The lights that ran around the tops of the stone halls were flashing red, signaling an attack was coming. Rose and Obi-Wan raced to the area they had just left, hearing the sounds of blasters in the distance.
"Do you think they followed us here?" Rose shouted over the booming siren, barely even hearing herself.
"No, I don't think so," Obi-Wan hollered back. "It was only really a matter of time. We've been sitting ducks for the past couple of weeks now. This was the third time we had to move bases."
"What about the peace conference meeting Cerasi was talking about?"
"Guess it got cancelled." They neared up to the hangar, sabers drawn. There were blasts going every which way, and the two teenagers had to block the incoming blasts, doing their best to repel them back to their shooter.
"Obi-Wan, we must get the kids out," Rose saw Nield coming up behind them. He was shouting orders at other members of the Young, trying to form a good defense. "They're in the gardens with Cerasi."
"I'll take care of them," Obi-Wan said, feeling the beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. "If I take them out of the secret door and into the wild, then we can hide there. I just need more time."
"Looks like I'm here to answer your prayers, Kenobi," Rose hollered at him. He gave a slight nod before disappearing out of the hangar. "Looks like it's just you and me, Field."
"Nield," he corrected her scornfully.
"Whatever. We can't stay on the defense forever. We need a plan," Rose ducked behind one of the crates and searched around the hangar. She peaked around the side and followed the cave's roof with her eyes.
"There are gas tanks on the other side of the room. I saw them when I came in. With a good enough vantage point, a shot will make 'em explode and cause a cave-in. If we can bring the roof down on that side of the cave, we can seal ourselves in, take out whoever is left, and then make it for the back entrance," Rose said to Nield.
"That's a suicide mission! Anyone caught in that rubble will be killed in it!" Nield exclaimed, firing his blaster into the haze. "I'm not sending one of my people to do that."
"You won't have to," said Rose, putting her sabers back on her belt and picking up a blaster. "Order the kids to fall back and wait for the moment to take out whoever is left. Make sure they aren't in this main area – I don't know how stable the rest of the cave is. Causing it to collapse here area might cause other cave-ins."
"And who is going to do this death job for you?" Nield spat out at her. Rose faked a look of hurt.
"Me, of course. Wish me luck, kid," with a wink, Rose crept her way along the side of the hangar, careful to keep her head down. She stuck low to the ground and hugged the wall, periodically pausing to wait for someone to pass by her. When she managed to slowly reach the other wall, she saw the enemy was streaming into the hangar by the dozen. Using the wall as a ladder, Rose climbed herself up to the top, prayed for the best, and took out her blaster, gaining a clear shot to the gas tanks on this side of the hangar. She looked over to the other side of the hangar and saw Nield giving her a thumbs-up, indicating all of the Young were out of the way.
"For the hell of adventure," Rose shouted into the air, firing the blaster. The explosion was deafening, and Rose felt the pressure of her being squeezed against the wall and something heavy crashing on top of her leg as she collided with the ground. Her head pounded hard against the stone floor, sending a shot of pain down her spine. She wasn't sure if the snaps she felt were from her leg or something else, or even a combination of the two. The ringing in her ears overpowered all other noise, and the mix of smoke and dust that filled her nostrils made her gag repeatedly. She frantically tried looking around, but all she could see was darkness.
"Obi-Wan," she coughed, but no words came out. She felt her consciousness slipping from her slowly, her thought process falling with it. Eventually, the world went dark.
The clearing of rubble above her snapped Rose awake. She saw beads of light beginning to poke through and heard muffled voices become audible. Although a boulder had fallen onto her left leg, it was preventing another boulder above her to fall, which would ultimately crush her. Rose breathed a sigh of relief and squirmed her hand free of its uncomfortable position, concentrating hard on the boulder.
"Remember, it is not size that matters, my Padawan. Master Yoda will be the first to say that," Shaak Ti had told her while teaching her about telekinesis through the Force. "The only thing that will hold you back is your own mind. Let your mind be free." Rose let her mind go blank, just as her Master had instructed her to. She felt her muscles relax and allowed the Force to be her guide. Beams of twilight light became rays, which eventually turned into sheets as the boulder lifted off of Rose gracefully. With the boulder gone from above her, Rose could more clearly see.
The outside world was now above her. There was no longer a battle going on, but the faces Rose saw were not ones she recognized. At first, they were in shock at the magic ability of the girl lifting rocks using nothing but her mind, but they soon became hostile, lifting the boulder off of her leg and pulling her out of the rubble, a blaster on her back.
Rose was relieved to feel that her leg was not broken, but a feeling with dread filled her as she looked down at her sabers, which were still in the hole she had just come from. There her precious sabers were, smashed into pieces by the weight of her, the blast, and the boulders pounding on them. The frame seemed to be in decent enough condition, but one of the sabers' tops was missing, and the other had broken shards of crystals spilling out of it. With a heavy sigh, Rose was led by the business end of a blaster onto a ship, where she was thrown into the brig, heavy, electrolyzed chains being placed on her arms and legs.
"Not quite the adventure I had pictured," Rose mused to herself, carving into the floor with her fingernail. "Not exactly how I wanted this day to go." The ship took off beneath her, leaving Rose to the mercy of its next destination. They had stripped Rose of her belt and tunic, leaving her with nothing more than the items in her hair and a measly pair of pants with a brown tube top to keep her decency. At least they allowed her that much.
"Oi, nerfherders! When's dinner at?" she hollered out of the cell, trying to get someone's attention. When no one came, she hugged her knees close to her, hoping that Obi-Wan and the others had gotten out okay. The ship came to an unsteady landing below her, and she heard the footsteps of someone nearing her. Three men appeared at the door, all of them carrying blasters.
"Get up," the closest one to her ordered. He grabbed her chains and pulled her out of the ship, Rose stumbling over her chained feet. As she passed by the other cells, she peered in, trying to see if she recognized any of the faces. Cell after cell they passed, the only thing between them and the other prisoners being a ray shield. Rose allowed herself a sigh of relief when she didn't recognize any of the people, filling her with a hope the others were hidden.
They led her into an elevator which took them to the upper floors of the prison. When the doors opened, they led her down the passageway to her new home. They threw her into a cell on the far end, activating the ray shield as she hit the ground. She rolled on the ground and caught herself, which proved to be difficult with her hands and feet chained. The guards looked down at her with disgust on their faces before turning and leaving her to herself. Rose felt the cold breeze fill her cell, her scraggly clothes nowhere near enough to keep her warm.
"Wait, what the –," Rose turned and looked to where the breeze was coming from. When she spun around, she was not greeted with the prison wall she expected, but instead there was no wall to be seen. The jail cell opened up into the wilderness, leaving whoever was within open to the elements and the thousand foot drop to the bottom of the jail. Rose didn't dare go near to the edge, but instead slunk into the back near the ray shield, wishing for the nightmare to be over.
"Alright, just gotta calm down," she told herself repeatedly, pulling all of her attention onto the view rather than the height. The mountains seemed to roll endlessly on, and Rose could see smoke rising in the distance beyond the range, the occasional red sparks flying above the peaks. She saw the fog roll lazily over the twilight plains in front of the range, and how the stars above were forever in sight. Rose closed her eyes and made herself small, pulling everything in as close as she could, shivering at the cold. She had no point of reference for how much time had passed; it could have been days since the cave-in and Obi-Wan, assuming she was dead, left her behind.
The next couple of days seemed to drag on, or at least Rose thought they were days. She observed the pattern of the nearby sun, and how it would peek over the horizon every couple of hours, stay for a while, and then hide again. Taking these as days, Rose began marking lines on the wall with a rock in the cell to mark the days going by - right next to a lovely drawing of a naked lady one of the previous occupants had taken the time to etch into the wall. Occasionally, the guards would come and taunt her at her cell, saying how she was going to be "taken care of" soon. She spat at them each time, her spit sizzling into the ray shield. They only laughed and made wolf-whistles at her, infuriating her even more. Twice they had taken her and interrogated her, torturing Rose to the breaking point to try and gain intelligence about the Young. Rose couldn't even give them information if she wanted to – she didn't have any to give. They called her a liar and whipped her even harder, the licks becoming more and more blurred together. To pass the time in between "sessions," as they liked to call them, Rose tried to clear her head by working out, trying her best to keep her mind off of the situation. She had tried meditating, but found it boring. Every time she had tried to reach out to Obi-Wan through the Force, it was silent on the other end.
"Soul bond my ass," she muttered. The time had come when she needed to begin forming her escape plan. Her options seemed pretty grim: jump off the side of the jail and plummet to her death, or run head first at the ray shield and be fried. With a gulp, she inched her way slowly to the side with no wall, getting on her belly as she neared the edge. Down she looked – down 90 levels worth of jail; it was 90 levels worth of stomach wrenching, death defying heights. Rose felt her head grow light and eyes glaze over, and she took a moment to compose herself before scouting the design of the jail. She saw that the open design for the cells did not go all the way down – they only started about halfway up the building – which would explain why she didn't see the missing wall in the cells on the lower floor. Rose peered up and saw that she was on one of the top floors of the tower. Even if there were some way she could jump and survive, there would be no way to get passed the fortified wall that blocked the jail from the outside world, a horde of guards in eyesight from every angle.
Hearing footsteps in the hallway, Rose pushed herself away from the edge and hid into the wall. Whoever it was, they stopped at her room, hesitated for a moment, and then unlocked the door, stepping in. Rose could see it was a guard by his uniform, and, supposing she would never get an opportunity like this again, she lunged forward at him, shoving her hand over his mouth as he began making sounds. His arms flailed frantically around, desperately trying to swing Rose off his back. She clung on just as desperately, trying to lead the struggling man away from the ledge of certain death and more into the cell, not wanting herself to be taken down should he fall. She felt something cold and wet touch her hand.
"That's so gross, you sicko!" she whispered harshly into his ear. She took her foot and nailed him as hard as she could in the one spot that mattered, his figure doubling over onto the ground. She flipped him over and straddled him, her hands holding his above his head. Only when she saw his face did she realize what a mistake she had made.
"Obi-Wan?" she said, recognizing the eyes of her friend while the rest of his face remained hidden behind a mask. She saw small tears welling at the corners of them – tears of pain. Rose pulled the mask away, and sure enough, there was Obi-Wan, biting his tongue to prevent his cries of dismay.
"I came to rescue you," he said in high, airy tone, his face scrunching up. "But I can see you can take care of yourself."
"You had that coming for sneaking up on me," Rose pulled him over to the wall of the cell, hiding him so that someone from the hall couldn't peer in and see him with her. She lowered her voice as she spoke. "By the Force, how did you get in here?"
"Wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much. I'm going to get you out of here, Rose, but you're going to have to be a little patient with me. Everyone else thinks you died in the explosion, but we both know you're tougher than that," Obi-Wan threw a grin at her, which quickly dropped after seeing her back. "Mother of Moons, Rose – what have they done to you?" He saw the raw stripes of where the electro-whip had struck Rose in the interrogation sessions.
"Just the fun stuff," she tried to laugh off, but he did not return her laughter. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again, thinking twice. "Come on, Obi. Don't give me that look," Rose pleaded, pushing herself away from him. She walked over to the other side of the cell and supported herself against the wall, her back to him. She looked up at the days she had marked on it. Fifteen. "You should get going before they find you here," she said, facing the wall. She heard the scraping of him getting up behind her and the quiet padding of his feet.
"Hey, Kenobi? My lightsabers – they were smashed under the boulder. If you could, do you think you could scrape up whatever's left? I want to see if I can repair those suckers before Master Ti has a fit," she turned to face him. "Try to remember a cloak next time, too. It's quite chilly up here."
"I'll be back before you know it," he vowed, leaving the room quietly. Rose watched him go quietly, her glimmer of hope disappearing into the darkness of the jail hallways.