Maya-202!
A Star Wars-Inspired Story!
Episode I
Chapter IX
The Battle of Kamino
Coruscant Space
General Grievous was ecstatic. For so long, he had been plotting his revenge. He was going to crush the new Jedi Order, taking them down one by one until they would be completely demolished. His new Sith allies had promised him power, and a total destruction of the power of the Jedi, once the Sith Council gained the Invulnerability Tablet. They could vanquish the Jedi, and the Sith, the Dark Side, would live forever. General Grievous looked forward to the day he could stand beside his Sith peers, and gain ultimate control of the galaxy, with no pesky Jedi to interrupt and try to prevent their rule. At least, that was what Lord Thomanius had told him the plan was. You see, it was around 3 months now that Grievous had been, essentially, just a head in a jar, with no body to move around with, just him and his thoughts. It was like something that would be seen in one of those Corellian Sci-Fi holodramas. But all this time staying with only his thoughts for company was, for lack of a better word, revealing. Unfortunately for Grievous, whilst the Jedi scum that had defeated him once before were not around anymore, there ideas, their way of life still was, and now the Order was back and still standing strong. Annihilating anyone who followed the Jedi would be the closest thing Grievous would ever get to revenge on General Kenobi for what he did all those years ago. He was hoping Kenobi had learned the Jedi trick enabling him to become a force ghost, so at least he might be able to watch in horror at the devastation General Grievous was planning to cause. Grievous had pictured that scenario many times, in fact he had even dreamt about walking up to Kenobi's ghost after slaughtering a ton of Jedi and cackling in his face. There would be nothing he could even do about it. Of course, this situation was all based on ideals, and Grievous did think that Kenobi wouldn't simply appear just to watch Grievous cause carnage, as much as the former cyborg would have enjoyed that. 'Baby steps, Grievous' he thought, as he reminded himself of his current mission. He was desperate to please Master Thomanius and Master Scald, the two who had revived him, by killing the Jedi filth he had been tasked to hunt. Aren Sarvenco was his name. Grievous looked forward to taking this treacherous little Jedi itch mite's lightsaber – his yellow blade would be a fine addition to his brand new collection. "General, we approaching Coruscant. You have an incoming transmission from Master Scald," the droideka, who was the Captain of Grievous' new flagship (which the General had aptly named 'Insivible Hand II', as he was not feeling creative at this point, more just excited about fighting Jedi again), told him. "Ah… excellent. Put him through-" Grievous said, before interrupting himself with a chain of splutters. "Roger, roger."
"Master Scald. What is it you have to tell me?" Grieovus asked hopefully.
"Lord Grievous, you will be delighted to know that I have narrowed down the location of your target." Grievous' photoreceptors lit up at this news. "Using a more precise Locator Incantation, I have found he has moved to the Uscru District, and it appears he is in a large skyscraper building. My guess is the Uscru Inn, he looks like he is sleeping in a bed," Scald said sinisterly.
"I hope he wakes up. I don't want to make the kill too easy…" Grievous laughed.
"Indeed. He is seven stories up. I can't see the number room, but he is three doors backwards from the end of the corridor. Good luck," Scald lifted his bright red hood up, and smiled wickedly. He was a bit older than Lord Thomanius, and he had rusty iron brown hair. It was the first time Grievous had actually seen his face properly, which was odd considering he had been receiving almost daily check-ins from Scald for the 3 months he was being restored and revived by him. "Thank you, my Lord. I will not fail you," Grievous bowed, and with that, the transmission finished. "Set a course for the Uscru District Landing Bay," Grievous instructed the Captain Droideka.
Rishi Maze, Kamino Space
Maya and Leo stormed out of lightspeed, and arrived to the sight of a big blue planet. "Kamino…" Leo noted. So this planet was Kamino. Maya had heard it was mostly oceanic, with heavy rainstorms for a couple of years before they entered a dry period, hence the intensity of its blue colour was understandable. But then, she realised they weren't the only ones in the planet's space. Several freighters wizzed past almost at the speed of light, and it looked like they were heading straight for the planet. They were red and almost oval in shape. Leo followed the ships coming past them with his eyes, a confused expression present underneath his helmet. "He didn't know we were coming, right?" Leo asked sounding puzzled. Maya shook her head.
"I don't think those are Thomanius' ships. Look at where they are coming from," Maya pointed to the cloud-like red area below them, the Deep Beyond, and sure enough, a seemingly never-ending supply of the same ships were flying out of there rapidly, one after another. "Oh. You think that 11they've come to arrest the Prince? It wouldn't surprise me – that is their job after all," Leo suggested. "I think so, thankfully. Let's give them a helping hand, maybe a bit of revenge for what he did to our home planet, what do you think?" Maya took off her helmet and smirked mischeviously at Leo. "Damn, I never knew you had a dark side (no pun intended). Go on, let's teach that itch-mite a lesson," the male trooper agreed. Maya accelerated the ship, until they almost met the speed of the Deep Beyond ships, and trailed behind the Tranqu-freighters. The stream of ships rushed towards Kamino like a waterfall, and very soon, they would hopefully stop the Nightmare Order and Prince Thomanius for good. Karma was coming.
Kamino, Irenca City
The rain hammered violently against the large windows of the Kaminoan lab. "Master Thomanius, I have just directed General Grievous to where I believe Aren to be. Soon, that Jedi problem of yours will be no more," Scald alerted Prince Thomanius. He replied with a simple "Good."
"Lord Thomanius!" Lieutenant Fearful called out. Thomanius spun around to see he was running up quickly, as he if he had just received alerting information. "What is it Lieutenant?" the Dark Prince asked. "Scanners have picked up a flurry of incoming Tranqu-Freighters from the Deep Beyond," Fearful said. Thomanius grinned. He had planned for this, as he knew that those puppets of Commissioner Panaris, who was in charge of the Deep Beyond's Police Services, would have been coming after him. "Excellent, this will be fun. Prepare the defences. Send 100 Night-Hawk fighters to shoot the Tranqu-freighters down. Tell ground units to fire at the Deep Beyond ships, and if any of them land, blast any Baaneraxx that dare to infiltrate the lab," the Prince instructed.
"Roger Roger!"
Lieutenant Fearful didn't want to let his Master down, albeit because his programming told him to 'feel' like this, but even so, he was determined to do a good job and help his Masters of the Sith Council achieve their goals. And so, these pesky nuisances of the Deep Beyond had to go – they were not going to interrupt his Lord's plans. "Units 200A-250X, pilot the available Night-Hawks we have and shoot down those ships!" Fearful said in an instructive tone.
"Roger Roger!" Night-Hawks were the fighters used by the Nightmare Army. They were tall vertical ships with a cockpit at the top, and they stood on one stand, with two 'arms' of sorts, equipped with blaster cannons, protruding out of the cockpit. They were very agile and swift making them easy to pilot dodge incoming attacks.
"Units 1A-99A, load up the Comet-Bomb Cannons, and fire when ready. Hit as many ships as you can," the Lieutenant commanded.
"Roger, Roger, Sir," Commander GREED, Unit 34-B, replied. He and the other units in his Battalion began lifting the heavy blue Comet Bombs into the cannons, designed to shatter enemy ships into unfunctional pieces on impact. The cannons were mounted on an Iryxian Copper stand, and they came with a seat attached to them, allowing the pilot to sit down and control it's movement and targeting. Several Nightmare Troopers hopped onto the seats once the cannons were loaded, and they started peering up at the line of invading fighters. The troopers charged the cannons, then fired, allowing an almost beautiful but deadly blue spark resembling a cartoon-like comet (hence the name), which sped upwards to the freighters. Many were fired into the sky at once, although some of them missed first as the photoreceptors of the droids were getting clouded up because of the ongoing rain. However, two of the frieghters were hit, and they exploded into pieces and crashed towards the treacherous oceans making up Kamino below. The troopers loaded another bomb, fired again, and kept on doing so until they had defeated as many ships as possible, but some were getting close to the landing bays of Irenca City, even with the Night-Hawk fighters shooting them down as well. One of the ships had been shot by a Night-Hawk, and it came plummeting down to the nearest landing pad and hit it with a thud. Lieutenant Fearful commed ground units that were still waiting inside the lab and told them to come outside now, and begin targeting the invasive Baaneraxx. The regiment of Nightmare Troopers followed his orders, and many of them came flooding out of the doors, armed with their EE-4s and targeting the doors of the frieghters, which were now settling on the leftover space of the landing platform. Fearful himself peeped through the lasersight of his DU-12 Sniper Pistol, a special weapon that his Lord Prince Thomanius had handed to him as a reward for his faithful service, and focused on the exits of the freighters. However, nothing happened – yet.
A loudspeaker sounded, and a Baaneraxxi voice said something that nobody here actually understood. Whilst the language barrier had posed some issues for the Deep Beyond when arresting Intergalactic criminals, they had hired Protocol Droids to translate for people to understand. The one belonging to this Platoon of Baaneraxx now spoke, presumably translating what the officer had just said into Basic. "If you do not understand, Officer Meldrow says Prince Thomanius Orace, come out at once! You are under arrest for suspected galactic terrorist activity, invading a planet, along with now murdering many Officers of the Deep Beyond and destroying our ships! If you do not hand yourself over to us we will be forced to fire and invade your lab until we find you and catch you. You have 2 minutes to reveal yourself and walk over to this ship to turn yourself in before we start to search the lab for you." Obviously, this was not going to go down the way the Baaneraxx wanted. There was no way Thomanius would hand himself over to them on a silver platter, and when the Baaneraxx tried to search the lab for him, they were going to have a fight on their hands before the Nightmare Troopers would let them get anywhere near their Dark Lord. 2 minutes passed, where the only thing to be heard was the noisy patter of the rain colliding with the ground. Lieutenant Fearful still aimed at the doors of the enemy carrier. He wiped the dripping water from his headpiece off, cleaning his photoreceptors to keep his shot focused. At that moment, the doorway parted, and a reddish figure emerged, alongside a golden protocol droid that was presumably the translator, who had his hands up in a surrendering manor to avoid the Nightmare Trooper's potential blaster fire. The leading Baaneraxx spoke again, and the droid translated as "The Commanding Officer said that he is beginning the search now. Any hostility from troops will be met back with equal amount from the Deep-" but the protocol droid was cut off by the firing of an EE-4 at the Officer. "Oh! Oh my! I should never have taken this job!" the golden droid almost screamed before he ran back in terror to the freighter he had come out of. The Nightmare droids managed to knock down the Commanding Officer, although he was still alive, but had fallen down to the ground and was now injured and squirming, shouting something inaudible to them. However, the Deep Beyond soldiers in the other freighters must have heard him, as about a hundred Baaneraxx came flowing out, all armed with their own TQ-13 Blasters. The blasters they used were purely to stun and tranquilise, not kill. EE-4s were much more powerful – the Deep Beyond were doomed to fail at this point. Fearful changed his position, in order to snipe as many of the enemy soldiers down as he was able to. His target landed on one that was charging right towards him, and he took a headshot. The beastly creature flopped down like a ragdoll the instant the bolt hit its head. The Lieutenant was good at taking headshots, and he was very alert as to where the closest enemies were on the battlefield even whilst looking through a magnified scope, another reason he had been selected to be Prince Thomanius' right-hand elite guard. He carried on sniping the Baaneraxx down for a long time – it felt like there was no end to them in sight.
Thomanius' stared out of the huge window in the upper observatory of his lab at the battle going on below. He had converted the observatory into his own private bedroom – it normally had a beautiful view of Kamino's thrashing seas under the city. But right now, the view was mostly carnage outside – and he loved it. The soldiers of the Deep Beyond were collapsing down one by one, and his troopers were doing very well. It only solidified the prince's belief that no one was going to stop him now. Not even his pitiful, pathetic little brother would really be able to prevent his plans once the bomb was complete. After all, the threat of blowing his home planet of Iryx to smithereens would be hanging over Onasius' head as a constant nagging worry. As soon as the Kaminoans figured out how to construct one world-splitter bomb, another could be made pretty easily, until an entire chain of bombs could be produced, and the Galaxy could be conquered. The Republic, along with every planet in the Universe, would have to succumb to the demands of the Sith Council, or else they would be destroyed. For now, though, Thomanius decided that he would go and help his army down on the Irencan landing platforms – he enjoyed a good fight, using his anger to demolish his enemies, and his last one at Iryx just didn't fulfil his desire for more adrenaline enough. The prince came away from the window, walked into his personal elevator, which was all panelled in bright white tiles, and pressed the ground floor button.
Coruscant, Jedi Council Meeting Room
Rey felt – no, she knew – that there was something wrong. The Force was almost screaming to her that something was very off. Her long time, oldest friend, and ex-stormtrooper Master Finn knew it too. Rey was staring out of the window in bewilderment – something big was coming. Master Finn had just entered the room, although she hadn't heard or seen him, she just felt his all-too-familiar presence in the Force grow close enough that he had to be in the same room. But this time, his energy had an air of concentration that she had not felt for a very long time – she couldn't read minds, but she could tell he was plotting something. "Master Finn. Do you feel the disruption in the Force that I feel too?" Rey asked. He nodded.
"I do, Mistress Rey. There is more behind the invasion on Iryx than it seems, I suspect, but Master Onasius has told me that his brother did it to steal the plans for a 'world-splitter bomb', and he is working on it. What's more, I have just received a telecom from the Commissioner of the Deep Beyond, detailing that he has sent troops to Kamino. Prince Thomanius is refusing to cooperate, and he has ordered his troops to attack the brave officers of the Deep Beyond. Their numbers are depleting, and they need help. I presume you can already sense that I am planning to do something… possibly foolish, no?" Finn questioned with a sly grin.
"You want to head there and fight him yourself?" Rey questioned. Finn nodded, and immediately sensed Rey's reluctance to let him go and fight by himself. "Why not?" he asked, almost in a childish way. "Finn, my friend, we have not fought a Dark Lord of the Sith for what feels like an eternity, and don't take this the wrong way, but we're… old now. And Prince Thomanius is a lot younger," Rey explained, but she was interrupted by a third voice.
"Age matters not, young Jedi. Under 2 centuries old you are, Mistress Rey," the voice said, and then giggled. Rey was stunned at who she was seeing. She held her hands up to her face in shock. But this was a pleasant type of shock, a relieving type of surprise. "Master Yoda!" she greeted. Finn and Rey bowed to his Force ghost.
"Have trust in your friend Grand Mistress Rey, you must. Fight well, even the oldest Jedi can. I fought Darth Sidious when I was centuries old, and whilst I may have lost, survived, I did. And you of all people know how powerful Darth Sidious was. The Jedi Order will stand strong. The most important trust is, in maintaining the Jedi Order. A lack of trust paved the way to allow for the creation of Darth Vader." Rey contemplated what Master Yoda had told her. She wanted to go herself, but she felt obliged to remain in Coruscant in case the Deep Beyond commed her with any more information about possible other attacks or problems in the galaxy. The Jedi were highly dispersed across the galaxy nowadays, dealing with crime and other matters that were problematic but seemed minimal compared to what had been going on on Kamino and Iryx. If she went with Finn, there would be no one here to receive transmissions. Suddenly, she realised that Yoda had disappeared. "Are you sure you don't want me to go, Master Finn? You could stay here and receive any other transmit-" she started, but was cut off. "Rey, I'm ready for this. You have taught me well over the past century – have faith in your teachings, Mistress Rey. You fought Darth Sidious and saved the galaxy with Ben Solo, and whilst I have fought criminals, I haven't had to take on a challenge this big – you have. Let me take on this fight, please," Finn requested, while bracing Ray's shoulders, asking for her trust. She nodded resistantly, before wishing him luck. "May the Force be with you," they both said, almost simultaneously. At that point, BB-8, now a little rusted from age, beeped excitedly, cutting the moment, and hopped beside Finn. Finn kind of stroked the droid's head, and then he set off for his Jedi Interceptor, with BB-8 speeding in the same direction behind him.
Kamino, Irenca City
The storm crashed against the F-Fighter that Maya and Leo were travelling in. They had been following the Tranqu-freighters, however in amidst of the weather fogging up the windshield of the fighter, they had gotten a bit lost and they did not know where the other ships had gone to. But they couldn't be too far away, after all, it wasn't that long ago since they had been behind the Deep Beyond soldiers, so surely they would be close to the lab. Maya had activated the De-mister settings, but unfortunately even that wasn't getting rid of the fog on the windscreen quick enough. Hopefully, they weren't coming crashing down to the fatal waves without knowing it. "Maybe we should've asked Prince Onasius before doing this?!" Leo panicked. Maya didn't answer right now. The fighter was almost trembling due to the wind and rain outside, like an earthquake was happening inside the ship. Suddenly though, Maya noticed something – ships fighting to the west of them. Some of them were Deep Beyond freighters – and sure enough, underneath those ships was the giant lab of Irenca City. "There! There they are, Leo!" Maya exclaimed, excited to have found them again. Leo, who had had his face in his hands for the last 30 seconds, lifted his head and was overcome with relief to see that they not only were they not lost and nowhere near death by flying into the dangerous oceans, but they had also found the lab and they were getting ever closer to retrieving the bomb plans back themselves. Although Onasius had only asked them to find out where his brother was, they had chosen to take matters into their own hands, which may or may not make Onaisus worried and infuriated because of it, but they wanted desperately to impress him, and they hoped that this would. "Yippee! Now just to try and fight the evil Sith Lord and his minions and steal his plans from under their noses… Shouldn't be too hard, right?" Leo said sarcastically. Maya chuckled at this comment, but she was determined to take the plans, even though she felt that she would be mad to try and go up against Thomanius simply with a close-range blaster. She knew she would be asking for trouble if she did that. So maybe it would just have to be fighting Nightmare Troopers and sneaking in to take the plans back. Who knew, maybe the Deep Beyond would have arrested Thomanius by the time they landed anyway. From a distance, Leo spotted a landing pad that wasn't too close to where the battle was taking place, and informed Maya of it. They chose to land there – hopefully the Nightmare Troopers wouldn't shoot them down on sight if they landed somewhere far from where the majority of them were situated. When they had landed, they got out and attempted to look for a way in to the lab, but there was just a wall of the lab which stretched around the entire perimeter. It seemed that the only way in for them was the main entrance, where the battle was going on. "Oh, great," Leo sighed, his head sloping down in exhaustion.
"Argh!" a Baaneraxx screeched as it was hit by yet another of Lieutenant Fearful's sniper bolts. Fearful took out an ion grenade and threw it into a crowd of Baaneraxx – whilst ion grenades were most impactful on vehicles and shields rather than soldiers, they still did a good bit of damage to troopers. When it exploded, many of the Baaneraxx fell backwards, whilst some others were almost blinded by the blue flash of light caused by it. But then, his DCS dinged. "Lord Thomanius!" Fearful saluted, although Thomanius couldn't see him as this was only a voice chat, rather than a 'holotalk'. "Good job, Lieutenant. I can see you have taken many of the Baaneraxx out. But please leave some for me – I'm coming down, and I want to show the rest of the Baaneraxx back in the Deep Beyond that they are making a huge mistake coming for a Dark Lord of the Sith…" he said, and then he snickered quietly. "Yes, my Lord," the Lieutenant replied. The chat ended. A few seconds later, Prince Thomanius arrived at the main doors. He was smiling villainously. All the Nightmare Troopers stopped firing and saluted at their Lord. "Hey, hey!" he shouted to the Baaneraxx that were still trying to shoot at the troopers and hadn't noticed he had emerged from his lab yet. They were taken aback by the fact he had appeared, but they knew that something wasn't right. It was never going to be as easy as just him handing himself over for arrest. "I'm here! You were asking for me, weren't you?" the Prince taunted. Officer Meldrow, who was injured but not dead after receiving fire, dragged himself off of the ground, soaking from the rain. Thomanius smirked, and beckoned him to come over. "My Lord, what are you-" Fearful said, but Thomanius put his hand up to silence him. Meldrow took out a pair of plastoid handcuffs, and approached the Prince warily, certain that he was being lured into a trap. Nevertheless, his loyalty was to his job, which was capturing those who threatened the galaxy on a large-scale, and so he put his worries behind him and continued towards Thomanius, who as of this moment, was unarmed. This was a bad decision.
It would have been a stomach-churning sight for regular beings if they had seen it. Officer Meldrow flailed his long red arms around, gasping for air whilst Prince Thomanius force choked him. He dropped the handcuffs, which fell to the floor with a tap. Eventually, Meldrow stopped moving l, as he took his final breath, and crashed next to the handcuffs once the Dark Prince removed his force grip from the man's throat. All the Deep Beyond troops that were still alive opened fire, but within an instant of letting Meldrow go, Thomanius had taken out his lightsaber and was now blocking the shots with every twitch of his weapon. The leftover Nightmare Trooper Forces fired back at the Baaneraxx which were attempting to shoot their Lord. The Lieutenant, yet again, found himself taking more pot-shots at the heads of Baaneraxx. Prince Thomanius walked slowly towards the lines of Baaneraxx whilst still deflecting their blasterfire. As soon as he got close to one of them, he shoved his blade straight through them, and they clattered to the ground. Prince Thomanius slashed through the groups of Baaneraxx with an ease that made it look as if it required little energy whatsoever. Fearful sniped any remaining enemy soldiers he could see, until eventually it seemed as if the Nightmare troops and their Prince were alone. Prince Thomanius took his purple lightsaber out of what looked like the heart of a poor Baaneraxx that had had the misfortune of being the last in Thomanius' line of fire. He turned around slowly and put his saber away – for approximately 1 second. He sensed something – Fearful could tell. "Master?" the Lieutenant questioned curiously. Thomanius re-drew his saber and revealed his magnificent purple blade once more. "Dreamtroopers!" one of his soldiers alerted. The Lieutenant scanned what was in his immediate view, and his photoreceptors saw two figures in ancient white plastoid armour. "Your highness, is it the ones you spoke of disposing?" Fearful questioned. His Lord looked extremely annoyed.
"I suspect so… now I think I see – no, sense - what the problem might be…" he thought out loud, before he ordered his troopers to hold their fire on his brother's minions. "I want to have a little… chat with them," he said with a slight hint of amusement to his voice. "But before I go, I need you to do something for me…" he commanded his Lieutenant.
"Oh my Jedi, it's him!" Leo quivered upon seeing Thomanius, who was striding towards them briskly.
"Just try to act like normal – if he can feel our nerves then he knows he can use them as a weakness and get in our heads," Maya advised. The pair didn't know what to expect from this meeting – they didn't even know if they'd both make it out of here alive. The chances were very unlikely. They were starting to see that the walkways were now littered with red bodies, almost so much that there was little room to move that wasn't covered with a corpse. The two were continuing forward, but then the Prince shouted "No, no. I'll come to you." Maya thought she could hear him laughing after saying it, however she decided not to tell Leo as it may have made him even more distressed. She felt a bit bad about bringing Leo along, but at the same time she had asked several times now if he wanted to stay in the ship and he had said no. He was a good and loyal friend. She hoped he felt a similar way about her.
It wouldn't take much time to get to Kamino now – Master Finn had rushed from Coruscant and had immediately gone into lightspeed to get there fast. The good news was that BB-8 was able to stay in contact with his fellow astromech R2-D2, who had somehow found his way to working for the Deep Beyond, of course roping C3-PO into this with him. He wasn't too sure of the tale that lead to them working there, but from what he gathered through one of C3-PO's rambles about it, R2 had been wandering off without him, trying to do some good for the galaxy by finding the Deep Beyond, and just like that he had ended up in it. C3-PO had followed behind him, and when the Baaneraxx realised his abilities as a Protocol droid, they utilised him for translation purposes. C3-PO had been less than pleased about it at first, but Finn was rather grateful for it as it enabled BB-8, who resided with Jedi Mistress Rey, to receive information and transmissions from R2 in the Deep Beyond if they needed Jedi support, in situations such as this one. Finn had a vague idea of where on the planet he was supposed to be heading to, based on coordinates BB-8 had been sent from R2's recently installed GPS chip. He hadn't ever been to Kamino, but he knew about the conditions there and so he had come prepared with his brown hooded Jedi robes to shield him from its torrential thunderstorms. Irenca City was the name of the ancient cloning facility where Thomanius was located. Finn found it strange that there was a cloning facility still there with Kaminoans on it, even if it wasn't being used to produce clone troopers anymore, since the official reports claimed that the Empire had, in essence, destroyed the facilities. He wondered if this facility was one that Lama Su had somehow managed to keep a secret from Emperor Palpatine. It was a long-shot though, considering that the Emperor had found out about other secret cloning facilities which had had their existence withheld from him at first. Anyway, none of that mattered right now – all that did was stopping a Dark Lord of the Sith that was using the facility for evil doings. BB-8 chirped, informing him that they were almost there. This was gonna be tough, but he had faced the Dark side before, and he was still alive now. Finn had promised himself that would never run away from fighting the good fight again.
It took less time than Maya had anticipated for Thomanius to reach the pair of dreamtroopers, as he performed a jump which basically propelled him to the other side of the walkway where they were stood. Maya and Leo holstered their weapons in preparation for the worst, but it was no use. When Thomanius reached them, he whipped the blasters out of their hands using the Force with a simple swiping movement. They tried to move, but all of a sudden, Thomanius kind of froze them on the spot. He wasn't force-choking them, but he was holding them still in the air. Leo yelled "Let us go! Bastard!" Thomanius just snickered at Leo's outburst.
"Ooh, that's not very nice. Not to mention strong language for someone brought up by my goody-two shoes Jedi brother. I'll let that one slide, but one more insult from you and I'll kill you right here," he threatened. He then moved over to Maya, who was also unable to move. His eyes washed over her. "You… are an interesting one…" the Dark Prince commented. "Who are you really? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that unless they inject midichlorians or something into your developing embryos, Dreamtroopers were not made to be force sensitive. So, my guess is you're some sort of spy of the Republic that my brother has sent to pose as one of his useless, feeble army members." Maya bit her tongue with all the snappy things she wanted to say to Thomanius and remained silent, but then he said "You can speak now." She chose her words carefully.
"I am not a spy. I don't know what is going on, and in fact I'm as clueless about what is happening to me as you are… and I think you are right about dreamtroopers not being designed to be force-sensitive. But I am a dreamtrooper. And I'd watch my mouth with what you say about us if I was you – because I can guarantee you that the Dream Order is not feeble, and a whole group of us could destroy you if we wanted to." She felt Leo's anxiety heighten once again beside her. Thomanius' jaw dropped in amusement at the sheer nerve of Maya. "Oh, you're sassy, aren't you?!" he teased. "Oh well… it seems my brother never taught you not to be rude to royalty…" It was then that Maya felt a sharp tightening around her throat, and she knew what was happening. This was it. Leo started shouting at Thomanius again, but Maya couldn't hear what he was saying as her senses had begun to fade, and all her effort was concentrated on trying to free her throat. Leo's shouting stopped however, and Maya presumed that her poor friend was being choked as well. They were doomed unless some sort of miracle occurred. Fortunately, one in the shape of a Jedi Master was just about to arrive…