge viewport. "Helm, take us closer," Thrawn ordered, hoping that Chiara wouldn't take too long to destroy the remaining weapons.

"Chiara?" Thisa called, the strain of his wound and the effort of the battle evident in his voice.

"I'm a little busy right now," Chiara called back, slashing at another of the defense canons. Ten down, twelve to go. There was no way she could disable all of them before the reinforcements arrived but she had to try. Instead of taking time to jump down from the emplacement she was currently perched on and then climbing back up another, Chiara took two running steps ad leaped toward the next one. Halfway through her arc, she realized she wasn't going to make it. She could almost hear Thrawn whisper "reckless!" in her ear as she slammed into the structure, the impact knocking the air out of her lungs. She managed to hook her elbows over the ledge and hung there for a moment, trying to catch her breath.

She pulled herself painfully up onto the canon, feeling certain she had broken a couple of ribs. Chiara made quick work of that canon before moving on to the next one. This time, she took the safer route and jumped down before sprinting to the next one and using the Force to augment her leap onto it.

She had made it through another five when the alien reinforcements arrived. With the power grid destroyed and Chiara wreaking havoc on their defensive gun emplacements, they aliens had no reason to hold back. They came in with weapons blazing, sending the Chiss scrambling for cover. Chiara ignored the weaponsfire that filled their air, focusing on taking down as many of the weapons down that she knew were pinning Thrawn down in the battle that raged overhead.

Thrawn had been right about one thing, Chiara noted: the response time and the disorganized behavior of the reinforcements definitely pointed to these aliens not being able to respond effectively on multiple attacks at once. Five left.Out of the corner of her eye, Chiara saw another Chiss warrior fall to the overwhelming numbers of their attackers.

She leaped up onto another of the cannons, destroying the delicate targetting circuits with two swipes of her blade. The attackers were closing in on her and blaster bolts buzzed through the air around her like a swarm of angry insects. Four more. She stumbled and nearly fell as she leaped down and started racing towards her next target, distracted by the deaths she felt through the Force. Please, don't let that be the Springhawk, she thought desperately as she regained her footing and jumped atop the next weapons emplacement.

"Helm, get us behind another of their ships," Thrawn ordered tautly as the cruiser that the Springhawk had been hiding behind and pummeling abruptly exploded.

"There are just three of the defensive lasers still functioning, Captain," the sensors officer told him and the Springhawk took refuge behind another enemy vessel.

"Excellent. Once the last one stops operating, join the Nightshade and the Whirlwind," Thrawn ordered. They had actually fared quite well so far, all things considered. It helped that two of the alien ships had been on the ground when the groundside team set off the explosives that had lined the hold of the captured vessel, taking the other two ships with it in a fiery death. Aside from the single clawcraft that had been lost immediately after they came out of hyperspace, they had been able to avoid further casualties. Using the enemy cruisers as shields against the base's defensive grid was severely limiting, though.

Still, even with their limited mobility, they had managed to destroy all of the enemy fighters and three of the heavy cruisers, so far. A fourth was beginning to vent atmosphere as the fighters swarmed over it, open it slowly to space.

"Sir, there is only one groundside weapon left," the sensor officer updated him.

"Prepare for attack pattern bon'hah," Thrawn said, suppressing a cold smile.

As Chiara jumped down from the second to last canon, she knew she would make it through the aliens who ringed in her final target. Taking a deep breath, she hurled her lightsaber at the final gun emplacement. It struck the canon, hilt first, and fell with a clatter into the structure. She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender as the aliens closed in around her.

"Put down your weapons," she called to Thisa and the three other remaining warriors. Thisa looked at her in shock. "Trust me, Thisa," she urged him. Slowly, he complied, dropping his charric on the ground and putting his hands behind his head. The other Chiss followed suit. The aliens herded them together not-so-gentle jabs from their blaster rifles. Chiara bit back a cry of pain as one of them poked her in the ribs with the muzzle of a blaster.

"I hope you have a plan," Thisa muttered, wincing as well as one of their captors prodded him in his wounded shoulder while the lone remaining weapons emplacement continued to thunder, spitting laser bolts up at Thrawn's ships.

Chiara gave Thisa a tense smile. "Watch and learn." Suddenly, a shaft of blue light appeared briefly inside barrel of the final laser turret just as the weapon fired again. What the aliens had failed to notice was that she had, in face, deliberately missed when she threw her lightsaber at the last canon. While they were distracted by herding Chiara and the Chiss soldiers into a cluster, she had used the Force to levitate the lightsaber into the air and slid it down the barrel of the massive gun. She had triggered the activation stud just as it began another firing sequence.

The blade must have hit a vital system, because instead of firing into space, the next shot exploded in all directions, blowing the entire structure into shrapnel. Chiara used the Force to call one of the discarded blasters to her hand and opened fire on the stunned and reeling aliens.

A few hours later, it was all over. Thrawn had decimated the enemy forces in relatively short order once he was no longer pinned down toy the defense grid. As an added bonus to Chiara and the warriors, the shock wave from the massive explosion that resulted from her unconventional destruction of the final canon had incapacitated most of the aliens. Apparently, they were quite sensitive to harmonic vibrations and the shock wave had irreparably damaged their delicate hearing, as well as their sense of balance, leaving them unable to stand.

The alien leaders had been quick to surrender to Thrawn once their fleet was destroyed. Thrawn had put down in the Springhawk just outside the perimeter of the defensive grid to collect the remaining warriors and their wounded. Medic Chaf'alm'itrina had managed to save four of the six Chiss who were still alive when they were brought on board, leaving the total Chiss losses at seven lives.

When Chiara finally left the medbay after having her blaster burn treated, she headed straight for Forward Visual One, where she knew Thrawn would be waiting. Thrawn turned towards her as she entered and gave her a rare smile. She joined him by the viewport and looked out at the alien planet that slowly turned below them. Thrawn put his arms around her, holding her close.

"I'm glad you're okay," she murmured, resting her head against his shoulder.

He kissed her forehead. "From what the warriors tell me, you single-handedly saved the day."

She shrugged modestly. "I had help."

Thrawn's forehead wrinkled. "I also heard that your lightsaber was destroyed. What will you do without it? I can hardly see you fighting with any other weapon."

"I can make a new one," she assured him.

"That one had no small amount of sentimental value to you, though. Why ever did you sacrifice it?"

"It was either that or do something reckless to take out the last laser canon," she told him. "I seem to remember promising a certain someone that I wouldn't do anything reckless, so..."

"Well, I am glad that you remembered your promise, but I'm sorry that you had to give up your lightsaber to keep it," he told her.

"It's okay, really. That lightsaber served as a very valuable reminder to me at one point in my life, but I think I've carried the weight of the past for long enough. This is a whole new chapter in my life. I think it's time for me to have a lightsaber that reflects that and looks towards the future, rather than focusing on the failures in my past."

"And just what does that future look like?" Thrawn asked, brushing a stray piece of hair back from her cheek.

"I'm not quite sure, but as long as you art part of it, I will gladly accept whatever the future chooses to throw at me," she told him.

"Whatever it chooses to throw at us," Thrawn corrected.