The mighty Mon Calamari warship was a dead hulk drifting beyond Magic Dragon's bow, but alarms were still wailing on the bridge. The flashing lights and shrill drone were wearing on Miltin Takel's nerves; the grand admiral felt like he could snap and throttle the next person to bring him bad news.
For better or worse that came from his security chief, Lieutenant Gorek, who'd gone to lower decks to counter the Rebel commandos and was thus outside strangulation range. From a safe distance, Gorek told him, "I'm sorry, Admiral, but it looks like they've sent two teams up the lift shaft."
"What? How? We cut power to the lifts!"
"They went up the shaft sir. With fibercables. We've pinned down one group on Deck Thirty-seven, Section-"
"Where are the others?"
"They're… on Deck Eighteen, Command Section."
Takel pounded the comm console, closing the connection and making an ensign jump. He spun away and called to his bridge security head, "Send all teams to the main lift shaft! That bastards are coming up! Get ready to lower the blast doors!"
Magic Dragon's crew, temporarily relieved after smashing the Rebel cruiser, was on verge of panic once again. Takel couldn't do much to soothe them; he was panicking himself. Hands fumbled over his white uniform, down his paunch, until he discovered the service pistol holstered at his side. Not much of a defense against a filthy Jedi, but it would have to do.
As the bridge's last few stormtroopers hurried out of the chamber, back for the lifts, Takel told the rest of his crew, "Get your weapons ready. We may have to defend to the last man."
That did little to comfort them. Takel switched his pistol to his other hand, wiped sweaty palms dry, and listened for the sounds of blasterfire that hadn't yet come.
Then the tactical officer said, "Admiral, we have fresh incoming."
Takel braced himself. "From the planet?"
"No, from hyperspace. It's… well, take a look, sir."
The grand admiral started for the tactical station, then froze when he spotted the new arrival in the center viewport, hanging directly over Magic Dragon's battered spine, turned to face the bridge. Sitting against a black backdrop it looked like the wall-mounted head of a fearsome beast.
Good news at last. Takel just wished his backup would stop arriving at such dramatic times.
"Comm, hail him and tell him to stop that Jedi now."
The lieutenant frowned. "But sir… There's no airlock at the command tower. And if he docks in the main bay-"
"Point him to the nearest spot to the bridge where he can make forced entry through the hull."
"You mean-"
"Tell him to burn his way through."
The comm officer relayed instruction. As the beast-head of a ship soared past the viewport, over their heads for landing, the sounds of battle approached in the corridor beyond.
-{}-
The path to the star destroyer's bridge was a gauntlet of sealed blast doors, stormtroopers and black-helmed security guards. The air was thick with laserfire and ozone and the smell of scorched bodies. It was kill or be killed, no quarter given, both sides driven by a primal need to live.
Rahm Kota rode at the crest of the wave, as happy as he'd ever been.
He danced ahead of his troops, flicking his lightsaber this way and that, never slowing, always deflecting. Sometimes attacks broke through, adding score-marks to his battered armor, but he never staggered, never stopped, never doubted himself as he led the charge to the bridge.
This was Rahm Kota was he was meant to be: a man at war.
He'd always been different from other Jedi, in part because he'd started training late. He'd felt accord with Master Windu, another Jedi who could summon his inner darkness, gain fuel by it, but never allow it to overwhelm him. It had made them both powerful warriors.
Windu had had the fortune, good or ill, to die at the start of the Jedi purge. Kota had kept fighting for almost twenty years against the Empire and his own despair. He'd almost lost the fight two years ago, along with his militia and his eyesight, but the man who'd stolen his hope had delivered it back to him. Starkiller gave him hope even now. A tether connected them across distance and he could feel Starkiller rising to battle, renewed with strength and conviction. Kota could only try to match.
As he battled he wondered if this was why he'd never fallen to the dark, even after twenty years of desperate battle. He fought not for personal gain or glory; nor (though he might) did he fight the Empire for revenge. He battled for a cause greater than himself: the Republic, the Rebellion, the legacy of the Jedi. Pushing back the dark.
In Starkiller he'd found a man to embody them all. A reason to keep fighting.
He was so close to the bridge now. A few more blast doors. Once they'd taken down all the troopers in this section of the hallway he moved to the next barricade and stabbed his lightsaber through the layered metal. It turned to molten liquid as he moved his blade. The heat bathed his face as he pressed his body close. He felt his soldiers tense behind him, weapons ready for the next barrage.
When he'd carved enough of a hole in the door, Kota summoned the Force and punched it open. He was the first through the gap, using the Force to hold the chunk of door in front of him as a shield while his soldiers filed through the gap and began shooting the latest cluster of stormtroopers. This was the smallest batch yet; the enemy had been whittled down to nearly nothing.
With brazen confidence, Kota hurled his makeshift shield and crushed one trooper against a bulkhead. He marched to the next set of blast doors—the last ones, he felt—and prepared to carve through.
Then he felt something behind him; a burst of panic juxtaposed against calm lethal intent. More blasterfire, at a new and different pitch from the guns his men used. Not stormtrooper rifles either. Kota reached through the Force to sense what was happening behind him.
When he understood his heart shuddered. For the first time since fighting his way aboard this destroyer, Kota was afraid.
-{}-
Grand Admiral Takel pumped an unceremonious fist in the air as he watched the holocam feeds. After clamping Slave I onto the command tower exterior and burning a hole through the hull, Boba Fett was blazing through the hallways, taking the Rebel commandos by surprise and shooting them down with impunity. He strode down the halls, popping off blast after blast from the custom pistol in either hand, leaving a trail of dead Rebels in his wake.
It was fascinating to watch. Fett cultivated an air of mystery, but Takel's connections in the Mandalorian sector left him more informed than most. It was still a mess of rumors, but he'd heard Fett was son of a former Mandalore; that he'd eschewed his clan to work solo; that he and Vader had some personal accord. Most intriguing was the rumor that he held an especial hatred for Jedi.
The galaxy's best bounty hunter was as good as advertised. Takel hoped he was just as proficient an exterminator.
The rest of the bridge crew, who unfortunately didn't have the same holo-cams to view, were still on edge of panic. Blasterfire ricocheted just beyond the sealed blast doors. Takel was about to urge them calm when he heard a muffled hum he couldn't identify. Then the tip of a blue-white blade stabbed through the center of the blast doors and began to cut a molten arc through the protective metal.
Time to panic after all.
Takel had seen how the Jedi breached the other doors, so he ordered men to stand on the gateways sides and prepare for to take his flanks when he came through. All the storm-troopers and standard security teams had already gone out and been slaughtered. All the bridge had left were men like Takel himself, armed with meager service pistols.
Everyone watched helplessly as the Jedi weapon carved his blazing arc through their door. No one could look away, which was one small blessing. It allowed Miltin Takel to reach into the fold of his sleeve, remove the second and final capsule of glitterstim he'd secreted there, and pop it into his mouth. He had a feeling he might need it. And if its power didn't save him, well, at least he'd go out on a high.
-{}-
Kota worked fast because he had to. If he could get to the bridge and take the ship's commander hostage, he'd have something to barter with, something that might stay the hand of the enemy approaching from behind.
Even though he'd yet to reach this section of corridor, Kota knew him. They'd battled each other already on Kamino and Kota had nearly met his match in the armored, resourceful bounty hunter. Only a bit of subterfuge from PROXY had given Kota the edge so he could force the hunter to retreat.
That edge was gone, which meant he'd have to make one of his own.
He'd almost completed the circular portal he was carving when the enemy arrived. Kota's scant remaining commandos opened fire as he pushed through the previous door. Laserfire sprayed against his battered, green-painted armor to no avail. True Mandalorian beskar then. Not a good sign.
Rebel soldiers were falling in a flurry, picked off by the dual-wielded blasters in the bounty hunter's hands. Kota had no choice. He turned from the blast doors and threw himself on the enemy with Force-enhanced speed.
But the bounty hunter was fast too. He twisted his body into the sweep of Kota's blade, which scraped noisily off the beskar shell. Kota shifted his attack upward; a vertical spin of his blade sheared off the tip of the bounty hunter's right blaster. His second one popped off a series of shots. Kota had to duck to evade them and one bolt burned through his silver topknot.
Pale hair swirled wildly around his face as Kota kept attacking. He cut off the tip of the bounty hunter's other blaster and moved in to literally disarm him, angling his blade for the exposed points at the man's wrists and elbow. But that damned Mandalorian was good. He kept his forearms up like a boxer warding off punches, catching every saber-sweep with his beskar bucklers.
But Kota had a weapon that could breach even Mandalorian armor. It was a talent shown to him by Mace Windu himself all those years ago: the ability to find the breaking point in even the most durable armor, physical or metaphorical, and shatter it with a single precise blow.
Kota dropped as fully into the Force as he ever had. Far off, he felt Starkiller in a similar harmony and joined himself with the boy's flow. Pausing his attacks, flinching only to deflect punches from the bounty hunter, Kota scoured the beskar plate on his chest, found the minute cracks rent by years of brutal service, discovered exactly where he needed to apply breaking force.
Knowing the bounty hunter would caught it, Kota made an upward sweep with his saber. The bounty hunter blocked it with his right buckler but the force the swing pushed that arm away, exposing his chest armor.
Kota slammed his palm into the center of that plate.
Shatterpoint.
The explosive force sent the bounty hunter flying back ten meters. His jetpack cracked noisily against the sealed blast door but the armor over his chest had become dangling fragments. Most of the beskar lay in shards across the deck.
Kota felt the bounty hunter's shock with satisfaction, then charged in for the kill.
The bounty hunter didn't rise to face him. Instead he bent forward on elbow and knees, back to the ceiling, exposed chest to the floor.
The rocket attached to his jetpack burned, burst, and launched.
Kota, caught in mid-charge, had no time to evade. In the milisecond before impact he threw up a wall of the Force and prayed.
-{}-
Takel had been watching the whole fight in fascinated wonder, but he was still shocked when the rocket caught the Jedi square in the abdomen, picked him off his feet, and hurled him at missile-tip down the corridor, right into the slab of blast door he'd carved open.
The explosion rocked the bridge. The cut-out slab was propelled across the deck and fell into the crew pit, crushing three officers and shearing limbs off two more. Smoke and blood and burning filled the chamber.
With his glitterstim-enhanced senses, Takel took in all of that, just as he took in the Jedi who'd been thrown onto the bridge's center walkway. His armor was scorched black, his skin smoked, and he left a trail of blood and ash as he'd tumbled through the portal. But the monster was alive and trying to rise.
And his lightsaber lay three meters away from him, four meters from Takel, amidst the deck's strewn rubble.
Boba Fett was stalking toward the bridge, seconds away from the entrance he'd blown wide open. The Jedi was trying to rise. In a burst of speed and intuition, Takel dove for the lightsaber. He landed on his stomach, slid face-first through the ash, grabbed the lightsaber in both hands. As the bounty hunter stepped onto the bridge he rolled onto his side and hurled the thing at Boba Fett, as strong as he could.
The cylinder spun through the air. With glitterstim pulsing through his body it seemed to wheel forever.
A meter out from Fett's outstretched hand it froze in midair, then flew back toward its owner.
-{}-
Kota's whole body tremored in pain, but the Force was with him. It pulled him to his feet, suspended him upright. It called the lightsaber back to his outstretched hand, away from the bounty hunter. His beloved weapon flew toward him; he could feel the satisfying smack of metal in his palm even before it hit.
But the touch never came. He heard the metal hiss of fiberchord and the clack of magnet on metal. He felt the lightsaber pulled away from him, reeled into the bounty hunter's waiting hand.
Kota intensified his effort and tried to pull the lightsaber back to him. He felt it strain against the chord, slip away from the Mandalorian's gloved fingers, and inch back to the main who'd made it.
Then a laser bolt took him in the side, punching through broken armor, rending flesh and scorching skin. Kota staggered, lost concentration, lost his lightsaber.
He heard the weapon ignite, felt the bounty hunter swoop down on him. Kota tried to muster the Force one more time but he was too hurt, too tired, too beaten.
Twenty years of war, but he'd reached his limit at last.
You're on your own now, boy, he thought.
Then he had peace: beautiful, black, and forever.
-{}-
The entire bridge watched in stunned silence as Boba Fett decapitated the Jedi with a two-handed swing. The silver-haired head toppled from armored shoulders, hit the blackened deck, bounced twice, rolled, and finally stopped.
Smoke rose from the burn-sealed stub of a neck. Empty white eyes stared at the ceiling. Blind, Takel realized with a tremor. All that, from a man who couldn't even see.
It was over. Alarms still sounded on the bridge, but the enemy was dead. The battle on and around Magic Dragon was over. Takel was aware that they still hadn't heard from the planet, but right now Vader's fate seemed immaterial.
After he pushed himself off the ground and holstered his service pistol, he brushed from ash off his white uniform and said, "Master Fett… I can't thank you enough."
"That was uniquely satisfying," Fett said, "but I still want to be paid."
Takel swallowed. "The Emperor is good for it."
"I know he is."
The Mandalorian helm turned down toward the dead man's head. Takel felt queasy at the sight and looked away, but Fett seemed to stare for a long time.
Finally, the bounty hunter shut off the Jedi's blade and hooked it to his belt. Takel dimly wondered if Vader or the Emperor would want it, then decided to let Fett keep the trophy. After all, he'd more than earned it.