Igniting the Stars/Part 7

"If you can just keep it stable—" Cienis was saying, his big hands cupping what remained of Elmir's leg, when death rippled through the Force and they both looked. Sunlight danced on the dust lingering in the air, and when jets of water shot from the fountains they misted the air with rainbows, but in the heart of that light was darkness blacker than the void between stars, and in that abyss of the Force Darth Vandak squeezed Lishedra's head until it burst into pulp in his hands.

Bekli, Elmir thought with sorrow. He mourned Lishedra, a great and brave Knight, but his first thought was of Bekli, heartsick as he imagined how she would suffer this loss. He had only begun to process the death of his own master, but it was there in his heart, a pain that would amplify tenfold when he had a moment to confront it.

A scream speared Elmir and brought his imaginings to terrible life; Bekli had seen her master's corpse. She and Krajjey met Vandak at the same time even though the hulking ZeHethbra was more than twice her height; Bekli had lost none of her Forceful speed, and Krajjey was limping from the many blows he had sustained. They fought Vandak together, but Elmir doubted. Lishedra and Bekli had already tried this, Form V rooting the Sith Lord in place while Form IV sprang about him to chip at weak spots, and Lishedra's remains spoke to the efficacy of that strategy. They needed more.

"Go," Elmir told Cienis. "I'll be all right."

The Human looked back at the battle, then to Elmir in obvious doubt.

"Go! They need you!"

Cienis nodded, a great weariness stealing over his features, but he raised his blistered hands and his fallen lightsabers skittered across the broken flagstones and sprang into his grip. He winced, but ignited the yellow blades and dove back into the fight, coming at Vandak from the side while Krajjey continued to pound at him head-on. Cienis, Elmir could see, was a Form IV stylist too, though he preferred to stay rooted to the ground, spinning and whirling and leaving the acrobatics to Bekli. As he fought, Elmir could see what a toll Vandak's Deadly Sight had taken on him.

Bekli leapt at Krajjey, landing on his shoulder and whispering in his ear. Vandak rounded on Cienis in their moment of distraction, managing to slash off the emitter of one of Cienis's lightsabers, though Cienis jerked back just enough to keep the hand holding it. Krajjey reverted to a one-handed grip and Bekli leapt into his palm; winding up like a scramball pitcher, Krajjey hurled Bekli at Vandak faster than Elmir's eye could follow. Vandak whirled to defend himself, but Bekli still cut through his trapezius and passed by so quickly Vandak's answering slash met nothing but air. The Anzat bellowed and the Force exploded out of him; Krajjey stumbled, Cienis fell onto his back, and Bekli went careening through the air with a high-pitched squeal.

Elmir caught her with the Force and set her down.

"Elmir!" she squeaked. "You okay?!"

"Hanging in there!" he promised.

"Elmir…he killed Lishedra…"

Elmir touched her face. "Master Kirthi too. But we can't get angry."

Bekli nodded even as tears gleamed in her eyes. "No emotion."

"Well," Elmir said with a smile, "maybe one emotion."

Bekli smiled back—a broad grin than showed off her two front, gnawing teeth, a smile she had been self-conscious about among their Clan mates when they were children until Elmir had told her how much he liked it. For one second she held his hand to her face with hers, and wordless support strengthened them both as it had so many times.

Then flagstones hissed and coughed smoke as Vandak slashed them to shards, trying to cut Cienis down before he could get back to his feet. Elmir squeezed Bekli's cheek with his claws. "They need you."

She nodded and reactivated her blade, using its snap-hiss to cover the sound as she said, "I love you."

"I love you too. Go get him."

And he watched her charge, a dwarf among giants without a trace of fear, a bat-eared, hog-nosed little bundle of fur and squeaks amidst towering colossi of men who roared like thunder and swung blows that could have cut her apart without so much as a tug upon their blades…the woman he loved.

Elmir wondered whether Master Kirthi had known, had intuited in that quiet, insightful way of hers. Had she seen the way Elmir and Bekli fought together, like two souls sharing one body, and understood that no friendship could bind two beings so tightly or carry them through so many perils, even through the Force? Had she counted the stolen moments in shipboard bays or downside places of beauty, the tranquil islands in a sea of war, and deduced that no two friends, no matter how long they were parted, would be at once so at peace and so serious when they were "catching up"? Had she awoken in the night to find her Padawan gone from his bed and dared to guess at the tender loving that had brought the two together for so very few nights? Had Lishedra? In his moments of deepest courage Elmir had dared to imagine asking his master, but now he would never know.

He thought they might have guessed here, on Gyndine, when Bekli and Elmir had spent their last moments of preparation not in checking weapons or meditation, but in each other's arms. It had been a risk, they both knew it, but they were going to war against Darth Vandak, a war from which they might never return, and though neither of them would ever doubt, there were things a lover should not leave unsaid before dying.

All this passed through Elmir's mind in a second; the next second, Bekli was back in the battle, flipping past Vandak's back and drawing his attention just long enough for Cienis to roll to his feet. Elmir turned and clambered onto the pile of rubble that had once been a skybridge and the ground below, dragging his maimed stump of a leg with him. Cienis's stim-shot was starting to numb the pain, and he needed a better vantage point if he was to help; sitting, he barely came up to Vandak's knee. He hauled himself, one torturous meter at a time, until he sat astride a twisted pylon that had been bent into a tight circle just the right size for a Drall chair, carefully avoiding a sparking wire a meter away.

Krajjey was back in the fight, he saw, and Cienis had found his feet and was dueling with his single blade, although Lishedra and Grayv's fallen weapons were there on the ground—Bekli had brought Elmir his own weapon, though he wasn't sure what good it would do now. Krajjey and Cienis seemed to have reached some strategy, Krajjey raining vertical blows on Vandak while Cienis swept at him with horizontal ones and Bekli bounced and rolled around among the big people, cutting at weak points. It wasn't a bad strategy, Elmir thought, as he levitated a broken piece of flagstone and hurled it at Vandak. He missed the Anzat's knee, where he had been aiming, but struck him in the thigh. Vandak dropped to that knee in a second of pain as the shard of flagstone cut through his pants and the flesh beneath, and Cienis lunged two-handed. Vandak parried the blow away from his chest, but Cienis angled it down and cut Vandak's other thigh instead.

This is it, Elmir thought, adrenaline flooding his system, but it wasn't. Vandak howled in pain, but as Bekli leapt for a sai cha to finish him, Vandak parried blindly behind himself and caught her blade at such a strange angle that Bekli's momentum slowed and she hung there, doing an upside-down pushup with her own lightsaber, her blade balanced on Vandak's.  Cienis stared, and in that moment of distraction Vandak hurled her into his face, and Cienis and Bekli went down, trying to untangle themselves.

Elmir feared Vandak would try to finish them, but he catapulted to his feet and charged Krajjey instead. So many injuries, even mild ones, had taken a toll on Vandak's fighting skills, but Elmir saw they had merely reduced him from near-invincibility to mastery, leaving him plenty of room to spare even against a Padawan of Krajjey's skill. They dueled, Form V on Form V, neither moving more than a few centimeters back or forward, refusing to cede ground, red and blue blades crashing together with such speed and ferocity that the quiet hum of the blades and even the dopplering of their slashes were lost. Elmir felt winces and tics of pain in the Force, and none of them were from Vandak.

Vandak lunged too far with his left arm, and Krajjey released his lightsaber with one hand, catching hold of Vandak at last. But it was Vandak's triumph that flooded the Force, and Elmir realized Krajjey had been suckered. He wrenched, but Vandak dropped the lightsaber hilt from that hand, caught Krajjey by the sleeve of his robe, and all but leapt into the pull. He landed at Krajjey's side, pulling him back and off-balanace, and in the second Krajjey took to shift his footing and steady himself, Vandak sheared off his arm at the shoulder.

Krajjey's bellow was so loud that Elmir covered his ears, and it rippled through the Force so hard that holo displays shattered into glass and wiring twenty meters around. Bekli and Cienis ran for it, but Vandak pulled his dropped lightsaber to hand with the Force and swept his two blades across to hack out Krajjey's legs. Krajjey wailed as he came down on the stumps of his legs, exposed bones pushed up into his pelvis, but before he could fall Vandak uncrossed his arms and beheaded him.

Cienis and Bekli tried. They tried mightily, the swift-footed Chadra-Fan and the relentless, whirling Human, but Vandak was just too strong, too skillful, and without the brutality of Krajjey's assault to root him in place, he stepped up his speed, attacking with spins and twists of his own. Bekli flew past his shoulder, and this time he twisted his head and answered with a slash instead of a block. Elmir gasped as Bekli's pain hit him in the Force and half of her left ear flopped to the ground. She restrained herself to lower jumps then, cutting at Vandak's legs and spine, but he dodged away from her or swatted her aside with every try. Elmir dared not hurl anything at the Sith Lord for fear of hitting one of his fellow Jedi; he tried to rattle Vandak with the Force, but Vandak simply skipped along with blows that did connect and came at his attackers from new angles.

Little might have been said of his social skills, but Cienis Favand died with courage and honor. When Vandak knocked Bekli down and she bounced before coming to a halt, stunned, Cienis threw himself between the two, standing his ground even as the red cyclone of Vandak's blades enveloped him. Elmir channeled Bekli energy through their bond in the Force, and she got back to her feet and leapt aside to come at Vandak from behind. Vandak forced Cienis into an arm twist and cut for his wrist; Cienis let go of his blade, jerked his arm out of range, and reached into the Force for the weapon, but just as he caught and reignited it, Vandak brought his other lightsaber around and stabbed Cienis under the chin and through the top of his head. He collapsed as Vandak ripped the blade free, and Bekli was left alone.

No, Elmir thought, not alone. She might be the last Jedi to bear a blade against the dark, but so long as they both lived, whether holding hands or ten thousand light years apart, they would never be alone.

Vandak looked at the slain around him, and a smile that was more of a leer twisted his lips. "Are you all that's left, little Jedi?"

Bekli caught her breath and chambered her lightsaber to guard. "Yeah, well, thermal detonators are small too! Come get me!"

Vandak's eyes lit up and he pursued Bekli, and she skipped away, but from his vantage point atop the ruins of the bridge Elmir could see the most useful angle of retreat. Knowledge flowed from one to the other, bypassing words, and Bekli capered over the fountains. When Vandak pursued, Elmir used the Force to funnel three spouts of water right into the Sith Lord's face. There wasn't enough water to short out either of his lightsabers, but Vandak spluttered for just a second as he spat the water away and blinked it from his eyes, and in that moment Bekli sprang in, nicked him in the forearm, and backflipped over his retaliatory slash with millimeters to spare.

Vandak pursued her over the corpses of their comrades, and Bekli fell suddenly, screaming, her flesh starting to steam and her fur smoldering. Elmir had expected it, and he knew he couldn't overpower Vandak. But he could use the Force on the fallen lightsabers of the dead, and so he did exactly that. Krajjey and Lishedra's blue blades, Grayv's green, and Cienis's yellow all snap-hissed to life at once, and now it was Darth Vandak encased in a hurricane of enemy blades. He defended himself with expert skill, blocking or parrying every blow, his wild tangles of hair flying around his face. But Bekli had escaped him, and she got to her feet, reactivating her blade and springing in too; Elmir knew her need without her asking and cleared a way for her. Vandak blocked and threw her back with a Force push, but Grayv's green lightsaber lanced through his stomach. Roaring, Vandak stabbed the hilt, which sparked and exploded, then spun in a whirl and sliced the other three hilts apart.

Bekli impacted the pile of rubble, and though she got to her feet, she and Elmir realized in one shared thought that they did not have enough energy—or enough Jedi—to keeping chipping away at Vandak in a frontal assault. She scampered up the collapsed bridge, and Elmir sensed suddenly that she had a plan. No plan was likely to survive the next few seconds, however—Vandak was in hot pursuit, and darkness flowed out from him like spilled ink across a page.

Elmir needed to buy her time. Tools flew off Cienis's belt into Bekli's hands, behind him somewhere, but Elmir didn't even look. Instead, he concentrated on pooling the light within himself, the internal glow that could shine even in deepest darkness. He thought of Bekli, and love, and the bond between them that made him a better Jedi, a better man. He was afraid for her, for them both, but he loved her enough that fear had no power over him. They had made their peace with death in that last embrace in the spaceport; they could only do what they could do before the end.

Elmir bundled up that light until he felt he would disintegrate and Vandak was meters away, then unleashing it like an unkinked hose. The power of his Force blow hit Vandak, and the Sith Lord actually skidded back and dropped to one knee; his eyes widened, and Elmir realized the red and yellow had turned back to blue. He had taken no visible injury, but his scarred cheeks looked darker, and the wounds he had taken steamed as if the lightsabers had just passed through his flesh. Something about his dreadful aura of invincibility had weakened; he seemed somehow diminished.

That was nothing to what Elmir felt, however; he wasn't sure what he had done, but he was sure he couldn't do it again for all the gems on Mygeeto. He fell sideways onto the rubble, panting. He noticed Bekli frantically working at an exposed power conduit with her own tools and those she had taken from Cienis. Elmir knew from experience he was unlikely to understand the process even if she took the time to explain it, but he had no chance to ask; Vandak had gotten back to his feet, and now his cold eyes were on Elmir.

He leapt, and Elmir had to scrabble onto his one remaining foot into a pathetic Force hop that barely carried him two meters; he landed hard, banging his stump and squealing with pain. Vandak's blows splintered the rubble where he had lain a moment before, and the Anzat could almost reach him from there. Elmir waved his hands, throwing broken pieces of metal and flagstone fragments with the Force, but he felt drained, and Vandak swatted each of the projectiles from the air with ease. Elmir grabbed the loose wire he had seen and used it to haul himself another meter away, dust caking in his first as he dragged himself like climbing a rope sideways. Some part of his mind noticed that the severed end of the wire was no longer sparking.

It was, he realized, the part of his mind that bound him to Bekli's, and then he understood. Vandak took the first step to run the little Drall down, and Elmir waved a hand. He could do little more than coil the wire once around Vandak's thigh, but just before the Anzat could cut it away, Elmir sensed Bekli acting and heard the whiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIRRRRR of a generator accelerating.

Vandak screamed through gritted teeth as electricity flowed into him, dropping his lightsabers as he twitched and jerked. Elmir hadn't bound him tightly enough with the wire, though, and the force of the electricity blew him backwards. He bounced down the pile of rubble, landing on the ground in a smoking heap.

Bekli was at Elmir's side, helping to pull him farther toward safety. "Did we kill him?"

They hadn't. Despite it all, Vandak was still groaning and pressing himself up to hands and knees, though his elbows shook and his body twitched. The charred flesh of the permanent wound where part of his cheek had been had stretched farther, blackening down to his jaw and opening to bone in places. It took him a few tries, but Vandak finally got a foot under himself, shifted up to one knee, and forced himself to stand. Elmir didn't know if Vandak had reached some new level of pain suppression Jedi could only imagine with envy, or if the Sith was so consumed with rage that nothing short of death would stop him. Vandak raised his hands and his lightsabers flew home to him; Elmir realized, too late, they should have destroyed the weapons.

Vandak's face, twisted with hate and rage, promised slow death, and Elmir sensed he and Bekli were on the same screen at once. She said, "If we don't kill him now—"

"—we never will. Go."

Bekli activated her blade and charged, hopping over rubble to get herself some momentum. Vandak's injuries had slowed him down, but he still had enough to meet each of her attacks, turning to face her whichever way she leapt. Elmir wanted to help her, but his leg was throbbing even through the stim-shot's numbing, and he had spent most of his energy and focus to down Vandak before; the thought of trying much more than levitation nauseated him. He still had his lightsaber on his belt, but even with two legs he wouldn't have contributed much to the fight; Form III wasn't too much use when the enemy could simply bowl him off his feet with brute strength, and even with a perfect defense, victory eventually required attack.

He sensed Bekli reaching out to him for help, for teamwork. Vandak had copied Cienis and Krajjey's strategy—downward slashes with one blade and horizontal ones with the other. Bekli was forced to decide between standing her ground and being knocked around or daring increasingly perilous leaps between the fast-moving red blades. She touched down and caught one of Vandak's blows; it didn't knock her down, but she was forced to spread her feet wide, and Vandak crossed his arms to finish her.

Bekli asked him for help in the Force, and Elmir felt her confidence—not that he would succeed, or that either of them would survive, but that he would save her if he could. Whether her trust focused the Force or just his own mind, Elmir would never know, but at once he had the answer. Drawing the lightsaber hilt from his belt, he threw it. He had no energy to manage anything more than levitation, but levitation was enough. The Force brought the lightsaber hurtling to a sudden stop in front of Bekli, and a twist of the Force activated the green blade as Bekli disengaged hers. Vandak's momentum carried him into the ferocious, bisecting blow, but it was the Force instead of little Drall arms that held the lightsaber now, and as the green blade stopped Vandak cold, Bekli leapt.

There was a snap-hiss and a zwhipp in the space of a second, and then Bekli touched down on Vandak's other side. For a second they all froze.

Then the Force screamed in warning, and Bekli leapt not away to safety, but past Vandak to Elmir, one last burst of acrobatic energy carrying her into his arms. As they held each other, the blue of Vandak's dead eyes became blinding, and stretched across his body, shining through his wounds like light through a cracked screen; it gleamed through his shoulder and ribs; it poured from his mutilated cheek and maimed thighs. For an instant it funneled out of his mouth like he was breathing blue fire, and then he exploded.

Blue-white energy rippled out, Sith energy made fire instead of lightning. The central pillar of the plaza shot sparks and ejected maintenance plates, and the holo display at its spire erupted, turning the pillar into a torch shooting flames ten meters high. Debris bounced in all direction as if the horrible, wailing roar in the air was true wind; the fountain jets superheated and vaporized, pouring steam so thick that the plaza was shrouded in fog. The dark energy burst toward the Jedi, too, but Bekli and Elmir each raised a hand and held one another's, willing the Force to protect them, shining their light against the last of the dark. And though the wind howled and the dark side screamed and all around them turned to chaos, they were in harmony, and no evil touched them.

And then it was over, and the plaza was only mist, dust, and distant sirens, with two little Jedi holding each other in the middle of it all, and Darth Vandak was conquered at last.