Chapter 8: Internal Issues

"Are we there yet?"

"No."

"Are we there yet?"

"No!"

"Are we there yet?"

"NO!"

Toph waited a little bit longer this time. "Are we there yet?"

Sokka felt a hard thud underneath him. "Yes!"

The shuttle just landed in the Fire Nation capital, specifically on the caldera rim not far from the observatory. Instantly Toph's world expanded beyond the confines of the shuttle, her feet receiving vibrations from the ground beneath her. Immediately Toph unbuckled her safety harness and was heading for the exit, and the shuttle's ramp couldn't lower fast enough for her. As soon as the gap was wide enough Toph leapt through it, colliding with the ground and rolling herself in the dirt, getting herself as filthy as she possibly could.

A few seconds later Sokka walked down the ramp, and couldn't help but smile. "I take it you're feeling much better?"

Toph either didn't hear him or simply didn't care. She got on her back to have her fingers and toes dig into the soft dirt, as if to grab hold of the Earth itself and never let go of it again. While Toph laid there on her back the dirt molded around her, and she appeared to sink a few inches into the ground, as if to disappear into it entirely. That void Toph had felt up in space was filling in like a landslide, her link to earthbending being restored. Toph basked in the dirt for what felt like eternity, until Sokka started prodding her with his foot.

"Are you going to be there all day?" Sokka asked.

"Can I?" Toph asked back.

Moving shadows got Sokka's attention, looking up and seeing many landing crafts descend upon the capital. "I don't think you have the time."

Inside the shuttle the pilot had just received a transmission from the Stalker, containing new orders for him to carry out. "Understood."

Flanked by two stormtroopers that came along for security, the pilot exited the shuttle with a blaster in hand. All three guns were then trained on Sokka and Toph, and one of the stormtroopers made the demand. "Both of you, hands up."

"And there it is," Sokka grumbled. Fortunately he was already holding his space shield, but couldn't reach for his space sword without getting shot. "I was wondering when the double cross would come."

"Now!" the stormtrooper demanded, both standing just beyond the end of the ramp. "Hands Up! Or we shoot!"

"Hold your ostrich-horses!" Toph shouted back, getting up on her feet. "See I'm holding my hands up… like THIS!"

Toph threw both hands upward, and pillars of stone rose up beneath the stormtroopers and launched them into the air. The pilot, although frightened, opened fire on the target he had been aiming at. Sokka had his space shield up to cover his face, and several blaster bolts hit it and left scorch marks in the metal. Then Toph brought her hands together and the two pillars she raised collided into each other, with the pilot squished in between them. There was a very loud crunch sound, and Sokka did not want to take a closer look.

"Kay, now what?" Toph asked.

Sokka pointed to the capital city under attack. "We need to do something to help down there."

Even from here Toph could feel the vibrations of the closest landings, vague though it was at the edge of her sight within the caldera. She glanced in that direction, and then back to Sokka. "Yeah no, we're not doing that."

"Why not?" Sokka asked.

"Pretty sure that's a lot of guys down there," Toph said, not needing to see them to know it. "I'm good, but I'm not that good."

"Point taken," Sokka admitted. "So what do you suggest we do?"

Toph pointed a thumb at the shuttle. "Well you're the tech guy. Figure out how that thing works. Maybe we can use it against them?"

Sokka glanced at the shuttle, and did not like the idea. "Yeah… last time I tried something like that, the ship exploded."

"Weren't you watching the pilot while he flew the damn thing?" Toph asked.

"I might have stolen a peek or two," Sokka admitted. He thought about the matter, and then shrugged. "Okay then, let's give it a try."

Back aboard the Stalker a portion of the Star Destroyer was under lockdown, particularly to keep the locals aboard from moving about and causing trouble. All of them were kept in that converted mess hall they were staying in, and the adjacent sections were kept under heavy guard. Although it would have been a lot simpler to just execute them via firing squad and be done with it, the stormtroopers were under orders to not let that resource go to waste. They didn't like the orders, but no stormtrooper would dare disobey Darth Vader.

After his little meeting with the captain on the bridge Zuko was brought back to the guarded section, all but thrown back in with all the other locals. The stormtroopers locked the door once Zuko was inside, completely certain that he wouldn't be getting out unless Captain Zed wanted to see him again. Inside the room there were many worried discussions about what was going on, though individuals stopped talking while Zuko walked past them to meet up with Qin. Seeing Zuko alive calmed them a bit, but that meant little considering they believed they would all be killed soon.

"Is everyone in here?" Zuko asked.

"Yes sir," Qin answered. "We just did a headcount, everyone is accounted for."

Zuko turned to face the crowd, a mixture of firebenders, waterbenders, and nonbenders from both the Fire Nation and the Water Tribe. "Everyone! Your Attention Please!"

All the idle discussions ceased, and everyone faced Zuko.

Now that he had their attention, Zuko continued. "I'm sure you've all figured out what's going on by now. The invasion has begun, and they've locked us in here for safekeeping. Our friends and families are fighting for their lives back home, and we have to do our part to stop this."

The scrawny waterbender Sangok raised his hand. "How are we supposed to do that? They took away all of our water before we knew we were being locked up."

"Not all of it," Zuko said, smirking while he said it. He held a hand in front of his chest and pointed down. "While Toph was here she found pipes in the floors. There are a lot of thirsty people on this ship, and they all need the water in those pipes."

"Oh…" Sangok muttered, understanding where Zuko was going with this. He noticed the other waterbenders realizing the same, and the mood shifted drastically. "Yes."

"We tear it all apart!" Zuko commanded. "Take the water! Take the ship apart! Take out everyone that stands in our way!"

Together all the waterbenders beckoned to the unseen water below them, yanking upward with both arms to pull the water to them. The floor rumbled under the pressure of an impending torrent, before cracks started to form and spread beneath their feet. The waterbenders repeated the motion again and the floor ruptured, geysers of water erupting from broken pipes and flowing up into the room. All that water now swirled around the waterbenders, all they could possibly need to fight a battle to destroy the enemy from within.

Although the floor had been torn asunder, the damage hadn't quite reached the level below. It had however triggered an alarm throughout the ship, so the waterbenders acted fast to remedy the situation. Together they shaped the water into a wide and fast flowing ring, and brought it down into the damaged floor. At high speed the flowing water cut into the metal, and after a few grinding moments a large circular piece of metal fell out into the floor below with a loud crash against the next floor down.

The waterbenders shaped some of the water and froze it into ice slides, connecting the two floors so that everyone could get down safely. Half of them had made it down when the doors opened, several stormtroopers entering and being shocked by the sight of a large hole in the floor. Firebenders struck while the stormtroopers were still surprised, Zuko himself striking down one while the other firebenders cooked the rest alive inside their armor. Although the first opposition had been dealt with, more were surely on their way.

"Let's get moving people!" Zuko ordered. He jumped onto an ice slide and slid down to the bottom. "This is only going to get harder from here."

On this floor the door out of the room was locked, so the waterbenders combined all the water into a single geyser and aimed it at the door. The impact of all that water was too much for the door to sustain, breaking off from the doorway and flung across a corridor into the opposite wall. The waterbenders hurried through the broken doorway first and reclaimed their water, just in time to create an ice shield when more stormtroopers opened fire. The ice absorbed the blaster bolts and turned into steam, and any resulting holes were quickly replaced with more ice.

Zuko walked out into the corridor, and pointed in the opposite direction from the firing stormtroopers. "The bridge is this way. If we can take it, we stand a chance."

Darth Vader stood on the Stalker's bridge.

He had been taking the time to receive an update on the situation planet side, and was somewhat annoyed with the slow progress down there. But then a ship wide alarm went off and had his attention, and the bridge crew immediately knew where the alarm had been triggered. It appeared that the locals aboard the ship had inflicted severe damage to the floor of their room, enough to reach the level below them and escape into the ship's corridors. For a moment Darth Vader was a little impressed, able to admire such ingenuity.

"Increase the guard around the turbolifts and vital ship systems," Darth Vader ordered. He turned and headed for the exit. "I will personally deal with this insurrection."

In the main turbolift Darth Vader headed down to one of the middle levels, the one that the locals had broken their way into. He walked down the main corridor that ran the length of the Star Destroyer, ignoring the stormtroopers running by in response to the alarm. Soon enough Darth Vader started hearing blaster fire up ahead, along with rushing water and burning fire and much painful screaming. There he made a right turn and then a left turn soon after, arriving at the spot where locals clashed with stormtroopers.

Darth Vader drew his lightsaber and activated it, the red beam igniting as he walked into battle.

Someone propelled sharp spikes of ice at him, which evaporated when they hit the lightsaber. Plumes of steam erupted from the lightsaber, and the blade flickered a little while the water disrupted the power current. After the first five ice spikes nearly shorted out the lightsaber Darth Vader switched tactics, holding his free hand in front of him and calling upon the Force. Now the ice spikes simply stopped moving in front of Darth Vader, until he telekinetically turned the spikes around and propelled them back to their source.

One of the locals was impaled by the ice, surprising the rest and drawing their attention to Darth Vader. More of the ice spikes were thrown at him and then repelled back at the locals, except this time the locals melted the ice and reclaimed the water to use again. So the locals then threw a wide wave of water down the corridor, which quenched the blaster fire the stormtroopers were shooting. Through the Force Darth Vader pulled on the floor, peeling up the deck plating into a curved barrier that the water collided against.

With his lightsaber Darth Vader cut the curved deck plating at the bottom, and then with the Force he launched the severed metal forward. Three of the locals were crushed by the moving metal, and the rest backed away at the sight of what Darth Vader did. Then he turned the Force on the ceiling above the locals, pulling off large pieces that fell to crush anyone standing underneath. However in tearing apart the ceiling Darth Vader also ruptured some pluming, spraying water on the locals that were still standing there.

Their supply of water refreshed and growing in volume, the locals that commanded the element put it to use. They unleashed a torrent of water that completely filled the corridor, washing away all the debris as it flowed towards the target. Yet that wave still came to a halt to the power of the Force, stopping just in front of Darth Vader's hand. Suddenly the water froze into a solid mass of ice, expanding beyond the corridor's confines and cracking the walls, ceiling, and floor. The corridor was completely blocked, at least until someone could melt through the ice.

Darth Vader expected something considerably lethal to happen next, yet the ice in front of him did not move. "What are they planning?"

It was difficult to see through all the ice, what with large cracks at every possible angle conspiring to obscure the view. From what little that could be seen it appeared that the locals had left, apparently using the ice to delay pursuit while they took another route. So Darth Vader started giving new orders to the stormtroopers, sending them to the likely places the locals were going and cut them off there. Darth Vader then turned off his lightsaber and put it away, not needing it at the moment, and then walked off to another part of the ship.

He wasn't in any hurry to get there. After all this was a space ship, there were only so many places they could go.

"It's got to be around here somewhere."

Zuko was understandably frustrated with the situation, although he couldn't let himself show it to anyone. The momentum his assorted benders and nonbenders had since their escape had been halted by the arrival of one man, and they had been forced to take a detour to get around him. Although the path directly to the bridge was no longer available, a secondary destination was still available to them. Thanks to the intel Toph provided while she was here, Zuko had a good idea how to go from here to the ship's armory.

Unfortunately they had already lost three of their waterbenders, some of their firebenders were in bad shape, and a bunch of nonbenders were dead. That just left poor Sangok and two others bending the water they had, so Qin and the firebenders took point from here to protect them. They were needed when they came across more stormtroopers, and these ones were met with fire that cooked them alive. But then they lost a few firebenders to blaster fire, and they didn't have the numbers to handle the losses they were taking.

"There!" Zuko yelled, pointing at a door. He got to it first and a waterbender was right behind him. "Sangok, can you get it open?"

"Just a moment," Sangok said.

Sangok forced as much water as he could into the doorframe, squeezing it all into all the little gaps and tiny cracks in the metal. He then froze the water all at one, ice expanding inside the door frame and applying extreme pressure within. It popped the door right off the frame, and when Sangok melted the water the door fell inward. Sangok rushed inside and had his water at the ready, but when he saw what was inside all of his water splashed onto the floor. Some of the others could see through the forcibly opened doorway, their jaws dropping at the sight.

Zuko walked in next, and was quite pleased with what they found. "Alright everyone, store's open, take your pick."

This was indeed the armory, with all the space age weaponry one could imagine, just sitting there waiting for the taking. Many shelves of blasters lined one of the walls, with the idiot-proof operation of point and click that anyone could understand. While the nonbenders helped themselves to the blasters Zuko looked at some stored stormtrooper armor, but decided that it wasn't worth the time to put on. That decision was proven correct when he heard blaster fire in the corridor, as more stormtroopers had arrived to gun them down.

"Alright everyone," Zuko said. He picked up a blaster and held it above his head. "Let's see how they like it!"

Everyone still outside hurried into the armory, quickly getting behind the nonbenders and their pilfered weapons. Stormtroopers were right behind them, and ran into a wall of converging blaster fire and the more literal fire. Soon the first of the stormtroopers fell into a heap of dead bodies, while the rest stopped at the door and fired through it. A pair of nonbenders fell to blaster fire before everyone else moved, getting to safe spots where the wall could shield them. But from cover it was difficult to aim the blasters, having to shoot blindly around corners.

From their cover Zuko and the firebenders threw more of their element, combining their smaller fires into larger plumes of flame that curved into the open doorway and shoot out into the corridor. The fire struck more stormtroopers and cooked them alive, and the ones not struck backed away a few feet to get away from the heat. Then Sangok turned some water into a few dozen ice shards and blindly flung them out the door, impaling a few stormtroopers and hearing their screams of pain all the way from inside the armory.

Sangok picked up a blaster in one hand and sheathed his other arm in a long tendril of water. "Okay, we got their weapons. Now what do we do?"

"Back to the old plan," Zuko answered, holding up the blaster he took. "We make for the bridge, and wreck everything along the way."

"Okay… if that goes there… and that goes there… it should do that… and make me do this…"

Sokka was muttering to himself inside the shuttle's cockpit, trying to make sense of all the knobs, levers, buttons, and other assorted parts of the controls. He only vaguely remembered little bits from looking over the pilot's shoulder, when he had been told to get back in his seat and let the pilot do his job. And it wasn't like Sokka could ask the pilot for instructions now, what with him having come down with a sudden case of death. Even if the pilot was still alive, asking him probably would have ended up with the shuttle blowing itself up.

"How's it going in there?" Toph asked, standing just outside the shuttle.

"Not very good!" Sokka admitted, having to yell to get his voice to carry out to Toph. "Maybe you ought to get in here and give it a try!"

"No thank you!" Toph yelled back. "If I can help it, I'm never leaving the ground again!"

"Can't blame you for that," Sokka muttered, and got back to work.

Sokka took another half an hour studying the controls, long enough to realize he wasn't going to learn anything more without trying something. So he pressed some buttons, turned a few knobs, and flicked some switches. That got the shuttle to rumble as the engines turned on, and the shuttle slowly lifted off the ground. The ramp remained open and let in more of the noise from the engines, drowning out Toph's surprised scream when the shuttle disappeared from her sight. Sokka ignored her and tried to focus on what he was doing, mentally praying that it would work as he imagined.

"Okay… easy now…" Sokka muttered. He gently moved a small lever. "Careful…"

"Any day now!" Toph yelled.

The shuttle started to vibrate, and Sokka's gut sank. "Aw crap!"

Sokka ran out of the cockpit as fast as he could, right before the shuttle shot forward. He found himself being flung toward the rear end of the shuttle, and he immediately fell out of the still open exit. He hit the ground and tumbled for quite a ways, nearly reaching the inner edge of the caldera rim before he stopped. Sokka ended up on his belly looking towards the capital, seeing the shuttle flying without a pilot. The shuttle tipped on its side, turned downward, and quickly crashed into a rather unfortunate landing craft.

The collision utterly destroyed both ships, although Sokka was a little disappointed when there wasn't a violent explosion. Sokka was even more disappointed that this had happened at all, and now he didn't even have a captured shuttle to show for his efforts. But for the moment Sokka's concern was the sheer pain he felt all over, having gotten bruised from the sudden meeting with the ground. He lay there groaning until Toph got to him, who he now realized had the right idea staying outside, not that it really mattered now.

"I felt that from here," Toph said, stopping to crouch beside Sokka, however little comfort that might be. "It was like a little earthquake."

"Well we learned something today," Sokka grumbled. He slowly pushed himself up to get on his feet. "When it comes to spaceships, I have no idea what I'm doing."

"You know how to crash them," Toph said.

"I don't think that's a special skill," Sokka said.

"It would be on the big one," Toph said. "If you could crash that one this would be all over."

"I wish," Sokka said. "Too bad we can't tell Zuko to do just that."

"Okay, new plan."

Zuko and his little group were not making any headway toward the bridge, being cut off by stormtroopers at every turn. It seemed that the enemy had figured out that the bridge was the destination, and used their knowledge of the ship to block off every possible route to get there. Right now the nonbenders were firing blind from behind cover, keeping up the suppression fire with stolen blasters to protect the benders from enemy fire. But it wasn't going to hold for very long, and more stormtroopers were arriving by the minute.

Zuko hated to admit it, but his original plan was not going to work. One alternative crossed his mind. "Let's just crash the damn thing."

He got a surprised look from Sangok. "What?"

"This thing has engines to keep it up here," Zuko said. "We go there instead, wreak them as best we can, and die knowing that we saved the world."

"That's insane!" Sangok yelled.

"I know that," Zuko said. He took a second to get a few shots in. "But we're going to die anyway. We might as well take all of them with us."

"Do you even know where the engines are?" Sangok pleaded.

"Vaguely," Zuko admitted. He remembered seeing the ship's engines from outside during that first shuttle ride here. "They're below the bridge in the main part of the ship. They're also big, so they can't be hard to miss."

"Fine," Sangok said. "But if this blows up in our faces and we end up in the afterlife together, I get to say 'I told you so.'"

"Fair enough," Zuko admitted.

At Zuko's command the group broke away from the current engagement, falling back into the corridor that they had used to get here. They got back to the last intersection and took a different route, one that wasn't blocked by stormtroopers and took them down to a lower level of the ship. Along the way the waterbenders seized more water from hidden pipes, tearing gashes in the wall where they pulled the water out through metal. They often hurled that water around corners ahead of them, expecting to run into more stormtroopers every time.

They found a path down several levels easily enough, but then started meeting resistance again. It appeared that the stormtroopers were being redeployed to intercept them again, and had access to faster routes to get through the ship. At first it was merely small groups of stormtroopers that got in their way, easily dealt with by stolen blasters and bending. But then larger groups got into position at defensible points, and the advance was brought to a grinding halt, much to Zuko's ever growing frustration.

Blaster fire from up ahead brought down a few more nonbenders, and the odds only got even worse. Now they were down to just Zuko, Qin, three firebenders, five nonbenders with stolen blasters, Sangok, and two more waterbenders. They simply didn't have the numbers to keep taking casualties like this, and it was getting harder to avoid losing more people. Mistakes were piling up faster and faster, and they were getting people killed. Even now another two nonbenders fell to enemy fire, and the stormtroopers started advancing from their position.

"So much for taking them with us," Sangok said, hurling some ice spikes at the enemy and hearing a few scream with pain.

"I know," Zuko said, that familiar feeling of guilt settling in his gut. "I guess we make our last stand here."

While still behind cover Sangok had a view of the corridor they came from, and he spotted something that only made things worse. "That might be over sooner than you thought."

Zuko looked down in that direction, seeing the same thing Sangok noticed, and a shiver went down his spine. "Not again."

Walking towards them through the corridor was Darth Vader, cutting off the path back the way they came. Darth Vader was all alone as he approached the battle, as him alone was all that would be needed here. With the stormtroopers on one side and Darth Vader on the other, there was no place left for Zuko and the others to go. It wasn't quite the trap that Darth Vader had in mind, but it would serve his purposes well enough. Darth Vader activated his lightsaber as he made the last few steps, just in time to use it.

Nonbenders with stolen blasters opened fire on Darth Vader, which was the first thing he expected to happen. The Force guided his hands as he moved his lightsaber back and forth, intercepting every single blaster bolt that came his way. The lightsaber reflected the blaster bolts back the way they came, hitting the people that had been firing them at Darth Vader. In seconds all of the armed nonbenders were dead from their own shots, leaving only the benders and Qin still alive, shocked by what they had just witnessed.

"That's just not fair," Sangok complained.

Zuko and the firebenders all threw flames together, combining their attacks into a thick plume of fire that filled the corridor. Yet Darth Vader merely held one hand in front of him, and the fire impacted an unseen barrier conjured through the Force. The flames dispersed and Darth Vader was untouched, much to the growing terror of the remaining benders, seeing a metallic man surrounded by fire yet not being burned. He then resumed his walk towards the locals, saw his foes taking defensive positions, and then threw his lightsaber at them.

The lightsaber spun round and round in the air, slicing one firebender in two and kept on going. It also cut off another firebender's arm, and spooked the third one enough to leave his cover and be shot down by stormtroopers. The waterbenders had created a wall of water between them and Darth Vader, but it didn't matter when he used the Force to pull the lightsaber back to him. On the way back the lightsaber struck a waterbender from behind and took his head off, and plunged through the collapsing wall of water before reaching Darth Vader's hand.

However when the lightsaber passed through the water there was an explosion of sparks, and the red blade was out when Darth Vader caught the lightsaber. Sparks continued to spray out from the lightsaber hilt in short and sputtering bursts, until he turned the weapon off and put it away. Darth Vader decided to deal with fixing the lightsaber later, for now he kept his attention on the matter at hand. Only four locals remained pinned between him and the stormtroopers, which would not take much longer to deal with.

Darth Vader reached toward the dwindling group with one hand, and a waterbender suddenly felt a tight grip on his throat. The water he had in motion fell to the floor, his concentration broken as he was being strangled from afar, reaching for his neck to pull at something that wasn't physically there. Darth Vader stretched it out long enough for the rest to figure out what was going on, seeing the look of horror on Zuko's face. The waterbender collapsed right before he died, and then Darth Vader was up close to the three locals that remained.

"I recommend that you surrender."

"We surrender!"

Sokka had his hands in the air, staring down the barrel of one out of many blasters aimed at him and Toph. Apparently the little incident with the runaway shuttle had not gone unnoticed, and the closest detachment of stormtroopers had been dispatched to find out what the hell happened. They quickly found Sokka and Toph, the pilot and two more stormtroopers restrained, and deduced that the two locals were responsible for the whole affair. At the moment the stormtroopers had their blasters aimed at Sokka and Toph, needing only an excuse to open fire.

"Not!"

Toph raised her fists toward the sky and a ring of rock rose up around her and Sokka, shielding them from harm when the stormtroopers opened fire. She then shattered the rock into large pieces and scattered it in all directions, spraying the stormtroopers with a barrage of rubble. The attack pushed back the enemy and knocked them down, forcing them to take a moment to get back up and get their aim back on target, a moment that Toph used to raise another stone wall and hurl that straight at the stormtroopers.

Unprepared and inexperienced for dealing with earthbending attacks, the stormtrooper formation was shattered and many of its members crushed by rock. Those that remained standing soon found the very ground giving way beneath their feet, a result of Toph bending the rock and dirt into fine sand that couldn't support any weight. They were waist-deep when they hit the bottom of the affected earth, which then solidified and trapped the stormtroopers in the ground, at least until someone came along to dig them out.

But the stormtroopers still had their blasters in hand, so Toph raised another stone wall to block their shots. "Now what do we do?"

Sokka looked at the capital city, some of which was burning. "We do something about the invasion."

"Got any specifics on that?" Toph asked.

"I guess we go to the palace and help the Fire Lord," Sokka said. He saw the odd look Toph was giving him. "Yes I know how that sounds."

"Bet you thought you'd never say it," Toph said.

"Yup," Sokka said. "Well make us a hole we can take the shortcut out of here."