Tenel Ka felt it, a surge of confidence in the Force like a half-remembered touch. She whispered Zekk's name so softly no one else heard it, not even the shuttle's pilot and co-pilot that were crammed into the cockpit with her.
"Your Majesty," the co-pilot said as they fell toward the crevasse that split the worldship's crust apart like an egg shell, "We're beginning our scan. No trans-mission signals detected. Searching for metallic com-pounds."
"The worldship is beginning to rotate faster," the pilot reported. "Shifting velocity to match."
Tenel Ka, strapped to the seat behind the pilot, leaned forward to get a better view. The shuttle slipped beneath the crack like it was falling into a deep canyon. Below, its searchlights stroked a vast dusty plain. At first it seemed totally featureless; then she spotted something that looked like a valley, bottoming out into a dried riverbed.
"Getting something ahead," the pilot reported. "Dropping altitude."
Next they passed over another plain. She reached out with the Force and found Zekk's presence still there, warm and confident. She knew Tahiri less well, but she believed the other Jedi was present too. Both of them still felt distant, their locations were impossible to tell. She kept her eyes on the plain below, and her breath caught in her chest as the searchlights flashed over a worn, angular metal structure.
"It's… an Imperial walker," the pilot said with restrained surprise.
Tenel Ka's mouth went dry. "Fact. Keep moving forward."
They soared past the crumpled walker's body and flew low over the plain. She remembered that metal contraption from all those years ago; her friend Lowbacca had nearly been killed in it, along with the Rodian Jovan Drark, with whom Tenel Ka had worked previous scouting missions. That had been early in the strike team's mission; Anakin had still been alive, as had Drark, neither for much longer.
And Jacen had still been Jacen, wrapped up in his own worries about the Force while simultaneously worrying about his tense, tangled relationship with his strong-willed little brother, a relationship that was painfully close to an ending neither of them expected or wanted.
Tenel Ka felt Zekk nudge her in the Force; something of her distress had rippled across to him, and she tried to reassure him she was all right. In truth, just knowing he was there to feel her, that he was alive at all, was enough to make her feel stronger. She'd lost so much already, getting Zekk back felt like a precious gift.
"Getting another signal," the co-pilot said. "This one looks scattered. It might be debris from the explosion we observed earlier."
The spotlight swept the dusty plain again and picked up scattered fragments of black, twisted metal. "So it is," Tenel Ka said. "Keep going."
"Forward, Your Majesty?"
"Forward."
The pilot nodded and kicked the engines ahead. Like most Hapans they were uncomfortable with Jedi; Tenel Ka usually resisted displaying her powers before her people, but in this instance Zekk's life took precedence.
As they continued ahead the searchlight stopped over a large crater that seemed to be pocked with smaller ones.
"Slow down," Tenel Ka commander.
The co-pilot frowned. "I don't sense any metals here, Your Majesty. No heat signatures either."
Tenel Ka strained against her crash webbing to look down at the crater. The space had been laid barren by the vacuum, by time, by the fight that had occurred here, and for a moment Tenel Ka doubted her initial assumption, but in the end, there could be no doubt. She was looking at the shaper laboratory where Anakin Solo had died, where everything had changed.
Where her promise to protect Jacen from the dark side had been irrevocably broken, even before she'd made it.
"Your Majesty?" the pilot gently prodded. "There appears to be nothing here."
"Fact." Nothing but ghosts. "Resume course."
She settled back in her seat. She wondered how harrowing this return must have been for Zekk, or worse, Tahiri, who'd never truly recovered from her loss here.
Not that any of them really had, or ever would.
She felt another nudge; Zekk again. She allowed familiar warmth to flood through her and told the pilots, "We are drawing close. Be ready to make a descent."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the co-pilot said as she kept her eyes on her sensors. Tenel Ka felt a spike of alarm through her in the Force right before she said, "We're getting another metallic signature. There seems to be residual heat as well."
"Take us there," Tenel Ka ordered, not that she needed to. She unbuckled her crash webbing and stood up, one arm braced against the co-pilot's seat as she watched the wrecked form of the Red Kiss gleam under the searchlight. One look told Tenel Ka that her cousins wouldn't be getting that ship spaceworthy, not in the time they had left.
"Trying to hail them" the co-pilot said. "No response."
Tenel Ka didn't need one. She felt Zekk's relief through the Force, and Tahiri's too. "Set down on the plain next to the freighter. They'll join us shortly."
"Landing gear extended," the pilot reported. "Setting down."
Tenel Ka leaned back, made sure her pilots couldn't see her, and allowed herself a smile. This mission to Myrkr, at least, would not end in tragedy. Her promise to herself would not end like the others.
That was when the worldship buckled, trembled, and shattered.
-{}-
From space, hovering underneath Dragon Queen's bottom disc, the crew of Wayward Soldier could see the Yuuzhan Vong worldship's great hull begin to crack under the strain of Myrkr's gravity. First one of the great vessel's spiral arms seemed to twist and snap under an invisible grip; then the existing crack that cut from the disc's edge to its center began to widen.
Chazdrul Harn had been hoping that the worldship was internally stable enough to remain whole for most of its fall. That might mean a nasty impact on Myrkr, but at least it would stay intact long enough for the Hapans to make a proper retrieval. Now it looked like the damn thing might crumble and burn up in the atmosphere.
"Captain Muro," the little Bimm beside him gasped. "I have to get to her. If I can get Mandala to-"
"That freighter won't fly and we both know it," Harn scowled as he shuffled over to the comm station and turned it on. "Dragon Queen, this is Wayward Soldier. Respond."
The Hapan admiral's stern visage sprung to life before him. "What is it, Captain?"
"What's the status of your retrieval?"
"Still in progress," the woman said stiffly.
"Admiral, is there anything-"
"No. We will update you when we learn more."
At that, the holo winked off. Harn and Vjarna shared hopeless looks; then both turned their eyes on the worldship as it continued to crumble.
-{}-
The great plain cracked beneath the Hapan shuttle just as it lowered its landing gear; slabs of raw yorik coral, twice the size of the ship, suddenly burst through the dust covering the plain. The ground beneath Red Kiss suddenly jutted ward and the broken freighter began sliding back. By the time it started moving, most of its passengers had already spilled out onto the plain in hope of retrieval. Zekk and Taryn stayed at the back, and when the shuttle bucked and started sliding, the Hapan was thrown back into the Jedi and both went tumbling hard into the airlock vestibule. The ship continued to rattle around them as they struggled to untangle from each other's limbs.
A voice squawked over his vac suit's comm line, so tense in its panic he barely recognized it as Trista said, "Sister! Sister! Please respond!"
"Coming out now," Taryn grunted. The ship kept jerking and heaving around them, but she crawled on hands on knees over to the edge of the airlock portal. Zekk tried to rise but immediately fell forward, half-landing on top of her.
"Save it for later, Jedi," Taryn squirmed out from beneath him.
Before Zekk cold bleat out a rejoinder the ship jumped again. Dust flew into the airlock, blinding them and drumming on their helmets, but he could feel his stomach lurch as the ship was thrown up once more.
He hung onto Taryn's waist with one arm and battered the dust away with the other. When it cleared, his guts turned to ice.
Red Kiss, or what was left of it, had been bucked free of the shattered field of yorik coral. The worldship's limited gravity hadn't been enough to keep it on the ground and now it was being flung outward, spinning as it moved.
The broken ground flashed by, then the worldship's exterior shell and the wide crack that seemed to be growing wider. Then he saw the stars, and then the engine-flares and smooth gleaming metal of Tenel Ka's shuttle as it tried to catch up with them.
Then they kept spinning, and the same scenes whipped by again. He didn't know if they'd fly through the gap or smash unto the coral ceiling; either way he wanted to get aboard Tenel Ka's ship as soon as possible. The next time it flashed by, he saw the ship pulling close, its landing ramp extended and a few figures in vac suits hanging off; they were either climbing aboard or trying to catch him, he couldn't tell.
He tried to calm himself, to find the Force and the people he cared about in it. He felt Tenel Ka on that ship, uncharacteristically panicked, and he felt Tahiri. He vaguely recognized the Force-impression of the Hapan woman lying beneath him.
We're coming over! He tried to tell his fellow Jedi. Whether they understood or not didn't matter. As Red Kiss flipped around yet again he tapped his helmet against Taryn's and said, "Get ready!"
"We can't jump," she said. "They're too far away!"
"Just trust me!" he shouted and rolled off her, pulling his arm from her waist.
The shuttle flipped into view again, and he was ready. He grabbed Taryn with the Force and flung her out the airlock, sent her rolling head-over-feet toward the shuttle as it struggled to keep pace with the tumbling freighter.
All of that flipped out of view. He saw a brief flash of stars, and the rough looming roof of yorik coral rushing to meet him. He tried to keep track of Taryn in the Force, keep moving her, but he found his efforts met by another's. Inside his mind Tahiri said, We have her!
Zekk felt relief flood through him. Then there was an awful scraping, and he was thrown upward, hard against the rim of the airlock. He heard the sound of his helmet cracking; then he heard, felt, and saw nothing at all.
-{}-
Tenel Ka, one hand hooked on the landing strut as she leaned halfway out of the shuttle's cargo hold, stared in wordless terror as the freighter's battered disc hit the inside of the worldship's protective shell. Its starboard edge- not the edge with the airlock from which Taryn had just flown, Force-assisted, into Tahiri and Trista's grip, not the one where Zekk was trapped- collided with the yorik coral and ground into it; the freighter's flipping stopped but instead its hull began to shear off in pieces along with chunks of dislodged coral. One slab fell right against the shuttle, barely missing the extended landing ramp and nicking its hull.
"Your Majesty!" the pilot's voice rang in the ear of her vac suit. "Do we have them?"
"Not yet!" she ordered, not caring how panicked she sounded. They kept chasing Red Kiss, even as its torn-up belly finally swung upward and slammed fully into the coral ceiling.
"Get us closer!" she called to the pilot. "Closer!"
The pilot, to her credit, didn't protest or complain. She kicked in a little additional altitude, skimming the coral underside so close she risked scraping off their own hull.
Tahiri tugged the pinned-up sleeve Tenel Ka's missing arm. "Can you find Zekk? I can't feel him!"
Tenel Ka had felt a fast burst of panic and a faster winking-out. She stared at the freighter as it scraped along, knowing it would only be a few seconds before the entire thing tore apart in a mess of shrapnel and debris from which there could be no survival.
Not again. She'd lost so much on this damned worldship already; not just Anakin and other good Jedi but all the things she could never quantify: youth, hope, possibility, love.
She wouldn't lose any more. She couldn't. She'd sworn to herself she wouldn't let this place anyone more from her. She couldn't live with herself if she broke one more promise.
Desperation gave her fuel. She reached out with the Force and found the faint echo of Zekk's presence, a presence she'd known deep inside for almost half her life. The echo was enough. She found him and pulled.
She sensed Tahiri join strength with her. She saw a dark figure tumble from Red Kiss moments before the entire ship tore itself apart. The two of them pulled his body from the expanding debris cloud, reeling it toward the extended landing ramp.
It was Taryn who stretched forward and grabbed Zekk's arm as it dangled limp to one side. She pulled him in with both hands and Tahiri grabbed him too, reeling him in.
Tenel Ka staggered with them up the ramp and shouted in her comlink, "Go now! Take us out!"
The pilot must have been too happy to reply, because the shuttle immediately banked down, putting itself well clear of the shuddering yorak coral ceiling, then banked to the other side and accelerated. Once they'd dragged Zekk into the hold, Tahiri slapped the control panel on the wall and retracted the ramp.
Tenel Ka and Taryn both staged with Zekk. His helmet had been cracked; his face was slack and unconscious but it didn't look like he'd suffered severe decompression.
Once the ramp sealed, fresh air hissed into the chamber. Tenel Ka unlatched her helmet but Taryn got hers off first. She tossed it into the corner and immediately tugged Zekk's off too. She brushed his hair away and ran her hands over his face, warm palms against cool cheeks.
"I can feel him," said Tahiri as she dropped to her knees beside him. "He's really faint, though."
Taryn pulled his bare head up into her lap and felt for a pulse. "He's still beating."
"We'll get a medic down immediately," Tenel Ka said.
Taryn bent over and, to the surprise of both other women, planted a kiss firm on Zekk's mouth. When she pulled back his cold lips twitched, but his eyes didn't open.
"Next time I'll make sure you remember it, Jedi," Taryn muttered, then looked up. "I'll stay with him, Go up. Go!"
Tahiri scrambled to her feet. Tenel Ka was right behind her. The two women hurried through crammed hallways, shouting for someone to go see Zekk in the hold, until they reached the cockpit, where they were greeted with the sight of crumbling coral falling toward them.
"Hold on!" a voice cried, and Tenel Ka realized that Trista had taken the shuttle's controls. Apparently not one to mourn the loss of her prized freighter, the woman wrested with the yoke and nimbly avoided one chunk of coral, then another.
One more big one tumbled toward them. Trista swung the yoke so hard to the right her whole body almost fell out of her chair, and inertia shoved Tahiri into Tenel Ka and Tenel Ka into the jumpsuited form of what must have been the mercenary captain from Wayward Soldier.
"We're clear!" Trista whooped as the last bits of the crumbling worldship disappeared. Stars filled their vision, and in the distance, the double-disc shape of the Hapan warship. Dragon Queen had never once looked so spectacular, Tenel Ka decided.
Tenel Ka would have been happy to soar right to her ship, but Tahiri leaned over Trista's shoulder and said, "Turn us around."
The pilot frowned and looked to Tenel Ka. Tahiri added, "Kill acceleration, then reorient us toward Myrkr. Please. I want to see."
Tenel Ka understood. She nodded, and Trista cut their speed and spun the shuttle around so their view-port faced the planet and the burning pyre of the dying worldship.
The spiral arms of the great creation's disc had been torn apart, falling into the atmosphere and burning up. A corona of fire spread around the craft's splitting center as it hit Myrkr's atmosphere. As she watched, the great rift within it spread even larger until the entire worldship cracked in two. Its coral entrails spilled out, so much immediately igniting as it tumbled toward the planet so as to form a giant umbrella of fire that seemed to reach out and grasp the rest of the disc.
She remembered the first time she'd seen that worldship; who had been with her, and who she'd lost in the long years since. Yet in all that time, in all that had happened, this place had remained in the back of her mind as surely as it had hung dead over Myrkr in its slow-decaying orbit.
As she watched the worldship's death a stunning sense of freedom came over her. It made her dizzy, and stole away her words, even her thoughts. Nothing could truly encapsulate what she was seeing, what she felt.
"Hmmph," the mercenary captain said, "Good riddance."
Tenel Ka looked at him and saw the satisfaction on his face, but when she tried to find him in the Force she found nothing, nothing at all.
Tahiri must have realized that. She put a hand on Tenel Ka's shoulder and said, "I'll explain later."
Tenel Ka nodded. The other woman didn't take her hand away. They stood together in the back of the cockpit, watching the worldship dissolve. Her mind fell back to Jacen's funeral; it seemed like forever ago, and it had brought her no closure. This pyre felt truer somehow; better and final.
"Your Majesty," the co-pilot said quietly, "Dragon Queen is hailing us. Are we ready to board?"
"Tell them to hold," Tenel Ka said. "Give us a minute more."
The co-pilot nodded and relayed the order. Tenel Ka and the others stayed where they were and watched the great worldship, so full of memory and history and tragedy, crumble and burn until it became nothing at all.