As Yage predicted, the blizzard died off after two hours and the natives agreed to give Tahiri one of their spare fur coats and gloves so that she could venture out with the captain, a company of twelve of her crew, and six natives. Decker had also volunteered to come as backup; no one objected and one of the Imperials even offered him a spare blaster as he was also supplied a spare coat and pair of gloves.
With Tahiri using her telekinesis to clear a path through the snow buildup every now and then on their trek to the Widowmaker, it took the company less than half an hour before one of the natives shouted something in her language as she pointed off to their right. The party halted and everyone there looked across the tundra; less than a kilometer away, a group of twenty natives hurried forth bearing spears and knives.
"Rival tribe!" Yage told Tahiri tersely as they and the rest of their company adopted battle-ready stances. "I recognize them; they're cannibals!"
"How many of them have to die before the rest retreat?" Tahiri asked without taking her eyes away from the clan.
"About half, maybe more," Yage answered. "Why?"
Without responding to the captain, Tahiri charged for the cannibals as she activated her lightsaber; none of the enemy seemed to register the oddity of her weapon as they continued on their own run. With a dash of Force-speed as she covered the last several meters separating herself from them, she decapitated three cannibals in one swipe before turning to her left and impaling her sword through another savage's midsection. She ducked beneath a skewering strike for the back of her head before she swiftly cut off that attacker's legs at the kneecaps and then leaped over two charging opponents; upon landing, she spun around to cut them both across their waists and let both halves of their bodies topple into the snow. With some telekinesis, she knocked one cannibal into another just in time to slice off yet another's spear by its metal end before promptly slicing him in half down the center of his body. She then flung her lightsaber forward to decapitate the two downed foes before they could fully stand straight up, resulting in her dashing away from a trio of savages closing in from behind. This brought her face to face with another trio; and with the last four enemies closing in from either side of her in duos, she deactivated her lightsaber, quickly hooked it back to her belt, and then spun in place as she unleashed a torrent of Force-lightning from each hand, stunning each of the remaining cannibals two by two until their flesh started to char away. Only when they finally dropped dead in the snow, smoke rising from their burned carcasses, did Tahiri finally cease her spinning and her double torrent; she shook her head briefly to clear away the mild dizziness that had ensued.
When she looked back at Yage and the others, Tahiri saw that they were all stunned by what they had seen. In response, she only shrugged and said, "Sorry; the rest didn't retreat like you said, Captain."
"Let's move on," Yage declared to the rest of the group a moment later; she repeated it in the natives' language.
Moments after rejoining the group, Tahiri noticed that the Chiss-like aliens regarded her very warily before quickly looking away as soon as she made eye contact with them. Their Force-presences radiated fear and even some loathing from half of them. Not surprising, she thought; even though the cannibals were enemies, she had demonstrated frightening powers to them that made her demonstrations back in the cave system look like mere parlor tricks. She idly wondered whether her existence violated whatever religious beliefs that these primitives had. At that, she couldn't help but think of a legend among the Tusken Raiders of a human man who had slaughtered an entire tribe roughly half a century ago and how they regarded that outlander as a demonic force; was that how these Chiss-like people would view her in time?
The Imperials, Tahiri sensed, also regarded her warily, yet not as fearfully; though they harbored some mild resentment that she had powers that they could barely, if ever, understand, they were at least smart enough to trust that she was a valuable ally.
"I thought Force-lightning was a dark side trait," Decker said after sidling up next to her.
She quirked an eyebrow. "What do you know of the dark side of the Force, Decker?"
"From what little I understand of the Jedi, it's something that turns them into something else. Something that vies for power over others. Like Darth Vader, or, as rumor had it, Palpatine."
"A Sith, you mean."
"Yes. I imagine that if there were another Jedi here, they wouldn't take too kindly to your use of the Force there."
"They probably wouldn't."
A moment of walking later, Decker said neutrally, "You don't sound bothered by that."
"Let's just say I'm not like other Jedi," Tahiri said with mild defensiveness in her tone. "In fact, a certain Jedi had come to the conclusion that, apparently, there was no light or dark side of the Force, and that whatever lightness or darkness is there is within us. Or something like that."
"Something like that," Decker echoed. "And I assume you believe that?"
"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," she replied evasively. "What matters is, I saved this group without losing a single soul in it."
"Soul, huh? Interesting word choice right there."
"How so?"
"Well, it's just that, in certain religious philosophies, several of which are admittedly very archaic among the likes of the Chiss and Ebruchi, to commit a dark, violent action leads one to darken, or rather, corrupt their souls."
"I assume you believe that?"
"Kinda hard not to. War, from a galactic scale like the one that passed two years ago to just that exchange with those cannibals, irrevocably changes one's soul. When they live through it, that is. And more often than not, that change isn't for the better."
"You sound awfully philosophical. Maybe you would've liked that Jedi I mentioned."
"Maybe. What's their name?"
"Jacen Solo."
"Ah. Well, if you don't mind my saying, but I think I'd rather get to know his sister. Much better looking, you know," he added with a sly grin.
"Sorry; she's taken."
"By who?"
"Jagged Fel."
At that, Decker faltered in his tracks for several steps. This prompted Tahiri to stop, turn, and regard him strangely.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine," he stammered as he hurried forward to catch up with her. "Just... sorry, I guess I had this crush on her. And to know that none other than Jagged Fel, one of the few humans in the Chiss Ascendancy, was the one to get into a relationship with her, that's..."
"Surprising?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
Tahiri returned the nod. But she couldn't help but sense that there was more to what he was expressing through his surprise over Jaina and Jag being together; it seemed more personal to him than he was letting on.
Still, she decided not to press him about it as she said, "Well, if you say that war changes people in ways that aren't all that great, Jaina's probably a textbook example of that. She used to be quite personable and sociable from when I knew her, back before the Vong. Now..."
"Now what?"
"Now... she's become a bit more aggressive, you know? Sure, she's got Jag, and she still got her family, but still... she's got more of a weight on her shoulders. Quite frankly, I don't know how Jag makes it work with her, especially since they have so much time apart."
"I assume you know him, by way of Jaina?" The slight excitement in his tone matched his Force-presence; Tahiri sensed it was something more than mere hero worship for Jag.
"Barely, I'm afraid. Which is why I don't know how he makes it work with her."
"Oh. Well... if you don't mind my asking, since you brought up the topic of how Jaina was changed by the war... how were you?"
"Changed by the war, you mean?"
He nodded.
She allowed a few beats to pass before she said, "In ways I really don't wanna get into."
His lips firmed. "But you used to be much different than you are now, right?"
"I was a kid. Of course I'm different now. Though I imagine, if it weren't for the Vong..." She shook her head, dispelling the thought of a different and better life from her mind. "It doesn't matter."
"With all due respect, I think it does."
"And why's that?" she asked warily.
"Because I think that when it comes to Jedi, a people who strive to be so close and at peace with the Force, it seems even less healthy for someone like you to embrace your own inner darkness than for someone like me. So I do wonder if you were anything like you are now before the Vong."
"I'll let you wonder, then," Tahiri said stiffly.
They walked the rest of the way to the Widowmaker in silence that was broken up only by the cold wind.
. . .
Several snowy hilltops later, the group had finally got their view of the crashed Imperial frigate that was their destination; it had impacted against the rock and permafrost beneath it on its belly and had since had several sections of bulkhead, both intact and damaged, removed by native scavengers in the two years since.
"The fact that the helmsmen were able to land in this way, with the damage we received," Yage commented proudly to Tahiri, "was a testament to their skill under duress. It's particularly bitter that they're both dead now."
"From the crash?" Tahiri asked.
Yage shook her head. "From a rival tribe. It's too bad it wasn't the one you eliminated, Jedi Veila." She looked out to the rest of the group and said, "Let's go," in both Basic and the natives' tongue.
Once they actually reached the dead Widowmaker, everyone who wasn't Tahiri or Yage took positions along its holed portside while the two women entered the crashed frigate. Yage led Tahiri along several corridors and up several levels over the course of five quiet minutes before they reached the bridge. The captain directed the younger woman to a terminal and, with a wave of her hand, said, "Broadcast your signal, Jedi Veila."
Tahiri plugged the commlink that Shawnkyr had given her into that terminal, and when a green light flared above her head, she said, "This is Jedi Veila. I have-"
She was stopped abruptly by her danger-sense, which prompted her to instinctively duck just as the terminal suddenly erupted in a flash of sparks followed by a curtain of fire. Tahiri backed away hastily with Yage before the former snuffed the fire out with the Force.
"Emperor's black bones!" Yage cried. "That was the last working comm terminal!"
Tahiri approached the dead terminal carefully and cringed when she saw that her commlink had been all but reduced to a slagged heap that had fused where it had been plugged in. She turned back to Yage and asked, "Do you think they got the message?"
"I hope so," Yage replied with a dispirited tone.
They both stiffened as the sounds of blasterfire echoed from outside. They hurried to the nearest viewport and saw that their guardians had scattered and taken cover behind giant pieces of the Widowmaker's debris as, several meters away, more than a dozen Vagaari were firing at them as they knelt behind meter-high metal shields. Behind them, a shuttle was parked.
Tahiri and Yage turned and hurried back the way they had come so that, in less than three minutes, they had emerged outside. With the Jedi acting as cover with her lightsaber deflecting the Vagaari's shots while Yage added her own fire against the pirates, they soon took cover behind a large hunk of plating with Decker and a duo of natives who periodically, with their own salvaged Imperial blasters, took potshots at the enemy.
"I think now would be a good time to repeat what you did to those cannibals, Tahiri!" Decker exclaimed.
"No moral objections to it this time, Decker?" she retorted.
"I promise you you'll never hear me complain of it again!" he replied loudly.
She nodded before she stood back up to her full height and leaped over the debris cover to begin crossing the distance to the Vagaari, deflecting the shots they aimed at her along the way.
However, just as she was halfway to the pirates, one of them lobbed a stun grenade at her. She skidded to a stop but didn't have time to erect a Force-shield before the grenade went off. Even closing her eyes and turning her head away at the last possible second didn't prevent the overwhelming white from obscuring her vision and the rest of her senses for several crucial seconds.
And by the time her danger-sense alerted her to an incoming attack, her disorientation allowed her only a wild lightsaber swing directly in front of her before a hard metallic strike to the small of her back brought her to her hands and knees. Her lightsaber clattered away from her grasp, and just as her vision recovered just long enough to let her see her hands partially covered in the snow, she was knocked out by another metallic strike to the back of her head.
. . .
"Sir, we have received a signal from the system where the Widowmaker crashed," one of the Guardian's comm officers reported.
Jag stood up from his command chair and paced to the reporting officer. "From Jedi Veila?" he asked.
"No, not by this signal, sir," the subordinate answered. "It's from a different source, from the same location, broadcasting on a wide frequency. It's strange; it looks like it is Chiss."
"It is," Jag said with recognition in his tone after briefly looking at the screen. He turned away and said, "Helmsmen, plot a course for that system." He pivoted back to the comm officer. "Notify the Lifesaver; we're going in."
"But, sir, this source isn't from the Jedi's commlink. It could be-"
"Are you questioning my order, Lieutenant?"
The subordinate looked flustered for only a split second before he said with regained composure, "No, sir."
"Then you have you orders." Jag walked briskly back to his command chair and resumed his seat for the next hyperspace jump.
"Sir," that same comm officer reported, "Captain Hesklon wishes to speak to you."
"Helm, belay that order!" Jag said. Addressing the comm officer, he said, "Put him through to my chair."
A moment later, a miniature representation of Captain Hesklon appeared above Jag's right armrest.
"Captain Fel," the Lifesaver's captain said, "you recall that the signal that Jedi Veila was to broadcast would be sent over to me as well as to your ship, correct?"
"I do, indeed, Captain Hesklon."
"Then how was it that you had received such a signal when I haven't, Captain Fel?"
"I admit, though I have received a signal from that system, Captain Hesklon, it did not come from Jedi Veila. But I assure you, the signal it came from was from a trustworthy source."
"Oh? Do you mind telling me who or what this source is, Captain Fel? Because I, too, have received such a signal, yet none of my comm officers can tell me it is, other than that it might be Chiss in origin. Might."
"I'm afraid I can't elucidate, either, Captain."
"And why not if you're so willing to trust it?"
"It is a personal matter that I'm not at liberty to disclose, Captain Hesklon."
"In a matter concerning the rescue of Imperial officers, Captain Fel, you are obligated to share with me, an Imperial officer, why you trust this unknown source. Because if you can't do that, why should I trust you?"
Jag suppressed a grimace before he said, "Allow me to take this conversation to my command salon, Captain Hesklon."
"By all means, Captain Fel," the Lifesaver's commander said with a tinge of impatience.
More than two minutes later, Jag stepped out of his command salon and declared to the bridge, "Captain Hesklon has agreed to follow through with us. Helm, plot us a course."
"Aye, Captain."
Moments later, the Guardian was in hyperspace, just as the Lifesaver launched from a different system.