Captain Sleskos grimaced as he watched the vidscreen before him; down in the hangar bay of his ship, the Needful Acquirer, the Jedi he recognized as Tahiri Veila was wiping out his men so easily, it was as if he were watching one of his people's native beasts—a Gremdrocht—massacre a group of children. She was moving too fast for any of their lasers to strike her down, and whatever wasn't deflected by her into any of his ship's bulkheads, floor, or ceiling was sent right back to the firers. And occasionally, she would even strike down one of the pirates herself when she got close enough.
And by the time the Jedi made it out of the hangar to be met by another group of Vagaari, she did something that really made Sleskos scared: from her free hand, she unleashed a torrent of electricity that almost instantly fried three of his men before they could fire off a shot. He had no idea that Jedi could even do that.
With that, he turned away and pushed past one of his comm officers, who didn't say anything about it, to open up a hypercomm frequency. Within seconds, the holoimage of another Vagaari captain appeared before him.
"What is it, Captain Sleskos?" the contacted Vagaari asked.
"Captain Vernoch, my ship has a Jedi aboard and she's wiping out my men!" Sleskos exclaimed. "We're in the system where that Imperial frigate crashed two years ago; you know the one."
"I remember it," Vernoch replied evenly. "This Jedi wouldn't happen to be Tahiri Veila, would it?"
Sleskos gulped nervously. "I had no idea it was her when we brought her aboard. I thought she would be-"
"Never mind that. My ship should be there in a few minutes; you're lucky I'm not far from that system right now." Vernoch signed off.
When Sleskos looked back to one of the vidscreens displaying Veila's rampage through his ship, he wondered if he'd have any remaining crew in the next few minutes.
. . .
Tahiri didn't care about the ethics against tapping into the dark side of the Force as she unleashed another current of lightning from the fingers of her free hand to crisp a duo of Vagaari from shooting her down. She pivoted to the right of the intersection of the corridor she was currently in and deflected several lasers fired upon her to the bulkheads at either side before she finally got one to hit the sole shooter square in the head, dropping him dead. She then hurried forward when she spotted a turbolift; though she was unfamiliar with the layout of a Vagaari pirate vessel, she assumed that the bridge was at the top of the ship, like with most Galactic Alliance, Imperial, and Chiss capital vessels.
But just as she was mere meters from that 'lift, a dozen Vagaari showed up from either end of the intersection ahead of her as if by magic and started firing upon her rapidly. Without slowing, she deflected all of the shots that would have hit her and left exactly half of the firers alive before she began cutting down the survivors. Once that was done, she turned to the 'lift and slashed its doors open. She peaked upward and saw that she would have quite an ascent; not a problem if she would actually take the elevator, but a bit of a workout for what she intended to do.
Tahiri's attention was then drawn downwards as she heard the approaching elevator ascend. She let herself drop there with her lightsaber pointed downward; with Force-cushioning around her legs to block against the turbolift's rapid ascent, she shoved her lightsaber blade through the roof. From there, she flipped back to the ledge behind her as lasers started blowing their way through in response; with her danger-senses alerting her to lasers that would have struck her, she naturally deflected them elsewhere through the 'lift shaft.
Once the elevator came to an emergency stop, Tahiri used the Force to push the now-weakened elevator roof down to crush the Vagaari who were inside. Then she plunged her blade through the controls, halting it in place so that it couldn't even be accessed remotely. So, with no worry of that elevator being used by anymore Vagaari, she proceeded to bound upwards across the shaft walls until she reached the topmost level with a preceding slash that cut the doors down. She was met by six Vagaari who immediately opened fire on her, but with a Force-shield around her, she allowed those lasers to dissipate there as she walked briskly forward until she reached them; and though they backed up a few paces as she approached them, it didn't stop her from finally dropping the shield and proceeding to cut them down before any of them could fix their aims to shoot her at point blank range.
With those Vagaari dead, Tahiri turned to the blast door that they had protected and plunged her blade to begin a large circular cut. Only two more armed Vagaari had come along to try to shoot her down, but all it took from her was a simple Force-push to send them falling down the open turbolift shaft before she resumed cutting. When she was done and that section of blast door fell forward, she blocked off a few laser shots before she unleashed yet another torrent of Force-lightning from her free hand that encompassed everyone on the bridge.
Tahiri allowed that torrent to go on for several seconds before she let it die away; everyone there collapsed with smoke rising from their bodies, though all of them remained alive, either unconscious or wishing they were dead, as she sensed.
"Which one of you is the captain?" Tahiri asked loudly. "And I know you bastards can speak Basic, so don't try to pretend you don't know what I'm saying."
Almost everyone who remained conscious pointed to the Vagaari in the bridge's center; he looked among them with a sneer before levelling a defiant glare at Tahiri.
She Force-pinned him by the chest to the deck before she walked up to his downed form. "Surrender," she said, "and I promise I'll let you and what remains of your crew go. But first, you're going to help me on why I'm here."
The pinned Vagaari chuckled. "You are too late, Jedi. My fellow captain won't let you leave this ship alive, even if it means the rest of us have to die."
Tahiri looked at him in confusion before her attention was drawn to one of the bridge's sensor boards, which signaled the arrival of another Vagaari ship several thousand kilometers starboard. Her attention was drawn back to the pinned Vagaari as he emanated another beep; she looked and found a device that beeped in sync with a red light in his right hand.
Sensing no immediate danger from it—such as if it were a thermal detonator—Tahiri asked her captive, "What is that?"
"A signal to tell any of our fellow Vagaari that we have been compromised," he explained with a malicious grin. "Usually, it means that they're supposed to help, but admittedly, more often than not, it means that they should stay away. But since I told my fellow captain that a Jedi was here, well... you will find out soon enough, Tahiri Veila."
Indeed, the pinned Vagaari's words were backed up as the other pirate ship opened fire with its Yuuzhan Vong magma cannons. Tahiri stumbled in place before she Force-anchored herself, taking focus away from her captive. This allowed the downed captain to, with his left hand, draw a blaster and fire; Tahiri instinctively rose her lightsaber in defense and deflected it right back into his head. She quickly turned and hurried out of the bridge.
Knowing that taking another turbolift during an attack on this ship was a bad idea, Tahiri desperately searched for an emergency stairway for about half a minute before she found one and kicked it open. She ran through, vaulted over the railing, dropped several floors, and with the Force cushioning her joints against the impact of a sudden stop, she arrested her fall by grabbing the railing on the level where she remembered this ship's hangar bay to be. She heaved herself over with a mild grunt and rushed through the exit there to head for the bay.
Along the way, however, she skidded to a stop as she suddenly felt several presences nearby; panicked presences that didn't feel like Vagaari and they didn't seem to be moving from their current position, despite the bombardment that the vessel was facing.
Grimacing, Tahiri quickly came to the dreadful conclusion of what those presences were: prisoners.
Standing still in deep but desperate contemplation despite the Vagaari ship rocking beneath her feet, Tahiri knew that it was her duty as a Jedi to save those prisoners; she couldn't simply leave them to die. On the other hand, however, her even just standing here thinking about saving them was costing her precious time that was needed to save herself; otherwise, not even Captain Yage and her remaining crew would be rescued.
And besides, she had already forsaken the Jedi creed of not embracing the dark side by using Force-lightning; just as it was necessary to use against what would have been overwhelming Vagaari forces, it would be necessary to leave their prisoners to die so that she may live.
But she also knew that if she let the captives die, especially if it turned out that she would have had the time to rescue them, she may never forgive herself.
Releasing a frustrated yelp, Tahiri turned in the direction of those panicked presences and Force-sped to their general location. Upon nearing, she slowed down to normal jogging speed, Force-anchoring herself where necessary to keep herself on-balance from all the rocking, before she soon found the door where the presences unknowingly awaited her. She pushed a button to slide it open, and sure enough, there were exactly twelve prisoners there: three Chiss—two male, one female—five members of a species Tahiri recognized as Geroons—three female, two male—three Ebruchi—all of them male—and one light-skinned human male with brown hair who looked like he could have been around Tahiri's age, if not slightly older. Each of them was placed in a separate cage throughout the cell room and they all looked at Tahiri with mixtures of fear and confusion.
Another rocking, accompanied by a shrill siren blaring, snapped Tahiri out of her observation and prompted her to stumble forward, ignite her lightsaber, and slash the prisoners' locks in quick but sequential order. When that was done, she declared, "C'mon, we have very little time!" and turned to leave; above the blaring of the siren, the clatter of the freed prisoners' footsteps following her could be heard.
Emerging into the corridor, red emergency lights flared and the rocking got even worse. Still, Tahiri hoisted herself up with Force-assistance and even used some telekinesis to help those captives that had fallen. From there, it took about two minutes before they reached the Vagaari ship's hangar bay and they piled into the nearest armed shuttle, with nearly all of them finding a spot in the rather cramped passenger cabin.
Tahiri was about to take the pilot's seat when one of the male Chiss stopped her with an arm and said something to her in what she assumed was Cheunh. When she looked back at him in confusion, the human man said in clear Basic, "He said he's a pilot; he can get us out of here."
"Thanks," Tahiri said curtly before waving an arm before the Chiss, letting him take his place while she sat herself in the copilot seat.
In seconds, the shuttle had lifted off the deck and was soaring out into space just as the hangar's structure was falling apart in response to small explosions occurring.
The Chiss pilot exclaimed something in Cheunh, which the human man—who stood grasping a hand upon the pilot and copilot seats' headrests—translated, "He says this thing doesn't have a hyperdrive!"
"Not a problem," Tahiri said. "Tell him to head for the planet!"
"What, why?" the man asked.
"Because none of the moons are habitable enough for us to hide," Tahiri answered with mild frustration. "Now tell him to-"
The shuttle was blasted forward against Tahiri and the Chiss' control as the attacked Vagaari ship finally exploded under its comrade vessel's barrage; and before the Chiss could regain control, something else caused the ship to buck and prompted an alarm to start blaring from the control console.
"What was that?!" Tahiri exclaimed.
"We just lost one of the engines!" the human man exclaimed after the Chiss shouted something. "Looks like we're headed for that planet anyway!"
"Tell everyone to brace themselves for possible impact!" Tahiri shouted. "And find yourself a seat, too!"
"I'm not sure if everyone will understand!" the man exclaimed. "I only know Basic, Cheunh, Sy Bisti, and-"
"Just do it anyway!" Tahiri interrupted.
Without another word, the man turned and hurried back, all the while shouting in what Tahiri assumed was Sy Bisti—since it sounded different from Cheunh—to the other passengers. All the while, she synchronized what little control she had of the shuttle with the Chiss pilot's movements just as the heat of friction started to show through the forward viewport.
Within half a minute, and despite the particular strain of wrestling the ship through atmospheric entry, the Chiss and Tahiri made it through and were now soaring down through the cloudy skies of the icy and snowy world rapidly approaching them. When they were several hundred kilometers above the nearest patch of ground, though, yet another alarm blared; as the Chiss announced the latest problem in his own tongue, Tahiri had a feeling that she could tell what it already was: they just lost attitude control and were coming in for a crash-landing, just as she predicted.
The Chiss pointed to a nearby mountain with a vast stretch of sizable room before them, as if it was made just for them as an emergency tarmac. Tahiri spared him a nod and wrestled with her own control again as they did their best to steer the falling shuttle in the direction of the makeshift landing strip.
"Hang on!" Tahiri shouted without looking back at the passengers as the "tarmac" approached them more quickly than she would have liked.
Mere seconds before, though, she instinctively erected a Force-shield around herself and the pilot as the shuttle's bottom scraped and sparked against the permafrost beneath it and started to quickly come up toward the mountain's face. She closed her eyes, hoping that the Force-shield would be enough to at least defend herself, if not also the Chiss beside her.
When the impact came, all became darkness for Tahiri.
. . .
When she awakened in a blurry daze that, thankfully, cleared up quickly, Tahiri saw that her section of the viewport was just inches away from the mountain.
The section of the Chiss pilot, however, had pierced a rocky outcropping and speared him clear through the chest; his head hung lifelessly aside. And when the ringing in Tahiri's ears finally cleared away, she heard the human man say beside her, "C'mon, get up! We have to get outta here! This ship's gonna blow!"
Indeed, yet another alarm joined the other two in a now-persistent and irritating tone. The man helped Tahiri out of her crash-webbing and yanked her to her feet so that he could guide her hurriedly out of the shuttle where all of the other passengers were waiting in the snow more than a dozen meters away.
When the shuttle finally exploded behind them, Tahiri and the man fell forward to their stomachs from the shock-wave.
Thankfully, they both retained consciousness to push themselves back up and regard the fiery wreckage momentarily before the female Chiss exclaimed in accented Basic, as if addressing Tahiri, "Now what do we do?!"
Before she could answer, Tahiri looked up and found an ominous-looking cloud approaching them several kilometers away.
"I say we find shelter," the Jedi said, "before that blizzard overtakes us."
The entire group turned and hurried away, hoping there would be somewhere at the mountain's base where they could weather the storm.