Revenge of the Jedi/Part 52

Celop Faro pulled himself another half-meter, gasping for breath, agony radiating down through his body from the searing wound in his throat. His legs trembled, refusing to support his weight each time he tried to stand; it hurt to leave his wound open to the air, but when he had tried to clasp it, one finger had slipped into the charred flesh and he had blacked out from pain. When he came to, there had been no choice but to drag himself on.

He was nearly there, too; Vedya's throne had a comlink built in, and systems to call up the ship's status. When he could summon emergency assistance, they would be able to patch him up…he would be presentable to Vedya yet…the situation was not beyond salvaging…

Liar, the dark side told him. What is salvageable here?

Bodies ringed the dais and bracketed the top of the staircase—Celop's informant, fallen White Guards, dead Jedi. Slapping his palms on the marble dais, Celop dragged himself another meter or two, but he found the marble cracked and blistered in places. What in the galaxy had happened here? Stray lightsaber slashes could not account for all this damage, and what else could melt marble?

Some of the blue sconces had died, and so Celop was only a few meters away when he realized the throne was gone—not destroyed, but completely absent, replaced by a featureless wall of black metal. He stared at it from the ground for far too long, trying to unfog his brain through the haze of pain, to understand what had happened. He pulled himself forward, but shuddered in revulsion when his hand came down on a severed body part.

It was a hand, he saw. A woman's hand, with soft skin as white as snow…

No. No, no, no…

He clawed his way forward with desperate strength, panting for breath, every few centimeters shooting new pains into the nerves behind his eyes. He found another piece—the arm that went opposite the hand, amputated just below the shoulder, still clothed in a white tunic and the sleeve of a white robe…

"Ve'yaa…" he moaned. "Ve'yaaaaaa!"

It could not be…it could not be! He hauled himself from one corpse to the next, vision blurring from pain, seeking without finding. A headless Devaronian, a Human fried almost beyond recognition, a White Guard…where was she? Had they taken her? Had they maimed and captured his precious, his beloved, his…?

His fingers scrabbled on his belt for his comlink; he dropped it and had to drag himself after it. "Kra'all! Kra'aaaaaa…"

He heard screams and panicked cries from the other end of the comlink, along with Darth Kra'all's roared commands. What in the galaxy was happening on the bridge? Celop reached for the Force for an answer, but the Force declined comment. Nor would it give him the strength to reach across the ship to Kra'all, to summon aid with his mind, or even to stand. He mustered only enough energy to roll onto his back.

And there, back to the cold marble, he saw what all the fuss was about.

High above, just below the mosaic to his lost beloved's triumphs, was a dome of transparisteel viewports, and through them, Celop saw a Sith cruiser approaching at distressing velocity. Her nose dipped toward the Kiss of Death, as if the Force itself had reached up and tugged the cruiser down to administer that fatal kiss in turn. The Kiss of Death ' s turbolasers pounded the ship's forward shields, but soon the cruiser swelled from a sleek shape in the distant to fill the entire viewport. In the Force, Celop could see the terrified crew members of the cruiser as their last seconds of life counted down.

It can not end this way, he told himself. Vedya was to sit on the throne, and I beside her…and at night…

Celop held Vedya's warm, soft body to his in his mind, and when the cruiser shattered the Kiss of Death ' s hull and ignited the air inside to fill the throne room with flames, the scorching fire was just another of Vedya's kisses.