Chapter 66
Splashdown
The Whipclaw's emergency repulsors kept it in a shallow glide, but it was still losing altitude fast.
"Can you avoid the copse of trees?" Ylenic asked, frantically trying to reroute power to the primary repulsors at his board while Ahsoka kept a firm grip on the ship's yoke, keeping it from rolling over due to the off-center force created by the one working engine.
"I can try, but it'll be easier if you get the repulsors working," she said through gritted teeth. She reached into herself, centering herself in the Force. Master Skywalker had tried to teach her how to focus herself in the Force in such a way that it seemed to make everything around her slow down, to give her the ability to think and move faster than normal to compensate for situations like this, when things were moving faster than any Togruta or Human could keep up.
The high-pitched whine of the backup repulsors pushing against the ground with all of their might made her teeth and montrals vibrate, but she ignored the unpleasant sensation. Amidst the noise and clutter, something tickled her nose. It wasn't smoke from any burned circuitry. The impacts had just knocked something loose in the engine, nowhere near the cockpit.
While she made a slight course adjustment, hoping to miss a large tree and splash into muddy water, she realized what the smell was. Burned fur. With her force-enhanced focus, she was noticing things that would normally have gone unnoticed.
It was hard to believe that Ylenic was still nursing bruised ribs and singed fur from his last battle. With everything that had happened, it didn't seem like the first battle with the Windu clones had been more than half a day earlier.
But this was it. The last clone. Cornered. And fighting someone, or something, here on Dagobah. As long as Ahsoka could land safely, this could finally be over.
With a solid clunk, and a momentary dimming of several of the console lights in the cockpit, the primary repulsors started drawing power.
"I had to reroute power through conduits that don't normally draw this kind of load," Ylenic said, seemingly speaking in slow motion while Ahsoka was using Force-enhanced speed. He slowly raised the power level, but the lights started to dim again before he got a third of the way to full power.
"It'll have to do," Ahsoka said, taking advantage of the extra repulsors to overshoot the copse of trees and try to slow down their descent. "We're still gonna hit hard. Hold onto something."
At the last moment, Ahsoka pulled the nose of the craft up and sent a surge of power through the repulsors. At that angle, the opposing force slowed the ship down, and sent swaths of mud and water splashing away from the landing site. One of the power lines overloaded, sending a blast of sparks out of the port side of the ship. The sparks sputtered as the water rushed back, and the Whipclaw belly flopped on the returning gush of water.
Steam rose around the port side of the Whipclaw as the water seeped into the damaged engine.
"Welcome to scenic Dagobah," Ahsoka said, shaking her head dizzily. "Tour hoverbus is on your left."
"A surprisingly smooth landing," Master It'kla replied.
Ahsoka unbuckled herself from the pilot's chair. "And right-side up, too. I was worried for a minute there. Thought we'd overbalance and flip backwards."
A blast of dark Force energy in the form of a giant splash of violet lightning passed overhead, and several more bits of rock and tree flew threw it. A smoldering chunk of wood bounced off the cockpit.
Once the wash of lightning stopped, a tiny figure leapt out from behind a smoking section of tree trunk and sailed through the air, briefly landing on a boulder and kicking off from it for momentum.
As the figure sailed out of sight, Ahsoka caught a glimpse of a flash of green light in its hand.
"By the Force... was that...?"
"I believe it was," replied Master It'kla.
"The ramp is underwater. Race you to the top hatch," Ahsoka said, darting out of the cockpit and heading towards the ladder that ran to the top hatch of the Whipclaw.
After everything that had happened in the last year, after feeling the deaths of all of her former friends and teachers, now Ahsoka knew that at least one member of the Jedi Council was still alive.
"Strong you are in the Force," Yoda said as he landed on the ground, throwing his lightsaber forward to slice another flying boulder in half. As the saber whirled back through the air into his hand, the two halves of the boulder split around him. With a wave of his hand, the two halves, now with a molten edge from the saber, flew towards the Windu clone. "But not that strong."
What little grip on sanity the clone had left seemed to be completely washed out by his anger. He leapt over the two halves of the rock and sent another blast of Force lightning at Yoda, who caught the first blast of it on his small green blade, used the Force to divert the rest harmlessly into a patch of muddy water. The water bubbled and steamed where it hit.
The clone glared at Yoda, and for the first time since the fight had started, charged at him with his saber instead of attacking through the Force. He leapt the last few meters, swinging with what appeared to be a wild blow, but Yoda was familiar with Windu's Vaapad style. He knew that it was a deceptive attack, a seemingly powerful blow that could easily have its direction changed.
It was nearly a perfect attack for dealing with a Jedi like Yoda. Yoda's style normally entailed using to Force to enhance small leaps, keeping him moving around a larger opponent. Against a less experienced enemy, this strike would have caused them to leap over the clone, and with a single change of direction, the clone would have cut the enemy in half.
But Yoda was far more experienced than that. He flipped backwards, and as he flipped, he used his inertia to bat the tip of Winduu's violet saber upwards. He landed on mostly dry ground, and with a Force push, darted below the clone's guard. The clone twisted to the side, and Yoda's slash that should have gone right through Winduu's knee only barely grazed the side of his thigh. The clone showed no sign of pain. Just anger.
The clone spun around, swinging low to the ground. But once again, Yoda knew it was a two-pronged attack. The low sweep was there to force him to take to the air again, and he knew that the clone had enough energy for another blast of Force lightning gathered in his other hand.
This time, Yoda went along with the clone's wishes. He leapt up, flipping over the blade. But instead of slashing out at the clone with his blade when he went over him, he stretched out with his other hand and pulled in all of the Force he could gather.
As he suspected, a broad blast of Force lightning erupted from the clone's hand, and Yoda held it tightly in his hand. As he landed in ankle-deep muck on the other side of Winduu, he released the energy. Half of it dissipated into the wet ground, causing the wisps of grey hair on his green scalp to stand on end. The other half blasted back into the clone, who was sent flying backwards.
"Wish to kill you, I do not," Yoda said to the clone, who was kneeling in the mud, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. "But stop you I will."
Finally, the clone spoke. "You couldn't stop him. The one who killed the real Windu. You failed. I felt it through the Force. You failed him. You failed the Jedi. You failed everyone."
"A Jedi for more than 800 years I have been," Yoda replied. "Failed many times, I have. Lost many friends. Windu among them."
"And he's not alone," came a young woman's voice from behind him.
Ahsoka stepped out from between the thick, gnarled Dagobah trees. Her two lightsaber hummed, the shorter blue shoto crackling slightly, the ionization in its blade sparking off the moisture in the air. Master It'kla followed, his lightsaber in his hand.