Thanks for your reviews again. :) ILY. Sorry it took me this much time to update. Too much school.
What are shock actions? Shit, if you ask me.
-Jori
The Haven Station, a massive complex established above the main centre of the colony found by Gwallishans on the planet of Hespa.
Haven was dark-blue metal rectangle resembling a huge board. It was situated above a system of mines called the Hespa Grid, most important source of living for Gwallishans and one of the reasons Galactic Alliance wanted Gwallish to join. Hespa was literally thick with rare ores, even including cortosis, for mining of which, as it happens, Gwallish needed GA, because mining of cortosis was very expensive and without financial support of the Omniempire, they were forced to close a fair half of the cortosis mines.
They needed each other. But they still couldn't find a way to make everyone happy.
Without the GA, Gwallishan intergalactic economy will fall in few months. Joining would save them from a terrible crisis.
I call that happy.
Ben sighed and turned away from the viewport on his left, which offered him a simple, not breath-taking view on an endless plain stained there and there with little craters, clumps of grass and low bushes spilled with tiny yellow fruit.
"I don't think this is a debate about our laws," Master Gardia said and tossed her platinum-colored braid on her back. "You have no right to indoctrinate us about our judicial system. This system worked for years and we are not going to change it just because of you."
Senator Norso, who, as some of the officers told Ben during a match of sabacc last night, lost a coin-flip with Bawan and had to come to see to the negotiations, snickered at the woman. "I don't say you should change the system," he said smoothly. "Just that it makes our situation harder."
Ben looked over at Allana, who stood, completely straight, at Norso's other side. She was, as was quite rare for her, clothed in Jedi robes. Her set was blue-green and silver. It was her privilege thanks to her status. When Hapan Chume'da said she has a right to differ from other Jedi by wearing robes of another color when she is a Hapan as much as Master Horn has it because of being a Corellian Jedi, no one dared to say no.
"I don't see anything hard on this situation," Lord Dalecus said and placed his hands to the edges on the table they sat at. It was a very diplomatically designed table. It was round and the star that edged the ornamental symbol of the Gwallishan duchy had as many points as were the seats at the table, so no one was favoured. "I think it's just you who sees a problem there. You will or will not give over the arrestees to us."
"You have to understand," Norso insisted, "Ten officers and one Mandalorian died during their ambush on the Phantom Rival, and countless more Gwallishans were killed when Lady Khai's flotilla engaged the Gwallishan Navy."
"Wait," Gardia's diminutive Keshiri apprentice said.
Gardia turned to him and snapped something in keshiri. The apprentice looked touched, but he replied something that made Gardia rise her brows. Then she nodded and said something that raised a smug smile on Keshiri's lantern-jawed face, a smile that disappeared the same second it appeared.
"My apprentice is right, Lord Dalecus," Gardia said to the lord. "She had to take control of the… lost flotilla. The one positioned on Node One."
Dalecus offered the woman a long look. "The flotilla on Node One," he repeated. "I cannot believe this," he added and turned back toward Norso, passing his hand on the smooth blue surface of the table. "She wasn't even supposed to be in control of one ship if there were not appropriate orders for dispatching. We thought she broke off the flotilla on her own with a pack of loyalists," he said to them, "But if a whole flotilla followed her…"
Ben studied Dalecus' symmetrical face, his wide jaw and low forehead, looking for a merest sign of lie.
He found none, but all this stuff around smelled of a lie. They had to lie. Nor Vestara, nor her apprentice said anything indicating that they seceded from the Lost Tribe, and those were the only two prisoners that talked to them.
"See, this is surely a very important thing to find out," Norso said, placing his opened hands on the table palms-up in an accommodating gesture, "But, as you said, we are here to talk about the arrestees."
Dalecus nodded and swept a hand over a little bald stripe that crossed his hair above left ear. "Yes. What solution do you recommend, then?"
Norso, for the first time during the whole negotiation, glanced over his shoulder at Ben.
He, unobtrusively, dipped his head.
Go on.
As we arranged it.
Norso turned back at Dalecus and Gardia.
"We thought that presence of some of our delegates during the meeting may satisfy our superiors," he suggested lightly.
Dalecus rubbed his throat. He threw a look sideways at Gardia.
She looked attentively at Norso with her bright pea-green eyes, then she looked at Ben and Allana.
When her look settled at Ben, who was watching her as attentively as she was watching him, her eyes narrowed and she said something in keshiri.
"Can we take a while to consult this?" he asked.
"Of co-"
The subtle prickle Ben felt in his spine from the very beginning of the meeting intensified into a sensation of immediate danger. He saw Allana's eyes widen in his peripheral view.
The danger was coming from the left, from the side of the viewport. Ben turned in time to see a ship, which, briefly speaking, looked like a charcoal grey brick with wings, accelerating toward them.
"Watch out!"
It was Allana who shouted this. Ben, in the meantime, used the Force to toss Norso and his chair to the farthest corner of the room.
The flying brick opened fire.
Five lightsabers hissed to life.
The squad of six Mandalorians that accompanied Norso plunged to the walls, where they were in partial cover.
Transpariplast of the viewport shattered under the barrage.
Ben's ice-blue blade flashed up and batted a bolt of crimson life away from his face.
"What's going on?!" Allana shouted, launching on the floor to avoid becoming a colander.
Ben sent his lightsaber spinning in front of his face, stepping to Allana and in front of her, covering her while she was rising.
"I don't know," he admitted, "but it seems dangerous."
Allana deflected a bolt hurled at her leg. "You don't say."
A gate located between brick's cannons opened, revealing a fair platoon of troopers.
Ben gulped loudly.
The Sith trio started shouting in keshiri. Their own entourage, squad of helmeted troops of immoderate height, formed a defensive line behind them. Their raisin-colored armor swallowed one bolt after another without seeming too much damaged.
Ben winked and moved his wrist just in time to prevent the bolt from sieving his arm. "Allana," he growled, "take Norso and go."
Allana scowled, but hadn't moved. Her golden-bladed lightsaber suffused her face in bright gold glow. "Ben…"
Ben watched as the first line of troops onboard the brick activated their jetpacks and started the quick flight between the brick and the conference room.
Mandalorians and Sith troopers opened fire and the first line fell.
But there was the second line right behind it and this one they couldn't stop whole, not while the brick's cannons moved to concentrate their fire on them.
Ben crouched a bit, preparing to spring at the enemies. "Go."
Allana lowered her lightsaber and gave him quick nod. "Good luck. May the Force be with you."
Ben smiled a bit as the first trooper's boots touched the floor. "There is no such thing as luck," he said. "May the Force be with you."
Allana started a run toward the trio of troopers that began to escort shocked and slightly injured Norso away.
Ben surveyed the nearest trooper.
His helmet, as well as the rest of his uniform, looked like a curved V when saw from the front. Its visor was round and tinted to black, so he couldn't see the face beneath it. His armor was hulking and awkward.
Ben guessed that dexterity was just secondary goal for the makers of this suit. The first was obviously firepower.
Both forearms were encased in rocket launchers, the jetpack on trooper's back was completed by two missiles and the gun he held in his large hands could be mistaken for a piece of doorframe.
So he was heavily armed. Good. Ben was fast.
He obviously caught trooper's attention. The muzzle of the door-frame gun turned at his head.
Ben raised his lightsaber to dodge it away.
But he wasn't prepared for the ball of size of a fist that flew out of it.
He spun away.
The trooper, in meantime, drew out a capsule from a pocket on his chest and punched it into the gun.
Ben sprang forward.
The trooper aimed and fired, Ben spun away again, not slowing down.
He grasped the projectile in the Force and hurled it into another trooper, who staggered under the impact and fell out of the viewport, pulling one of the third like troopers with him.
The third line landed.
Ben thrust his lightsaber into the armor of the nearest trooper. There was enough strength in the strike to create a sag in his breastplate. He also took the trooper's breath away.
Before he could recover, Ben pivoted and kicked him straight into the gap beneath the breastplate. The Force-enhanced kick sent him stumbling backwards.
Ben used another Force-push to throw him out of the viewport.
He ducked under another projectile coming at his chest and hit it from below with his lightsaber, launching it into a pack of enemy troops.
He made a backward roll and the projectile one of the troops sent at him bit into the floor.
He looked around and found out that just few of the troops possess those huge guns. Some of them – mostly from the fourth and fifth line – were equipped with simple blaster rifles. Big-guns shot mostly at him and the Sith trio, while the rifle-equips shot at the troops.
He rose to his feet.
His comlink deeted.
He activated it and spun away from a spray of bolts shot at him by one of the just arriving troops of the sixth line.
"Skywalker."
"The Fate is prepared for take-off."
"Good." Ben noticed the incoming projectile in the last moment, and had to dive into a forward roll. "Wait for us. We're on our way."
"Roger."
Fate's temporary pilot – the Fate was Ben's personal ship – clicked off.
Ben rose his voice to shout over the noise of the firefight. "Back down!"
Ben's earpiece tuned for a squad channel rustled.
"What? Back down?" It was Aik Skirata, squad's captain. "We almost got them."
"We're backing down, captain," Ben retorted impatiently, deflecting blaster bolts and ducking and dodging more projectiles.
Skirata paused.
Ben almost reached the door. "We. Are. Backing. Down. Now."
"He's right, boss," a female voice sounded. "We're outnumbered."
This time the pause was just fractional. "Dammit."
Ben ran through the door, followed almost immediately by a diminutive Mandalorian in dark grey and black armor. The rightly red pad on her shoulder was all scorched and warped.
He slowed down for a while to let her catch up with him. In the same time she did, a thundering explosion sounded from the room and a blue-armored figure jumped through the doorway.
A rough chuckle sounded from the squad channel.
"A Mandalorian farewell."
The female Mandalorian chuckled as well.
Aik nodded at Ben. "Are we going?"
Ben, who inadvertently stopped running, now put up the pace again. "Sure."