also to Koraty, who laughes with me at reality and X-Wings, and has no idea I dedicate all this stuff to her.
Commander Horn felt just a tiny shock, like waking abruptly from deep sleep. "Open bay 5138." He muttered. There was great reason to, great reason, and the techs in the pit heard that, or were simply afraid of him, and quickly made the order fact. A spasm, like an upheaval in the Force, and-
-Commander Horn felt a tiny shock, like waking abruptly from deep sleep.
"Prepare the attack." Darth Vader said. "Now, no ship is to leave. Jump to hyperspace soon, Commander."
Horn bowed, nonplussed by the abruptness. Finally the Rebels destroyed, crunched beneath the Imperial heel. Vader sensed his inferior's glee at this and, smiling grimly behind his eyes, exited, his black cape sweeping along the floor.
Corran Horn, Jedi Knight, left his body and the cold floor beneath him as if these things formed as a shell around his battered true self. The body, accepting of gravity and without movement completely, was the same and somehow different, here again in Maw Installation.
He levered himself up on hands and kneees, and when his feet were under him saw Leeondro K'Saavis and stopped mid-movement, realizing that the time machine was now in the inventor's hands.
The Empire.
Me.
The dark side?
K'Saavis' Twi'lek aid was tapping at the room's computer with clawed fingers. The cragy alien face turned toward them then.
"It worked." Corran growled. He remembered K'Saavis, Kell, De'shar as if from a different life, another person's mirror reflection. Closer to reality were Darth Vader, that alien animal-person, Admiral Hyla who had ordered the Death Star to fire-
"Look at this" The Twi'lek said, and K'saavis moved to look into the computer screen. Corran stood with general difficulty. What in the Seven just happened to me? Everything was rapidly feeling normal.He staggered up, bound for now only by his curiosity toward what would be shown on that sceen. The Twi'lek's claws pointed out a dial or reading shown there in the lower right corner, though the image Corran studied first was of the containment field he had been held in, and himself repeatedly falling and disappearing as if into the floor. The others' eyes were on the dial.
"You're sure this is right" K'Saavis asked after a time.
"Hmm." His aid nodded.
K'Saavis looked to Corran, the time machine held tightly in his hands; his gaze wavered between Corran and tha machine. "Interesting thing you have shown me."
"What's that" Corran asked.
"You did not travel through time at all! There was, on this screen, an image of a galaxy where the Empire had never fallen! Where what was back in the Civil War is! Amazing." There was a light in his eyes and passion in his voice, a scientist reveling in science.
They used the machine on me. Corran just then realized or remembered. And with K'Saavis' words and a digging back in his mind and the Force he was remembering also what exactly had happened. He felt just shock.
The Twi'lek snagged some kind of sensor or pad off Corran's forhead and connected the thng-a disklike silver device-to the computer. And there was the bridge of the Star Destroyer Bitter Heart, and Darth Vader turned toward the screen, commanding him. The Twi'lek rewound it in a second, then it played from the beginning, all of Corran's experiances. That nameless planet shattering into fragments of sparks...He let anger wash over him and away. What now, what to do? Two Wiphid Force-users stood at the doorway.
"So it is like an alternate history." K'Saavis quietly said. "Here you are Jedi Knight, there dark commander, here I am renegade loyalist...there..."
Greed and power lust rose in his sense. Corran, disgusted, tried to understand. That was an alternate reality? The present, where the Empire still lived? Those dials must have tracked years, standing still while the camera rolled.
There was a knock, like a thunk or thud actually, and the thre of them turned toward it. The Whiphids looked midway puzzled and fierce, and one of them stepped back as another thud and shiver shook the door. K'Saavis looked at his major domo with undesguised pleading and stammered"Do something". Corran stepped back a pace.
The door blew off its track and tore the edges off the connected wall. A second or too after the violent scream of metal it had slammed against the opposite wall and dug into the plasteel, missing K'Saavis only because he ducked behind the computer stand. In the doorway, Master Kell stood in rising blaster smoke-a result of De'shar's crisping of the left Whiphid-palms thrown out before her and a grin that looked more like a fang-toothed challenge splitting her long face. She lowered her hands and strode in then, confident as a barrister in court. The Twi'lek's blaster flew to her hand.
"Party's over, K'Saavis. This place is gonna be shut down but good." The razor-blades at her wrists were out, but inside she was deep-space calm, and full into the Force. As she spoke De'shar propped a vibroblade against her shoulders and when the remaining Wiphid bodyguard pulled a blaster on him Kell's other companion, a white-furred alien, disarmed him with something like a four-armed teras kasi move. Kell swung her head around and knocked the Whiphid out with a stare and flick of her tails. So Corran missed K'Saavis depress a button on his commlink, and when the inventor moved out from the computer it was with his hands above his head and his expression passive or resigned.
"Alright, Jedi." He said. "Whad'you want"
Then the danger sense bloomed like a pain behind Corran's eyes, and he and Kell were runing for the torn door and K'Saavis in the other direction to a second exit Kell's Force attack had barely missed. De'shar faltered and was going to ask what was going on but Corran grabbed her shoulders and pushed her out ahead of him.
Corran heard a laser blast, so much bigger then a blaser's, and repeated spurts heralded the cracking of thick transparisteel. Corrran looked back.
Three black ships poured lasers into the rapidly shredding room, and space pulled at his clothing and chilled the regulated air. At the other end of the hall a blat door was closing-the Twi'lek, orange eyes staring, lost his fragile grip on the computer stand. With a pang of darkness, Corran turned and made for the blast doors, climbing through the angled canter before it closed completely and he was in the stillness of the other side.