Revenge of the Jedi/Prologue

Six Days Ago

As the Crescentia convulsed, crew members crowding the corridors slammed into bulkheads and even Jedi fought for balance. Slejux Nissatak anchored himself in place, but his hand was not fast enough to catch a Human crewer as she flew by. She crumpled to the deck, and Slejux's cilia caught the rusty tang of Human blood. Defying his instincts to kneel and aid her, he continued to run as soon as the ship leveled out. Painful as the truth was, he knew in his heart he could not save her.

He knew, if he was being honest with himself, that few of them could now be saved.

The emergency klaxon had become little more than discordant background music to accompany the Crescentia in her death throes—the shudders running the ship's hull grew stronger and more frequent every minute. Republic Intelligence technicians backed up critical information and secured files against slicers while the few gunners who had not been killed—manning the few gunning stations that had not been destroyed—plugged away at the Sith fighters peppering the Crescentia with laser fire or the approaching frigates unleashing their turbolasers. A distant shriek of tortured metal told Slejux the shields had failed altogether, and enemy fire was ripping apart the hull.

He had been set to lead a Jedi strike team aboard Darshkére's flagship, but moments before the expected launch order, the mission had been scrapped. By then Yan Razam and the other Jedi aces were enmeshed in battle with Darshkére's starfighters, leaving only troop transports and older shuttle craft aboard. In the time it had taken Slejux to sprint from the hangar bay to the bridge in search of answers, he had wished Tirien and Narasi had been back in time for the battle; the Second Chance might not be able to keep up with the Aurek-class fighters, but it could fly circles around anything else aboard.

Once he had reached the bridge, though, Slejux had found time to thank the Force that his friends were not here.

"Where did they come from?!" Tiran Bor'iczek had demanded; a onetime Jedi ace whose starfighter career had ended with one disastrous crash, he had become the Crescentia ' s captain instead.

Slejux's cilia struggled with holograms on the best occasions; even tracking the microscopic alterations in mechanical hums only carried him so far. Neither could Force Sight come to his aid; the Force saw its own way and revealed more than eyes ever could, but it also missed things unique to the visual spectrum. But the Force had reached out through the durasteel and shielding, across hundreds of kilometers of space, and seen the changing battlefield in its own way. The Seventy-Second Republic Battle Group, extended to press Darshkére and prevent his escape, was now caught between two enemy fleets—caught, and outnumbered more than two-to-one.

"It's Gasald," Master Greech had growled, gesturing to a holo Slejux could not see. "That's the Kiss of Death."

The enemy flagship had proven itself aptly named; in moments the Seventy-Second's rear line had broken, a dozen warships in flames, and a swarm of Sith fighters had descended on the Crescentia. The picket ships, facing annihilation and turning from the battlescape, had relayed the worst blow, just before being atomized: Gasald's interdictor cruisers had the whole battle group pinned. There was no escape.

Master La'altac had watched the holo until the Crescentia began to shudder, then bowed his head. "We must evacuate."

"Where?" Master Godogon asked. "The interdiction field—"

"The smaller craft may be able to escape where the slower ones can not. And if not…"  Slejux knew the gentle Camaasi's soft, resigned sigh would haunt him the rest of his life, and so he was grateful the rest of his life would not be long. "There is no death, there is the Force."

Slejux had run for the hangar bay then—not to save his own life, but to smooth the evacuation. The children and the non-Forceful among the crew were particularly at risk, but even among Jedi, brave hearts could fail when faced with the test. No Jedi could truly know the answer until the situation was forced upon him, and part of Slejux was vaguely pleased by the realization that, for all his faults, he was no coward. He would help as many beings evacuate as he could. Then he would die.

Please give me the grace to serve until my last breath, and die with honor, he thought.

As Slejux bolted through one corridor after another, he caught reports of catastrophes. Admiral Whoork's Refulgent had been hammered from both sides and knocked out of the fight. Yan Razam and her squadron were trying to get back, but hemmed in by ten times their numbers, drowned in so many bodies that even their skill was useless. The Crescentia ' s engines had been knocked out, making it nothing more than a Force-filled bullseye. The library wing had been destroyed by a crashing fighter—of which side no one could say, but now the ship was on fire.

"Get the younglings to the escape pods!" Slejux heard a Jedi instructor yell.

"Escape pods?!" another retorted. "Gasald will pick them up!"

"It's better than dying!"

"No! It isn't!"

Slejux knew no more of Vedya Gasald than any other Jedi—though on that reputation alone he was inclined to agree—but he did not stop to enter the debate. In the next corridor even he could not keep his footing; the ship rolled forty-five degrees on its axis in time with a distant explosion and a wave of death in the Force. Bouncing off the wall, Slejux heard the crackle and his cilia smelled the smoke from his crushed vocoder. In a few minutes the want of breathing tubes would become problematic, but he comforted himself that he likely did not have those few minutes left.

He started to run, but his feet would not carry him to pace, and he slowed to a halt in the middle of the corridor. Beings raced by, yelled at him, pushed him, but it all faded into the background. They plodded by him in slow motion, their words a meaningless jumble of stretched-out syllables. Time slowed until even his cilial vibrations froze.

As the mundane world crawled, the Force accelerated. Slejux saw himself running down the corridor, dodging around an injured crewer, overleaping a broken droid. He felt the seconds tick by. He raced into the hangar bay at last, where he perceived distant Jedi trying to cram evacuees into a transport. Then a turbolaser blast ripped through the hangar; it incinerated most of them, and the fuel tanks it ignited burned the rest. Slejux felt the shrapnel rip through his exoskeleton as he became one with the Force.

He beheld his own death.

Slejux had always heard that beings could not foresee their own deaths—a natural limitation of the Force, the old masters theorized. The Force's reminder that destiny is beyond any of us. Slejux had found no exceptions in recorded history, and so he had taken it as truth. Had they all been wrong? Or had the Force merely shown him a possibility? His death was coming; he could feel that for certain. So why warn him of the conditions of certain death…unless it was the conditions, not the death, that were uncertain?

Everyone moved so slowly around him that Slejux began to lose track of them, but he no longer cared. Make of me what you will, he pleaded. Show me how to help.

The Force showed him, and time sped back up. Slejux turned on his heel and raced back the way he had come, drawing on the Force for speed until all his cilia knew was a blur of wall on either side. But he had walked this path many times each day, as long as he had been aboard, and the scent markers carried him home to his own chamber.

Time was short, he knew; even as he passed through the door, he felt the distant rumble that was the turbolaser annihilating the hangar bay. Slejux could not have saved anyone there, but there was one last way to help, one final, invaluable thing he could protect. Ripping the top off his trunk with a wave of his hand, he pulled out Master Kwhuel's holocron, sat down on the trembling deck, and bent all his will to the device.

Shield, he thought. ''Protect. Defend. Let no mundane harm come to this. Let durasteel and fire find no purchase on its shell. Shield it. Protect it.''

He had told Tirien the truth, and seen it again for himself—the holocron was of vital importance to the Jedi. Slejux had assumed, wrongly, that he would be part of that importance too, but that task would fall to other beings. He could serve only one way now; all his Force powers could serve the light one final time. Everyone would be lost, but all would not be lost with them.

''Shield. Protect. Defend.''

He wove the Force around the holocron as the Crescentia bucked and rattled; objects flew out of his trunk, smashing into walls and digging into Slejux's carapace, but the wounds were phantom aches on limbs already dead to him. Pain was temporary, and soon it would end. All that mattered was concentrating the Force on the holocron like armor, as the Jedi of old had done with their swords, amplifying common metal until even a lightsaber blade could not cut it. Slejux knew no such technique—it was long since lost, trapped in dusty holocrons on a forgotten shelf—but the Force knew the way, and Slejux followed its teachings, learning as he went, blanketing the holocron in protection no laser could ever pierce. Guarded by the shield of the Force, it would be safe from harm.

''Shield. Protect. Defend.''

And it would, he knew; Slejux could feel he had done it. He allowed himself a gasp of relief, and struggled on the breath. Air fled his cabin; somewhere the hull was ruptured. Death was only seconds away, he was certain. Just time for a final twist—one last touch of the Force so his labors would not be in vain.

Slejux laid the holocron on the floor with his remaining good arm—the trunk had come off the floor and crushed the shoulder of the other—then took what breath he could, grateful for the chance he had been given, and for the blessing of dying a Jedi. Perhaps no one would ever know, but honors and acclaim meant nothing to a true Jedi. Honor, he thought, ''not honors. May the Force be with us all.''

When the fire chased the fleeing oxygen down the corridor and into the cabin, Slejux felt no burn. When the ship's reactor exploded, the shrapnel shredding his chitin plates and the organs beneath, Slejux felt no pain. The Crescentia erupted and vanished, and it took with it the body of every being aboard, but Slejux Nissatak was a luminous being, more than the crude matter the explosion had burned away, and even as he died, that light shined.