Second Chance/Part 6

Battles stank of the dark side in the Force—fear, pain, loss, fury, and death mingled together in a collage of sentient misery—but the noise was nearly as problematic. Artillery burst with deafening roars and follow-up pressure waves that rattled the eardrums, laser fire from distant cannons impacted the earth so hard teeth rattled, and every soldier not screaming in pain or bellowing orders or challenges to the enemy was either laughing madly in the chaos or crying in despair. In many ways, Tirien found battlefields the antithesis of the Jedi Temple and its calm, quiet peace.

Narasi tagged along in his wake as he swatted blaster bolts aside with his lightsaber and occasionally used the Force to fling some hapless Sith trooper to the ground; focused meditation had healed the glancing wound to his left shoulder, but he still preferred to deflect one-handed when he could. Roughly half a kilometer away he could sense See Klees, a Gran Jedi Knight, fighting her way forward on the opposite flank. In the middle was Master Cazars; he could not spare the focus to look for the flash of her blue blade amidst the scarlet blasterfire, but he could feel the Warrior Master's strength in the Force.

"Get down!" Tirien barked as the Force gave him the same warning, and Narasi and a dozen soldiers dropped as Tirien threw himself into the dirt. A missile whistled by overhead, exploding somewhere behind them.

"Wish Master Darakhan was here!" Narasi called.

"Well, he's not," Tirien said, getting to his feet. The Corellian and his apprentice had gone north, responding to reports of a monster ravaging a collection of villages. "Let's go."

They advanced toward a hundred-meter bridge spanning a canyon; the Taanabians had built their city on both sides, and both the Republic and the Sith were attempting to seize the whole thing and avoid blowing the bridge. Tirien led their contingent of troops in hard, deflecting shots and occasionally sending one back the way it came. He sensed Narasi trying to add to his efforts, but the squad of Republic soldiers were hard on Tirien's heels in a delta formation, and she wound up in their midst, lightsaber tight to her body so as not to wound an ally.

There was a sudden, concussive blast, and an entire squad of Sith soldiers vanished in an explosion of soil and armor chunks. A cheer went up around them, and Tirien saw one of the Republic's four-legged walkers clunking forward, its main double-gun firing on the densest groups of enemies. Six meters tall, it could only advance slowly, and its creeping durasteel legs reminded Tirien of a spider's, but enemy blasterfire simply bounced off its armor. As it mowed down another squad, the Sith broke ranks and fled in earnest.

Tirien and Narasi ran to keep up with their soldiers, and they met Master Cazars halfway to the bridge. The Twi'lek Jedi Master had discarded her robe, and she wore leather bracers on her forearms to flatten her sleeves and a leather headdress to keep her lekku behind her head and out of the way of her blade.

"Now's our best time to cross the bridge," she told Tirien.

"There's no cover," Tirien objected, wiping his brow with his sleeve; he could feel the scrape as he left a smear of dirt across his forehead. "We should wait for See Klees and take it at full strength."

"She's engaged at the landing strip," Elata Cazars answered. "We can't lose the initiative. Let's go."

"Let the walker lead," Tirien suggested as they started forward. "I'll keep the missiles off it."

The Twi'lek nodded approval, and Tirien drew a deep breath as if he could inhale the very Force itself, charging himself with its energy. He was not sure how he felt about becoming a Jedi deflector shield, but Makashi was ill-suited to reflecting blasterfire, and he was developing a proficiency for redirecting projectiles. A group of Republic troops started down the bridge with heavy shield held in their off hands, staggering under the impact of concentrated fire. Master Cazars was right behind them, shouting encouragement and using the Force to hold the line steady.

The walker came next, firing its double cannon, Tirien in its wake. Across the bridge and fifty meters down the canyon, a sniper took a shot at him, but he deflected the blast into the sky. As expected, the Sith opposite them fired rockets at the walker; gritting his teeth in concentration, Tirien crushed one in midair, and its explosion consumed most of its fellows. With a thrust of one shaking arm, Tirien knocked the last one just enough off course; its propellant scorched the side of the walker, but it exploded in the village.

The Republic line was a third of the way across the bridge; Tirien could see the charred skeletons of what had once been Sith and Republic tanks, left here for scrap after the last battle. A ruined Sith artillery gun also lay toppled down the way. Tirien wondered whether there might be unsalvaged ordnance he could levitate and use on the Sith.

He had just raised a hand to shift the fallen gun when the dark side surged, an icy wave cascading through the Force and breaking his concentration. Gasping, Tirien staggered back into Narasi, whose eyes had gone out of focus. There was a groan of metal, and the Force filled with fear.

Tirien looked up and saw the walker rising off the ground, its four legs pawing the air pathetically. Calling on the Force to sharpen his sight, Tirien looked across the bridge and saw a dark-robed man in the midst of the Sith troops, his hands raised. The Sith soldiers cheered and renewed fire on the line, and the walker started to crumple.

Tirien felt the panic of the pilots and gunner inside, the walls closing in on them. He deactivated his lightsaber and raised his own hands, but combating the Sith Lord in the Force was like trying to hold together a cracked dam; the pressure built against his powers, and as soon as he let it slack the walls of the walker closed in.

"Master!" Narasi called, apparently so startled that she had rediscovered that form of address. "We have to…I don't know, get them out!"

"No time!" Tirien replied. He could not overpower the Sith Lord through brute Force alone, but perhaps he could stall him…

Calm he tried to urge the pilot and the gunner. The Force was everywhere and everything, between Tirien and the soldiers, between the Republic and Sith lines, even between Tirien and the Sith Lord trying to crush the walker and their advance with it.

But most importantly, it existed between the walls of the walker.

He did not try to rebuff the Sith's powers; instead, he focused on the walker itself, durasteel and electronics. He envisioned its frame and shape, and willed it to retain that shape. The walker dented…and then un-dented, its metal shell smoothing out. The frame around the main viewport squeezed until the glass cracked…and then it stopped squeezing, relaxing before the glass could shatter. Tirien was the pilot's wary confusion as he watched the walls of his craft expand and contract, a sine wave evidence of the struggle in the Force.

One of the walker's legs strained its pistons and it stretched almost to hyperextending…and then it didn't. As he watched the leg bend back where it belonged, Tirien saw Master Cazars staring at him, and as he split his focus he realized how hard it was becoming to breathe, and with what intensity his brain was pounding.

"DO SOMETHING!" he roared at her. He was dimly aware of her taking a running leap over the line, blade flashing to deflect fire. Now that he had stopped to think about what he was doing, it was much harder. The walker's walls started to buckle again, and it shook in midair, jostling the occupants in their crash webbing.

As Tirien worked to hold it together, he had a vague sense of danger and heard the electric snap of laserfire connecting with a lightsaber blade. He dared not look to watch; he pictured a tractor beam, a perfectly vertical column in which the walker was held suspended. It bounced sharply off his envisioned constraints as the Sith Lord fought him, and Tirien felt the pain behind his eyes as his headache amplified.

The Force drew his attention to the bridge in time to see Master Cazars, dancing and dodging through a hailstorm of fire. Landing and tucking into a crouch, she swiped a hand, and the Force carried the entire first row of Sith troopers off the bridge and into the canyon, screaming on the way down. As the next row of soldiers recoiled, the Twi'lek Jedi levitated a half dozen dropped blasters; they rotated to fire on the Sith ranks, and as the troopers scattered, all six concentrated fire on the Sith Lord.

He ripped his lightsaber free from his belt to defend himself, and Tirien suddenly found himself supporting the weight of the walker unaided. Gasping, staggering under the strain, he focused as hard as he could to settle it back down on its legs. As the Republic soldiers cheered, there was another crack as a blaster bolt was deflected, and Tirien became aware of Narasi. She stood between him and the Sith on the far side, feet spread wide, blue blade shining before her body.

She seemed to sense the change in him, because she looked over her shoulder, eyes wide. "Are you okay?!"

"Narasi…" Tirien started, but he was drowned out.

"Shoot him!" yelled a Republic soldier, and his companions picked up the call. "Shoot him! SHOOT HIM!"

Tirien looked at all the helmeted faces pointed his way; for a brief, wild moment he thought they were yelling advice to him. But then he saw the Sith soldiers starting to fire on Master Cazars again, and she dropped her hold on the levitated blasters to make her blade a shield of blue plasma before her. Beyond, the dark-garbed Sith closed down his own blade, and Tirien finally understood the soldiers were yelling at the walker.

"Shoot him!" he added to the welter of voices, but he sensed immediately it wouldn't happen. Trapped between horror at their close call and blissful relief at still being alive, the pilot and the gunner sat numb in their chairs, and the screams from outside were barely a hum through the durasteel armor.

"Shoot him!" Tirien added again, gripped by frustration. He doubted he could fend off the Sith's attack a second time, and he was watching the window close. Shoot him!

And then, as his frustration leaked into the Force, he was the gunner. His gloved hands found the controls as his borrowed eyes lined up the sights on the distant man in black. His stolen finger tightened on the trigger.

It was over in the space of two heartbeats, and Tirien heard the report of the double cannon with his own ears. The thick bolts burned across the bridge, and the Sith Lord did not react in time. Tirien watched as the shot dismembered him, incinerating his torso as what remained of him blew out in all directions.

The Republic soldiers cheered and renewed fire, but Tirien staggered back, appalled. Narasi extended a hand for him in concern, but he barely saw her now. Even with the Sith Lord dead, the dark side had not quieted—because now it was not battering at him from without, but chuckling within.