A/N: Somedays... it be like this.
25: Better To Burn Than To Fade Away
What had, perhaps, surprised Carth and Revan the most — outside somehow finding one another three hundred years later, stumbling across one droid and their old ship, and running into their own descendents — had been a sudden renewed interest in the Mandalorian and Jedi Civil War eras, including two notable holovids.
Despite being three hundred-odd years removed from the current war, the dramatic, politically charged and dark retelling of the first war had been well-researched and accurate. Much to Revan's delight, they'd also cast her as female.
The other was notable trash, especially once Revan was pulled off Maelstrom and everyone realized the "female Revan" side of the debate had been correct. When most of their research was proved wrong, they'd unabashedly slapped an "inspired by true events" onto the title card and moved on.
On the Foundry it was treated as an amusement, especially because the off-duty personnel got to see the actual Revan sniping at the stilted dialog and hilarious mistakes, all while throwing popcorn at the holoscreen and complaining that the male lead wasn't even Bastila's type (with hurt that might have been a little too personal).
"Can't believe anyone funds this bantha shit," she barked again, nailing the lead's forehead with a well-aimed projectile. Carth chuckled from next to her. "That computer was a dick, and they're making it out like a victim. You remember that, right, Carth?"
"I think a kinrath was trying to eat my face."
She frowned at him as some of the other viewers laughed quietly. Khemmaa griped again about the hilarious liberties taken with Wookiee culture in this Kashyyyk arc, and Revan nodded. "They can't even get Shyriiwook right, K, I'm not surprised they didn't do research."
"They can't, they'd pull this off the holonet if they knew what my 'father' just said."
Revan grinned before returning her attention to the screen. Less than a second later, alarms indicating an approaching ship began to ring.
"The Dorin's Sky?" Carth asked. The ship had not made its scheduled arrival time that afternoon – not an uncommon occurrence for ships coming to the Foundry, but it had made Revan rather anxious most of the evening. Revan frowned as she stood.
"Late, even for the Republic." Carth stood to follow, and she stopped him. "No, you're fine. Remember, a kinrath was eating your face? I've got it."
He grinned and settled back as she walked away, trailed as always by HK, but it faded when he spotted the grip she had on her lightsabers. The alert ended, and they went back to the show. Carth dug into Revan's abandoned popcorn.
Around two minutes later, another alarm pierced through the sound of the show — louder, piercing, more insistent. He was on his feet in an instant, blaster in hand.
He didn't even need to issue an order. The off-duties around him scrambled to their feet, rushing to weapon racks lining the walls and then back for the docking bay. Carth looked at Khemmaa.
"Attack alarm, get your weapon."
She nodded and disappeared into the crew quarters. Revan and HK barreled back through the off-duties, turning them back as Carth rounded the corner for the docking tube. Khemmaa reappeared behind him, her bowcaster clenched tight in one massive paw and a look of concern on her face.
"No time." Revan grabbed his arm and pulled him after her without breaking stride. "I'm taking you, K, and most of our forces into the Foundry."
"We're being—" Blaster fire opened behind them before she could answer.
"They must have taken the Sky en route. The fleet will be behind them." Revan growled under her breath. "Malgus."
"Malgus?"
"Malgus!" she repeated, with more venom.
"How can you be sure?"
"I just am."
"Then they need me out here, I can't—"
"You can and you will!" This tone was completely unlike any Revan had ever used on him, somewhere between a straight order and a snap. His training took over unconsciously, and he fell in next to her. "We can hold out in the Foundry."
Nervousness spread rapidly through the soldiers as they crossed through the Foundry doors, and Revan waved everyone through before following. The heavy stone doors silenced the blaster fire almost immediately as a single alarm chimed.
"Enemy fleet approaching the station."
It was almost too casual a statement.
"Admiral Onasi and I are heading to the command center," Revan said as she broke through the soldiers, returning to Carth at the front. "I want everyone set up strategically down the hallways. I'll direct you as we walk. We'll activate the factory's defenses and send help, and oversee everything from there. Keep me updated. You'll do fantastic."
They looked to Carth, who glanced at her. That crinkle was back at the corner of her eyes. The realization hit him harder than even the revelation of her identity had so many years ago.
She didn't think they would make it.
Carth drew a deep breath and nodded back to the Foundry soldiers. The diminutive Jedi replied with a curt nod of her own and turned on her heel, starting down the hall.
Their forces slowly broke off as they traveled, taking up positions around corners and behind statues, until it was only them, Khemmaa, and HK. Carth looked back over at Revan and cleared his throat.
"No," she said, before he could ask. "There will be at least as many Sith as Malgus thinks he needs to handle me, if not more. They don't stand a chance. I wouldn't tell them that. I want them to die thinking I can still pull a miracle out of my ass. I'm sorry, Khemmaa."
The Wookiee mumbled something behind her, but was otherwise quiet.
"That isn't what I was going to say," Carth replied quietly.
"Mm."
He reached out and gripped her arm, but they didn't stop walking. "I'm glad I'm here."
Revan replied with a weak smile. "I'm not."
Carth sighed and opened his holocomm, and they spent the last few minutes of the walk coordinating the fleet defense with Kaylak. He didn't tell the Admiral that the Foundry was all but a lost cause, just that they were falling back to the command center. If they lost the Foundry, he'd know.
As soon as they entered the command center, Revan pointed to the shuttle pad she'd had installed and the tiny short-range shuttle waiting there. "Get the shuttle warmed up. I'm going to check the feeds."
Carth disappeared into the shuttle, and Revan reached the console and the security feeds. T3 poked her arm with his manipulator, no doubt confused at her lack of greeting.
"I need you to plug into the Foundry and download everything, then start the system wipe."
T3 replied with a quiet, nervous dwoo and wheeled back to the port. Revan glanced over at the data feed as he plugged in and watched a download bar appear on the screen.
"Thank you," she mumbled, flipping through the various security cameras. The doors to the Foundry were already breached, broken on the ground just inside the doorway. Revan frowned. Sith.
A few cameras later she found the boarders — a large party of Sith, around fifteen, with several supporting commandos and non-Force personnel behind them, enough that it was difficult to count them from the camera angles. Her hand hovered over the intercom, but she hesitated before opening it.
They were much further than she'd expected.
"Really thought Mertz could hold out longer," she muttered and diverted her hand, sending out an alert and orders to intercept to all the factory droids she'd produced in the past few days. It'd buy them a few more minutes, at least. She flipped a switch near the alarm and locked all the doors on the Foundry. Another put the production systems at full power, producing hundreds of droids per minute. She'd never run it this hot before.
Revan came back to the intercom and opened it as one of their slicers opened a door.
"Hello there." On the feed, the Siths' heads popped up. "Yes, you there, with the spiky shoulders? You're in charge here?"
::You are Revan?:: Shoulders said, with some incredulity. Ah, right, there it was.
"Don't seem so surprised. I want to make you an offer: turn around and leave, and I'll forget this ever happened."
::We outnumber you. Your soldiers are dying with ease. You will be no different.::
"I'm frozen with fear."
::You are a fugitive from the Empire. We will return either you or your corpse to the Emperor.::
"That's what I expected. Have fun getting here." Revan slammed her hand down onto the comm and glanced back at the shuttle. "Carth! We're going to have company."
He jogged back from the shuttle. "You think?"
She pointed to the screen, and he nodded. "I want to wipe the console when T3 is done and prime the self destruct, just in case. We'll fall back off the station as a last resort."
"We should stay." He was right – station commanders had a habit of going down with them. But she shook her head.
"I have the coordinates for every factory that might still be out there. Otherwise… I'd agree."
"But the self—"
"We can't let the Empire get this station."
Carth nodded with a sigh. "No. I know. It's just—"
"Yeah. Three hundred years, for nothing." She pointed to the other side of the console. "The self destruct gets primed over there, I need to oversee the defenses. TS, report to the command center with care, please."
He jogged to the other console, and she refocused on the Foundry's defenses as T3 chirped and whistled nervously next to her. TS jogged in, and Revan directed her to the shuttle. Finally, T3 chirped and unplugged from the console with a triumphant whistle, and Revan checked the surveillance feeds.
The boarders were almost there.
"T3, on the shuttle." The droid whistled and wheeled toward it at top speed. "Carth, how close are we?"
"Priming now. Looks like eight minutes to full status."
"Eight minutes," she grumbled. "K, get Mora onto the shuttle and set up right outside it, make sure no one messes with it." Khemmaa growled, scooped up the gizka, and gently tossed the tiny creature inside the shuttle. That earned her an angry chirp. "Carth, set up a shield and make sure nothing happens to that self destruct. Prime it as soon as you can. It'll take a 3 digit code, 491, just don't hit enter."
"You got it."
She glanced back at the feed. "They're almost here, love."
"It's never good when you call me that, gorgeous."
"HK, set up over there. I'll keep the Sith interested. You keep the commandos focused."
"Statement: Of course, Master."
The droid clomped into position, and Revan turned away from the console and pulled her weapons from her belt. Carth caught her around the waist and kissed her, hard, transmitting more meaning than he could in fifteen minutes.
"Be careful," he murmured.
"You too."
He released her and returned to the panel, and she took her position at the center of the platform. One hand swept aside the makeshift furniture she'd used for her nights of brainstorming, sending it clattering off the edge of the platform. There was the sudden zip of energy behind her as Carth set up the shield, screening both himself and the consoles, and the click-click as he pulled the safety off his blasters.
With combat on her horizon, and sensing the Sith approaching — big in the neutral power of the Foundry — every noise, every creak, every shot of the ships above them slowed in her mind. She sank just deep enough in the Force to to put herself just three steps ahead. To cheat.
"Remember, HK. Shields up for the blasters. Snipe the troopers. Get Sith legs if you get an opening because fuck them."
"Exaggeration: I did not kill one-point-three million meatbags over the last three hundred years just to impress you, Master."
She rolled her lightsabers in her hands and took comfort in the cold metal. "Then do what you do best."
The door slid open ahead of her. To her pleasure, her droids had made a significant dent in the borders: at least eight Sith and numerous troopers were missing, making it a much more manageable seven Sith and about fifteen soldiers. Spiky Shoulders was still there, one shoulder pad torn and hanging. He was also at least twice her size.
"Well. You're either very good or very stupid. As to which, who knows? I'm biased."
"Your droids were inferior."
"Ha!" Ridiculous. "They took most of you out, didn't they?"
"Our weak." He spat the word in the typical manner of the Sith. "You will not stand against us either."
"Who sent you? Malgus?" He didn't answer. "It's fine, it's always Malgus. Your leadership would sacrifice you on a hopeless errand. Your Emperor plans to destroy you, the galaxy — and here you are, wasting your time with me. It's really quite pathetic."
"We view you as insignificant. If there is enough left of you, I will deliver you to the Emperor's feet myself."
HK's gun clicked menacingly, and she was glad she'd installed that otherwise pointless switch. "Threat: That will be difficult when you have no limbs."
Revan held up her hand. "That'll be hard, since he spends most of his time on that invisible pleasure yacht over Dromund Kaas." The Sith exchanged a look. "Ohhh, you didn't know about that? Tragic. I could write papers on what he does there. The last party he threw—"
"Enough!" Shoulders snapped, and Revan smirked. "We will kill you for this insult."
"I'm touched. I don't think you understand who I am."
"You are weak. I have killed hundreds of Jedi, and you will be no different."
"You can't count the number I've killed." Revan's grin widened as she stepped into stance and ignited her weapons. "Shall we settle this like civilized beings, then?"
The response was seven igniting lightsabers. HK fired from right behind her, nailing one of the Sith right in his chest and sending him crashing to the ground. Two more bolts whipped past her head, tearing the rest of Shoulder's hanging shoulderpad off.
Revan threw her lightsabers forward and charged.
#
The last Imperial boarder was barely dead before Revan snapped her lightsabers back onto her belt and sprinted back for the console, the panic she'd beaten back with rage and the Force boiling back into her throat. Everything played back in her head in perfect detail, continuing the unexpected curse the Emperor had given her. The flash of a thrown lightsaber she hadn't blocked in time, her brief struggle to wrest control of it from Shoulders…
She threw herself down at Carth's side, one hand falling to his shoulder. The resulting gash had split his uniform across his back, with a dark burn crossing from hip to shoulder underneath. It didn't look as bad as it should. Gods, it didn't look as bad as she knew it should.
"Carth?" she whispered, pressing her fingers into the side of his neck. She almost cried when she found a pulse. "Carth, can you hear me? Ca— HK, monitor the station's surveillance."
The droid clunked past her, and she rested her hand on Carth's uninjured shoulder. "Carth, please answer me." Khemmaa growled from a few steps away, back toward the shuttle. No, he was probably unconscious – lightsaber burns were a pain unlike almost any other, after all, and he'd never been this unfortunate. "Get the stretcher out of the shuttle."
Khemmaa's heavy footfalls disappeared. Revan closed her eyes, pouring as much Force healing into him as she dared. She ran her fingers through his hair and murmured his name again, telling him he was going to be fine, at least confident that he wasn't a single step away from death. The Wookiee returned as the stretcher screeching on the stone floor.
"Set it down." Khemmaa did and, with all the gingerness she'd last used as a Padawan, Revan used the Force to shift him onto it. "All right, carefully. HK?"
"Status: No hostiles present, master."
Revan turned to Khemmaa and looked away at the hesitation on her face. "Help me get him onto the shuttle, please."
She didn't know how scary she looked when fully engaged in a fight, when she actually stopped holding herself back, but she'd heard the rumors.
The two of them carried the stretcher into the shuttle and secured it, and Revan stepped back out. "Keep her warmed up. I'll finalize the self destruct. I'm sure Malgus will send boarding probes in soon — we need to be ready."
Khemmaa growled in agreement, and the shuttle revved to a start behind her as she returned to Carth's console. "HK, update?"
"Status: Still empty, master."
Revan nodded and turned back to the console, preparing to enter the code, but her hand stopped right above the touchpad. Sitting on the screen, ready to go, were the numbers 491. She glanced back at the shuttle. Carth had reported having thirty seconds left right before… that fear hit her chest again, and she pushed it back.
An alarm chimed near HK, and the droid flicked a switch with one finger. "Alert: more meatbags have boarded the Foundry, master."
"Imperial?"
"Affirmation: Yes, master. It appears boarding probes have breached the interior in Sectors Y, B, R, A, and D."
"About how many are we talking?"
"Assessment: It appears to be two hundred." HK turned back to her. "Boast: I consider that acceptable odds."
Revan closed her eyes. No, it wasn't. She shut off the Foundry's production systems. "I'm hitting the self destruct. We'll have five minutes to evacuate."
"Statement: Master—"
"Don't back-talk me, HK!" The droid's eyes flickered in displeasure. "Get in the shuttle. T3!" The droid whistled faintly from the shuttle. "Radio the Valiant and tell them we're abandoning the facility. Get a—" Her voice caught in her throat, and she swallowed. "Radio for a medical team to meet us."
HK clomped into the shuttle, and she found her hand hovering over the self destruct. It clenched into a fist. Then this was how all her years of torment would end? Sacrificing the Emperor's primary desire? The station she'd given up everything to hide?
She still knew where the other facilities were, and still had probe droids out for them. If she stayed, sent the others back to the ship, would Malgus just destroy the station? Or would he insist on taking her alive and she'd find herself trapped in another prison, locked as tightly as before, all but helpless? She looked down at the self destruct, at the shuttle, at the doors to the rest of the Foundry, and then to the hopelessly out-gunned fleet above them.
And without another second of hesitation, she slammed her hand into the button and sprinted for the shuttle.
Blaster fire glanced off the console around her and she whipped out one lightsaber, deflecting it back toward the soldiers coming through the doors. Khemmaa returned fire, and she sprinted past the Wookiee and into the ship.
"Come on!" she shouted back, throwing herself into the pilot's seat. Khemmaa appeared a second later, strapping into the co-pilot's. Blaster rounds slammed into the front viewport as she pulled away from the shuttle and directed it upward, through the still-falling asteroids and into the firefight above.
She sank into the Force again to dodge incoming turbolaser fire as she wove her way through the battle. The fleet was already preparing to fall back, reorganizing into an escape formation with fighters retreating. Revan whipped the shuttle around a blast as the Valiant sent docking orders, and T3 screeched as he slid across the floor into one of the walls.
"Can they stop the self destruct?" Khemmaa asked. Mora chirped unhappily from her lap, held there by one massive paw.
"No."
A few of the blasts seemed to target them in particular, and Revan wondered if Malgus knew it was her as she dodged them.
After a brief but knuckle-whitening journey, the shuttle set down in one of the docking bays. A medical team was at its side just as the forcefield closed over the hanger door, and the ship turned away toward freedom. They carefully loaded Carth's stretcher onto a hoverlift and took off at a run toward the rest of the ship. Klaxons blared around them, loud and echoing in the hanger and the shuttle's tiny interior. Khemmaa unstrapped and moved toward the back, but Revan moved slower. Her hands hovered over the controls, shaking, and it all flickered back again.
Carth. Shoulders' lightsaber. Wrestling for control. Hitting Carth. She closed her eyes, and the rest flowed after it. The Sith's feral grin. Turning both lightsabers into double-bladed ones. How it felt to pull nearly all the Foundry's neutral power into her and charge.
Oh, gods, that was the last thing she wanted Carth to see. Especially if he—
She stood and turned away, scooping Mora up with one hand as she started down the ramp. Khemmaa growled something at her, something she thought was comforting, but she could barely wrap her mind around Basic at the moment.
"I'm needed on the bridge," she mumbled unconsciously.
Her path up was mechanical. She was vaguely aware of being followed by Khemmaa and the three droids, largely by T3's worried chirping at her heels, but it sounded miles away. It didn't feel real. Nothing did. She'd never felt this way after a fight, either. The scene just kept repeating in front of her, like a bad holovid rerun. She was supposed to protect him. This wasn't supposed to happen.
She headed up the bridge, the crew barely noticing her passing as they fought to escape the battlefield. Kaylak ignored her until the space ahead of them cleared and he gave the order to start the hyperspace jump.
"Are you sure that abandoning—"
"Yes." Her voice was far quieter and monotone than intended. "Once the self destruct goes off, it won't matter."
Gods, if he… if he didn't make it… he was most of her impulse control, most of what kept her in line. What was she going to do without him?
"You're destroying it?" She thought he sounded far angrier than she deserved.
"Unless you want the Empire to have it."
Kaylak's mouth drew into a thin line, but he nodded and barked a few more orders into his comms.
"Did anyone else make it off?" There were escape pods. Maybe…
"You're the only ones."
Revan just nodded. The ships finished forming into formation just as T3 chirped in warning, and Kaylak shouted the order to make the jump.
"Sir, picking up an explosion behind us—"
"Making the jump in three… two… one—!"
The stars blurred outside the viewports as the ship lurched ahead into lightspeed, back toward the Republic. Revan ducked her head.
"T3?"
The droid's head swiveled back her way with a sad chirp. /Foundry = destroyed/