Chapter 2
Foyi emerged from her hibernating trance the instant the winds ceased howling and became a steady but slowly-calming presence. She stood slowly, testing her limbs and joints for rigidity and soreness, but she was pleased to find none; her Force trance had been complete, as regenerative as it was invigorating. She felt well-rested, even though she had not slept at all during the night. She checked her chrono and found it was the early hours of the morning. Assuming the sky was not completely shrouded by clouds, the sun would be visible over the mountain peaks in only an hour or so. Foyi padded across the cold floor on bare feet and cracked the door open a few centimeters, peering out at the world blanketed in white beyond. The walls of the neighboring houses were streaked with ice and pockmarked by the scars of loose debris being driven into their sides by the uncaring winds. A few decimeters of snow covered the village's cobblestone streets, and knife-edged drifts had been sculpted by the wind, some of the drifts so high they engulfed the lower-roofed homes, while others were iced over or even frozen solid. She glanced beside the door and found the 74-Z Speeder Bike still hovering beside their home, though it was much closer to the wall than she had originally parked it. A thin sheen of ice covered most of its surface, and a drift had even formed against it. The wind was no longer as egregiously angry and vicious, but the cold it carried on its zephyrs slashed through her skin and chilled her bones.
Foyi ducked back in the house and set about bundling up for the day. Her stomach growled, desiring a morning meal, and she placated it temporarily by wolfing down a nutrient bar. She pulled on a coat, robes, a scarf, and drew the hood over her head, tucking her lekku inside its voluminous folds. She stopped by the door to her sister's bedroom and opened it a few centimeters, checking on the sleeping form of Tama, swaddled in the heavy furs and blankets of her cot. Foyi reached out to her in the Force and found that she was still fast asleep, dreaming soundly and pleasantly. Foyi smiled, then slipped the door closed and exited the house into the blood-chilling winds. She drew the scarf over the lower portion of her face, strapped on a pair of goggles, then hopped aboard the bike, momentarily readjusting her position as her posterior slid across the ice on the seat. She keyed in the startup sequence, and the 74-Z coughed and sputtered for an agonizing moment. Then, with a stutter and a roar, the speeder bike bellowed to life, and Foyi allowed herself a chuckle. She opened the throttle and wheeled away from the house, racing down a short stretch of street before flying out into the open again.
The wind was bitterly cold against the exposed parts of her face and the thin lining of her gloves. She could feel the hot moisture of her breath beginning to freeze into patches of ice on her scarf, and what air reached her throat was rough and raw on its lining. The speeder bike protested the speed and the ice that had formed in its inner workings, and her passage across the wide open plains was marked by a streaming cloud of disturbed snow. The dunes of snow and ice that had existed the day before on the plains were like mountains in miniature, towering in graceful, sharp-edged shapes, their slanting peaks curling in on themselves, white wraiths of snow blowing off their tops.
It did not take her long to reach the copse of trees and small ridge where she had killed the pair of snow scouts the day before, though the landscape surrounding the area was so changed, she almost flew right past it before she recognized it. The speeder bike was whining much louder than usual by this time, and it practically screamed as she wheeled it around. She parked the vehicle at the base of the hill and closed its throttle, but left it running. Most of the trees had been leveled by the storm, half-buried in snow, their stripped branches thick with ice; she could even see the remnants of a trunk almost a dozen meters away, where the tree had been ripped from its roots and carried bodily through the air before being deposited. The remaining bike had been ruined, obliterated by a fallen tree and crushed under the weight of choking ice. The bodies were nowhere to be found. Foyi found this disconcerting, but not necessarily unexpected. The corpses could have been buried by the snow, frozen solid hunks of flesh and armor until the blazing heat of summer thawed them. Or they could have been blown away by the wind, like some of the trees had been. Or predators could have drug them off to their dens for food; voorcats were known for not being particular about whether their prey was alive or dead before they consumed them.
Foyi spent almost an hour trudging through the snow, searching for any signs of the bodies she had left, digging up potential areas of concealment with a small trowel she had brought in her pack. Her digits were completely numb by the time she decided to give up the search, still mentally cursing herself and the storm for preventing her from disposing of the evidence of her kills. She had acted like an Initiate yesterday, and there was still a decent chance that her idiocy would result in reprehensible consequences for herself...and, more importantly, Tama. She returned to the ruined bike, then set about her task of burying its remains in snow. Her chilled limbs began to gain warmth as her arms pumped, stabbing the blade of the trowel into snow drifts swept nearly solid by the incessant wind, but the cold of winter would not be denied. Before she was satisfied with the task, she was shaking from cold, despite the hard labor and the heavy garments, for as she sweat, the moisture would freeze within her clothing, dropping her body temperature. After some leveling and patting down with her utensil, guided by the Force, the buried 74-Z bike appeared to be just another drift in a horizon-spanning plain of them, and the winds would make certain that it stayed buried as long as the snow and cold of winter persisted. She looked to the other speeder bike, the one still functioning and hovering nearby, despite how much it whined in the cold; of course the Imperials had not properly adapted their vehicles to winter conditions, trusting in the "infallibility" and "superiority" of Imperial engineering. She found herself indecisive as to its fate. She really should get rid of it, buried here alongside the one she had just interred or fly it a considerable distance from this area and crash it into something unyielding. But her extremities were already so numb they felt like cold, durasteel weights hanging off her limbs and the back of her skull. And crashing the 74-Z meant trudging through the snow that was waist-high at certain points, facing winds that could reach gale-force speeds, while contending with the distinct possibility of another blizzard similar to the one the night before appearing seemingly out of nowhere. And the journey from here back to her home was well over twenty kilometers, which would require a difficult overland journey where she could simply die of exposure.
Foyi blew out a shaky breath as she made her decision. She did not like it, but for now, she needed the stolen 74-Z. It was not ideal in the slightest, but she would keep the speeder bike for survival, for she could not return to her home, to the sister that relied on her, safely without it. This would necessitate her hiding the vehicle for an extended period of time, but she believed she could take this risk. She knew of several abandoned shacks and a disused warehouse on the outskirts of the village that would serve as excellent and anonymous hiding spots, as many villagers, and even some Zeison Sha, used them for concealing all manner of contraband from the Empire. And if stormtroopers were to find the location in which she stashed the bike, it would be difficult for them to discern exactly who was responsible for the theft and subsequent deaths of the snow scouts.
Foyi stepped in her previous footprints, not bothering to hide them, for a few minutes of the high-speed winds would erase any evidence of her being here. She straddled the speeder bike, opened the throttle, and the bike shrieked as she wheeled it around and zipped across the plains. She glanced up at the sky, her teeth chattering in the insufferable winds, and watched worriedly as gray and black clouds skidded across the gray atmosphere. Slight fractures in their feathery coverage admitted the cold light of the sun, leaving random shafts of gray light filtering through the air and kissing the ground. The wasteland was beautiful in its own right, and she could not deny the thrill she felt within her chest at the speed with which she was passing everything, from rising mountains that seemed to touch the clouds, to scraggly trees, to the voorcat slinking through the snow almost a half-kilometer to the east. She could not physically see it, but she could feel its carnivorous intent through the Force. The Force was alive, and just as breathtaking as the feeling of the speeder roaring beneath her, of the wind whipping through her clothes, tugging on the sensitive flesh of her lekku. Despite the cold she felt, the wind that ripped her breath from a raw and ragged throat, she realized there were far too few instances where she felt truly alive, truly a part and player in the great holovid known as Existence. Here and now was one of those moments, and she could not stop herself from letting out a long, pealing ululation as she zoomed past the outskirts of the village.
Foyi slowed the vehicle as a collection of rundown houses and dilapidated shacks came into view. She pulled the throttle closed and let the 74-Z coast toward one of those shacks, a rectangular establishment of prefab housing, much of the roof caved in. There were parts of other vehicles and frozen pieces of machinery scattered in dejected piles, having become an impromptu dumping ground for residents and visitors alike who cared not where they discarded their broken datapads and droids. Most of the metallic scrap was frozen to their places in the ground, but Foyi found some old, tattered cloaks and tarps and parked the 74-Z in the shack. She draped the tarps over the vehicle, then used the Force to rip several pieces of machinery and metal scrap free of their frozen positions, then heaped them all about the speeder bike. When she was done, the tarps was arranged so that it looked to be just another scrap of cloth whipping about in the wind, trapped by the weight of all the metallic trash heaped atop it. It would take some concerted and knowledgeable digging to discover the speeder bike, and as long as she kept it hidden and did not use it unless absolutely necessary, the bike could most likely remain out of sight until the spring. Only then would she be forced to dispose of the bike...or perhaps the Imperials would have given up the search for their lost equipment and personnel by that time. Maybe she could keep the bike for use by herself and Tama by hiding or removing the laser cannon and rearranging the steering vanes to make the vehicle appear to be a 74-Y Speeder Bike, the civilian version of the 74-Z. If she could make it look like a civilian bike, it would be even more difficult for the Imperials to pin the theft of the bike and the death of the snow scouts on her.
She emerged from the shack almost an hour after she had arrived. The meager sunlight was far brighter than before, the infrequent streams of light filtering through the thick clouds brilliantly gold in hue. The temperature had rose only a few degrees, though it was enough to make her feel as if she were having less trouble breathing in the frigid air. She readjusted the half-frozen scarf about her throat and chin, pulled her hood down somewhat, and trekked through the deep drifts lurking throughout the streets. Foyi passed the occasional passerby, most of them residents, the descendants of the original colonists of Yanibar, hardy, resourceful, resentful people who ventured out in the inclement winter because they had to. No one, not residents, not visitors, ever got used to Yanibar's weather.
Foyi turned the corner of an old convenience store and began striding along the street hers and Tama's home was located. She looked up from watching her footing and froze. About ten meters down the street, their backs to her, were a squad of snowtroopers, moving in an orderly fashion, systematically checking the doors of each house they came across. There were nine of them in total, dressed in the winterized armor, hip capes, and heating packs indicative of Cold Assault Stormtrooper units. The squad had split into two groups, four stormtroopers approaching each house on either side of the street, while the squad leader stood in the center of the street, questioning passerby and residents who had been pulled from their homes into the blistering cold. Her eyes gazed past their armored forms, and determined that at this rate, they would reach her home in only a few minutes. She was figuratively frozen in place for a long, agonizing moment as she attempted to decide what she should do, how she should act, while berating herself for causing this mess. She just knew the stormtroopers were here because of her actions yesterday; the Imperials never sent an entire squad down this street, and they almost never went door to door administering impromptu interrogations.
Foyi forced herself to act, to end her indecision. The survival of herself, her sister, their lifestyle, may very well depend on what she did in the next handful of minutes, and she would not be useful simply standing here. She turned to the left, sticking to that side of the street as she kept her gaze low, willing herself to appear small, insignificant, unimportant. Her goal, a thin alley branching off from the street, was ahead; if she could slip into its confines, it would link with another cramped alleyway through which she could sneak into the back entrance of her home and remain invisible to the street. The Twi'lek had just reached the corner of the intersection when a voice rang out over a helmet speaker, a voice calling, "You! Wormhead! Halt!"
Foyi did not need the Force to tell her that the squad leader was speaking directly to her. She turned slowly, facing the squad leader, who still stood in the middle of the street, only now his blaster was pointed in her direction. The other snowtroopers in the street were now turning toward her as well, and their blasters were not quite leveled at her, but they imposed a silent threat nonetheless. Foyi momentarily considered reaching for her discblade, but it was still secured in the holster on her back, beneath her heavy coat. Extracting it, even through the Force, would require too much time and effort, and most likely invite a blaster bolt to the head before she could use the weapon with any effectiveness. The Twi'lek attempted an innocent facade, raising her hands and replying through chattering teeth, "Me, sir?"
"You see other wormheads on this street?" the squad leader demanded, his question completely rhetorical. "Come over here. Now."
Foyi walked slowly over to stand in front of the squad leader, the other snowtroopers moving closer, their weapons raised. Foyi cast a nervous glance at the gathered Imperials, then addressed the snowtrooper before her. "Can I help you..." She glanced at the snowtrooper's rank insignia. "Can I help you, Sergeant?"
"Let me see your face," the sergeant responded. Foyi reluctantly complied, removing her hood, unwinding her scarf, and pushing the goggles atop her head. The cold immediately felt like a razor scraping off the uppermost layer of her epidermis, but she gritted her teeth and bore it, managing to maintain what she hoped was an innocent, clueless expression. The sergeant's expression was completely unknown to her; stormtrooper helmets were not particularly revealing. "What is your name, wormhead?"
"Foyi Imbuma," Foyi responded, using the split form of her Twi'lek name, which was a more common naming convention outside traditional Twi'lek culture.
The stormtrooper sergeant stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment. Foyi attempted to not shift about on her feet nervously, keeping her eyes cast downward in a subservient expression, knowing better than to stare too long into the soulless lenses of the snowtrooper's helmet. Most likely, the pause was due to the man conferring with superiors through his helmet's comlink. When he spoke again, Foyi was not expecting it, and nearly jumped at the sound of his grating, digitized voice. "You live on this street?"
Still recovering from her surprise, Foyi automatically answered, "Yes", and instantly regretted it. She was having difficulty not betraying her emotions and inner turmoils on her face. True, black fear was coiling and squirming in her stomach, gnawing at a knot in her lower abdomen. Even calling upon the Force did little to truly calm her emotions as visions of herself and Tama trapped in an Imperial cell or interrogation chamber swam before her eyes. She was keenly aware of the snowtroopers having formed a semicircle around her, the unspoken threats hovering at the barrels of their E-11s.
"We've had reports of unlicensed speeder craft in this area. Specifically, the civilian use of a 74-Z speeder bike, which is authorized for use by Imperial personnel only. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that would you, wormhead?"
Someone had heard her driving around with the bike, maybe even seen her, and like good little Imperial citizens, had reported the strange occurrences to the authorities. At this point, they could only have suspicions that the speeder bike and the missing snow scout patrol were related, but under Imperial rule, one could be interrogated, tried, and executed on suspicion alone. Considering the way the squad was focused on her and her alone, it was likely the snowtroopers suspected her already, so it would not do to give them a bold-faced lie. She might be able to talk her way out of this if she gave a modicum of the truth, or used some sort of misdirection or diversionary tactic. She feigned an expression of deep recall and consideration, before answering in a quivering voice that was not entirely artificial, "I...I did hear something last night...something that sounded like a speeder driving past my house...I'm not really a mechanic or a speeder jockey, so I don't know what kind of vehicle it was, but I suppose it could have been a bike..."
As she spoke, she extended her Force awareness, tasting the emotions of the snowtroopers arranged around her. She felt anticipation, excitement, aggressiveness, even mild fear. But all she sensed from the sergeant was incredulity; he did not believe her story, though she had the sense that he based this conclusion more on instinct than any actual evidence of her falsehood. "Why don't you show us where you live, and we'll see if we can't identify the type of speeder you heard." While he phrased it like a suggestion, the two snowtroopers who came up beside her, each gripping an arm, made it clear that it was anything but. Walled in by armored bodies and blasters, Foyi was marched down the street as she used a pointing index finger to lead the way to her house. She began to submerge herself in the Force, calling upon its power to keep her calm, serene, and prepared for any opportunity that presented itself. As her house came into view, she drew the Force about her and extended herself through it, her mind riding a single, directed current that carried past the snowtroopers and into the house ahead, searching about for Tama's presence. A warning, a scream of fear, a one-word command to run rode the wave's crest, but the current did not find its intended destination. Unless Tama was somehow hiding herself from the Force, a skill well beyond her meager level of training, she was not present. She was nowhere to be found in the house. Foyi allowed herself an audible sigh of relief. For once, she found herself rejoicing in Tama's stubbornness and her unwillingness to listen to her older sister. If she was not in the house, she was most likely at the spaceport again, listening to the wild tales of spacers, spice runners, and smugglers, and so that was where Foyi would start to look for her. But first, she had to somehow extricate herself from the clutches of these snowtroopers, then pack up whatever they could and leave. She knew several places they could hide on Yanibar, including Zeison Sha safehouses where they would be welcome and protected. It would not be as private or as independent as living in a home all their own, but it would be lightyears better than spending time on an Imperial prison barge.
They approached the house, and Foyi was relieved to see that the wind had removed any obvious evidence that the 74-Z had been present outside the door. One of the snowtroopers wasted no time in kicking the door open, and four of them poured in, their weapons sweeping the interior. The sergeant grabbed Foyi's arm and hauled her inside as well, in time for her to see one of the snowtroopers kicking the table and furniture over, shattering dishes from the night before. Another took a look at the fireplace and the glowing embers within, while the other two crept into the hallway, examining the refresher and the bedrooms. She did not hear any cries of surprise or discovery, and silently thanked Tama for her obstinacy. One of the snowtroopers emerged from Foyi's room and said, "Sergeant, sir, we found a locker in here. Has a code on it."
The sergeant roughly propelled Foyi forward, his grip like icy durasteel on her arm, and pushed her through the doorway. The blankets and meager mattress of her cot had been upended and spilled across the floor, while there were multiple new dents in the locker's door, as if the snowtrooper had tried to bash it open with his E-11 before remembering they had a prisoner who could open it. Stupid bucketheads. The sergeant let go of her arm and nudged her toward the locker with his blaster, his voice cold and deadly. "What've you got in there, wormhead?"
"J-just some clothes. It's my wardrobe...there's nothing interesting in there." Except a stolen Imperial blaster. A small, desperate plan began to form in the base of her brain, and her lekku twitched excitedly. She fell further within the cool waters of the Force, but they had become more tumultuous as she began to summon a heated tide of anger, feeling the vibrations humming just beneath her skin as she internalized it, crystallized it. It was time for action. She was a Zeison Sha Warrior, more than a match for a stormtrooper squad. She would strike quickly, cleanly, and true. Assuming the stolen blaster she had not touched in years still held some sort of charge.
"Open it," came the sergeant's expected command. Foyi crouched down before the locker, making certain her body obscured the lower contents of the container as she input the code. Her entire body was practically buzzing with caged anticipation and raw Force energy. Her senses were sharp and crystal clear. She was one with the room and all its contents. She knew exactly where the blaster was before the door ever opened. She could feel the presence of the snowtroopers in the house, their positions, the sound of their breaths. There were two in the tiny room beside the sergeant, which would limit their maneuverability and fighting prowess. However, she would be similarly confined, but surprise was on her side. If she did this right.
The door popped open with a tinny squeal, and she slowly stood, still blocking most of the snowtroopers' view of the locker's interior. The sergeant began to speak, commanding, "Alright, no sudden movements. Back away slowly..."
Foyi began to comply, then reached out in the Force at the same time she spun around. The stolen E-11 leapt free of the locker's confines and slapped into her waiting palms, so that as she faced the sergeant and the pair of snowtroopers, she was suddenly armed. The sergeant gave a cry of surprise, but Foyi squeezed the trigger, discharging a laser blast into his sternum. The armor's control panel burst in a shower of sparks, smoke, and flame, and the sergeant gave an anguished cry as he was blown backward into one of his subordinates, knocking him over. The only snowtrooper in the room still standing fired at her torso, but she had already rolled to the side, and the blast went wide. She came up to one knee on her ruined mattress and fired from the shoulder, the laser piercing the man's helmet and blowing most of his head away, leaving a greasy splatter of blood and brain matter across the bedroom's wall. The snowtrooper trapped beneath his commanding officer's corpse extricated himself from beneath the body, but his weapon became momentarily trapped in the corpse's armpit, which gave Foyi plenty of time to shoot him in the lower abdomen. The snowtrooper gave a strangled cry and fell atop the sergeant's body, rolling over in pain, screaming through the helmet's vocabulator. She attempted to fire another shot to finish him off, but there was a fizzling, electronic noise, and she realized that the blaster's power pack was bereft of charge, depleted by years of disuse and the sudden, current violence.
Foyi could sense the snowtroopers approaching the doorway before they arrived, and as the first snowtrooper leveled his blaster through the opening, she hurled her empty weapon directly into his faceplate with a Force-propelled throw. His aim was thrown off, and his shot stuttered into the ceiling, blowing white-hot shards of stone about the room. Foyi surged forward, rolling through the doorway, refusing to have her mobility compromised by the confines of her bedroom. As she came rolling across the floor, she whipped off her coat, so that when she came to her feet, she whirled the heavy garment around the head of the disoriented snowtrooper, the cloth obscuring his vision. She gripped his arm, spun him around, then caught him in a headlock, propping his body before her just as the rest of the squad began to enter the house, firing. The snowtrooper in her arms, the coat still wrapped around her head, struggled, but she managed to move him to intercept the blaster bolts meant for her. She felt his body spasm in her arms as multiple lasers struck his torso, and with a shuddering breath, he went limp. Foyi let the body fall as she leapt over the corpse in a Force-enhanced jump forward, landing a flying punch into the faceplate of the lead snowtrooper, letting her anger and fear for Tama's safety provide unnatural power to the blow. The snowtrooper's helmet cracked in a jagged fracture right down the center, and the unfortunate soldier was blasted to the ground by the ferocity of the blow. But barely had she touched the floor with the toes of her boots and she was spinning away, tucking into a roll to avoid the concentrated fire of two more snowtroopers, the lurid heat of their laser blasts singing her skin and robes. She stopped her roll behind the overturned table, and blasterfire thundered into the opposite side, as well as the wall behind her, sparks, splinters, and stone shrapnel exploding all around her. The old wood of the table would not withstand the withering assault leveled against it for long, but Foyi did not need much time.
Her left hand snaked over her shoulder as a laser blast punched through the table and scathed the skin between the right side of her throat and her clavicle, burning away a small portion of her hood in the process. She extracted her discblade from its holster even as she hissed in pain; the laser burn was not life threatening, but it was bad, and it stung mightily. Another laser sliced through the table, which had caught fire at this point, but it exploded harmlessly at her feet. Her cover about to be blown to pieces, Foyi allowed herself to experience the pain of the burn, allowed it fuel her simmering rage, and sharpening all of it to a razor point. She leapt from cover, the Force washing all around her, carrying her on a tidal wave of energy. Everything seemed to occur in slow motion, giving her plenty of time to observe her enemies, their positions, whether they stood or crouched, whether they fired from the hip or the shoulder, and how far they were spaced from one another. There were three in the main room with her, close to the door, spaced relatively evenly from each other, while the last two members of the squad were outside, invisible to her vantage point and shining like beacons in the Force. The three in the room discharged their blasters simultaneously, but she found herself with all the time in the world to react, twisting her body midair to let the lasers pass above and below her, sometimes with only centimeters to spare. But the Force was her ally, her strength, and she trusted it completely to warn her, to keep her safe, to guide her weapon and her actions. The discblade left her hand, feeling more like she had let it fly of its own accord rather than applying any physical force to throw it. Even as she was arcing toward the end of her leap, gravity drawing her to the floor, the discblade spun and whirled in a horizontal arc of its own. Its whirling edges caught the snowtrooper farthest to the left in the throat and tore it open in a spray of blood, shockingly scarlet on his white armor. But the weapon, guided by her mind, by the Force, did not slow, would not be diverted, and passed through the throat of the snowtrooper to his right. The snowtrooper farthest to the right attempted to duck the discblade, but it merely curved downward, following his changing height to bury itself in his chest, parting his breastplate as if were not even present. By the time Foyi's dive from cover carried her to the floor and she rolled back to her feet, the three snowtroopers were dead, collapsing to the floor, gasping their last breaths as blood spurted from their mortal wounds. She stretched out her right hand, gasping at the pain that the motion needled her burn with, and the discblade ripped itself free of the snowtrooper's armor and soared into her hand.
But she was still not done, even though her chest was heaving and her muscles were shuddering from exertion, pain, and fear. She was just reaching her feet again when the final pair of snowtroopers leaned in through the doorway, firing their blaster rifles at her, using full autofire and filling the room with smoke, flame, and screaming lasers. Foyi zigzagged back in forth, and her left hand shot forward, her mind calling on the Force, imagining the nearest snowtrooper in melee range before her. The Force swirled like a tide retreating from a beach, and the snowtrooper was suddenly thrown bodily through the doorway and into the main room, shrieking in surprise as he soared through the air to land directly in front of the Twi'lek Zeison Sha. A lightning-fast blur of her wrist opened his throat, and as he collapsed, Foyi's free hand wrested away the blaster still clutched in his spasming fingers. The final snowtrooper continued to fire, but only one of his shots came close to Foyi, and it was intercepted by the collapsing form of his comrade. Foyi enhanced her speed with the Force as she dodged to the side, raising the E-11 and depressing the trigger. Still set to autofire, a scarlet storm of light erupted from the blaster's barrel, stitching craters in the wall beside the doorway, whizzing through the doorway into the snow-flung winds, and catching the snowtrooper's barely-exposed shoulder. He staggered into view, reaching for his wounded shoulder, and he took three laser blasts to the chest, and collapsed in the snow, his rifle firing a single, reflexive shot into the air. Then silence reigned once more in the house, save for the hungry crackle of flames consuming the table and guttering out in the many craters in the walls, floor and furniture of the main room. The silence was pierced by an agonized whimper coming from her bedroom, and Foyi rushed back into the room to see the snowtrooper she had shot in the gut crawling across the floor, mewling in pain and fear. She got there in time to hear the last few words of a message he spoke into his helmet's comlink. "...need reinforcements...Zeison Sha..."
Foyi fired the blaster before she realized it, silencing the fallen soldier forever. She felt her legs quivering, and involuntarily she collapsed to the floor, gasping for breath, weariness settling into every fiber of her being. As a Zeison Sha Warrior, she had trained for combat, but never had such a battle so threatened her life or tested her Force abilities to the breaking point. The burn on her neck felt like it was ablaze, the flames slowly spreading through her blood and producing an agonizing heat over much of her upper body. She knew it was not a mortal wound, that she would survive it, that a healing trance would take care of most of it, as well as a bacta patch if she could acquire one. But she had neither the time nor the luxury for such things. The snowtrooper had gotten a message to his superiors. Even if they had been willing to overlook the disappearance of a snow scout patrol in the dangerous wilderness of Yanibar, there would be swift and total retribution for the slaughter of an entire squad in an urban area. She had to get her sister and herself to shelter and safety as soon as possible; perhaps even offworld, though she was loathe to leave. Even now, there could be TIE Fighters, AT-STs, perhaps the Jedi Hunters of the Inquisitorius mobilizing to bear down upon this house with powerful, vengeful fury. She had put herself, her sister, and the entire Zeison Sha community in danger by unnecessarily attracting the attention of the Empire, perhaps all the way up the chain to Imperial Center itself.
Foyi forced herself to stand from her exhausted position on her hands and knees, snagging one of the torn blankets from her ruined cot to use to wipe her discblade free of blood, then replaced it in her holster. She then retrieved a satchel and began stuffing extra clothes and personal items in the bag, pausing when she got to her armor. She momentarily considered leaving it behind due to its weight and conspicuous nature, but she could not bear to part with it. It was a part of her, of her heritage, and the Empire had already taken so much of that from her. She would not allow them to take this.
Hurriedly, her burn screaming in protest, Foyi removed her outer layers of clothes and strapped her armor to her frame, feeling the comforting weight of the suit and robes, how the armor adhered to and moved with her form and her actions. She had the distinct feeling of being whole, as if she had been missing a vital portion of her being for a long time and was finally reunited with it. She retrieved her outer robes and belted them over the suit of armor, mostly obscuring its contours and bulk. She then withdrew a length of rope from the locker, picked up one of the snowtrooper's E-11s, checked the charge, and tied the rope to the barrel and the grip, so that she could sling the rifle over her back. Finally, she reacquired her coat, which was still wrapped around the dead snowtrooper's head and pulled it on, then shouldered her satchel, and with a heavy sigh, jogged from her room and through the main doorway into the icy streets beyond. She cast a glance into the sky, expecting dozens of TIE Fighters silhouetted against the cloudy atmosphere, but she saw nothing of the sort, neither did she hear the characteristic scream of the Imperial starfighters' ion engines. She noticed with mild interest that there was no one on the street, all the passerby having vacated the area in response to the ferocious firefight that had occurred. Which most likely meant that if the Imperial base had not received the dying snowtrooper's call for reinforcements, they were probably receiving a flood of messages from scared and distraught civilians. Spast!
Foyi set off at a jog, wheezing at the exhaustion still gripping her and the weight of her armor and the objects she was carrying. She angled herself toward the spaceport on the opposite end of town, and prayed that Tama would be safe until she got to her.