Despite the damage of the battle, the stormtroopers left in the Hapan C-and-C managed to get the most critical pieces of equipment running. Hunched over a backup console, Roan was able to discern the scope of the battle in orbit and watch it as it changed. After his conversation with his father, the Imperials shifted their battle plan to target the enemy flagship. After a strangely disorganized, lurching start, his father's destroyers moved to entrap Black Majesty and once it was boxed in, Invincible surged forward and deliver the killing blow.
When Black Majesty's marker winked out on Roan's display, he turned to the stormtrooper sergeant beside him and said, "Start broadcasting that surrender signal again. Maybe this time they'll listen."
"Gladly, Your Majesty."
The trooper hurried off to comply. These stormies had conjured miracles out of broken equipment with skill he could only envy. His father's Empire would be nothing without the little people who got things done. He had to remember that.
The thrill of success only partially lifted his spirits. Vitor, Treis, and Mohrgan were still pursuing Queen Serissa. Roan yearned to be out there with them but Vitor had been right; someone needed to stay here, contact their father, and hopefully bring an end to this fight. He'd been right to stay, but he was still anxious. As he looked around the chamber he spotted Nat Skywalker and Elliah Chalk, both listless as well. Nat wanted to fight with his cousin and Elliah seemed strangely deflated, as if she'd expected to do more on this mission than just guide them to the C-and-C.
When the sergeant announced the surrender signal had been sent, Roan looked back at the tactical readout. He hoped that the signal, the destruction of Black Majesty, and the death of that mind-controlling Sith Lord would finally combine to cow those Hapans into laying down arms.
The backup tactical display was frustratingly limited in the information it provided, but it seemed to Roan that some Battle Dragons and Nova cruisers were starting to shift away from the Imperials, to the battle zone's edge. After a few minutes more and more ships joined them. It didn't look like surrender or even retreat; it looked like the Hapans didn't know what to do and had made a temporary pause to consider their options.
Roan went over to the communications station. "Sergeant, let's hail Invincible and see what's going on."
"Right away, Majesty."
As Roan stood by the console, Elliah and Nat edged closer. They wanted to know how this would end as much as he did. The holo-projector had gotten blasted during the fighting but the audio transmitter worked fine. Roan expected to hear his father again first-thing, but instead he got another man's voice.
"This is Invincible, General Lukas Briggs speaking."
Roan remembered that name. One of his father's Voidwalkers. "This is Prince Roan Fel. General, we see the Hapans seem to be pulling back from engagement."
"That's correct, Your Majesty. One of their ships just hailed us to discuss a cease-fire."
"That's excellent. Is my father talking to them now?"
The simple question yielded a long pause. Roan waited with growing disquiet until Briggs said, "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. Your father is dead."
It felt like he'd been dropped into an abyss. He braced himself against the console and managed to say, "Dead? How? Invincible…. It wasn't attacked."
"He was assassinated on the bridge. We're… still not sure of the specifics. I'm very sorry, Your Majesty. The whole Empire will grieve for this."
His father, the Emperor. Dead here, dead now, after finally winning his long grueling war for the Empire's soul.
"I'm very sorry," Briggs repeated. "Is the, ah… is your brother with you?"
"No. No. He's…." Vitor. An Emperor. "He's not here now."
"I understand. Your Majesty, I'll handle cease-fire talks with the Hapans."
He'd forgotten those in an instant. "Yes. Thank you, General. Does my… Have you told my mother?"
"Not yet. We're having trouble contacting the Shedu Maad team. But we'll keep trying."
"Thank you, General." The buzz of faint static yawned to fill their comm line. Finally Roan said, "I'll hail you again," and killed the link.
He was suddenly aware of everyone else: the tired Hapan commandos, the stormtroopers radiating shock even through their masks, Nat and Elliah with faces full of concern. They seemed to spin and tilt around him, like the world had gone off its axis to waver uncontrollably.
Roan had never wanted to come here. He'd thought his father's mission to free Hapes was a misguided venture and consoled himself with the thought that, after one more campaign, they'd finally settle into peacetime rebuilding. There'd be no peace for his father, or him or Vitor or their mother. Davek Fel's last misstep had been the fatal one.
When it was clear Roan had nothing to say, the stormtrooper sergeant called, "The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor!"
"Long live the Emperor!" the other troopers echoed, and some Hapans joined too.
Roan didn't. He was too dazed and weak to speak. His eyes drifted across the spinning scene until they stopped on Elliah's. In their dark compassion was the only solace to be found.
-{}-
It was impossible to have missed Darth Maleth's final moments. The old Sith had blazed with power greater than ever before and made himself a conduit for the Force at its most raw and destructive. Yet when he'd flared the brightest he'd been suddenly extinguished, without even a cry of agony in the Force marking his obliteration.
That was when Darth Kroan realized that they were in trouble.
He hadn't expected Darth Saydel to stay and die with Maleth and he wasn't disappointed. He could feel her presence in the Force, proud as ever but also anxious. He couldn't tell if she was making a run for Intruder but if Jedi were overrunning the Fountain Palace it was highly possible. He fully intended to get there first and suspected her people had more important things to do than stop him.
When he stepped out of his chamber he saw the corridor empty, his guards drawn away. He wished she'd kept at least one to watch him; the Fountain Palace's insides were a labyrinth of passageways both grandiose and secret, and embarrassing as it was, he had no idea how to get to back to his ship. He did his best to retrace familiar pathways and guide himself back to the hangar but it surely wasn't the best route.
Help came with Darth Saydel. He felt her Force presence, nearby and just as anxious as him. If she was heading for Intruder, he was confident he could convince her to let him join. If she wasn't, he might be able to steer her. Either way, he preferred running into her than the Jedi swarming the Palace.
He found her at the opposite end of a long white-marble hallway. She had a dozen guards with her who immediately raised their weapons. Kroan already had his lightsaber in his hand and ignited it, but the guards didn't fire and Saydel didn't reach for her own weapon. She stared at him across the distance.
"I felt Maleth die," said Kroan. "Did they take the command center?"
"Yes," Saydel sniffed. "They've destroyed my flagship as well."
"Then come with me. We'll escape on Intruder together."
"I'm not surrendering my kingdom to the Jedi," she spat.
"You won't. As long as you're alive your soldiers will rally to you." From what he'd seen it was probably true. "We must get to the hangar and escape. We'll go up to orbit and join your fleet. You can't fight another day if you die here."
And she stared at him, eyes narrowed, until she decided, "You can't find the way by yourself, can you?"
Kroan hissed breath between his teeth and said nothing.
Saydel chopped a hand and her guards lowered their weapons. "Come with me, Darth Kroan. We can fight another day together."
-{}-
Vitor had thought he was ready to die, but as they chased Serissa's Force-presence through grand halls and hidden corridors the fear came back. It was the kind he'd had at the very beginning, the chill in the very center of his chest that threatened to blank and his mind and freeze his body. He could tell himself he'd die well, and he'd done everything to prepare for it, but he was still at the edge of a precipice. What lay beyond he didn't know, couldn't know. Maybe it was dissolution in the Force, maybe it was some life-after-death. Maybe it was pure oblivion.
Marin could sense his fear, just as he could sense her resolve. She was still fiercely denying his coming death and had set herself to save him. He didn't grudge her that resolve. In her own way she needed it. It would hurt her all the more when she died and the fact that he'd be unable to help her made the waiting dark all the worse.
Terrified and determined, they both followed Allana as the woman guided them through the Palace. At first they retraced many of the paths they'd taken from the hangar, passing many dead bodies and blaster-scorched walls, but soon Allana was leading them down a different route, through white-marble corridors untouched by violence.
"We're getting close," she said, almost to herself.
"Is she on this level?" Tanith asked. She'd kept pace with Allana the whole time. Marin and Vitor were right behind them, eight Hapan commandos after them, with Treis and Mohrgan bringing up the rear.
"Not this level," Allana said. "She's beneath us. Three or four floors, I think."
Vitor didn't like the sound of that. All the lift tubes in the palace had been disabled. "Are we heading for a staircase?"
"Something better. And I think she'll be crossing there too."
"This part of the palace hasn't changed?" asked Tanith.
"Not the part we're going to it. I doubt it, anyway."
Allana volunteered no more than that. Instead she picked up her pace, and those behind her hurried as well. She guided them down three more corridors and around four turns, and finally out into the open.
Not outside, though when Vitor followed her through the door that was his first thought. It was a massive atrium made from a shaft that cut down the heart of the Palace. The ceiling dome high above was made of stained-glass that must have lit a beautiful rainbow on sunny days, but on this overcast one their faint colors placed everything in a dim light. The circular chamber was no more than thirty meters in diameter but it rose at least ten storeys from top to bottom. Walkways crisscrossed the atrium from different directions at different levels, and with a quick count Vitor gathered they were six levels from the lush green garden on the bottom level.
"Which level do we need to get down to?" asked Marin as she bent over the guard-rail and peered down.
"I'm not sure." Allana's brows drew together. "I…. think she's coming."
With trepidation, Vitor reached into the Force. He felt it too, presence that was dark, determined, and anxious all at once. At least one presence, maybe more.
Marin stepped back from the rail and looked at him. With her eyes and the Force she promised she'd protect him. He had no doubt that she'd try.
Then the atrium erupted in laserfire. It shot upward from below and everyone dropped to a crouch. As Tanith's commandos crawled to the catwalk's edge to return fire, Vitor joined them. He peeked down to see figures three levels below, crossing a walkway that ran perpendicular to theirs. He counted a handful of black-armored Hapan guards shooting upward with their rifles but what drew his attention more were the two without blasters. One was a man in black robes with his bald head darkened by scars. It was the same Sith he'd faced on Nemesis. The other was a woman in a black and gold dress that looked martial despite the swirl of its skirts. Her hair was black, her face pale.
It was the woman who was going to kill him, and the sight of her froze him in fear.
Not so the others. Allana grabbed her lightsaber and called on them to attack. Vitor pulled from the edge and looked over his shoulder to see Treis and Mohrgan with their white blades ignited, ready to vault the opposite railing. As he scrambled to his feet they threw themselves over the rail and dropped.
The younger Knights' bravery shamed him out of his fear. Vitor grabbed his lightsaber and ignited. Marin was right their beside him, gold weapon blazing. Their eyes met; she gave him a firm nod. She pulled herself over the rail and jumped and he was just a second behind her.
Treis and Mohrgan had landed on the walkway three levels down, right in the center of Serissa's guards. Mohrgan kicked one guard over the rail; Treis disarmed another and used the Force to knock a third off the walkway. Two more guards had just opened fire when Vitor and Marin landed right behind them. Two quick slashes dropped them both.
The remaining guards had split away from the center of the walkway and fired at the Knights as they edged toward either exit. Marin and Vitor stumbled backward until their shoulders pressed against those of Mohrgan and Treis. It took all their concentration to deflect the hail of laserfire coming from both directions.
Through the light-show Vitor would see Serissa holding back by the door through which she'd come. He saw the lightsaber in her hand, not yet ignited. They couldn't have killed Retor; he risked a look over his shoulder to see the other Sith on the opposite end of the walkway.
Retor ignited his saber like was ready to join in, but just as he did so more people dropped down. Fiberchord grapplers dropped Tanith and her commandos, who immediately opened fire on the Hapan guards, on Serissa and Retor. A single red blade shot out from Serissa's lightsaber. Both Sith fought back laser-blasts as Allana dropped down, Force-assisted, beside Marin and Vitor.
Just as the commandos finished the last guards, Serissa jumped into the fray. She was too far away from Vitor but just the sight of her made him freeze in fear again. Her single-bladed saber cut down the two closest commandos. With a motion of the hand she picked Tanith from her feet and threw her off the walkway.
The other soldiers hesitated before attacking. For a moment the battle on the walkway went as still. Serissa stood by one door, Retor the other. The guards they'd brought had fallen and a cluster of knights and commandos occupied the middle of the walkway, ready to attack in either direction.
A deep, familiar voice called from behind Vitor and said, "I'm sorry, Majesty, but I think I know the way from here."
"Darth Kroan!" Serissa barked. "Wait!"
Vitor pivoted just in time to see other Sith turn and sprint through the door.
The commandos nearest Serissa didn't waste her shock. All three opened fire and with a snarl the queen barely got her lightsaber up in time. Her next Force-blast knocked them off-balance but not off the walkway. Serissa bent forward and charged. Just as she reached the commandos she triggered the blade on the other end of her lightsaber, and with the elegance of an accomplished pike-fighter she spun two fans of red light that cut all three women in two.
Then she was on the Jedi.
An invisible punch knocked Vitor away from her. Marin, he thought, as his cousin's red beskar figure jumped ahead. As he scrambled to his feet he looked behind him to see Treis and Mohrgan, still dumbfounded, looking at the doorway through which the other Sith had escaped.
"After him! Go!" Vitor shouted, and they went with two commandos chasing. The four of them probably wouldn't be enough to stop Retor from reaching his ship. They'd probably call Roan and Vitor prayed his brother could handle it.
Vitor jumped to his feet just as Serissa took the head off one commando and impaled another with the opposite blade. Her twin blades could claim the entire width of the walkway at once. She danced away from the corpses in a swirl of red light and black skirts, placing the bodies between her and the Jedi. Vitor realized that she had already dispatched all the commandos. There was only four of them left standing. One Jedi Knight, one Imperial prince, a Sith queen and a Jedi one.
Serissa stood with her back to the door but didn't retreat. Her eyes had taken an angry yellow glow as she held her double-bladed lightsaber horizontally in front of her, waiting. Vitor joined Marin in standing beside Allana. The urgency of the fight had dissolved his fear.
Allana lunged first. Serrisa blocked her first low blow, then spun her other blade to attack. Vitor and Marin rushed in together to join the clash: red blades against blue, Sith versus Jedi; queen of darkness versus queen of light.
-{}-
Grief was a well he could sink into forever, and Roan was actually grateful when his personal comlink started buzzing. When he flicked it on and heard Treis' voice instead of his brother's he felt relieved, but not for long.
"Roan, we need help!" It sounded like his friend was running. "We found two Sith. Vitor and Allana are fighting Serissa. This other one, Kroan, I think he's going for the hangar."
"I'll help," Roan said. Killing a Sith was exactly what he wanted to do right now.
"Head him off at the hangar! Can you get back there?"
"I can try. Just hold on."
Roan shut off the commlink and found all eyes on him. He looked straight at Nat Skywalker. "There's a Sith heading for the hangar."
The young man nodded. "Then we'll stop him."
"Good answer. Let's go."
As they started for the exit Elliah blocked them. "Are you sure you're okay for a fight?"
"Very," Roan said. There was nothing he wanted more.
"Do you remember the fastest way back?"
"I can find it."
"I'll show you."
"You don't have to do that," Nat said.
"Please. Just let me help."
Roan didn't want her to come, didn't want to put her in danger, but he didn't want to waste time either. What he wanted was a little blood in recompense for his father's.
"Okay," he told her. "Show us where to go,"
-{}-
Even though they battled her three against one, it seemed impossible to land a killing blow on Serissa Lohr. They had numbers on their side but the terrain was in her favor. The walkway was too narrow for them to attack her all at once and she stubbornly defied attempts to knock her down into the gardens below. When the battle started Marin threw herself into a somersault over the Sith's head. Serissa had swiped upward, lightsaber sizzling against beskar, then continually blocked Marin's attacks from behind as Vitor and Allana tried to take her from the front. She was constantly moving despite the constricted space; both feet never touched the ground for more than a second and her blades were a constant deadly whirl.
The battle dragged on, one draining minute after another. Allana quickly found herself short of breath, face slick with sweat. This fight to claim the future of Hapes was what her life had been building toward, the destiny waiting on her for the past forty years, but that was decades too many. Serissa was a nimble, fierce fighter but not without weaknesses. She overextended her attacks and relied too much on her double-bladed lightsaber to protect her back and flanks. Allana could have taken advantage of those flaws and maybe even won if she were as young as Serissa, still in her physical prime, but instead she was battling a Force-strong athletic woman one-third her age and it was a struggle just to block every attack.
Marin and Vitor sensed her tiring. Serissa sensed it too. She focused on attacking the older woman while still defending against the others. She knocked Allana back several steps. Allana stumbled on one of the chopped-open corpse and lost balance; one arm flailed out for balance, taking her saber with it and leaving herself open.
Serissa spun one blade toward Allana's chest but Marin threw herself into the other's rotation. Red light grinded against red beskar but didn't cut through. Marin thrust her gold saber at the Sith's head and Serissa's whole upper body bent back to evade. The tip of the blade hissed a burnt scar across her lower jaw, but Serissa twisted her hips and snapped a backward kick that took Marin in the stomach and launched her into the railing so hard she tipped backward. She was barely able to call on the Force in time to grab the catwalk's edge with one hand while the other still grasped her lightsaber.
Allana found her balance and saw her opening, but Vitor saw one too and he was closer. He lunged, letting his blade sizzle against the underside of hers. Serissa, still tipped off-balance from the kick she'd given Marin, adjusted her stance and stepped back. Vitor pushed forward, overextending, leaving his right forearm open for a cutting blow.
Serissa didn't take the bait. Instead of crashing her lightsaber into his cortosis buckler she snapped a kick into his stomach, staggered him, and sliced downward. The emitter piece from his lightsaber vanished in a flower of sparks and he dropped the dead weapon, helpless.
Allana was there. She fought back Serissa's first blow, then another. The Sith spun and struck for Allana's face. She blocked the red blade and pushed back. Serissa reversed her spin, dropped to a crouch, and struck low, too fast for Allana to fully withdraw. She felt the red blade slice across the inside of her thigh, tearing vital muscle. The leg collapsed beneath her and Allana hit the walkway hard.
Serissa still attacked, a series of spinning swipes from the left, right, left again. The fall had loosed Allana's grip on her lightsaber and Serissa's fourth blow knocked it from her hand and sent its cylinder skidding away across the walkway.
The Sith dropped back a half-step, straightened her grip, then lunged forward to spear Allana through the heart.
-{}-
Vitor knew exactly when the moment came. He watched Allana collapse, watched repeated red saber-blows knock the weapon from her one-handed grip, and when Serissa tilted backward to prepare the killing blow he knew what he needed to do.
And he realized that if he hadn't been prepared for it, he wouldn't have done it. Surprise or mortal fear would have stolen the vital second him. But no, the Force had sent him that dream, that damned vision, and it hadn't been a curse or a cruel trick.
It had been a gift all this time.
He threw himself in front of Allana and felt the red Sith blade slide through his chest, right beneath the sternum, tearing stomach and lungs, just missing the spine as it tore out his back. Pain spread across his body, overwhelming pain that would have dropped him, but he'd known that was coming too.
The Force had put him here and the Force gave him strength. Instead of collapsing he reached both hands out and grabbed Serissa by the wrists. She tried to pull her blade out, pull herself away, but Vitor wouldn't let her go.
As he held Serissa close he stared into that face, the exact face from his vision, beautiful and twisted in a wrathful snarl. And over her shoulder: Marin, back on the walkway and on her feet, saber in hand, face slack with shock.
-{}-
When it happened, she couldn't move. It was everything she'd dreaded, everything she'd sworn to herself and Vitor she'd never allow. The whole universe seemed to freeze, locking that tableau into place: Serissa with one red blade spearing through Vitor's chest and out through his back. Vitor reached out with dying strength to grab her wrists in an iron vice. She tried to pull away, to free her hands and free her weapon, but Vitor pulled her close until the emitter of her lightsaber nearly touched his chest.
It was the perfect opportunity to cut her down. Maybe the only opportunity they'd get.
Marin knew, and she still didn't move, because her heart had already turned black with vengeance. She didn't want to cut Serissa down, she wanted to take all the rage insider her- rage for the Sith witch, for Mandalorian murderers, for herself- and burn Serissa with it.
She wanted to with all her heart, just like she'd wanted to kill Kaynar Auchs.
Shock, rage, and doubt all went through her in fast succession. Together they lasted all of two seconds. In that time Allana pushed herself to her feet, using the Force to propel her where her torn muscles wouldn't. Her lightsaber flew to her hand, ignited, and she fell on Serissa from the side. The dark queen saw it coming but Vitor's grip held her in place. As her red blade impaled Vitor, the light queen's impaled Serissa. It went in beneath her raised arm, through ribcage and lung and heart and lung again and finally came out the other side.
Serissa's sneering face went slack. Her shoulders wilted. Her grip on the lightsaber released and both blades shrunk down to nothing. Only then did Vitor let go of her. She fell to her side, landed on her shoulder, and went limp with her head and long hair dangling off the edge of the walkway.
Vitor fell too. He dropped to his knees, then bent backward, as though to show his smoking chest-wound to the sky.
Marin moved, finally. She scrambled over Serissa's body, dropped beside Vitor's, and took him in her arms. It was all she could do, and all she ever could have done.
-{}-
Roan had almost reached the hangar when agony spread out from his chest. He cried, stumbled, and fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway. Elliah and Nat immediately dropped down beside him and the Jedi asked, "What happened? What's wrong?"
Roan didn't know. He gathered his thoughts and reached out with the Force, dreading what he might find. The pain in his chest was already dwindling but it wasn't his pain. It was Vitor's.
The realization nearly made him collapse entirely. His brother wasn't dead, but his presence was so faint, and fading so fast. In minutes it would be down to nothing.
"Are you hurt?" Elliah asked and put a hand on his shoulder. "Can you stand?"
"I… I'm…." Roan couldn't say anything. He wasn't alright. He'd never be alright again.
His father and brother both, lost in the same day. The same hour.
It was like he'd taken a mortal wound himself, and been cursed with staying alive.
"Is it your brother?" asked Nat, softly. Maybe he sensed it from Roan, maybe from his cousin.
Roan didn't speak, didn't nod affirmative, but Elliah whispered, "Oh, I'm so sorry."
He felt cut off from everything, lost in a void. He didn't try to stand. There was no reason for it. There was no reason for anything, not when everything had been stolen from him when all the fighting should have been over.
Then heard the sound of laserfire, and the hum and crash of lightsabers.
He remembered the angry determination that had impelled him to chase that last Sith in the first place. It came back stronger than ever and pulled him to his feet. He could see the warning in Nat's eyes; the Jedi had a dim view of revenge. His mother, too, had taught that it was a gateway to the Force's seductive, ruinous Dark Side.
Maybe his mother was thinking differently now. As for Roan, he no longer cared.
Without a word to Nat or Elliah, he shoved past them and broke into a sprint. The battle sounded seconds away.
-{}-
Darth Kroan wasn't surprised to find four women guarding Intruder. The way his luck had been going since coming to Hapes he'd expected worse.
No, not since Hapes. Since Kovix-589. Since Orelon. Since the damned Fels had unmasked and defeated him on Balmorra eight years ago.
Just the thought of it all gave him the power of rage he'd needed. Kroan burst into the hangar with his lightsaber already blazing. Intruder still sat in the center and two women had dropped to their knees beneath its right wing and were spraying laserfire at him. Kroan batted their attacks easily and used the Force to locate the two remaining Hapans: one on his left flank, one on the far-right corner.
Kroan jumped sideways, an airborne spiral of ragged black robes. He came down on top of the commando there, saber through her chest. One of the women under the ship landed a lucky shot to his shoulder before he could turn around. Pain spread down his left arm but he used his right to lift his saber and artfully deflect her next shot right back at her. She dropped with a scorched hole in her face, which made the commando beside her start in surprise.
Kroan was already on his way toward her, but beyond her panic he felt something else. The fourth woman, the one in the corner, wasn't attacking but was doing something else.
Kroan cut down the third commando without stopping and raced for the corner. Standing near some cut-open portals in the closed hangar door- lightsaber work, no doubt- was one last Hapan. She had something small in her hand; a detonator. Kroan used the Force to wrench it away from her. The woman dove across the floor after it. Kroan got there first and stamped his boot down on it. A jab of his saber took her through the skull and stopped her, dead and prone at his feet.
Panting from exhaustion and his wound, Kroan picked up the detonator, looked at it once, then hurled it out the portal and into the ocean. He looked around the hangar and spotted two compact charges placed against structural pillars at the nearest two corners of the chamber. No doubt the other two were wired to blow also. All the more reason to get out of this damned place.
He took his first step toward Intruder when two more figures sprinted into the room. Red armor, white blades. Imperial Knights, Davek Fel's custom-tailored personal Jedi minions. For vermin the man had ambition, and Kroan hoped Vull had made him pay for that insolence.
There was no choice but to engage them. When he got close Kroan saw they were mere youths, younger than the Fel prince he'd battled on Nemesis. They tried to take him at once, hitting both flanks. It was an amateur move and Kroan kept skirting away from their blows, forcing them to chase him and attack from the same angle. It was harder for him to attack that way and he waited for one of them to slip so he could even the numbers for this fight.
That was when three more figures rushed into the hangar: a Jedi boy with a blue saber a long blonde hair, a black-haired girl with no weapons at all, and one more Imperial Knight. Interesting pairing.
The two he was fighting swelled with confidence for the new arrivals, and that was where they slipped. When the younger one swung too high, Kroan swung low and scraped the tip of his saber across the boy's abdomen. He stumbled and fell back for the wound, probably too shallow to kill, but it would take him out of the fight.
The other Knight used the Force to push his friend away from Kroan, then stepped in front of the Sith Lord. Three against one made the odds steep, even if he was fighting children, but the Knight held off his attack as he waited for his friends to arrive. That gave Kroan the critical two seconds needed to summon all his inner rage and funnel it from his palm in a blast of Force lighting. It took the young man in the face, blinding him, and Kroan could have speared him thorough the gut right there, but the newcomers were almost on him so he side-kicked the Knight in the stomach and sent him skidding across the deck, pivoted on one foot and blocked the first attack from the final Knight.
As their sabers crashed and sizzled, red and white, he felt the raw anger blazing from this one and looked more closely at his face.
Not just any Imperial Knight. An Imperial prince. From the murder in Roan Fel's eyes, the Sith Lord had a very good idea what had happened. So as the prince stared at him across the crucible of their lightsabers he drew his lips and smiled.
-{}-
"What's the matter, boy?" Darth Kroan hissed, "Too weak to beat the man who killed your father?"
Roan pressed down harder but the Sith Lord skirted away just in time to avoid a side attack from Nat. Kroan danced back from them both, placing himself beneath his black ship's wing and begging them to follow.
"What do you mean?" Roan called, stalking after him. "What did you do?"
"Well, I didn't kill him myself, but I loved setting it in motion." Kroan held his lightsaber to one side, like he was inviting an attack.
It took all of Roan's self-control, and Nat's wordless plead for restraint, for him not to charge after the Sith. Maybe the Sith had arranged his father's death, maybe Kroan was playing with him, it didn't matter. The taunts only heightened the rage inside. He felt he was about to burst with it. His whole life had collapsed around him in an hour and the Sith had to pay.
Another mind tugged his, urging restraint. Treis. His friend had yearned to kill a Sith for years in revenge for his own father, but as Treis stepped beside him now Roan felt nothing but calm determination from the other Knight. He'd grown up with that wound, learned to accept it, and learned to draw strength from it without being overwhelmed by his own damage.
Not so Roan. His wounds were all too raw.
"I am waiting," Kroan cried.
They attacked as one: Nat on his left side, Treis on his right, Roan from dead center. The Sith skirted back again, forcing them to chase him and attack only when he allowed them to get close. It was infuriating but the only smart way for Kroan to fight. After they'd moved out from under the wing the Sith launched himself into a somersault that took him on top of it. Roan didn't hesitate to follow, and the second he landed her was attacked with a fistful of lightning. It exploded in his face and knocked him onto his back; only a Force-nudge from Treis, himself now vaulting onto the wing, kept him from falling off.
Roan struggled upright as Kroan battled Nat and Treis. As he jumped to his feet, he saw Nat step close enough to knock Kroan's lightsaber downward with his own two-handed blow. Treis stepped in on Kroan's right-hand side as the Sith twisted his saber free of Nat's. Instead of going for the killing blow as Roan would have, Treis made a downward swipe of his forearm. The cortosis buckler smashed into the red blade. Light shuddered and died in Kroan's hand and he barely recovered from shock in time to dodge Treis' next swing. With a wordless howl, Kroan hurled the useless saber into the Knight's face, then used a gust of Force energy to throw him off the back of the ship.
Roan reached out with the force to soften his friend's fall. Nat charged the Sith and brought his blade around for a decapitating arc.
Kroan stood firm. A second lightsaber appeared in his hand, red blade stretched long. Nat tried to defend himself, too late. The Sith nearly took off his hand and succeeded in cleaving the emitter from his lightsaber. Nat dropped the sparking debris and stumbled. Roan called on the Force again to hurl his cousin back, out of the way of a fatal strike. Nat slid across the ship's soft curves and tipped over the edge, and then it was just Roan and the Sith facing each other across the black.
-{}-
Losing a lightsaber to damned cortosis. The Sith Lord cursed himself for it. Given that it had been affixed to the forearm of an Imperial Knight, Kroan was quite certain it had come from one of Veers' stormtroopers and that supply of ore Kroan himself had provided. He was very, very was sick of irony by now.
Thankfully, the saber he'd taken from Darth Heyd's corpse back on Orelon had come in handy after all.
"Come at me, boy," he hissed to the Fel boy. "I've survived the rest of your damned family, I can outfight you."
Propelled by his own reckless anger, the prince charged across the deck. Kroan met him in a flurry of light. He could feel the boy's spite with every blow and started to wonder if only the father had died. He thought he'd seen the brother too, confronting Darth Saydel. He'd felt her death just before reaching the hangar; perhaps she'd taken the elder prince with her.
If he killed the last prince, the final heir, Kroan could wreak greater revenge on the Fel family than even he'd hoped for. He led the boy on, accepting his fierce attacks, waiting for his fuel of anger to run dry and for exhaustion to take him. When Roan pressed him close to the edge of the wing he began to fight back, making sharp jabs at the boy's defenses, forcing him to step back.
Then Kroan was falling, sharp pain spreading from his left shoulder. He tumbled to the hangar deck, just barely landing on his feet, and rolled before coming up again. Taking that first shot to his shoulder had been painful; this was agony, and he realized he'd taken a second laser blast in the same spot.
His head swung around and he spotted the black-haired girl pressed into a corner, on her knees, a dead commando's rifle clasped tight with both hands.
As he pushed himself to his feet, the prince dropped right in front of him. Two vertical blows knocked Kroan back to his knees and he saw the girl hefting her rifle, ready to take another shot at him the moment Fel gave her an opening.
And he saw, just a meter behind her and above her head, the tiny winking light of an explosive charge.
He dropped off his knees, onto his back, and used the Force to propel himself two meters across the deck. When his shoulders knocked into the corpse of a commando he grabbed her fallen rifle, lifted it, and fired a single shot over the girl's head.
Somehow Fel knew what he was doing. He spun around, reached out a hand, and used the Force to drag the girl away from the explosive charge right before Kroan's laser hit it. The fireball sent a shock wave across the hangar, spilled dust from the groaning ceiling and debris from the blasted-open walls. White ash filled the air, clouding everything.
Kroan pushed himself to his feet and staggered through the haze. He couldn't even hear anything for the ringing n his ears. He called on the Force to push away some of the ash and started toward the spot where Intruder's landing ramp would lower. As he fumbled his free hand in his robes for the controls to pull it down, two white pillars resolved out of the haze.
Lightsabers fell on him soundlessly. He grasped his own in both hands and caught their attacks. On his left, that red-armored Knight who'd already cost him one weapon. On his left, the long-haired Jedi brat with a borrowed blade. Kroan did what he'd done before, backed away and forced them to follow, but he only got a few steps before his back hit something hard, something metal. A damned landing strut.
White blades fell on him. He could barely defend both with his bad shoulder, so he called his anger and turned it into a burst of lightning that knocked the Knight back. Kroan crashed his saber into the Jedi's with a one-handed blow. The Jedi, instead of pulling his saber out from beneath, twisted his blade and the Sith's arm with it. He twisted his arm a little more, twisted it until his forearm knocked into Kroan's blade.
He didn't see the cortosis until it shorted out the lightsaber in his hand. Kroan dropped it in shock and stared at his empty hands. Then he stared at the white blade that stabbed into his chest from the right. Another blade joined it, piercing him from the left.
As pain threatened to overcome everything, even his anger, Kroan lifted his head and looked at his killers. Two children, two brats, neither of them even a prince. A young Imperial Knight and a young Jedi, scions of a splintered union, now come together in battle to plunge their blades into a Sith Lord. It was sickeningly poetic.
They pulled their lightsabers out of him as one. Kroan lost the strength to raise his head. His vision grew darker. He tipped forward and felt the pain of his forehead cracking against the hangar deck but it was a distant kind of pain, like he was already being dragged from his body. Everything felt distant, even all the ambitions and vanity that had driven him here. He wondered why they'd compelled him at all. As Kroan faded into nothing his only certainty was that while he hated irony, poetry was worse.
-{}-
By the time their hearing started to come back, they'd made sense of most of it. The explosion Kroan had triggered had destroyed one support pillar and partially collapsed the roof. The rest of the hangar stood intact, but coated by dust and debris.
Roan had pulled Elliah away just in time to save her life. The blast had still knocked both of them unconscious, but Treis and Nat had taken Kroan before he could escape and ended him together. When they explained this, Roan looked at them both and saw the same tired satisfaction. Nat Skywalker, good Jedi of the noble line, had taken no pleasure in killing the Sith Lord, but he was relieved the battle was finally done. As for Treis, the look in his eyes was peaceful. It told Roan he'd had no rage or vengeance in his heart when he'd driven in the blade. Roan knew he wouldn't have managed the same himself. He could only be grateful to his friend for taking the burden from him.
Elliah had been closest to the blast and woke from it after Roan did. They sat amidst the dust and debris of the hangar, too weak to stand and looking up at the others. Mohrgan leaned his wounded body against Treis and Nat handed the youngest Knight his lightsaber back.
It was tired, well-earned satisfaction for all of them except Roan. None of them mentioned his father and brother, not even to console, but he could tell they were all struggling for words.
When Elliah tried her voice for the first time she said creakingly, "Thank you, Roan. You saved me, didn't you?"
"You'd just saved me."
"I just… had to help."
"I know. Thank you."
When he thought back to the seconds before the blast he remembered them clearly. He remembered Kroan pushing himself away and grabbing the dead woman's rifle. Realization had come to him in a second and he'd been faced with a choice: run Kroan through with his saber while he still held the rifle, avenging his father and Vitor, or use the Force to pull Elliah from the blast.
Roan hadn't even thought about it. He'd simply done it. If he had thought about it, revenge might have won out. Instinct had saved him from his own darker urges. He was glad for that. Too many good people had already died.
He saw another question in her eyes, the real one. Elliah said, "Is it true? Your father and your brother… both?"
He felt Treis, Mohrgan, and Nat staring at him too. Roan looked down and croaked, "Yes. They're dead."
Grim silence. Elliah filled it again. "I'm sorry, but… I still don't know how your Empire works, but if your father's dead, and now your brother… Does that mean you're Emperor now?"
"Oh," Roan gasped. In his grief and anger, the painful immediacy of loss, the thought had never occurred to him. Now, in the stillness and silence, he felt himself sink into the fullness of his new reality and all he could say was, "Oh."
-{}-
Vitor didn't even notice it until he was on his back, facing the atrium's high and distant dome. The colors on its artful glass had grown deeper, brighter. The clouds over the Fountain Palace must have finally drawn away. The rainbow glow surrounding him had started from a blue, blue sky.
The light from high above beckoned, but everything around him was growing dark. He knew Marin and Allana were kneeling beside him; one of them was resting his head in her lap. Hands brushed his face but he could barely feel them. It was like a memory of touch. One dark shadow hung close, halfway obscuring the beautiful light.
He tried to lift one hand to touch the shadow. Both women jerked back; they'd thought he was already dead. He must have been so faint.
Someone took his hand and squeezed it. He felt Marin's touch in the Force but not its pressure on his hand. He didn't even feel the pain from his wound. He felt like he'd already left it all behind: the body, the anxiety and dread, the future and the past. He'd never known freedom like this.
It wasn't for Marin and Allana, not yet. He tried to squeeze Marin's hand back. He couldn't tell if it worked.
The world had lost all detail. Shapes were shadows; everything else was rainbow light that grew brighter and brighter, like he was being drawn to its source. Though Marin's shape hung above him it seemed to dissolve before his eyes like mist. She seemed to be fading away, just like he was fading away before them, but he knew neither of them were really dissolving. They were parting, and only that.
He tried to move his lips and tell Marin something while he could. He tried to say Don't regret this.
Maybe he said it, maybe not. Her shadow faded, washed clear by waiting brilliance. Rainbow light surrounded him, drew him in, and Vitor was lifted high past the plane where he'd laid, shedding senses, thoughts, and crude matter until light was all.