Star Wars: Lost Souls

by BAPostma

Zeison Sha Warrior Foyi Imbuma has spent the majority of her life hiding her Force abilities on Yanibar, while training her sister, Tama, in secret. But when Tama is kidnapped by a sadistic serial killer, Foyi must venture across the galaxy, from the Smugglers' Moon to shadowy Point Nadir to the hostile jungles of Felucia, to rescue her sister. Cover Image courtesy of Wookieepedia.

22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Tama sat beneath the window from which hung the tattered remnants of a transparisteel barrier, feeling the sickly, humid breeze of Felucia's night air slipping across her lekku like a moist rag. She was breathing slowly and evenly, attempting to ignore the gnawing pains in her stomach and catching her breath from the amount of effort she had just expended explaining the only idea she had been able to generate to deal with the confinement caused by the ray shield generator in the courtyard far below them, and thus ensure their escape from their current predicament. Nuri, the Bothan boy named Fenn, the obnoxious and wheezing Rodian Farr, the quivering Twi'lek boy Otar, and the introspective and uncomfortably silent Duros Cyran were arrayed in a semicircle about her. They had arranged themselves on a variety of ruined and moldering slabs of furniture, or spots of the floor in the suite they had decided to occupy or exhaustion had dictated they perceive as comfortable. Some of them lay flat on their sides or stomachs, facing her as she finished speaking, while others sat upright, though their bodies swayed as though they might fall over from maintaining such a simple but vertical position. All of them were starving, abused, frightened, and nearly delirious with weariness and the lethargy brought

on by the absence of adrenaline coursing through their systems. But all had been attentive as Tama spent the better part of an hour or more outlining her plan, which, while simple, required an arduous amount of explanation and several impassioned attempts at convincing them of even attempting such a thing.

Attempts that had yet to be successful, Tama mused, as she looked in turn to the expressions of her fellow captives. They each represented different species and cultures, and therefore possessed a variety of ways in which they expressed the same concepts and emotions. But there was no denying the startlingly similar expression of abject disbelief that was across all of their faces. All of her fellow prisoners were looking at her as though they expected her to suddenly transform into one of the ravenous Rakghouls that Pash had conveyed to her in some of his more colorful spacers' tales.

Tama waited another agonizing moment, too tired to reach out with the Force and get a sense of exactly what they were thinking. With a sigh, she asked simply, "Well? If anyone's got a better plan, I'm willing to listen."

The fur on Fenn's face shifted noticeably as he cleared his throat. "Here's an idea: You don't get to make anymore plans. Not after the insanity you suggested we attempt."

"Is madness," Farr agreed, bobbing his oblong alien head.

Tama threw up her hands in desperation and irritation. She turned to Nuri, the closest thing to a friend she had amongst this group of survivors, of prisoners. "Nuri, you know we can do this."

Nuri looked as though she wanted to support Tama, but could not bring herself to do so due to her own sense of disbelief. "Tama...in the last day, I've seen you do several incredible things. You convinced a starving boma not to eat us, warned us when the droids got too close, and even called a blaster to your hands from across a room. With your mind. But this...this is something entirely different. And the way you talked about this...well, you don't sound all that confident about any success in this absolutely crazy plan, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me, or anyone here."

"You complete laserbrained," Farr hissed, jabbing a cup-tipped finger in Tama's direction, as if he were accusing her of a criminal act. "What makes you think you magical?"

Tama's lekku twitched in exasperation even as she sighed. "It's not magic, as I explained earlier. The Force is the energy that unifies all of reality and the universe, and maintains life wherever it may be found. Some people, like myself, like the Jedi of the Old Republic, like the karking Sith for Edge's sake. Just 'cause you can't see or feel it doesn't mean it isn't there."

"But you can?" Otar asked skeptically. "How convenient for you."

Nuri whirled on him angrily. "Hey! Don't dismiss this...power so readily. You think that blaster Tama gave me just crawled across the hangar on its own?"

Otar shrugged, as though such an occurrence was so common as to not be consequential. "Honestly, I'm not sure what I saw back there. Strange things happen in this galaxy, and none stranger than during battle."

Farr scoffed, a rude, nasally noise emerging from his snout. "Like you fought many battles."

Otar looked sheepish, but still mumbled vindictively. "You don't know anything about me."

Fenn was absentmindedly twitching his ears, a gesture Tama took to represent careful consideration on his part. "This...plan you propose...it can't be the only way we can bring down the shield generator." He looked down at the holdout blaster he continued to nervously palm in his hands. "We found this hidden in the ruins. Maybe there are other, more powerful weapons concealed in the city, something that would be better suited to bringing down the ray shields. Like thermal detonators or ion charges or whatever."

Nuri snorted like she had just heard one of the most ridiculous courses of action in her entire life. "'Thermal detonators'? 'Ion charges'? Whaddya think this place is, a Hutt's armory? The son of a barve that trapped us here hid supply and weapon caches to give us something to fight over, but there's no way that anything in those caches is powerful enough to bring down those ray shields. Look at that blaster in your hand; that thing's barely able to bring down a Battle Droid, and those clankers might as well be made of flimsiplast. The only reason you found that thing was because 'the Savior' allowed you to, and that was only because he wanted us all to fight and kill each other for it. There isn't going to be anything within these ray shields with enough punch to knock out the shield generators."

"So you're actually considering her barvy ideas?!" came Otar's incredulous response.

Nuri bit her lower lip as she cast a guilty glance Tama's way. Tama could see that the Zabrak girl wanted to support her, wanted to believe in what she was suggesting. Of those gathered, she had seen the most direct evidence of the Force through Tama, and while she at least believed in the Force's existence, she could not know the extent and reach of the Force, nor Tama's own skills with it. Which were nothing to comm home about even when she was not so weakened by her current circumstances. Tama could understand Nuri's reluctance to support her, though part of her was yearning for Nuri's confidence in her, if for no other reason than to give herself a modicum of self-confidence in her own abilities. What she had proposed for a plan was almost entirely dependent upon a Force ability she had discovered to possess only hours before, and was uncertain she could replicate even under ideal circumstances, even fully hale and prepared with considerable practice and training. Her plan was desperation incarnate, but her instincts told her that if they did not adopt a course of action that was not only risky but unexpected, then they would soon find themselves no longer in a position to take any action that would facilitate their mistake. Even now, their captor could be listening in on them, could be evaluating the plan she had just proposed, could be ordering more droids to search through the ruined city until they found them hiding in these upper apartments and blasted them all.

Nuri finally threw up her hands, as though the discussion did not matter in the slightest. "It's...completely vapebrained, I'll admit it, and it requires us to put a lot on faith. Especially considering none of us know each other well. But Tama's the only one who's proposed a plan so far, and though I'll be the first to admit it doesn't make sense, if she can actually make it work, it may be our best play at escaping this compound."

Cyran remarked aggressively to that comment, jabbering fervently in Durese, her scarlet eyes devoid of pupils rolling in their sockets to almost imperceptibly to show that she was addressing everyone present, though Nuri was the only one who could at least partially understand her. Nuri nodded, still biting her lower lip. "Cyran says that whether we try this plan or another one to bring down the shield generators, it'll be worth a bucket of Hutt drool anyway," Nuri provided for those not versed in Durese. Cyran seemed indignant at the Zabrak's translation, which Tama suspected was more cultured than Nuri had presented it, but Nuri continued unabated anyway. "We knock out those ray shields, we can get out of this city and the prison we're caught in here, sure. But then all we have to deal with is the untold kilometers of trackless jungle over the surface of Felucia, as well as settlements and cities probably in similar state to the one we're in now. This planet was hit hard during the Clone Wars. I...I don't know much about it, but there's little left here but ruins, hostile natives, wild creatures like that rancor, and maybe even Imperials. Once we're out in the jungles, there's not much out there that can help us get offworld."

Tama gave her an introspective look. "You said the Empire's here as well?"

"I said 'maybe'," Nuri clarified haughtily. "And even if there were, I doubt they'll be in a friendly mood. We can't rely on them, whether they exist or not, to get us off this hellhole."

Fenn rapped his clawed digits across the burned and scarred floor at his feet. "Nevermind Imperials. The bastard who put us here has to have a way offworld...or, at least a way to get people like us down here. Maybe we could locate where the 'Savior' has his ships, and get off that way."

"It heavily guarded, surely," Farr chimed in.

Otar was nodding along with Cyran, who murmured her own agreement. "There would probably be more droids. Maybe some monsters, or 'the Savior' himself. But with more blasters, a little luck...whatever magical powers you have, Tama, if you really do have them, maybe we could seize one of his ships."

"Do any of us even know how to fly a ship?" Fenn asked skeptically, more to make certain the others did not get ahead of themselves.

Cyran raised a hand, as did Nuri. The Zabrak gave the Duros a smile, then faced the Bothan with confidence in her eyes that belied the desperation of their current situation. "If it's got a navcomp and a hyperdrive, I can fly it." Cyran chattered something that sounded agreeable, and the Zabrak nodded appreciatively. "Cyran says she can fly it better than I can; I'm willing to take her up on that challenge. Assuming we can get ourselves a ship."

"That's a huge assumption, considering we've yet to get out of this city," Tama replied, wishing to similarly curtail the enthusiasm and speculation on events that had yet to pass, in an uncertain future that was filled with negative possibilities for the group of exhausted, starving, and abused children. "And to do that, we need to get those ray shields down."

"We're going to need a lot more weapons," Nuri replied mournfully, cradling the A280 Blaster Rifle in her lap as though it were a precious heirloom or a talisman of good luck.

"The droids have plenty of those," Otar suggested. "We did so well against them back at the hangar...all we have to do is blast a few more, take their weapons, and everything will be astral. We won't need your laserbrained scheme, Tama. We can just blast the shield generator with the weapons we take and get out when the shields come down."

Tama pushed herself up to her feet, groaning with the effort of doing so as the lactic acid in her overtaxed limbs sent painful shivers through her legs and knees. She turned around and peered down into the courtyard several floors below, the droids patrolling its perimeters easy to spot due to the flickering lights emitting from some of their carapaces, as well as how they were silhouetted against the glows exuded by some of the mushrooms and fungi growing thick over the detritus in the courtyard. A quick visual scan revealed the droids to have steadily increased in numbers that were certainly fatal for the ill-equipped and poorly prepared band if they dared venture within a dozen meters or more of the courtyard. She shook her head, trying to still the fearful shiver that vibrated through her lekku as she did so. "There has to be almost two dozen droids down there now surrounding those generators. He knows we're after it now, and won't let us get close enough to do any damage, much less steal weapons." She turned to the others with a distraught expression on her face. "We were lucky in the hangar; had that rancor not crashed the party, we would have all died in those ruins back there, no matter how good of a shot Nuri apparently is. We go anywhere near that courtyard and those generators, we'll be cut down immediately."

Cyran addressed Tama, her expression twisted into a grimace that the Twi'lek assumed was quizzical. Nuri translated for her, asking, "They're still all battle droids, right?"

Tama looked back out at the courtyard for a moment, then nodded. "As far as I can tell. Why?"

Cyran posed another question, which Nuri supplied further translation for. "If they're all battle droids, that means they're not very smart. Little more than blasters on legs, built to shoot first and ask questions later, and only capable of executing simple commands and heuristic functions. Wouldn't it be simple to distract them then?" Nuri's eyes opened wide as she caught onto the hovertrain of thought Cyran was suggesting. "What if we drew a few of them away at a time, just enough to handle with what we have and steal the weapons they carry?"

The others considered this suggestion for a few tense moments, the only sound that of the creaks and groans of the wounded building settling as it slowly succumbed to Felucia's gravity, as well as the eerie whistle of the humid night wind carrying through the gaping windows. Fenn was the first to speak, asking, "How much ammo do we have left?"

Tama checked the readout on her E-5 Blaster Rifle she held at the same time Nuri examined her own. "I still have plenty of shots," the Twi'lek answered.

"I'm running low," Nuri replied in a grim voice. "But not so low that I can't bring down a few battle droids. Or maybe a super or two."

"Too dangerous," Farr squawked in protest.

"This whole planet is dangerous," Otar countered. "If we want to leave, we're going to have to take risks. I say the possibility of getting our hands on some more weapons and ammo is worth that risk, if it allows us to get out of this place."

"If we do get these weapons, could we maybe shoot the shield generators from a distance?" asked Fenn.

Tama was about to respond negatively to that, but Nuri beat her to the punch with a sneer and a shake of her head. "The generators are in an armored bunker, not plastered on a flashing holotarget. Even if we get these weapons, they won't get us any closer to the generators; simple blasters aren't going to punch through that plating, nor those blast doors. And there's going to be all those droids in between us and the generators." She heaved a great sigh, then gave Tama a weary smile. "I hate to say it, but unless anyone has some seismic charges they've been saving for a special occasion, Tama's plan is the best we've got."

The others looked largely uncomfortable, and both Farr and Fenn seemed desperate to come up with any course of action beyond the insane scheme Tama had formulated. But after several long moments, no one offered any further notions, and it was with reluctance that they nodded their begrudging assent. Tama felt a knot drawn tighter in her gut, one that had nothing to do with the gnawing, ravenous hunger that continued to vex her. She was not certain she should be happy that they had agreed to her plan, because despite her assurances, she highly doubted she was up to the challenge she had presented herself. But such was the nature of forcing people into such untenable positions as the one they had been thrust into. The prisoners had nothing left to lose, and therefore were willing to risk everything they had on what could turn out to be a spectacularly poor set of circumstances.

Tama breathed a resigned sigh and tried to maintain her focus, willing herself to become divorced from her anxiety and pain. May the Force be with us all. "Then we try to draw a few droids away and get their weapons," Tama proclaimed. "And then...we'll see if we can make ourselves a new ally willing to bring down that bunker for us."

---

The children lurked in one of the alleyways on the opposite side of the courtyard from the building they had taken temporary refuge in. Tama and Nuri were once again in the front of their procession, though such an arrangement was fortuitous for all present, considering they were the only two with any significant armament. Otar, Fenn, Farr, and Cyran all crouched just behind them, save for the Bothan boy, who leaned against the grimy, carbon-scored wall of an abandoned, multileveled restaurant with his holdout blaster pointed skyward by one of his nervously twitching ears.

Tama and Nuri peered into the shadows cast by the glows of Felucian vegetation and the light streaming from the energy discharges of the ray shield generators. This close to the bunker and the key to their escape hidden within, Tama could not help but feel the apprehension at having to attempt to get through the bunker's blast doors and the keys to their escape. The two dozen heavily-armed, if not entirely functional, battle droids patrolling the intervening space between the center of the courtyard and the passage through whence they peered would be more than a slight deterrent as well.

Nuri hefted her A280 Blaster Rifle, placing the stock against her shoulder as easily and fluidly as though she had been born with the blaster attached. She looked back at Farr, the Rodian crouching beside a pile of detritus and jagged bits of permacrete, then nodded to him as Tama hefted her own weapon. The Rodian made little more than a whisper of sound as he picked up one of those permacrete shards, then with a surprisingly well-aimed toss, sent the refuse whipping over their heads and into the courtyard beyond. Tama almost cheered when the fragment clattered off the back of a battle droid's oblong head, nearly knocking the poorly-balanced and barely functional machine over. The action elicited a high-pitched whine of "Hey! Who threw that?!"

The droid's distress attracted the attention of one of its fellows, a super battle droid whose duranium plating was so corroded and battle-scarred, it was a miracle of engineering that the machine was still able to walk around intact. The super lumbered over, keeping its right arm locked in an upright position, its gravelly voice broken by random bursts of static. "What is wrong with you?"

Farr cocked his arm back for another throw, but Tama halted his arm with a firm hand. They did not want to draw away too many super battle droids if they could help it; they had not the time, tools, or knowledge to extract the wrist blasters from super battle droids and use them as their own weapons. They needed to draw away more battle droids than anything else. The super battle droid gave the immediate area a quick sweep with its sensors, then turned back to the battle droid, and if a faceless automaton could look chagrined, Tama was certain she would see such an expression worn by the super battle droid. "You are malfunctioning again. You require maintenance."

"A rock just hit me in the head!" the unfortunate B1 protested.

"Of it's own volition?" The B2 sounded truly sarcastic.

The battle droid actually spluttered slightly as it stood motionless for a lengthy moment, its processors turning the question over multiple times and finding no immediate answer. The B2 waited for a only a few seconds, then returned to its scheduled patrol route, leaving the flummoxed battle droid to consider whether rocks typically jumped up and struck anthropomorphic machines on the protrusions of their chassis that resembled skulls. Whatever answer it had generated to resolve its own question, it did not voice aloud, and began walking its own patrol route again.

Tama removed her hand from Farr's wrist, and the Rodian hurled another jagged clump of duracrete, this time with enough force to bash the back just below its scrawny neck, rocking the droid forward as it squawked loudly and nearly dropped its weapon in the process. The battle droid spun on its heels, raising its rusted E-5 Blaster Rifle, then gave a shout as its sensors switched to an infrared spectrum and caught sight of the six children crouching in the dark alley. "Hey!" it called as it approached, its blaster swinging back and forth as it switched between targets. "You're not supposed to be here! You're supposed to be out there, being eaten by large predators!"

Tama's eyes flicked between the different shapes clomping through the ruins and fungal growth, seeing more of the skeletal ones close to the droid they had attracted beginning to take notice of the altercation. Tama allowed herself a brief smile she did not feel as Farr whipped the final stone straight into the droid's chest. Reflexively, the B1 fired a hyphen of laser energy as the rock struck the scarred armor across its chest, but the projectile threw off its aim, and the shot went wide, soaring off into the humid night air and briefly painting the courtyard in a garish, sanguine flash.

Immediately, calls and cries from other battle droids began echoing, and several of the dark figures began moving with janky, stunted, but quick movements toward them. Nuri hissed, "Run!", but none of them needed her encouragement, for they were all pelting down the alley in the direction opposite of the courtyard, and toward the main portions of the city. Tama, bringing up the rear of the fleeing prisoners, glanced over her shoulder to see several battle droids had been lured by their provocation, at least four of them, all shouting orders to halt, while occasionally contributing with strange, simultaneous calls of "Roger, roger!"

The children made it to the end of the alley, where it met an intersection of several such paths between tightly-spaced edifices she had not the time to identify the purposes for which they had been built. She jabbed alternatively at each alley peeling away from the one they were in, directing those without energy weapons to find hiding places, while she and Nuri took positions of cover behind rubble and refuse on either side of the alley they had just exited. Farr, Otar, and Cyran disappeared into the black shadows of the perpendicular alleys, while Fenn ducked around a corner and aimed with his holdout blaster.

The quartet of B1 Battle Droids stumbled into the intersection, their blasters sweeping the area, their voices hostile and confused, though they had yet to fire. Indeed, so focused on catching the children that had provoked them were they, that they had failed to properly scan their new surroundings upon exiting the alleyway. The lead battle droid fell flat on its chest with a keening wail as its clumsy, rusting feet caught the sharp edge of a slab of permacrete that had been torn asunder from the ground at their feet by some explosion courtesy of the Clone Wars battles fought here. The droid immediately behind the first suddenly found its comrade an egregious obstacle for its own clumsy limbs, and it went down in a heap as well, reflexively firing a shot that splashed across the wall dangerously close to Fenn, purely by accident. The last two battle droids had the presence of mind to take note of their fellows collapsed across the sprawled debris and each other, and halted just before following suit. Yet they were slow to process their surroundings, or realize the fact that their present situation was most disadvantageous to them. For Nuri and Tama took the opportunity presented them, springing from cover to fire indiscriminate blaster bolts into their carapaces, the rapid-fire bursts of Nuri's A280 and the slower but powerful energy discharges of Tama's E-5 blowing limbs from sockets and joints, melting armor, and punching holes through their chassis. The pair of battle droids collapsed, missing limbs and smoldering from over a dozen holes and blast points across their bodies, their constituent pieces raining down upon their comrades, who were struggling to get up. Fenn was the first to start firing at the pair of battle droids still active, two of his shots hammering into the shoulders of the battle droid on the bottom of the pile before the third sliced directly through the machine's angular head, nearly cleaving it in two lengthwise. The droid atop it, still extricating itself from its fallen comrade and the pieces of the final pair of droids lying astride it, never had a chance as Tama and Nuri's blasters poured fire into it, reducing it to little more than slag.

For a lengthy, breathless moment, there was silence in the intersection of alleyways. Silence that was broken by Tama's stumbling, hurried footfalls as she ran as fast as her tired legs could carry her to the pile of destruction that was once the quartet of droids, and ignoring the weapons strewn across the ground there, leaned into the alley from whence they had entered and peered into the shadows. For the moment, she saw no movement down its length, no signs of other pursuing droids. Nuri scrambled to her side, retrieving a discarded power pack from one of the droids and slapping it into her weapon to refill her ammunition, then beckoned the other children over, saying, "Come on! Grab what you can, then let's get out of here."

The other prisoners hastened to comply, and after a moment of rummaging through the heated droid parts, they had successfully armed themselves with weapons capable of bringing down any B1 or B2 battle droid they might encounter. They had collected another A280 Blaster Rifle, an E-5, and even one of the E-11 Blaster Rifles favored by stormtroopers, while Fenn gave up his holdout blaster in favor of a DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol Tama had serious doubts about his ability to effectively handle, though she was not going to waste time arguing about who should take what weapons from their defeated quarry. For just as the children were scooping up the weapons of their enemies, her keen senses had picked up the telltale sound of metal striking permacrete in rhythmic cadence. She was just beginning to call out a warning when a pair of Super Battle Droids appeared at the end of the alley. Everyone jumped back from the alleyway's mouth as laserfire erupted from its opening like a volcano of stuttering, scarlet beams. Tama fired her own retaliatory shot down the alleyway, rocking one of the supers on its heels, but doing little damage. The prisoners cried out in unison as they fled away from the alleyway, Nuri leading the charge from the intersection and down the alley that opened on the right side. The children ran as fast as they were able, which constituted a speed greatly increased over the slow and ponderous strides of their B2 pursuers, and it was only moments and several corners and turns later that they lost sight of the supers completely.

They continued on, albeit at a slower pace, for the exertion of their distraction and trap had caught up to them, and they found it difficult to even lug the blasters around, despite the fact that none of the weapons weighed more than a few kilograms. They paused to take a rest in another intersection, one that had a single alleyway opening into the city proper, where they could see the shadows and silhouettes of leering, battle-scarred buildings, could hear the zephyrs of humid air and the calls of predators and prey somewhere in the jungle beyond.

Cyran babbled something between gasps of ragged breath. Nuri chuckled in response, then hissed, "Well...stage one of our plan outta here's done."

Tama nodded, wiping sweat from her brow. "Now...for the hard part."

"Insane part, you meaning," Farr gasped, his voice reedy and wheezing through his snout.

"Which is why it's going to be so hard," the Twi'lek quipped, though she felt no true mirth in the comment. Only apprehension steadily rising to panic.

---

They had only allowed themselves moments to catch their breath, for it was not long that they heard the sounds of super battle droids in pursuit, their steps clanging in eerie echoes through the maze of alleys. Thus began a frenzied but mostly silent jog through the twists and switchbacks amongst the alleys, leaping over piles of detritus, colonies of mold and mushrooms, and ducking beneath the angular arches created by some buildings slumping into others as erosion ravaged their superstructures. They kept their course circular, always maintaining a general knowledge of where the courtyard was located in relation to them, and never straying farther than a hundred meters or so from the shield generators. At least, according to Fenn, who seemed to have the best directional senses amongst the group, which was only confirmed whenever they caught brief glimpses of the arcs of light that fed the umbrella of ray shields above them through the spaces of the towering and empty complexes about them.

Only when they had not heard the echoing sounds of clanking footsteps and the telltale "Roger, roger" of battle droids for several long, tense moments did they finally stop to rest again, to reassess their situation and prepare for the next stage of their hasty and desperate dreams of escape.

They stopped to catch their collective breath in the ruined and mildewed lobby of what had likely been a bank, judging by its arrangement, though Tama could not be certain, nor did she truly care. The other children, most of whom had been previously defenseless save for what little they might do with their scrawny and weakened limbs, were practically elated to now possess weapons, gaining their first real semblances of hope since they had been kidnapped. Nuri put a reassuring hand on Tama's shoulder, and Tama allowed herself to touch the Force, to feel the emotions of friendship and reassurance the Zabrak was giving off, becoming a conduit for courage and a renewal of purpose her friend did not even realize. "Pure sabacc so far," Nuri remarked in a low tone, attempting to sound far more confident than she felt.

Tama allowed herself a small smile that became a grimace. "We haven't even begun the hard part yet, but your optimism is...appreciated."

Nuri grabbed Tama's hand, squeezing her fingers tight, eliciting unintentional pain from the contact. "I can still come with you...help you...somehow. You don't have to do this alone, Tama."

The Twi'lek was shaking her head even before her Zabrak companion finished her sentiments. "No...it's better that I do this alone. If something goes horribly wrong, I don't want you anywhere near, where you could get hurt." Tama turned to face her, to meet her eyes, and they shared a moment of regret at the possibility that this may be the last chance they had for any meaningful conversation, that they may never have the time to develop their acquaintance forged by tribulation into the deep friendship the two of them believed would inevitably follow. If only they were granted the time to do so.

Nuri gave a mirthless laugh, almost a scoff, as though the dire circumstances under which they had met were the punchline to the galaxy's idea of a cruel joke. "If you hadn't noticed beforehand, this place isn't my idea of safe. Whether I'm by your side or crouching here in the mold, I'm likely to be hurt by something."

Tama conceded the point with a sad nod. "At least it won't be by a rancor's claw if you stay with the others."

Nuri's response was predictably glib. "It might. There's supposed to be a cargo hold's worth of rancors wandering this planet naturally; we're as liable to run into one as you are."

Tama's grimace communicated to the Zabrak that she did not find her levity particularly amusing, so Nuri let the forced grin leave her face. "This is the part of the plan only I have a chance to make work," Tama explained. "I'm the only one who could possibly succeed at this...I can't really even call it a plan. This is all so desperate, so off the plotted course, I don't know what to expect." Tama bowed her head and brought her fingers up to her temples to knead the flesh there, trying through tactile action to alleviate the tension, the fear, the pain that radiated through her skull, her body, her very soul. "I don't know if I can do this, Nuri. It could all fail so easily. I could fail so easily."

"Then don't," came Nuri's simple response. "You're more than a simple Twi'lek girl from a backwater that doesn't even appear on most starcharts, Tama. You're something unique, something special, something that hasn't been seen since the Clone Wars. If anyone can do this, you can, and you will, because if you don't, we all die anyway."

Tama gave a mirthless laugh. "And that's supposed to reassure me?"

"Trust in yourself, Tama." Nuri smirked, shaking her head, as though astonished by what she planned to say next. "Trust the Force."

Tama, who leaned against the dusty, mold-spattered wall behind her, let her head fall back against it with a decided clunk that reverberated through the spore-choked atmosphere of the sepulchral lobby, the only sounds those of the ragged breathing and furtive whispers of the other children, who had mostly ignored Tama and Nuri's private conversation. They were still focused on getting to know every aspect of the weapons they had just acquired, or making half-hearted complaints regarding the soreness in their limbs and the gnawing vacuum residing within their stomachs. Tama could see the exhaustion on their faces, the contrasting emotions of despair and burgeoning hope locked in deadly battle with each other. She would not help any of them by lying around, second-guessing herself; if there was a time to firm their resolve and keep them motivated, now was it.

Tama heaved herself to her feet, and Nuri stood beside her, keeping her blaster rifle held across her chest. Seeing the pair of them standing, the other children ceased their conversations and gave their full attention, their hollow regards making the skin on Tama's lekku crawl. "What now?" Otar asked, cradling his E-5 and keeping his focus upon the female Twi'lek, denoting her to be the de facto leader of this group of prisoners. Whether she wanted to be or not.

"I'm...going to see what I can do to get those ray shields down," Tama replied, trying to keep the nervous quaver from her voice. "I'll be going alone, so as to put no one else unnecessarily at risk. If...if I'm successful, you'll definitely know. If I'm not...you won't be seeing me again." Her gaze caught Farr's multifaceted eyes, and she allowed herself a sardonic grin. "And I'll stop bringing you trouble."

Farr managed to look sheepish, but Tama continued, having meant the Rodian no malice. "If I get the 'help' we need to bring down that bunker, I'm going to have my lekku tied with focusing on that task, so you're all going to have to keep the droids and any other unwelcome visitors off me. Nuri will be in charge of doing that."

Nuri stepped forward, her gaze fierce. "Tama's probably going to be taking some time to do her task, and in the meantime, I mean to whip you all into the youngest gang of blaster-happy gunslingers this side of the Perlemian. Once I'm confident that you can all handle those blasters without shooting your own faces off, then we're going to head back to the courtyard and take up flanking positions all around it. That way, we can start picking off the remaining droids while Tama's bringing our help, but not before, lest that karking psycho send more of them. So you will all do as I say, when I say it. Understood?"

Both Farr and Otar looked as though they wanted to argue with the Zabrak's assumption of command, but Cyran nodded happily, and Fenn merely shrugged, standing himself and saying, "Seeing how you handled those droids before, I doubt this is your first blaster fight, and you seem to know how to handle yourself. I'll follow your lead, Nuri."

Nuri gave him an appreciative nod, then glared at the Rodian and Twi'lek boys, who could not withstand that withering stare for long, and nodded their silent assent as well. Nuri then turned to Tama and squeezed her hand again, giving her a smile that was as frightened as it was encouraging. "Come back alive, okay?"

"If the Force wills," Tama replied, giving a great sigh and finally being able to let go of some of her anxiety. Now was the time to prove herself, and she refused to fail. Too much was counting on her now.

Tama left the dusty, moldering lobby moments later, offering no further encouragement and receiving none in kind. The band of prisoners who had chosen to reject the fate planned for them by their captor understood the stakes involved, that if they did not give their all to make this scheme work, they would most certainly die. Surviving, so far, had proven to be motivation enough, as well as an irrational but understandable desire to prove the nattering voice that invaded their heads wrong regarding their purported "sins". Tama felt a sharp stab of fear as she considered the fact that the voice belonging to their tormentor had yet to speak to them for the past several hours. Nor had the droids so clearly under its command tracked them down, so it was likely that the owner of the voice was not as omnipresent as it wished to appear, and did not always know where they were, or what they were doing. She supposed she should take comfort in that, though she could not help but wonder if the voice's extended period of silence was merely a ploy to lure them all into a false sense of security, to once again strike with its cryptic words, its oily presence, the migraines and sickening feelings that twisted their guts accompanying its pervasions. Perhaps their captor was fully aware of their desperate plan for escape, and was merely biding its time, waiting for the moment they would be most hopeful and therefore the most vulnerable to devastating counterattack. She found that she was shaking almost uncontrollably as the made her way through the debris-strewn alleys, heading toward the main sections of the ruined city. She found that she had to pause for a moment, just to regain her bearings and her composure, to reacquire the strength needed to press onward with her self-appointed tasks.

Tama resumed her trek, forcing herself to keep such depressing thoughts from her head. She recalled the teachings of the Zeison Sha her sister had done her best to impart to the willful and stubborn Tama. Foyi had always told her that for a Force-user, strong emotions could be both boon and curse, for the Force almost always surged in accordance with these emotions, allowing emotional stimuli to be used as tools for focusing and harnessing the Force within oneself. But with that power came a measure of control that had to be practiced, for emotions could imbalance her connection to the Force, to throw her dangerously out of alignment and therefore no longer able to control herself. Foyi had taught her to always find the calm center of her being, her "true self", whenever she felt as though she was in danger of losing herself to her emotions.

Tama purged herself from those emotions, from the fears and doubts that plagued her as starvation and exhaustion refused to relent from her body. It took effort both mental and physical, but she refused to let that deter her, reaching out to the Force around her and pulling it to her like a cloak, embracing it as it embraced her. Even on this diseased world, the Dark Side constantly bearing down upon her consciousness and crushing her spirit, she reached out to find the hidden purities of the Force, the sharpening of her senses and the clarity of simple existence she felt whenever she communed directly with its power. The sounds of the jungle, the wind curling through the stalks of mushrooms and fronds of fungi, the calls of animals and the chatter of insects, was all like symphonic music. The feel of that air on her grimy skin, stained by sweat, mud, and blood, was a refreshing breath. The darkness looming within the shadows of ruined buildings lightened as details resolved themselves to her eyes. The stench of her own body odor and the strange, musky scents exuded by the spores and molds became an aroma that was not quite pleasant, but was something right, as though there were no other way such smells could intermix and present themselves. She opened her mouth to suck in another lungful of atmosphere, and it was like breathing for the first time after having to go without air for an indeterminate length. Here, even here, in this muddy, battered alley, on this broken and corrupted world, amidst the physical ailments and emotional trauma that ravaged her, was peace. Here was serenity. Here was oneness, rightness with the Force. In this moment, with the Force beyond her, and yet so easily within her reach, she felt as though she could truly do anything, and the plan she had created was suddenly executable, the goals attainable.

Tama made it back to the main portions of the city with little difficulty, the maze of alleys, rubble, and fallen buildings she had been clambering through opening onto streets strewn with the abandoned remnants of the Clone Wars, leered down upon by the ghastly, skeletal husks that had once been multifloored complexes and skyscrapers of thriving industrialization. Their flight through the city from the hangar of broken and discarded speeders had been hasty and motivated by fear, and so Tama had taken no time to commit landmarks or street names to memory. But she was one with the Force now, feeling as though she was barely tethered to the collection of endoskeletal musculature and sacs of organs that constituted her body. She was little more than present thought and base instinct, the most fundamental means by which a sapient being communicated with the Force and their surroundings. So she let those instincts be her guide, listened to the slight whispers, the shifts in the music on the edge of her perceptions, as she walked through the ruined city, ignoring the cries of the predators prowling and lurking somewhere in the depths of ruinous darkness. She walked through streets, over collapsed and burnt husks of gunships and hovertanks, of pieces of droids and the decayed armor of clone troopers. Her journey took her in a direction she could not place nor name, and yet she followed it because she knew no other choice, save for the one that felt right to her. She lost track of time, awareness of herself, her legs merely the instrument by which she transported her body across the ruined landscape, to the goal she had set for herself. They existed only to facilitate her upon reaching the hangar they had vacated amidst blasterfire and the shrieks of the rancor, and she could not help but feel like the polished stone she had used to practice such an arduous exercise back on Yanibar.

Tama lost all track of time till the sky began to lighten on one of the horizons, the first glows of morning slanting through the windblown spores that eddied between the heights of the edifices. Tama allowed herself to become more aware of her surroundings, and saw the hangar before her, one wall shattered beyond all recognition, much of the durasteel rafters that had supported its ceiling rent and twisted, allowing much of the ceiling to slump to the cracked and rubble-laden floor within. There were still wisps of smoke, stirred by the zephyrs of fetid wind, that curled out of the morass, from where blasterbolts had struck droid carapaces or the fallen walls. Nothing else moved in the rubble, though Tama could not help but wonder if she stood and watched long enough, if the hangar might not finally collapse in on itself. The rancor's fury must have been terrible to behold, for there was little left of the hangar standing, and no sign of anything that continued to live in the ruins.

Tama trotted to the hangar, leaping over large slabs of jagged rubble and the crushed remnants of the Tsmeu-6 Wheel Bike, identifiable only by the curvature of one of the metallic shards. Her eyes passed over it and the rest of the debris within the amorphous confines of the hangar, until she found wide, sweeping marks in the mud where a large pair of feet had shifted and stumbled about multiple times. The tracks left by the rancor were unmistakable due to their size and the severity with which they had been ground into the dirt, and she had no issue following them as they rounded the hangar's grave for several passes, then meandered off in a great, curving trail deeper into the city, through mud, trampled patches of mold and mushrooms, cracked permacrete, and dented scraps of metal. Tama now moved swiftly, no longer so lost in the midst of the Force, but maintaining a crouched position as she stalked in the rancor's wake, trying to make herself small, barely noticeable to physical eyes and sensations within the Force simultaneously.

The morning was already upon her, rays of smudged sunlight attempting to break through the roiling clouds of spores and the cumulonimbi that loomed overhead, when she heard the first sounds of irregular, guttural breathing. The trail had led her to the far edge of the enclosure described by the ray shields, judging by the faint buzzing across the back of her lekku and the purplish tinge to the air several meters ahead and to her right. Here, the city had given way to an open space ringed by sidepaths along enclosures and walls created by flora imported from various worlds, likely having once been a recreational area of some kind before the Clone Wars, though almost two decades of neglect had practically destroyed it. What was left was a tangle of sickly trees overrun with mold and mushrooms dripping with dark moisture and drooping like the black, gnarled fingers of Sithspawn. The ray shields' perimeter bisected the tangle of fungi and pitted dirt, where blast craters formed random ponds of sludge-choked water. Within the darkest, most snarled tangle of fungi, the heavy sounds of respiration from enormous lungs could be heard, and out of instinct alone, Tama ducked behind a slab of broken duracrete that thrust into the sky at an acute angle. She peered around the chalky, tattered edge, and in the pitiful light of the sun and the eerie glow of the ray shields, she saw the dark, hoary hide of the rancor. Her eyes followed its bulk until she realized she was looking directly at its left shoulder; craning her neck farther, she peered through a space in the thicket, and could see the cruel, mashed face of the creature. Its lipless jaws were closed tight and splattered with sticky saliva, mucus, and dark liquid that may have been blood. Its high nostrils expanded and contracted in rhythmic cadence, while its dark eyes were closed. It would have looked peaceful, had it not possessed a visage that would give most sane observers nightmares for weeks on end.

Upon seeing it, Tama felt her calm shaken, the fear that she had let dissipate rising again in a sudden flood of emotion and extrasensory overload. She shoved it back down through sheer will alone, and let her heartbeat slow until she could no longer hear its thunder pounding through her skull. She peered around her chosen spot of cover again, fearing the rancor may have sensed her presence, but it was still asleep, grunting and growling slightly in the back of its throat as it took in great gasps of air through its slightly parting jaws and the wide slashes that served as its nostrils. Already questioning the merits of this plan she had created and her own ability to hold up her end of it, Tama reached out to the Force again for calm, then rounded the angular slab of duracrete and slowly padded over the muddy ground toward the thicket. As she approached, she sharpened her senses, stretched out with her mind and reached into the Force, into the immeasurable potential energy all around her, connecting her to the ground beneath her feet, the meandering spores in the air, the immense predator slumbering before her. The Force, as always, was omnipresent, and despite the taint of the Dark Side that continued to tear at her attention and confuse her senses, she pushed through the murky cloud of corruption, to the scintillating lights of presences within the Force, of life.

Tama had already drawn to the edge of the thick tangle of mushrooms and overgrown, alien flora when she paused, letting her eyes flutter closed as she gave all the attention she could muster to this one task. Her mind soared from her body, the physical world no deterrent to it as it plunged through the incredibly thick hide of the rancor, to dip warm fingers of consciousness into the brain of the creature before her. With her eyes closed and her attention no longer focused on her physical surroundings, Tama did not see or hear the rancor stir, but she felt it. Her mind had barely touched that of the rancor's when she had to pull back slightly in surprise, for she was assaulted by a sea of images and sensations that sharpened and faded at rapid and random intervals, a sequence she recognized. The rancor was dreaming.

Tama's eyes snapped open as she began reflexively backpedaling from the overgrown rubble and tangle of fungi as it began shifting around with great, earsplitting cracks and snaps of the thick strands and stalks of mushrooms. The rancor, roused from its sleep by the mental intrusion into its dreams, brought its overlong arms under its bulk and pushed off the ground, growling with the effort, producing a vociferation that sent vibrations all down the length of the Twi'lek's spine. The rancor's odd, blunted, and grotesque head rose above the thicket's canopy, its eyes fluttering open and closed as they readjusted to the gleam of sunlight lancing sporadically through the clouds and spores. Those small eyes turned to regard her, and she saw an intelligence there, a sentience that made an estimation and evaluation of her, as though it was considering whether she was presenting herself as a meal to sate its ravenous appetite. Still actively sensing the feelings of the creature before her, Tama could practically hear its stomach growl in accordance with her own, and that sound was only followed by one produced by its throat, a threat display meant to cow her into submission, to freeze her in her fear and thus present easy prey.

The rancor's widely splayed feet thundered through the fungal underbrush, crushing and toppling mushrooms, and its arms reached out to either side and just ahead of it, its digits opening wide to grasp her in its claws. Tama continued to back up, the fear raging through her screaming at her to run, to make her weak and wobbling legs churn as fast as they were able, to run across the city and not look back, lest she slow enough for the rancor to catch up to her.

But Tama forced herself to slow, then stop, standing straight as the ponderous gait of the rancor brought the creature towering over her, swallowing her with its shadow. She quieted the fears within her, forcing them and all other emotions from her mind as she continued to reach beyond herself, to extend appendages of thought and sensation to the primitive but powerful mind of the monstrosity standing before her. Once again emptied of emotions, she could clearly feel the naked energies of the Force coursing through her and around her, as well as the Force within the rancor itself. With the Force so filling her, the rancor no longer seemed quite so frightening, despite its sheer size and fearsome appearance. It was merely another beacon of Force energy, a life signature feeding the Force while simultaneously relying upon it for its very existence, whether it realized this or not.

Tama found it a simple thing to reach out to the rancor's mind, to expand her consciousness to include not only her own existence, but that of the rancor's as well. The creature paused in its forward advance, its desires to consume her outright halted by curiosity, and a modicum of fear of its own, as it too sensed the alien contact of her mind. Tama was not experienced with such telepathic and empathic communication, and she could already feel her exhausted body quivering as the effort required to draw upon the Force in such a way began to drain her. But for now, she was truly beyond physical concerns, having touched upon the Force to a degree she had never before experienced. She drew upon the memories affecting the mind and instincts of the boma, though she found the rancor's thoughts to be more sophisticated than that of the previous predator's. The boma had been a mere animal, an organism of instinct, hunger, and the drive to satisfy the most basic of survival needs. In contrast, the rancor had some level of sapient intelligence, actually wanting things beyond that which would ensure its continued survival. It wanted to hunt, as its family members had, as the ancestors that had come before it had. It wanted to find shelter, comfort, and belonging, missing the security and kinship it had felt when in the company of others of its kind. But most of all, it wanted to escape, to flee from the invisible walls which fenced it into this graveyard of metal and stone.

As Tama discovered this desire on the rancor's part, she reached out to it, targeting it specifically with a wave of empathy, assuring the creature that she wanted the same thing. She gritted her teeth as she rooted deeper into the rancor's thoughts and feelings, surprised at how complex the monstrosity actually was, almost on the same level of intelligent thought as a child's might be. And so it had little difficulty understanding her attempts at promoting a kinship between them, her unspoken desires for alliance against the being who had wronged both of them. And yet, it also understood that her mental intrusions did not belong, that she was not meant to be in its mind, that she was an interloper to its thoughts and sensations. Tama pushed harder, digging deeper, her hand rising into the air before her face of its own volition, a tactile attempt to focus her mental efforts. Sweat ran down the lengths of her lekku and the small of her back, and she could feel the rancor's hot, rancid breath wafting about her face as it leaned close with a threatening growl, a growl that peeled off into a breathy exhalation as her mind burrowed into its own. The rancor's claws dug deep into the mud in a final show of defiance, those claws perilously close to either side of Tama, threatening to sweep her from her feet.

But as magnificent and terrifying as the beast was, it was ultimately no match for the Force, nor for one sensitive to its unlimited power, even one with as little training in its mysteries as she.

Tama opened her eyes when she felt a profound and deep connection between herself and the rancor, an understanding that was as much spiritual as it was mental or physical. For several long moments, she could see through the rancor's eyes, could feel its own bodily processes as raw meat and fungal matter worked their way through its digestive tract, smelled its rancid breath as if it was exuded from her own lungs. She had a moment of vertigo when she gazed through the creature's eyes and saw herself standing there, a Twi'lek girl reduced to little more than rags hanging off a frame of grimy skin stretched taut over a brittle skeleton, one hand raised as though in a placating gesture, her eyes still closed. As the bond between Twi'lek and rancor solidified and the Force flowed more easily between the two of them, she experienced difficulty determining where she began and the rancor ended, whether there were even two distinct beings anymore, or if they had merged into a single presence within the Force.

Then Tama let herself release her mental grip on the connection, for it was a construct of the Force now, and existed outside both herself and her new companion, allowing them to sense each others thoughts, feelings, and emotions. They shared a common purpose now, no longer viewing each other as enemies or predator and prey, but as equals, allies with shared goals. Tentatively, Tama's upraised hand stretched further toward the rancor, and sensing its intent, the creature lowered its head until its face loomed in front of her own, its hot breath contributing to the feeling of grime on her skin. Her fingers touched the rough, wrinkled surface of its snout, and it was surprisingly dry and warm. The rancor made a slight, thrumming sound in the back of its throat as it derived pleasure from the contact. For too long, it had gone without companionship, and though its mind continued to occasionally rebel against her thoughts imposed upon its own, it seemed genuinely elated for the sense of belonging she had given it.

Him, she reminded herself as she peered into its mind again. This rancor was a male, as aware of her sex as she was of its own, looking upon her as one might a younger sister, to be guarded and protected. The rancor brought up one of its claws, the forefinger coming up to gently tap Tama on the shoulder, and through the emotional connection they shared, she understood it to be a gesture of affection. Tama tried not to be knocked off her feet by the motion, continuing to stroke the leathery flesh of the rancor's face, while exerting her telepathic influence over him, showing him images of the bunker containing the shield generators, making him understand that this large, squared boulder with light sitting atop it was the reason for their mutual imprisonment, and the means by which they might escape. The rancor understood, and gave a low growl of determination.

Tama was so exhausted from the day's events and her battle of wills with the rancor, but she somehow maintained her footing and ceased her stroking of the rancor's snout, merely keeping her hand upon his hide and feeling the warmth exuding from within. She reinforced the image she had represented with a reaffirmation of its location, its strengths, and the defenses about it. There was a moment of hesitation, indecisiveness, as she tried to make her companion realize that where she bid him to go would be dangerous, perhaps deadly.

The rancor understood, but he was not afraid. Despite his semi-sentience, he too understood the concept that those things worth achieving were similarly worth fighting for. And though prey had been plentiful in this prison of strange lights and eerie hums, the rancor desired freedom to roam the jungles of his birth once more, to taste freedom again. It was a commonality shared by both of them, and they drew strength in each other's resolve to find that freedom again, to fight for it if they must.

Tama looked up into the rancor's searching gaze, and allowed herself a small grin. "How about we get out of this place, and eat anything that dares to stand in our way?"

The rancor gave an appreciative growl in response, and the resolve they shared strengthened them both.

---

While Tama had been absent, hopefully having success with recruiting a rancor to their endeavor of escape, as insane as that sounded, Nuri and the other children had busied themselves with preparing for the most opportune moment to strike back against the forces commanded by their captor. Nuri, being experienced with blasters and fighting for her life when necessary already, had taken it upon herself to make certain the other children were at least marginally familiar with the weapons they had procured, and that they could successfully use them without injuring themselves in the process. From all that she had seen so far, Fenn seemed to have the most practice, or talent with blasters of the group, while Farr was too excitable to aim properly, and Otar and Cyran had never held an energy weapon in their lives, though they assured her they were eager to learn.

What followed was about an hour of haphazard target practice and frantic relocation as the shots of their spent lasers echoed through the ruins and joined the cacophony of nighttime noises and the screeches of ravenous predators. Nuri would indicate some bit of refuse or ruined structure she wished for her "charges" to hit, then would check their stances and how they chose to brace themselves in preparation for the recoil unique to each weapon. When she was satisfied, she would order them to fire a volley, inspect the blast points to determine accuracy, then urge them all to move to a different area within the labyrinthine streets and alleys, so that they never stayed long in the location they had just announced with the blasterfire. During this entire session, they neither heard nor saw any signs of the Savior's droids searching for them, and none of the creatures hunting through the mud and mold came close enough to present any true threat. Nuri was loathe to spend their time in such dangerous and potentially suicidal activities, but if Tama was able to enlist a rancor or something equally as powerful to take down the shield generators, both she and their "ally" would need as much cover and distraction as could be provided. With how many droids were in that courtyard, arrayed around the bunker, she doubted even a fearsome rancor could withstand the fusillade of laserfire the droids could bring to bear. Which meant their numbers had to be thinned and assaulted from all sides, but not before Tama and whatever beast she controlled through the Force could devote its full attention to the bunker; otherwise, more droids would arrive to reinforce and replace those already destroyed, and there would be a firefight the children could not win, even with the element of surprise.

And so she gave her newfound allies a crash course in blaster weaponry, and continued their haphazard target practice until she was satisfied that they could all at least get close to hitting something at medium range. Ultimately, Nuri had to call the training session to a halt because of how much time had already been spent on it, as well as their dwindling supplies of ammunition. They would need every blaster bolt they could bring to bear.

The children then set about winding their way back through the twisted passages that formed the alleys and streets around the courtyard, and with some guidance and scouting on Nuri and Fenn's parts, they found shadows from which they could lurk to espy the courtyard beyond. There were even more droids surrounding the bunker now, never straying farther than the expanse's perimeters, and apparently as alert as barely functioning, nearly twenty year old machines of low intelligence and preprogrammed violence could be. Nuri and Fenn remained in the shadows, sticking to bits of rubble and spots of cover as they examined the patterns of their enemies, and the fortifications around the bunker, which were little more than the thick durasteel walls of the building and its hardy blast doors. It would be simple to outflank the droids and catch many of them in a crossfire, as none of them bothered to actually sweep the alleys that presented numerous points of access to the courtyard. Nuri just wished there were far more of the prisoners to fight. She wished her father were here; he would have been able to turn the odds that were so heavily stacked against them to work in their favor.

The following hours were occupied by each of the children slinking through the alleys and darkened, shelled buildings, always keeping the courtyard within their sights, until they reached vantage points from which they would have great advantage in firing upon the droids. Had they been a battalion of battle-hardened stormtroopers, now would be the perfect time for a surprise assault, where each member would only have to focus on one or two targets and trust their squadmates would handle the rest.

Nuri's instructions had been less precise; this was no military, and she was no commander. "Just pick your targets, aim as carefully as you can, and fire simultaneously, so the enemy can't focus on a single location and cut us all down one by one. Destroy and weaken as many of the droids as you can; Tama will need all the help we can give her."

"And if Tama no come?" came Farr's question, the Rodian voicing the unspoken doubts they all shared.

Nuri had bit her lower lip and said with far more confidence than she actually felt, "She won't let us down."

Now Nuri found herself alone, leaning against a wall covered in a thin film of mold, mere centimeters from a ground story level window, its opening cleared completely of transparisteel, with only bits of the transparent material scattered across the floor of the dark room she inhabited, having been ground into glittering dust by time and its erosive effects. She had drawn her aching knees up to her chest and propped the A280 Blaster Rifle against her shins, her hands occasionally rubbing the smoothed metal of the barrel in nervous anticipation. Infrequently, she would crane her neck to the left to gaze through the opening of the window and the courtyard beyond, watching the circuits taken by the droids, listening to the occasional garbled and static-laden conversations they would carry on. Her eyes always sought past them in the darkness, past the glowing strands of light emitting from the roof of the bunker, to various other windows, doorways, and alleyways where she knew the other prisoners were to be hiding. So far, she had seen no sign of her compatriots, which she took as a good sign, for if she was able to spot them amongst the ruins, they were far enough out of their spots of cover and hiding places for the droids to catch sight of them as well. This ambush would all be for naught if they were flushed out of hiding early.

And so she was forced to wait. Wait and hope that Tama would be able to uphold the most critical part of the plan, the part that was the least likely to succeed. Had the Zabrak not seen with her own eyes some of the things that Tama was capable of, through this so-called "Force" of hers, Nuri would have shot the plan down immediately. Even now, she found herself questioning whether the starvation, exhaustion, and trauma had irrevocably crippled her mind, to have agreed to and even supported such a course of action. More than likely, as she sat here with false hope blossoming in her chest, Tama was even now being digested by that rancor, and her and the others would follow soon after. The Zabrak had to squeeze her eyes shut in denial against that hovertrain of thought and the haunting phantasms it conjured in her mind. Instead, attempting to remain calm before the coming flurry of activity and violence sure to occur, Nuri tried to clear her mind completely of all thought and emotion, to be at peace as much as possible.

Her attempts at inner serenity must have been successful, for moments later, Nuri felt herself snapping back awake, nearly dropping her blaster in the process. She let out a great exhale of frustration and wakefulness, blinking rapidly. Now was not the time for sleep, no matter how much she truly needed it.

The Zabrak shifted slightly, trying to make herself more comfortable, mentally chiding herself for dozing off and wondering what had awoken her from her temporary slumber. It was then that she realized that the voices of the droids had become more frequent and animated, babbling to each other and repeating their favored phrase of "roger, roger" as they seemed to be preparing for some new development. Careful not to reveal too much of herself and thus compromise her position, Nuri gazed out the window, to see the droids hurrying to the far side of the courtyard, brandishing and readying weapons. If she recalled correctly, Cyran was ensconced in a window well on that side, and for an agonizing moment, Nuri believed the Duros had been discovered by their enemies.

But then she felt the vibrations shiver through the ground beneath her feet and posterior, and she felt a mixture of both elation and fear. Her eyes peered through the darkness and shadows cast by the ray shield generators' lights, past the hustling droid carapaces, to gaze down one of the largest passages and access points to the courtyard, what had once been a street, the end of which was mostly blocked by a half-demolished gossamer glider. Looming over the crumpled wings and crushed cockpit of the vessel was a hulking shadow that, despite its size, was pounding down the street on its stumpy but powerful legs, its lengthy arms alternating between vicious swings and supportive pushes off the cracked permacrete with its thick knuckles. Flashes of phosphorescent patterns outlined its features, while a shrieking roar that produced soundwaves violent enough to rattle her teeth and horns in her sockets.

Nuri let a feral grin curve her mouth; either Tama had succeeded in her part of the plan, or their luck had just taken a turn for the better. The droids were most definitely distracted now as they perceived almost two thousand kilograms of primal fury and raw destructive force bearing down on them, and despite their poor heuristic processing abilities, they could easily perceive the threat, and predictably opened fire on it.

As the screaming onslaught of red hyphens of laserfire slammed into the approaching rancor to little effect, Nuri shouldered her blaster rifle and propped it on the bottom edge of the window, looking through the scope affixed to the dorsal rail. She had barely brought her finger to the trigger before the retorts of energy weapons from sources beyond the droids' blasters echoed through the courtyard, and spears of sanguine energy erupted from multiple windows, doorways, and alleys, some of them passing over the battle droids' heads uselessly, while others sliced into their ranks like a vibroblade through flesh. Nuri grinned as her compatriots began their assault, sowing more confusion than inflicting true harm, though both served their purposes of distraction and division equally well. The Zabrak depressed her weapon's trigger, sighting along the scope as a battle droid, turning about wildly as it tried to ascertain all the directions it was being assaulted from, stumbled into view. A single shot from her rifle brought it down, and she immediately selected another target, a B2 keeping withering fire from its wrist blaster concentrated on the approaching rancor. As though it were second nature, she flipped the gun's fire selector to autofire and unleashed a spattering of bolts that burrowed deep, angry ulcers of molten duranium in the Super Battle Droid's armor, and the automata fell, its wrist blaster still spewing sporadically into the air.

The group of droids that had clustered before the street and the ruined glider were now trying to spread out, the limited tactics subroutines in their artificial brains bidding them to put distance between their fellows so that single attacks could not affect so many at once. But their reactions were too slow, for the rancor had mounted the wreckage of the glider and came down upon the group of droids, its lengthy, armored limbs sweeping through their midst. For the second time that day, Nuri witnessed the raw power and fury of a rancor, the primal rage that made the species an object of fear and terror all across the galaxy. Battle Droids cartwheeled through the air, trailing broken servomotors, joints, and splashes of lubricants, to either hit the ground hard enough to crumple into twisted heaps of broken, twitching parts, or slamming into the walls of buildings with shrieks of metal and explosions of sparks. One unfortunate battle droid tumbled head over heels through the open doorway of an old florist's shop, its wail of "Why me?!" ending in an abrupt clang of metal. The rancor roared in alternating shrieks of fury and triumph as droids crumpled and were reduced to slag at its claws, though some of those vociferations were punctuated by gasps of pain, great rushes of air from its enormous lungs as the sustained fire of some of those blasts punctured deep into its hide.

Then blasterfire from yet another source rang out, and Nuri's eyes were drawn to a small, thin figure emerging from the shadows and swirls of disturbed spores, a figure heaving a snubbed blaster rifle and taking careful shots that cut out the legs or chewed through the spindly waists of battle droids and super battle droids alike. Nuri wanted to scream with joy; Tama was still alive, and judging by the proximity in which she remained, just slightly beside and behind the rampaging rancor, her portion of her proposed plan had been successful.

Despite the large number of droids and the inexperienced "soldiers" arrayed against them, their tormentor's metallic minions stood little chance against the combined efforts of the children and the fury of the rancor, bonded in mind and soul with the Force-sensitive Twi'lek. Within moments, the three dozen or so droids had been reduced to a third of that number by the rancor alone as it charged directly through their lines, further depleted by the wild, suppressing fire of the lasers from all the rebellious prisoners flanking the perimeters of the courtyard. Indeed, the rancor could have dealt with the rest of the droids by itself, but Nuri saw Tama jog to its side, her hand reaching out tentatively to brush the creature's leg with the briefest of contact. Whatever passed between them was invisible to Nuri, but it did not go unnoticed by the rancor, for the focus of its assault changed as its large, unwieldy head rose to fix its eyes upon the bunker in the middle of the courtyard. The rancor tossed its head back in a roar that seemed to warp the atmosphere itself, then lowered its head and began loping across the courtyard, crushing anything, droid and mushroom alike, that happened to be in its way. Tama followed in the creature's wake, as though she needed to be as close to the rancor as possible to continue compelling it to the prisoners' benefit, her E-5 Blaster Rifle rising intermittently to put a bolt or two through a nearby droid. Nuri let the others around the courtyard continue to pour fire into the remaining battle droids and focused on covering Tama as she and her immense companion sprinted across the intervening space.

When the rancor collided with the bunker, the shock sent through the ground was enough to nearly knock the Zabrak onto her posterior, and the shriek of pain and frustration elicited from the rancor was so loud, Nuri was certain her ears were bleeding as a result. She peered through the window again to see that the rancor was actively hammering on the exterior of the bunker, its claws scrabbling over durasteel supports and permacrete walls, the metal denting and crumpling beneath its anger, the stone crumbling and cracking, both having been weakened by the years and the pervasive intrusions of Felucia's hardy and persistent flora. However, the assault was proving ineffectual, for not even the strength of a rancor was enough to immediately crush a structure meant to withstand turbolasers and explosive charges. Two Super Battle Droids, staggering on their malfunctioning feet, turned their lasers upon the rancor, blaster bolts hammering into the side of its neck and head and provoking another scream from the creature. Nuri turned her attention from the rancor and unloaded a storm of blaster bolts into the pair of B2s, their backs facing her and therefore easy and susceptible targets. They went down in smoldering heaps.

The rancor, at Tama's invisible urging, returned to its assault upon the bunker, putting great scars in the metal and ripping chunks from the mold-weakened permacrete, but at the rate it was trying to crack the shell of the bunker, the creature would likely wear itself out long before it was able to get at any of the delicate electronics and shield generators hidden within. Droids continued to drop all around the courtyard, as the prisoners Nuri had attempted to train finally became more accurate, or lucky, with their weapons and commenced destroying the remaining battle droids with well-placed blaster bolts. For now, the courtyard was practically theirs, and the desperate and insane plan they had used to do so had somehow, against all odds, worked.

But the battle had been incredibly loud and had undoubtedly attracted attention. If more droids, predators, and who knew what else was at their captor's disposal were anywhere nearby, they would be converging on their position as soon as possible. Which meant they were already out of time, and their living "bunker buster" was no closer to disabling the ray shields for them.

Nuri rose in the window, then shouted across the space and over the sound of continuing blasterfire and growls of frustration from the rancor, directing her vociferation at Tama, who remained in the rancor's shadow. "Tama! Hurry! Have it hit the emitters on top!"

Due to the din, there was no way that Tama could have heard articulate speech coming from the Zabrak. And yet, she seemed to understand exactly what Nuri had yelled in her direction, and she looked up to the rancor again. A strained look of concentration came to the Twi'lek's grimy face, and the rancor redoubled its efforts, though now its great, sweeping claws no longer dug furrows in the sides of the bunker, but reached up and sank its hands into the streams of energy twisting upward to form the ray shields. It shrieked in pain as the raw strands of energy burned its armored flesh, but those digits kneaded, gripped, and pulled, and with a shower of sparks and a flash of light and smoke, the rancor gave a howl as it ripped the emitters free of their housing. The barely perceptible hum of the ray shields above them ceased suddenly, replaced by a dull, droning whine as the dome of energy high above them began to dissipate, the shields falling away into oblivion, receding from the air like water being drawn from a beach by the tide.

The other prisoners were beginning to emerge from their hiding places, shouting and cheering as the shields disappeared and the last of the droids fell twitching to the mud. But their sounds of celebration were drowned out by the anguished and angry screams of the rancor, flinging its burned and singed claws to either side as it roared to the night sky, as if denying the entire galaxy. Nuri's grin of triumph immediately became a grimace of concern as she focused on Tama, who suddenly seemed very small compared to the rancor, and was actively putting as much distance between her and the predator as possible on her hobbling, limping sprint. Nuri vaulted through the broken window and began to sprint toward her, glancing between the rancor that was obviously in pain and her friend and companion, who was angling for the nearest alleyway. The other children, who were scattered about the courtyard in accordance with the cover they had just left, now showed fear in their eyes as they saw the rancor continuing to shriek in pain, then dropping into a hunched position, cradling its injured hands to its chest as its dark, tiny gaze swept the courtyard, malice indicative of an intelligence beyond that of a simple animal gleaming in its eyes. They assumed the rancor was no longer on their side, and scattered back to their hiding places and the alleyways that would take them through, and presumably, out of the city.

Nuri caught up to the fleeing Tama as she turned a corner into a cramped and dark alley, the ground choked with clumps of mushrooms, some of which effused clouds of spores as their churning feet tore through them. Nuri could hear the low, deadly growl of the rancor as it turned to pursue, could feel a fetid rush of air at her back as a mere stride from the monster put the creature on her heels. Nuri dove through the opening and followed Tama, feeling the buildings hemming them in shake as the rancor attempted to wedge a reaching arm through the alley to snatch at the girls. One of those claws, still smoldering, passed within centimeters of the back of Nuri's head, before she caught up to the fleeing Twi'lek, and together, the two of them tumbled around the first corner the alley took and out of the rancor's reach. They scrabbled away from that corner as the edifices continued to shake, then the rancor's frustrated scream echoed through the confined space, deafening both of them.

Nuri pushed off the slimy ground at her feet, then reached down and helped Tama to her feet. The Twi'lek girl looked as though a slight breeze would knock her flat, she was so unsteady on her feet. So Nuri offered her shoulder, and the Twi'lek gladly took it, leaning heavily upon her, though Nuri was quite capable of supporting her slim form, even in her own weakened state. The Zabrak squeezed her shoulder, then asked in a hoarse voice, "Are you okay?"

"Stellar", Tama gasped, her lips quivering as she did so. "We...we need to find the others...then g-get moving. He...might have backup generators, or more ray shields. This might be our only chance...at escape."

Nuri grimaced as Tama tried to hobble away. "We need rest, Tama. You need rest. On Spira. For years."

Tama gave a dry laugh, her hobbling continuing and reluctantly dragging Nuri, her support, along. "There's no time. We need to get out of here, before more droids, or acklay, or bomas, or that rancor hunt us all down. The others...find them...then we escape into the jungle, where it won't be easy for him to find us."

"What happened with that rancor, anyway? You had it helping us, but now it wants to eat us again?"

Tama nodded, the pain on her face originating from more than her physical condition. "I...lost him. I lost control of him when I...asked him to attack the emitters...he burned himself, and the pain..." Tama shook her head, as though she were trying to dislodge the agonizing memories that she was currently experiencing. Nuri noticed her hands were quivering uncontrollably, instinctively tucking them to her chest in an eerie mimicry of the rancor's own motions. "He felt that I had betrayed him...and now he wants to eat me, and all I care about. Rancors are a lot smarter than they look...They hold grudges..."

Nuri grunted as the rancor roared again, the call coming from a greater distance than it had been before, which meant it was no longer crouched at the entrance to their alley. Even so, she had no intention of returning the way they had come, but would rather make their way through the maze of alleys and streets surrounding the courtyard, to find their way into the city proper and reunite with their comrades. She gently guided Tama along as they headed deeper into the labyrinth, attempting some levity as they shuffled forward. "Can't be that smart if he wants to eat us. We're so scrawny, we'd probably just get caught between his teeth."

They had barely made it a meter in their shambling advance, Tama just opening her mouth to respond to the Zabrak's jest, when they were immediately brought to their knees by an unexpected supernova of pain that lanced through their skulls. It was so intense, Nuri was unaware of anything but the pain, not even feeling the scrapes she got on her palms and knees as she toppled to the jagged permacrete, dropping Tama in the process. She was screaming, but she could not hear her own voice over the sound of the psychic scream that ripped through her skull, like a blaster bolt that had entered at the top of her brainstem and continued to bounce around within her cranium's confines, melting and setting afire all the matter of her brain. The scream was not true sound, and it was more than the voice of their captor in her mind; it was pure rage, hatred, and agony all twisted into a mental onslaught that threatened to end her very existence with its power and unbridled strength. The shriek seemed to last for eternity, but it was gone as soon as it had arrived, leaving only a feeling of emptiness, a chill that radiated throughout her body, mind, and soul, as though all that she was had been scoured clean and lifeless by that horrible burst of agony.

Nuri did not know how long she lay there, the world swimming in and out of focus, unable to string together any coherent thoughts. She finally began to return to awareness when she felt Tama shaking her shoulders, so forcibly that her head was bouncing up and down and tapping the ground beneath the back of it. The pain shooting through one of her vestigial horns as it struck the permacrete repeatedly was what helped her refocus and collect herself. She opened her mouth to say something, then felt her stomach rebel, and she turned to the side just in time to retch multiple times, though little more than saliva and flecks of bile emerged from her esophagus.

Finally, the retching ended, and Nuri found she could sit up again, albeit unsteadily, and it was still difficult to think straight. She met Tama's concerned and pained gaze, and could feel the girl's hands on both of her cheeks, keeping her head upright; Nuri felt certain that her head would loll about loosely on her neck if the Twi'lek had not supported it. She saw her mouth moving, but it was several moments of horrifying, ringing silence before she could actually hear what she was saying. "Nuri!" she was shouting. "Nuri! Come back to me! We have to get out of here!"

Nuri nodded dumbly, and together, the two girls struggled back to their feet, supporting each other equally. The world continued to swim in and out of focus, and Nuri could only pick up on the occasional ragged gasp from either herself or Tama beside her within the din of ringing that continued to plague here ears. She wondered now if her ears were truly bleeding, but was too frightened and disoriented to make certain. "What...wh-what the blinking ferglutz was that?"

Tama seemed reluctant to answer; no, she was afraid to. "That was...him. The bastard who kidnapped us...and it's become even more imperative that we leave this place...this whole planet, if we can manage it."

Nuri gave her a puzzled look, attempting to ask the question on her mind, but finding that her tongue failed her. Tama understood anyway, gasping as she stated, "I think...I think I know what he is now. And if I'm right, we're in more danger than any of us realized, and we need...to get as far away as fast as we possibly can."