Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt
Nevan made his way to the main cabin and found his Apprentice sitting on a couch at the far corner. The dim light made it difficult at first, but as he drew closer he noticed an apprehensive look on Aida's face and frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"Master, what was your life before the Shadow Jedi like?"
Nevan immediately recognized it as a deflection, a changing of the subject to distract him. He thought on it a moment and decided to go with it, and allow Aida to decide when to answer his question.
"It wasn't far from the ordinary, ordinary for a Jedi I mean. I never really knew my family as with all Jedi I was taken from my family at a young age." He made a sweeping gesture, indicating the ship "The Demons Foe is my only link to them, they left it with the council to be given to me the second I was certified to fly."
He smiled at the memory "They were very hesitant, I wasn't always quite the crack pilot I am now."
Aida grinned and with mock surprise said "Really?"
"You laugh now, but when it comes down to it my skills could save your life." He stopped to gather his thoughts "now where was I? Oh yes, well after many years at the temple I was nearing the end, the time when you are either chosen as a Padawan or sent off. I guess this is when the change occurs as I was chosen, but there weren't any masters available and you were sent to the AgriCorps."
She smiled "I'll bet they never expected I would jump ship and wind up being found on the streets by the Shadow Jedi."
"Luck for us they didn't" Nevan smiled at his apprentice before continuing on "anyway I spent the next few years training under Master Dokun, a very wise man but incredibly set on the old ways, I would pull some stupid stunt as always and next thing I knew he had me cleaning the entire temple top to bottom with a tiny rag, claimed it was a test of patience, but all it did was make me want to do is pull another stupid little stunt. Although back then everything I did was nothing compared to what I do now, the Jedi aren't as lenient that's why I left the strict ways of the Jedi and found the Shadow Jedi who better understand balance and the fact that suppressing emotion only makes for a bigger explosion in the cases when it does finally all come out."
Nevan noticed that Aida had drifted, her attention seemed to be focussed elsewhere and still not wanting to push her further he smiled "Why don't I stop here and finish later, let's practice on a few meditations now."
Aida nodded, and moved away to prepare for meditating. Nevan stalled for a moment before joining her, and soon the two were meditating deeply.
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Nevan was brought out of his meditation by the frantic beeping of the proximity alarm "What the? We shouldn't be anywhere near Cerallis for at least eight days."
As he made his way to the cockpit he continued to mutter to himself about needing to give the ship a tune up.
He was horrified what he saw in the instruments and quickly brought the ship to face a massive rectangular shaped Interdictor cruiser, the hull as almost completely smooth except for the turbolaser emplacements, and twin panels nearly three times the size of the Demons Foe protruded on either side.
He continued on, hoping that he would go unnoticed as ships like these outside of Republic command were rarely friendlies. His fears were confirmed when a beeping on the console to his right showed the cruiser launching a wave of cone shaped fighters with blunted noses and three laser barrels, one on the bottom, and two on either side of the cockpit.
He cursed quietly to himself and slammed his palm against the intercom "Aida get into the port gun well, we've got company!"
Soon the activation light established that his Apprentice had reached and activated the dual gun turret on the bottom port side of the ship.
The ship bucked as a barrage of lasers cris-crossed against the shield.
Pulling up and out of the barrage he gave Aida a clear shot and smiled in pride and victory as he saw the first two ships to reach them explode under the assault of the lasers barrage.
Once again the enemies found their target as he was thrown forward from and assault from behind. Trying every trick he could think of he cursed as he still couldn't shake the fighters. Looping down and through enemy fire he grinned as he saw the fighters drop of his screens due to 'friendly fire.'
Nevan opened the intercom once more "I'm going to fly past that moon on the far side of the cruiser if we're lucky they won't follow." Not waiting for the conformation he closed the channel, banked starboard, and hit the throttle.
Weaving back and forth in and almost insane fashion it would almost seem to the other fighters that the pilot was drunk, but it worked his motions were almost impossible to interpret and so seemingly random that only a few shots rang true, and did so because of dumb luck.
A blarring noise from the console warned him of an incoming missile, he once again turned on the intercom "Aida!"
"I see it!"
The crimson lances of energy rang true as they hit the missile, which took out another fighter with it in the explosion.
He kept his erratic manoeuvres up as he drew closer to the cruiser only to dodge the fighters the Demons Foe being too small for the turbolasers on the cruiser to be effective.
Quickly they made their way past the cruiser and sped on towards the moon, the blarring from the console indicated that another missile had been launched "Incoming!"
Aida's voice yelled over the console "I can't hit it brace for impact!"
The ship shook violently as the missile collided with them.
"How are we?"
"Some internal damage and the rear deflectors are down, we can't risk another hit I'm diverting all power to the engines." as he did the ship rocked almost as violently as when the missile collided.
The plan seemed to be working as the Demons Foe sped past the moon
Nevan hit the intercom once more "There the sensor shadow should keep the cruiser from knowing what happens to us, now it's just up too you to finish the last five fighters."
Easing up on the throttle, Nevan began diverting all the power back into primary systems and any unnecessary power back into the rear deflector screens.
"We're almost in the clear, I'll get the nav computer running to plot a jump out of here, when we take out the fighters we can jump out as soon as we're out of the interdiction field"
A groan from the ship indicated the fighters were back in range and they had scored a glancing blow.
"Aida!"
"I'm working on it, try to get me a good shot, these guns aren't effective unless you have people in the top and bottom wells on both sides."
With humour in his voice Nevan said through clenched teeth "Please try not to point out design flaws in a battle situation, I taught you better than that"
Aida's voice rang over the intercom "Yes, I believe your aggressive tendencies towards conflict is another problem the Jedi had with you."
"I just find a fight is the better answer in the long run...usually." Nevan paused for a second as the saw another two lights wink out indicating the destruction of another two ships "You want aggressive eh?"
He brought the ship around and once again shunted power, only this time to the forward deflectors "How 'bout a game of chicken." he muttered to himself
"Master, what are you doing?"
No reply
"Master!"
Aida watched the ship quickly moving towards them and realized he was giving her the perfect shot she wanted, lining the turret up directly with the fighter. Pulling the trigger at the last possible second Aida heard another groan from the ship as the shields were put to the test plowing through the explosion and the remains of the ship.
Nevan grinned "Told you I know what I'm doing."
An explosion rocked the ship as the two remaining fighters scored direct hits.
"We've lost engines! I'm going to try to put her down on the moon, sensors show it's inhabitable."
Another hit cut out most of the power throughout the ship and whatever reverence for life that the Jedi order had built into Nevan was momentarily lost. With a growl of rage he reached out his senses found the two pursuing craft and in one violent gesture crushed them both.
With a small hint of exhaustion in his voice Nevan smiled and mumbled to no one in particular "And that is why I left the Jedi."
He frantically worked the controls and tried to gain whatever small amount of control of the ship he could "Brace yourself we should be down momentarily and I've done all I can, this won't be an easy landing."
Moments later a jungle like surface rushed towards their view and in another moment their vision faded to black, the last sight of both Master and Apprentice being the ship plowing into the ground.
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Nevan groaned as he came too. He rolled over and pushed himself to his feet, the metallic tang of blood in his mouth in his mouth indicated that he was bleeding. He quickly checked himself over for any serious injury, finding none he raced out of the cockpit towards the lower port side gun well.
Leaning over the edge he yelled down to his Apprentice "Aida?"
He received a low groan, similar to his own in response.
"Are you okay?"
Another groan "I think so!" a quick check "Yes!"
"No time to sleep, get up here, we have quite a bit of work to do."
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A/N: Ok second chapter done and up, hope you all enjoy it please review if you have the chance tell me what you liked and what you didn't and so on.
As usual tell me any mistakes and I'll fix them as soon as possible.