"Hold on, I got you!" screamed Sabine.
She grabbed the door frame with her other hand and started to pull the blond up. But Shin was so far down already, the walkway collapsing with her. She could feel her fingers slide free from the door frame, feel herself dip further into the void.
She crossed Shin's gaze. The blond had a surprisingly relaxed expression, but there was only sadness and resignation in her eyes. Come on, don't give up just yet, I'll pull you up! she thought, desperate. But her arm was ankylosing, her fingers barely keeping grip on the doorframe anymore.
For a moment there, Sabine felt like she saw herself from outside her own body. There she was, her body torn between that doorframe and Shin, every muscle and tendon stretched to its limit to save the blond's life. The feelings she had, in this very moment, were so very clear. She would die to save her, she would give anything to pull her back up, to hold that warm and thin body in her arms, protect her, and kiss her once more.
The girl had tried to kill her so many times. Almost succeeded too. And Sabine had fought to kill every time as well. All she would have to do was let go of her, and she would slay an enemy. Her captor, the apprentice of Ashoka's murderer. Nobody would even know.
Inside herself, Sabine knew she should do it. Save herself, sacrifice the blond, and release the galaxy from another threat, almost conscience-free.
But she couldn't. Not after those moments with her, against her, inside her. She stared at those big puzzled eyes that she loved, and how delicious it was to tease the girl just to see that cute and ever so candid confusion in her gaze.
She looked at this small nose she loved to bite and feet bumping against hers. At those thin perfect lips, their mischievous smile she had learned to love because the girl was so alive when she fought back. Those lips she had kissed, bitten, taken ferociously. Those lips she had felt in her most intimate places, kissing her, eating her, making her feel alive too.
And she knew there was no point in living if she could never have them anymore.
Then, she saw it in the girl's eyes, right before she acted. The affection she was feeling back, the blond's own inebriated fascination for Sabine... and suddenly, the cold resolve. No! No, no, no! You don't! You don't even think about that, I forb...
Sabine felt like she was having one of those chase nightmares where she was moving through thick water. Everything was happening in slow motion and she could not act as quickly as she was thinking.
Though she expected it, the strength of the Force-push took her by surprise, forcing her to let go of Shin's hand without any chance of fighting it. She knew the blond girl had done that, for this exact purpose. And she was feeling so mad about it, so betrayed by her sacrifice.
It felt strange to be so furious even though not even two seconds had passed since it happened. Time felt suspended as she could see the last pieces of the walkway bend and sink into the void through the half-closed blast door. It finally slammed shut and she slammed into the corridor's ground, rolling and crashing hard.
She did not slow for a second as she spun back up, barely keeping her balance while running back to the door.
"Shin!" she screamed, punching the door open frantically.
It was taking forever to open back up. Her own scream felt muffled to her ears like she was hearing herself from afar. The door lifted open and she bolted through it, before barely stopping herself in disbalance as there was only a dark void now, where the meshed walkway had been before.
Then, the deafening calm around her hit her like a wave. Some durasteel structures were still creaking in the dark, a few debris falling here and there. In front of her, in the distance, she could see the engine wall, gutted by her explosives. Fuel lines had frozen in the depressurized void, flames from the burnt parts slowly smothered by the absence of air. In the sinister orange blinking of emergency lights, she could see a hole, running deep into the massive engine, burnt debris collapsing it.
Nothing was rumbling anymore. The rogue engine had been slayed, and without pressure around to carry the sound, she did not hear the normal maddening hum of the ship anymore.
She looked down, where the walkway had collapsed with Shin. She could not even see the bottom of the ring section. Glowing white-hot debris were disappearing in silence in the dark, as they followed Shin in her demise. She thought about jumping too, hoping to land wherever the blond girl had fallen and climb back with her, but she knew that would just be pure and simple suicide.
Ten seconds had passed, or maybe less, when she felt a sharp and frozen pain in her stomach. It was as though the force had punched her in the guts. She fell to her knees, pale and trembling. Every cell in her brain lit up in panic as she knew perfectly well what she had just felt. No. No I refuse to know it, I refuse to think about it, I REFUSE IT! she thought, feeling like she was screaming in her own head. She buried the feeling deep, and the thought of it deeper. It wasn't possible to ignore it entirely, that she had felt Shin's death echo and rumble in the force. She tried to ignore it, their ever-so-dawning connection being severed, and destroyed in an instant, shattering her to the core. And it took every drop of energy and denial she had left to set it aside like truth could just be a stupid point of view to dismiss.
She stepped back into the corridor, switching her helmet frequency to Garret's. She was immediately assaulted by the man's voice.
"...is mission control, do any of you copy? I repeat, this is mission control, Shin, Miss Wren, do you copy?" said Garret, over and over.
As she answered, she was surprised at her out-of-breath voice.
"This is Sabine Wren. We need to hurry, I need to find a way down!" said Sabine, speaking fast.
"Down...? Down what?" asked Garret, puzzled.
"Down that fucking engine room! All the way down! I need to go now, tell me how!" she screamed, almost against the man.
Garret remained silent on the com for a moment. Then, he spoke again, and his voice told Sabine he understood what happened.
"Sabine... Just come back to the ship core, would you? It's... I'm so sorry. You made it though, we're safe. Just come back..."
Sabine screamed so hard the mic in her helmet whistled in feedback. She did not even said an intelligible word, she just screamed, like a part of her soul had been torn away. This time, Baylan's voice came through the com.
"Miss Wren. I salute with deep gratitude your devotion, and hope, toward Shin. But I felt it too. I think you can believe in my honesty when I say there's no point in going after what remains of her. She's dead, Sabine." said Baylan, his calm voice infuriating Sabine.
She took a long breath, then pressed the com button again, speaking colder than the void around.
"Respectfully, Baylan, na'rsheb," she said, bitterly. "And if you're not so fresh on Mando'a, that means for you to take your gratitude and your honesty and shove them up your ass."
"Miss Wren..." started Baylan.
"No," cut Sabine, harshly. "I'm going down there. I'm bringing her back. You can help or you can slana'pir."
"Piss off?" tried Baylan, calmly.
"That's the general meaning," confirmed Sabine.
Baylan remained silent for a while, then answered, in a battered tone.
"There's little I can do to stop you Miss Wren, and far less I'd want to do anyway. Whatever you find down there, I hope it helps more than it hurts you."
Garret spoke after him before Sabine could answer.
"Sabine, I just looked at the schematics. There should be a maintenance shaft two hundred meters down the corridor, going down to the lower hull. From there, you could rejoin the bottom of the engine room, where I gather you will... find Shin."
Sabine started to run as fast as she could, barely able to speak under the effort.
"Her suit must have damages, put the pressure back in the ring section, Garret!" she ordered.
The engineer answered in a calm compassionate tone.
"I've already done it Sabine, but... if her suit has damages, then she truly is gone..." he said.
"One more word in that regard, Garret, and I will make sure you are gone" spitted Sabine.
"You don't understand. The pressurization is underway, but... pumping back air into such a massive volume of the ship? It's not instant Sabine. It's gonna be an hour before you can safely survive a puncture in your suit."
Sabine swore a good number of other flourished Mando'a curses in her mind, as she reached the maintenance shaft hatch. Blanketing herself in denial, she opened it and practically jumped down the ladder, going down as fast as she could.
If the main maintenance corridor was already barren, gloomy, and treacherous, those undershafts were almost impracticable. The bulky pressurized suit was not helping, as Sabine had to crouch, crown, and squeeze between loose cables, hot fuel lines, and protruding equipment with close to no space for advancing.
She knew she was getting close when the barren corridor started to show strange bends in its mesh floor and she passed a severed cooling pipe. Soon enough, debris were littering the very uneven floor, and the whole structure of the corridor was twisted and wrinkled, showing the trauma of the previous tearings from the thruster.
She felt she was out before she could see it. The giant engine room was quiet, faint sparks being swallowed by the dark here and there, white-hot metal debris slowly extinguishing on the ground.
Above, she could barely see the ominous shape of the engine's upper part. Far above, only the last meter of the walkway was still eerily hanging from the motor wall side, most of the meshed bridge scattered in pieces at her feet. The pure durasteel beams running on the side of the destroyed walkway had fallen down and bent from the shock. Has to be a hundred meters fall, thought Sabine, immediately repressing the thought. She did not want to think what that would have done to a human body.
She slipped and fell as her foot stepped on a slippery cylindrical object. Grunting, she sat down and patted the floor in search of the treacherous debris. But as she found it, her fist closed on a much too familiar piece of metal.
She exhaled, in despair, as she pressed the button on the lightsaber, a red-orange blade igniting and casting a vivid light to the room. Shin's lightsaber, she thought, agonizing. The light from the blade was lighting up the torn remains of the belt it had fallen from. Further ahead on the floor, amongst the debris, she guessed the dark round form of the blond's utility bag. She did fall. All the way down here.
She fell to the ground, crying. Tears came like a torrent down her cheek, misting her helmet visor. It's over... she thought. Her body must be down there under the debris, crushed and disarticulated.
She felt pure rage in herself, at the thought, the injustice. Screaming, she spun back up and started to lash at the fallen debris with the lightsaber, cutting into the pile of crushed metal, and digging a hole through it out of pure despair.
Minutes passed. Or hours? She didn't know anymore as she was slashing her way through the debris field to exhaustion. But her strength started to fade, and she paused, catching her breath.
Then from the corner of her eye, she caught a faint, pale blue light emanating from aside. She pulled a durasteel panel out of her way, then a small fallen beam. The pale blue light grew stronger and she could peer down to its source, through the debris pile.
Somewhere underneath the big engine base, where the debris was the thickest, she could see a transparisteel porthole, light shining from inside of it. A door! There's some kind of room underneath that engine.
She knew Shin was dead. She had felt it. And she didn't have the strength to deny it anymore. But something inside of her just couldn't die and accept it. A last, impossible, insolent spark of hope.
Grasping the lightsaber with both hands, she started to dig again, clearing the door.
Hold on! I'm coming!
