"What measure a man
Who rises with joy,
Sets eyes on distance,
And lusts for secret horizons?
What measure a man
Who suffers unyielding years,
Turns bitter with anger,
And bends to inescapable fate?
What measure a man who explodes
With violence and fatal life,
Burns fast and brief,
And scatters ashes across the stars?
What a measure a man
Before Xim?"
Lyechusas
Compared to the other creatures now held in the secret fortress at Abraxin, this new arrival seemed quite mundane. Just a human male, twenty to twenty-five years of age, hair too long for a soldier but otherwise there was nothing outwardly different from him and hundreds of other young men stationed at the facility. Yet he was the key to everything.
While the second captured starship was settled into its berth, the captives were offloaded from a second transport. The twelve Tyrants were loaded into a new cage and placed alongside their comrades. While separated by mesh frames they were put close enough to converse in the hope that they'd speak and let slip something important.
But Jaminere felt sure the real prize was this long-haired, plain-seeming young human. According to Colonel Belmenos's reports he'd been seen using strange powers, possibly equitable to those displayed by the red woman. Now it was time to find out how similar they really were.
It has been Oziaf's idea to perform simultaneous interrogations of both subjects. The T'iin T'iin had returned the red woman to the same room where she'd been tortured earlier, in the north wing of the compound, while a similar chamber had been hastily set up in the south wing to interrogate the young man. If they had any sort of mental connection with one another, Oziaf said, it would be observable by placing them in alternating duress.
Perhaps. Jaminere was also interested in seeing if this man responded to torture so violently. Most of all, though, he wanted to have a conversation. Recent events had become a puzzle and solving it might unlock seismic changes in the Empire and Tionese civilization. That he'd invested so much effort in chasing and collecting these pieces only heightened his enthusiasm. Finally he was starting to understand what enthralled Xim about the Tyrants and their ancient mysteries.
During the previous interrogation Oziaf had been alternately generous, coy, and cruel. Jaminere was not so mercurial, so once the human stirred to alertness while strapped down in his bed, he tapped a simple red button that sent ten seconds of painful electric shocks through his body.
The human twitched and retched for another thirty seconds after the shocks ended. When he stilled Jaminere bent close to the observation chamber's microphone and said, "That is a sample of the punishment we will deal if you do not cooperate. You should be aware of that before we proceed with the interrogation."
The man said nothing, but Jaminere hadn't expected him to. He went on, "You should also be aware that we know you can understand Tionese. I'll also assume you can speak it. Now, for my first question: were you born on any planet inside the Tion cluster?"
The man held his tongue, just like the woman. So it was going to be like this, then. Jaminere gave a small, annoyed sigh when he tapped the button. He watched on the camera-feed as the human twitched, spasmed, and bit his tongue to keep from crying out.
In a bored tone Jaminere said, "We can make this a test of your endurance, but that serves neither of our interests. So again, I'll ask an anodyne question. Please answer yes or no, or nod and shake your head. Are you native to this region of space?"
That time the young man said, "No. I am not."
"And where are you from?"
"Very far away."
Jaminere was inclined to believe him. He couldn't place the man's accent, and in his travels he'd heard many. "Why did you come to Tionese space?"
There was a long pause, and just when Jaminere was ready to press the shock button the man said, "We were chasing a generation ship."
"And this ship was from your region of space?"
The man hesitated again, then nodded.
After reviewing the whole sequence of events, Jaminere was inclined to believe it him so far. He moved on to the next stage. "Describe the companions you came here with."
He waited, but the man did not respond. Jaminere tapped the button and sent five more seconds of painful shocks through his system.
After the electricity died down and the man was panting hard under his binds, Jaminere asked, "What is your relationship with the Tyrants? How did you come to be in league with them?" He waited, watching the man's sweating face on the viewscreen. He was tempted to give another shock but instead asked, "Are you from a world still subject to their rule?"
The man exhaled. "No."
"Then why are you working with them?"
He waited patiently, but the man did not answer. Jaminere tapped the button and subjected him to ten seconds more agony. While the prisoner groaned in his cell, Jaminere changed audio channels and hailed the observation room on the other side of the facility.
Oziaf's voice was annoyingly chipper. "You called, Viceroy?"
"I'm performing the first round of interrogation on the prisoner. Have you observed any reaction in the woman?"
"I believe I have. There were certain points where her expression screwed tight, not quite as though she were experiencing pain. More as if she were remembering it." Oziaf added, "Of course, she may be as snout-less and beady-eyed as yourself, but she is not human. These expressions may mean something different on her."
"Have you conducted any interrogation yourself?"
"You mean have I shocked her? No. Her changes of expression appeared without external stimuli. At least, not stimuli we could measure."
They really were talking about beings with magic extrasensory powers. Jaminere couldn't believe it, all the more because one of them was a mere human, barely different from himself. The captured Tyrants seemed totally devoid of the magic legends attributed to them, but these two foreigners appeared to possess it instead.
It was as fascinating as it was frustrating. He told Oziaf, "Hold your interrogation for now. I'll call you again with the signal to start."
"Then I wait with held breath. By the way, I don't suppose you've churned up anything useful from him?"
"He's slightly more talkative than his partner. He says he's not from this star cluster, but he's been reticent beyond that."
"Then I suppose you should continue your work."
"Quite." Jaminere shut off the link and looked at the viewscreen. The human still lay prone, sweating, breathing deep but steadily. Interestingly his eyes were closed and the hands at his sides were half-clenched. It was as though he was in a meditative pose.
Did his powers allow him to ameliorate pain? That sounded quite handy, but Jaminere was more interested in how that man would respond if pressed. During the last session the red woman's psychic outburst had scared both him and Loreac out of their chairs; only Oziaf had retained his composure. This time Jaminere knew what to expect.
He hoped so, anyway.
He had more questions to ask, but that man had been recuperating for too long. The press of a button pulled him quite nastily from his meditative state and when the shocks were done Jaminere leaned close to his microphone and began the interrogation anew.
-{}-
The new batch of captives was placed in one large cage walled with a metallic mesh, then moved via truck to a massive warehouse-like chamber in which four other cages were also located. They were placed close enough to speak with the other prisoners and Shen could not keep the others in his cage from speaking to their comrades, but he prayed they obeyed the rules he'd laid down before they'd allowed themselves to be captured. They had to act as though the humans could overhear and understand their words, which meant nothing could be shared that would indicate help was on the way.
There was plenty to talk of besides, and Shen couldn't keep himself from joining those pressed against the cage's long wall. He did his best to peer through the densely-woven metal strands and recognize who was in the cage beyond.
He caught a green hide on a lean body and snapped, "Kaim, is that you? Kaim?"
The figure turned at the name. Shen grasped the mesh with both hands and pressed himself as tight as he could against it. "That is you, isn't it?" he said. "It's me, Shen."
"We never thought we'd see you again," Kaim said without relief. "They captured you as well?"
Like he'd told the others to do, Shen nodded. "There was nothing we could do. They placed a tracker on our escape ship."
Kaim hissed through his fangs. "These humans will use any deception..."
"Where is my mother? Have you seen her?"
When Kaim did not reply right away, his heart fell. Kaim said, "She was taken shortly after we arrived. Others have been too. They've taken thirteen of us, I think… None have come back."
His tone made it clear: Kaim believed they were all dead. Yet he asked, "Can you… feel if she is alive? Would you know?"
Before he asked any question too revealing, Shen said, "I think so." He hoped so, desperately, because in his heart he felt she was. He needed to believe that, because he'd come here to save her above all else. If his Force powers could not save his mother, then he might as well die here.
Kaim gave his friend too much credence; he sighed in relief. "I am glad. All of us have been worried. She is our only Elder left..."
"I know."
"What about the Scourges? Where are they?"
"I was going to ask you. I thought one was captured with you, the red human-like woman."
"We have not seen her either."
Their captors must have separated out the Scourges for interrogation or testing. He wondered what suffering they'd received, and wondered more about his mother.
"Where is Rone?" he thought to ask. "Did they take him away too?"
"No. He is in a different cage."
"And all of you here," he gestured to the other cages, "You are unhurt?"
"They haven't touched us yet," Kaim said bitterly. "They only take us one at a time."
"What about the machine we took from Endregaad?"
"We were trying to move it, as you requested, when they ambushed us." Kaim bent his head in shame. "I was… too slow to defend myself."
"It is all right," Shen told him, and dared wonder what would have happened if he'd just ignored that blasted thing when it crashed into Endregaad. That world's dusty plain seemed an idyll from which they'd been calamitously expelled.
Bleak thoughts were interrupted by a burst of electricity through the mesh walls of the cage. Shen and the others leaning against it jerked back in pain. More power sparked through Kaim's cage, forcing him and the others back. Words in incomprehensible Tionese boomed over a loudspeaker as the captives nursed their pains.
Maybe the shocks were a warning, or maybe these humans had heard all they wanted from the newcomers. Shen hoped this was not so, but it was out of his hands.
Everything was out of his grasp now except the Force. It was to that strange and frustrating power that he turned now. Separating himself from the others, Shen sat on the floor of the cage, closed his eyes, and tried to reach out with it.
He was never much good at this part. His mother had taught him that the Force was something you compelled to obey your will, but now he forced himself to sit placid and feel things. He sensed aggravation, fear, and boredom brewing all around him, which might have come from his fellow captives or just from himself.
Shen tried to reach beyond that and find something alien, something new.
There was pain beyond. He sensed that. Other minds writhing in agony, each reaching out desperately to the Force for succor. It had to be the other Scourges.
He thought on that young human called Erakas and how brave he was. When they realized they'd been tracked and that the enemy could swarm them any minute, Erakas had not rushed off with the other humans to save himself. He had stood his ground and offered himself to the enemy in the hope of saving one friend and dozens of strangers he'd been taught to despise.
These Scourges were made of something truly amazing. Could Shen himself be so strong?
It was time to find out.
He concentrated and reached beyond their pain. He stretched his awareness as far as he could, up and out and up, until he thought his mind was touching the cold void of space.
But space was not a void. There was one bright beacon of life there, more powerful than any he'd ever known. Shen reached out for it in his feeble, ignorant way, reached and reached and reached.
And with a tiny gasp, he felt it touch back.
-{}-
Mal-Oba Talyak floated in the empty space of the Gravity Scorned's expansive cargo hold, eyes closed, reaching out to the world below. The emergency screamer on the Hand of Light had led them true, and now they drifted high above a quicksilver marble nestled close to the misty veils of the Ihala Spiral. They were clinging to its sole moon for camouflage and had not yet been spotted. If such a thing occurred, Talyak had no doubt Ajek Kroller would slam on his burners and get them out of here as fast possible.
But for now they held. Freed from decks and bulkheads, even from gravity, Talyak was suspended in a yawning emptiness and cast his soul down to the planet. Kroller was still trying to get detailed sensor-sweeps of is cloud-swirled surface, but Talyak was certain the ones they sought were below. He felt a large mass of life clustered in one location and did his best to sort out those lives from a distance.
He felt what one would expect from a mass of sentient beings packed together: every emotion from boredom to ecstasy, with most middling in between. Determinedly, a little desperately, he sought out the young knights whom he'd allowed (yes, allowed) to be captured. He chased the remembered flavor of Erakas's earnest heart and Essan's self-torturing determination.
When he found them, he shuddered with the echo of their pain. They were being subjected to torture, both of them. Talyak was not easily roused to anger but his heart smoldered then. He suppressed his dark feelings as best he could and tried to send them some succor across the distance.
What he could effect was meager, but he sensed that they felt his presence and took some tiny strength from it. He also sensed that they were being kept far apart by their captors, which meant they'd be so much harder to rescue. His spirits wilted.
Then, astonishingly, a mind probed his. The touch was faltering and hesitant, and that was how he recognized it as Shen's. He still strained to wrap his mind around the young Rakata, as ignorant of his own potential as he was of his race's hideous past. Talyak thought himself free of prejudice, but the prospect of a Rakata learning the path of the light side strained his credulity.
Yet if he was going to liberate Essan and Erakas from the grasp of this evil empire, he would have to put his faith in the Rakata.
How strange the ways of the Force. In all his decades of theory, in all his apprehensive imagining prior leaving Tython, he'd never imagined a situation like this. Was this not proof that the Force shone eternally against the great nothing?
Talyak hoped, and with hope he touched Shen back. He felt the Rakata recoil but not withdraw entirely. He focused on that sole mind and spread his awareness out around it. Many other lives, Rakatan lives, were clustered around Shen, which meant their captors must have pent them all together. Perhaps they thought their so-called Tyrants cowed and focused their intent on the Jedi.
It was, Talyak supposed, what he'd have done in their place. It was also a weakness begging to be exploited.
Before allowing the Hand of Light to be captured, Talyak had removed the computer that translated between Tythan and Rakatan. He had also taken all of their so-called 'lightsabers' aboard the Gravity Scorned.
Once the plan came to him it was hard to refuse. He still yearned to save Essan and Erakas from their suffering, and he knew he'd blame himself forever if they died, but there was no way to rescue them both. He'd get only one chance to surprise his enemy and he could not afford to waste it going after one but not the other.
Shen and his Rakata offered a third way, the best way.
Talyak sighed in the empty hold. A small, reluctantly smile nudged his lips. Before leaving Tython, Master Sohr had urged him to surrender his sense of responsibility to the younger knights. All this time Talyak had resisted but finally he was forced to bow to that wisdom.
He would save Essan and Erakas by allowing them to save themselves.
Talyak opened his eyes, unfolded six bent limbs, and nudged himself toward the chamber's exit.
-{}-
Ajek Kroller was not a daring man. He had been once, and in his youth he'd accumulated a small collection of death-defying stories that would stand well against other spacers' cantina-spun yarns. All that had ended when Serena died. Danger felt too real afterward. Finding Vaatus in that dark pillaged freighter and making him into a son helped patch a wound in Kroller's heart, but it had also heightened his newfound sense of responsibility. Space was full of ways to die, and he'd protect his children from all of them.
Yet when Talyak floated into the Gravity's cockpit and explained his mad plan, Kroller did not spit refusal. He could feel Reina silently urging him on, and surprisingly Vaatus did too. And if he was being truly honest, he'd expected something like this from the moment they took a Jedi Master (whatever that meant) aboard.
So after Talyak was done explaining his plan, Kroller looked the alien straight in the eye and asked, "Are you sure you can do this?"
"Yes. Are you?"
Instead of answering honestly he said, "What the hell. Go back to the 'lock and make yourself ready."
So Talyak did, and when he signaled the preparation were complete, Kroller took the Gravity's throttles tight in hand and asked his crew if they were ready.
"I'm good here," Reina said.
"Turret primed and standing by," Vaatus said, voice hard.
"All right, then." He flipped the switch and set thrusters to burn. "Here we go."
The Gravity shot forward from its hiding place and rushed toward the planet below. The nav beacon sitting over this misty world was encrypted and he didn't even know its name, but he'd been able to run scans that marked only one artificial settlement on its surface. He chased those energy signatures now and added the push of his thrusters to the planet's natural pull.
He had no idea if they saw him coming yet. He'd waited until the orbiting Cadinthian dreadnought (probably the same one from the asteroid belt) had swung to the far side of the planet. That would buy him some time on entry; exit would be a tricker matter.
The cockpit shuddered all around him as the Gravity plunged toward the surface. Soon the porthole was filled with silver-gray cloud-swirls. It was highly unusual, not to mention unsettling, to have a faceful of planet. Normally when Kroller set down at a ground port he turned this face skyward, used the Gravity's sensors to guide its plunge down to the landing pad, and finally summoned a burst of last-second thrust to soften touch-down.
Kroller would really prefer not to have to stare at the planet he was dropping toward at several hundred kilometers per hour, but this was the way it had to be. As they buffered through the atmosphere flame washed everything away. He risked glances behind him, at Reina and Vaatus, and saw their attention glued firmly to their screens.
They fell straight from fire into mist. It roiled against his window and he prayed to every god that the altimeter on his instrument board was correct, because once there'd be no room to pull up after he breached the low, low cloud cover.
Instead he pulled back on his control yoke, then cut main engines and used direction thrusters to tip the Gravity from a daring plunge into a level position, holding five thousand meters over the surface. So his instruments said, anyway; the clouds were too opaque to tell anything.
But he pushed ahead, trusting his sensors to keep him above ground and to track the enemy base. Its energy output was like a bonfire on Kroller's thermal sensors and he had to wonder what Xim's people were doing down on their secret hideaway.
Then, all at once, he got his glimpse. Low, rocky mountains burst from the fog and he swerved to slip between two peaks. Then the slopes tumbled down into a dry basin and on that plain rose another set of mountains, these ones made of tiered metal.
Kroller slammed the retroburners hard. Deceleration nearly slammed his head into his console but he flew the Gravity low and slow over the base. He'd been to enough industrial worlds to recognize factories when he saw them and the highest metal peaks were tipped with smokestacks and fuel injectors to match the biggest ones on Barancar or Lorrad. Whatever Xim was doing in secret here, it was big.
Another complex, relative wide and low-slung, stretched between the industrial mountains. He'd kept an open comm channel with the airlock vestibule and he called, "Tell me when!"
"Now!" said Talyak.
They were over a thousand meters in the air and cutting over the middle complex. Finally, they were rousing fire from the facility's modest defensive turrets and flak was coming toward them in streams. He hoped they hadn't come all this way for the Jedi Master (whatever that meant) to commit suicide, but that was out of his hands now.
Kroller slammed the button, opened the airlock doors, and let the Jedi drop.
Then he flared engines and ran as fast as he could.
-{}-
Talyak plummeted like a Jedi Master should: gracefully.
Hard winds buffeted him as he dropped, limbs and tail splayed out like an eight-pointed star. He squeezed his eyes shut but saw everything through the Force. He nudged himself against the powerful gusts, directing his fall to the center of the Imperial complex. Like a missile he was locked and homing in.
And so he fell, directly to the place where the Rakata were being held prisoner. As he plunged he squinted through the harsh wind and spotted a collection of docking bays like honeycombs spreading between the factory-towers; most were empty but the wrecked Rakatan vessel, as well as the intact Hand of Light, were easy to spot. In the last seconds before he hit the roof he felt the upper-altitude winds recede and called on the Force for the final favor of deceleration. He still landed hard but used all six limbs to spread the pain of impact across his body.
For a moment everything was still and quiet. The Gravity Scorned had soared away and the facility's anti-air guns had gone silent. At ground level the wind was soft, almost gentle. When Talyak rose on two feet and looked around, fog shrouded every distance. Even the peaks of the nearby factories were half-faded.
He felt the Rakata beneath him. Shen was reaching out for him, asking what to do.
Be ready, Talyak sent, then swung the pack off his back and retrieved two of the Rakatan weapons. Lightsabers, the translation computer called them. A technically accurate term, but it felt fitting on a deeper level. Unlike the Forcesabers of old, these ones did not force a Jedi to summon his darker instincts to power it. Here he could wield a weapon of weightless blade yet remain fully in the light. Ironic that the Rakata of all people would develop them.
Talyak ignited sabers in his lower hands and stabbed them into the roof. They burned smoothly through the metal and he worked quickly to carve a circular hole through the ceiling. Then, less elegantly than before, he dropped.
The fall was shorter than expected. His feet jangled the top of a large cage made of intermeshing metal. The Rakata held captive immediately stirred in excitement. Talyak knew he didn't have much time so he acted quickly to cut through the mesh and drop into the cage itself.
"I have come here to free you," he called, and hoped the translator strapped to his chest was doing its job. The Rakata were frozen in shock, so he opened his pack and threw it to the ground. Four more lightsabers spilled into view.
"For you!" he said. "We fight!"
They understood that much. As a pack of young Rakata scrambled for the weapon, Talyak spun on the cage's size and quickly slashed an opening through. By now human guards, all armored in black and hefting powerful rifles, were rushing to stop them.
While the Rakata free their comrades in other cages, Talyak bought them time. He used the Force to knock the first wave of guards into the second, then threw himself into the third. By then they'd raised their rifles and were firing bursts of bullets. Metal slugs winged his shoulders and flanks, tearing through his clothes, cutting through his fur, and streaking bloodily through his skin. Minor wounds, so far. When Talyak reached the first patch of guards he swung both sabers in alternating arcs. They passed so smoothly through the mens' armor, it was like cutting through air.
Bodies collapsed around him. Talyak was stunned; it had never been so easy to kill. It shouldn't be so easy.
The Rakata, however, had no such complains. The ones with lightsabers threw themselves at the remaining guards and hacked them down. Others grabbed rifles awkwardly in three-clawed hands. The youth called Shen trotted up to Talyak and began speaking in his native tongue.
Talyak adjusted the translator to process his words. The mechanical voice relayed, "Most of us are free, but there are prisoners in other places. The Jedi are not here. My mother is not here."
"We will go find them," Talyak said. Now that the guards had been disposed of, he reached out to touch Essan and Erakas. He found them already alert to what was going on elsewhere in the facility, but he could discern no more than that.
"I must find my mother," Shen told him. "But the others must find a ship."
The only ship that would fly them out of here was the Hand of Light. Only the Jedi knew how to pilot it, and the Imperials would surely be scrambling to lock it down before the prisoners got near.
Which meant they had to move quickly. Talyak ached to rescue Essan and Erakas, but they do things these Rakata could not. They were Jedi and could, he desperately prayed, take care of themselves.
They would have to. Talyak handed one lightsaber to Shen. "Take this. I will get your people to my ship. Find our mother. Find my people."
The Rakata grasped a cool lightsaber in either hand. "I will try."
"You will do," Talyak said, and hoped the words came out encouraging.
It seemed to work. Shen hurried away and called to a group of comrades, all seemingly young and grasping either lightsaber or rifles. At the same time, Talyak heard heavy doors open and felt a wave of danger rushing toward them. A large portal opened and more soldiers rushed through. Instead of charging the escaped prisoners head-on they threw up riot shields and tossed grenades through the air.
Talyak stood his ground, raised four hands, and pushed back. The grenades reversed arcs and landed behind the soldiers. Light flashed, the ground shook, and smoke flooded the chamber. Rakata threw out ancient battle-cries and rushed their stunned and injured enemies.
The Jedi Master took his place alongside them.
-{}-
When the emergency call interrupted his transmission, Jaminere could barely comprehend what he was hearing.
"What do you mean they've escaped? How?"
"They had help," said Colonel Belmenos. "A starship dropped out of orbit and deployed, ah, an alien and it cut the prisoners free."
"What? Why didn't you call me?"
"It happened fast, sir, and now they're out of control."
"Lock down their ships and use any force necessary to stop them. That means lethal force. Get any fires teams you have down there. Now."
"I'm already on it. I promise we'll contain them."
"You'd better." Jaminere literally punched the comm link closed, scraping his knuckles against the console so hard they cracked to bleeding.
He tried to get his emotions under control. The Abraxin facility had only a modest security force; most of the troopers set to guard the prisoners had come from the Ascendant itself. Likewise its air defenses were minimal, because there should never have been a reason to need them. Abraxin was locked away from all but a select few who could decipher its encrypted hyperspace beacon. It should have been impossible for a ship to sneak in here and deploy. None of this made sense.
But neither did the young human he currently had strapped to the interrogation table. The youth had not demonstrated any telekinetic abilities like this scarlet partner, at least not yet, but he did seem to react, however faintly, to Oziaf's administrations on the woman. He'd never believed in telepathy and had dismissed it as pseudoscience, just as he'd dismissed the legendary powers of the Tyrants, which Xim seemed so fascinated by.
Well, now they'd captured Tyrants, examined them, and found no trace of those powers, but a human and an alien woman did. It was all utterly confounding and apparently a third of these magic foreigners was wreaking havoc in his base right now. That would fall on his head, yet how could he expect the unexpected?
He didn't think that that excuse would fly with Xim, and he'd do what he could to prevent this from becoming a total disaster. He looked at the camera screen and saw the young man staring narrowed-eyed at the ceiling of his cell, like he was concentrating. Maybe trying to summon more of his powers.
Jaminere didn't give him the chance. He stabbed another button and released knock-out gas into the chamber. They'd used the same admixture on the red woman earlier and had been lucky the concoction, designed for humans, had worked on her unknown physiology.
It performed perfectly on this man. He squirmed, shuddered, and closed his eyes. The bio-monitors attached to his bed confirmed that he was indeed unconscious.
One crisis averted, plenty more to go. Jaminere sighed and tapped open a comm line to the other interrogation chamber.
"Oziaf, in case you haven't noticed, we have a problem." The line buzzed faintly, emptily. He called, "Oziaf, are you there? Answer me, you damned rat!"
But Oziaf was not there.
-{}-
Essan felt it when Erakas appeared, and then Master Talyak, but she did not truly believe they might escape until she felt that great surge of chaos nearby. She knew then that it was time to act.
She'd been enduring the second round of torture in stoic silence, pulling the Force within herself to endure the periodic electric shocks and questions from that unreasonably chirpy voice. The shocks and question were both more mild than last time, she thought; it was as though they weren't really interested in interrogating her at all. That was a far cry from what Erakas was experiencing, if the echoed sensation of his pain was anything to go by.
Master Talyak was not so constrained. She felt him in the center of a whirlwind, but one he initiated and he controlled. She'd never felt the old Talid, known on Tython as contemplative and retiring, exude such raw power before. She borrowed what little of it she could, because getting out of here was going to be difficult. But at least she'd learned lessons from last time.
The shocks and questions both stopped at the same time she felt Talyak's storm surge elsewhere, which meant her interrogator was distraction. She used this reprieve to gather her strength, then punched outward in a single concentrated blow. Instead of breaking through a few of her binds, as she had last time, she put all her attention on a different target: the chamber's sole door.
One strong push was all it took to knock the thing off its hinges and send it clattering into the hallway beyond. From her vantage strapped to the bed, Essan could easily see the long straight outside corridor and the two guards rushing to restrain her.
They were in fact her liberation. Essan called on the Force again to smack their bodies together as they shouldered through the threshold. That stunned them without knocking them down, so she dragged the nearer of the two to her bed. At the same time she wrenched her wrists free of their binds and reached out for the man's belt, hauling him on top of her.
By then she'd definitely regained her interrogator's attention. Electric shocks surged through her other binds and the pain was so intense she nearly dropped her captive. Instead she pulled him closer so that the shocks leaped between their bodies.
She also found the remote control pad strapped to the man's belt and thumbed the biggest button she could find.
Her binds snapped open. She rolled off the bed and tossed the guard hard into the wall. The other one was surging to his feet but she was too frayed to call on the Force. Instead she reared back and delivered a powerful kick to his torso that knocked him against the opposite wall. She half-pounced and half-collapsed on him, then pulled the stout electrified baton from his hand and the slugthrower pistol from his belt. She was not familiar with either weapon, but she could learn fast.
As she stood up, still wobbling on unsteady legs, she realized several things. One, an emergency alarm was wailing. Two, air hissed beneath it, and she knew the chamber was being pumped full of knock-out gas. Three, the chaos down below was growing. The Rakata were fighting fiercely and Talyak was leading them on. The facility was throwing as many people as it could against the prisoner insurrection.
Whether that would make her escape easier or harder remained to be seen.
Weapon in either hand, Essan rushed down the corridor, back bent, peeking around each corner. The maelstrom below was like a beacon and she tried to follow it, though the interior of this place was an unfamiliar maze.
She found a stairwell and hurried down two flights. If Talyak was here it meant the Hand of Light was too, and the Master would be leading a charge to the ship. If she could meet up with them—
A door one flight below swung open. Boots clapped and echoed up the stairwell. She ducked up one flight and threw herself into the nearest door and the blank corridor beyond. Her heart pounded fast and she prayed they would pass her by.
They didn't. The door swung open. She knew her only hope was to charge them while they tried to pass through the doorway so she attacked, first with a push of the Force to knock them back into the stairwell, then using the stun baton to shock them. Yet something in their armor proved resistant to the electrification, and her meager tunic was no insulation at all. The first soldier through the door swung his own baton into her stomach. Pain doubled her over and spasms ran through her body. Then came the punch to the face that nearly knocked her off her feet.
She defended herself madly, frantically. She raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger again and again, filled the corridor with thunder-cracks until she'd emptied the magazine and filled the air around her with gunsmoke. Her barely-aimed shots had dropped a few soldiers but more came. They surged around her like a black storm and began to rain down blows with their electrified batons.
She begged the Force to help with withstand the storm, but there was only blow after blow. She dropped to her knees and still the attacks came. She had a vision of herself standing alone before the storms of Tython, Forcesaber in hand, brave and resilient against anything the ancient world could throw at her.
Vanity, she thought. It had nearly killed her then, and it would doom her now.
She curled up on the floor, hands over head and knees to chest, pain overwhelming her, darkness clouding her vision and her thoughts. Use a bullet, she urged her attackers. Better to end like this than beat her back into her cell.
Then a new storm came. Billowing clouds of determination and rage swelled up the corridor from the far end and collided with the first set. They clashed and thundered against each other, creating a hailstorm of body-blows and cracking guns, falling blades and crackling batons.
That was how she felt it in the Force. When she opened her eyes and lifted her head she couldn't believe what was happening all around her.
A mob of Rakata, wielding captured guns and blades of pure light, cut down her attackers one-by-one. Those fierce swords—not Forcesabers butsomething else—made quick work of the soldiers' armor. A heavy body fell atop hers but a Rakata swooped down, grabbed both her legs, and pulled her free.
The battle was over in moments, and only one storm remained. Essan, too battered to stand, huddled on the floor, staring up at all those nightmare-faces now looking at hers with concern.
One of them, a saber-wielder with blue skin, crouched to his haunches and looked her closely. His mouth worked soundlessly before he forced out a word in Tythan.
Just one word, but it was enough. He said, "Mother."
-{}-
"We have them pinned down inside their ship, sir," reported Colonel Belmenos. "All exterior guns have been trained on the berth. As soon as they fly up and try to run, we can shoot them out of the sky."
That was no comfort to Jaminere. The Tyrants should have been stopped before they reached their ship, and while he'd rather shoot it down than let them escape he'd have much, much rather preferred to keep that ship intact. The limited surveys Loreac's engineers had been able to perform suggested there was much more they could learn from it.
"Do everything you can to keep them from taking off," he told Belmenos. "Do you know why they haven't already?"
"No, sir," admitted the colonel. "It's possible they'd waiting for more of their own."
Jaminere hoped so, because they'd be waiting an extra-long time for their young compatriot. He looked to the other side of the room he'd hastily moved both himself and the captive to. The youth lay face-down and unconscious on a firm examination bed, hands trussed behind his back and a second set of fibercables tied around his ankles.
This was no interrogation chamber, but a medical examination room in the administration tower of the south factory. Jaminere had only wanted to get the prisoner (and himself) as far away from the mob of Tyrants as possible. They'd already lost control of the woman and couldn't afford to lose this one too.
He'd seen neither whisker nor tail of Oziaf. If that scarlet witch had killed him on her rampaging escape, nobody had reported his body. Yet Jaminere doubted that Xim's Special Plenipotentiary was dead. That canny T'iin T'iin was the ultimate survivor; he'd often supposed Oziaf would outlive them all.
When the door to the medical room swung open he half-expected to see the rat scampering in on all fours, but instead it was Loreac, looking as frazzled as Jaminere had ever seen him. His long hair was tangled and his spectacles exaggerated the wildness in his eyes.
"Have they corralled the Tyrants yet?" the director asked.
"Yes, corralled them inside their own ship. But they haven't tried to run yet."
Loreac frowned. "We'd have to shoot them down, wouldn't we? A pity to wreck that ship..."
"We'll do what we have to." He glanced warily at their captive, wondering when he'd come out of his sleep and what he might do. A part of him wanted to kill the youth right now to avoid the risk, but no, he was too valuable alive.
He turned his attention full to Loreac. "We have all manpower focused on the Tyrants, but I still want this man under guard. I'm leaving that to you."
"You mean…. ah." His eyes got even wider. "We've tested the prototypes, of course, but never in an uncontrolled environment."
"There has to be a first time and this is it. Get two of them up here. Post one inside the room and one outside."
"Outside? You think someone can break him out? We're a long way from the battle zone here."
Amazing how a man so clever could refuse to see something if it veered too outside his ordered worldview. "Just do it," Jaminere said. "We have no idea what these monsters are capable of."
-{}-
Shen could feel his mother up ahead, and she was guiding him to her. He didn't know if the Force worked that way, but he believed it adamantly. Quoll was a beacon and he followed her light down the winding corridors of the enemy base. Alarms wailed overhead and sometimes his group collided with handfuls of enemy soldiers but the bulk of them, it seemed, had been sent against the larger escape attempt.
The humanoid woman Essan was also helping. She'd been badly beaten during her own escape but she limped ahead, sometimes clutching Shen's arm or Rone's for stead. And on the rare times when Shen reached a forking path and hesitated, she pointed where to go.
When they reached the final door it was unguarded and easy to break down with a few sweeps of a lightsaber. Shen kicked the door inward and it clattered to the floor of the cell. Crouching just beyond its toppled plane was Quoll. She looked up the entourage that had come for her in disbelief, and from her tattered clothes and the bruises on her skin it was clear she had suffered in her captivity.
Yet she still sprung to her feet and wrapped both arms around her son. He embraced her in turn, and she rasped in his ear, "You have come. How did you come?"
"The Scourges," he said. "They have come to rescue us all."
She pulled away from him and looked to Essan, who slumped against a wall and watched them through the black tangles of her hair. She said something in Tythan that Shen could not understand.
Quoll could. "We must get to their ship," she said.
"Your mother's right," added Kaim, whose lightsaber twitched anxiously in his hand. "There's only one way out of this place."
"Then we'll go." Shen looked at Essan and asked, "Can you get us there?"
Quoll translated the question, and the response: "I will try."
It was good enough.
They began by retracing their path through the building's maze of corridors and stairwells. Emergency alarms fared all the time but by now they'd all tuned out that noise and listened for the rumble of approaching feet, but passage back to the ground-floor warehouse was surprisingly easy. Yet Essan warded them off before they returned to that large chamber. There was another way, she said.
Shen did not believe she'd explored this section of the facility before; rather she was using the Force to guide her to her fellow Jedi, Master Talyak. He felt her reaching out and marveled at the strength and ease at which she did it. Though she limped along only with Kaim and Rone's help she guided them unerringly, avoiding skirmishes wherever possible.
As he helped his mother along Shen asked her, "Were we once so strong?"
"Perhaps," Quoll told him, "though I think our ancestors used the Force in other ways."
"You mean violence?"
"Physically. Spiritually. And I suspect… it took its toll."
"Is that why we lost to the Scourges?"
"Who can say? Perhaps you will discover that yourself."
"With your help, of course…"
"I think you are moving beyond me now… becoming something new."
"I don't think—"
"That is good, my son," Quoll said firmly. "It is for the best. I could only ever look backward."
That was when Kaim said, "Everyone, hold."
He and Rone crept carefully toward a sealed double-door locked by a metal gate. Shen did not have to get any closer to hear the crack of gunfire from the other side. The Force told him little else, but Essan said something.
"We are almost at the ship," Quoll translated. "They are... waiting for us."
"Then we go to them," said Rone. He pulled something from the utility belt he'd stripped off a human soldier. It was a simple metal sphere, but they all knew exactly what it could do. A few others drew out looted grenades, while others hefted stolen rifles.
Shen put both hands on his lightsaber. For some reason, that alone seemed right.
It was going to be a mad rush to the ship. Some of them would not make it. He looked to his mother, whose jaw was set in hard determination, then to Essan, who still had to brace herself against the wall with one hand.
He gestured to Kaim and said, "Take care of her. Get her to her ship."
Kaim glanced at the woman, then nodded. If Essan sensed they were talking about her, she did not interject.
Rone, meanwhile, primed the grenade and asked, "Are we ready?"
"As we can ever be," said Quoll.
Her authority was all they needed. Rone pounded the control panel and the metal gate creaked up into the ceiling. Then they pushed through the double-doors.
Shen had expected a frenzy, but it was something else to dive into that maelstrom of whistling bullets, gunfire, shouts and screams. The Hand of Light sat within a cradle beneath the planet's misty skies but was surrounded by humans shooting at it with handheld rifles from behind whatever cover they could find. This was actually a good sign: it meant that Talyak and the escaped prisoners had retaken the ship itself. Figures half-shrouded by smoke returned fire from beneath the Hand, using the lowered ramp and landing struts for meager protection.
The entrance of Shen's group turned the whole battle. Their arrival clearly took the humans by surprise, as did the grenades Rone and two others hurled at the largest nests of soldiers. The landing pad thundered; flame and smoke filled the air. Shen ignited his lightsaber but did not slow to fight. He grabbed his mother by the arm and pulled her along as he sprinted for the Hand of Light.
No one bodily tried to stop him. The soldiers recovered from their shock by scampering for further cover and pumping out more fire from their rifles. Shen heard bullets sing close, then heard a grunt from behind and felt his mother stumble. He pulled her toward the so-close entrance, though she staggered and bled from a shot to her leg.
When they reached the ramp a few others were hurrying up the metal slope. Shen lowered his mother onto it, handed her his lightsaber, and said, "Get inside! Hurry!" then turned and scoured the smoke-filled scene for Essan.
He saw her crawling toward him on elbows and knees, face wrenched in pained determination. The body sprawled in a blood-pool five meters behind her might have been Kaim's. Shen snarled in frustration (there was no time for grief), then threw himself across the floor. Flat on his stomach, he skittered to a halt beside Essan and waved one arm for her to get on his back.
She seemed to understand. The red woman pulled herself over his shoulders. Shen grunted under the weight but pressed palms flat against the ash-strewn floor and pushed up.
Humanoids were small compared to his race, but it was still a struggle to carry her, especially when bullets flew constantly through the air. He knew they must have been a tempting target so he pumped his legs and charges as fast as he could.
Just as he neared the ramp he spotted one black-shelled human emerge from the swirling smoke on his left flank. The rifle sparked with exhaled bullets. There was no chance to dodge.
Then a body interposed itself between him and his attacker. A tall blue form collided with the armored human and a lightsaber hummed briefly between them before both figures slammed to the deck.
Shen knew instantly it was his mother.
As soon as he reached the ramp and bent low and rolled Essan off his shoulders. Without checking to make sure she was alright he ran back out to Quoll. She lay beside the fallen human, face-up, eyes still open and chest still moving, though it was now rent by bullets and spilling out blood. Her hand, improbably, clasped the lightsaber still.
Shen scooped her up in his arms and carried her up the ramp, into the ship. As soon as they reached the first cabin he dropped to his knees and lay his other on the floor. So much blood. Her hands lost their strength and the lightsaber rolled across the floor.
"No, no, no," Shen repeated. He bent over her, stroking her face but not daring to touch her blood-soaked chest. "Why did you do that? Why?"
"You…" Quoll moaned; blood leaked from her mouth. Even as they stared into his, her eyes lost focus.
"I was only trying to save you," Shen choked.
"You… future… I give… everything… to…"
And then she was gone. She passed with a tiny shudder and a cessation in the Force. To Shen, it felt like the bottom had dropped out of his world and he was falling deep. He did not even notice when the ramp swung shut, the ship rumbled from within, and they pushed clear of the battle into unfriendly skies.
-{}-
Essan stood in the corner of the chamber, aching body braced against the wall, watching Shen bend over his dead mother. His crooked back shook but she could not see his face and found herself wondered if Rakata could shed tears. That they could feel keening grief was undeniable. Shen bled agony in the Force.
It was so hard to watch she had to turn away. As she did, the Hand of Light shuddered around her and began its push-off. She had no idea how many prisoners had been rescued, but the halls of the ship were now packed with Rakata and on her way to the cockpit she staggered and sometimes stumbled over the bodies of their wounded.
When she reached the cockpit she found only Talyak at the main helm station. He kept them low over the enemy base, away from small arms fire but beneath the arc of its scattered anti-air towers. Dropping into her familiar seat was relief like she'd never known, but there was no chance to indulge.
"Where is Erakas?" she asked, skipping all greeting.
"He is in danger. I believe he is still held captive."
Essan was too exhausted to reach out for him in the Force. It took all her effort to assuage the pain of her broken ribs and bruised organs. "Can you find him?" she asked.
Talyak stared through the window, searching the fog-wrapped factory rising before them. After a drawn-out second he said, "Yes," then urged the ship forward.
-{}-
Patience was a Jedi trait, but Erakas didn't realize how important it could be until right now. When he faded back into consciousness he did not open his eyes, twitch his head, or chafe against the binds digging into his wrists and ankles. He was lying face- down and he probably wasn't on the same bed as before, and though he yearned to open his eyes and look around he forced himself to stay where he was and listen.
"What do you mean they broke the line?" a man growled. "You should have intercepted them. No, no, I don't care. We'll get them as they run." It was the same voice that had interrogated him earlier, only more angry.
A voice he didn't recognize asked, "What happened?"
"More Tyrants broke through to the ship. It's taking off now."
"Then we'll have to shoot it down."
"I'm aware. If we're lucky we can pull survivors from the wreckage."
"But the equipment—"
"I know." A frustrated sigh. "This place has an observation tower, doesn't it?"
"Six storeys up. We can take the lift."
"Let's go."
Erakas heard boots slapping fast, just shy of a run, the opening of a door and then its closing. And then there was silence.
He didn't move even then. He waited and reached out with the Force. His mind and body were still groggy from whatever knock-out gas they'd used but he forced his mind to reach through the haze. He felt desperate minds blazing not far away; Essan and Master Talyak were the brightest among them.
It was true. They'd broken free, recovered the Hand of Light, and stood ready to escape to the stars.
He wanted to urge them to go on and run while they could, but he felt them reaching out for him, zeroing in on his location, and surging in his direction.
Erakas decided he didn't want to lay around and wait for rescue. He reeled his awareness back and felt the space immediately around him. There was nobody in the room, not even guards outside. His two captors from a minute ago were far away.
Finally he opened his eyes, lifted his forehead off the firm bed, and exhaled. He looked to his right then left and saw that he was lying on a medical table in some kind of small clinic. On his right side there was a desk with medical utensils and drawers; it might have something he could cut through his binds with. With a twist of hips and collar, he rolled himself onto one shoulder, then onto his back, and prepared to drop off the bed.
Standing in front of the door, so tall its head nearly scraped the ceiling, was a massive metal automatons.
Its proportions were roughly humanoid, with double-joined arms and legs, plus broad shoulders and square-topped head atop a thick metal neck. The head was faceless but twin lights shone side-by-side like eyes staring directly at him.
"Oh," he said.
The machine didn't move at first and he wondered if he dared risk it. Its arms, each three times thicker than his own, ended in grasping five-fingered hands and weapon emplacements jutted out from either wrist. Erakas sat upright slowly, arms still awkwardly pinioned behind his back. It still didn't budge. Still slowly, he tried swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.
Then the machines moveb. Three stomping strides were enough to bring it to the bedside and it pinned Erakas back with one powerful hand against his chest. The pressure was so much he was forced to breathe shallowly, and there was no room to wiggle out from beneath it. Those twin glowing eyes stared into his with soulless dispassion.
It seemed he was going to need rescue after all.
-{}-
Erakas was awake and in distress. Talyak knew that much, just as he knew the human was someplace low in the tower that jutted from one side of the factory complex. He'd flown the Hand of Light expertly, skimming just above the body of the facility and beneath the range of its anti-air cannons. Now they were face-to-face with where they needed to be.
He could see that Essan was in no condition for a fight. He told the Sith woman, "Please handle the controls. Be ready to run as soon as I return with Erakas."
"You'll get him alone?"
"I'll do what I must."
Because he'd done the proper thing, as Master Sohr had urged him back on Tython. He'd put aside his feelings, concentrated on the most important part of the mission, and fulfilled it. But Erakas was still in danger, and Talyak was the one only who could help him.
Essan tapped her controls. The Hand's forward plasma cannons fired and the building-face in front of them exploded. Smoke rose, rubble fell, and when debris cleared a portion of the exterior had been gouged open, displaying the twisted remnants of a lift tube and several exposed layers of hallway.
He looked at Essan. She said, "Whenever you are ready."
Talyak nodded once, then sprung from his chair. He hadn't felt this light in decades; sureness and the Force had returned to him the agility of youth. He moved down the ship's corridors as best he could, sometimes going around and other times over strewn Rakata escapees. When he got to the airlock vestibule he immediately opened the portal. Essan had pivoted the ship to give him a clear jump into the damaged building, and he reached out to sense Erakas.
Then something hard tapped his shoulder. He turned around to see Shen holding a lightsaber out for him to take. Another one was grasped in his other set of claws.
Talyak's eyes darted to the offered saber, the Rakata's unreadable face, the saber again.
Shen said something. The translator pinned to Talyak's chest (he'd forgotten he'd worn it) said, "I will come with you." The Rakata added, "I must save someone."
For the first time Talyak felt the young being's keening grief. So he nodded, took the offered saber in his upper-right hand, and drew another in his lower-left.
Then, together, they leaped into the fray.
Except there was no fray, no battle, no waiting soldiers. They'd all been pulled down to the landing complex and it would take them time to get here, especially with the lift disabled. Talyak guided them both to the lowermost of the exposed levels and they advanced quickly through a long straight hall now empty of everything except wind-blown debris. Erakas was very near and still in distress; he could feel that so clearly, despite not being able to tell what was threatening him.
Very odd, Talyak thought. Then he rounded a corner and understood.
It stood like silver-skinned statue nearly three meters high, with glowing dual eyes and arms raised. Long-barreled weapons protruded from its wrists and Talyak had just enough time to swing himself and Shen back around the corner before the guns unleashed sprays of bullets.
They slammed their backs against the wall and Shen panted. His translator asked: "Are they monsters?"
That summed it up. Automatons had been used on Tython for centuries but had not seemed to exist in the Tion cluster. The machines they faced now (surely the reason for these massive, secret factories) looked more advanced than anything the Jedi had produced.
More bullets sprayed. Powerful metal feet clomped toward them. Shen clasped his saber in both hands and looked to Talyak for guidance, desperation in his eyes.
There was no use saying it in words, so he tried to impart it through the Force. Distract, charge, fight.
Then he acted. He summoned a powerful burst of the Force and slammed the robot's heavy body into the wall. Talyak and Shen charged quickly and slashed with their sabers. To their shock, the energy blades, which had seemed to cut through everything with ease, could only grind slowly through the gleaming metal shells around the machine's arms and torso.
They were pressed too close to the machine to fire, but the robot swept out a powerful arm, knocking Shen in the chest and throwing him back. Talyak took what opening he could: he dashed in front of the machine and slashed up with both sabers, aiming not for its arms but the underside of its shoulder-sockets. Instead of sizzling against reflective armor the lightsaber-blades cut through interior servos and sparked electric cables apart. With one final push, Talyak severed the robot's left arm, and with it its weapons.
The other hand, however, was firing on Shen. The Rakata scrambled to get away but bullets tore through the skin of his left calve. Talyak didn't bother with finesse this time; his hefted both sabers into his upper hands and thrust them forward, blazing tips aimed at the same point between the robot's eyes.
Light scored through metal. The eyes winked out and the robot's arms fell to its sides. Just as Talyak had desperately hoped, he'd speared it through its primary processing unit. Shen, grunting, tried to rise and Talyak turned to the door through which he was certain he'd find Erakas.
Then the door swung open, revealing another towering droid. Talyak didn't have time to react; one powerful metal hand shot out and grabbed him around the neck. Suddenly he was choking and his feet kicked helplessly in the air. His lower hands pried uselessly at the metal fist now crunching his windpipe and his upper arms bashed the lightsaber against the sides of the robots' head, but that bright armor reflected his frantic blows.
He felt cartilage crack; blackness clouded his vision. He was a Jedi Master but his only weapon was the Force, and the Force was life, and life meant nothing against this artificial monstrosity.
Though his sight blurred and darkened he could see past the robot's shoulder. With its other massive arm, it pined Erakas by the chest to a medical bed.
Their eyes met. The Force flowed through them perfectly in their final moment: desperate, afraid, helpless.
Then a third joined their union. Shen raged to his feet and attacked the robot. His saber thrust upward into the arm holding Talyak, cutting primary servos and causing the limb to go limp. At the same time he tossed his other weapon under-arm. It flew right into Erakas's hand and the human pushed it against the underside of the robot's other arm, lifting it off his chest.
He slipped off the bed, then hacked madly yet ineffectually against the robot's gleaming flank. Yet with three saber-wielders attacking it the damaged machine was overwhelmed, and finally dropped to its knees once Erakas slashed the insides of its leg-joints.
As soon as it fell he bounded over the hunched, massive body and bent to the floor beside Talyak. "Are you all right, Master?"
Talyak's throat still ached, and his voice came as a wheeze. "I was going… to ask you… the same."
Erakas smiled in reply, and that smile didn't leave him when he looked back to Shen. The Rakata spoke, and the translator chimed in: "Can we go now?"
"Oh, yes," said Talyak. Erakas helped him rise, and together all three hurried down the hall toward the blown-open end of the hallway where the Hand of Light waited.
Essan had held the ship with its airlock nudged as close as possible to the ruined tower base. A Rakata was waiting in the portal, waving them ahead. Yet as they drew near Talyak saw what looked like surprise on that alien face; soon it began to wave is auburn limbs in alarm.
Talyak looked around to see one giant war-robot lurching toward them on jerky legs. Its right arm dangled limp at its side but the other was raised to shoot.
"Go!" Talyak shouted.
Shen and Erakas sprinted ahead, using the Force to extend their leap from shattered floor to safety in the airlock. Talyak swung his sole lightsaber to ward off the robot but it did not slow down. Bullets sprayed, catching his shoulders, flanks, his lower-right arm. There was no stopping this metal monster.
But he'd saved Erakas, and Shen too. They were young; they were the future. He was a Jedi Master and he had done his duty to safeguard them. That was enough. Wasn't it?
It would have to be.
Suddenly he was swept off his feet. With the Force, Erakas picked his battered body up and reeled him inside the airlock. The two Rakata pulled him deeper inside the vestibule and Erakas called, "We've got him! Take us away!"
But before Essan could spin the Hand of Light toward the sky, that horrible machine raced to the edge of the broken hallway and, impossible as it was, leaped. Explosive power shot through its legs to propel it across the gap. Talyak and the other watched in horror as one metal hand locked onto the side frame of the airlock. The rest of the robot swung to fill the gap.
The Hand finally turned and began to ascend. Wind whistled through the gap as the robot tried to force its oversized body through. Frantically, Talyak tried to knock it back with the Force but it held on tight to the frame.
Erakas grabbed two lightsabers and sprang. Their tips speared through the robot's head and its eye-lights died. Yet it still held to the side of the door and did not budge until the Hand made a drastic veer that unbalanced the machine and tipped its massive body into the vestibule. Talyak just barely managed to scoot out of the way before being crushed.
For a second all of them stared at the prone giant. Then Erakas lunged for the airlock controls and shut the outer door. Wind and clouds disappeared and he asked, "Master, can you stand?"
Talyak was battered and bleeding, too weak to stand, but he said, "I will survive."
But only if they got past that Imperial cruiser circling in orbit. They'd slipped around it before because they'd had the element of surprise. Now they'd have to fight past the hard way.
-{}-
"Tell me we can take them by surprise," said Vaatus, interrupting the tense silence that had reigned in the Gravity Scorned's cockpit.
"Not surprise exactly, but they've got other things on their minds," Kroller replied as he pushed the Gravity hard away from the planet.
After doing their aerial drop-off they'd continued to cut lower over the planet's surface, using fog to cloak themselves as they flew above its ridges and troughs. Kroller had reduced speed to limit their heat flare and set them into a low and stable soar while they watched for signs of action.
Action was happening now. The Hand of Light was racing away and the big dreadnought, the one marked on Reina's sensor board as the Ascendant, was swinging to intercept and deploying a set of quick-pursuit battlebirds. The Jedi's powerful ship would have a hard time against that, even as the Gravity shot away from the planet on a trajectory that would pass out of the dreadnought's firing range but tantalizingly close.
There was no telling if their distraction would actually work, but they were ready for anything, Kroller gripped his throttle tight, Vaatus had the guns prepped, and Reina was doing her part as well. She'd already locked on to a navigation buoy at Amarin and had plotted a course from there that would take them safely clear of the Imperials. But they'd only jump clear once the Hand of Light did too.
Her sensors marked that ship as well. According to her readings the Gravity would pass close to Ascendant first but those battlebirds could go either way. She watched her board, heart pounding, mouth tense. The Ascendant was holding firm to block the Hand and all the smaller ships were rushing to intercept the Jedi.
"They're not buying it," she told her father.
"You set yourself up as a nice, tempting target and they don't even want you," Kroller shook his head. "I'm insulted."
"Dad..."
"We can nudge a little closer. Vaatus, get ready to send some spray at those battlebirds."
"Got it," the Nikto said.
The ships veered and Reina clung to her crash webbing with one hand. Their adjusted course but two battlebirds near firing range, and within a minute she heard the muted chatter of the gun turret releasing two sets of rounds. At this distance critical hits were next to impossible, but it was a threat those Imperial pilots couldn't afford to ignore.
So she hoped, at any rate.
"Oh, we've got their attention," said Vaatus. "Both of 'em are veering toward us."
"I'll put on some distance." Kroller tilted his control yoke. "Get guns and chaff ready for any missiles. Reina, can you call our friends?"
"I'll try," she replied and adjusted her headset to bring to mic to her lips. She tapped her console and said, "This is the Gravity, calling Hand of Light." Something stuck in her throat before she asked, "Did you get everyone?"
And to her relief it was Erakas who said, "We've got enough."
She exhaled. "Good. We've got a lock on a jump beacon. Can you receive my signal?"
"One moment…. Yes, we've got it."
"Then lets gets the hells out of—"
"Missile incoming!" Vaatus called. "I'll try to shoot it down."
"Can't make hyperspace for another thirty seconds," Kroller said. "Stay on it."
As the ship began to veer and sway again, Reina told Erakas, "We're thirty seconds to jump. Can you follow?"
"We'll follow," he said, and the link closed without explanation. She looked at her sensors and saw the Jedi ship had engaged three battlebirds while two long-range missiles streaked from the Ascendant. Could they handle all that? They'd have to.
"Damn, I can't get it," Vaatus grunted as the turrets shuddered again.
"Use chaff if you have to," Kroller called.
Vaatus's response was between a grunt and a whine as Kroller twisted the ship in desperate evasive, but here in high orbit there were no asteroid to duck behind, nothing to turn to their advantage. Alarms screamed loud and proximity lights flashed a bloody, mortifying red.
"Chaff!" her father shouted.
Vaatus pulled a lever and released a cloud of metal fibers behind them. For an agonized heartbeat nothing happened; then the entire ship shook violently with the concussive force of an explosion.
But not their explosion, only the warhead caught in the chaff cloud behind them.
"Remind me never to do a good deed again," her father said as he turned the Gravity on a straight shoot away from the planet.
At the same time a voice came over her headset. "Gravity, we are clear and ready to jump."
"Great. Stand by." She flipped back her mic and pleaded to her father, "Can we go now?"
"Absolutely," Kroller said, and one final acceleration carried them free.
-{}-
Jaminere saw the two ships wink into hyperspace from the confining safety of the factory watchtower. He stared at that sensor board for only a second before the confirmation call came from the Ascendant, but it seemed to last much, much longer.
When Captain Sovane's voice came on the line the young man said, "I'm very sorry, Viceroy, but we were unable to stop either from escaping. They split our forces and the Tyrant ship was unlike anything my men were prepared to fight."
"I'm aware," he said. After all, it was the third time that ship had escaped from their grasp. When it had been taken so easily at Mullan, he should have taken that as a warning sign. But no, he'd been so eager to capture the mysterious foreigners and decipher their puzzle.
They still held a few pieces, he reflected after closing the line to the Ascendant. The larger, wrecked vessel still sat in its berth and would be taken apart, every bolt and computer circuit analyzed. Fresh corpses of dead Tyrants could be collected and examined down to the genetic level. The generation ship which had started all of this was still in their possession, as was the computer core it had ejected to Endregaad, though its contents had yet to be deciphered. And, he supposed, they'd gotten an informative test-run on Loreac's new war robots.
He turned away from the comm console to see the director bent over a video screen, reviewing security footage of the battle between his two automatons and three magicians. Yes, three; Jaminere had already watched those events as they happened and it was clear that one Rakata, at least, had the same telekinetic power as the young human and six-limbed alien, and of course the red witch who'd gotten away.
There were at least four of them, then. There might be many more. It was not a welcome thought.
Loreac, however, seemed thoughtful. "There's definitely lessons to be seen here," he said. "The head is a weak point. It's too exposed. We should move the central processors into the torso beneath additional armor. Of course, we'll have to shift something else to the head..."
"The kiirium alloy resisted those energy blades," Jaminere pointed out. "Of course, they still found weak points."
"We'll see what we can do about those. Thankfully, a few of those weapons got left behind. We'll have to examine them thoroughly."
Jaminere sighed and leaned against the wall. "How gracious of our enemies to provide us with these lessons before we started large-scale production."
"Yes. If only it made up for all the other damage they did," Loreac frowned. "Well, the factory itself is unharmed. Research and production wings, assembly lines… Everything is fine. I hate to say this, but today could have been much worse."
He was right, but Jaminere took no comfort when he thought of the explanations he'd have to give Xim. They'd come closer than ever to attaining the object of his dreams only to let it slip through their fingers.
But he'd have to face his friend and tell the honest truth. He'd always tried to do that; they'd been through too much together, and their fates were too closely bound. Twisting or abusing that connection would defile everything he'd done to get this far; every price he'd paid, and made others pay. He could no more lie to Xim than to himself.
A signal from the communications console jarred his thoughts. He opened the hail and heard a familiar chirping voice. "This is the Special Plenipotentiary, hailing the First Viceroy. I hope I have the right line."
"Oziaf. I was beginning to think something had happened to you."
"Your concern is touching, Viceroy, but I got out with all my fur intact."
"I suppose you left the guards to fight that red witch and her Tyrant friends?"
"Yes, and though I flushed with shame I reminded myself you were doing the same thing. That is what you did, isn't it Viceroy?"
Jaminere sighed. "So it was. You know what this means, of course. We'll both have to answer for what happened today."
"I know," Oziaf said soberly, "and I'm already drafting my response. If there's nothing else to say for now, I'll leave you to prepare yours."
"Very well, though I'd like to compare notes before we face judgment."
"I'll make sure it's arranged. Until then, Viceroy."
The channel clicked off. He looked at Loreac, who was still engrossed with the footage of his robots. Jaminere felt a tinge of envy toward a man untainted by the complications of politics.
But he'd face them all the same, and he'd tell the truth because he owed it to Xim and himself. And then he'd face whatever judgment Xim dealt out. And he'd survive, and they'd continue together on a path that had already been paved by so many bodies. And at the end of the path?
He did not know. He thought he had once, but that was so long ago he couldn't imagine what his life might be beyond war and service. Those was the path he had chosen. Xim had led him along, but every step had been his. Every step and every choice.