Second Chance/Part 3

Mali had heard many beings—Jedi, soldier, and civilian alike—speak of the chaos of battle, but ever since he was a Padawan he had never understood what they meant. It was loud, to be sure, and there were a lot of moving parts, but that didn't make it chaos. Had they seen it as he did, Master Tem-Fol-Rytil, or even Tirien, would probably have compared it to the various instruments in an orchestra weaving their tones into a symphony, or each brushstroke of color on a canvas coming together to form the work of art, or something equally flowery. Mali preferred the analogy of a bunch of insects fluttering around a hive; that there was a lot to keep track of didn't mean the whole thing was without rhyme or reason.

But his was just another analogy, and words often failed to portray the Force. Battle was an incredible expression of the Living Force; different lives in different spots with different goals under slightly different conditions, all interacting with one another and shaping themselves around each other's actions. The darkness was there, to be sure, but those who thought it smothered the light were letting fear get to them. In the end, there was no death; there was the Force.

"Master, recon reports they're trying to overrun the southeast perimeter," Aldayr called. "War droids!"

Mali nodded, having caught the chatter on his own ear comm. Deflecting a shot without looking, he replied, "Well, we can't have that! Can you take it from here, captain?"

The helmeted head nodded. "We'll hold 'em, sir."

Turning to his companions, Mali said, "Let's go!"

"Got your six, Master Darakhan!" Narasi pledged.

The two of them followed at his heels, Aldayr fighting down a brief flash of the annoyance he had mostly suppressed over the last three days. Mali wasn't entirely comfortable with it either. Though she was green, Narasi was brave and resourceful. But she wasn't his Padawan.

The first day, when he, Tirien, and their Padawans had repulsed a force of Sith skirmishers, Mali had been almost startled when Narasi had appeared at his side, cutting the arm off a Sith soldier who had lost his blaster and, in a remarkable display of either boldness or madness, tried to stab Mali at point-blank range with his vibroblade instead. He had worried that Tirien would be concerned for her or annoyed with him, but when the Pantoran had finally noticed her absence at all, he had acquiesced without complaint. Later on, he had brought it up only to ensure she hadn't been in Mali's way; when the Corellian told him, truthfully, that she had been an asset, Tirien had let it go at that. And since then, she had slowly drifted more to his side than Tirien's until now, when she flanked him like a second Padawan and Tirien wasn't even on the same street.

He had not even known she was Tirien's Padawan until Aldayr had told him so; between her eagerness to join him and Tirien's indifference, he would never have guessed it himself. And neither fit with what Tirien had told him of their few adventures together when Mali had finally forced the story out of the laconic Knight…

Somewhere ahead, a shell exploded, and Mali put his concerns aside. Now was not the time for personnel troubles; good soldiers were dying and innocent people were in danger. He followed the flow of the Force, and it led him to a cluster of burning houses.

Republic troops had upended a disabled speeder, and were shooting from behind it at a squad of tripedal Sith war droids, which advanced with cannons blazing. Off to one side, soldiers from both sides were giving wide berth to a duel; Tirien Kal-Di fought against a masked dark sider, green blade to red, their bodies silhouetted against the flames.

"Narasi, help him!" Mali said, pointing with his free hand.

The Zygerrian started forward, then hesitated, her expression sinking into resignation. "He…he wouldn't want me to, Master."

"What do—" Mali began, but at that moment, the war droids' fire punched through the speeder. Tirien could handle himself against one dark sider; the soldiers might not fare so well against the droids.

Getting a running start, he summoned the Force to his aid, letting it boost his leap and carry him to land amidst the droids' ranks. Rising in a whirling slash, he dismembered five of them before their systems could even track his presence. They adjusted to compensate, but their cannons did little more than tear each other apart as Mali darted among the blasts; the shots he could not dodge he turned back to their sources, and droids broke apart.

Programmed to attack in waves, the war droids were relentless and ferocious, but not particularly adaptable. They tried to reassemble ranks, which just gave Mali a line to cut down. When they finally assessed him as the greater threat, the Force guided him away, and he leapt clear as they all rotated to face him. The Republic soldiers did not disappoint, mowing down the droids the second their backs were turned.

Mali touched down and turned to Tirien in time to see him dodge a violent, two-handed sai cha blow; instead of chopping off Tirien's head, the dark figure overswung hopelessly wide, and Tirien calmly ran him through. Mali had to smile in admiration; even sweat-soaked and smeared with battle debris, Tirien delivered the killing blow with precision and grace. Makashi was a little too artistic for him, but he could recognize the other man's skill.

Looking up at him, Tirien nodded, then searched the scene until his gaze found Narasi. He called, "You all right?"

"Yeah," she answered; Mali noticed she didn't hold his gaze for long.

Nodding again, Tirien looked back at Mali. "They're pushing hard, but it's haphazard. I think we can hold them if—"

A whining brrrrrrrepppp cut him off, and Mali turned in time to see clouds of debris chase one another down a neighboring block. He followed the trail to a six-story office building, which shuddered and started to fall. It hit the surrounding buildings with a roar so loud Mali had to call on the Force to dampen his hearing; the dust billowed up, coating the nearby blocks.

When the echoes had subsided, Mali asked, "What the hell was that?!"

Tirien shook his head to reorient himself, then grimaced. "Rail gun. They have them mounted on tanks now.  I thought we'd cleaned out the last of them two weeks ago, but we must've missed some."

"Rail gun?"

"Magnetic accelerator cannon, sir," one of the soldiers supplied as his colleagues checked the droids to ensure they were down for good.

"Like a Verpine shatter gun?" Mali asked warily. He had seen firsthand what the Verpine weapons could do; he vividly remembered watched them demolish a wing of parked starfighters before he and Aldayr had finally apprehended the saboteurs.

The same soldier's helmet mic picked up his snort. "Knockoffs, but the same principle."

Brrrrrrrepppp. Another line of dust in the distance followed a projectile's wake.

"Well, we'd better put a stop to it!" Mali said.

Tirien smiled mirthlessly. "Lead on, General."

He did, racing down the street with Tirien at his side and their Padawans a few meters back. Leaping onto the roof of a house, he saw the tank slowly proceeding up the street, with ranks of Sith soldiers spread out on either side like wings. A Republic soldier took aim with a recoilless rifle, but the tank's repeating blaster tracked him and gunned him down before he could fire. His comrades took cover rather than retrieve the weapon.

The flow of the Force centered on the tank, but Mali didn't need more than his eyes to see it was the lynchpin of the assault. Aldayr drew his blaster pistol and fired at the Sith from the side, but as they scrambled back, the repeating blaster turned their way. Tirien ignited his blade and deflected the first round of fire, but he was holding his lightsaber two-handed, and the shots were coming perilously close. Mali felt a twinge of pain in the Force as a shot got past his guard and singed his shoulder.

Mali stepped to the edge of the roof, but the Force redirected him. Instinctively he knew the tank's crew was prepared to fire again. With all focus on Tirien—and Aldayr and Narasi, as they stepped up to help him deflect fire—Mali reached into the Force, gritting his teeth as he squeezed hard. The long, square barrel of the tank's main gun groaned and whined, then finally buckled in the middle.

When the gunners fired, the explosion rattled Mali's teeth and shattered the windows twenty meters in every direction. Mali had to throw himself to the roof's shingles to dodge the shrapnel; sticking his head over the ledge, he saw Tirien holding up a hand, where he had stopped part of the tank's turret in midair just before it crushed all three of them. Mali dove down to drive off the Sith soldiers before they could recover, but it turned out the Republic troops didn't need the help; those soldiers who hadn't been vaporized by the explosion or flattened by the shockwave broke under Republic fire.

Jogging to Tirien's side as the Pantoran let the turret fall with a crash, Mali asked, "You all right?"

Tirien inspected the black mark on his left shoulder, rolled the joint experimentally, winced, and nodded. "It's not my sword arm, I'll be fine."

"Aldayr?"

"Ready for action, Master."

He waited to see if Tirien would ask after Narasi, but the Pantoran just gave her a quick glance before returning his yellow eyes to Mali. "Hold here or push back?"

Mali grimaced; it was exactly this sort of thing he hated about having an officer's rank. If they held position, they might give the Sith a chance to regroup, but if they drove too hard, they might overextend and get cut off from their troops. He needed more information.

"Cover me," he told Aldayr, who stepped up close to him with his lightsaber raised to guard while Mali knelt and drew out his imagecaster. Tirien studied the surroundings, eyes half-closed as he reached into the Force. Narasi stood a few paces away, looking like she wanted to speak but didn't want to interrupt him.

Mali was studying the glowing blue and red dots on the map, trying to decide where they could be most useful, when the whole holographic display flashed yellow. Switching to the comm function, he said, "Darakhan."

"Sir, we've got a perimeter breach in Sector Aurek—southwest corner. It's a light show!"

Mali grimaced. "Acknowledged. Jedi Kal-Di and I are on it."

Getting to his feet, he turned to face Tirien. "Looks like we're going with option three."

The Pantoran nodded and jogged over to a group of Republic troops who were bringing up the rear of the force pursuing the fleeing Sith. "General Darakhan and I need to borrow your speeder bikes."

"Oh. Uh…"  The corporal looked around, saw four Jedi converging on him, and nodded. "Yes sir! Dismount!"

He and his fireteam dismounted, and the Jedi wasted no time rocketing off toward Sector Aurek and its "light show"—the Republic Army slang for an active threat with lightsabers.