The Liberator/Part 6

Day 7 of the Liberation of Milagro

"I think there's somebody over here, Aldayr!"

Wobbling on a canted floor-that-had-once-been-a-wall, Aldayr jumped and caught the door frame, a hole in the ceiling-that-had-once-been-the-other-wall. The cruiser had plummeted to Milagro's surface during the space battle, but enough fighting had continued since that they had really only gotten to rescue and salvage two days before, while he and Mali tackled the hostage crisis in the Sith prison. Rescue droids and crews had saved all the obvious survivors, but Mali had brought them over for a last sweep just in case.

Aldayr hauled himself up, ducked through a sideways door, and tossed aside the wreckage of some machinery as Renata raised her voice.

"Hello? Is anyone there?  Can you hear me?!"

Aldayr stretched out with the Force, but he felt none of the agony and flickering consciousness he associated with the crash. "I don't sense anyone, Renata."

"Yeah, but I…gaaah!" Aldayr pulled himself into the next room to find Renata untangling a cobweb of wires from her hair. He picked a few strands out for her. "Thanks."

"Sure."

"So yeah, I saw…there! Hello?!" She hopped from one angled workstation to another, and Aldayr saw a man's torso draped over one, his head slumped against his arm, blood pooled along his hairline. "Sir? Can you hear me?  Can you—"

She got to his workstation, stopped, and fell backwards. Aldayr caught her and steadied her, but she pitched past him, dropped to her hands and knees, and dry heaved for a few seconds before vomiting over the edge of the console. Hopping up, Aldayr looked down at the man's body and saw it ended in a bloody tangle of organs at the waist. He wasn't sure where the man's lower half had gone, though a few bloody smears on the floor suggested it had bounced down the room and through a door.

Aldayr shook his head in sympathy, but he was unfazed; after liberating some of Valin Aresh's concentration camps, nothing would ever turn his stomach again. Then again, he had been a Padawan for years and accompanied Mali through battles far worse than Milagro—including, now that he thought about it, the last time he was on Milagro. Clearly Renata could not say the same.

He tagged the corpse on his datapad for retrieval, then dropped back to the console, which groaned a little under their combined weight; pausing until he was sure it was steady, he pulled Renata's Padawan braid back away from her mouth. "You all right?"

She spat a little bit and wiped her sleeve over her mouth with a miserable look. "That's…horrible."

"Yeah, I guess."

"You guess?!"

"If you're gonna be a Padawan, you're gonna see a lot worse than that."

All of thirteen, Renata Cul'Caritas had bright, inquisitive eyes surrounded by an asteroid field of freckles. She had not cut her auburn hair upon becoming a Padawan, though she kept her braid separate from the rest. She vaguely reminded Aldayr of Narasi at that age, except that, even at thirteen, Narasi had been much more battle-hardened. Aldayr missed Narasi's company; he wished she and Tirien could have been here…

"Let's go," he said, and turned without waiting for Renata's answer. As Mali said, sometimes the best way to lead was to simply start doing and let others join in.

Sure enough, as he hopped his way down and across the room, he heard Renata's lighter steps behind him. "I…I thought I did okay in the battle, and that was pretty bad."

"That?" Aldayr laughed. "That was nothing, we were with our masters and a battalion of Marines!"

"But we…but the government center!"

"That was a lot of fighting, but it wasn't anything bad. Most of those people we killed with reflected blasterfire.  When you have to get to melee range and start taking limbs and heads off, then come talk to me."

Jumping into a doorway, he held a hand out to catch Renata as she followed; she wore a nauseated look again as she skipped down into his arms. Depositing her beside him, Aldayr heard the whistling keen of wind slithering through too small an opening, and he shouldered his way through rubble into the next room to find it had once been a passage bordering the ship's hull. The durasteel had been torn away in places, but one of the buildings the cruiser had toppled in its death throes had collapsed over this particular rip, allowing only the hint of breeze and no light. Aldayr brightened the glowrod hanging from his belt.

"At least the floor is the floor again," Renata said; the corridor had torn away from the rest of ship enough that it was more of a floor than a wall. Aldayr's calves still gave him hell as he plodded up the incline, but he opted not to challenge Renata's outlook; if she needed to put a positive spin on the situation—and could—more power to her.

Renata stumbled on a loose piece of decking and almost went head over heels; Aldayr caught her by the wide obi around her waist and wrenched her back to a standing position. "Thanks."

"Stay balanced," he told her. "It's just like doing an obstacle course. They have those in your palaces?"

"I didn't train in a palace!" she said, and Aldayr snickered at her scandalized look. "For your information, I'm a commoner. But my master doesn't care about that."

"As one of a planet full of 'commoners', I'm glad to hear that," Aldayr observed dryly. "You…do you sense that?"

He stopped, tilting his head. Renata paused beside him, dropping to her hands and knees and closing her eyes as she listened. Reaching into the Force past the tremors of death and destruction, he thought he felt a faint spark of life.

Apparently Renata did too, because she knocked on the metal. "Hello? Can you hear me?  HELLO?"

"It's durasteel, Renata, you're going to have to knock harder than that," he said. Tugging her up to a standing position and out of the way, he peeled the glove off his right hand, dropped to a knee, and punched the floor three times. It dented a little, but it also rang like a bell, and Aldayr sensed some reaction beyond.

"Does that…hurt?" Renata asked as he straightened up and took the lightsaber from his belt.

"No." He ignited one of the two blades, beveling his cut as he walked a slow circle around the spot. "It doesn't have pain sensors."

She shuffled as she watched him work. "My master told me a Sith Lord cut off your arm."

Aldayr remembered the blazing heat, the excruciating feeling of his nerve endings set on fire, and Ondar Vargh's dead, emotionless stare. "Yep."

"Was it…was it really bad?"

Aldayr completed his circle and sighed as he deactivated the blade. "He cut my arm off, Renata, it wasn't good." He gestured to the hole. "Get the plug out."

She raised her hands, levitating the flooring out and pitching it aside. Aldayr shined his glowrod through, and the light fell on a mess of wires, random pieces of metal, and a pane of cracked glass that reflected it back. But he heard slapping hands on the glass and nodded. "They're there. Hold the light for me."

She held it over the hole as he clambered down, then dropped it into his hands. Hanging it on a shred of twisted metal, he looked down and saw a Human man and a woman of a Near-Human species he couldn't identify; the woman was in obvious pain, and the man clutched a toddler, but both looked up at him with sudden relief so profound that it hurt Aldayr's heart. They waved frantically, but he gestured them back. "Renata, get down here!"

She lowered herself beside him, and he pointed to the glass. "Can you hold the whole pane in place?"

She squatted down beside it, touching it with a hand. "It's cracked in a couple spots, but it looks pretty secure."

Aldayr rolled his eyes. "With the Force, Renata. I'm going to break it, and I'd rather not rain glass shards on a kid's head."

"Oh." Even in the dim glowrod light he saw her blush. "Yeah. Got it."

She held her hands over the pane and Aldayr felt her reach into the Force. Aldayr made a cover your head gesture to the civilians, repeating it until they turtled up, both shielding the toddler. Already cracked, the glass required only one cybernetically enhanced blow before it shattered through. True to her word, Renata held it, though Aldayr could feel the sudden strain on her focus as holding one piece turned into holding thirty. Supplementing her efforts, he flung the glass away against the hull of the ruined cruiser, where it burst into powder.

Both parents pressed their child up first, and Aldayr lifted the boy one-handed; his skin shone in a way Aldayr thought had nothing to do with ill health, but his breathing was shallow and he was obviously malnourished. Handing the boy to Renata, Aldayr hauled the father up next, and last the wife, who struggled on the ascent. Renata had passed the baby off to its father, which was fortunate, because her face turned green when she saw the twisted mess of torn skin and snapped bone just above where the woman's knee should have been.

Aldayr took it in better stride, but he still stared. "How did you survive that?"

"I am Icarii," she said in richly accented Basic, her voice trembling. Her skin gleamed more than her son's, and she had strange scale patterning in spots on her face and bare shoulders. "I survive many things."

"Part of the structure collapsed on her leg," the Human husband answered; he looked like only dehydration was keeping him from crying. "We couldn't get it out, it just hurt her worse…"

"Is there anyone else inside?" Aldayr asked.

"No," he said. "Just the three of us. We thought we were going to die…"

"You'll be safe now."

"I come Milagro to be safe," the Icarii said, leaning on her husband's shoulder; her remaining leg was trembling, but not all the tightness in her face looked like pain. "Leave home, leave family. Jorzen say Milagro safe.  Now this."

The husband winced, and Aldayr did too. He could think of no reply, so instead he drew out his comlink. "Nikodon to Rescue Control."

"Go ahead, sir."

"I've got three live ones at my location, including a youngling and an adult female with a severed leg. They're stable-ish, but I need rescue droids immediately."

"Sending a unit your way now, sir."

Aldayr climbed out of the hole first, then used a combination of the Force and brute strength to get the parents up. He levitated the toddler into his father's arms while Renata climbed up, and a few minutes later the rescue crew arrived. In the lead was a salvage droid with arms that looked like hydraulic presses, using its incredible density to brute-force broken durasteel out of its way; a second salvage droid with fusion cutters and electrical dampeners among its many appendages followed. The medical droids brought up the rear, conducting a quick assessment before they placed the boy in a medical capsule, wrapped the husband and wife in blankets (over the husband's protests), and carried them both away through the wreckage.

Aldayr gave them a head start, and as the clanging metal footsteps died away, Renata asked, "Do you think they'll be okay?"

"Probably. It's been a rough few days for them, I'm sure, but it looks like they spent most of their food on the kid, so he'll probably pull through.  The male didn't look hurt.  Never met an Icarii before, but she's doing a lot better with losing a limb than I did, so I'm betting she knows something I don't."

Renata's jaw clenched, and Aldayr thought she was fighting against her stomach again. Rolling his eyes, he hung his glowrod on a twisted beam and pulled off his tunic and undershirt.

"W-What're you doing?" Renata asked warily.

"Look, Renata," he said, holding up his cybernetic arm as if he could flex its biceps. When he had her attention, he said, "If you're going to be using a lightsaber, you need to get used to body parts coming off now and then. It happens.  Suck it up."

She looked offended, but she looked at his arm anyway, the bulky droid design and extra shielding that led up just short of his shoulder, where metal met flesh. Aldayr let her get a good look before he got dressed again and attached his glowrod to his belt. They explored the building in silence, but there was little to see beyond the family's apartment; internal walls had collapsed, and the ceiling dropped just enough debris on their heads that Aldayr felt it unwise to punch or Force his way through. He and Renata hiked back through the ruined cruiser, cataloguing another two dead crewers before they reached Milagro's failing sunlight.

Aldayr offered Renata his hand on reflex, but she ignored it, hauling herself out of the cruiser with a few scuffs and heading off to her master. Shrugging, Aldayr drew out his comlink. "Mali."

"You're out?"

"Yeah. Three live ones and a few more corpses for the index."

"Hang on, I'm on my way to you."

Mali appeared a moment later, walking along the cruiser's hull and hopping over the holes turbolasers had made. Aldayr bowed as his master approached; Mali returned the gesture and asked, "Got everybody?"

"We couldn't make much progress in the building; I thought it might collapse if I took out any of the walls. But we didn't sense anyone."

Mali nodded, then glanced over Aldayr's shoulder and lowered his voice. "How'd Renata do?"

Aldayr grimaced. "She's not doing well with gore. She's just a kid, really; I'm not sure why she's here."

"Everybody has to start somewhere," Mali replied. "Better here, with us, under…well, not controlled conditions—we're no strangers to the ol' hack and slash, if I do say so myself, but it's still a battle, we're not invincible—but with us she's unlikely to get seriously hurt. And going along on the rescue and salvage, she can process her emotions with a support structure there.  Were you supportive?"

Aldayr opened his mouth, but it just hung in that position; he couldn't quite bring himself to say yes.

Mali gave him a look. "Yeah, that's about what I expected."

Aldayr rolled his eyes. "She's not my Padawan."

"You were still the senior Jedi," Mali replied. "And you're probably the most seasoned battle veteran among the Padawans here. Maybe that Ongree, Krib-Nyuth, but still.  I'm in command here, and you're my apprentice.  Other Padawans are going to look to you to lead, not to mention the soldiers and Marines."

Aldayr felt a bizarre mix of annoyance and pride; it took him a moment to nod. "Yes Master. I'll work on it."

Mali nodded, then gestured to the ship. "You find out whose it is?"

Aldayr stared. "Ours."

Mali snorted. "Obviously. But which ours?"

Aldayr understood then. Grimacing, he said, "Corellian."

Mali crossed his arms and staring down at the wrecked hulk. "Great…"

"This is on Gasald," Aldayr said, gesturing to the ruins. "Her people shot it down, it's our people who died."

"And Milagroans," Mali replied. He shook his head. "Yeah, Gasald's forces did this, but we won and they're not here, so it's on us to make this right. At least we've got the reactor contained."

"And it's not just Milagro, right? Other people are going to want to know which ours it was too."

"That they are." Mali sighed. "One, big, happy family…"