The Liberator/Part 3

Day 5 of the Liberation of Milagro

A jumpmaster checked the straps and buckles on Aldayr's parachute, tugged at the back experimentally, then tapped the back of his head. Aldayr held an overhead line in his cybernetic hand as an armored Special Forces major gave Mali status updates.

"Marines have snipers here, here, and here," he said, indicating red dots on a blue holo that showed a prison complex and a three-block radius. "Our people are here, here, here, and here. We can kill the perimeter guards once we have the go order and storm the main building, but thermals still show a handful in the execution chamber itself, plus at least thirty non-combatants."

"Any droids?" Mali asked.

"Unclear, sir. We could try to send a droid popper down as a chaser on the rockets—"

"Negative," Mali said. "The timing's going to be tight enough as it is.

"Civilians are still keeping up a prayer vigil at the cordon, but we've got the surrounding blocks clear. Regular Army is on standby to make sure nothing gets out into the city."

"Good. Any last details?"

The major checked his datapad. "We'll be in position in one minute, sir. After that, it's all on you two."

Mali nodded and clapped the major on his pauldron, then turned to Aldayr. "Ready?"

"Yes, Master." He checked his wrist comlink to ensure it remain synced to both their parachutes. "Unless the link fails, in which case we might die horribly."

"Well, I seem to remember someone saying all warfare requires risks," Mali replied, and they both laughed.

"Thirty seconds, sir," the major called.

The two Jedi double-checked that their lightsabers were secure, then affixed their helmets and breathing masks. Aldayr had sealed the glove he wore over his replacement hand, and Mali had donned gloves too. For once he had set aside his Corellian green robe—charging an Army colonel on the ground not to lose it or let it come to harm—and the two wore warm turtlenecks below their Jedi tunics.

"In position," the major called, wrapping his hand around the overhead line. "Holding over target at ten kilometers. May the Force be with you."

Mali nodded, then pointed a finger at the door release, and the gunship's door opened. At once the wind howled inside, tearing at their clothing and shaking the ship. Using the Force to hold themselves steady, they walked side-by-side to the door. Mali extended his right forearm, and Aldayr grasped it with his left. Holding up his left hand, Mali counted down from five, lowering each gloved finger in turn, and when his index finger curled down into a fist, they jumped.

The roar of the wind blocked out all sound; Aldayr could not even hear his own whoop of excitement, and he called on the Force to dampen his hearing just a little. Like Mali, he was already using it to keep their blood flowing, their lungs absorbing the oxygen without issues, and the gases in their bodies from bubbling up and causing decompression sickness. Warmth was a memory, but he was conscious of the light of the sun on the back of his neck; Mali had timed their HALO jump for high noon so the sun would blind anyone looking up until it was too late.

This high up, Aldayr could see cities, highways, and forests for dozens of kilometers in every direction, and the ground did not seem to be approaching him with much haste; it was still too far away. After Mali's regiment had swarmed Rogeum and Mali had killed Halicon Karzded, most of the Sith forces on the planet had understood the game was up. The Army was collecting surrenders and processing prisoners of war worldwide, but a handful of Sith had decided to try bargaining or threatening, or hold out for the even less likely possibility of Gasald coming to rescue them. And so Mali and Aldayr had crossed to the far side of Milagro and gone skydiving.

This'll be one to tell Narasi about, Aldayr thought. He could imagine her look of mingled awe and jealousy; he was sure Tirien Kal-Di had never done anything like this with her. With his headphones and the Force muffling the caterwauling wind, the fall was oddly peaceful; Aldayr even found a moment to meditate, preparing himself for battle.

Mali squeezed his arm, and Aldayr looked over and nodded. The gray-brown blur below resolved into shades of gray and brown, which soon enough would become individual structures. He tugged Mali in, letting his master get a grip on his shoulder before raising his wrist comlink to his visor; it was essential that they remain in close proximity as long as possible. He watched the altimeter count down until it was nearing a kilometer above the ground, then tapped Mali on the arm. Mali released him, drifting away in the air and reaching into the Force. With just under a kilometer to go, Aldayr tapped his comm.

At once he felt the rustling at his back as his parachute deployed, followed by a tug that wrenched him upright. Mali's chute had deployed at the same time, and they drifted to ground together, Aldayr steering his parachute at the same time he tugged Mali along in tandem with the Force. His master gripped his steering lines to keep the parachute steady but let Aldayr drag him wherever he would; Mali himself was concentrating hard, and Aldayr got a peripheral taste of his master's combat sense, his intuition for the progress of a battle and how he might best influence it. The battle had begun, even if none of the beings below knew it yet, and all their lives were coming together, like lining up a targeting reticule on an enemy fighter and waiting until the display gleamed red.

Mali tapped his comlink, and though nothing changed below, Aldayr knew the plan was irrevocably set in motion. He could pick out individual structures now, even the moving dots that were guards, and he angled his parachute toward the building that housed the execution chamber, pulling Mali along. Just as he could start to see features in the guards, tension started in his mind as the Force built toward a warning, and Mali tapped his comlink again. The next second Aldayr sensed they had been spotted, but before another second had passed, laser fire crisscrossed the compound from several directions and the perimeter guards died, one batch after another.

Mali took back control over his parachute, and Aldayr saw they were right on course. When only fifty meters separated them from the duracrete roof of the execution building, two rocket-propelled thermal detonators zipped into view. Aldayr closed his eyes to shield them from the bright fusion flare, but looked down at once when it was gone.

Mali had timed it perfectly. The thermal detonators had vaporized everything in their blast radius, leaving two neat holes in the roof. In unison Mali and Aldayr hit the releases on their parachutes and fell the rest of the way, using the Force to gentle their landings as they drew their lightsabers. Below, a group of beings were huddled in a corner under the guns of a handful of Sith troopers wearing the black and emerald Karzded had chosen for his elite death troopers. Mali landed among them, and his blue blade swept two down before they had even gotten over the shock of their new skylights.

Aldayr landed on a catwalk overlooking the various execution chambers, providing a prime observation point for the horrors that might be inflicted below. Three meters away, a Sith Acolyte was issuing orders to those below. "Kill the Jedi! Kill—"

Aldayr hurled himself on the Sith, both blue blades blazing forth from the ends of his saberstaff, and he nearly decapitated the Zeuol woman; she threw herself back at the last moment, bouncing off one of the catwalk's railings as she drew her own scarlet blade. They dueled along the catwalk's curve, Aldayr keeping on the attack to prevent the Sith from recovering the initiative, pursued by the echoes of blaster fire colliding with a lightsaber blade.

The Zeuol all but fled toward a staircase, where the catwalk rose to a mezzanine platform supported by numerous durasteel pillars. But the catwalks themselves were suspended from the ceiling, and rather than give chase, Aldayr whirled his lightsaber and sheared two of the ceiling support beams. The catwalk was bolted to its supports, not welded, and the Zeuol wobbled as it groaned under the sudden imbalance. Seizing the moment, Aldayr leapt forward to cut the next two supports. The Zeuol ran for it, but Aldayr summoned the Force and stomped down hard on the grating. It tore away and he fell, but the Zeuol hadn't made the stairs, and the catwalk gave out under her too.

Aldayr came down on a thick glass observation roof, put in place so observers on the gallery could witness the sufferings in the execution chamber below without risking exposure to whatever was going on. He slashed it to shards with one blow, dropping lightly into the chamber, but the Zeuol fell the whole way. She got up at once and reactivated her blade, but she limped into her attack, and Aldayr rebuffed her with ease. The room smelled of waste and charred meat and reeked of suffering and death in the Force.

The Sith woman thrust out her hand and Aldayr braced himself, but her power passed him to some unseen target. At once he was conscious of extraordinary danger, and the Force guided him away from a spout in the floor just before it vented a stream of fire into the air. Spurts of flame erupted throughout the chamber at random, and Aldayr danced among the flames, slashing at the Zeuol when he could get close enough. He saw shackles on the walls near each flame vent, and the knowledge of how the Milagroans had been made to suffer filled Aldayr with Jedi righteousness and lent him such strength that a blow guided by his cybernetic hand sent the Zeuol bouncing off a wall. A nearby spurt of flame ignited her flowing skirt; she cut the burning material away with her blade and leapt aside, Aldayr's strike parting the wall behind her.

Sweat was pouring down his face, his tunic was starting to char, and his visor was fogging. He ripped off his helmet and threw it at the Sith, then choked in the hot air. She hit him with a Force push and he had to intentionally trip himself to fall short of a flame spout, which ignited and crisped his hair. Squeezing his eyes shut against the searing heat, he rolled back to his feet in time to parry a strike at his head.

Reaching for the Force, Aldayr sank into its flow, the here's-the-next-five-seconds precognition Mali had taught him, a single facet of the Jedi Knight's own battle sense. Aldayr pursued the Sith woman but did not strike, leveling out his saberstaff hilt; when she took the bait and brought down an overhead strike, Aldayr caught it on his left blade, gritting his teeth to make a show of struggling against her. She levered in, her empty black eyes like great holes in her head above her own sneer…and when she came close enough, Aldayr seized her by the collar of her thick robes with his cybernetic hand.

She grabbed his wrist, but her pale fingers tightened uselessly on the durasteel. For one second, Aldayr sensed she had realized her peril too late. Then he jerked her sideways and held her over a spout until it ignited and set her on fire.

She shrieked in agony, dropping her lightsaber and beating at his hand with her flaming sleeves, but Aldayr held her at arm's length until the spout stopped, then pitched her away. While the Zeuol wailed and writhed on the floor, engulfed in flames, Aldayr ripped off his own burning tunic before the fire could spread past his replacement arm, then used what was left to pat out the fire on his glove. He looked at the Sith with a mix of loathing and pity; she deserved death, but no one deserved to die like this if it was avoidable. He raised his saberstaff, but there was no way to get close enough; she was flailing so wildly she might seize him and send him into a geyser of flame too. As squinted through the flames and smoke, he felt the echoes of those who had burned here before; their wails joined the Sith's, hardening Aldayr's heart and stilling his saber hand. Then, with a last horrible, belching groan as her lungs ignited, the Zeuol shuddered and lay still, and the chance for mercy passed.

A few seconds later all the flame spouts cut off, and Aldayr sensed Mali outside a second before he got the door open and charged in. He had discarded his jump helmet as well, and his hair was tousled around his face, but his green eyes gleamed like live wires. "Are you all right?!"

"I got a little cooked, but I'm okay." He examined his cybernetic hand; the extra shielding and insulation had protected the wiring, but his glove had melted onto the durasteel in places. He peeled off what was left.

Mali advanced, studying the scene; his eyes lingered on the dead Zeuol Sith, and Aldayr knew him well enough to understand he was putting the pieces together. "That was…inventive."

Aldayr shrugged to hide his discomfort, tossing the ruins of his glove to the floor and articulating each of his cybernetic fingers in turn. "It worked. How'd your fight go?"

"It—"

The crack of blasterfire from the entrance room made Mali turn and run. Aldayr followed his master back to the main chamber under what remained of the catwalk. Some of the execution chambers were open, and he caught glimpses of gas nozzles, garrotes, and a room with a bloodstained drain on the floor and saws mounted on the wall. He worked to control his anger, which admittedly became easier when he reached the main chamber. The assassin droids were scrap metal, and all the guards were dead. Some of the heartier prisoners had taken their blaster carbines.

Aldayr didn't see a problem until Mali knelt beside one guard, who had lost his helmet, along with most of the back of his head, which was still steaming. Mali studied him, then looked up at the prisoners.

"I told you to keep an eye on him," Mali said. His tone was soft, but at once Aldayr walked forward, laying a hand on his lightsaber hilt.

"He tried to get Meson's gun," one man said.

Mali rose slowly, staring at the man, who looked back without emotion. Several of the other prisoners refused to meet Mali's eyes, but one of them nodded, and another said, "Yeah, that's…that's what happened."

No one else spoke up, and before Mali could say anything more, there came a pounding on the locked main door. "General Darakhan!"

Mali gave the prisoners a last glare of disappointment, causing many of them to look away, before he stormed to the door and lightsabered it open. A squad of Marines flooded in, and Aldayr saw more in the courtyard beyond. A Marine with lieutenant senior grade's bars on his pauldron strode forward. "Prison secure sir, if this building is."

"We're secure," Mali reported. "These people need medical attention."

"We've got corpsmen moving up, sir," the lieutenant reported. He looked past Mali. "You killed all the guards?"

Mali looked back at the prisoners, and Aldayr followed his gaze to see defiance, fear, shame, and despair over the thirty-odd faces. There was a long silence, then Mali said, "Yeah. Yeah, I killed them all.  And Aldayr got the Sith."

"Well done, gentlemen," the lieutenant offered. "Sergeant, let's get these people moving."

"Oh, and confiscate those blasters, lieutenant," Mali ordered. "These people won't need them."

Aldayr caught a few bursts of anger in the Force, but most of it drowned under humiliation and growing regret. He watched the Marines herd the prisoners out, saying nothing until he and Mali were alone. Mali knelt beside the dead Sith soldier again, laying a hand on his shoulder armor. Aldayr kicked aside a war droid's severed cannon arm and squatted beside him.

"Master, can I ask you something?"

Mali didn't look up. "Sure."

"It's about killing. Ethics."

Mali snorted, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "No, this wasn't right, it was murder. And what I did just then wasn't any better.  But these people have been through hell, and who knows what they suffered in here, hostages against the Republic's mercy…against the reality of what's happened…"

Aldayr grimaced; he saw Mali's point, but he would not have spoken up either. "That's not what I meant, Master."

Mali sighed and looked over. "What did you mean?"

"The Sith I was fighting…when she was burning…" Aldayr had heard her scream and smelled the roasting flesh without a wince, but as he brought it forward in his memory, nausea twisted his stomach. "I know Jedi don't kill the defenseless, but if you've mortally wounded an enemy, and all they're going to do for the rest of their lives is suffer—and their lives aren't going to be long anyway—is it wrong to just finish them cleanly? Is it better that way?  Merciful?"

Mali sat down, right there on the dirty floor of the execution chamber. "Deep question," he admitted. "It seems like mercy. Hell, it seems like doing wrong to not do anything, doesn't it?  Just watching somebody suffer when you caused the suffering in the first place?"

Aldayr squirmed, but nodded.

"Problem is, if you strike them down and end their suffering, then you're making yourself the judge over life and death."

"Haven't I already done that? I'm the one who stuck her in the fire in the first place!"

"Which you did fighting her, I assume." Aldayr nodded, and Mali said, "Because she was still a danger to you, and it was the way to end the battle. Yeah, it was a gruesome way, but she was still fighting—trying to kill you, and all these people.  You did what you had to do to end the threat, and once she stopped being a threat, you didn't try to hurt her anymore.  You made the right call."

Aldayr was at once relieved and uneasy. He saw Mali's point, how it would have been the dark side to slay a defenseless enemy, but he could not pretend that he had hesitated merely because he wasn't sure the killing would be of the light. But outwardly he just nodded and put on a half-smile. "Thanks, Master."

Mali nodded and smiled tiredly back, and they got to their feet and walked into the sun. "Skydiving went well."

"Your timing was flawless, Master."

"Remind me to write up commendations for the snipers. And those guys who launched the detonators, too."

The lieutenant jogged back up. "We're removing all the prisoners to medical care, sir, and we've got the surviving Sith troopers under guard."

"Excellent," said Mali, back in Jedi General Mode. "Have Intelligence interrogate the Sith, and turn our slicers loose on any computers they left here. Oh, and run EOD droids through to make sure the Sith haven't left us any nasty surprises."

"Yes, sir."

"And lieutenant?"

"Sir?"

Mali gestured over his shoulder, and his face hardened in a way Aldayr rarely saw. "Go through the execution chamber, get the bodies out, and get any evidence we need. And once that's done, bring in demo droids, thermal detonators, whatever you need…just wipe this building off the face of Milagro."