Chapter Seventy Three
Tassadar's body was falling, and his mind with it. This was not the momentary disorientation of submersion in the disembodying rift, the wrenching descent that merged into eternity. This was reality. Real wind lashed at his face and kept his eyes closed fast. Real pain burst from his gut.
He flailed, and his arms tossed lamely back and forth against the rushing air current before they were pushed again against his armored sides. He forced one eye open and absorbed a plane of solid, dark blue, broken by the crests and smooth sides of tiny, pale forms. Pain from the wind and from his midsection forced the eye to close quickly, but the Protoss knew.
Freefall, headfirst and a thousand meters above the surface of an unknown ocean. In his best condition, the impact would be fatal.
He attempted to summon the energies of the High Templar to him, imagining a psionic cocoon that could encase his wounded body and willing it to be. Sparks crackled down his arms, but he could manifest nothing more. The exertion prompted a flare of pain from the gash, and Tassadar could feel the soft tissue of his belly tearing and bleeding into the whipping air. Rumbling with aggravation that bordered on panic, he compelled the atmosphere around him to shift and darken, hoping to form a cushion beneath his tumbling form. The Dark Templar technique was rewarded only with more pain.
It's not the fall that kills you, Tassadar.
The Protoss forced open an eye, but he didn't need to. Kerrigan was plummeting beside him now, and feel the sneer on her cracked lips as clearly as he could see it.
Today, that honor is all mine.
Tassadar felt the weight of a clawed hand pressing down on his chest, and his world convulsed. He felt what little energy he had not expended in the futile attempts to save himself from the fall leach away at her touch, and he almost black out. Sheer will and self-preservation instinct saved him from that fate, and when he recovered, the fall had ceased and he was adrift again in the vital, inter-dimensional ocean.
Impulsively, he funneled the ambient energies into himself, desperate to replace what Kerrigan had taken from him. The renewed power flowed into him and he was suddenly refreshed and able to think clearly again, but the respite did not last. As abruptly as the planar juxtaposition had come, her essence assaulted his again, and he felt himself dragged back towards the great quartet of upwellings. He attempted to resist and pull away from the Dark Queen, but her hold was too tight, and he could only bide as she selected a pinpoint of variance from the converging currents and tossed them both into it.
In a baked, rocky desert, Tassadar felt his face ground into the dry sand. Within a murky river, he all but drowned. An alien city on an alien world saw him smashed through dense glass until blood flowed from a hundred cuts. In the blackness of deep space, he froze and asphyxiated at once for an endless second.
Again and again, Kerrigan threw him into the real world, wounding and humiliating the Templar in new and excruciating ways. Again and again, the rifts opened around them and Tassadar felt his strength renew, only to be torn away with the next forced emergence. By the third fleeting, agonizing episode, he knew he was beaten; with his refilling reserves of power and her knowledge of the terrible, inter-planar expanse, she could cast him wherever she wished, wearing away at his ravaged body with each successive trip. Even resisting the fresh influxes of energy couldn't break the cycle; somehow, the ambient power of the rift seeped into him all the same, and Kerrigan gleefully renewed her assault.
Tassadar did not know how many times he was thrown into realspace and then recalled. The myriad of sights and pains flickered across his failing senses and flowed together in his mind, until he could barely summon a coherent thought from the torturous morass. The moons of Aiur. The dark ravines of Shakuras. Human faces. Protoss faces. A familiar starfield, spread out before him like the pages of a book. Whether these were new images, memories, or delusion, he no longer could clearly discern.
When the Templar at last heard his name, he only recognized it because the psionic resonance was clear meant for him.
Glorious, Tassadar, glorious! You truly are a credit to your species. It's fitting that you are one of its last remnants. Any number of lesser creatures would have succumbed to my onslaught, but your body still lives and your sanity is still intact.
Kerrigan filled his perception, and he could see her eyes once again. They were wide and filled entirely by the jet of her pupils, engorged on the very essence of the flow between universes.
I hope you have saved enough of yourself to appreciate this moment, good Templar. The broken shell that your core will soon become is more than sufficient to draw the energy I need from this realm. The portals are already forming and closing at my whim. With you, nothing will be impossible!
A conduit?
The singular thought pierced the swirling fog of Tassadar's intellect. She had referred to him as a conduit before, but he had disregarded the word in his zeal. Now, however, her full meaning took shape before his mind's eye. Before, he had assumed that Kerrigan had needed to sap his own psionic energies to control the rifts, but plainly, they were not nearly enough. Instead, he had only survived so long because the inter-dimensional space had replenished him with each visit. Even now, he felt the endless ocean filtering through psychic pores, clearing away mental debris and focusing his thoughts. The amount of energy available must be limitless, more than Tassadar could hope to ever control or comprehend.
No, the Protoss corrected himself. It was more than any mortal being could reckon with.
Realization swept away his pain. For one precious moment, he perceived the majesty of the great, lost plane about him, untainted by Kerrigan's cancerous presence. He saw the endless currents of fundamental energy that bound universes together, each a small facet of a whole grander than any who had not encountered it could comprehend. He felt the glow of uncounted stars across uncounted realities, each one with its own distinct warmth. He touched the life-force of beings separated by more than space and time, and yet undeniably attuned to the same vastness.
He felt a profound sadness as the moment of clarity faded away, eclipsed once more by the corrupted human's power, but his resolve did not waver. He was a Templar, a son of Khas, and he would see his mission through.
Tassadar could feel Kerrigan's essence closing upon his, her tendrils already outstretched.
This time, he did nothing to resist. Tassadar opened himself to her, intertwining light and dark energies and unfurling them into the waiting maw.
I am yours, my Queen. Eternity awaits.
Kerrigan drew in the Protoss in greedily, seizing hold of each morsel of consciousness and each strand of power with unsurpassed relish. To Tassadar's surprise, the sensation was not at all unpleasant. It was as though he was falling into a deep slumber, with bits of musing and memory drifting off into the ether before his mind succumbed to soft, dark relief.
Distantly, almost oblivious to Kerrigan's voracious feeding, Tassadar set what remained of his being to one task. He reached out into the flow submerging him, willing it align with his diminishing being. As a minute ripple emanated from him through the trackless reach, an unpleasant smothering intruded upon his last, sheltered thoughts, but he did not attempt to repel it. The intruder became as much a part of him as the endless vital sea and the cooling ember of his own mind.
The exertion robbed the Protoss of the last extremity of his will, and silent numbness descended upon him, an entire lifetime of weariness. There was little left to resist the pull of sleep. A few words and cherished memories were all that he had kept with him. For the second time in his life, High Templar Tassadar settled into a deep, untroubled dream.
The Queen of the Zerg continued to devour the other's pith, utterly unaware of his fading thoughts. Years of disappointment, boredom, and meticulous planning had made her victory all the sweeter, and when Protoss light and dark gave way to the pure, untainted stream of cosmic essence, she could not contain herself. Energy flowed into her at an awe-inspiring rate; by herself, she had never been able to absorb even half of what now poured in effortlessly, invigorating every corner of her consciousness. Even in the depths of the inter-dimensional realm, she could feel the flow of universes quicken around her. The sensation was intoxicating, and she drank even deeper.
Grand designs formed in her head, products of long hours of brooding as she waited for her machinations to work their way through the Alpha Quadrant. Immediately, she dismissed them; they were small, fancies of a mind still restrained by the confines of her own limited reality. The Queen of Blades could do far better. Soon, she would surpass even the creators of the device that made her dreams manifest, and her empire would encompass four universes and beyond. And then? She would be a god.
Perfection.
Suddenly, the self-ordained deity had an urge to test her new powers. She had all the power she would ever need to control the rifts now. Indeed, she was so saturated with new energy that she was beginning to have difficulty thinking clearly. With a certain amount of reluctance, she savored the glorious flow a moment longer, and then let it go.
The stream continued its course into her, funneling through the seething shell of her exposed intellect, which grew in volume and intensity with the influx. Slightly irritated and increasingly uncomfortable, the god tried to release the flow again.
It was only when her second attempt failed that she realized that every trace of the Protoss' mental energy had dissipated, and in its place, the great cosmic tide had formed a new current, one that flowed directly into her. There was nothing to let go of.
The painful overabundance of energy arcing through her became excruciating, and the god felt fear. She lashed out at the void, ramming the rending tentacles of her will into its widening stream, but they flared and burned at the ferocity of the torrent. The god tried to withdraw them from it, but the psychic emanations had already melted away, replaced by new strands of streaming energy that joined their primary in its inalterable course. New and unimagined torment washed over her as more energy poured through the fresh tributaries.
The god's perceptions pulsed with obscuring luminance, and the realm around her began to dissolve into a haze of blinding light. Rage, confusion, and fear melted into an incoherent miasma, a thundercloud assailed endlessly by barbs of jagged lightning that settled upon her conscious thoughts, disrupting and drowning them. Self-preservation instinct alone emerged uncompromised, burned free of ambition and Zerg biological engineering.
She thrashed desperately, clawing at the eddies and currents of the plane, conscious of nothing other than a desire to escape the pain that was overwhelming her. The exertion only brought a sensation of bloated, tired numbness, and her aimless throes redoubled.
No longer really aware of her psychic presence in the void, the god thought she could feel her corporeal form wrapping itself back around her. For a moment, the presence of skin, bones, and blood was comforting; this was something she could control, something she could fight back in. It was still hers, and nothing could defeat such a perfect form.
But even as she tried to settle into the body and move her limbs against the suffocating blackness, her extremities lost feeling. She looked at a hand, only to see it scored with blazing rifts that belched helixes of black and blue-white light. The fissures spider-webbed down her arm, and she felt her legs and torso dissolving with the same piercing luminance. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lower jaw had fallen slack and useless, cracked with an inner light that was not her own.
As her eyes went dead, splintered by the sundering light, a single thought blazed in her mind, and her form ignited like a sunrise. The last mental wall breached, a wave of energy burst from what was left of Kerrigan, turning aside lesser flows as it propelled that final memory across timeless space.
Eternity awaits.
Jacen's eyes flashed open and his mouth gaped wide, its edges flecked with froth. A long, strangled scream issued from him, lingering in the chamber's high corners before echoing out into the dusky sky. He could do nothing to silence the wail; every fraction of his willpower was focused inward, and it was all he could do to keep his sanity under the assault. The Jedi's frame convulsed violently and his back arched sharply upward. His arms lay limply to either side, pinned to the floor by unseen hands.
The lithe form of Aayla Secura kneeled over the man, straddling his chest as her palms pressed against his skull. Her eyes bored into Jacen's, piercing them with malice that had brooded and festered for decades before the Twi'lek's birth. Invisible, corrosive energies poured from her fingertips, products of dark arts that no Jedi had ever dared employ. The gleeful, crooked grin that split her youthful features was borne of an ancient bitterness few living beings could comprehend.
The being beyond Aayla's darkened eyes was known by a hundred names, on a million worlds. Darth Sidious. Senator. Supreme Chancellor. Master of the Sith. Schemer. Enslaver. Murderer.
Emperor.
Palpatine delved into the young Jedi's mind, shattering mental barriers and peeling away unwanted memories with a surgeon's practiced skill and a gourmand's appetite. He leafed through guarded secrets and peered at unvoiced thoughts with contemptuous ease, relishing the agony that each new incursion unleashed upon his victim.
"I had forgotten how invigorating it is to break a conscious, unwilling mind," he hissed with breathless exuberance, leaning closer and digging Aayla's fingers into Jacen's scalp. "And you, young Solo, are most worthy of the effort. All this, and you still resist me? If you survive, you will make a fine agent of my will. I am in need of replacements."
Jacen gagged and ground his teeth. His neck bent against the Twi'lek's grip, but she held his head fast.
"I'll… I'll never join you!"
The wicked grin on Aayla's faced widened. "Still so naive. Look at this face. Look at your pretty, alien friend. She resisted me, too. When I was forced from my old body and found her mind, she was as defiant as you are now. Empty Jedi platitudes diluted her thoughts and pointless restraint bound her power, but I dug past them. I found a seed in her, a fragment of doubt, one that dwells within all those who possess power but not the will to wield it. She had seen the pure, uninhibited truth of the Dark Side, and felt its might. It was a simple matter to nurture that seed; it thrives upon emotion, and your friend was a sea of anger and desire, barely muzzled by her masters. Yes, in the end she tried to fight me, but blind serenity and restraint cannot withstand the truth of nature."
"The Light that you worship is nothing, Jedi. A pale illusion conjured up by those too cowardly to harness the full power within them. There is only the Dark Side, and it is the Force. I am the Sith, Solo, and the Force serves me. Secura could not deny my power, and neither will you."
Fresh torment lashed at Jacen as Palpatine tore deeper into his mind. The Jedi knew what the intruder desired, and it was all he could do to keep it from him. When their minds had touched, the Sith glimpsed recent memories, and that meant that he had seen Kerrigan and her rifts. Jacen knew that Palpatine and the Zerg Queen shared more than a fondness for deception; both nursed an insatiable need to dominate. If the fallen Emperor found one of the ancient's gateways, darkness would descend as surely as if Tassadar failed in his crusade.
And so Jacen resisted. He had been trained to oppose mental incursions, but this attacker was unlike any his masters could have anticipated. Palpatine's will towered over his own, and as the Sith Lord's assault continued, he knew that no secret could be sheltered for long. Each barrier he erected withered away under Palpatine's gaze, and each failed effort racked his mind, boiling away memories and miring thought. Sanity itself was beginning to give way before the dark mind, and Jacen knew that once that was gone, nothing stood between Palpatine and his prize.
You can't win this way. Withdrawing and defending won't keep him out. The voice was his, eager and reassured. But there is another way. Fight back.
Palpatine was too strong. Jacen wasn't prepared to face the destroyer of the Jedi Order alone. Even Master Skywalker was barely able to withstand the dark being's might.
But Luke did survive. He did not best Darth Vader by retreating and hiding. He did not endure Palpatine by retreating inside of himself. He lashed out, and his anger gave him power.
But Luke refused to give into the Dark Side.
And his refusal almost killed him. You are alone, Jacen. No one is here to save you.
Jacen summoned the few comforting thoughts he could, flickering candles against the pounding thunder of the Sith's advance. The faces of his family, proud defenders of the Light all. The Jedi Praxeum, where he had learned to control the power within and use it to protect others. The Code, clear and calming. Laura, determined and beautiful.
Each was part of him, and he would not betray everyone and everything that mattered to him. There were worse things than death.
But you will not be the only one to die. Once Palpatine has broken you, just as he destroyed Aayla, he will know of the rifts. Even if Kerrigan does not spread her ruin across space and time, he will. Do you think Mom and Dad will be safe, then? Will Laura?
The serene images shattered. Jacen was alone, trapped by the impending storm.
What good is the Light if it cannot save what you love?
In a moment of clarity, Jacen saw Aayla's face, less than a meter from his own. Her lips were still frozen in a vile sneer, and her pupils were void-like slits, wreathed in flame. The man could still remember her as she had once been, could still see her confident smile and feel the kindness in her eyes. He missed the familiar face, longed for so achingly that the pain almost overshadowed the searing of Palpatine's intrusion.
Their eyes were locked. Jacen realized that he loathed the creature that had robbed Aayla of her body, and now peered out with such arrogance and disdain. He hated Palpatine.
His chest tightened, and he could feel it warming from within. Jacen's jaw closed, and he felt his lips draw back into a sneer.
The huge double doors at the throne room's end began to move. Immediately, Palpatine pulled back from Jacen, breaking eye contact and removing Aayla's hands from the man's head. The sudden cessation of the mental assault and release of pressure shook the Jedi's world, and his thoughts scattered. The kindling flame in his chest guttered, and he fell still.
Palpatine rose slowly, eyes fixed on the doors as they parted.
"Lord Vader," he said through Aayla's curled lips. "Unannounced, as always."
Darth Vader pressed into the open chamber without a word. His black facemask was fixed and emotionless, but the rest of his figure was alive with energy. His heavy cape whipped behind him with a force that surpassed that of the chilling wind. His armored chest and broad shoulders heaved noticeably with every step, and each mechanical breath was a hiss. He held a lightsaber in his right hand, its crimson blade harsh against the dimming light.
"How goes the campaign, my lord?" Palpatine asked, outwardly unmoved by the other Sith's approach. "I trust that nothing untoward has drawn you back to Coruscant? I have endeavored to fulfill your wishes to the best of…"
The gloved fingers of Vader's left hand wrapped around Aayla's throat and he yanked her from the floor. She made no attempt to resist as he brought her face centimeters from his own.
"My son is dead," Vader said, his voice slow and raw.
Aayla's mouth opened and her neck bulged, but no sound emerged. Rather than relax his grip, Vader tightened it, burying his fingers in blue flesh.
"Who did this?" Even through his suit's vocalization system, the words trembled with rage. "Who killed Luke?"
A hand rose to claw at Vader's iron grip, and Aayla gritted her teeth. After a moment's pause, Vader's fingers loosened fractionally, barely enough to allow the Twi'lek a strangled breath.
"It… it wasn't me, my lord." The voice was weak and subdued, and Aayla looked away as Vader pulled her closer still.
"Then who?" the Sith demanded. "Look at me! Who killed my son?"
When Aayla's head turned to face Vader in full, her look of muted dismay had been replaced by an evil grin.
"You did. For all your efforts and all your power, you could not save him, and so you left. You left him here. You left him alone. He died because of your failure and your weakness."
Vader froze.
"Don't be so distressed, my lord," Aayla sneered, her voice swallowed by Palpatine's. "It's not like this hasn't happened before."
Her hands shot forward, pressing against the cyborg's plated chest. Lightning arced between her outstretched fingers, and Vader's front vanished in a burst of light. He fell backward, roaring as blue-white spasms coursed over his torso and down his arms. Free of his grasp, Palpatine alighted easily on the throne room floor.
Several meters away, Vader picked himself up off of his back and rose onto his haunches. His dark cloak hung loosely about him, smoking with the energy of Palpatine's lightning. He stared at the gloating Twi'lek face.
"I destroyed you," he said, the fury in his voice momentarily dulled by disbelief. "I felt you die."
Palpatine shook his head slowly.
"I taught you better than that, my apprentice. You know the power of the Dark Side better than anyone, and you know that I have mastered its every facet. I once offered you the power to stop death itself. That power was not a lie. You were simply too weak to wield it."
Lightning leapt from Palpatine's fingertips, but this time Vader was not caught off guard. He cast back the folds of his cloak and thrust the blade of his lightsaber out in front of him, catching the crackling teeth of energy as they arced through the air towards him. The jagged, luminous tendrils wrapped around the column of light and surged down it towards Vader's hands, but he angled the weapon downward and the flow reversed, sending a cascade of searing energy into the solid stone at his feet.
Palpatine interrupted the attack and withdrew his hands. His back straightened, and he flung the slender arms of his new body out to either side. Two pommels flew from his hips, landing and igniting in waiting palms. Vader raised his own blade from the floor and lowered his masked helm.
"No hidden pawns this time," Palpatine said, mirroring the other's stooped pose. "No reprieve and no mercy. Just as it is meant to be."
Both leapt forward in the same moment. Palpatine closed the gap in a heartbeat, leading with a pair of high, parallel slashes. Vader's blade caught the blows in the same movement, sweeping them aside in a swift, brutal stroke. Palpatine's attack had left his flank completely exposed and Vader powered through towards it, angling his lightsaber under the Twi'lek body's outstretched right arm. Even as the towering cyborg brought his weapon against the other's ribcage, he bent his legs and rolled under the blow. In the same movement, Palpatine swung himself forward under Vader's extended arms and brought his blades against the man's thigh.
The lightsabers barely scorched the black padding of his leg before the limb surged away from them. Vader smashed his knee into Palpatine's chest and the smaller figure fell backwards. He moved to follow up on the blow, but his adversary had already recovered, somersaulting back from her compromised position and landing on her feet several meters away, completely unfazed by the punishing impact.
"How marvelous it is to be young!" Palpatine shouted, twirling both of his weapons in full circles.
Vader was already in motion, covering the distance between them with a long stride and aiming a diagonal cut at Palpatine's unprotected neck. Palpatine dodged the blow easily and pressed his own attack, chopping at Vader's right shoulder with one blade and following immediately with the next. The first gouged the surface of the reinforced composite covering Vader's upper torso, but he recovered in time to repel the next, locking the green and blue beams with his own and regaining his footing.
He bore down on the crossed blades, pushing them back towards their master. For an instant, the Sith were eye to eye once again, their respective masks lit by the lightsabers' eerie glow. Then Palpatine gave way, leaving Vader to compensate for the force of his own assault as he made for his legs once more. Unable to sidestep the incursion, Vader brought the butt of his lightsaber down on Palpatine's neck, forcing him to divert his course and withdraw.
The dueling figures repeated the cycle of parry and riposte several times, moving back and forth across the wide chamber floor. Each time, Darth Vader pressed a strong, focused attack, throwing his physical might and force of will behind a single, devastating blow. Each time, Palpatine's slimmer, younger, lighter body would deflect or dodge the strike and lunge into counterattack, using multiple blades to feint and slip through Vader's defenses. After every exchange, one or the other would give ground, they would share a swift series of probing attacks and parries, and begin again.
With every bout, they moved closer towards the gaping, open edge of the blasted chamber. Vader could see that Palpatine was guiding them there, but he did not care. Rage still coursed through him, and all he could do was press onward. Shadowy faces and distant, instinctual warnings lurked at the edges of his consciousness, but an inferno of anger kept them at bay. The creature before him had to be destroyed. That was all that mattered.
Palpatine's lips creased with mocking confidence.
When they were little more than a meter from the brink, Vader launched another assault. Aayla blocked the blow, let it slide away from her, and then moved to flank her opponent once more. Rather than attack his legs or torso, however, she used one blade to punch several neat holes in the dense fabric near the edge of his cloak. Leaping back from the chamber's precipice, she reached out for the material and swept it towards the blasted rim. With uncanny precision, the trailing edge of the cloak found its way to the brink and the holes she had cut aligned with contusions in the melted surface.
Vader jerked after her, only to find himself pinned by the small of his back. He cast a confused, withering look back at his cloak, and Palpatine charge forward again, scoring a gash on Vader's upper right arm. The man hissed with mounting fury, and hauled against his caught raiment. Woven of the blaster-resistant fibers, the cloak would not yield, and Palpatine moved in for another swift clip.
The Twi'lek face flashed across Vader's vision, and he saw the gleeful sneer upon it. The other Sith was toying with him.
"Your anger gives you power, Vader," Palpatine said, withdrawing from the edge again. "But it controls you. It always has. Fury exists to be dominated and bent to one's will, just as the Force does. I have mastered both. You are their slave. One such as you is fit only to kill and intimidate, never rule. How can you control an empire if you cannot command your own emotions?"
"Perhaps you are correct, my master." Vader grabbed his cloak with his free hand. "Perhaps I cannot command this empire. Perhaps I am still a slave. But I can kill, and whatever trickery you used to escape me last time will not save you again."
With a single movement, Vader tore his cloak away. The reinforced fabric shredded against his might, leaving only ragged scraps protruding from his armored back. He cast away the rest, and it fell from the precipice into the descending night.
Palpatine crossed his blades in front of him.
"We shall see."
Jacen heard the crash and sizzle of crossed lightsabers. He opened his eyes and saw flashes of blue, red, and green played across the dark ceiling far above. For a moment, he was disoriented, distant and shivering in the cold. Then, in a rush, everything came back to him. Aayla. Palpatine. His own brush with the Dark Side. Everything.
He turned his head on the flat, hard stone. Halfway across the chamber, Aayla… Palpatine stood locked in combat, Jacen's lightsaber clutched in his left hand. Against him was a figure he had seen only in old holo-vids and fevered imaginings. Darth Vader stood as imposing and terrible as he had ever imagined, a tower of rage with a crimson blade in his hands.
Two nightmares warred almost within arm's reach, and Jacen knew he could not delude himself into thinking it all a dream. His head ached from the Sith's intrusion, and embers of hate still flickered at the back of his mind, waiting to be fanned again.
Grim realities played across his mind as the two fought, oblivious to their prone spectator. Aayla's dark fate and Palpatine's thirst for knowledge of the portals loomed heavily over him, but somehow the moment of hatred and rage that had almost taken hold of him dominated his thoughts. He had experienced the Dark Side before, but never in such a fundamental and visceral way. This time, it had not been borne of some external force or basic survival instinct.
The impulse to embrace the Dark Side had descended from reason. Calm, altruistic logic, cherished in Jedi philosophy, had compelled him to embrace everything he had spent a lifetime resisting. Had Darth Vader not intervened, and Jacen not lashed out in hatred, Palpatine would have broken him and taken his secret. The Light had not been enough.
Now, the two great evils of Jedi parable fought before him for reasons he could only guess at. If one, malice and greed, was victorious, he would undoubtedly return to Jacen and finish his gruesome feast. If the other, temptation and anger, prevailed, he would have to face a new and unknown danger.
Jacen tested his strength, and found he could barely push himself upright. He lacked the energy to run, much less fight. There was one reserve still available to him, but…
No. I will not give in. Not yet.
The lingering flame behind his eyes receded further, but it did not vanish. He still felt his loathing for the creature inside of Aayla, and he did not have the strength or the will to suppress it entirely.
Jacen pushed himself to the closest wall and sank back against it, allowing the spectacle of the duel to wash over him.
Darth Vader was now firmly on the defensive. Each time he attempted to land a critical blow on Palpatine, the Sith used the speed and flexibility of his younger, unencumbered body to evade the attack and retaliate. Palpatine's hits were minor, some almost cosmetic, but they landed with each clash, and it was plain that the mounting number of gashes across Vader's body were beginning to take their toll. Already slower than his opponent, Vader's movements were becoming more sluggish still, and it was all he could do to rebuff Palpatine's more brazen attacks.
Yielding ground with each engagement, Vader eventually found himself pinned against the far wall of the throne room. Taking advantage of the Sith Lord's loss of mobility, Palpatine hammered at him from both sides, using his lightsabers to threaten Vader's flanks in a quickening, erratic series of slashes and jabs. At last, one found its way past the cyborg's defenses, and Palpatine barked a laugh as he drove one blade into Vader's hip.
Thinking his victim pinned and distracted, Palpatine slashed his other edge at Vader's neck guard. Rather than try to avoid or deflect the blow, Vader switched his lightsaber to one hand and wrapped the free arm around the one that had delivered Palpatine's first strike. The forward lurch and added pressure drove the blade deeper into his side, But Vader pressed on, throwing his weight into Palpatine and pushing off from the wall. The decapitating cut gouged the wall uselessly, and Palpatine was swung around and smashed bodily into the vertical surface. He gasped, the smile gone, and felt the bones in his pinned arm creaking under Vader's brawn.
He flicked the wrist of his trapped limb, raking a lightsaber blade across Vader's back, but the masked titan did not loosen his grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Palpatine saw a descending flash of red. Unable to avoid it physically, he pushed against the down-crashing arm and blade with the Force, willing it to bend away. Vader immediately recognized the exertion and countered the immaterial blast with one of his own, but the distraction was enough to loosen his hold on Palpatine's arm. Releasing its weapon, the thin Twi'lek limb slipped free.
As Palpatine ducked from the wall and spun away around Vader, Jacen could see that her escape had not come without a price. The arm, formerly enclosed in a long, black glove, was bear, its covering discarded in Vader's grasp. Just below the shoulder, smooth, blue skin gave way to a landscape of charred rot. Down to its emaciated, almost skeletal fingers, the arm was blackened with horrific burns that cracked the skin into jagged, irregular scales. Between the fissures livid, whitish growths bubbled and sprawled, spreading tendrils of tumor-like tissue around the elbow and down the forearm.
The Jedi's heart quickened at the gruesome sight; with the revelation, the darkness he felt radiating from Aayla's body became all the fouler, as though Palpatine's last façade had been tossed aside. The loss effected Palpatine as well, and he hissed with rage, throwing himself against Vader before the other could fully disengage from the wall.
The lost lightsaber flew back into Palpatine's hand and his assault on Vader renewed with ferocious vigor. The masked Sith managed to avoid being pinned once more and maneuvered the fight back into the open chamber, but he did so at the loss of any fresh initiative. Palpatine was a blur of light and motion, flanking, striking, and withdrawing faster than Vader could effectively track him.
With a stifled grunt, Jacen pulled himself onto his feet and slowly rose, using his wall for support. His eyes were fixed on Vader as the man wearily blocked another volley of blows. It was clear that he was losing, and as Jacen watched him yield step after step, it was plain that he wouldn't last much longer.
In some ways, Darth Vader was as dark and twisted as his master, but Jacen knew that the threat Palpatine posed was far greater. The Emperor was a true agent of the Dark, merciless and insatiable. For all his crimes, Darth Vader had once been something more, and Jacen knew that, deep inside of him, some part of the good that was Anakin Skywalker still clung. Palpatine had no such inhibition.
Unless…
Jacen's gaze focused on the putrefied arm. He paused a moment, took a deep breath, and pushed off from the wall.
Snarling, Vader lowered his guard, allowing a pair of blows to etch deep gouges in his chest plate. The interface panel on his chest began to spark, but he ignored it. Disregarding Palpatine's attacks, he freed himself to launch one of his own and did so with reckless abandon, bringing his saber to his side and charging forward, intent upon slamming his full force into Palpatine's unarmored flesh.
Rather than attempt to spin around the blow, Palpatine leapt back, barely avoiding a vicious, horizontal chop that easily could have bisected him. Exhaling through clenched teeth, the Sith drew Jacen's green blade back and then whipped it forward, releasing the pommel as he did. The lightsaber became a spinning disk of light and whistled through the air, aimed perfectly for Vader's black helm. Still charging after Palpatine, Vader swung his saber hard and wide, dashing the projectile from the air and sending it spinning away.
Palpatine had vaulted upward immediately after tossing the blade, propelling himself vertically more than three meters. Distracted by the lightsaber, Vader did not see him move, and found the space in front of him empty. He began to slow, only to feel the weight of two feet slamming down onto his shoulders. Reeling from the sudden impact and his own momentum, Vader could do nothing more than glare upwards as Palpatine, balanced precariously on rounded pauldrons, plunged his remaining blade downward. The blue beam punched through the shoulder plating of his sword arm, barely missing Palpatine's foot as it plunged deep into machinery and flesh.
Vader roared, staggering as Palpatine pulled his weapon free of smoking armor and jumped from the cyborg's frame. The towering Sith collapsed onto his knees and clutched at his wounded side. The right side of his torso sagged, its arm flopped uselessly against the floor. Vader's lightsaber rolled from limp fingers, silenced.
"A pity," Palpatine said, his voice dripping with disdain. He rounded the heaving form with jaunty ease, seemingly undiminished by their contest. The only hint of frailty was a slight tremor that ran through his despoiled fingers as they lowered the tip of their blade below the chin of Vader's mask.
The kneeling Sith turned his faceplate upwards to stare into Palpatine's sneering visage. He was silent, save for the weakened, rhythmic sigh of his breathing.
"I had great hopes for you, Lord Vader. You had limitless potential, once, but you have squandered it at every turn. Failure has dominated your life and consumed everyone you have ever cared for. Your mother, your wife, your son; all dead because you lacked the strength protect them from your enemies and from yourself. And now, at the end, you have only your life left to lose. You have failed to best me, and for that, I shall do what your old master should have done so many years ago."
The humming tip of Palpatine's edge probed towards the base of Vader's neck, but stopped abruptly, less than a centimeter from the black plate. He stiffened and looked up from his defeated foe, eyes wide. Then, in a swift, fluid motion, he spun away from Vader, brining his lightsaber up just in time to intercept another blade. Green and blue beams of energy strained against one another, hissing and crackling in the dusk.
Above the crossed blades, Jacen Solo stared into Palpatine's eyes, his gaze resolute.
"I am no fool," the Sith snarled. "This creature surprised me once. Never again."
"You are overconfident, Emperor," Jacen replied. "I resisted you. Darth Vader resisted you. If you couldn't break a failure and an ignorant boy like me, how could you truly break a Jedi knight? I know, deep down, she's still fighting you."
Jacen thought he could see Palpatine's lip tremble slightly, and that was enough to bring a tired smile to his own face.
The reaction was enough to provoke the Sith into action. With terrifying speed, he disengaged from Jacen's lightsaber and slashed at his chest. The Jedi deflected the blow, but Palpatine struck again and again, battering at the other's blade until he was able to flick it from his grasp. In an instant, Jacen felt a hand clench around his throat and the shaft of a lightsaber align beneath his chin.
"You do not need your tongue to tell me what I wish to know, Jedi," Palpatine hissed. "Be silent."
"You're afraid!" Jacen gasped through the vice-like grip. "Afraid that I'm right. What's the matter? Couldn't get rid of her as easily as you thought?"
Jacen felt the agonizing tendrils of Palpatine's will encroach on the verges of his conscious mind, but he did not retreat from them. He would not withdraw this time, would not accept defeat.
"I know you can hear me, Aayla! This isn't his body, and he doesn't have your mind! Whatever he's done, tried to show you, made you do, I know you're still in there! Look at your arm! That's all he is! A scar! A parasite! A weak, defeated thing, afraid of what you can still do!"
The hand at his throat tightened with unnatural strength, and Jacen began to gag.
The blood-shot coronas around the pupils of Palpatine's eyes shimmered with rage.
"Your friend is dead, Solo, not even a memory! Soon enough, I will show you the despair that I showed her."
Jacen's eyes bulged and the veins on his neck swelled, but he still managed to mouth a few words.
"Just… a… scar."
The skin at the base of his jaw flared with pain as scattered hairs burst into flame from the intensity of the blade.
Jacen closed his eyes.
Kill me. That's all I can ask for now.
There was a hissing whoosh from somewhere behind Palpatine. A lightsaber reigniting. Jacen braced himself, expecting the beam at his throat to leap forward. Hazily, he imagined what it would feel like as the column of heat cleaved through his neck, half saw Palpatine spinning back to face Vader once more as his head tumbled to the floor.
The blow did not come. Searing heat still racked his nerves, but it did not resolve into the overwhelming pulse of the lightsaber itself. Disoriented, Jacen opened his eyes a crack. Through the dull glare of the blue edge, he could see Aayla's face, still only centimeters from his own. The Twi'lek face was a mask of bewilderment far greater than his own, fixed squarely on the hand that still held the weapon in place.
A hand which refused to move from Jacen's throat.
There was a brief, bubbling hiss and a muffled thump. The eyes widened, fixed Jacen with an unknowable, strangely vacant stare, and then rolled into white orbs. Aayla's body fell back, crushing hand and lightsaber falling way with it.
Jacen watched her hit the floor and crumple like a discarded doll. The Twi'lek's back was marred by a long, deep gash that stretched from hip to shoulder. The man stared at the smoking, blackened mark for a long moment, mute, utterly lost in the moment.
After what could have been seconds or an age, Jacen felt his legs begin to give way and had to focus, catching himself before he joined Aayla on the cold floor. Beyond the limp form, he could see Darth Vader, stooped and sagging towards his injured side. The Sith's red-bladed weapon hung loosely from his left hand, its tip gouging the polished stone.
Vader was not staring at the fallen figure. The darkened lenses of his mask displayed muddy reflections of Jacen's pallid features, and the Jedi could feel that the man behind them was utterly fixated upon him. He could feel new tendrils of consciousness, touched with the same aura of darkness that Palpatine's had possessed, but… something more, as well. Curiosity. Trepidation. And suddenly… hope.
Without a second thought, Jacen opened his mind fully to Vader. Memories poured forth, everything that the Jedi could bring to mind and fragments even he could barely recall.
Reminiscences flashed before his eyes. He lay wrapped in his mother's arms, cooing softly as her calming voice lulled him into sleep. He scampered about the floor of the Millennium Falcon with his brother and sister as their father chuckled over them with the tall, kind-hearted Chewbacca. He stared in wonderment at his first lightsaber as it ignited in his grasp, Uncle Luke's steadying hands on his shoulders.
He could feel Vader watching alongside him, utterly engrossed by each fleeting recollection. Almost tenderly, the man sifted through Jacen's childhood, lingering over images and sensations as though they were his own, reluctant to let any fade away. When they came to Jacen's years as a learner at the Jedi Praxeum, discovering the ways of the Force under Luke Skywalker's close, careful tutelage, a swell of emotion washed over Vader, but he endured, savoring every snippet of memory Jacen could offer him.
As quickly as they had bubbled up, the recollections drifted back into Jacen's subconscious, and the two were alone in the darkening throne room again. The man across from Jacen stood outwardly unchanged, his battered, dark armor and swept helmet sinister in his weapon's crimson light. But as the Jedi looked more closely, felt beyond the battle plating and life support mechanisms to the mind beneath, he found something new.
Slowly, Jacen extended an arm towards the other.
"Anakin?"
Aayla's crumpled form convulsed. The movement, at first a few reflexive finger tremors and waist motions, moved swiftly up her back and arms, until her neck began to twitch. All at once, her back arched and she flipped over, limbs splayed wide. Both men took a sharp step away from her, but before either could make any other move, the Twi'lek's chin shot into the air and her eyes and mouth opened wide.
There was a shriek, an echoing, ethereal wail that seemed to resonate from the foundation of the palace itself. Icy wind suddenly whipped across Jacen's face, not from the open Coruscanti sky, but rather the space just in front of him. In a moment, it was a howling gale that meshed with the otherworldly screech and overwhelmed all other sensation. Gritting through the assault, Jacen saw that a hazy light had begun to pour from Aayla. It surged from her mouth and eyes in streams of dense mist that collected a meter above her face, swirling with formless, shadowy patterns. As Jacen watched, the cloud became a thunderhead, charged with violent cracks of lightning.
A wrinkle on the billowing surface of the phenomenon flowed through the churning winds until it faced Jacen, and he could see that it was a face, barely recognizable, but dreadfully familiar. Lightning coursed into its eye sockets, and the visage flared into life. The shapeless maw of its mouth gaped hungrily, and the entity coalesced around the face and surged forward, straight at the Jedi. Jacen's body seemed to be rooted in place, and he could do nothing but watch as the cloud enveloped him and the savage, crackling light and shadow became his world.
"No!"
The booming voice cut through the roar of the gale, and Jacen suddenly felt himself falling. In a moment, he was flat on his back, free of the entity's overwhelming presence. The swirling form still hung above him, but there was something else inside of it too, now, a thrashing mass of black. A glint in the corner of his eye caught Jacen's eye, and he turned his head to find Darth Vader's lightsaber pommel on the floor several meters away, abandoned by its master.
The wailing of the gale sharpened into a screech that seemed to shake the stones on which Jacen lay. The thunderhead churned and compressed, its surface immersed in a storm of arching lightning. The entity disappeared into the swirling light, and when it cleared, Darth Vader stood alone. The reinforced composite of his armor ran like melted glass and the rest of his suit was bathed in bluish fire that constantly guttered and reignited, burning away fabrics design to withstand the harshest extremes of nature.
And yet, the man beneath stood straighter and prouder than Jacen had ever seen before. His right arm still hung limply at his side, but he seemed untroubled by it, his posture wide and steadfast even as his vital coverings melted into the whipping air. As Jacen raised himself onto his arms, the man turned to face him. The sharp, intimidating contours of his mask had dissolved away, leaving a soft, muddy mass and wide eyes that glowed with residual light.
"Tell Leia that I'm sorry," he said in a voice that bore no hint of artificiality or anger. "Tell your mother that I'm proud of her. And when you see Luke again, let him know that… that I love him. Let him know that I always will."
With that, he turned away, stared out at the boundless night sky, and began to run. In a few long strides he was at the brink, and he plunged over it without hesitation. The man plummeted swiftly past darkened windows and vast supports, shedding corroded coverings and trailing a wreath of barbed electricity that still lashed at his body.
As he felt his flesh begin to dissolve into the rushing night air, the man sensed the other mind near his own, and knew it perceived everything he did. But as the world melted away into crisp, white light and the other felt fear, he found only a settling calm. Dark memories faded with sight, and for the first time in far, far too long, Anakin was at peace.
Deep within the Forerunner device's computer system, Cortana registered another fluctuation in the structure of the rift network. This one was much like the first she had perceived, just after accessing the machine's navigation and targeting processor. Smaller and somewhat muted, it nonetheless sent a ripple across the plot of three-dimensional space that represented the functional aspect of the portal device. The AI could only guess at the cause of the distortions, but their effects were all too apparent. They swept over the minute lines and horizons that connected the four major convergences of activity on her plot, bending them out of shape and causing their anchor points to drift.
Her frustration and agitation mounted as she tried to keep track of several strands she had focused on as possible egress lines from her own anchor point. The technology she was trying to comprehend and manipulate was quite unlike anything she'd been programmed to encounter, and her brief experiences with Forerunner virtual systems and half-blind rift travel were the only reasons she wasn't entirely overwhelmed.
The rapidly-ticking mission clock in the back of her mind wasn't helping matters.
Desperate to keep a hold on the shifting, immaterial pathways, she focused on the course of one of them as it wound into a major convergence point. Suddenly, she realized that it terminated quite close to the epicenter of the most recent fluctuation.
Things have a way of blowing up around you, Chief, whether you set them off or not. Let's hope you're consistent as I know you are.
"Jacen?"
Aayla lay against Jacen, her head cradled in his arms.
"Yes, Aayla. I'm here."
She was silent for a long moment, her breath slow and labored. Only one eye was open, its heavily-lidded orb defined by a clouded iris of hazel.
"It's gone."
"Palpatine is gone. For good. You beat him, Aayla."
She coughed weakly.
"I did nothing. I fell. I failed."
Jacen shook his head and placed a hand on one of her limp lekku. It was as cold as the night air.
"If that was true, I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. You fought him. You resisted the dark, and now Palpatine is gone."
"No. No, I didn't resist the dark. I tried to use it. I wanted revenge, Jacen. I wanted it so badly. I needed to destroy him, and I didn't care how I did it. And it worked. At least, I thought…"
She paused.
"I failed the Order."
"That's not true…"
"Yes, Jacen, it is. You might not understand now, but I hope that you do someday." She paused again, waiting until Jacen looked her squarely in her open eye. "To be a Jedi is never to succumb. Never to compromise what we believe in for personal reasons. What I may have done at the end doesn't atone for my failure."
Jacen held her gaze. "You're still a good person. You did what you thought was right. You did what you had to."
Aayla's eye lingered on Jacen for a moment in silence, and then slid shut.
"I can't feel my legs."
Jacen tried not to glance at her withered body. Even without much training as a healer, he knew that she was well beyond help.
"I can carry you," he said, trying to sound cheerful. "We should get going soon. I wouldn't really choose this place to set up camp. With all the trouble, I forgot to bring blankets."
The Twi'lek didn't reply.
"How about it? Aayla?"
Jacen looked down at her calm, set features, and knew.
R2-D2 hummed and beeped busily as he interfaced with the security routing hub that was imbedded in one wall of the small communications room. Aside from the holographic projector that took up one corner of the space and the large section of grating that the Master Chief had forcibly removed to reveal the hub propped against another wall, there was plenty of room for the astromech to bustle from port to port as he looked for the correct data feed and plumbed tertiary networks for lightly-encrypted backdoors. The Chief and Reginald Barclay stood well out of his way, flanking the chamber's only door as they waited.
After a few minutes, R2-D2 disengaged from the last access slot and turned to face his new human companions, emitting a triumphant tone.
"What's it saying?" the Chief asked Barclay.
The engineer stared at the droid curiously.
"I'm not sure, but it does sound happy."
The tone went flat with tired exasperation, and R2 made for the door. It opened automatically and he rolled out into the hall without incident. Cautiously, the two followed.
"We must be being followed," Barclay remarked as the trio moved down a long, windowless hallway, identical to virtually every other one they had encountered on the level. "Imperials don't give up so easily. I mean, we're still in their facility. They should be able to track our every move, and I don't see why they'd let us avoid them like this."
The Chief was somewhat annoyed with Barclay's nervous chatter, but he had to admit the man made a good point. They hadn't run into as much as a cleaning droid since Barclay had been freed. They're progress hadn't been exactly covert, and the only real effort they'd made to cover their tracks were the astromech droid's periodic stops next to control terminals. At first, the Chief had suspect that the little machine was simply locking doors and checking floor plans, but the fact that they'd avoided patrols for so long indicated that the droid was more skilled than he gave it credit for.
Indeed, each passing minute that they didn't come face to face with a squad of stormtroopers made him more and more suspicious of the astromech. It was clearly more than just a piece of service of equipment, and neither man could guess why it had been attached to Darth Vader's detail. Nevertheless, it was keeping them alive and out of enemy hands, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.
Besides, there was a more pressing concern on the Chief's mind.
"Sixteen minutes until pickup," he muttered, checking his mission clock for what seemed like the hundredth time.
"Are we close to where you were dropped?" Barclay asked.
The Chief checked his motion tracker, still mostly useless, and took stock of their recent movements.
"We should be close to the evac point, but we're still thirty levels too high."
Barclay frowned.
"Then shouldn't we be looking for lifts? I know you don't want to use them, but what other option do we have? The service tubes didn't work out."
They had attempted to descend by way of a service conduit they had located, but it was only traversable for a few levels before it split into dozens of smaller channels and pipeways. Plainly, the architects of the facility had been somewhat more security-minded than the designers behind most Starfleet vessels.
Slowly, the Chief nodded.
"We'll have to use them. Hopefully, your little friend can keep the lifts covered and working all the way down."
As if responding to the conversation, the R2 unit issued a few high notes and turned down a side passage. After a dozen or so meters, they came to another doorway, and R2-D2 indicated towards it with a spin of his head. With Barclay covering him a safe distance down the hallway with his blaster rifle, the Chief backed next to the door, opened it, and after a 'clear' signal from the engineer spun inward, weapon at the ready.
He found himself in a small turbolift chamber. Five doors adorned the bare walls; three leading to awaiting turbolift shafts, his entryway, and another on the opposite side of the room that looked as though it had been sealed shut with a welding torch. Beyond it, muffed shouting put the Chief immediately on edge. He might have withdrawn outright, had it not been for the room's occupants.
Leaning against the far turbolift, Jacen Solo sat with his lightsaber lit in one hand. Propped next to him, the frail, limp body of a blue-skinned woman lolled, her eyes closed. The Chief immediately recognized Aayla Secura, remembering the desperate flight from the Poloon system, where he'd seen her last.
"Chief," Jacen said, clearly exhausted. "I'd been hoping you'd find your way here soon. I ran into some trouble on the way, and I'm not sure how long it'll take them to get through." He nodded towards the partially-melted door.
Keeping one eye on the door, the Chief moved to Jacen's side, Barclay and R2 close behind. The Jedi nodded weakly when he saw the astromech, but the droid showed no sign of recognition.
"Does she need medical attention?" the Chief asked kneeling next to Aayla. He knew the answer before Jacen responded.
"She's one with the Force, now. I just couldn't leave her here."
The Chief nodded, turning his attention to the young man. There would be time for questions later.
"What about you?"
"I'm just… tired."
"Chief," Barclay said anxiously. Jacen's sudden appearance had been enough to mollify his nerves briefly, but a low banging had begun beyond the sealed door. The R2 unit added his own warning tone.
"Can you walk?" the Chief asked Jacen.
He nodded, quite unconvincingly.
"Barclay, help the Jedi into this lift."
The ride was cramped but uneventful. R2-D2 took a few moments to negotiate with the lift computer, but it quickly dropped them the number of levels the Chief indicated, and they exited into yet another empty hallway. Nonetheless, the Spartan felt particularly compromised, burdened now by Aayla's body, even though he hadn't objected to Jacen's request to bring it along. The Jedi moved quickly enough with Barclay's support, and within a few minutes, they were back on ground the Chief recognized.
Their luck didn't hold.
After passing through several abandoned security checkpoints, the Chief walked headfirst into a pair of Imperial personnel. Fortunately, the technician and black-uniformed army officer had their backs turned to the doorway, occupied with a security display, and the Chief had time to shift Aayla to one shoulder and level both before they could do more than draw their blaster pistols. Nevertheless, one managed to key an alert button on his comlink before he fell, and although no audible alarm sounded, the Chief knew their time was up.
The rest of the way to the long, windowed hallway was a running gunfight. Evidently, the facility's guard had been deployed in full force to try and locate the intruders, and the R2 unit's diversions had done little more than slow their search. They ran into two more pockets of soldiers before rounding the corner into the dead-end hallway, and could hear more echoing down the corridors after them.
"I don't see anything," Barclay said as they came to the end of the passageway, now brightly-lit against the night sky. He eased Jacen, who now barely seemed to be conscious, against a wall. The Chief did the same, laying the Twi'lek out near where the rippling distortion had appeared before.
"It hasn't been reactivated," he replied. The clock was at two hours, fifty-eight minutes. They were early.
Shouting emanated from down the adjoining hallway, and the sound of multiple, rapid footfalls soon joined it. The Chief checked the ammo in his blaster and indicated that Barclay do the same. Unimpressed by the remaining load-out, he glanced down at Jacen's lightsaber and considered briefly, but decided against it. If the guns weren't enough to buy them time, he wasn't about to go down waving an energy sword like a lunatic. That only worked if one could see the blaster bolts coming, and even he wasn't that fast.
"Grab Solo!" the Chief ordered. "Get as close to the wall as you can!"
Barclay hurried to comply, fumbling with his blaster as he pulled the other man against the flat surface.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, ten seconds.
The Chief kneeled a few meters in front of Barclay, placing himself directly in any attacker's line of fire. His shields wouldn't take many blaster bolts, but if worse came to worse, it could buy the others a few more seconds. Just as he lined his rifle up, the first white-armored head appeared, right in the iron sight.
He smiled. Sometimes, it was the little things.
After the first three troopers dropped without firing a shot, their pursuers smartened up somewhat and slowed their advance. Readjusting his sight, the Chief could tell that they were massing just out of view. At least three officers, judging by the voices, and probably five times that number in grunts. Fleetingly, the Chief wished he'd saved one of the jury-rigged phaser grenades from the assault on Kerrigan's citadel.
"Brace yourself!" he called backed to Barclay. "They're about to make a push!"
By way of response, a blaster bolt tore down the hallway from behind him and nearly took the shoulder off of a trooper who'd edged too close.
That's the spirit.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Time.
Three stormtroopers appeared at the end of the hallway, E-11s blazing. The Chief responded in kind and knocked down one before the others could even draw a bead on him. He felt three shots sheer over his head, and gasped as another punched him in the gut. His energy shield exploded with luminescence, and the indicators on his HUD burned bright red. The barrier wouldn't withstand another direct hit.
The surviving soldiers had already disappeared from view, however. The Chief was momentarily confused, until he saw the squat, cylindrical device rolling down the hallway towards him.
Ah.
"Cover!" he yelled over his shoulder, swiftly backpedaling.
There was no response.
For a terrible moment, the Chief expected to find Barclay with a gaping hole in his chest, but when he reached the end of the hallway, there was no one there at all, save Aayla's body. It only took the Chief a moment to realize that the once-solid wall was rippling like pond water on a windy day.
The Spartan didn't pause. In an instant, the Twi'lek was in his arms, and in the next, Coruscant, the ambling grenade, and throng of shortly bewildered soldiers were memories.
The last thing that the Chief registered before he slipped into the rift was the mission clock, displaying 3:00:11:70.
Funny. Very funny.
