Hello and happy summer to everyone!
This next post has two actions scenes in it, with Anakin/Sabe and then Luke/Leia/Chewie. I just want to apologize in advance, as I still really haven't gotten the hang of writing this type (I prefer character introspective scenes and dialogue) but sadly, I wrote myself into this corner, so now I just have to suck it up and face it. Also, because of all the action, the post is a lot longer than I intended, but if I'm ever going to finish this, I have to keep to the outline and include all these scenes in this post.
After this post, there are only three left in Individual Journeys, and then the Years the Followed Series ends and Glimpses into the Future – a fifteen post epilogue – will begin. (I have taken care to ensure GotF does not contain too many action scenes. :P )
Read on and enjoy. Reviews are GREATLY appreciated, and thanks to those of you who have. :D
Chapter Nine:
Individual Journeys
Five Years After Rebirth of the Light
There was no doubt the station was equipped with some kind of surveillance system, and it was only a matter of time before they encountered trouble. Anakin wanted to make the most of that time.
Corridor after corridor, they sprinted through the station, heading deeper into the core where the control center was sure to be located. The inside of the station looked like every other Imperial structure Anakin had ever been in during his time as the commander of the Imperial forces. The same bland coloring, stiff architecture. Cold, impersonal - like everything else in the empire: orderly at the sake of individual freedoms. The further in they ran, the more claustrophobic he began to feel.
"You sure you know which way we need to be heading?" He asked Sabe as the corridor ahead of them ended in a blank wall.
"You sure you can detect trouble before it detects us?" she replied, glancing around in wary confusion.
"Now that you mention it," Anakin replied, hand flying to his lightsaber, "get down!" The words had barely left his mouth before the wall beside them vanished – A hologram! They've been leading us into a trap! – and a squad of Imperial troopers open fired.
Sabe reacted instantly, ducking beneath Anakin and his ignited saber. As he deflected the shots, she rolled, came up behind him, and returned fire. They were so close to the troopers, barely three meters distance between them, that it was only the Jedi reflexes of her companion that offered them protection from the barrage of lasers.
The troopers had no such protection, from either Sabe's blaster or Anakin ricocheting their own bolts back at them. Those in the front dropped instantly; those in the back retreated in surprise.
Taking advantage of this, Anakin pushed forward, forcing the troopers back even farther into the new corridor. The troopers had come from somewhere in the interior. This just might be the door they were looking for.
As he continued to deflect the bolts, Anakin reached out to his enemies. He was relieved to sense these were clone troopers. He knew that, later, this would not make their deaths at his hands any easier – in the back of his mind, Anakin recognized that these and the Tie pilots were the first beings he had killed since renouncing the Darkside – he had been friends with many clone troopers during the wars, and their deaths had hurt as much as any other beings would have. But he was relieved they were not human or humanoid, that the Empire had yet to implement recruitment of Imperial citizens into the military.
Or they had, but none had been stationed here. Anakin felt slightly dizzy with the realization that he knew nothing of the Empire now, only what he learned through Alliance channels. Focus! he told himself. He had not thought being back at an Imperial station, facing clone troopers, fighting those who had once been his to command, would have such an effect.
Sabe, in the meantime, had no problem taking out the troopers, firing with deadly precision into their midst. Only once does she miss; the bolt manages to ricochet off the side of a trooper's helmet, ping on the wall, and fly back at them. Sabe ducked, Anakin swung like he was aiming at a ball, and the bolt flew off again to take a trooper right between the visors on his helmet.
A whirl and clicking sound behind them momentarily startled them, having been so focused on the troopers. From around the corner where the corridor had ended, rolled two battle droids. They didn't look anything like the out-dated models used by the Separatists; their armor had an uncanny sheen to them, as if they had just been oiled, and their weapons had definitely undergone an upgrade.
With the arrival of the droids, the troopers fell back and ceased firing. Sabe kept her finger on trigger, her eyes on the clones. Anakin, at her back, turned to face the droids, his face setting into a looked of steeled determination. The light of his saber reflected off the droids, casting the corridor in a shimmering red hue.
"Lower your weapons," one of the troopers ordered in a voice tinged with a mechanic squeal from his vocorder. "You are under arrest for illegally entering a high-security station and firing on Imperial personnel. Lower your weapons and come with us."
"Oh, I don't think so," Sabe muttered. "Plan?"
"Yeah," Anakin replied evenly, eyeing the droids. "Take my hand."
"What? Why?"
"Put down your weapons!" the trooper commanded a second time, and this time, the battle droids raised their own level with the heads of their targets. It would take only a second, a single breath, to order them to fire.
"Now's really not the time to ask questions." He shifted his saber into his right hand and reached for her with his left. "Take my hand and don't let go."
Sabe did as ordered, feeling self-conscious of the strange action in such a situation.
Just as her fingers wrapped around his, the entire corridor, maybe even the entire station for all she knew, suddenly went dark. The lights went out like they were a snuffed-out candle, and the shock to her senses made Sabe go rigid with fear.
For a long, terrible moment, she was alone in the dark.
Then Anakin yanked on her hand, pulling her in a direction she could only hope was away from both troopers and droids. In the darkness, she could hear the troopers shouting, the blasting of weapons, the droids screeching, the pounding of feet. But all of that fell away behind them as Anakin, running full tilt, pulled her away from the mayhem. He was her guide, the Force his, and together they raced away before the battle droids could activate their search lights.
"What did you do?" she puffed in between breaths.
"Flipped one of the switches in the corridor," Anakin replied, and she could hear the smugness in his voice, so proud to have found a non-violent solution to their immediate predicament. "We've got only a few minutes before – "
Even as he said it, the lights switched on above them, blinking back into life and revealing their location to whoever was watching on the surveillance.
Just as quickly as the light flooded on again, Sabe and Anakin were down a side corridor, plunging back into the gloom as they entered the depths of the station. They had managed to find themselves in a narrow maintenance hallway, cut off from the bright, sterile halls used by the stations other inhabitance. The corridor narrowed further, and under their feet they heard not the thud of solid durasteel, but the hollow clang of meshed flooring. Wires hung overhead and the walls revealed their innards.
"Where are we?" Sabe demanded, looking overhead as they ran.
The Jedi gave her a baffled look over his shoulder. "You're the one who's supposed to know that!"
They came to a halt, preparing to turn back, but in the quiet hum of the station, they heard something else. It was coming from back the direction they had run. For a moment, it sounded only like another part of the station working away, pinging sounds in the distance. Sabe made to head back that way, but Anakin pulled her to him, powered down his saber and listened.
"The droids," she whispered as the realization dawned. Anakin nodded, but remained quiet, hoping these were not equipped with some kind of scanning equipment. If they could sneak away –
"Run!" Sabe shouted, belting past him. The gleaming hulls of the droids rolled down the narrow space right towards them, and Anakin turned on his heel.
They sprinted through the narrow corridor, dodging the wiring and occasional container in their way. The droids had no such problems, barreling over everything, flashing brightly in the dark before vanishing again into the shadows. Gasping, Sabe glanced over her shoulder, past Anakin, fearing even a glimpse of their pursuers.
The darkness of the cramped space gave way ahead in a soft, purplish glow, and they raced gratefully towards it. In an instant, they were trapped not in a small maintenance corridor, but on a grated platform with railings, overlooking what had to be the operating core of the station. Above and below them, the space was a huge cylinder with smooth walls and tiny exhaust ports. High above, the reactor hummed and shivered, letting off an eerie purple light that barely illuminated the otherwise hollow chamber.
And there, further down the platform, stretching from their side of the chamber to another maintenance corridor on the other side, was a solid durasteel bridge with no rails. They made for it without a thought, taking their first steps down its length as the battle droids came crashing onto the platform behind them.
It was perhaps the worst place to be. They were grazing banthas as far as the droids were concerned, with nothing between them and the droids weapons, and nearly half a kilometer to the other side.
Anakin again ignited his saber, and put himself between the droids and Sabe, ready to provide the defense as they ran.
But the droids were not firing.
They stood, weapons at the ready, but seemed strangely content to watch their prey make their way speedily across the bridge.
"Why aren't they firing?" Sabe yelled back at him.
"I don't know," Anakin replied, hearing the Force whispering to him but unable to make it out. "But I've got a bad feeling about – "
There was a loud whirling mechanical sound, a reluctant screech as metal scraped against metal. Sabe stopped running and watched in horror as the middle section of the bridge broke with itself and began to slide inwards. Both side of the bridge became shorter and shorter each instant, their path to safety diminishing, leaving them with the chamber below and the droids behind.
Anakin cursed and reached to his belt for his cable before remembering he had left such Jedi tools in another life time. He had only his lightsaber, and silently prayed Sabe, as an experienced agent, carried something similar on her utility belt.
From the determined, focused look on her face, she did. Sabe whipped out a cord and began to swing it forcefully through the air.
Anakin glanced back at the quickly diminishing bridge, to the droids, then back to his companion. "Here, let me." With the Force, he could guide the hook the first time to an object that was strong enough and secure enough to hold their weight. But as he reached for the cord to take it from her, Sabe released it. With surprising accuracy, it sailed across the chamber and caught one of the exhaust vents.
Not nearly close enough to their only exit.
"Hold on," Sabe instructed, and as the end of the bridge reached their feet, she wrapped her arms around his torso, he wrapping his arms around her waist, and the two went flying through the air.
The sudden sense of danger was like a blaster bolt to his heart, and Obi-wan gasped in the darkness of the tunnel he had been following back to the chamber where the artifacts were stored. Choking on the blue dust that was sucked into his lungs, for a moment his eyes teared up. In the watery, painful spike caused by the dust, Obi-wan saw figures.
For an instant, he could see thousands of troopers engaging ragged looking warriors, of ships barreling down upon them. Then the ships were Sabe, and Anakin, hurtling through the air together, slamming into unforgiving durasteel. A ship, crashing into the base of a mountain, the familiar outline exploding in a cloud of dust.
And then it was dust he was seeing, blue dust swirling in the cave as he coughed and sent it spinning about.
But the vision, the vision had been real.
They were in danger. All of them, the natives and the twins and the others off wherever their mission had taken them.
Heart racing like crazy, Obi-wan's feet did their best to keep up with it, casting him through the tunnel in a head-long rush towards battle.
The chamber wall approached swiftly with the promise of a bone-crushing slam. Anakin spun them so that the impact would strike his back and hopefully protect Sabe from any injury. She tucked her head under his chin, her dark hair reminding him of Padme and how much he really wished he could be safe with her right now in their home on Thanatia, and then his back screamed as it connected with the wall.
He had thought he had braced himself well, but the impact knocked the wind out of him, and the saber out of his clenched hands. Anakin watched it forlornly through watery eyes as it dropped away beneath them, into the depths of the shadowed chamber.
He could almost hear the beginning of a Kenobi lecture.
That was when the droids started shooting again.
Twirling end over end, the saber fell through the empty space. Anakin had been close enough to the wall when he'd been forced to release it that the ends pinged against the wall a time or two, only aiding in its spiraling descent.
The floor raced up to meet it, with a loud sucking sound as a garbage chute opened up and sucked it out of the chamber. End over end, with a great rattle and the occasional set of sparks, the hilt collided against the chute walls as it made its way towards the end, where it would be evacuated into space.
But halfway through the chute, the hilt crashed against a corner as the tunnel made a turn, hitting the ignition button. Immediately, the bright blue blade flared to light, slicing through the chute. It left a trail of dark scorch marks as it burned through the metal and in some places into wiring. Then, through either a bit of luck or the will of the Force, the blade made quick work of a vent and sailed out of the chute. As it met the end of the vent, the hilt once again slammed up against the wall, disengaging the blade.
The lightsaber clattered out of the vent, rolled a ways and finally came to rest in a corridor.
Even at this distance, the droids had remarkable accuracy, and the bolts rained around them. Anakin and Sabe hung from the cable, listlessly swinging against the wall without anything to find purchase on. They managed to avoid the bolts by leveling against the wall with their boots and kicking off as a bolt drew near them. It worked for the first few moments, but almost immediately they needed to think up something else.
"Tell me you've been in worse spots," Sabe called over the resounding echoes of firing in the chamber.
"Well," Anakin replied while eyeing the wall and then the vent high above them for some possible escape, "there was that time I ended up nearly being burned alive in a river of lava. Of course, I was evil at the time, so on some level, I probably deserved it." He flashed her a brief smile that was meant to be reassuring.
Sabe swung out away from the wall, missing yet another blaster bolt from the droids. When her boot flew back from the motion, she managed to kick Anakin in the shin.
"Ow!"
"Well, stop squirming!"
"Squirming is the only thing keeping us alive!"
Following his words, there was an ominous sound from above, and the two looked up to find that the droids had redirected their aim. They were no longer shooting at their prey, but on the cable from which they hung.
Skywalker looked at the vent, wondering if somehow they could climb up the cable before it was too late and crawl into the chute. But the distance was too great. Then he noticed the next vent that was level with the one they were presently hanging from had another some twenty meters below it. Now there was an idea.
"Hold on." Then he pushed off from the wall again and looked down. Sure enough, there was another vent directly below them. He looked to Sabe. "Release the cord." He expected her to stare at him like he was crazy, but once again, the agent surprised him. Releasing her clasped hands from around his chest, stopped from plummeting only by the his hands around her waist, Sabe reached for the release on her belt.
Then they were falling.
With a slight push from the Force, Anakin blew the gate off the vent and as they sailed past it, he reached out and grabbed hold of the edge. Sabe gave a slight gasp, now only suspended by one arm, and grabbed desperately at his tunic. Anakin grimaced, his arm screaming in pain, and he feared he might have dislocated the shoulder.
They had only moments before the droids would figure out their prey hadn't fallen to their deaths. With a deep breath, and the help of the Force, Anakin hoisted Sabe above him. She grabbed onto the edge of the vent and pulled herself in. It was too tight of a space for her to turn around and pull him in after her, but with both hands now at his disposal, Skywalker did the deed himself and followed her in.
They crawled far enough in that the bolts from the droids couldn't reach them, then Anakin collapsed and pressed his face against the cold dursteel of the vent, relief flooding through him.
"So," Sabe managed between her labored breathing. "You and Obi-wan used to do this sort of thing often?"
"Whenever we could find the time." He joked, but it tasted sour even as he said it.
There was a pang of guilt over the thought of his lightsaber, probably space dust by now. Obi-wan had given him the crystals for it, crystals that had been from Siri, the first woman the other Jedi had loved. But, Anakin thought to himself, better that he had dropped the saber then later dropping Sabe when he had needed that hand free to catch her.
In the sudden quiet after the chamber, he could hear her up ahead, breathing hard but hiding her fear well. Now he had a moment to think beyond their survival, Anakin was amazed at the depth of trust she continued to show him.
The tiny darkness and their harsh breathing suddenly reminded him of when Sabe had shoved him into the kitchenette of his wife's quarters on at the base. He couldn't help but smile. The two of them sure had a knack for getting into trouble together.
"We make a good team," Sabe laughed, as though reading his mind. Then she was off and down the vent, despite being completely blind in the darkness. "Come on, Skywalker. Try and keep up."
She had no idea where she was going, but Sabe figured they would come upon another vent before too long, hopefully out into a hallway or a room of some type, and after that they could get their bearings. The near-death experience, not her first by any long-shot, had adrenaline pumping through her at an alarming rate, and Sabe pushed onward with a blind determination.
When the floor gave way beneath her, she wasn't ready for it.
She called out for Anakin, felt her shoulder connect hard with a wall to her right, and the rush of air as she slid down the vent at a steep angle.
"Sabe!"
Anakin rushed forward, grasping in the dark with both hands and the Force, but found nothing. He could sense her, but not her exact location. And then he was falling, hitting the wall on his left and sliding off down the vent.
It wasn't as steep as he thought it would have been, but Anakin still felt a jolt of fear. Not for himself; for Sabe, whose presence was getting farther and farther away from him. The vent must have split, and in the dark, he went down one way, and she the other.
They were separated. He was weaponless. Relief came only for a moment, when a light up ahead announced a vent, then he went sailing through it, out into a hallway, smashing against the opposite wall.
With a groan, Anakin lay motionless on the floor on his side. There wasn't a part of him that didn't hurt. Carefully, he creaked open one eye. At first, all he saw was the gray contours of another bland, gray wall. Then the gray was interrupted by two black shapes. After a moment, Anakin realized they were boots.
"Well," a voice announced, heavily accented with the clipped tones of the Core, "this isn't quite what I've come to expect of Jedi. A little rusty, Lord Vader?"
Anakin groaned as he recognized the voice and pushed himself wearily up on his hands and knees.
"It's Skywalker, Admiral."
"Admiral? Hardly. It's Grand Moff now, Skywalker." Tarkin grinned a slim, oily grin before reaching down to offer the other his hand and helped him up. "Welcome to my station."
In the quiet of the cavern, Padme wandered from shelf to shelf, examining the thousands of Jedi items that six years ago she would never have been allowed to know of, much less examine.
Lightsabers she was familiar with, as both Anakin and Obi-wan carried one, and she had been on numerous missions with them in the past. But she had rarely handled them, or taken notices of the different styles other Jedi carried. Holocoms, training devices, crystals; thousands of shelves held thousands of curious items for her eager fingers to hold and explore. Things her husband knew, her brother-in-law, one day, her children. It was a world she was just on the outside of, and Padme knew this was how most in the galaxy felt about the Jedi.
Farther back in the cavern, lit by the luminous glow of the computer module, she could hear Threepio and Solo exchanging words.
"Oh," the droid was complaining in his familiar whine, "if only Artoo were here! This hunk of junk computer isn't listening to a word I'm saying!"
"That ain't exactly anything new," Han muttered to himself, busy lying on his back under the system, fighting with the wiring. "Listen, Goldenrod, we didn't bring you here to carry on a little chat with your new pal here. Just get it to bypass any security systems and download its guts!"
"I am trying, Captain Solo."
The adolescent sighed and pushed himself out from underneath the machine. Trying to manually download the files wasn't doing any good, and he was concerned about pushing his luck with any further amateur hacking. "Hey, you're a Jedi droid, ain't ya? Do or do not; there is no sithing try here, buddy."
"Again, Captain, my name is See-Threepio. And as a droid, I don't necessarily have access to the Force, though in the recent past, my counterpart Artoo – so unfortunate that you haven't had the chance to make his acquaintance – has claimed to have seen a ghost!And I suppose that would require some Force ability - "
"Would you quit yakking at me and talk to the computer?!"
The droid's stance seemed to stiffen, given the impression of a huff, then turned to the consol. A series of twirps and beeps were exchanged, the monitor flashed and code began to scroll down the screen.
"How very interesting!" Threepio cried. With a stiff jerk, he reached over and pressed buttons on the consol. "Captain, downloading of the files has begun."
The screen flashed again, a time bar appearing at the bottom as more and more of the files transferred over from the computer's databank to the datapads they had brought along.
"What've we got, professor?"
"It's quite remarkable, Captain Solo. There are personal files here, detailing where each Jedi child came from, and mission reports. And here," he pointed to a folder that hadn't begun downloading yet, "lesson plans, written accounts of theological discussions. The history of the Order, dealings with the Republic, some of these files reaching all the way back to the end of the Tetra Empire!"
Threepio stepped aside as Padme approached. She stared at the screen, watching her children's future dissolve into code and reappear on the datapad her droid held.
"Well done, Threepio." She murmured. "Captain, we owe you a great deal of gratitude."
Han stared down at his boots, hoping to hide his blush of pleasure.
"Aw, you don't owe me anything, your ladyship. Just glad I could help."
Padme looked over at him, hearing the underlying message behind his words. The boy was proud to have been a part of something like this. When they returned to base, she would have to remember to make recommendations on his behalf. The future was more than just her children and the Jedi Order. It was the valiant efforts on the parts of the rebels. And of young Han Solo, and others like him.
"Alright then," she said, smiling as Threepio passed her the first full datapad. "Let's get started."
If it wasn't clear to the warriors of the Blue Dust clan that this was a losing battle to begin with, they were certainly made aware of it before long. The clone troopers continued to push them further and further back towards the mountains, merciless in their killing and single-minded in their destination. Though the clan numbered in some few thousands, the Imperials had sent thousands more to the planet to contain the native population.
Above, Ties rained down relentless fire, careless of their targets. Their lasers scorched the surface, exploded against the foothills in bright bursts of blue and orange flame. The charred remains of natives and Imperials alike dotted the terrain.
At last, the warriors could take no more. En mass, they disengaged and fled back towards the caves along the mountains' sides. The troopers gave chase, but as the last natives slipped into the mountain's openings, others above let loose huge nets containing boulders. They came crashing down the mountain side, a flurry of rock and dust, to slam down upon the few troopers who had made it to the caves. The rocks settled in the dust, effectively barring the entrance to the clan's fortress, where they hoped to outlast the Imperial siege.
After a brief cheer for their victory, however minor, the warriors on the cliffs dashed inside, before the Ties zeroed in on their new targets.
The twins caught only glimpses of what was going on down below. They were too busy helping their Wookie companion fight off the entire squadron that had set its sights on the Falcon.
Chewie had at first issued a strict order that the cubs return to the lounge. But Leia had proved herself a fair gunner, and Luke kept a sharp eye on the scanners while Chewie fought to keep the Imperial fighters off their tail. He gave a howl of protest as one of them took a shot at their scope, missing only by a meter as the Falcon preformed another defensive maneuver.
The entire ship rocked as a Tie came up on their left and slammed into them with its wings. The cockpit's occupancy were nearly knocked from their seats by the impact, but Leia held on and with impressive accuracy, blasted the eyeball with one of the side guns.
"Take that!" she cried defiantly.
Chewie joined her with a long growl, then woofed in astonishment as three Ties in tight formation suddenly appeared in the viewport, headed in a beeline straight for them. He pulled back on the thruster, banking hard and swinging them to the left. They slammed into another group that had been trying to sneak up on that side, effectively sending their enemies spiraling out of the sky.
"Hard to starboard! Chewie, hard to starboard!" Luke cried, and just as the Wookie managed the sudden maneuver, the Falcon's left side skimmed along a cliff.
"Hold on, cubs," he barked, yanking on the controls and sending them back towards the mountains. "We're going to try your little trick again. Strap down."
Obediently, both children snuggled into the oversized co-pilot's chair, grabbed the restraining mesh, and belted themselves in. Silently, his eyes still on the scanners and scopes flashing on the control panel, Luke reached between them and took his sister's hand.
"Don't let go, okay?"
Leia nodded, her little body trembling in fright as she sensed what her brother had already known. "Okay," she whispered back.
Then the ship shook, and began to buck in the air.
Chewbacca howled in surprise and turned to look at the controls. The panel was lit up, flashing red and yellow, alarms blaring throughout the cockpit. One particular warning frightened him the most. Their engines had been hit, and they were losing altitude.
His massive paws clutching the controls, eyes on the horizon, Chewie sent up a prayer to the mystical power that had until now protected them. If he could reach the plateau outside the mountains before the ship went down, there was a chance he could bring it in with the belly of the hull taking the brunt of the damage. Otherwise, they would surely be destroyed.
But they were going down too fast. The engines were dead, the hydraulics on their last breath. And two young cubs in the seat next to him, shaking but staring determinedly ahead. Counting on him.
Chewbacca roared, pushed down on the thrusters as far as they would go. They passed one peak, then another, dipping further and further into the range. The Ties had left off their firing, seeing the Falcon managing to stay airborne only by coasting on its last thrust of energy.
The entire ship shuddered and screamed as its port side connected with a mountain, then tilted on its side, skidding down a sharp cliff on its belly.
There was a terrible screech as hull gave way, an explosion. Glass broke, metal collapsed in the heat. Even the blue dust was devoured in the wake of the crash.
With the warriors retreated into their mountains and the Falcon vanished with a burst of fire into the depths between the ranges, the former battlegrounds echoed with a horrible silence.
Hope you enjoyed. I had the most fun with the Sabe/Anakin dialogue. Too much with the RotS reference she unknowingly makes?
Caslia
