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Even with their combined strength and several strident repetition's of Yoda's "Do or do not; there is no try," Jaina and Kyp were barely able to lift the durasteel enough to wiggle Jag out from underneath it. The moment after Jaina had rolled under it and out onto Kyp's side, it went crashing back down to the floor with reverberations strong enough to make Kyp worry about even more of the ceiling caving in.
"Jag," Jaina asked warily, reaching out simultaneously with the force and her hand to see if he was still alive. To her relief, she quickly found his pulse, but Kyp could easily see that without a nice, several day long stint in a bacta tank, soon, Jag wouldn't last long.
Kyp refocused on Jaina, with her covered in dust, grime and blood- he wasn't sure if it was hers or someone else's- it was hard to tell if she was all right. Kyp was well aware of the fact that Jaina could have cared less about her own physical condition at the moment, but he had other things to worry about, as well. The entire station was in danger and he had no idea of what the current situation was. Mara was out there, but despite her very capable skills she was only one Jedi Master. She could only do so much, assuming she was still able to do anything.
Making a quick decision, Kyp said, tightly, "Help me put Fel, in a healing trance and then we need to move, Jaina. Jade could probably use some help."
Without a word of either agreement or disagreement, Jaina slipped into the flow of the force alongside Kyp. Working together, it took them less than a minute to slip him into a deep healing trance. It was the best thing they could do for him at the moment.
Grimly Kyp said, "Let's go." Rising to match his actions with what he had said, he stooped to pick up Jag.
Jaina stood up more carefully than Kyp. For a moment, it looked as if she would start swaying on her feet. Kyp started to reach a hand out to steady her.
"You okay, Goddess," he asked curtly.
She steadied herself, and grunted, "Nothing a few bacta patches won't fix."
But Kyp wasn't quite so sure. Nevertheless he picked up Jag and started walking. It seemed like forever before they managed to reach the site of the explosion. Both Kyp and Jaina were tense, waiting for another attack. None came, but both remained wary and silent, brooding in their own thoughts.
Without warning a lightsaber came crashing down towards Kyp's head. With Jag's added mass, Kyp couldn't move with his usual speed and grace. He stumbled back from the attack clumsily, but not nearly fast enough. He watched as the blade slid towards him with unstoppable speed and slammed solidly into an amethyst blade. The energy the blades released when they met singed Kyp's face.
The blades remained locked for a long moment, giving Kyp a chance to stumble back out the way and allowed Jaina room to press her attack. She withdrew her blade, pulling it back up quickly and then sending it slashing back down towards their still unseen assailant. Following her blade forward, Jaina took a step around the corner, saw her opponent and immediately stepped back, switching off her blade.
"Kam," she exclaimed, by way of a relieved greeting.
The older Jedi's expression was one of first surprise and then grim relief. He laid a hand on Jaina's shoulder as he reattached his lightsaber to his belt. "It's good to see you, three," he took in Jag's injured form. "Here, Durron," he said, "I'll carry, Fel."
He took Jag from Kyp and then beckoned for them to follow him. "We have a makeshift med center set up," he explained as they walked. "The explosion caught us unaware, but we've already found most of the trainees."
Kyp noticed that Kam himself didn't seem to have escaped unscathed. "How many critical injuries," he asked, just before Jaina could, "Jag needs a bacta tank."
Kam nodded at the last part of Kyp's statement. "We should be able to manage that, at least for a little while." His voice seemed to shrink. "The force was with us today. Most of the children will be fine, but a few of them won't make it." He grew harsher with every word and beneath his calm control, Jaina could feel his anger simmering.
"What about Ben and Mara," Jaina asked sharply.
"Mara's fine, she's still searching. Ben...," he hesitated, "Ben's still among the missing."
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Mara pushed her way towards her destination, her lightsaber ignited and held up high to light her way. She moved with ease and a graceful efficiency of motion even as she focused all of her determination on her objective. After she had left Syal, Myri and Valin, she had found more and more people, trainees, non-force sensitive students and several of the other Jedi that were on Shelter at the moment. The more people she found the less she had to worry about the general rescue effort and the more she had been able to find one child in particular, Ben.
The last person she had helped out of the wreckage remembered that Ben had last been seen with Tionne. She had two options at that moment, randomly searching for Tionne and Ben or taking precious time to meditate and hoping that the force would show her what she wanted to see. At first she had chafed at the inaction, at the mere thought of sitting still while Ben was still missing, but then she forced herself to calm down. This was for Ben's sake. It had seemed like forever before the force had shown her where to find Tionne, but when she checked her chrono, she had thanked her lucky stars that it had only been fifteen minutes.
She was cutting her way through a piece of thick durasteel with incredible slowness when her comm. link blared at her. Taking one hand off of her lightsaber hilt, she quickly activated it. "Jade," she answered automatically.
"I just heard. Kam told me," Jaina explained rapidly into the comm. link. "Where are you?"
At that moment, Mara was incredibly glad to hear her niece's voice. Without hesitation she uttered three little words that most people thought she was incapable of saying, "I need help. I don't know where he is, Jaina and I can't feel Ben through the Force. I've almost reached Tionne, but," she trailed off. She didn't have to finish her sentence. Jaina knew all too well, from her own childhood, what could happen to unprotected children.
"I'm on my way, Mara," said Jaina, and Mara could hear the clatter of Jaina's feet as she ran towards her destination. "I'm going to try to find another way around I think I have an idea about how to get there faster." She hesitated, and then added, "And Mara, we will find him."
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Her feet pounded on the durasteel and she ignored the throbbing from the cauterized cut on her back and the rest of her body. She had heard the desperation in Mara's voice and she hated it. The idea she had told Mara about involved a short cut she had found a few days previously, while she was wondering the station at night. She was surprised that the students had yet to find it, but it would suit her needs perfectly. The entrance she had found was in the docking bay. The entrance led into a tunnel that wandered through the center of Shelter. It was probably part of some kind of central maintenance system, but all Jaina cared about at the moment was the fact that, as long as part of it hadn't caved in, it would take her quickly to where Tionne was.
She dashed through the docking bay scrambling towards the entrance pulling aside the panel and froze. Something was wrong, even in her mad dash through the docking bay something out of place had caught her attention. She put the panel down quietly, unhooking her lightsaber with her other hand and scanned the room slowly for whatever had set off her internal alarms.
It took her less than five seconds and an internal count of the ships that were in the docking bay to realize that one of the x-wings that had come in with her small portion of Twin Suns was missing. It took a second for the rest of the pieces to put themselves together in her mind. Amazingly enough all of her pilots had already been accounted for and she could only think of one other person on Shelter who would want to get out of there now. With a flash of Force guided intuition, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt where Ben was, or more accurately who she was with.
Without wasting another moment of time, she raised her comm. link to find it already beeping and signaling that someone was calling her. "Goddess, here," she snapped without thought. She paused her dash as she came to the Jade Shadow.
"What did you find," Mara demanded through her comm. link, "I felt something from you through the Force a moment ago."
"Is Ben with Tionne," Jaina demanded without answering Mara's question, desperately hoping that what she was thinking was wrong.
"No," Mara's voice was matter of fact, hiding what Jaina was sure that she was feeling much better than she had earlier.
"I know where he is," Jaina said slowly. "I'm in the docking bay right now. One of the x-wings is gone. Callista has him." Jaina wasn't sure what she had expected Mara to say or do, but clicking off her comm. link without so much as a word uttered, wasn't what she had expected. She stood there for a moment and then used the Force to open the special lock on the 'Shadow's hatch.
Despite her lack of any kind of reaction, Jaina was sure that Mara would be there as soon as she could, ready to go after Callista. Jaina intended to have the 'Shadow ready to leave by the time that Mara got there. It had been a while, since she had done them, but the preflight checks on this ship had once been like second nature to her. She was almost through the list of checks and she had been running scans of the system for about five minutes when she heard Mara come aboard.
Jaina quickly got out of the pilot's seat, retreating to the more familiar copilot's chair to wait for aunt to come to the cockpit. The moment Mara walked through the door, Jaina didn't wait to be asked for information. "The Shadow's ready for take off. I've been scanning the system for the past few minutes. I found the x-wing ion trail. Hopefully once we get out in space we can figure out where she was going when she went to hyperspace. The gravitic distortions from the Core should narrow down the places where she could jump from."
Mara simply nodded, as they worked together in silence to get the 'Shadow up into space. After several tense moments of working to trace the transmissions from the x-wing's hyperdrive, Mara spoke to Jaina for the first time, since she had come on board. "Jaina you don't have to come with me. I'm not going to stop until I find him and if you don't want to take those risks."
"No," Jaina cut her off sharply, "Ben's my cousin, don't try to stop me from going with you. I can take care of myself." Her brown eyes flashed with anger. "Besides, I have a score to settle with Callista."
Mara turned her attention back to the console in front of her and for the next few moments the only thing that they said were the banter of pilot and copilot pinpointing and laying in the x-wing's destination into the hyperdrive. Just before she pushed the levers that would send them into hyperspace behind Callista, Mara said, so softly that Jaina almost didn't hear her, "Thank you, Jaina."
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Even with their combined strength and several strident repetition's of Yoda's "Do or do not; there is no try," Jaina and Kyp were barely able to lift the durasteel enough to wiggle Jag out from underneath it. The moment after Jaina had rolled under it and out onto Kyp's side, it went crashing back down to the floor with reverberations strong enough to make Kyp worry about even more of the ceiling caving in.
"Jag," Jaina asked warily, reaching out simultaneously with the force and her hand to see if he was still alive. To her relief, she quickly found his pulse, but Kyp could easily see that without a nice, several day long stint in a bacta tank, soon, Jag wouldn't last long.
Kyp refocused on Jaina, with her covered in dust, grime and blood- he wasn't sure if it was hers or someone else's- it was hard to tell if she was all right. Kyp was well aware of the fact that Jaina could have cared less about her own physical condition at the moment, but he had other things to worry about, as well. The entire station was in danger and he had no idea of what the current situation was. Mara was out there, but despite her very capable skills she was only one Jedi Master. She could only do so much, assuming she was still able to do anything.
Making a quick decision, Kyp said, tightly, "Help me put Fel, in a healing trance and then we need to move, Jaina. Jade could probably use some help."
Without a word of either agreement or disagreement, Jaina slipped into the flow of the force alongside Kyp. Working together, it took them less than a minute to slip him into a deep healing trance. It was the best thing they could do for him at the moment.
Grimly Kyp said, "Let's go." Rising to match his actions with what he had said, he stooped to pick up Jag.
Jaina stood up more carefully than Kyp. For a moment, it looked as if she would start swaying on her feet. Kyp started to reach a hand out to steady her.
"You okay, Goddess," he asked curtly.
She steadied herself, and grunted, "Nothing a few bacta patches won't fix."
But Kyp wasn't quite so sure. Nevertheless he picked up Jag and started walking. It seemed like forever before they managed to reach the site of the explosion. Both Kyp and Jaina were tense, waiting for another attack. None came, but both remained wary and silent, brooding in their own thoughts.
Without warning a lightsaber came crashing down towards Kyp's head. With Jag's added mass, Kyp couldn't move with his usual speed and grace. He stumbled back from the attack clumsily, but not nearly fast enough. He watched as the blade slid towards him with unstoppable speed and slammed solidly into an amethyst blade. The energy the blades released when they met singed Kyp's face.
The blades remained locked for a long moment, giving Kyp a chance to stumble back out the way and allowed Jaina room to press her attack. She withdrew her blade, pulling it back up quickly and then sending it slashing back down towards their still unseen assailant. Following her blade forward, Jaina took a step around the corner, saw her opponent and immediately stepped back, switching off her blade.
"Kam," she exclaimed, by way of a relieved greeting.
The older Jedi's expression was one of first surprise and then grim relief. He laid a hand on Jaina's shoulder as he reattached his lightsaber to his belt. "It's good to see you, three," he took in Jag's injured form. "Here, Durron," he said, "I'll carry, Fel."
He took Jag from Kyp and then beckoned for them to follow him. "We have a makeshift med center set up," he explained as they walked. "The explosion caught us unaware, but we've already found most of the trainees."
Kyp noticed that Kam himself didn't seem to have escaped unscathed. "How many critical injuries," he asked, just before Jaina could, "Jag needs a bacta tank."
Kam nodded at the last part of Kyp's statement. "We should be able to manage that, at least for a little while." His voice seemed to shrink. "The force was with us today. Most of the children will be fine, but a few of them won't make it." He grew harsher with every word and beneath his calm control, Jaina could feel his anger simmering.
"What about Ben and Mara," Jaina asked sharply.
"Mara's fine, she's still searching. Ben...," he hesitated, "Ben's still among the missing."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------
Mara pushed her way towards her destination, her lightsaber ignited and held up high to light her way. She moved with ease and a graceful efficiency of motion even as she focused all of her determination on her objective. After she had left Syal, Myri and Valin, she had found more and more people, trainees, non-force sensitive students and several of the other Jedi that were on Shelter at the moment. The more people she found the less she had to worry about the general rescue effort and the more she had been able to find one child in particular, Ben.
The last person she had helped out of the wreckage remembered that Ben had last been seen with Tionne. She had two options at that moment, randomly searching for Tionne and Ben or taking precious time to meditate and hoping that the force would show her what she wanted to see. At first she had chafed at the inaction, at the mere thought of sitting still while Ben was still missing, but then she forced herself to calm down. This was for Ben's sake. It had seemed like forever before the force had shown her where to find Tionne, but when she checked her chrono, she had thanked her lucky stars that it had only been fifteen minutes.
She was cutting her way through a piece of thick durasteel with incredible slowness when her comm. link blared at her. Taking one hand off of her lightsaber hilt, she quickly activated it. "Jade," she answered automatically.
"I just heard. Kam told me," Jaina explained rapidly into the comm. link. "Where are you?"
At that moment, Mara was incredibly glad to hear her niece's voice. Without hesitation she uttered three little words that most people thought she was incapable of saying, "I need help. I don't know where he is, Jaina and I can't feel Ben through the Force. I've almost reached Tionne, but," she trailed off. She didn't have to finish her sentence. Jaina knew all too well, from her own childhood, what could happen to unprotected children.
"I'm on my way, Mara," said Jaina, and Mara could hear the clatter of Jaina's feet as she ran towards her destination. "I'm going to try to find another way around I think I have an idea about how to get there faster." She hesitated, and then added, "And Mara, we will find him."
================================================================
Her feet pounded on the durasteel and she ignored the throbbing from the cauterized cut on her back and the rest of her body. She had heard the desperation in Mara's voice and she hated it. The idea she had told Mara about involved a short cut she had found a few days previously, while she was wondering the station at night. She was surprised that the students had yet to find it, but it would suit her needs perfectly. The entrance she had found was in the docking bay. The entrance led into a tunnel that wandered through the center of Shelter. It was probably part of some kind of central maintenance system, but all Jaina cared about at the moment was the fact that, as long as part of it hadn't caved in, it would take her quickly to where Tionne was.
She dashed through the docking bay scrambling towards the entrance pulling aside the panel and froze. Something was wrong, even in her mad dash through the docking bay something out of place had caught her attention. She put the panel down quietly, unhooking her lightsaber with her other hand and scanned the room slowly for whatever had set off her internal alarms.
It took her less than five seconds and an internal count of the ships that were in the docking bay to realize that one of the x-wings that had come in with her small portion of Twin Suns was missing. It took a second for the rest of the pieces to put themselves together in her mind. Amazingly enough all of her pilots had already been accounted for and she could only think of one other person on Shelter who would want to get out of there now. With a flash of Force guided intuition, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt where Ben was, or more accurately who she was with.
Without wasting another moment of time, she raised her comm. link to find it already beeping and signaling that someone was calling her. "Goddess, here," she snapped without thought. She paused her dash as she came to the Jade Shadow.
"What did you find," Mara demanded through her comm. link, "I felt something from you through the Force a moment ago."
"Is Ben with Tionne," Jaina demanded without answering Mara's question, desperately hoping that what she was thinking was wrong.
"No," Mara's voice was matter of fact, hiding what Jaina was sure that she was feeling much better than she had earlier.
"I know where he is," Jaina said slowly. "I'm in the docking bay right now. One of the x-wings is gone. Callista has him." Jaina wasn't sure what she had expected Mara to say or do, but clicking off her comm. link without so much as a word uttered, wasn't what she had expected. She stood there for a moment and then used the Force to open the special lock on the 'Shadow's hatch.
Despite her lack of any kind of reaction, Jaina was sure that Mara would be there as soon as she could, ready to go after Callista. Jaina intended to have the 'Shadow ready to leave by the time that Mara got there. It had been a while, since she had done them, but the preflight checks on this ship had once been like second nature to her. She was almost through the list of checks and she had been running scans of the system for about five minutes when she heard Mara come aboard.
Jaina quickly got out of the pilot's seat, retreating to the more familiar copilot's chair to wait for aunt to come to the cockpit. The moment Mara walked through the door, Jaina didn't wait to be asked for information. "The Shadow's ready for take off. I've been scanning the system for the past few minutes. I found the x-wing ion trail. Hopefully once we get out in space we can figure out where she was going when she went to hyperspace. The gravitic distortions from the Core should narrow down the places where she could jump from."
Mara simply nodded, as they worked together in silence to get the 'Shadow up into space. After several tense moments of working to trace the transmissions from the x-wing's hyperdrive, Mara spoke to Jaina for the first time, since she had come on board. "Jaina you don't have to come with me. I'm not going to stop until I find him and if you don't want to take those risks."
"No," Jaina cut her off sharply, "Ben's my cousin, don't try to stop me from going with you. I can take care of myself." Her brown eyes flashed with anger. "Besides, I have a score to settle with Callista."
Mara turned her attention back to the console in front of her and for the next few moments the only thing that they said were the banter of pilot and copilot pinpointing and laying in the x-wing's destination into the hyperdrive. Just before she pushed the levers that would send them into hyperspace behind Callista, Mara said, so softly that Jaina almost didn't hear her, "Thank you, Jaina."
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