Desperate Measures/Part 13

Narasi and Tirien raced toward the hangar bay side-by-side, Narasi still amazed at her master's appearance and rejoicing in the feeling of his presence in the Force. They met a stunned Aldayr Nikodon, who had been herding slaves into a Zygerrian drop ship; he took his double-bladed lightsaber from Tirien with wide eyes. Freed slaves clustered around the ramp, but Narasi could see there wouldn't be enough room; the ones inside were already visible, packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. Behind them, Narasi could hear the screeches and wails of Kai Latra's Sithspawn.

"What's going on back there?" she asked her master.

"That's a long story too," he replied. "The condensed version is that it would be best if we left sooner rather than later."

"What do we do?" Aldayr called over the tumult of slaves and prisoners. "We can't just leave them here?"

There was another roar from corridor, but Narasi felt a disturbance in the Force far closer and more intense. She turned as a grate broke off what she would have taken for an air vent, though she could see that it was actually some sort of miniature maintenance tunnel—probably for the Ugnaughts. A furry, clawed hand poked out, the claws trembled until they got a grip on the wall and tensed. With a pull, Olik Gryfe hauled himself into view.

He rose, but his legs trembled. He looked horrible, so pale now than Narasi could see the veins in his face, the ruins of his right sleeve ending in a bloody pulp that had once been an arm. Even there, though the arm dripped blue and red, little tendrils were wiggling, like worms rising from the dirt to sniff the rainy air. Narasi fought back a shudder of horror.

Aldayr stepped forward and activated both blades of his lightsaber, and Narasi joined him, thrilled to have her weapon in hand at last. But she didn't ignite her blade. "Olik, don't do this."

Tirien was at her side at once, taking Mali's lightsaber in hand. "Narasi?"

"Master, it's Olik. From…actually, you know what, too long to tell.  Just…we've got this.  Can you get the slaves on the ship?" Tirien looked at her, and Narasi sensed his concern, but that very sensation filled her with joy, even in this joyless place. "Trust me. We've got this."

Tirien glanced at Olik, then replaced the weapon on his belt, nodded, and ran to organize the boarding process while Narasi turned back to Olik. He had not moved—he swayed on the spot, his dark brown Human eye glassy, his blood-red monstrous eye pointing in random directions. Narasi took a step forward and Aldayr shifted his guard to let her pass. "Narasi…"

"Olik," she said, loud and clear, "do you remember—"

"Narasi," he croaked. She fell silent, and his brown eye looked at her. "Narasi Rican. Oh, and Tirien Kal-Di, too.  And whoever you are."

Narasi gave Aldayr an encouraging nod, and he grimaced but said, "Aldayr Nikodon. I'm a Jedi too."

"We're all Jedi," Narasi said, then added for emphasis, "all of us, Olik."

"Jedi…" Olik mused. He swayed, staggered, and caught his balance just before he fell. "Capture the…no, before that…I remember the Jedi. I remember they didn't want me."

His face darkened. Narasi said, "That's not true, Olik. You weren't a Knight, but you were a Jedi.  Finja was a Jedi too."

There was real, sentient anguish on his face for a moment. "Finja…I remember her. Yes, she…she was a good Jedi.  What a Jedi should be."

"Come back with us, Olik," Narasi urged. "Be a Jedi."

"We don't have enough space as it is," Aldayr muttered, but Narasi swatted his arm. Olik, however, smiled, and some of the fog in his Human eye cleared.

"No. No, there's no place in the Jedi Order for someone…something like me." He wiggled the claws of his right hand, then looked at the stump of his right arm; one of the little flesh tendrils was wrapping itself around what remained of his bicep. "All this…this isn't nature. It isn't right.  What I am now shouldn't exist."

"Olik, that's not true, you're still you—"

"I'm more me today than I've been in a very long time. Thank you both for that." There was a roar from behind, and Olik glanced over his shoulder before nodding to the slave ship. "Go on. Get them away.  I'll cover your retreat as long as I can."

"Olik, no!"

"Go, Narasi. Thank you both.  May the Force be with you."

Narasi swallowed the lump in her throat. "And also with you."

"And also with you," Aldayr echoed her. He was ambivalent for a moment before taking the Hiitian's lightsaber from his belt and tossing it. "Take this."

Olik caught it and activated the red blade. "Not very Jedi. I'll have to be even more peaceful to compensate." He smiled, showing the fangs in his mouth, then turned toward the approaching shrieks. "Well, as peaceful as I can be…"

And as he strode away toward the Sithspawn, Narasi heard him say, "There's no emotion, there's…there's…peace, that's it. There's no ignorance…"

Aldayr disengaged his lightsaber and turned back to the Zygerrian transport, pulling Narasi with him. Tirien had managed to impose order—now that she devoted attention, she could actually feel him radiating enough calm to keep them from panicking—but he could not make the ship bigger.

"We could steal one of their ships?" Aldayr suggested, pointing.

Tirien looked. "A clunky thing like that? Kai Latra probably uses it to transport monsters for experiments, it'll have a double-digit start time when we need to be gone in single-digit minutes."

"What do we do?" Narasi asked.

But the three Jedi turned back toward the hangar bay entrance as if called, and a ship came into view, hovering closer and just squeaking in past the Zygerrian ship. Tirien and Narasi stared, and when the boarding ramp dropped and they got a good look at the Jedi hanging from the lowering strut, Aldayr did too.

"Mali?"

"Tirien!" Mali Darakhan called. "We traced your beacon to the city, but when we saw this castle we could sense the dark side and—"

As the ship got lower and closer, he donned a baffled look of his own. "Aldayr?! Narasi?!  What—"

"No time!" Tirien bellowed back, then turned to the slaves. "Everybody else into the Second Chance! You all in the Zygerrian ship: seal her and get flying, we'll catch up."

The beings who had been packed around the Zygerrian ship's ramp thundered toward the Second Chance ' s ramp instead; Mali swung out to hang on the outside of the lowering strut with wide eyes. "What…?"

"Into the ship!" Aldayr barked, shouldering through the slaves. "Double file, no pushing! Go to the hold, stay out of the engineering section!"

Tirien and Narasi brought up the rear, eyes on the door to the slave chamber. The Zygerrian ship managed to close its ramp and finally peeled away, lumbering toward space. When they got to the Second Chance, Mali was still hanging from the strut. "How did you—"

"Gonna have to wait, Master," Aldayr said as he pushed an Abyssin in; the cyclops's shoulder had healed and he looked far too eager to go back and fight more Sithspawn.

"But why are you—"

"Really, Master Darakhan, no time!" Narasi advised.

"I just—"

"NOT NOW," Tirien barked.

Mali looked startled as Narasi and Aldayr skipped up the ramp and Tirien pulled him back onto the right side of it. Before he could ask anything else, there was a guttural, gargling roar, and they all looked in time to see a creature leap into the doorframe—a hulking beast with no eyes, a mouth full of fangs, hooked claws which secreted some kind of toxin that pooled and bubbled on the floor, and curving horns a meter long that ended in points ideal for goring unwary Jedi. Mali took one look, raised his eyebrows, and said, "Maybe it can wait. SLEJUX, PUNCH IT!"

The ramp was still only half-closed as the Second Chance accelerated; Narasi caught a glimpse of the black wall of Kai Latra's castle before the ramp sealed. The ship was packed with beings, all talking and jostling at once, and she followed in the wake of the other Jedi as they bulled through.

"Narasi, Aldayr, one of you get on the guns!" Mali ordered.

"Since when do we have guns?" asked Tirien.

"It's possible Slejux and I made a…contribution…"

Tirien and Narasi demanded in unison, "What did you do to our ship?!"

"Story for another time!" Mali sang as he disappeared into the throng crowding the cockpit.

Aldayr started, "I can—"

"I've got it!" Narasi barked mutinously. She found an access shaft with a ladder where a curved wall had once been, and climbed it grumbling, "'s my ship…I get first shot…"

At the top of the ladder she contemplated how to get herself in the gunner's seat, but as she got a hand on it and tried to haul herself up, she found herself suddenly pitching forward; gravity had changed as she passed through the shaft into the gunning station. "Whooooa!"

"Oh yeah, there's a gravity field just for the guns," Mali's voice squawked from a headset hanging off the gun.

Narasi managed to right herself and haul her way into the seat. "Good to know!"

She reached for the headset, but stopped herself. One was hanging from the right side of the gun turret—two headphones connected by a band, the type any Human or near-Human could comfortably wear. But hanging from the other side was a headset whose speakers were connected in the front by a curved piece like the band of a tiara and in the back by a flexible strap—awkward for a Human, but just right for a Zygerrian's larger ears.

Touched, Narasi donned the headset, snugged the strap across the back of her skull, and looked around. "Whole lotta buttons here, Master…"

"The trigger's the important one," Mali replied.

"We're all well aware that you can do a spiral scattergun and land every shot, Narasi," Slejux's voice chided, digitized twice by his vocoder and the comm. "Does it please you to rub in your superior marksmanship?"

Narasi grinned. "Just saying, Slejux."

"Focus up," Tirien's voice added. "We're breaching the atmosphere."

The viewport flared bright for a few seconds before the Second Chance burst out of the atmosphere. Following her sensor indicator, which looked at least one generation newer than the main sensor suite in the cockpit, Narasi saw the Zygerrian cruiser along with a pair of corvettes. The stolen drop ship was giving the trio a wide berth, but the corvettes were moving to pursue at a much quicker pace.

"How long until you can make the jump?" Slejux asked, and after a moment added, "The drop ship will require at least two minutes. One of the prisoners was a pilot, but he's unfamiliar with this craft."

"We'll have to make an attack run on the corvettes," Mali announced.

"We'll have to what?" Narasi blurted.

"Mali," Tirien added, "one double gun isn't enough to attack a picket ship."

"Not to kill it, maybe, but we can keep it busy. Don't look at me like that!" he added; Narasi could visualize her master's expression. "You have good engines, we gave you top-of-the-line shields on Corellia, now you have guns…"

"And a reactor straining into the red to power them all. I notice you didn't give us a new one of those."

"It's on the to-do list."

Narasi felt Tirien's spike of annoyed amusement and smiled despite herself. His voice came back over the comm. "Fine, but I'm piloting. Move.  Narasi, look sharp."

She called up the targeting screen; the corvettes were almost within range. They opened up with ranging fire, including the wide packets of light that could only be turbolasers, but Tirien weaved around them all. Narasi tried a spiraling shot as the Second Chance rolled, but only a few hit, and they impacted the cruiser's shields without effect.

"The prisoners report they're taking impact," Slejux said.

"Have them shift shields to full port," Mali advised.

Slejux relayed the order, then reported, "They have. The pilot reminds you courteously that he is new to piloting the Zygerrian ship, not to piloting spacecraft."

As Mali chuckled, Narasi got off a second round of fire on one of the cruisers as Tirien took them in for another run; she was still getting a feel for the guns, and Tirien's jinking and juking made aiming a nightmare. The Second Chance shuddered as it curved out, but its own shields held. "Am I even making a dent?"

"They have good shields," Mali admitted.

"If they're putting power in shields, it means they have to take some from weapons or engines," Tirien noted; Narasi admired his ability to speak calmly while the Second Chance twisted through a double corkscrew to avoid turbolaser blasts. "Which means the drop ship either can get farther or will take less damage. This is a distraction, not a bombing run."

The Second Chance shuddered again, and Aldayr said, "Now we just need somebody to distract them from us."

"Going back in. Aim, Narasi."

She tried mightily, but the weaving was still throwing off her aim. On top of the brutalizing day she had had, she was used to gunning from the Crescentia, which was not much for sharp movements. She stitched a line of fire down one cruiser's hull, but the shields absorbed it all.

"Thirty seconds," Slejux commented.

Tirien asked, "Where are we going?"

"Good question, actually…"

"MALI!"

"Working on it!…here, Botajef! We can hop on the Hydian and go right back to the Core!"

"Slejux, relay that. Mali, calculations.  Aldayr, tell our passengers to brace themselves.  Narasi, make this one count."

Narasi wiped the sweat and blood off her forehead, trying to settle into the Force and ignore the whip lash across her back and the aches all over her body. The Second Chance weaved as it came back in for another attack run, but as it dodged a turbolaser, it leveled out for one second. In that instant, Narasi heard Tirien's voice not in her ears, but in her mind. ''Feel the Force. With me, now.''

Taking a deep breath, Narasi reached out with her senses, past the mingled excitement and trepidation all throughout the ship, past even the other Jedi, fixing her mind on Tirien's. She felt him reaching out to her in turn, and when they came in range, she let the Force guide her aim. She jerked her gunning station left and right, scattering fire over the two cruisers rather than concentration aim, every shot hitting home—she knew where Tirien would fly a second before he did it, and her hands put the targeting reticule where it needed to be before her conscious mind could.

Tirien swung them wide, and Narasi almost strafed again, but hesitated as the Force caught her trigger finger. Wait it seemed to say. Wait…NOW.

She switched to dual fire and squeezed the trigger, and the double gun thundered, and the paired bolts hit the corvette's turbolaser in an instant of shield flicker. The gun burst open on one side, fire igniting its canisters and blowing half the weapon into space while the other half sagged, spitting sparks.

"Great shot, kid!" Mali crowed. "That was one in a million!"

"Drop ship is away," Slejux added.

"Coordinates are in," Mali said. "Hyperspace in three…two…one…"

Past Narasi's gunning station, the stars extended to streaks, then blurred to the mottled blue and white of hyperspace. Leaning back in her chair, Narasi peeled her headset off and sighed a sigh that went on and on for a while before she was done. She wasn't sure how long she and Aldayr had spent in Kai Latra's nightmarish stronghold, but it felt like ages, and the sustained horror of it all combined with her exhaustion to drag her down into her cushion. She was certain she could sleep right there in the gunning turret, but she heard Tirien calling her name.

"Coming, Master." She flipped awkwardly in the gravity exchange and climbed back down the ladder, sliding the last few rungs. She found beings of half a dozen species clustered around the ladder shaft, speaking in as many languages, though she caught a few compliments on her shooting in Basic and Huttese. Tirien pushed his way through the crowd and smiled at her, and Narasi felt oddly free, like she had finally relaxed muscles clenched for a month.

"Good shooting," he said, and extended a hand.

Narasi smiled wryly as she clasped his hand. She knew he was not the affectionate type, and in front of a cluster of impromptu refugees she wasn't either, but he clasped her hand with his other one too, and in his touch and his small smile she found all the reassurance she needed, and for a moment, all was right in the galaxy again.