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Old Jedi Temple grounds, Arabia Terra, Fortress World Mars
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B'asia Ti sat in silent meditation on a bluff overlooking the deserted roadway running up to the Old Temple. This morning, for the umpteenth time since she had become a Knight, her mother had dismissed her opinion out of hand. To calm her rising irritation and find her center she faced the brisk winds of the Temple Zone and listened to her nearby subspace vox-box as it belted out the haunting tune Season of the Witch by Donovan.
Earthlings would have called the song 60s rock, but that meant little to the Empire, which was hit with the entirety of Earth's catalog of songs like a flechette launcher to the face when they had settled Mars. To them it was merely Heavy Isotope music and Elvis Presley was as new and fresh to an Imperial as Kid Rock.
Even out here on the far side of Mars, on the sheb side of nowhere, the attack on Nal Kuat had been the top news in the agricombine village settlements nearby. B'asia's father, Jason, had spent the evening watching the HoloNews broadcast from Palpatine Prime and had eventually fallen asleep during his twentieth viewing of the wreckage of the burning INS Hope.
They had both sent separate messages to the New Jedi Temple on Wadarae seeking instructions. Nal Kuat was nearly equal distance from both temples and B'asia was sure her abilities could be useful helping to rescue beings still trapped in the disaster area or healing the wounded caught up in the cowardly attack. Instead, her mother, in the role of Grand Master, told her to stay put. On the rimward terminus of the Bloodstripe Run, Mars was probably the safest world in the Empire, her mother had told her.
B'asia had snapped back that personal safety should not concern a Jedi when innocent lives were at stake. Her mother merely cut the feed from Wadarae. B'asia was sure she wouldn't have done that to one of the other Jedi Knights. What did she have to do to prove to her mother that she was capable of bigger things than categorizing temple statuary?
That was the mission the Order had tasked her with. Her first mission after leaving her Master Gap-Ido's guidance was counting statues, packing statues in foam and, eventually, moving statues aboard her T-6 Shuttle. They'd been at it for two weeks, ever since the moment they had set down on Mars. Her father had wanted to take it slow, perhaps take a few days off and see old friends that still lived on the red planet. B'asia was in a rush to complete the simple mission and move on to something more worth her time.
The problem had been the mosaics. Statues of Yoda, Agen Kolar, and Ob-Wan Kenobi, along with twenty other four meter tall statues carved in miff stone, had been moved to the landing bay and prepared for transport by the temple droids. The mosaics had to be cataloged for their precise positions and then carefully removed from the walls and placed in special containers for the trip to Wadarae. After ten days of packing the only thing they had actually moved aboard the shuttle was the original Uneti tree Gap-Ido had planted as a youngling over twenty years ago. The Force only knew why her Master had asked B'asia to retrieve it as he planted an entire orchard of seedlings from that very tree on Wadarae. Was her Master attached to a tree, B'asia mused?
There was a strange tremor in the Force.
B'asia forgot her troubles with the inventory mission and focused on the odd disturbance. It was like a tiny ripple of a still pond. One ripple was followed by a second in the Force. A strange grip seized the back of her head underneath her montrals giving her a slight headache. Another ripple followed, then another, and then hundreds. These were deaths, she realized, as the sensation in the back of her mind sucked the wind from her lungs. Beings were dying. She could feel them calling out in the Force and then suddenly becoming silent as if they were flames being snuffed out.
Something had happened. Not far away, if B'asia had to guess and by the strength of the tremors in the Force she'd assumed that whatever had happened, had occurred within the local system. It wasn't the thousands of deaths on Nal Kuat, as she had felt those yesterday. Was it another attack, an industrial accident here on Mars or maybe Earth, a natural disaster, or Force-forbid, another attack from those mysterious raiders at Nal Kuat?
B'asia got to her feet and retrieved her comlink. She activated her father's frequency. "Papa."
Jason Bogan immediately answered. Perhaps it was the concern in her voice, or maybe it was because he was an attentive parent compared to his wife, B'asia decided. "What's up, sweat pea?"
"Did you feel that just now?" She regretted her question almost as soon as it left her mouth. Her father was an Earthling and as a species they were cut off from all aspects of the Force.
"Was it an earthquake? I was helping R6 dismantle the stain glass window in the east atrium." Jason Bogan responded. B'asia sighed, if it had indeed been a planetquake her father would have noticed the glass shake where he was.
"I don't think so. Something is irritating the Force."
A Force disturbance! I will be right there." Her father clicked off the comlink. She imagined he was running through the temple complex as fast as he could. She spent the time waiting, gazing out across the cratered plain. An ill feeling was out there somewhere and it was growing stronger, almost as if it were approaching the planet. Just as she started to focus on whatever it was, it vanished as if someone had deliberately concealed it from her.
Her father arrived a moment later, breathing heavy. That didn't surprise her, as she thought of him being in his mid-forties as ancient. He was followed by B'asia's astromech droid R6-D9, who speedily rolled in behind her father. "B'asia, what was it? Should we call your mother?"
"She's halfway across the Galaxy. Whatever it was, happened in our neck of the woods." B'asia informed her father. "I felt a wave of anguish and then nothing."
"R6, are you picking up anything on the HoloNews' alerts?" Jason asked the droid.
Its response was in the beeps and chirp of binary droid speak, which B'asia had been forced to learn as a youngling and her father had picked up over the years of hiding within the Order.
"Nothing but coverage of Nal Kuat? What about military frequencies?" Jason asked the droid.
More chirps followed. B'asia translated, "Just the general alert that's been active since yesterday's raid. I'm surprised Moff Hinter hasn't raised the alert condition level for the local system."
"We're a long ways from Nal Kuat and Palpatine Prime. Whoever hit us struck the fleet and the government in the soft spots. Mars is the most well defended planet in the Empire."
"The planetary shield doesn't make us invincible." B'asia argued. "Hinter only has those two Star Destroyers protecting this end of the Bloodstripe Run."
R6-D9 beeped again, more urgently than before. Jason squinted his eyes in concern. "RescueOps is calling for all emergency workers on Mars to report to their stations and to be ready for a mass casualty event. Many thousand wounded are due to arrive in Amidala City momentarily."
"We've got to get into the city right away." B'asia stated.
"B'asia, we don't even know what's going on. Rushing straight into the unknown might do more harm than good." Her father argued. He did have a point as B'asia hated not knowing what was going on, but she did know one thing because the Force was literally screaming it out to her . . .
"Papa, we're needed. We can help." B'asia assured him.
"Fine. I'll back your play, kid. The temple still has a lot of medical supplies we should take along. If it's bad enough for RescueOps to recall so many rescue workers then they'll need all the meds and stims they can get their hands on." Jason stated.
"But that will take some time to load it all aboard the shuttle." B'asia complained. She wanted to leave immediately as she feared lives depended on her Force abilities, but she saw very little in the way to counter her father's point that the temple's supplies would be put to good use.
"Then we had better get a move on. Come on, R6." Her father and the droid turned and headed back inside the Temple. B'asia was tempted to grab the swoop bike in the shuttle's cargo bay and race ahead to Amidala City and allow her father to follow after, but a swoop bike would take a day to reach the city while the shuttle could make it there in under an hour once it was loaded. In the end she decided her father's course was the correct one.
It took them over an hour to get the shuttle loaded with bandages and medicine Master Hja and her mother had stockpiled here during her father's campaign to overrun Mars with a horde of angry Earthlings. Stang, she thought, her family's history was a strange one. The loading took longer than B'asia would have liked since the droids had to properly tie down everything they had already previously loaded and make room for the medical supplies which they had planned on donating before they returned to Wadarae.
B'asia and her father left R6-D9 and the proxy droid GWB-99 behind to watch the temple. Not that she feared thieves would steal the two ton statues that was all that was left in the temple. It was just that neither of their droids had any medical programming and B'asia feared they'd just be in the way if things were as bad as the Force was telling her inside Amidala City.
The Jedi Knight throttled the engines and tore out of the temple hangar like a mynock out of the Seven Corellian Hells. Her father chided her, "Watch it, kiddo. No need to overheat the sublights."
"This isn't your old Toyota, Papa." B'asia referred to the beat up landspeeder her father had told her about driving in high school. "Besides, we have to take the long way since the shield keeps us out of orbit."
"Um. . ." Her father paused for several seconds as he studied the shuttle's sensor monitor. "What shield?"
The Jedi looked over at the flight controls in front of her father. Sure enough, the subspace radar energy readings showed a negative return on the energy shield that protected Mars. The sole planetary shield in the Milky Way had vanished.
B'asia and Jason peered ahead through the shuttle's cockpit viewscreen. Amidala City was still hundreds of kilometers to the southwest but already tiny black dots by the dozens were appearing in the upper atmosphere in that direction. Two tiny specks were diving from altitude and turning towards the approaching shuttle. They must have spotted the T-6 as they orientated themselves on the Jedi shuttle and rapidly closed the distance between them.
Jason Bogan may not have possessed a connection with the Force but even he could detect the danger they were in. "B'asia."
"I see them." B'asia said as she turned the shuttle to the west. The airspeeders approached close enough that she could make out details on their fuselages. They looked like R-22 Spearheads. Some civilian models were used on Palpatine Prime, but the way they flew in formation with one another and the array of missiles and cannons they carried under their short wings hinted they were not manned by any civilians B'asia had ever come across.
A line of fiery projectiles streaked past the canopy as the two strange fighters maneuvered into a position behind the shuttle. B'asia squinted at the strange fire. "Was that slug-fire?"
"Tracers." Her father said. "And they'll kill you just as much as a blaster bolt."
"They've got to be pirates." B'asia turned the shuttle into a split-S turn to try to lose their pursuers.
"I don't think so." Jason pointed at a larger ship descending from orbit to their south. It was disgorging dozens of the smaller A-shaped airspeeders. Several of which turned and raced after the T-6.
B'asia attempted to keep flying towards the west and the sparsely populated farming region of the Chryse Planitia. She had one eye on the newcomers and another on the rear radar. The two fighters on their tails flew like they knew B'asia's home address. She turned the wings from their vertical alignment to horizontal just in time to dodge a missile launched by their pursuers. The fancy trick may have avoided the missile but it did little to stop the second fighter from lining up his sights on the shuttle's engine block.
The impact shook the shuttle like the striking of a hydro-hammer. B'asia thought she could feel the slugs slam into the craft through her cushioned flight seat. "Engine three is out. Two is on fire."
"Losing power in engine one." Her father warned. "We're going down."
B'asia knew her father was right. She reached for the ejection controls. "Fierfek! Papa, hold on."
The T-6's cockpit blasted apart from the flaming fuselage. The sudden ejection shot the cockpit pod upwards and in between the two pursuit craft. B'asia's stomach lurched as the cockpit somersaulted through the air before its repulsar stabilizers righted it. The attackers ignored them in favor of watching the T-6 fuselage smash into the plain below. They circled the rising smoke pyre several times before speeding off to the south in search of other targets.
The escape cockpit capsule gently glided to the ground. The canopy popped open, allowing the brisk Martian air into the capsule. Her father unfastened his harness. "Emergency beacon is running. RescueOps should be here in a few minutes."
B'asia looked up into the sky where hundreds of ships of all kinds, from cruisers to the small fighters were dropping from orbit. "I don't think RescueOps is coming."
Jason looked up and nodded. "Yeah, I can see your point. Well, any idea where we are at, kiddo?"
"NavComp says we're outside the Becqueral Crater in the Mawrth Vallis, about five hundred klicks north-east of Amidala City." B'asia said before climbing out of the downed capsule.
"Ah, I once hiked past here to the west twenty years ago."
"The whole galaxy knows that, Papa."
"Well now Imperial Roadway 10 goes through here." He pointed to a thin strip of roadway less than a kilometer away. B'asia wondered how she had missed it on their descent. Her mother would have said B'asia had her heads in the clouds. Well Mom's not here right now, so I better get my head in the game for Papa's and my own sake.
They took the first aid pack and water bottles from the shuttle's meager emergency supplies and then jogged together towards Imperial Roadway 10. The highway serviced the rural farming region and was lightly used this far north of Amidala City. As such, it took ten minutes before they ran into the first motorist driving an old Halberd 441 swoop bike.
He was a purple Theelin teen who was hardly more than a youngling. He wore a threadbare cape, a torn dewback leather jacket, googles and a thick layer of dust. He pulled up his googles and winked at B'asia.
"Can you give us a ride? It's an emergency." B'asia asked, wondering why the kid wasn't more concerned with the invasion taking place over his head right now.
He leered at her, "What's the rush, doll face. Why don't you take me behind those rocks over there and make a man out of me."
Jason started to step forward, but B'asia answered before her father could do anything to the rude, little sleemo. "What do you say I smack you around for a little while?"
The Theelin grinned. "Can't we do both?"
B'asia rolled her eyes and with a gentle Force Push sent the impertinent youth flying off of his swoop and sailing through the air. He roughly landed on his shebs several meters away.
The Jedi jumped behind the controls of the machine and slammed the kick starter. She held out a hand to her father and swung him into the seat behind her.
"Hey, you can't do that! I'm going to call the guard!" The Theelin shouted at them as they spun the swoop around and gunned the engine. The Halberd 441 sped away towards the city as fast as its engine could carry them. B'asia hoped the kid would be alright. She'd have to track him down after the emergency and pay him for the use of his swoop out of Temple funds. The Jedi weren't usually thieves, she reminded herself.
It took them three hours before they could see Amidala City on the horizon. Civilian airspeeders were pouring out of the city. Many of them shot to pieces. Hundreds of smoking pyres marked the horizon. Ten kilometers outside the city a convoy of HCVw A9 Juggernauts were lined up along the roadway. They had been blasted to pieces and several of them had been torn apart by bomb damage. Burned bodies of their crew lay in the ditch next to the vehicles.
They had to slow the Halberd as the roadway started to become crowded with civilians fleeing the city. Dozens of landspeeders were shot up causing traffic to bottleneck in several areas. B'asia saw a family of Bufopels kneeling next to one wreck crying. They wailed around a figure laying on the ground covered in a single sheet. B'asia could feel the grief coming off them in waves. A Hylobon leaned on his horn trying to move the mass of foot traffic blocking his expensive sport landspeeder from moving faster than a crawl. The frightened refugees paid the Hylobon little attention as their eyes were focused on the skies above.
B'asia expected to see the organized skylines above the Empire's oldest city but civilian traffic had been dispersed. In their place were formations of military craft lazily circling the metropolis. Every few minutes a pair of them would swoop down and unleash their payloads on a target within the city. Streams of anti-airspeeder bolts reached up into the sky to chase the attackers away. Yet, through the bursts of explosive blaster energy the invaders could not be deterred. The city was burning.
Imperial Roadway 10 ended in a low-income section of the city known as the Negs. Beings were outside their homes and businesses watching the battle unfold over their city. The smell of smoke was thick in the air and the reverberations of bombs falling on the city could be felt through the soles of their boots. Abandoned landspeeders and roadblocks manned by Stormtroopers prevented the swoop from going any further. With a resigned shrug, B'asia abandoned the vehicle. Hopefully, its Theelin owner would track it down one day.
Jason was much more familiar with Amidala City than B'asia. She had only lived in the Old Temple on Mars and moved to Wadarae as a Padawan. The Grand Master never had much reason to send the youngling Initiates into the city during the Order's stay on Mars. Jason Bogan, however, had explored the city side by side with none other than her uncle Brakatak, the Lorda of the Gran Kajidic. As her mother had once told her, there wasn't a nook or cranny in Amidala City that Brakatak and Jason hadn't gotten into at some point. Her father took point and wove through the frightened throngs west towards the great Yos River that bisected the city.
Beings gathered on the sidewalks and in the roadways themselves. They looked confused and ducked in fear whenever one of the invading airspeeders raced past overhead. B'asia was asked by a dozen beings along the way if she had any idea what was going on. Nobody knew if the attackers were the same ones that had attacked Nal Kuat and Palpatine Prime the day before or Confederate invaders from Earth or both. Their fear was amplified whenever a Stormtrooper or a blaster wielding civilian took pot shots at the fast fighters and bombers from among the crowd, causing more panic and confusion. Stormtroopers on one block yelled at the crowd to disperse, to move east, to move west, to go home, or to build barricades. Stores were broken into and looters rushed past the Jedi Knight with armfuls of food and goods.
"Where are we going?" Her father asked, pushing out of the Negs. He had been heading towards the Amidala City InterGalactic Space Port, which was the logical site to bring the mass casualties from the morning's announcement. But now B'asia could feel pain and fear all around her as more bombs rained down across the stricken city.
"Follow the biggest pyre of smoke and we will find the biggest fire. Surely, that's where we will be needed the most." B'asia suggested in an awkward attempt to sound assured like her mother had always been.
"Sounds good to me. The biggest one looks like that big bastard over there." Jason pointed towards a massive smoke column rising from the center of the city. Luckily it seemed to only be a few kilometers to their west.
"Let's go, Papa." B'asia started to jog. Her father, despite what she considered advanced age, kept up with her.
They reached the Yos River twenty minutes later. The sight was something out of a war holodrama. The Seven-Seven cloudcutter had been hit by several bombs near its thirtieth floor causing the top half of the building to topple over into the river below. AT-AAs had climbed to the top of several buildings and were providing a sporadic covering fire at the patrolling antagonists over the city. Across the river in Tarkin's Square the Imperial Mercantile Exchange burned furiously, creating the smoke plume that had drawn in B'asia and her father.
The stock market was a lost cause and only a few fire fighting vehicles plied their hoses on the building. Most of them seemed more concerned with preventing the flames from spreading to the old Imperial Palace and the mostly abandoned Tarkin Tower, which still defiantly stood over the burning city.
Four bridges crossed the Yos, named after the four fleets that had carried Tarkin's Fist into the Milky Way Galaxy. The Subterrel Bridge was only a few blocks away and the closest to their current location.
They were about to head towards it when a crashing din rose from down the river. B'asia and Jason turned their heads in that direction in time to spot three Y shaped bombers racing up the river barely a few meters higher than its waters. Anti-airspeeder batteries along the waterway spotted the attack and turned their rapid-fire blasters onto the onrushing attack. The waterfront was instantly filled with blaster fire as thousands of errant bolts sliced into the buildings lining the river. A giant plume of water erupted in front of the bombers from a near miss but the enemy pilots crashed right through it while maintaining their tight attack formation.
When the trio of bombers reached B'asia's position it seemed as if time slowed down while the airspeeders passed by. She could feel the heat from their engines and barely taste the ozone from their exhausts in her mouth and nostrils. She was close enough to see the pilots in their white, open-faced helmets and orange flight suits focused on their target ahead. The tail gunner at the rear of the nearest bomber was turned in B'asia's direction and she was slowly waving at the Jedi as they raced by.
The bombers pressed on through the anti-airspeeder fire and aligned themselves on their targets. Proton torpedoes fell away from their weapon pylons and streaked ahead of the enemy craft. Six of the deadly projectiles bore in as the attackers peeled off from their attack runs. Their aim was true and the proton torpedoes impacted at the base of Tarkin Tower.
The shockwave was enough to knock everyone along the waterfront off of their feet. The old military headquarters, the site where the Empire had planned and led its war against the Earth twenty years before shuddered. There were several large snaps and booms as durasteel supports shattered. Beings witnessing the tragedy got to their feet and started to flee. Tarkin Tower seemed to emit a groan and then a roar as the affronted building lost the battle with its own structural integrity. Sheering off near its fifth floor, Tarkin Tower's center of balance shifted away from center and the black tower collapsed to the west, falling across the burning Imperial Mercantile Exchange and dozens of blocks beyond. A massive cloud of dust joined the cloud of smoke and tendrils raced down nearby alleys and roadways, covering Amidala City's denizens in dust and debris.
North, across the river several explosions rang out, drawing the Jedi's attention in that direction. B'asia turned just in time to see the center spans of the Anoat and Ploo Bridges collapse and drop into the swirling waters of the Yos River. B'asia pointed to the fallen crossings. "Those weren't hit by those bombers."
"No. They weren't." Jason spotted refugees on both ends of the downed bridges bunching up as their escapes were cut off. "We need to get across right now."
Her father started to run towards the Subterrel Bridge, now only a block away. B'asia started to run along with him, but suddenly stopped short.
Something wasn't right. There were many figures merely standing or working atop the Subterrel Bridge, ignoring the flight of refugees running past them. The workers were dressed in Imperial Naval uniforms covered with gray ponchos. Several of them were carrying more blasters than she had ever witnessed an officer wielding.
The Force vibrated in distress. B'asia had long grown accustomed to the slippery, choking feeling in the Force her father gave off. Earthlings required a potassium filled diet which attacked and slaughtered midichlorians. Potassium replaced midichlorians in their bodies, severing their connection with the Force. Those Naval officers on the bridge emitted so much of that stifling feeling that it almost felt as if the Force was enraged around them.
B'asia didn't quite understand what she was feeling. Rather than rushing into something she knew nothing about, she stopped in her tracks and placed her right hand to her temple. She reached out with the Light Side. She could nearly feel their thoughts. They were here to destroy, to sabotage and for vengeance.
The Jedi Knight was suddenly pushed back several steps. The throttled feeling of the saboteurs' Force signature was instantly blocked by a complete wall of fiery rage. That's when B'asia saw her.
Among the disguised enemy demolition troopers a shorter figure emerged. B'asia sensed she was a female, dressed in all black leather, covered in a chain mail skirt and topped with a fearsome dark helmet with only a narrow vision slit. The armored woman shouted at her men to abandon the bridge and retreat. They all left except for another man, about B'asia's age, dressed all in black. Even from this distance B'asia could see he was quite striking for a near-human.
"Papa, stop." B'asia called out to Jason. He skidded to a stop nearly halfway between B'asia and the woman in black. The armored woman cocked her head and studied Jason Bogan. B'asia wanted to kick herself. She didn't want the strange woman to know who Jason was to her.
B'asia could sense the two on the bridge were Force users, and not of the Light Side either. The Dark Side swirled and radiated from them. Surely they could feel that her father was an Earthling. Earthlings had no way to conceal what they were from Force sensitives.
The Jedi Knight walked to the end of the bridge. Her father sensed the danger from the two mysterious strangers and walked back towards her. The disguised Earth troopers reached the far end of the bridge and prevented refugees from crossing east, leaving the two Dark Siders the sole occupants of the crossing. They stood at the center of the bridge, never taking their eyes off of B'asia.
"Let's get out of here." Jason suggested to his daughter.
"It's too late for that. Those two will pursue me into the city. At least here on the bridge there are no innocents to get in the way." B'asia said.
"What is it with you Ti women and bridges?" Jason said. She could feel his fear and worry for his safety. Whatever happened she would do everything to protect her father.
"Run, Papa." B'asia said.
"B'asia, I can't just . . ."
"Run!" She snapped.
Her father did as she asked. If she fell here the Dark Siders would try to track him down. He was a traitor to the Earth in their eyes and she feared, a link to the Jedi. She didn't know how she knew, but that woman in the black armor loathed the Jedi.
B'asia walked out on the bridge. The mid-day sun bore down on them. The Jedi rested her hand on her lightsaber. "Who are you?"
The woman said nothing. It was up to the younger man to do most of the talking. "You are a Jedi are you not?" His voice was filled with an Earth accent, the product of exotic locations named Hollywood and California. Yet he did not feel like an Earthling. B'asia could sense that he had a strong connection with the Force.
"I am. What are you?' B'asia demanded.
"I've seen this moment in my dreams." The man said. "We are here to restore the balance between the Earth and the Empire and to sow vengeance against the Empire for the destruction it rained down on us twenty years ago."
"That war is over. Both sides signed a treaty and walked away. Can't we have peace?" B'asia asked.
"There can be no peace between the Sith and Jedi." The black-armored woman spoke for the first time. Her voice a mix of rage and pain as it rose from her helmet.
"Sith? The Sith were left in the Home Galaxy. Their kind are not welcome here." B'asia said.
"We found our way here, just as you Jedi did." The woman replied. "We care not for wars between Empires but we will be victorious over your foul kind."
She reached up and placed her hand on her helmet. She unclasped it from her neck guard and pulled it up and over her head. She revealed the face of a middle-aged Mirialan woman. She sported red Sith tattoos that covered the entirety of her face. "Now you know who you are fighting, Togruta scum."
The Earthling turned and looked at his companion. B'asia sensed it was the first time he had laid eyes on her face as well.
"Surrender and answer for your crimes here, Sith, and I promise you will have a fair trial once we have forced the Confederacy back off of Mars." B'asia pulled her lightsaber free and ignited its bronze blade. She didn't believe the first meeting of the Sith and Jedi in twenty-six years would end without a fight.
"A Jedi once promised that to my mother. A Togruta just like you." The Mirialan Sith spoke of events B'asia had no knowledge of. "For that, you will have no eyes tonight. You won't have ears or a tongue. You will wander the Light Side's afterlife blind, deaf, and dumb, and all the Jedi ghosts will know: this is the Jedi Knight, the fool who thought she could stand against a Knight of Ren."
B'asia didn't know what a Knight of Ren was. She still had so many questions about what these two were, how they had arrived here, what they were attempting to do, how they had gotten wrapped up with the Earthlings and just what in the hell the Sith were doing in this Galaxy. But she didn't have time for that, for at that moment the Knight of Ren attacked.
The Mirialan activated dual vibroblades from each of her shredder gauntlets attached to her forearms and unsheathed a vicious-looking morning star from her belt. With a twirl she whipped it above her head and brought it down directly towards B'asia's face. The Jedi was stunned by the suddenness and the ferocity of the attack. Acting on pure reflex she raised her lightsaber just in time to deflect the blow.
The spiked ball of the weapon sparked off her bronze lightsaber but didn't break against the superheated beam of the Jedi's weapon. The Sith's weapon must have been constructed from phrik or cortosis, B'asia realized. She didn't have time to dwell on it as the Mirialan was already circling for another strike.
The Sith advanced, lunging from one foot to the next to throw off B'asia's guard. With a flick of her wrist she thrust the morning star at B'asia's head, narrowly missing it as the Jedi ducked to the right. The Knight of Ren jogged a few meters away keeping her weapon at the ready and studying B'asia's defense for an opening.
She charged and leapt into the air. She swung her weapon so hard into the Jedi's lightsaber that the glowing blade nearly bounced back and struck B'asia in the face. The Knight of Ren landed and rolled away, pacing in a circle around the Jedi's defense.
For his part, the Earthling had drawn another fierce-looking bar-like weapon with a fearsome pick on its end. He looked ready to join the fray but the other Sith motioned for him to stay back. B'asia quickly determined which of the two Sith was master and who was the apprentice.
The Knight of Ren approached rapidly and swung at B'asia's feet. The Jedi deflected the blow and then countered the thrust from the Sith's shredder gauntlet at her head. The Sith wasn't fighting fair, but who ever said they would, B'asia thought.
B'asia swung a horizontal swipe at her opponent's torso, which she easily ducked but it put her on the defensive. She recklessly thrust one shredder gauntlet at B'asia which the Jedi deflected into the cobblestones covering the surface of the bridge. Sparks flew as the Sith scraped her blades across the roadway.
The opposing gauntlet flashed past B'asia's eyes. She narrowly dodged being stabbed in her montral.
B'asia lashed out with her own weapon causing the Knight of Ren to duck and back step. She caught herself and held her left gauntlet out towards B'asia while holding the morning star behind her head and resting atop her shoulders.
The Knight of Ren took a step forward and with all of her upper body strength swung the morning star to smash down into B'asia's lightsaber. The force of the impact drove B'asia back. Her boots ripped up cobblestones from the roadway as she was pushed backwards.
The Sith had over extended herself and B'asia saw her opening. She reacted on instinct crafted through thousands of hours under her mother's watchful eye in the training arena. She performed a Trakata, turning off her lightsaber just before making contact with the Sith's parry and reigniting it a heartbeat after it had passed the point of contact with the morning star and well inside the Knight of Ren's defense.
With a lunging thrust she stabbed the bronze point of her weapon into the Sith's shoulder. The armored Mirialan screamed, not in pain, but in anger.
"Master!" The Earthling rushed forward and placed himself between the two combatants. He held his weapon towards B'asia. He looked unsure and if B'asia had to guess he had never been in a real fight in his entire life. But then again, outside of sparring at the Temple, neither had she.
"No, get back, apprentice." The Sith ordered her Earthling minion.
Suddenly there was an explosion up river, followed by dozens more. Huge geysers erupted in the water as bombs fell along the waterfront. B'asia chanced a glance skyward to spot a formation of nearly twenty high altitude bombers cruising across the city casually emptying their bomb bays and unleashing death upon the city. The explosions were coming closer and closer and it was soon apparent that the falling sticks of bombs were going to strike the bridge.
The Sith grabbed the Earthling by the back of his collar and started to drag him back to the west bank of the river. B'asia started to follow but was suddenly faced with the rapid fire of the Sith's Earth allies firing blasters from cover on the far side of the river.
B'asia could deflect the bolts with well-practiced ease, but she couldn't drop her guard and pursue the retreating Sith. Not if she wanted to get off the bridge before the bombs hit. She started to run back towards the eastern bank to find cover from the approaching bombardment.
"Let's do this again sometime!" A voice called out to her. She realized it was the Earthling yelling over his own shoulder as he ran for his own cover. "If we ever meet again, I'm Finnigan."
"And I'm B'asia." B'asia didn't know why she told him that. It just came out. He stopped on the other side, performed a comical bow, and then vanished behind a pile of rubble. Six seconds later bombs started falling across the bridge, eventually dropping it into the Yos.
That had been the most horrifying experience of her life to square off against the Mirialan Sith or Knight of Ren or whatever she was. The Earthling, however, was intriguing. She could feel his deep hatred for the Empire and thirst for vengeance, though when his master squared off against B'asia, she felt none of his hatred aimed at the Jedi.
She needed to find her father, but that would be easy enough. After all, how far could he have gotten? She thought about the meeting with the Sith. One thing she was sure of, it wouldn't be the last time they'd meet.
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Up Next- We got to get out of this place