The timing could not have been more unfortunate. One of the squadrons of patrolling troops happened to spot Janna. With limited cover, a stormtrooper rising up the side of a tree were not difficult to spot, and any stormtrooper not in search/patrol formation was obviously not, in fact, a real stormtrooper. Janna was just beginning her ascent up the tree when blaster bolts began to pelt the trunk and the fence behind her.
"Kriff!"
Janna knew she would never make it up to the branch without being struck. With no other choice, she let go of the blaster rifle and dropped back to the ground. Scrambling to her feet, she wedged herself into the corner between the tree and the security fence. There was just barely enough space to fit her entire armored body.
"Hovis, help! I'm trapped!"
Standing on the branch above her, Rosado could see that his friend was in trouble. Her blaster rifle finished its ascent via the grappling cable and came to rest against the tree branch. Hoping he hadn't been spotted yet, he quickly retrieved it and returned fire on the attacking troopers. He wasn't very successful in shooting any down, but he did manage to halt them from advancing any closer and draw their fire away from Janna below. Standing on the branch, he had the advantage of cover which Janna did not.
Between shots, he grabbed the end of the ascension cable, pulling out its length by hand. "Janna! Catch!" He dropped the end of the cable down to her.
Janna threaded the cable through the belt of her armor and tied it off. "I'm ready! Hoist me up!"
Rosado rested the blaster rifle atop another branch at roughly his eye level, pointed in the general direction of the ever-growing numbers of attacking troopers. He triggered the cable to retract, holding the blaster in place braced against the branch and squeezing off shots to hold the attackers at bay. He couldn't really aim, but there were now so many stormtroopers that a few went down just by sheer luck.
Janna, meanwhile, tried to hold herself behind the tree trunk and out of the line of fire, guiding herself up the tree with her hands and feet as the cable pulled her up. It became easier once she cleared the top of the fence and could circle all the way behind the trunk, at which point Rosado ceased fire and held the blaster rifle directly above her so that the cable would not become jammed.
"I sure hope someone is gonna be here to pick us up, like, soon!" Janna yelled over the sounds of impacting blaster bolts as Rosado bent down to help her onto the tree branch.
"Me too!"
Marco squinted, leaning forward over the hand controls of the BARC speeder. He inched the bike forward, trying to get a better view. He thought he had seen a glimmer of stark white armor through the foliage around him. Hesitantly, Marco edged forward until the nose end of the speeder was poking out from the tree line.
A pair of stormtroopers were on the lowest branch which hung over the security fence, one bent over to help the other climb up to their level.
Gotcha!
Marco quickly pushed the throttle forward, and the bike howled as it tore from the foliage.
"Did you hear that?" Janna asked as Rosado grasped her hand and hauled her up onto the branch. "Sounds like a speeder bike!"
But beneath his helmet, the color had drained from Rosado's face. He had indeed heard something, but it wasn't the sound of an approaching speeder. He risked a careful glance around the tree trunk and his fears were proven correct.
Stomping slowly toward the tree from around the side of the factory was a huge, gray walker.
An AT-AT.
Janna paid it no mind. She was looking in the opposite direction, out past the fence. Marco was waving to her as the speeder bike raced toward the tree. "Our ride is here!" she said happily, but Rosado didn't hear her.
"Janna! We gotta-!"
A huge chunk of the base of the tree trunk exploded as a huge laser impacted the ground just in front of it. The massive tree shuttered violently, and both faux stormtroopers quickly grabbed onto smaller branches overhead to keep their balance.
Having been alerted to the intruders' location, Lieutenant Sherrod issued orders to his troops as he watched through the windows of the command deck. "That's it," he told the AT-AT pilots. "Shoot out the bottom of the tree so it falls inside the fence. I want them captured!"
"Yes, Sir!"
The huge laser canons barked three more times, sending their payload into the target. Janna and Rosado couldn't move, lest they fall from the tree. The base of huge tree trunk exploded into splinters a little more with each hit, until enough had been blown away that the trunk could not support the top-heavy weight above it. As if in slow motion, the wooden colossus began to tip toward the center of the Imperial facility.
"AAAAHHHHHHHH!"
They held on for dear life as the branch on which they stood began to rotate from horizontal to vertical.
Marco was only a few dozen meters away when the tree began to fall. He watched in horror as his friends rose higher into the air, pitched skyward by the falling tree.
"NO!"
He gunned the throttle to full power, skimming along close to the fence in the hopes that his friends could jump right into the bike's sidecar, but it was too late. By the time he passed under the spot where the branch had just been, it was four stories in the air and the tree had titled to a forty-five degree angle and was still on its way down.
"Kriff!"
A deafening crash accompanied the tree's impact with the ground. The shock knocked loose Rosado's handhold and he found himself violently pitched forward into a mass of shattered branches and leaves. Once again, he was lucky to be clad in stormtrooper armor, as it protected him from being impaled on the many sharp and pointy things below him.
The fall still hurt, though.
"Owww…" he moaned when the ride finally came to an end. Gingerly picking up his head, he looked around for Janna, but couldn't spot her. "Janna?"
The next thing he knew, Rosado was being yanked out of the pile of broken branches. He was set roughly on his feet and a set of binders were clamped onto his wrists. A stormtrooper held onto his arm. Janna, similarly restrained with binders and a stormtrooper escort of her own, stood beside him to his right. Another two dozen stormtroopers circled them, each one holding their weapon trained on the two imposters.
A trooper wearing the orange shoulder pauldron denoting him as a captain stepped forward and pulled off Janna's helmet, dropping it unceremoniously to the ground. At ground level, the air was not quite as smokey, but it still burned eyes and throat, and Janna began to cough. The captain removed Rosado's helmet as well, and the former Imperial joined his companion in gagging on the putrid air.
"Who are you?" the trooper demanded.
"Jabba the- *cough* Hutt," Janna choked out.
The captain glared. He removed the each of the prisoners' utility belts to relieve them of any small explosives or weapons that may be concealed within. "Take them inside," he said to the stormtrooper holding Janna. "The Lieutenant will want to question them."
"Affirmative. Let's go."
The troopers roughly shoved the pair toward the tower. "Get moving, you."
As the tree and his friends disappeared behind the fence, Marco hauled the throttle back and triggered the inertial dampers, bringing the speeder bike to an abrupt stop.
The young Jedi wracked his brain. He needed a way inside the fence, but with the facility on lockdown, the security gates had blocked off all entrances. Sure, he could lightsaber his way through the fence, but it would take too long to cut a hole large enough to get the bike through, and the enemy would almost certainly spot his emerald blade poking through before he finished.
How am I gonna get in there…?
A little further along in the direction Marco had been traveling was a large rock embedded in the swamp floor. His eyes drifted a little further into the brush where he spotted another tree; not as huge as the one inside the fence, but tall enough.
"Yeah…yeah, that could work."
Marco zipped over to the base of the tree and hopped off the bike. He ignited his lightsaber and held the blade horizontally high above his head. He dragged the blade downward through the tree back-to-front, creating a long, beveled cut. This carefully cut angle had two effects: the tree fell in the direction of the rock formation, and also created a gentle slope at the bottom for the speeder bike to travel up.
When the tree began to tip, Marco extinguished his blade and used to Force to gently guide the tree down. With the top end leaning against the rock outcropping, he now had a perfect ramp from which to jump the fence.
Figuring he'd probably need it again fairly soon, Marco kept his lightsaber in hand as he took up his mount. He piloted the bike as deep into the brush as he could before it became too thick to traverse. He whipped the speeder bike around, pointed its nose at the bottom of his makeshift ramp, and gunned the throttle to full power.
Marco held onto the handgrips for dear life as the BARC speeder rocketed forward. It shot up the length of the tree-ramp in under a second and sailed into the air.
The captives and their stormtrooper escorts had barely taken five steps when the sound of a repulsorcraft caught the attention of every being within earshot. Dozens of stormtroopers turned in the direction of the noise and were shocked to see a large, Republic Army BARC speeder sailing through the air over the fence.
Marco, too, was surprised, for he had gained quite a bit more altitude than he'd anticipated. He'd cleared the security fence by over fifteen meters.
"Ohhhhh kriiiiiiiff!"
Even at full power, the repulsors would not be enough to keep the bike from colliding, likely quite painfully, with the ground. So Marco made the decision that it would be preferable to bail out. He pushed off from the foot pegs and away from the bike as it fell. The BARC did indeed hit the ground, overloading the repulsors and killing the power. It bounced and flipped over before landing on its side and sliding along the ground, coming to a halt with the sidecar pointed skyward.
Marco used the Force to slow his ow decent and landed about two dozen meters from where Janna and Rosado currently stood, his friends' mouths agape in shock. Their stormtrooper escorts released their hold on the prisoners, bringing their blasters to the ready as the other troopers in the vicinity quickly shrugged off their shock and rushed to surround Marco.
"Freeze! Hands where we can see 'em!" barked the stormtrooper Captain.
Marco raised his hands as instructed, very slowly, as his eyes scanned the crowd of stormtroopers for his friends. They weren't difficult to pick out. They were the only troopers not wearing helmets, and they were looking right at him. His cybernetic eye could pick out the binders securing their wrists.
The stormtrooper Captain produced another pair of binders and stepped forward to apprehend Marco. Guess I lost the element of surprise. Oh, well. Nothing to do now but lean into it.
The trooper captain froze in his tracks as the emerald blade of a lightsaber suddenly ignited in the boy's hand. "He's a Jedi!" he yelled, taking a step backwards. "Blast him!"
The noise from several dozen blasters firing at the same time echoed across the nearby landing pad, but not one found its mark. Marco leapt into the air, sailing over the heads of the stormtroopers standing between himself and his friends, and landed atop of supply crate. A few of the shots took out stormtroopers standing on the opposite side of the circle.
Before the Imperial soldiers could refocus their aim, Marco pulled something from his belt.
"JANNA!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.
Her vision was a bit blurred from the smokey air, but Captain Ordonia had been intently watching her Jedi friend since he had crash-landed on the scene. She could see his left arm reared back over his shoulder, as if prepared to throw something.
"CATCH!"
Janna didn't have to wonder what he was about to throw for very long. A plasma blade of glowing crimson ignited in Marco's left hand: The inquisitor's lightsaber. And when he threw it, he launched it like a spear, propelling it with the Force. It sailed through the air just as the stormtrooper whom had been escorting Janna brought his blaster to bear on the Jedi. The blade impaled the trooper straight through the chest, and the impact knocked the trooper backwards onto the ground.
Rosado's guard turned toward his fallen compatriot in surprise. Janna reacted on instinct, lunging forward and slamming her shoulder into the stormtrooper, knocking him to the ground. "Hovis! Get that thing!"
Rosado dropped to his knees beside the dead trooper while Janna tried to wrestle the other's blaster away. Just enough of the lightsaber's blade was exposed between the hilt and the trooper's armor for him to carefully slide his hands in and split his binders down the middle. He ripped the laser sword from the stormtrooper's chest and quickly swung it toward the one wrestling with Janna. He plunged it through the trooper's chest plate, scant centimeters from Janna's head, and the Imperial solider went limp.
"You almost hit me with that!" Janna yelled.
"Sorry! I can barely see anything!"
Janna stood and held up her bound hands for Rosado to slice apart. When he'd done so, he handed the lightsaber to her and picked up one of the blasters lying on the ground. "What now?"
"Now we go for the speeder bike! Follow me!"
"Shouldn't we help Marco?"
"Does Marco look like he needs help?"
The instant the inquisitor's lightsaber had left his hand, Marco had been under fire. His perch atop of the supply crate gave him a perfect vantage point from which to redirect blaster bolts. By the time Janna and Rosado had freed their bonds, he had downed a dozen more stormtroopers, all fallen to their own fire. The herd now sufficiently thinned, he leapt from the crate, bringing his lightsaber straight down on the closest trooper yet to fall. He launched off the ground with a push from his cybernetic leg, flying toward the next trooper, and when that one was dispatched he moved onto the next, and the next, and the next.
"No, he does not."
Even from the height of the command deck, it was not difficult to see the emerald green blade that was presently cutting his troops to ribbons. Sherrod keyed his commlink, the commander of the AT-AT his contact on the other end.
"What are you doing?! KILL THAT JEDI!"
"I can't without hitting our own troops, Sir."
"SHOOT! THE! JEDI!"
"…Sir, yes, sir."
Marco's lightsaber sliced another trooper's blaster in half, and he was rearing back to bisect the trooper as well, when he felt a tingle in the Force altering him to danger. Reacting on instinct alone, he vaulted backwards, narrowly avoiding being obliterated by a heavy-duty laser. The shockwave of the blast propelled Marco even further backwards, but he managed to right himself and land on his feet, his boots skidding on the ground until the momentum had dissipated.
He looked up, coming face to face with the source of the huge blast. The AT-AT had stood dormant since his arrival, and having never seen one before, he mistook it for a static structure. But now it stood with its cockpit angled toward him like the head of some predatory creature, a pair of heavy laser turrets mounted to each side aimed directly at him.
The few remaining stormtroopers darted for cover. Marco paid them no mind. He took a deep breath through his filtration mask, concentrating, staring down his massive opponent.
It fired. Marco pushed off with the Force, strafing across the ground out of harm's way as the blast exploded behind him. The AT-AT gunners fired again, and again, and each time Marco would dodge, skimming lightly across the ground. With each dodge bringing him closer and closer to the walker, eventually the canons could tilt down no further, and Marco stood effectively out of harm's way between its legs. The AT-AT attempted to reverse, but it would never be able to find the young padawan in its sights.
Marco was already beginning to climb its right front leg.
Fortunately for Janna and Rosado, all attention shifted away from them as the presence of a Jedi was deemed far more important than a pair of imposter stormtroopers. Without helmets to protect their eyes and lungs from the smoke, running was difficult, but they bravely wove their way through the carnage to reach the now inverted BARC speeder.
"Hurry," Janna coughed, "We gotta get this thing right side up again."
But Rosado did not move to help his companion. A loud clanking noise had reached his ears, audible even over the sounds of the blasts behind him. "J-J-Janna!"
She hadn't noticed. She was busy trying to right the speeder bike. "Come on, Dude, I need your help."
Rosado frantically pointed toward the tower. "Look!"
As Janna turned around, the source of the clanking sound emerged from behind the building. Another walker, this one standing on just two legs and significantly shorter than the towering AT-AT, but much faster and nimbler. It's cockpit section rotated toward them, canons swiveling to take aim.
"Kriff," Janna muttered. "Run!"
They sprinted in the direction of the factory building as the walker opened fire.
While the AT-AT operators were busy scratching their heads and wondering where the Jedi had gone, Marco made short work of scaling the walker. Aided by the Force, he propelled himself to the top of the body segment in four calculated jumps, landing in a crouch at its highest point. He plunged his lightsaber blade through the armor and spun on his heel, carving a circular hole around his body. He dropped through to the interior, an area that would normally house troops, but was thankfully empty.
Wasting no time, Marco made his way through the articulating passage to the cockpit in the command head. The operators, two of them, sat at the controls. A third, the walker commander, sat behind them. They didn't appear to have noticed him, as they were all busily arguing about to where the Jedi could have possibly disappeared.
Marco hid for a moment behind the bulkhead, peaking into the cockpit and scanning the controls. Nearly all of the myriad of buttons and switches were unidentified, but there was one rather large toggle bearing a label: "EMERGENCY EJECT."
Marco grinned behind his oxygen mask. He held out his hand, reached out with the Force and focusing it on the button. It lit up as it was depressed by an invisible finger.
There was a loud hiss as the airtight seals broke, then three roof hatches blew off with the bang. Before the AT-AT's operators had a chance to realize what was happening, they were being blasted through the openings in the roof, still strapped to their seats.
"Bye-bye, bad guys!"
Star sat in the copilot seat, staring at her new commlink in her hand. She and Marco had both had to buy replacements on Iego. Marco's had been lost during their fight against the inquisitor, and hers had been so waterlogged that by the time they escaped the Star Destroyer Moonshadow, its circuitry had been fried.
Tom was leaning over her shoulder, trying to train her in using the copilot's controls. He could tell she was having trouble paying attention. "Staring at that thing isn't going to magically make it receive a transmission."
Star sighed and set down the commlink on the control panel. "I know. I'm just worried. I was sure we would have heard something by now."
Tom tried to give his friend a reassuring smile, though he had to admit that he was getting a little anxious himself. "C'mon, Star, this is Janna and Marco we're talking about. I'm sure between the two of them, they've got everything under control."
"This is so out of control!" Rosado yelled.
Without their stormtrooper helmets to filter the smoke, fleeing from the walker was difficult. Janna and Rosado coughed and wheezed as they ran, ducking and weaving between anything that might offer them cover. Lasers exploded all around them as they impacted the ground, showering the pair in dirt and debris. They ran more by feel than by sight.
A stack of supply crates lay in their path. They split up as they reached it, Rosado running to the left, Janna to the right. Rosado risked a glance back at the pursuing walker and instantly regretted it. It fired in his direction, barely missing him and striking the supply crate beside him, but the bright laser left spots in his already smoke-blurred vision, momentarily blinding him just as he and Janna reconvened past the stack of crates. He crashed into her, and they both tumbled to the ground.
Janna started to pull herself back up, but was halted by a coughing fit. Her oxygen starved muscles were exhausted. She could barely breathe, and her body convulsed so violently that she could not rise above her knees. Rosado was unable to do anything other than turn himself over onto his back.
The walker, which Rosado knew as an AT-ST, emerged from the haze and smoke of its own expended munitions, clanking noisily with every step.
Janna still clutched the lightsaber Marco had thrown to her. She ignited the crimson blade, holding it above her head and waving it back and forth, praying that Marco, wherever he had disappeared to, would see it.
The AT-ST came to a halt, no more than a dozen meters separating it from its prey.
It's cannons turned slowly, taking careful aim at the pair of targets.
Janna wanted to close her eyes, or look away, but she couldn't. Convinced she was for sure about to die, for the first time in her life, she was completely frozen with fear.
With the cockpit of the AT-AT now vacant, Marco stepped forward, looking out the viewscreen at the ground below. His eyes landed on a bipedal walker stomping its way along the far side of the landing pad near the factory tower building and firing at a target that he could not see through the smoke and dust.
That's gotta be them, but I can't see them. He quickly hopped into the gunner's chair, hurriedly trying to decipher the unfamiliar controls.
Through the targeting scope, Marco saw the walker come to a halt. A moment later, a red glow emerged from within the cloud of dust.
There they are.
The ground beside the AT-ST exploded as a huge laser impacted the ground. Another struck a few seconds later, just behind it. The walker crew, realizing their conveyance had just become a target, turned the AT-ST around to flee. Two more lasers struck the ground before, at last, one beam found its target. Janna and Rosado turned face-down and covered their heads as the walker vanished in a fiery explosion, pelting them with little chunks of debris.
The pair cautiously raised their heads, searching for the source of the heavy artillery. The antiaircraft guns remained motionless, and the only other weaponry capable of such firepower was-
Janna squinted. Through the smokey, dusty air, she could make out the obvious emerald glow of Marco's lightsaber emerging through the command head of the AT-AT, waving back and forth.
"What just happened?" coughed Rosado as he staggered to his feet.
"Marco happened." Janna ignited the crimson blade again and waved back. "Thanks, Marco."
Still watching from the command deck window, Sherrod could feel his blood nearly boil as he seethed with rage. He turned away toward his subordinates behind him. "Power up the antiaircraft cannons," he barked. "Target that AT-AT and FIRE!"
"But, Sir-" began one of the targeting technicians, about to protest firing upon their own equipment.
"I gave you an order, Private."
The malice in the Lieutenant's voice made the technician shudder. "Powering up the canons, Sir."
Janna almost didn't hear the hydraulic whine and clicking mechanical joints. The antiaircraft canons which flanked the landing pad, dormant until this very moment, had suddenly come online, swiftly rotating and pivoting down to take aim at the AT-AT.
"MARC-! *cough* *cough* *cough*!"
He never would have heard her warning at that distance anyway. She frantically waved her lightsaber in the direction of the antiaircraft turret nearest to her some fifty meters away, hoping he would get the message.
But Marco's green lightsaber blade had vanished from view.
Marco pumped his fist as the AT-ST exploded. It had taken him a few attempts to strike the walker, the unfamiliar targeting controls much more difficult to decipher than the one used by the turrets aboard the Raventalon. He hopped from the gunner's chair, igniting his lightsaber and waving it through the ejection hatch in the roof. Through the viewscreen, he could just make out Janna's red blade waving back at him.
Marco pulled his arm back inside, returning his weapon to his belt as he turned to make his way back to his improvised entry point.
He felt the tremor in the Force far too late. When he whirled back toward the viewscreen, he was greeted by the sight of a huge beam of red energy streaking directly toward the viewscreen.
"Oh, Kri-"
Janna and Rosado could do nothing but stand with their mouths agape as the first blast from the antiaircraft gun slammed dead-center into the command head of the AT-AT. The second hit came from a different canon, perpendicular to the walker. It struck the broad, flat side of the troop carrier segment, the bolt exploding in a fiery explosion.
The bark of the canons became defeating as they pummeled the AT-AT. The walker's heavy armor plating took the brunt of the impact until at last, one shot struck the articulated tunnel joining the command head to the body segment. The walker detonated as if it were one gigantic explosive device.
Janna and Rosado instinctively looked away, feeling the heat of the fireball on their unshielded faces. When Janna looked back, what was left of the walker had amassed in a pile of charred and crumpled metal in a heap on the ground.
"Marco…"
The next thing they knew, a dozen stormtroopers poured from the building. The troops surrounded them, six in front, six behind, blasters pointed at the two intruders.
"Freeze! Drop your weapons!"
At first, neither moved. Janna and Rosado glanced at each other questioningly.
"I said drop 'em! NOW!"
Janna let her finger slip from the lightsaber's activation plate as Rosado tossed the blaster rifle in front of him. When she dropped her arm to her side to drop the weapon, she shook the detonator from the sleeve of her armor, palming it in her hand as she released the lightsaber from her fingers.
"Hands above your heads! Both of you!"
Rosado quickly obeyed. Janna did as well, but slower, carefully keeping the detonator concealed as she lifted her arms.
Two stormtroopers stepped toward them, each pulling binders from their belts.
Janna clicked the detonator.
The blast of the small explosive device atop the fuel silo was followed a split-second later as the entire structure blew apart, a massive ball of fire stretching into the sky. The stormtroopers were shocked, and, as Janna had expected, all looked toward the explosion. She dove for the lightsaber on the ground, igniting it as she rose back to full height and swung it wildly toward the stormtroopers directly in front of her. She managed to catch three of them in the blade's wide arc, slashing them across the chest.
"Run!"
Rosado didn't need further encouragement. He sprinted after Janna as she made a mad dash for the speeder bike, bending down to scoop up the blaster of a fallen stormtrooper as he ran past.
Marco groaned as he lifted his head from the hard control panel of the AT-AT command head. He tried to put both hands on the panel to push himself back upright, but found he could not raise his right arm.
"Oh, good. My right arm is dislocated again."
The first shot from the antiaircraft canon had impacted squarely on the nose of the command head. Fortunately, the AT-AT was so heavily armored that one shot was not nearly enough to pierce the exterior. Unfortunately, the walker's sensors detected the blast and snapped shut the emergency hatches in the roof, which would not have been an issue had a shot to the side not broken a coolant line and filled the inside of the body with poisonous gas.
Trapped in the command head with no way out, Marco plunged his lightsaber into the wall of the articulated tunnel that led from the head to the main structure and quickly tried to sever it. He hoped that, if he timed his jump right, he could leap out of the command head as it fell away from the body. Unfortunately, just as the tunnel was weakened enough to break away, the AT-AT exploded. The force of the blast from inside the body broke the control head away, but it also knocked Marco all the way into the control panel, where he'd hit his head and blacked out as the control head tumbled to the ground.
The collision had also dislocated his shoulder.
Staggering to his feet, Marco found an edge of the bulkhead that was still mostly vertical. He grit his teeth, closed his eyes, and slammed his right shoulder against it as hard as he could before he had too much time to think about it. It hurt, but Marco had dislocated and reset this same shoulder so many times now that he was getting used to the sharp pain. He let out a muffled groan though his clenched jaw and rotated his shoulder a few times to make sure it was properly set. It would ache for a while, but he could deal with that.
He reached out with the Force until he could sense the kyber crystal in his lightsaber, which had slipped from his hand during the fall. It had rolled beneath the control panel, and he called it backed to his hand.
The command head had landed right side up, so Marco simply walked out through the neck. "Alright…now where did they get to?" And then a massive explosion boomed across the open space from the opposite side of the landing pad. Marco instinctively covered his head. "What the heck was-?!" He looked toward the burning fuel silo, then toward some commotion on the ground nearer to the building. Janna and Rosado were sprinting toward where the BARC speeder had crash-landed, pursued by eight stormtroopers, who were having very little luck gunning down two moving targets. "I don't know how Janna made that explode from so far away, but I'm positive it was her doing."
Marco took off running for the speeder bike.
The BARC speeder still lay on its side, sidecar pointed toward the Rori sky. Janna and Rosado were exhausted by the time they reached it, still coughing and gasping for air as they ran.
They circled around it, using it as cover from the stormtroopers. Rosado quickly began returning fire. His vision was still blurry from the smoke, but his spray of suppressing fire was enough to halt the stormtroopers from coming any closer, as they had nothing to use for cover.
"We gotta *cough* *cough* get this thing *cough* turned back over!" Janna choked out.
Rosado ceased firing and moved to help, but as soon as he did, the eight stormtroopers resumed running toward them. He quickly resumed shooting and they fell back. "I can't! *cough* *cough* If I stop, they'll *cough* *cough* *cough* overrun us!"
"Then *cough* keep shooting! I'll just have to get it myself!"
Janna put her shoulder against the bike's seat and shoved as hard as she could, but her feet couldn't maintain their traction on the ground and slid out from under her, and the intense effort was just causing her to cough even more. She tried a few more times, but to no avail. Then she moved around to the opposite side and tried to pull the bike down from it's underside. No matter what she did, it was simply too heavy for one teenage girl to move on her own.
"I can't budge it!" Janna coughed.
"Don't worry, I got it."
The speeder bike suddenly rose a few inches off the ground, turned right side up, and gently settled back to the dirt. Janna and Rosado were both shocked to find Marco walking up from behind them.
"Marco! We thought you *cough* got blown up!" Rosado exclaimed, forgetting that he was supposed to be firing on the stormtroopers. Not only were the eight advancing toward them again, blaster bolts pinging off the opposite side of the bike as they took cover behind it, but now more were emerging from the building.
There was no time for pleasantries now. "Get this thing powered up again!" Marco yelled. "I'll hold 'em off!"
"Right!"
Marco vaulted over the speeder bike. As soon as he did so, the blaster fire coming toward him seemed to only intensify. He twirled his lightsaber about his body, deflecting away every energy bolt that came near. He was grateful that the antiaircraft canons could not tilt down far enough to fire at the ground, or they would likely already be dead. Behind him, Rosado continued to lay down suppressing fire from behind the bike.
Janna, meanwhile, was forced to leave cover and climb atop the bike in riding position to access the controls, meaning the only thing keeping her alive was Marco essentially acting as a human shield. She remained as focused as ever, though, quickly resetting the system, cycling the reactor, and attempting to trigger-start the repulsors. At last, the BARC speeder rose off the ground, the power to the repulsors restored. She fired up the engine.
"Got it! Let's get out of here!"
Rosado quickly hopped into the sidecar. Marco backflipped onto the rear of the bike as Janna gunned the throttle. "Head for the rear gate!" Marco called. "We'll lose them in the jungle and contact Star and Tom for a pickup!"
"Roger that!"
More troopers waited for them at the rear gate, opening fire as the speeder bike came into range. Marco leapt over Janna's head and alighted on the nose of the speeder bike, using the Force to hold himself in place as he deflected the blaster bolts back. By the time they zoomed through the gate, only one stormtrooper was left standing.
Marco extinguished his blade and returned it to his belt before hopping onto the back of the seat behind Janna. "Now we just have to get out of range of their frequency jammer."
"Right!"
Marco pulled his commlink from his pocket as Janna wove the bike through the thick jungle. He continuously pinged Star's frequently until at last, the transmission connected.
When the commlink chimed, Star grabbed for it so frantically that she nearly sent it flying across the cockpit. "Marco! Is that you?!"
"It's me! We need a pickup!"
Janna's voice, sounding hoarse and exhausted, came next. "We're heading due-north toward heading six-one-seven!"
Tom, in the pilot's seat, was already firing up the engines. "Got that, Pony?" he asked.
The droid twittered that it did and was plotting a course on the navigation screen.
"Hang tight, guys!" Star called excitedly. "Help is on the way!"
Eventually, the jungle thinned out and became a grassy swampland. The ground was far too soft here for the Raventalon to land, but at least the trees here were sparse, so the ship would be able to fly low enough for the speeder bike to board. Janna slowed their pace, but kept the bike moving in case of incoming pursuers. They had wound their way through the jungle quite a bit before picking a direction and gunning it to put as much distance between themselves and the factory, so the trio hoped that they had lost the Imperial troops.
Janna and Rosado took the opportunity to catch their breath.
Despite the Raventalon taking only a few minutes to reach them, it felt like an eternity. Star greeted the BARC speeder on the ramp as Janna piloted it into the hold. As soon as the Padawan had retracted the ramp, Tom wasted no time making for the atmosphere and space beyond.
Star, meanwhile, threw her arms around first Janna, and then Marco, whom she also kissed on the cheek. "I was so worried about you guys! Are you okay?"
"Just a little *cough* *cough* smoke inhalation," said Rosado as he gingerly hopped out of the sidecar. After all the climbing, running, zip-lining, more climbing, and even more running, his joints and muscles were extremely sore. He very slowly sat down on the deck.
Star and Marco helped Janna off the bike. "Just sit me against the wall," she said. She was exhausted.
Marco, on the other hand, felt great. He pulled off his oxygen mask and offered it to Janna, but she waved it off. "Give it to Hovis. He needs it, he's old."
"Hey!"
But the man accepted the mask from Marco, anyway. It did make breathing easier.
"I almost hate to bring it up," said Marco, "but, uh…was your mission successful?"
Janna, still breathing hard to catch her breath, smirked as she nodded an affirmative. "You bet it was."
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Fanfiction's notifications don't seem to be working properly. I have not received any notifications myself since February of this year. If your notifications aren't working, either, and you would like to know when I post new chapter updates to this and all of my stories, you can follow me on Twitter. My handle is SVTFOE-dork17.
If you leave a review (and please do) I will still see them even if I don't receive a notification email. I check to see if any reviews have been posted to my stories regularly.
