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With that he started to run—and Rune was running too, still one of the unit, the misgivings of his conscience drowned out in the Force’s hellish symphony that the Reborn were a part of. He had a score to settle with the Jedi, and they couldn’t all be as dangerous as Skywalker and Katarn.
They ran, jumped, and landed on the loading dock just as the assault transport began to pull away. The last of the marines it had dropped off were just disappearing through a hatch into the depths of Cairn Base; covering their back was a semicircle of six Jedi. Each of their lightsabers was a different color, forming a mesmerizing rainbow as they twirled and flourished them about. Standing at their center was a male Zabrak whose black hair fell about his shoulders beneath a skull crowned with horns—Rune winced at the sight of him. Bringing a gleaming emerald saber to guard, the alien turned to Vrekis and called, “Your master is dead, dark-siders; you have no hope of escaping us! Lay down your weapons!”
“You are the ones who will not escape, Jedi!” taunted Atlan—another red-hood—as he and six more Reborn came from the opposite end of the platform and melded with the shadowtrooper’s followers, becoming a single, uniform row of bloodshine. No more words were traded, and the next moment the tide of battle rose up over their heads.
Master Desann had taught his followers to fight as a team, but strategies and training were little more than an afterthought at the melee’s outset. Above all there was power, there was the Force guiding Reborn and Jedi alike. Step by step, the clash of dark and light played out in a dance too lethal and frenzied for any mortal mind to devise. Each time Rune blinked he found himself in a new position, paired with a different brother against a different enemy, slashing and blocking, spinning through a whirlwind of arcing blades.
It was a beautiful, terrifying contest, all instinct and intuition, all the unspoken grandeur of the Force. But since the Force was a paradox, Rune remained himself even as he lost himself in the violence; and so he did not find it in himself to be shocked when his brothers started to die.
The first was Cyprus. Rune felt a kind of psychic sting, a report of another man’s pain matched by a manic scream. Then, meters away, a flash of an amber-robed body falling, the lightsaber slipping from his fingers; and that was all.
Seconds later: at the Force’s bidding Rune sidestepped, and a lightsaber held by no one blurred past him like a glowing amethyst spear. As Rell twisted away from a duel to parry it, the bewitched weapon slowed incrementally, then spun inside his guard and burned through the Reborn from shoulder to waist.
Rune snarled as he turned around, and his rage gave him focus, driving him toward a diminutive, big-eared Sullustan Jedi who was calling his lightsaber back to himself. He stood back to back with the Zabrak and another Jedi, who were struggling to weather a battering assault from Vrekis.
Rune was only meters away from the Sullustan when the Force again saved him at the last second; he ducked, only hearing the dopplerling wwrum of yet another lightsaber as it stabbed at him from above, missing his head and shoulders but leaving one ear ringing.
His new assailant landed in a crouch nearby: a male Human whose dark hair was tied back in a short ponytail—an example of New Republic decadence if there ever was one. Rune moved on him at once; in wordless synchronicity he was joined by Koresh, and the two slashed and stabbed from two directions at once. The Jedi gave ground, but his every step was measured as he expertly spun his sky-blue saber to parry.
The two Reborn didn’t relent, pressing the lone Jedi out toward the edge of the loading dock, away from his allies. Behind them, the melee began to spread itself out, dividing into several smaller duels.
Abruptly the Jedi broke away and ran, his long strides carrying him to a corner of the platform, where several narrow, rail-less catwalks reached some distance out into the chasm.
“Where are you going, Jedi?!” jeered Koresh, his voice high and gleeful.
“Just getting a better view of the place!” the other man retorted. Reaching the beginning of the catwalk, he pointed his blade in challenge and beckoned. “Care to join me?”
Rune barked out a harsh laugh as he and Koresh Force-leaped across the platform and renewed their assault. Though the Jedi immediately backed away down the catwalk, they seemed to be in his element now. With only just enough room for the two Reborn to advance side by side, they couldn’t employ most of the more powerful, sweeping attacks that their training had favored.
Once in a while, one of the three combatants would flinch out of the way of a stray blaster shot. Level by level, the far walls of the Harbor glimmered with weapon fire, while plumes of smoke and droning rebel transports troubled the air.
Growing impatient, Rune called on the Force and flipped over the Jedi’s head, landing in a crouch behind him and bringing his lightsaber down to split him in two. But the bloodshine beam of plasma only sizzled through metal, and Rune couldn’t recover his defense before the Jedi’s boot slammed square into his chest. As Rune landed on his back, the Jedi flicked a stab at Koresh’s face; it missed, but the green-hood retreated a step and hesitated.
“You… will pay for that, Jedi,” Rune wheezed as he regained his footing, wary of the abysses on either side of him.
The Jedi eyed Rune over his shoulder, but kept his blade toward Koresh. “I’m afraid I’m short on credits,” he replied, deadpan. Glancing from one Reborn to the other, he added, “I’ve been going easy on you. You’re on the wrong side. Surrender.”
Rune coughed, clenching down on his pain with sheer will, trying to regather his focus as well as his power. His mind was clearer out there on the catwalk than it had been in the melee back on the platform, and the Jedi’s words rattled him. With Master Desann dead, the Empire would never be reborn. He was on the wrong side. Surely the Rebel terrorists and their Jedi lackeys weren't on the right side either. Even so, this was not Rune's fight.
Yet there he was.
“You are a coward—afraid to fight us!” snarled Koresh, whose already-grotesque grin was further enhanced by the fierce glow of his blade.
That is what we all look like, thought Rune distantly.
A scream rang out from the loading dock. All three men looked to see the Zabrak Jedi falling onto his back with both of his legs gone at the knees. Amazingly, the alien managed to hold onto his lightsaber, but his antagonist, Vrekis, easily shunted it aside and decapitated him with a single stroke. Not a second later the shadowtrooper turned on another Jedi, who was rushing too late to her comrade's aid, and slashed her across the chest. The woman fell, her sun-yellow blade vanishing as she joined the dismembered bodies scattered about the platform—among which, Rune could not help but notice, at least four more Reborn now lay.
Koresh looked back to the Jedi before him, his eyes aglow with cruel glee, seemingly unperturbed at the deaths of his brothers. “The Force betrays you!”
The Jedi’s voice arctic. “Oh, it does, does it?”
Then he lunged at Rune before either Reborn could act, feinted low, and kicked him in the chest again. Rune staggered back, his breath leaving him in a throat-scorching rush.
Koresh closed in from behind, but the Jedi spun toward him at the last second. There was a shrill howl as the green-hood's lightsaber, and the arm grasping it, tumbled from the edge of the catwalk—before the Jedi kicked him in the spine and sent him down after it.
Choking down a deep breath, Rune brought his saber to guard, waiting for another onslaught; he knew that the best course would be to attack, but his concentration had frayed. He levied a silent curse on Vrekis, Nelvish, and all his brothers for dragging him into this pointless, hopeless battle, and on himself for letting them do it.
A heartbeat passed. Rather than charging, the Jedi merely waved a hand. Having only had eyes for their blades, Rune was unprepared for the wave of Force power that caught him up and flung him over the catwalk’s edge.
Spinning through empty space, Rune let go of his lightsaber and screamed into the Force, grasping at all of its power to slow his descent, to cushion his impact. Far sooner than he expected, a hard surface found him, and an explosion of white-hot pain shot from his feet to his skull and blasted his consciousness away.
Moments or perhaps hours later, he found himself splayed out on his back, staring up perhaps six or seven levels at what he assumed to be the catwalk he'd fallen from. Compared to before, the Harbor was remarkably quiet, with the report of energy weapons and explosions intermittent; the troopers were falling back, and the Rebels were penetrating into the depths of the facility.
Every bone in Rune’s body shrieked at him. Moving only made it worse, but he climbed to his feet as soon as he dared. He had fallen onto a debris-strewn conveyor belt, one of several which linked the Harbor to the lower sections of Cairn Assembly.
After a few shaky steps, he staggered to his knees beside a mangled, bloody mess which had once been Koresh. Rune flinched away from the sight as well as the stench, panting as he tried to force his strength to return. Yet deep within, there still burned a little ember of exultation. Fate had spared him once again.
Rune waited a long moment, then stood again and found the dead man’s lightsaber nearby. The hilt felt cool and comfortable, just as his own had; one saber was as good as any other. For a brief instant he wondered whether his destiny involved keeping such a weapon after escaping this place. Would it be more trouble than it was worth?
He shook his head and raised his hood, which had been dislodged during the fall, and followed the conveyor belt into the tunnel of dark steel from which it emerged. Nothing was impossible, but plans and speculations were all a fool’s game until he escaped.