The Fog of War/Part 8

When the quartet emerged from the cockpit, Mali clapped three times. "I don't know what the hell you did up there, but it just felt impressive. Also, the lights won't come back on."

He gestured to the extinguished glowpanels above their heads; one was still sparking. Tirien snorted. "We were hit, I'm glad it's just the lights."

"Your fancy flying?"

"Most of it, but Narasi was the lynchpin." The Pantoran laid a hand briefly on his apprentice's shoulder. "Well done."

It was simple, almost casual praise—though Tirien's ever-serious voice could inject gravitas into a shopping list—but even though Narasi still looked rattled, she smiled at his words. Of course, from such a taciturn Jedi it was probably an extravagant compliment, but it cheered Mali a little to see how much tighter their bond had grown since Taanab. He had sensed it in Tirien's protectiveness earlier, but he was relieved that Tirien's sense of responsibility for her didn't prevent him from giving her life-and-death challenges.

"All I did was fly," she said with an attempt at modesty. She gave Slejux a wondering look. "Was that battle meditation?"

Mali looked at the Melitto sharply, but Slejux shook his faceless head. "No."

He did not go on, and Mali sensed that somewhat was going unsaid. Stepping forward into the awkward moment, he said, "Well, you got us down to the surface; now the real work starts."

"Is there anything resembling a plan?" Tirien asked wearily.

Mali tried not to let it annoy him. "We can't make a plan without a sense of conditions on the ground," he noted. "We spread out, find out the exact situation, and assemble a strike mission from there."

He could tell Tirien still had mixed feelings about targeting Gasald or her senior commanders for death, and of course Slejux was next to impossible to read, but Master Kadych nodded. "Let's move. The longer we delay, the more the Sith get entrenched."

"We'll stand out too much if it's all six of us, though," Mali pointed out.

"But we don't want to spread too thin until we know what we're up against," Tirien countered. "Three and three? Slejux, Narasi, and I can—"

"Let's spread the wealth around, Kal-Di," Master Kadych interrupted. "I'll go with you and Rican; Nissatak, go with Darakhan. A combat expert and a Force expert each."

Mali was prepared to consider Tirien a combat expert in his own way, and everything he had heard of Slejux suggested the Melitto Jedi was a terror in a duel, but he saw Master Kadych's point. Narasi looked less than enthused with the arrangement, and Tirien frowned, but he had apparently reached his daily quota for defying Jedi Masters, because he led the way down the Second Chance 's boarding ramp without another word.

Mali's boots crunched on the rooftop; it was caked with the detritus of buildings that had disintegrated under turbolaser fire from orbit. It was early afternoon, but the sudden flashes that marked the ongoing battle were still visible above. The streets below were similarly awash in grime and scorch marks, but whatever battle had marred them had long since moved on. The air smelled of fire, but the fear in the Force hung over the city like a pall.

To Narasi and Aldayr's amazement, labor droids were still diligently at work inside the factory, moving goods along the assembly line and oblivious to the carnage outside. Mali checked, but they were not manufacturing weapons or armor, so he left them to their work.

"Comm if you find out anything," Tirien said as they parted ways on the street.

"What if they're jamming?" Narasi asked.

"They have to keep some lines open so they can talk to their own troops," Mali answered. Then he frowned at Tirien. "But they might scan to intercept. Do you have a better shroud than the Temple-issue?"

Tirien showed him a long-suffering look and drew out his comlink. The device slipped into its data port was definitely not from the Jedi Temple; it had all the hallmarks of a black market add-on that could be worth anything from a fine to a prison sentence on certain worlds.

"Suwo?"

"Suwo."

Mali grinned, and Tirien gave him a grudging smirk in return. Mali took it as a good sign, hoping their friendship would survive the mission to Milagro—assuming they did.

"May the Force be with you," Tirien added.

"And also with you," Slejux replied.

"Happy hunting," Master Kadych commented languidly, then departed down a street with a fault line stretching into the distance. Tirien and Narasi followed, and Mali was left with Slejux and Aldayr, both of whom turned to him. Gesturing the opposite way their comrades had gone, he led the way at a light jog, keeping to the shadows of the remaining buildings.

"Aldayr, where are we?" he asked.

His Padawan drew out his datapad, typing for a moment before shaking his head. "Can't triangulate, Master. The fleets are probably disrupting satellites."

"Or they shot them down," Mali mused. "Well, let's explore."

Mali could sense they were being watched as they made their way down one street after another, but most of the minds he could feel felt only of fear; the handful showing genuine hostility lacked the intent that would mean a threat, and he assumed they were Milagroans who had very recently learned to dislike offworld visitors.

"Where's the fighting, Master?" Aldayr asked.

Aldayr's voice was uninflected in a way that had become increasingly common since Taanab, but he didn't look at Mali as he asked, and that was new and disquieting. Trying to smother his apprehension, Mali slowed to a halt and reached into the Force. His combat sense kept trying to draw his attention upward, but after a moment he perceived a more localized danger ahead. "That way."

They started to hear the tumult when they were still a kilometer out. Three blocks after that the flow of refugees started, both unarmed civilians fleeing headlong and routed soldiers seeking a safe point to regroup. A few stared at the three Jedi, especially faceless Slejux, and one or two shouted out warnings, but none tried to stop them. Mali and Aldayr had their lightsaber hilts in hand.

The next block down, Mali's danger sense jumped from a background hum to a scream, and he activated his blade in time to swing and bat away a blaster bolt. His second deflection was more controlled, and he saw the shooter leaning out a window several stories up. His reflexes were more than a match for the third shot, but he forced his conscious mind to dominate them, rolling his wrist at the last second; the reflected shot shattered the window and sent the panicked sniper running.

"You missed, Master." Mali heard the frown in Aldayr's voice.

"No, I didn't," he said as he deactivated his blade. "He's not a Sith, he's just some Milagroan whose whole world is falling apart. He probably saw the lightsaber and stopped thinking there."

"Not every threat must be resolved with killing," Slejux commented. His vocoder's mechanical voice did its best to convey emotional tones, but it was the hint of disappointment in the Force that caught Mali's attention, because he didn't think the Melitto was disappointed in Aldayr.

"What if he shoots somebody else just running by?"

Be present in the moment, Padawan, Mali might have said, but Slejux had made him curious. "Well, that wouldn't be good. Go up there and bring him down here.  Peaceably, but I want to talk to him."

Aldayr opened his mouth, but swallowed whatever his initial reply would've been and instead bowed his head, running into the building. Mali and Slejux took refuge in an alley between buildings.

"You okay?" Mali asked.

"You are kind to ask," Slejux answered. "I will be."

"What's this about battle meditation?"

The vocoder emitted a buzz that Mali thought might be its attempt at replicating a sigh. "Would that I had such a gift. No, merely a mind trick; creating confusion in the fighter pilots so we could evade them."

"On the fly, when they were that far away?" Mali whistled appreciatively. "I see why Tirien thinks so highly of you. That's well beyond me."

He had meant it as a compliment, but Slejux folded his hands in a contemplative way. "I wish I merited his faith."

"We got away."

"And I confused two pilots right into a building."

Mali understood then. The mind trick was meant as a diversion, sending all twelve pilots off on a fool's errand while the Second Chance made the surface safely. Neither Slejux nor Tirien had meant it as a weapon.

He put a hand on Slejux's shoulder. "Hey, if Tirien had bothered to put guns on that thing, I'd have been the one shooting those pilots down."

"And that would have been a defensible choice," Slejux agreed. "But you would have chosen it."

Mali wondered what he could say to help; he thought mind-tricking the enemy to death would have been a defensible choice too, but the accident of it seemed a hard obstacle to hurdle. "At least you got us down to the surface. Now we can help."

Slejux nodded, then cocked his faceless head. "And you? Are you okay?"

"Me?"

"You seem ill at ease with your Padawan."

Mali grimaced, but before he could reply the Padawan himself returned, dragging an older Human along with him. The man was clearly past his prime, though he had a hard look around his eyes that suggested his fighting days were not yet done. Aldayr's lightsaber was still on his belt, but he had the shooter in his mechanical hand, and Mali could see the man wincing.

"That's enough, let him go," Mali ordered. As the man rubbed his arm, Mali said, "We're not here to hurt you. We're Jedi Knights.  I'm Mali Darakhan."

The tough face twisted into a surprised look. "The Corellian? General Darakhan?"

Mali repressed a sigh. "Just Mali, but yeah. This is Slejux Nissatak and my apprentice, Aldayr Nikodon."

"We've met," the man growled, giving Aldayr a glance. "Commander Jossi Feld, Tarbunt City Police. Is the Republic invading too?"

"We're here to help," Mali assured him.

Jossi glanced upward; the afternoon was waning toward evening, and the space battle was getting brighter overhead. "Going well so far, then…"

"Be easier if people stopped shooting at us," Aldayr commented.

Jossi gave him a look. "If you don't want to be shot at, you're on the wrong planet, boy."

Mali interceded before they could snip at each other further. "What's the situation? I know Gasald and Lakalt are both here."

"Yeah," Jossi confirmed. "Haven't seen any sign of Lakalt's people in Tarbunt City, but we got reports of them in the capital and the north. The army deployed there to try and repel them; when Gasald's people landed here they steamrolled us.  Most of my officers were dead in the first few hours."

Mali had been a commander himself long enough to recognize the survivor's bitterness in Jossi's voice. "Nothing you could've done would've saved them," he said. "The Empire's got a galactic war machine."

"And we're just one insignificant planet on the way to Corellia, yeah." He snorted at Mali's surprised look. "We might not be one of yours, General Darakhan, but we're not stupid. I can read a holomap."

"I don't plan to let Gasald have Corellia or Milagro," Mali insisted. "If we can help, we will."

Jossi gauged them for a moment, his eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he finally sighed. "I doubt there's enough of the government left to negotiate with the Republic, but I'm not about to turn away good fighters. I've been in touch with some people trying to put together a resistance here; the cops we've got left, some army vets, a handful of civilians."

"If we can get everyone organized, you might be able to harass Gasald's forces for months," Mali allowed. Unless she committed the bulk of her force to pacifying the planet, Gasald would have to settle for a loose grip, and if she did bring her heel down, it would expose her elsewhere.

"Until she turns her Sith loose on us," Jossi noted.

"That's why we're here."

He met Jossi's gaze until the other man nodded. "I've got some comms equipment upstairs. We'll see if we can get in touch with the others."