THE SIEGE OF IZIZ
The time has come. While the rebels work on ridding Iziz of the droid army, the northern navy sails to Iziz to take back the capital. Meanwhile, DK takes the reins when Sanjay takes atonement into his own hands. -LS
...
The city of Iziz is eerily calm when the navy sails down the river. No droids or soldiers patrolling the docks, no ships in the harbor, no people going about their daily business. The only evidence that Iziz isn't a long-abandoned ruin are a few plumes of smoke rising from within the city walls.
"I don't like this," a fighting man worries where he thinks she can't hear.
They couldn't say TRAP any louder if they painted it in neon letters on the walls, Dalla laments.
One-Eye must be thinking the same thing. He casts his good eye to the tops of the walls, watching for snipers or projectiles or salt gods know what else.
I really hope Father knows what he's doing.
As if Marlon can read her mind, the comm chimes and Dalla answers. "Aye, Father."
"Ready cannons. We'll be in range in two minutes," he orders.
Dalla repeats the order to her crew. "Scouts reported the droid army leaving the city gates a few hours ago. How many men does he have?" The silence is suspicious. Lux's last report was of a full-force riot the droid army couldn't contain. "He has to have enough to manage the people's rage."
"Either that or the people of Iziz just don't want to open their doors to northerners," Elinor Harkon grumbles. Looks like they're on party comm. "I doubt they'd welcome a siege no matter which banners we're flying."
"Whether they fight us or not, a riot and a siege is never a good combination. We'll have to be careful of civilians," Jamos worries. The risk of friendly fire always decreases when using edged weapons, but northerners are no strangers to blasters and stray harpoons.
"Our spy in Iziz says House Flint's southern branch split on the issue," Dalla reports. "Some of his fighting men are Flints, but the spy doesn't know who or how many."
"Other than the Rash vassals and stewards, I think that's all he has," Glover Harkon admits.
"The Royal Palace is still crawling with droids. It's the last Separatist stronghold in the city." Marlon says. "They won't release it easily, but if we take it we've all but won."
"Father, do you know how many men the vassals have?" Ephraim asks.
Glover doesn't sound too sure. "A few hundred, perhaps. It's the Flints I'm concerned about."
"Weak bastards," Wyman Flint spits. "They were too cowardly to leave Kira during the Beast Wars, and they've never grown spines since. You couldn't get them to commit if you held a blaster to their heads."
"If you Flints didn't have so many children, we wouldn't be having this problem," Jamos snarks.
Wyman snorts. "Look who's talking."
"Aye, Jamos. Are you sure your wife isn't a Flint?" Ephraim jests.
"Third great-grandmother on her father's side, if Grandmother told us correctly. Though with the Harkon's and Bralykburn's penchant for twins you'll probably pass us on your first try." They all can practically hear his signature grin. "Congratulations, by the way."
There's a short silence, and then Hugo Bralykburn speaks up: "Ephraim, what does he mean?"
"About that, Hugo. Talia didn't want you to worry about her since we're going into battle and all, but she's pregnant. You're going to be a grandpa."
Hugo sputters. "And she left me to find out on a pre-battle party comm?!"
Jamos chuckles. "Funny what you can find out from a comm, isn't it Bralykburn?"
"I swear, Jamos -."
Elinor clears her throat. "Can we get on with this so Captain Blackwell can get home to his wife and make more babies? And so Ephraim and I can get home before Talia pops out my niece or nephew or both?"
"Both? Really, Ellie?" Ephraim groans.
"I want two nieces, but if you have to have a boy in there -."
"Back to the battle," Marlon interrupts. "Wyman, we'll take the Flint forces and do everything we can to spare you the shame of kinslaying."
"It's not kinslaying on a battlefield, my lord."
"Still, they are part of your House and we don't want to repay your loyalty with dishonor," Dalla says, silently praying Werda has the sense to stay in the tunnels.
"It's still going to happen. I know it and my men know it. We may not like it, but we're prepared."
There's a beat of silence and then Dalla says, very quietly. "Thank you, Uncle Wyman."
Marlon swiftly changes the subject. "Does everyone know which gates to breach and where to access the battering rams?"
"Aye."
"Keep your comms on you. A time will come we need to reach each other quickly and I would rather not lose any of you because you don't have your comms."
"Captain, we'll be in range in thirty seconds," One-Eye announces.
"Ready weapons."
The others' crews must have told them the same thing. "May we go in the light of the salt gods," Marlon says.
"In the light of the salt gods." Dalla kills the comm and hurries over to One-Eye at the bow. "That's six cannons that could hit us from this angle?"
"Aye."
"But they're not aiming." It isn't that the cannons aren't aiming at her ship, either; they aren't aiming at any of them. She doesn't need to hear warning bells to know that something's wrong here.
"Maybe they don't have the men to use them?"
She shakes her head. "They're automated." Come on Rash, why are you pointing your cannons at the water when there's a navy in range? "Aim for the cannons but hold your fire. I want to know what game he's playing with us."
When the cannons fail to move she hits on another idea. "Kriff, the riverbed! Navigator, check the sonar. Did he put something on the riverbed?"
The navigator taps the screen and shakes his head. "No obstacles, Captain."
Then what is this? If he doesn't want to shoot them and he doesn't want to tear them apart from below, then what does he want to do? They don't have troops on the riverbanks, do they?
Nope. Dalla resists the urge to pace bow to stern and back again. She doesn't see any troops waiting to attack them from behind, nor any gates or chains to close them off. She knows they're sailing into a trap; they have to be sailing into a trap.
They must be hiding something nasty behind the gates. Let us land, ram them open and then greet us with bombs or falling boulders or poison gas or salt gods know what else, she decides. She can't think of anything else.
"Use caution at the gates," she orders. "They're like to be waiting for us there." The cannons are still eating at her but her father hasn't given orders to destroy them, and he's the fleet commander.
One-Eye scans the docks as they get closer. "They rarely start out this quiet," he mumbles.
"I don't like it any more than you do, One-Eye. This isn't like what he's done before, just throwing droids at us. He never sat and waited." A commotion goes up on the other ships and both of them see what it's about: a shadow's rising on the top of the wall. Quickly.
"That has to be it," she mutters. "Starboard cannons, aim for whatever's giving off -"
Before she can finish her sentence four droid gunships clear the city walls and swoop toward the northern fleet.
Marlon's voice booms across the water: "All vessels, fire on those gunships!"
"Starboard, fire!"
The gunners and those on every other ship obey, loosing scores of particle beams at the gunships. But instead of the ships exploding from the onslaught and crashing into the river, the cannon shots fizzle out against an ultraviolet barrier.
Salt gods, they've got a ray shield.
And they've got a lot more. The gunships barrage the last row of the fleet with heavy cannons, turning them all to bits in the blink of an eye.
Dalla and One-Eye race to the stern to get a better look at the carnage.
"We have to find cover," he implores.
"We can't. The wreckage would tear us apart." Who needs gates or chains when you can turn your enemies themselves into blocks? Dalla searches the sky for the gunships and swears. "Kriff, they're coming back! We're sitting gulls without shields and we don't have anything to break theirs."
"Torpedoes?" A fighting man nervously suggests to no one in particular.
"Those will just sink our own men." Instead they'll need torpedoes' cousin, missiles. And of course, missiles are the one thing they don't have.
The gunships turn back for the navy, this time coming for the starboard flank. And to Dalla's horror, one of them is aiming straight for Maiden's Heel.
"Incoming! Get down!" she bellows and hits the deck. Seconds later, the ship shudders from impact, a hundred screams ring out, and the deck starts to tilt.
Dalla raises her head in time to see the gunship flying past them and off to the east. The entire crew is lying on the deck, either still facedown or looking for her or the gunship.
Leading by example Dalla gets to her feet and shakily makes her way to the rail to survey the damage. The gunships gutted the hulls of those around hers; she imagines Maiden's Heel must be in the same state. She doesn't want to think about what happened to her crew belowdecks.
The deck tilts further and reminds her that she doesn't have time to think about it either.
"Abandon ship," she orders,
One-Eye hears her. "I'll deploy the lifeboats."
The deck steepens and some of the younger sailors stumble. The gunships must have torn out the entire hull. "We don't have time for lifeboats." She checks one last time to ensure she has her weapons and comm and then swings a leg over the rail.
"Abandon ship," she repeats and signals them to jump.
…
Dalla has a pretty good bouquet of reasons to hate Sanjay Rash.
First and foremost, there's the betrothal. Forcing someone to marry you isn't exactly a prime way to make friends.
Second, Sanjay Rash hurt her loved ones. He'd made Aunt Shara's life hell when they were married, he held Kason hostage, he was a hair's breadth away from executing Thias, and his men murdered Miranda. There's no way she can forgive him for even one of those offenses, let alone all of them together.
And on top of all that, he sank her frakking ship.
The last few members of Dalla's crew hit the water when she jumps in herself. Apparently when the choice is between following your captain overboard and staying on the sinking ship, most take the plunge.
It's not just her crew in the water; most of the other ships did the same, which makes it harder for Dalla to do a headcount. Counting her and One-Eye, she gets twenty-three.
"Do we have any injured?" Heads shake. If there's one thing those gunships don't do, it's leave injured. "Swim for the Polaris and the Queen Lana."
The other crews have the same idea, heading for their houses' remaining ships. Dalla lifts her comlink out of the water, praying it still works. Thank gods for waterproofing. She punches in Steela's frequency.
"Steela, you all need to find cover now."
"Got that covered. We have the Highlands. The droids can only reach us through the valley."
"You need more cover than that. Four gunships just flew over and turned our rear flank into driftwood. They have a ray shield and particle beams don't -" wake breaks over her head and she holds the comlink aloft. "Nothing works on them."
"Dalla, what was that?"
Situations speak louder than words. "I'm in the water."
"What?!"
"I'm in the water, Steela. They sunk my ship!"
"Holy kriff! Are you okay?!"
"I'm fine, but if you don't find cover you won't be. I've got to go. Be -" she's cut off by a commotion on Steela's end before the comm terminates. "Steela? Steela, say something!"
A whirring sound grabs her attention and her blood runs cold when she sees what it is.
Oh gods, the cannons. That's why he aimed the cannons at the water.
"Forget the ships; get to the wall!" She orders right before the cannons open fire on the people in the water.
…
At the sound of the comm chime Lana ran for it as fast as her one and a half year old legs would take her. She slid across the floor to the holotable in stocking feet and pressed the button she'd seen Momma press so many times to activate the image.
"Daddy!" She exclaimed as the projection came into focus. But the man in the image was not her father. The toddler frowned at the man with the crown on his head.
He didn't speak.
Shara ran into the room a moment later so focused on her daughter, she wasn't paying attention to the holoimage. "I don't know what ever possessed you to bring home a puppy in the middle of everything." She knelt before the little girl and began to wipe her tiny hands with a disinfectant cloth.
"Kasey poop." Lana grinned.
"Yes," said her mother. "The puppy pooped and you were trying to help Momma clean it up."
"I help!" She looked up at the strange man proudly.
It was only then as Shara turned her attention to disinfecting the edge of the table and activation button, that she noticed the man in the image was not her husband. "Dxun!" She swooped up the baby in her arms protectively and took a step back as if he could jump out of the projection and snatch the child away.
"Shara," Sanjay Rash whispered, his voice choked with emotion. "This is your daughter? Kason mentioned a younger sister. I had no idea… what a beautiful child."
There were dozens of things she could have… things she wanted to say to her ex-husband just then but the majority the of them weren't appropriate for the toddler's ears. She set Lana down, placing herself between the child and the holorecorder. "Baby Girl, go and play with your brothers."
"Aye, Momma." Kason must have taught her that. The little girl sped right off and Shara watched her go. She seemed to have skipped learning to walk and gone straight to running and climbing. She was growing up so fast.
Still Lana had no way of understanding what was truly going on. She missed her eldest brother and her cousins. She'd even chosen to name the norcog pup after her missing brother. At least Shara's eldest was away from the palace, away from that monster.
"They keep you on your toes." Came the all too familiar voice behind her. "But it is what you always wanted. You are amazing with them. You know, for a moment, holding her, you looked just like that picture of you and your mother that used to hang in your father's house. Do you remember the one?"
Shara spun on the spot. "Of course I remember!"
His eyes widened at her angry response, hands raised as if in surrender, but he kept talking. "I understand now. You said once that we wanted different things, that I only wanted a way to carry on my name and you wanted a child to hold and nurture and teach. You said my mother would take our child away to be raised by nannies and tutors. You were right. Kason, your daughter, the others, they are so fortunate to have you."
"And yet you kept him from me. You held my child hostage." Her voice was low and dangerous, but he didn't seem to notice.
"A remarkable boy; he's very smart and loyal." This Sanjay added with a bit of a frown but then he went on wistfully. "And his voice… it… it was almost like hearing you sing again, Shara. I… found myself wishing he was mine."
"But he is not yours!" She yelled. Sanjay jumped in surprise at the outburst and the noises of her other children elsewhere in the Hold ceased for a moment. She lowered her voice when she spoke again. "You never managed to get me pregnant, in case you've forgotten."
"Shara, I haven't…"
"And never an ounce of compassion." She cried. "Every month, every failed test... I died inside. Never once did you attempt to comfort or console. It was always, 'how long will it be till we can try again?'"
She swiped away at the tears. "And then when it came so easily to Mel and Brem, seeing their happiness, trying so hard to be happy for them. All I got was comparison and blame."
"I am sorry, Shara. I had no idea. I only wanted a child so badly so that Mother would take our relationship seriously."
"I'm sure she was thrilled to see me go. Probably she had a list of replacements a kilometer long..."
"That never mattered to me." There was a shine in his eyes even in the holoimage. "No one has ever mattered to me but you."
She realized now how broken he was. Losing his mother, this war, the pressure of answering to Count Dooku, had all taken their toll. That still didn't excuse him. "Yet you caused all this trouble trying to marry my niece. What? Was that just so you could see me at the family reunions?"
He didn't answer right away. She gaped at him in disbelief.
"I - I did want to see you again but that wasn't why…" He let out a breath. "I put off marrying again as long as I could. Mother had been at me about it for years. Finally, a girl from one of the five Onderonian houses came of age and before her death, Mother made me swear that I would secure a marriage alliance and produce an heir for House Rash."
"She's dead, Sanjay. You should have let it go!" She said, exasperated.
"Perhaps, I should have." He said quietly. "But I had also been thinking about what you said about having a child to raise, to hold in my arms. I'm not getting any younger. I wanted to experience that. I would have given Dalla that…"
"Sanjay, that's what I wanted. It's not what Dalla wants. She wants to sail her ship. She wants to be with her father and her brothers. And she's not much more than a child herself. Salt gods, Sanjay, she's young enough to be our daughter!" Shara caught herself, horrified. "Your… sh-she's young enough to be your daughter."
"Shara, I - you know I always thought I wanted a son to carry on the Rash name but then I remembered the way Melaana was with my Father, the way you were with yours. Kason was named after him wasn't he? And then seeing you with your little girl just now. If we could have had a daughter…"
"You know who else was just that age?" She couldn't let him go on. "Miranda Harkon. Your cousin? The girl who was murdered on your orders?"
"I never ordered… I would never think…"
"No, you didn't think! But it was your men who killed her! She was Dalla's best friend! Do you think she would have ever been able to forgive you for that?"
"I had no idea it had happened. I didn't even know I had cousins. I sent…"
"Red roses?" She asked. "Yes, very subtle. Did you know I held Miranda the day she was born? Her eyes, even then, were so like yours, like Mel's. It was hard for me to even look at her face, so beautiful, but all I could think of was the disdain I always felt from your mother." Shara took a steadying breath. "Oh I got over it eventually. Your aunt has never treated me with anything but kindness. And Miranda… she was beautiful, and fearless. She had just become captain of her own ship. She loved sailing. She was… very like Melaana…"
"Stop!" He held his hands over his ears unable to listen any longer.
Shara watched him weeping like a baby. He had brought it on himself and yet she had loved him once. "Why did you even comm me?"
Sanjay sniffed and tried to collect himself. "I'm all alone now. General Tandin defected to the rebels, but I'm sure you knew that."
She gave a small nod.
"I-I was watching from my balcony as the navy came in. Shara, some of the ships went down. One of them was at the head, flanking your brother-in-law's flagship. She was flying Blackwell banners."
Shara's heart stopped for a fraction of a second. "Was it the bigger one, or the smaller one?" she demanded. Neither option was good: the larger of the two ships that would be flanking the Queen Lana was the Polaris, and the smaller was Maiden's Heel.
He cringed. "The smaller one. And half the right flank along with her. Shara, please tell me that wasn't...that I didn't just get Dalla killed."
Shara had stopped hearing him at "right flank." She fell to her knees. "Oh salt gods, no." She knew every man and woman on those ships from working with Jamos; she couldn't bear the thought of them… "Please, let them be okay."
Sanjay had gone back to sobbing full-force. "I killed her, didn't I? I killed that sweet girl. I never meant for this to happen! I was going to be gentle with her, I was going to give her a child. She never would have been in Iziz if I hadn't … and now she's dead too. Oh gods!"
Shara refused to believe that was the case. She couldn't let herself believe something had happened to Dalla when she couldn't comm the fleet for confirmation. "Is that the only reason you commed? To tell me you think my niece is dead?" She got back to her feet and brushed off her skirt, embarrassed she'd lost her composure in front of him even for a second. "Who do you think you are Sanjay, the angel of death?"
"No, that wasn't all of it." He wiped his tears with his sleeve. "The palace is crawling with Dooku's droids. They treat me like I'm not even here. I fear … if they don't get the outcome they desire… maybe even if they do, that they're going to kill me."
"And what," Shara asked not sure how she was supposed to feel. "You expected me to come to your rescue?"
"No. I know I don't deserve it. I just…" He looked her straight in the eye. "I just wanted, if I'm not going to be alive much longer… to see you again, hear your voice… I love you."
Shara turned away from the holoimage and covered her mouth with her hand.
"I know you can't love me back. You have your husband and your beautiful children." He breathed a sob. "I do hope you won't remember me too cruelly. And Kason, and Dalla's father and brothers, and the Harkons, tell them… that I am truly sorry."
"I will ." She turned back to face him but just then she heard a crash and someone crying and, "I'm telling Momma!"
"I have to go," she told Sanjay.
"Of course you do." He nodded sadly. "Goodbye, Shara." And his image faded from view.
…
DK wrote Sanjay's comm to Shara a long time ago, before we even knew where it would fit in the story. I think it does quite well right here, and it's so exciting to finally share it with you.