Re: your prediction, 17 - you know Korkie very well.
Enjoy a big chapter - the last of our time on Ryloth.
Chapter 16: Shatterpoint
Mace made short work of the Imperial rescue party scattered in the periphery of the Emperor's crashed shuttle and carried onwards through the forest. He was not lulled into any sense of security. The true battle lay ahead of him still. There was something like a rumbling thundercloud in the Force. The Emperor was exercising his anger somewhere in the near distance. Mace felt the cold emptiness of extinguished life. He had noticed a remote village as he flew in.
But where was Korkie?
Shielding admirably, wherever he was. His presence was faint and ephemeral and could have been anywhere. He had obscured Cody's presence alongside his.
Padawan, please…
A mistake he would surely learn to stop making soon. He hoped to, at least. Mace was on a battlefield on Ryloth with the Emperor ahead of him and still, thought of the Jedi Temple made his heart ache.
"We have to go to the village!"
"We cannot go to the village, Hera."
"They'll be killed!"
"So will we!"
Hera and Cody turned to appeal their respective cases to Korkie, who had not yet found his voice.
"It's hard for me to think with all this-"
He waved his hand irritably at something they could not see.
"-in the Force. But I…"
Cody gave Korkie a look of sharp warning.
Do not be your father's son right now, Korkaran Kryze. Not today.
The boy seemed to hear him, or perhaps the case was simply unarguable.
"Hera, listen," Korkie appealed. "Cody and I landed our ships to keep you safe. You should never have been in that space battle and you certainly cannot be in that village today. The Emperor is too powerful, Hera. We can do…"
Korkie's voice faltered on that crucial word.
"Nothing," Cody finished firmly. "We can do nothing. With an army, maybe. An enormous army. But not just us."
Hera looked to Korkie in a watery-eyed plea. But the young man clenched his jaw and shook his head.
"Cody's right. I'm sorry. We'd stand no chance."
"Then what are we going to do?" Hera asked, her voice edging upon hysterical. "Aren't we going to die anyway, stranded here? Everyone's kriffing dead, no one can rescue us-"
"Hera."
Korkie laid his hands on the young Twi'lek's shoulders and imparted what Cody suspected was a Force-sensitive shot of sedation.
"We don't know what's happened back there," he told her, voice soft. "But I have hope. We will make our way back, find any ship we can, and we'll get out of here. We're not going to die."
Tears were running down Hera's face now. She was a child, Cody realised, in that moment. For all her valour and all her intelligence, she was still a child. But she drew herself taller; she sniffled and nodded. She might have been the most courageous child that Cody had ever known.
"I just hope my dad's okay."
Her voice was but a whisper. Korkie nodded grimly and led them on their journey back to the crash site. Cody did not see any hope in the young man's eyes.
Isval's eyes widened in dismay as she shot across the rainforest from the Imperial communications tower back towards the wounded patch of jungle where the space battle had turned to land. There was a distant column of smoke. It was not fire season.
"I think the bastards have gone to the village," she breathed. "They're burning it down."
Beside her, Drim's face darkened. His family, too, had fled the spice mines.
"Are we any chance at taking them out from the sky?" Crost asked.
Isval grimaced. Neither Cham nor any of his fellow starfighter pilots were answering their comms, which could only mean that attacking the Emperor and his General was a hopeless task even with blaster cannons and shields at one's disposal. The mission was, Isval knew faintly, an unprecedented disaster. But she'd not let the truth of it sink in yet. If she even began to truly fathom how many of her friends had died today she wouldn't be able to hold the ship steady on its course.
"Why don't we give it a kriffing go?" Isval asked.
There was a manic edge to her voice that even she could recognise. She was ready to die for Ryloth in that moment. It felt that dying for Ryloth was all that was left for her to do. Cham was surely dead. There could be nothing left.
But as the village reared up ahead of them Isval felt a thudding and then a profound emptiness in her chest. Because she would not even be granted the gift of martyrdom on this bloody day. There was no blaster fire nor any tug in the Force from beneath her.
The village was razed to the ground and corpses littered amongst the ash. They had arrived too late.
"Hold up!"
Korkie was stopped in his tracks as he thunked into Cody's outstretched arm. On the soldier's other side, Hera had done the same.
"Didn't you hear that?" Cody pressed. "Can you sense anyone?"
In all honesty, Korkie had not and could not.
"There's a foot soldier out there," Cody murmured, lifting his blaster and motioning for Korkie and Hera to crouch. "Probably one of the TIE pilots who chased us down."
He prowled forward, finger poised on the trigger. The jungle seemed devoid entirely of sentient life. Until, in the Force, a faint glimmer…
"Cody, wait!"
Korkie laid a hand on his companion's blaster arm.
"Cody, I think that's…"
There was a further rustle of movement and a glimpse of brown through the many-layered greens of the forest.
"Mace!"
Hera hiccupped out a few more tears, this time of relief. Cody sighed in gratitude.
"General, thank the stars…"
Mace Windu did not smile. His eyes were fixed on the child with dismay.
"Young Hera…"
Korkie hurried to fill the silence before the child could sob anew.
"I'm sorry," he offered. "It was all my fault. She stowed away on my ship and I didn't sense her until it was too late. I was distracted. I'm sorry. But we're going to get her back in one piece."
Mace nodded curtly. He had already smoothed his emotions cleanly away, as only a Jedi and General could do.
"We need to get you out of here. The attack has gone badly."
The words were brief, but potent. Hera trembled where she stood. Korkie's relief at seeing the former Jedi Master was fading quickly against the enormity of their predicament.
"I made it in unscathed; my ship still flies," Mace went on, as he began to lead them through the jungle. "I'm afraid that all of the Free Ryloth starfighters I came across were damaged beyond repair. Do you know of any other functioning ships we still have available to us?"
"Mine, General," Cody answered. "But it only seats one."
"I'll take it," Mace declared. "We'll get you and any other survivors into my ship."
Korkie's expression slackened.
"Mace, no, you can't fight the Emperor alone-"
"I must. There is no alternative."
Korkie felt a child in the weary Knight's company, although the difference in their heights now was slight. Mace spoke with a leaden heaviness, his frown etched deep into his face.
"You will not escape unless I engage him. And I am afraid that you will not be of any use in that battle, Korkaran."
There was a horrible tightness in Korkie's chest. Had he truly brought Mace Windu back here to fight the battle that he had told Korkie, in a rare show of vulnerability, that he was not yet ready to fight?
"Surely, Mace," he pleaded, "I can be of some use."
"No. I will be weakened by any attempt to defend you."
Korkie felt a welling shame burning behind his eyes.
"I'm so sorry, I…"
His voice came out hoarse, almost a whisper.
"I never should have brought you here, to this. I never should have-"
He was unable to form words then, as the anxiety rose and bubbled within him. He had felt no fear for himself as he sat in the hangar in his Whitecloak but now he felt it all, for he had doomed Mace Windu and Cody and that wasn't all. For no one had said what had happened to Trapper or Woolley or Kix or Gregor or Boil and perhaps it was their ships that lay wrecked in the jungle, folded in over broken bodies-
"Korkie."
It was Cody's hand upon his shoulder that brought him back.
"Stay here. Right here."
His mother had spoken those simple words to him in the years of the horrible stalemate in which his father had stopped visiting and the taming of Korkie's Force sensitivity had been left to the Force-blind Duchess of Mandalore.
Stay here, Korkaran. In this body, in this moment.
He had meditated floating on his back in the pond in the palace gardens.
"I'm here," Korkie managed.
The words stumbled from his mouth, barely his own.
You are here, Korkaran. You are nowhere else.
"I'm here," he repeated, and tasted them on his tongue.
"And you need to stay here so that we can all get out," Cody affirmed, holding Korkie's swimming eyes with his own steady gaze. "I need you and Hera needs you. The General will look after himself."
Korkie's eyes darted to Mace and he wanted to disagree but clamped his jaw down shut against the words. He nodded tightly instead.
"I think the Emperor and Grievous went north," he offered. "To that village."
Mace nodded solemnly.
"Yes, I sensed it too," he affirmed. "But he will not be occupied there for long. I intend to intercept him on his return towards the landing zone. You need to make it there directly."
He handed the ignition swipe to Cody.
"Bring survivors with you if you can but do not delay. The safety of the two young ones is most important."
"Understood, General."
"We'll meet on the second moon if unpursued."
"See you there, General."
Mace embarked in one direction and Cody, after a quick scan with the ignition swipe, in another. There was a glazed absence in Hera's reddened eyes. Her arms were folded protectively across her thin chest and she did not move.
"Come on, Hera," Korkie murmured, laying a hand on her shoulder.
He steered her to follow Cody.
"Just focus on your walking. I'm here with you."
She walked obediently but did not speak. Korkie thought of the day he had spent watching HoloNet by Harshika's side, a day that had turned nightmarish when his father appeared handcuffed in a colosseum on Geonosis. The day that his childhood had ended.
He couldn't do much for the young Twi'lek. But he was glad to be with her.
It was no accident that Senator Orn Free Taa had not once since the beginning of the Clone Wars been home to Ryloth. He could tell himself that his ceaseless barrage of senatorial sittings and networking meets did not permit a return to his homeworld; he could tell himself that he preferred the metropolitan lifestyle – the food, the drink, the entertainment. But the truth of the matter was that Orn Free Taa was no fool and he knew that the people of Ryloth regarded him now at best with detached antipathy and at worst with unbridled malice.
The people of Ryloth had forgotten that slavery was no invention of the Empire and that the foundation of wealthy systems was good, hard labour. Mining spice was an ugly trade, to be sure, but it was the beginning of a developing capitalist society on Ryloth and the wealth would trickle down. Orn Free Taa's conscience was clear but he did not fancy his chances at making his reasoning understood by the workers of Ryloth who were, imminently, crowding the narrow, rocky roads leading up to the long-abandoned Senator's House.
The Emperor had promised Orn Free Taa that Ryloth would be rewarded for the wealth it accrued for the Empire and there had been no choice but to take him for his word. It would have been unjustifiably stupid to make himself an enemy of the Emperor as the foolish Senator Amidala and Duchess Kryze had done. Orn Free Taa had done well for himself trusting the promises of the Emperor.
Until today, at least.
The Emperor had promised Orn Free Taa that he would meet him at the Senator's House in Lessu at the commencement of business hours and it was well into mid-morning by now. Amongst the Senator's assistants there had been talk of a space battle and the destruction of the Perilous and Orn Free Taa had not believed a word of it until an advisor hurried in with-
"Highly, highly confidential footage, Sir, picked up by one of our circulating communication satellites."
-and the Senator had seen the damage for himself.
The Emperor had also promised four legions of stormtroopers to help maintain order on Ryloth and in doing so improve the productivity of the spice mines. Orn Free Taa could only assume that those tens of thousands of soldiers were now orbiting his homeworld in fragmented pieces. So the Emperor really had let him down rather badly.
"We don't know if the Emperor and Grievous have survived, Senator. But the Free Ryloth Movement is yet to claim responsibility for the explosion or release any sort of statement."
Orn Free Taa rose from his chair. He felt a little queasy. The Free Ryloth Movement had not yet claimed the scalp of the Perilous and its crew but the announcement was surely not far away – who else but Cham Syndulla's band of violent heretics would think to plunge their galaxy into such disorder? And when the announcement came the people, who already clamoured outside looking for their prodigal Senator, who already stomped their boots in unrest and threw stones at the heavy windowpanes, would surely storm the house. The Emperor's forceful methods of peacekeeping were no secret but Senator Taa preferred not to engage in such conduct himself. These were his people, after all. Angry, misguided… but Twi'leks. His own.
"Ready my ship. We are to return imminently to Coruscant."
His advisor paled.
"Senator, we don't know what further threats remain active in Ryloth's airspace-"
"We will take our chances."
Death in space, at least, would be quick. Anonymous. Already Twi'leks were climbing the gate to the grand house on the hill. If he stayed he would have no choice but to have them all shot. He could hardly stand here and allow them to tear him limb from limb.
"My ship, ready it, now!"
His voice was high and desperate. He would need several strong drinks after all of this was over.
"Yes, Sir," his advisor acquiesced. "Right away, Sir."
Orn Free Taa clutched his cloak at his chest and made for the private hangar. If it weren't for the imploded Perilous he would assume the whole debacle an elaborate and humiliating assassination engineered by Palpatine. But the day simply could not have been proceeding according to plan.
The only conclusion, then, was that the Emperor had let him down. The Emperor had let him down very badly indeed.
They had destroyed the village and all but destroyed the Free Ryloth Movement. But Sidious felt no sense of ease. There was an impossible presence in the Force. The presence of one who only knew to run and hide and skulk in the shadows. The presence of one who was too weak, far too weak, to ever combat him…
And yet the fool was surely here. His presence brazenly unshielded like some precocious youngling. Which could only mean, of course, that he meant to offer himself up as some distraction. That there had been survivors of the aerial massacre. Knowing the child's damn luck, the Prince of Mandalore was probably amongst them.
Sidious looked to his cyborg companion.
"Every last fighter of the Free Ryloth Movement must be killed, General. You will find them at the crash site."
Grievous gave a half bow, hesitated for a fraction of a second.
"And you, my Lord?"
"I shall follow shortly behind," Sidious assured him. "There is an insolent soldier who demands my attention."
Grievous frowned, bewildered.
"Come out, Master Windu!"
With a wave of his hand, Sidious uprooted a great fig tree and sent it soaring over the canopy to reveal the figure behind it. He would give the fool what he wanted. He would make him pay for his overconfidence.
"If you so desperately wish to face me, Jedi, let us not waste any more time."
It had been Eshgo's idea, Isval's head filled as it was with thoughts of dizzying despair, to return to the crash sites and search for survivors. And kriff, was she grateful they'd come back. She stumbled from the cabin and ran in an ungainly sprint.
"Cham!"
She flung her arms around her General in a fierce embrace and was surprised as his solid frame swayed with her impact.
"Cham, are you alright, are you-"
"Concussed," he reported, lifting a hand to his head as he righted himself. "Nothing to worry about."
Isval didn't argue with him. She had the sense they didn't have the time.
"Other survivors?"
"I've found three so far. Many are missing. Shot down distant from here."
"Three?"
For there had been twenty pilots in Cham's fighter squadron.
"Three of the clones," Cham affirmed. "None our own."
Isval felt a welling despair in her chest. She had lost ten soldiers already.
"How-"
"Two others apparently landed safely but I've not found them yet," Cham went on. "Cody and the kid."
"None of our own?" Isval repeated, voice hoarse. "Cham, how could-"
"Our ships weren't up to it. Not against those TIE fighters."
His chest heaved as he spoke; the only glimpse of vulnerability in his steely countenance.
"The clones that survived are still searching for others. Mace Windu came back. Has a ship we can get out on."
"Where's the Emperor?"
"I don't know."
"Alive?"
"I sure as hell didn't kill him."
"He massacred the village," Isval told him, voice cracking. "You get out of here, Cham, you're hurt and we need you. But I'm going back out there to find him."
Cham grasped her firmly by the arms.
"Isval, defeating him is not possible. Not as we are. We all need to-"
"We all need to get the hell out of here."
Isval's head whipped around at the new voice. The young revolutionary – who had, Isval realised faintly, saved her life when he called for her to delay her detonation – emerged from the undergrowth, his arms smeared a muddy orange.
"Right now, okay? We need to get out. The Emperor's very close."
There were two others with him. A clone and another. The details were somehow blurry with the adrenaline but there was no denying what Isval saw before her. Immature green lekku and a rolled-sleeved pilot's jumpsuit. Her heart tightened in her chest.
"Hera," she breathed.
Cham let out a wounded cry.
"Hera, what are you-"
"Later!"
The golden-haired boy caught Cham in his arms as he stumbled towards his daughter.
"Listen to me, Cham. Take your daughter onto that ship right now and we can talk later."
The clone beside him waved an ignition swipe and directed father and daughter to the ship.
"Come on, let's go."
Cham was almost cataplectic with fear and shock and rage. Isval had never seen him like this. Not even on the day Eleni died.
"How did this-"
"Later, General Syndulla!" the young rebel repeated, with the voice not of an adolescent but of great authority. "We have very little time. The Emperor is very-"
His voice died in his throat and he turned to face the forest seconds before Isval heard the whispering of the undergrowth and then the humming of 'saber blades.
The boy swallowed stoically and found a weapon at this belt. When he spoke, it was with valiant bravado, as though greeting an old friend.
"General Grievous!"
The boy wore an idiot's smile upon his radiant face.
"I like the new leg. It becomes you."
The cyborg appeared from the shadows of the forest, impossibly hulking in stature. He was spattered with mud and dark green lylek blood, his four blades raised for attack.
"Bastard of Kenobi," he growled.
The boy held two blades in what was surely a futile attempt at resistance against this enormous warrior. Isval found her own blaster and fired a series of shots at the cyborg. But her bolts were deflected easily.
"I'm going to ask everyone one last time," the boy uttered, eyes still on his enemy. "To please get on the kriffing ship."
Bastard of Kenobi. Prince of Mandalore. Isval felt a surge of fond recognition for the boy who still said please in the face of death. She would proudly fight by his side. But first, she took a fistful of Cham's jumpsuit in one hand and took his daughter's trembling hand in her other and hauled them onwards towards the ship. Someone had to listen to the kid.
Korkie found himself shoulder to shoulder with Cody amidst the flurry of lightsabre strikes, backing up slowly but surely in the direction of their getaway ship.
"I told you I didn't need a personal bodyguard, Cody," Korkie gritted out, ducking a swipe.
Cody fired a spray of blaster bolts above Grievous's head, anticipating the cyborg's intention to leap above them and cutting the pathway swiftly off.
"And I told you that you weren't winning that argument," the clone countered.
"We're all getting onto the ship, kid."
It took Korkie a few moments to place the third voice. Isval. The Twi'lek leader loped deftly into the fray with a blaster in one hand and vibroblade in the other, taking a swing at Grievous's new leg. Korkie had to commend her agility; the blow that had found Korkie's chest on the stolen weapons freighter was dodged easily by Isval's backwards leap. Grievous snarled his displeasure and launched a barrage of strikes that left Cody sprawling against the damp earth, Korkie lunging across with outstretched Darksaber to defend his fallen comrade.
"Ship ready yet?" Isval called.
The answer came in the form of a muffled response, soon drowned out by the roar of an igniting engine. Korkie took a half-second to turn his head, to glimpse the ramp of Mace Windu's ship not five paces behind him. But Grievous sensed the opportunity afforded by Cody's brief incapacitation and finally pulled off his leap. He stood now, four blades ignited, between the fighters and their escape.
"Kriff," Korkie breathed.
He launched himself at the cyborg with more desperation than ever, forcing Grievous to engage him. He couldn't let him get up that ramp and to those precious survivors. The last of the Free Ryloth Movement. The last of the Faulties. Hera. But with every blow he delivered, Grievous managed another step backwards, towards the ship.
"Close the ramp, Cham!" Isval hollered. "Close the kriffing-"
The engine roared again as the ship lifted from the earth and flew backwards to buy them a few precious metres. But the ramp dangled precariously open still. It was very nearly, Korkie knew, within Grievous's supernatural scope to leap that distance. Cody managed to finally land a blaster bolt that seemed to sting, striking the cyborg where his armour edged his eyes. But even this bought them only a few seconds.
"By the stars, Cham, close that ramp and kriffing go!"
But the ramp remained open and the ship hovered still. Korkie, in truth, could not see any way that they were going to reach it. He thought of Shmi, and his promise to return to her, and how he'd never even apologised to Anakin. He felt stupid, senseless tears pricking at his eyes.
There was no way out.
To fight Vaapad was to turn a raging river back towards the peak of the mountain. To defy gravity. The weight of it was like nothing else Windu had ever grappled with. The icy cold of the Sith Lord's power coursed through him, a poison that he had no choice but to swallow. He was the fulcrum, the pivot point, taking all of Palpatine's power and turning it back upon him. The blade in his hand felt barely like his own.
"You are nothing but my pathetic mirror," Sidious snarled, drawing breath after a series of twisting aerial assaults. "Your Light gives you no strength."
Mace Windu braced for the next onslaught. He fought back a barrage of 'saber strikes that were followed by a torrent of Force lightning. Even with the barrier of the lightsaber between them, deflecting the power back towards the Sith, the lightning seemed to somehow both freeze and scorch his limbs. It was sickening, to be touched by this darkness. It seemed to fill the very air that Mace sucked into his burning lungs. But to resist would only weaken him. Mace breathed once more and relinquished the fight. Allowed himself to feel that malice. Left only a flicker of untouched light to persist in his very core.
"And yet, you cannot destroy me," he toyed.
He could not do this forever, with his own light and Sidious's burgeoning darkness dancing within him. Something would soon give way and if he fell off that precipice into the darkness he knew he would never return. It could only have taken a few minutes for Cody to lead Korkie and Hera back to the crash site, but they would surely have encountered Grievous on their way. Windu had hoped to engage both Master and General but had been unable to prevent the cyborg escaping towards the survivors.
But it would do him no good to think of them and reaching out to Korkie in the Force was an impossibility. Vaapad demanded all of the focus and strength he had.
"You will die here, Windu," Sidious spat. "Wil it please you, to die here? Will you have served any purpose?"
Not yet, Windu knew quietly. There was something better in this galaxy for him. The time is not right. Something that he had not yet done.
"Weak," Sidious hissed, edging closer to him with vicious strikes of his red 'saber. "Pathetic. Broken, lost Jedi."
Windu allowed the wave of swelling Darkness to wash over him. Broken, lost Jedi. He was, wasn't he? Broken, lost Jedi. But there was some strength, was there not, in all this pain? In waking up every day despite it?
"You are the broken one, Emperor," Mace countered.
He saw it then, clear as crystal in the Force. The precious Shatterpoint. With a great cry of pain, he cast the Force lightning aside, setting a nearby tree alight, and locked blades with the Sith Lord once more. Amethyst and crimson. Rising smoke.
"You lost it all when you lost Skywalker," he breathed. "Every other war you wage is a futile battle against the inevitable."
And Mace Windu somehow anticipated the second bout of Force lightning before it left Sidious's hand. He turned the cruel power back against his opponent with a surging, impossible strength – a strength that had never been his – and the Sith Lord stumbled back.
Mace would not get another chance like this. A precious few seconds' reprieve. He gathered the Force around him and leapt with augmented strength into the nearby fighter. He had no choice but to trust Cody and young Korkaran. He had held the Sith Lord back for long enough. He flew from the jungle and into the thick cloud as the Emperor pulled his wounded self back together and howled his inhuman rage.
They weren't going to make it. Korkie flung his blade down time and time again and parried blows without drawing Grievous a single inch away from the ship. He wanted, childishly, to yell at his father. What good were the defensive parries of Soresu if you couldn't attack your blasted opponent? And he wanted to yell back through the generations of Mandalorians and ask who in the hells decided to make the Darksaber so heavy. It felt as though he was swinging the blade through mud rather than air. There was no leader nor follower, as Mace Windu had tried to teach him. It was a clumsy, discordant dance. His muscles were spent. He would not make it. He would die on Ryloth, a failed Jedi and Mando both.
"Jump, Korkie!"
There were clones extending their arms from the ship's extended ramp; Korkie couldn't tell them apart in the heat of the battle. He wanted to scream at them to go back inside the ship before Grievous inevitably turned his blade upon them but he didn't have the breath for it. Nor did he have the strength left in him to make that leap.
"Come on, Korkie, we've got to dig a little deeper here. We've not got long."
Cody's voice, close behind him, peppering Grievous with surely futile blaster fire still.
"You're telling me?" Korkie panted.
He shouldn't have spoken a word; it was a waste of precious strength and his next swing of the Darksaber was badly mistimed, leaving a scorch on Grievous' armour but clunking in his follow-through heavily to the ground.
A child's voice carried over the clamour. Hera.
"Watch out, Korkie!"
Time seemed to slow.
The clones pressing the precious child back into the hold. Grievous turning with a wicked glint in his red-rimmed eyes, preparing to leap. The scream in Korkie's muscles as he lifted the Darksaber from the earth.
The blade was so heavy. He would not lift it in time.
But Isval moved with a righteous fury that Korkie had known in himself only once, on the balcony of the palace of Sundari with his mother at his feet and Darth Maul hulking before him. With a warrior's cry she tore towards General Grievous and did what Korkie's Form III training and good sense could never have possessed him to do; she leapt directly at him, vibroblade drawn and aimed at the cyborg's unarmoured eyes.
Then there was a flood of noise, all at once.
A hoarse Ryllian cry that must have belonged to Cham Syndulla. Frantic instructions barked from Cody, his hands on Korkie's ribs, ushering him towards the ramp. And drowning all of it out, a piercing shriek from the Kaleesh warrior.
It was like no sound Korkie had ever heard. His sweat-drenched skin was suddenly chilled. He faltered in his stride but Cody pressed him onwards.
"Come on, Korkie, up, let's go, hurry, let's-"
"What about Isv-"
"Move, Kryze!"
They sprawled up the ramp and into the ship's hold. Korkie only managed a glimpse of the scene below as the ramp whooshed shut.
A vibroblade in the cyborg's eye. Isval's body in pieces at his feet. She had been struck by each of Grievous' four blades as she leapt towards him but she had found her mark.
"Isval!"
Cham Syndulla's belated cry echoed where it had been trapped inside the rising ship. He lay his hands on the metal hull, his orange skin faded almost to ashen white. Korkie could not think very clearly but recalled that it was undignified to faint and so laid himself supine on the floor before he could disgrace himself. His chest heaved with breaths so violent they threatened to burst open his wounds.
"Stars, kid, didn't anyone ever teach you the first rule of weaponry?"
Someone had snatched up his two blades – left, in his exhaustion, unsheathed on the floor beside him – before they could sever a limb as the juddering ship accelerated out of atmosphere.
"Sorry," he panted.
Korkie looked at the ceiling above him and felt swooping airsickness. Kriff's sakes. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe, to find his centre of gravity. There was the crying of a child somewhere near him. Other ragged breaths. Grim muttering. No victory.
"You okay, kid?"
The figure – a Twi'lek, Korkie realised, perhaps one of Isval's boarding party – clipped his now extinguished weapons back at his belt, laid a hand on his sweat-drenched shoulder.
"No," Korkie mumbled. "No, I'm not."
He rolled and vomited onto the floor. He was done. Exhausted. Shattered.
A brutal chapter, apologies. Does Orn Free Taa count as comic relief? Hopefully kind of.
Let me know your thoughts, particularly re: Mace vs Sidious. I find it hard to fully understand Mace's powers. When he had Sidious disarmed in ROTS, had he truly bested him? Or had Sidious allowed it in order to turn Anakin? A mystery I've never quite understood.
Next chapter, our Ryloth arc concludes and a new one begins. We'll check in on our (my) favourite Inquisitor too.
xx - S.
