Summary: Rogue Squadron heads back to Hoth to defend an Intelligence Unit. But they get more than they bargained for.
Disclaimer: Star Wars, Rogue Squadron, and the rest are not mine. I write this for my own amusement. Jesina is my own, original creation.
---------------
Chapter 21: Dancing With the Dark Side
---------------
As soon as they'd taken off, Jesina commed Wedge. "Rogue Lead, come in. Rogue Lead, are you there?"
"Here, Nightwind. What do you need?"
"Go back to Hoth. Make sure there's a medical team waiting for us, and that they have a bacta tank ready."
On the other end of the conversation, Wedge stared at the comm unit. There was an urgency to her voice that he remembered hearing only on rare occasions. "Who, Jes?" A dozen thoughts ran through his mind, none of them, for some reason, matching reality. So it hit him hard when Jesina's reply came back.
"Iella."
---------------
Kyp ran through the hollowed corridors as fast as he could – which wasn't fast at all. Keeping Iella alive and putting her into the trance had weakened him severely. He hoped that Horn would be in a mood to be cooperative once he found him. Otherwise he wouldn't have a chance against the other Jedi.
He wasn't betting on that, though. Once he'd opened himself fully to the Force, the Corellian had been easy to find. His Force signature was akin to a fire blazing against the black of night: powerful, dangerous, and anything but subtle. And he could feel the Dark Side energy that the other man was calling on to aid him in his quest for revenge.
I don't get there soon, he thought to himself, I'll have a full-fledged Dark Jedi on my hands, instead of one just dancing with the Dark Side. Of course, that was provided that the man hadn't already gone too far over to the other side.
He stopped short as he reached the corner. Horn was in the next chamber. He didn't even need the Force. He could hear the Corellian speak to one of the men, though he couldn't hear the response. The next thing he heard were the man's anguished screams. As he rounded the corner he drew his lightsaber and activated it, but the light of the weapon was nothing compared to the illumination from the Force lightning streaming from Horn's fingertips. "Enough!" he yelled, but the Jedi never faltered.
Summoning his strength, Kyp raised his hand, sending the other Jedi back against the wall. It broke Horn's focus on the unfortunate Imperial, who continued to writhe and jerk for a moment before he lay still. Kyp stood a few meters away from Horn, dropping into a fighting stance. He thought he could take anything the Jedi could throw at him – for a few minutes at least. He was wrong.
---------------
"Lean on it, Dreis," Wes hissed through clenched teeth as he narrowly dodged a small chunk of rock. It wouldn't have done much damage if it had hit him, but given the choice, he preferred not to take the chance.
Jesina scowled at the comm unit as she dove and then almost immediately went back into a climb. The trip out seemed to be more difficult than the trip in. "Lean on it," she muttered to himself. "You lean on it." Aloud she retorted, "I'm going as fast as I can. I go any faster I'm going to get rocked. And I won't see it until it hits me."
"Night flight, form a perimeter around the Nightwind," Tycho's voice cut into their spat. "Anything small, blast it away. Anything big, give a shout." He paused. "Lay off, Janson."
"A little warning there?" Malat shouted as she deliberately rocked the ship from side to side, just barely slipping between a larger asteroid and a medium-sized one. Checking her scopes, she watched the two collide and yelled into the comm. "Dive! Now!"
Swallowing hard, she clung to the stick and prayed that her belt would hold as the ship was pummeled with debris. "All power to rear shields. And hang on!"
---------------
Kyp wasn't prepared for the ball of dark energy that slammed into his chest, flinging him backward. He didn't hit the wall, but he landed flat on his back, his head connecting soundly with the rock floor. He fought the darkness that seeped into the edges of his vision, using the Force to shunt the pain away.
"Corran, listen to me," he pleaded as he struggled to his feet.
The Corellian Jedi advanced slowly on him. "You're the one? Who killed those Senators? Who killed Iella?"
Kyp shook his head. "No. I didn't kill anyone."
Horn raised his hand and Kyp sensed his intention a moment before the Force lightning shot from his fingers once again. He held his lightsaber up, grimacing as he fought the current. His hands burned as the heat seared his skin. He remembered briefly Luke's account of his electrocution, and was glad the Jedi had taught him something about how to defend against it. "Iella…is still…alive," he gasped out, his strength finally giving way as he fell to his knees.
Luckily, his words made their way through the darkness around Corran's mind. He used the last of his energy to project outward the image of Iella on board Dreis' ship.
Horn faltered, unsure of what to believe. Kyp, twitching slightly because of the Force lightning that had gotten past his defenses at the end, fought to raise his head. "I'm not lying, Corran. See that for yourself. I don't have strength enough to deceive you. It took everything I had to keep Iella alive."
The other man shook his head. "I can't sense her."
"She's too weak. And I put her into a healing trance." He could see that Horn didn't believe him. "You know I'm telling you the truth, Corran. Use the Force. You can see that I'm not lying."
Slowly, he felt Horn's tentative presence in his mind. "Where is she?" he spat out.
"With Dreis and the others. They're bringing her back to Hoth, for treatment."
"Will she live?"
"I don't know. You know I can't see that far," he murmured. He didn't say that she'd have had a better chance if he'd been able to go with them rather than coming after Horn.
But he didn't have to. He could tell that the thought had occurred to the other Jedi. His shoulders slumped and he fell to his knees, staring blankly ahead.
---------------
Jesina saw a fighter-sized chunk of the shattered asteroid heading straight for Tycho. "Tycho! Tera!" She yelled a warning to her friend and an order to her subordinate. Tycho couldn't get out of the way fast enough, but by the time the rock would have connected with his ship, it was nothing but pebbles and space dust that grazed harmlessly against his shields.
"Thanks, Nightwind."
"That's what I'm here for," she returned. "Nice shooting, Tera." The woman was a trained sniper – she'd performed at least one assassination that Jesina knew of – and could probably match Janson's skills as a gunner. Her abilities had come in very handy on this trip.
"That's what I'm here for," the other woman responded, and Jesina could almost hear the grin in her voice over the communicator.
She smiled despite the situation. "That you are." Then her smile faded. She sent the ship into an almost vertical drop, hearing curses from her passengers, and skimmed across the surface of one of the larger asteroids. Coming up again, she saw another, roughly the size of the Nightwind, heading straight for her. "Hold on!" she shouted, sending the ship into a roll to port, just barely escaping a collision. But no one saw the next rock hidden by the mass shadow of the one she'd just missed.
---------------
Kyp rested his head on the ground for a second, taking shallow breaths and trying to regain his strength. He'd managed to get through to Horn – briefly, anyway – and he was glad. Because if things had gone on the way they were, he'd likely not have gotten up again.
Slowly, he rolled over onto his stomach and raised himself onto his forearms, then slowly rose to his hands and knees. Breathing heavily, he tried to get to his feet but couldn't. Giving up, he crawled across the floor to reach Corran's side.
The Corellian rocked back on his heels, eyes closed. Kyp could feel his confusion. It broadcast through the Force so clearly that he felt almost as if it had taken on a living form and stood before him in the cave.
He could also feel the other man's desperation in the Force. He was reaching frantically for the light, but fighting through the darkness was no easy task. Kyp knew that firsthand.
He drew himself up slightly and knelt in front of the other Jedi, placing a hand on each of his shoulders. "You need to listen to me, Corran."
The Jedi opened his eyes and blinked several times. "What did I do?"
Kyp sighed. How am I supposed to answer that? he asked himself. Tact was hardly his strong suit. "You slipped," he said simply. "You let your anger get the better of you. You were angry about Iella, and you wouldn't see reason."
Horn blinked at him several times. "I don't…I can't…" He closed his eyes again and shook his head.
Kyp felt for him, he really did. He knew what it was like. The Dark Side held sway over a mind like no other force in the galaxy. And it was inviting. Cold as it was, the power it held just welcomed you in, enveloping you. And once you began to wield that power, the coldness, the darkness – none of it mattered anymore. The strength you gleaned from it more than made up for the torment.
He sighed. "Yes, you can. You have to. You need to get up. And you need to come back with me."
"I can't…I can't face them."
"If you can, I can. Corran, you killed seven men who, as much as I shouldn't be saying this, deserved what they got. I destroyed an entire planet. If I could face Luke and the others after that, you can face Antilles and the rest of them."
Horn shook his head. "No. I can't."
"Yes, you can. You have to."
The Corellian opened his eyes again. "How did you do it?"
"Do what?" Kyp asked. He had a feeling he knew what Horn was asking, but wasn't sure.
The other Jedi repositioned himself, shifting from the squatting position he'd been in to sitting cross-legged on the floor. "How did you come back?"
Kyp adjusted himself as well. This wasn't a conversation he was accustomed to having. And it wasn't one that he really wanted to have right now. Or at all, for that matter. But he felt he didn't have a choice, if he wanted the Corellian to come back with him. Besides, if someone could benefit from his struggles, then maybe some good could come of all those lives lost.
"I…it wasn't easy. It took a lot of time. And it's always there. The temptation isn't necessarily always there, but the next time anger hits you, the pull toward the Dark Side is stronger. And the reminder is always there. You'll always remember that you gave in, that you weren't strong enough to withstand it. And that weakens you. It makes it harder to resist."
"It's so…empowering. I've never felt so strong."
"That's because it controls you. You don't worry about what you should or shouldn't be doing, because it doesn't matter. You don't control the Dark Side, and that's the mistake we make."
"I could have killed you."
Kyp shrugged uneasily, knowing exactly how true the statement was. He'd been weak after struggling with Iella, and if Horn had hit him with the full force of his anger, there would have been no way he could have withstood the barrage. "Yeah, you could have. But you didn't." He shrugged again. "For whatever reason, the Force was on my side this time."