Chapter 8: What Once Was Lost
Marina was aware of the Force even before she was aware that she was awake. It was there, deep inside her, swirling like a liquid pool, somehow both a calm harbor and a roiling, lightning-infused storm at sea in the same moment. She took a slow, shuddery breath as she became aware of her surroundings. More specifically, of the grated floor currently pressing a red Dejarik board pattern into the side of her face.
She pushed herself up to her knees and swayed as a wave of light-headedness blurred her vision. "Uuuuuuuuugggghh," she groaned, and swallowed hard to clear the cottony dryness in her throat.
The flood of emotions stormed out again, but she choked them down, forced them back into the cells in which they'd languished all these years, and walled up the cracks as best she could. She couldn't deal with them, not here, not now. So instead, she climbed shakily to her feet amid the ruined remains of the station's mining droids. What was just a little more collateral damage added to the list?
Okay, keep moving, keep moving. She slid the vibrocutter into her makeshift belt and pulled out the mining laser. It was probably best to stick with what she was familiar with. Mercifully, the next corridor was empty of both droids and bodies, giving her a moment to try to gather herself as she padded along, following the colored stripes on the floor leading her to the administration deck.
The corridor stretched on, and the longer she walked the more aware she grew of just how quiet it was. She found herself breathing softer, tip-toeing as she walked, and glancing over her shoulder. It was too quiet; not just the creepy quiet, but the echoing silence of a place that's supposed to be loud and bustling. It just felt . . . wrong. And she sincerely hoped it was just the normal sort of bad feeling, not the . . . other kind.
At last she found the airlock for the administration level where she'd hopefully find out where that trapped man was kept, and it was a big one. The heavy, vacuum-proof, blast-door rated duraplast slabs were locked down and sealed tight. And, making matters worse, she could make out something, not quite heard, beyond those doors. The old woman's voice flooded her mind and the cold shock of it dropped Marina to one knee, mining laser tumbling from nerveless fingers.
Ah, you can feel them, but they are distant, unclear. Cast aside your sight, cast aide what you see, and reach out with your perception.
Marina felt a presence, a consciousness reach into her mind. She shuddered as her senses were gently pushed outward, without her will or control. She fought it, clinging to her her body, but she was pulled away, outward. She reached past the blast doors, through them, and felt something small but rife with power moving through the room. Even through the shock of the telepathic communication she felt confused. She felt no thoughts, no consciousness, but there was still motion, energy. The voice, effortlessly following her thoughts, explained.
The droids you cannot perceive, but the small oscillations of energy, that you can feel, echoing outwards. It is a skill you will need if we are to survive this place.
No, no! Get out of my head! Marina shook her head violently, flicking sticky, half-dried flecks of kolto from her.
Even in her head Kreia's voice sounded affronted. If you wish to venture out alone and unguarded, so be it.
The presence faded and she was along again in her mind. Marina shuddered, but it passed more quickly than before. She was getting used to it. It was a relief not to be gasping on the floor, but she had very mixed feelings about all of this so quickly settling in.
Either way, the old woman was right. She could feel the small shunting of energy back and forth within the droids. There were at least seven or eight of them on the other side. They were definitely going to be a problem, but first she had a door to deal with.
The airlock manual control panel was blinking an unpromising shade of red, but she took a closer took to see what she could do. The touch pad kept flashing with text in basic followed by several other languages.
::Warning, airlock sealed. Explosion detected in main fuel line::
Marina tapped the open command, only to be met by new text.
::Manual override requested. Please enter administrator priority command code::
Well, it had been worth a shot. The good news was that the system was still up and running, so she might be able to avoid having to cut through the thing. The bad news was that she had no idea where this administrator was, and whoever she was, she was unlikely to be very cooperative if this was all going to get blamed an Marina.
So, it was time to see if there was a shortcut.
Marina popped off the touch screen panel and let it hang by the wiring while she took a peek behind it. She was passable, at best, when it came to coding or hacking, but mechanical things, those just made sense to her. And if she was lucky . . . yes! It was an old, outdated model of airlock; all of the encryption was built into the touch pad itself, leaving a simple single-action lock behind it. Now all she had to do was apply a little pressure here, give a little shot of power from the plasma cutter there, and . . .
::Manual override accepted::
The airlock's clamps whirred and disengaged one by one until, with a final hiss of depressurizing air, the airlock opened. Marina leaned to the right and glanced passed the edge of the airlock door and winced at the sight of five mining droids. Still, the Security Chief's log had mentioned an override on the command console, over through the airlock on the right. All she had to do was get to it.
She drew her mining laser, pulled out her single ion grenade, and took a deep breath. This was it.
It was suicide, probably. The clumsy, crab-like mining droids were not exactly effective combatants, but as their ostensible overlords had discovered, it didn't matter much when you didn't have any real weapons either, and there were a lot more of them then there were of you.
Still, it wasn't like she had a choice here. And was she ever getting sick of that thought crossing her mind. Ah, screw it. It wasn't like she had a lot to lose. Adrenaline flooded her system as she flipped off the safety and she felt herself slipping into combat mode, the curiously hyper-aware state beyond the reach of most sentients, the state she'd tried to avoid for so long.
She charged.
Marina was aware of everything around her. She saw the three droids clustered to her left, and two more to her right, near the main administration command console. She felt others nearby, but out of sight. Her left hand flicked out, launching the grenade at the clustered droids even as their targeting systems picked her up and started tracking, but slowly, so slowly. The mining laser was lining up with the droids on her right without conscious thought. A laser pulse flashed passed her, but she stayed focused, stayed on target.
Her finger tightened on the firing stud once, twice, in rapid succession. Her first pulse caught the droid on its front left leg, but the second struck home on the delicate sensor stalks. The droid let out a mechanical squeal and stumbled.
Behind her the ion grenade exploded in an electrical firestorm.
Marina charged the final droid firing as she came. Her first two shots mangled the droid's legs, but the droid returned fire before she could get off a third. The droid's pulse was wide right but tracked in on her. The super-heated laser touched right leg just before the pulse ended.
Pain exploded inside her, so bright and hot she couldn't see. She was thrashing on the floor, though she didn't remember falling, her throat was raw from the screams she couldn't hear. The mining laser wasn't in her hand, it was gone. Oh it hurt, it hurt.
The droid was approaching, confused that she had fallen. The asteroids it usually mined didn't move.
Marina tried to force herself to focus, to think. She needed her blaster, and now. Her hands flashed out searching the ice cold deck as much by feel as by her blurred vision. The sound of metal on metal approached and still she couldn't find it. The sounds stopped, and time seemed to freeze. She could see the droid standing above her, its sensors focusing on her prone form. In the same moment she saw the mining laser, a meter out of reach.
I'm going to die. I'm going to die, right here, right now.
It was a surreal thought, as she watched the droid's focusing lenses focus in on the tears streaming down her flushed, dirty face.
Kreia felt the change, felt the quickening of breath, the dilating pupils, the flash of pain. The power of the feelings crossed the space she'd left open between them, filling the old woman with an energy and strength she hadn't felt from her own body in many years, but tempered by the sharp edge of agony. But her sight was not so blinded as to be distracted by physical emotions.
She took the opportunity to feel the emotions that lay beneath the surface while the girl was distracted. She had little time, so she shifted past the irrelevant, the hopes and dreams, the fear and self-doubt, until she found her goal. Kreia frowned. The girl was afraid of her, of what she knew and represented, but also resentful. With more time, perhaps . . . but no. Even now, she felt a shadow in the distance. And with Kreia's diluted, weakened senses, it must be close. Very close. Now was the time for boldness, not caution. If she couldn't get the girl to respect her, she'd get stubborn women to need her.
She would not lose her, not now. She examined the feelings flowing towards her for a moment longer, then set her will. It was time to push.
You don't want to die.
The thought surprised her. She was alone, lost in so many ways, a wanderer, but she didn't want to give up. She couldn't give it up. And so she reached deep inside herself, into the force, and with a hoarse cry it exploded outwards. The droid was launched backwards and away, its metal legs clawing helplessly at the deck while electricity arced through its body. It smashed into the bulkhead and lay still.
Marina gasped and fought the urge to clutch her burned leg. It was bad. The laser had burned a whole in her undergarments and actually melted the skin of her thigh. Great sobs wracked her small frame. It hurt so badly she could barely think, but the pain weakened her control and shook loose a flash of memory.
She stood on a mountain side, looking down at a small battlefield. Somehow its small size made it more personal, easier to take in the horrific violence that the sentients in the field below had wreaked upon each other. There were a half-dozen fully armored forms in a burned out circle, their armor and bodies sliced apart with the unstoppable fury of a lightsaber. In the middle of them stood a Jedi, distinguishable only by the blue light of an ignited lightsaber burning in his hands.
One of the Mandalorians had surprised him with a flamethrower, and the results were ghastly. His hair was gone, as well as any trace of his Jedi robes. His skin was a bubbled and blistered mess of cracked red and dead black that dribbled off him. His hands were fused to his weapon, and half of his face was burned right down to the skull. He screamed soundlessly, his lungs completely charred, as he hacked mindlessly at the last corpse which was already nothing but bloody chunks.
The masked figure next to her considered the scene for another moment before speaking.
"On the Battlefield the Force is a great blessing and a great curse. The Force can sustain the mind, allow it to stay focused and fight through pain that would incapacitate a normal woman. And yet, every sentient creature in the known galaxy has developed mental defenses for a reason. The Force's pull on your mind can be the pull of a life preserver in the storm of combat, but it can also be the yank of chains, keeping the mind from escaping pain so great it cannot withstand without breaking."
The figure looked impassively down at the Jedi, now slicing into the blood soaked ground where the Mandalorian had once stood.
"Look at him, Meetra. A normal sentient would be dead long since, and those Mandalorians would have gone on to kill many more. They were good soldiers. But now he can't escape. The Force keeps him on his feet when his mind should shut down, sustains him when he should asphyxiate. He's dead, his lungs incapable of drawing breath ever again, but instead he will wander, clinging so tightly to the Force in his pain that he will live for hours yet."
Meetra overcame her horror faster this time. She'd seen battlefields before. She leaped down with the power of the Force to strengthen her legs and soften the blow of the impact. The Jedi turned, and it bothered her that she couldn't recognize him. She knew every Jedi on this planet.
His mouth opened in a soundless cry and he charged forward, swinging wildly, with no hint of self-preservation or fear, caught up in the madness of agony.
Marina sidestepped the mad charge, wincing as her robe, face, and hands were splattered with flecks of melted skin. But she did not hesitate. Her blade flashed once and the Jedi dropped dead at her feet. She turned back, fighting the anger burning up inside her, and watched as Revan considered her with as much detachment as she had the dying Jedi under her command.
The hammer of metal on metal signaled the approach of the rest of the droids on the administration deck.
The console. She had to reach the console.
Marina shook her head trying to clear it. She tried to climb to her feet, to move, but the pain flashed and she collapsed again to the deck with a moan. They were closing in, no time, no time. So she crawled, hand over hand, dragging her wounded body to the command console. She reached up and clung to the swivel chair, hauling herself to her knees. The pain flared up, making her wince, but she thrust it aside an tried to focus. The override, the override, where was it? The droids swarmed forwards as if sensing their peril and the first, speculative shot sailed past her and whined off the bulkhead leaving a black smear.
The command console was a mess of dials, knobs, switches and readouts, but most of them didn't seem to be working. Another laser bored into the console itself, making the remaining lights flicker. No more time. She could hear at least of the three of the droids enter their firing cycle.
Marina picked a button and slammed her hand down on it. The droids powered down, slowly slipping to the floor, while Marina oozed down the command console chair to join them on the deck in oblivion.
Kreia winced in irritation at the pain that remained in her creaky old body, even as the girl's vanished with her consciousness. The battle aboard the Ebon Hawk had been a near thing, nearer than she had any intention of allowing the girl to discover, and she had yet to recover. But the fool girl refused to listen, and now she lay bleeding and helpless. Kreia was tempted to leave her there to learn from the scarring, but time was growing ever more pressing. The shadows were growing closer now. They'd been skulking around on a whisper, drawn to the death she'd left behind, but they had the scent now.
So she reigned in her annoyance and opened up her mind. The foolish, precious girl was unconscious, but her spirit responded, an innocent little girl sitting alone. She took her by the hand and, as they walked together through the recesses of Marina's mind, Kreia began to teach.