Chapter Five: Aboard the Fortune of Demise

When the soldiers boarded the Nebula Dancer, they came prepared. They fired stun bolts at them until they could not twitch a finger, and then they slapped a neural disrupter on Angela's neck to prevent her from calling upon the Force. Then they hauled them off, placing her in a separate cell from her companions. It was a dark mirror to the events on the Ardent Soldier, and the parallels did not go unnoticed by the beaten Jedi.

She waited in her cell for hours. Iron manacles attached by lengths of chain to the back wall bound her wrists and limited her movement. Stripped of all but her base undergarments, she felt vulnerable and alone. The guards were too fearful of her and her reputation to summon the up the desire to rape or abuse her, muttering about the "Jedi witch's curse," but that was little comfort—she was still helpless, unable to call upon the Force for aid. Being trapped in a chill detention cell for hours took its toll on her patience and she worried about the welfare of Kanig and Ooroosh.

Then the waiting was over. Admiral Adguard entered alone, fearless and imposing. "And so the elusive Jedi princess is finally in my clutches," he said simply.

"You can't possibly think you can hold me, Adguard," Angela said defiantly, though she knew in her heart that her words were a hollow bluff.

The Admiral knew it too. He smiled evilly. "Of course I can, dear girl. You see, I hold all of the cards. A neural disrupter to keep you pacified, your ship impounded to prevent your escape, and your friends in my custody to keep you from making any sudden moves."

"What have you done with them?" she demanded.

"Nothing yet," he replied smoothly. "You'll find my tactics incredibly cliche, but they are undoubtedly effective. I hold them hostage to ensure your good behavior. You can imagine what will happen if you insist on being a naughty child." He drew a line across his neck with a finger. She paled. "I see you grasp the reality of your situation. You don't have a prayer of defeating me, Jedi girl. As the Ardent Soldier died in a puff of flame, so do your hopes of escape."

Angela struggled against her bonds, but they were unrelenting. "I never give up, Adguard! I'm going to break out of here, and when I do, you'll regret everything you've done!"

"And so we conform to yet more cliches," the Admiral noted dryly. "Very well, I will play the role of villain to please you. You, my dear girl, are in no position to make threats. Soon, very soon, the galaxy will be mine. After all, I now have the two keys formerly in your possession. Now, you're going to tell me where the last one is."

"Ha! You must be joking. I won't tell you anything, not even under torture."

"We'll see, won't we?" A pair of guards entered, carrying several crates full of mechanical devices. Razors, heating panels, energy conductors—she could only imagine the level of pain that could be inflicted on soft human flesh by such tools. A massive droid hovered in, and the guards proceeded to arm it with the various implements. And then it advanced on her.

To her credit, it took almost two days of constant torture before she screamed. Little moans and grunts had escaped her, of course, but she had not capitulated to the agony until much, much later. Sweat and blood soaked her undergarments, stung her many wounds, matted her hair. But she had not spoken the name of the last key's resting place.

And so the Admiral ordered the session to continue. Another day passed before the Admiral tired of waiting and ordered the sessions to stop. "It would not do to kill her," he said gruffly. "Let her recover a bit. Then continue again."

A fourth, then a fifth, day passed in quiet rest. On the sixth and seventh days, the tortures were intensified. She had never imagined such pain could exist. It was blinding in its power. By the end of the seventh day, she was beyond physical sensation. Her entire body was numb, her ears deafened by her own agonized howls, her vision blurred from the constant ache that left her disoriented. She had not been given food for the entire week and only marginal portions of water. Thus, she approached her breaking point.

Left amidst her own blood and filth, exhausted beyond all exhaustion, Angela seriously considered surrender. "I can't do this," she mumbled brokenly to herself during the night. "I'm not strong enough." And then the Admiral entered. "Come to gloat some more?" she growled, spitting blood at him.

"Charming," he said tersely, wiping the stain from his uniform. "I've come to inform you that I've had your friends executed. If you had been a good girl and told us what we wanted, they would still be alive." Then he left.

A hollow pit of despair formed inside her, and she howled and howled and howled.

Two more friends, dead because of her. First Ran, now Kanig and Ooroosh. She had not known the two aliens long, nor did she know them as well as she knew her Master, but she had considered them friends—at the very least comrades in arms. But now they were dead—because of her. They did not even have a real reason to join up with her, and she got them killed.

"I couldn't help Ran when he needed me," she moaned, "and I couldn't help them when they needed me, too! What kind of Jedi am I? I'm supposed to save and protect people, but I can't even protect the people around me!" She shouted, she roared, she thrashed against her chains, the manacles cutting deeply into her wrists and drawing blood. "What use am I?"

She fell to her knees, ignoring the pain that shot up her bound arms. "Forgive me," she groaned. "Forgive me, all of you. I failed you all. I'm a failure of a Jedi. My weaknesses got you all killed. I'm so, so sorry!" Tears fell from her eyes unbidden and her shoulders were wracked with sobs.

She cried herself to sleep and she hung there, by her chains, throughout the night.

A noise roused her from her slumber. Her arms ached. But then she felt warm, strong hands massage her strained biceps, easing some of the tension. Ran had caressed her that way when they lay together. When she looked around, she saw no one. But she thought she heard the whisper of robes.

And then she saw it—a metal cylinder lying by the door. A lightsaber. Ran's lightsaber.

She did not question. She did not ask how or why. She just focused on it. The neural disrupter on her neck turned her mind to jelly, made it difficult to reach the Force. But strain she did, pushing her mind and body to the limit in ways torture never could. Cries and moans escaped her lips, pain shattered her composure, but still she reached, reached, reached!

Ran's lightsaber flew above her, its blue blade shimmering and illuminating the cell. There were sparks as it cut through the chains. She ripped the neural disrupter from her neck, crying out as the pronged needles that had been stuck in her spine were unceremoniously pulled free.

Again, she looked around. But there was no lightsaber. Indeed, the chains did not show signs of a lightsaber's cut. The links had shattered, as if weakened. Somehow, in some delirious state, she had telekinetically undermined the integrity of the chains and broke them apart. But the fact that she had seen Ran's lightsaber made her think that she was not yet alone.

"Thank you," she mumbled into the silence. She thought she heard a roguish chuckle answer her, and she smiled. "You always were a bastard. I will avenge you. And I'll avenge Kanig and Ooroosh, too. But I won't do it out of anger. I swear I won't. I don't know if it was you or just some hallucination I had from being tortured, but I've learned my lesson. I won't succumb and I won't give up. That's a promise."

It would be hard living up to that promise, she knew. The deaths of her friends were too fresh, too real, too much in her mind and heart. But a Jedi did not live an easy life.

For now, she had to concentrate on stopping Adguard. Walking up to the locked door, she reached out with the Force and felt the presence of two guards outside. "You will enter," she whispered, sending tendrils of manipulation out of her cell and into their minds. The door unlocked and opened. Her fists shot out with lightning speed, breaking in each guard's windpipe. They fell to the floor, choking.

She quickly fished through their pockets for their keycards, a plan already formulating in her mind. The plan would only work if she were fast, though. There was no time to think about revenge or anything else except escape. Her bare feet slapped on the cold durasteel flooring as she ran through the halls, sweeping her mind's gaze through the Force. She read the thoughts of dozens of soldiers, some in the bunks, others above or below a deck from her. Through them, she learned where the Nebula Dancer was located and that it was under heavy guard with an electronic lock on its controls.

She came to the hangar and swiped a keycard through the security lock. The doors slid open, catching over a dozen guards by surprise. They gawked at her, a bloodied, half-naked girl. But she ignored their stares and focused on her goal: the Nebula Dancer, locked to the hangar floor by magnetic couplings.

Her mind stretched out and touched those couplings, forcing them away. She fought against the pull of magnetic energy, but she succeeded. The couplings fell away and hit the deck with a thunderous clang. The guards regained their senses and opened fire. An alarm sounded, accompanied by flashing red lights. The element of surprise was spent.

Angela did not fear the blaster bolts heading her way. As she did on Rakaris, she swept them aside with a gesture, though it took more effort than she suspected. She doubted she could do it again. So she raised her hands and sent out a great burst of telekinetic power at the guards, bowling them over with a thought. They were not dead, but she knew that her move had broken more than a few bones and dealt quite a few concussions.

The path cleared, she ran up the landing ramp and into the Dancer's cockpit, where she found the electronic lock. Again she swiped the keycard through. The lock deactivated and fell to the floor. She buckled herself into the pilot's chair and set the ship into its take-off cycles. That was when she heard the rapport of more blaster fire. The reinforcements had arrived.

"Damn it," she cursed. "Ten minutes. Got to hold them off for ten minutes. Damn it, Ran, why'd you have to get a ship that takes forever to warm up?" She set the ship on autopilot, instructing it to randomly jump into hyperspace as so as it cleared the hangar. Then she climbed up into one of the gunwells and heated up the quad lasers. She turned the cannons toward the hangar doors, where no less than fifteen soldiers were gathering and laying down suppressive fire.

She returned fire, blasting out the controls on the doors, which slid closed in response. It was only a temporary measure, she knew, but it would buy enough time for the Dancer to finish its take-off cycle. By the time the soldiers forced the doors open, the Nebula Dancer had already jumped off into hyperspace.

She settled into the gunner's chair and sighed. Escape—she had, against all odds, escaped. But at what cost? Her friends were dead and she was alone. Again the tears came, but she wiped them away with a blood-caked arm. "I will not succumb," she vowed again. "I will succeed and I won't give up."

Her gaze looked out into the blue-white of hyperspace, but all she could see was Adguard's face. Hatred and anger burned in her, as did the desire to kill the man with her own bare hands. One by one, she in turn burned away those feelings. A Jedi had to be distanced from those emotions. She was going to do so forcefully. "I'll be coming back for you," she promised to that vision of Adguard she saw in her mind. "And when I do, you'll pay. But for now, you can have your reprieve. I'll be back, believe it. Then I'll do what LeFrein wanted me to do and what Kanig and Ooroosh died to do—stop you."

Only the hum of hyperspace answered her.

End Book Two