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Rune took the lightsaber in his right hand and flexed the fingers of his left as the turbolift slowed to a stop. Emerging, he found the lobby deserted. It would take only a few minutes to reach the maintenance bay from here, but Rune was wary and unwilling to let hope overpower his caution. Pain blanketed his body, squeezed at his joints, gnawed away at his focus. He had not forgotten his weakened Force power, or the fact that there were two Jedi lurking somewhere nearby. His only chance was simply to reach their ship before they had a chance to encounter him. Hopefully, whatever sabotage they had come to perform would keep them occupied.
A dark premonition took shape in Rune’s mind as he left the lobby behind and started into a corridor that served as one of Cairn Assembly’s numerous observation zones. Through viewports on either side, one could see the skeletons of unfinished All-Terrain Rapid Deployment Pods nested in their alcoves. They looked especially bare, since the welding and lifting equipment that normally surrounded them had all been removed.
Ten meters down the corridor, a lone figure bearing a red lightsaber whirled to face Rune. “What are you doing here?!” Vrekis’ voice was strange—duracrete-hard as always, but unmistakably strained, even hoarse. He stalked closer with an unsteady gait, and Rune gaped at him in dismay for a full second before mastering himself. Donning his customary mask of deference, he marched up to meet his superior.
Looking past Vrekis, Rune spied two bodies—both Human, clad in flight suits, clutching inactive lightsabers in their dead fingers. So much for sneaking past the X-wing’s owners. No doubt the shadowtrooper had sensed them and decided to go hunt them down, as if he had nothing better to do.
“I was separated from the others back in the Harbor,” Rune offered. “Then I sensed the Jedi saboteurs and came to help you.”
Stopping just out of reach, Vrekis angled his lightsaber toward the floor, but didn’t extinguish it. Up close, his armor was crisscrossed with lightsaber scoring in nearly a dozen places. Most prominent was an almost artfully-placed burn hole in the chestplate where the shadow armor’s Artusian crystal used to be; it seemed to have melted almost down to the body glove beneath. Rune, it seemed, was not the only one who’d had a brush with death.
The shadowtrooper cocked his masked head at Rune in a way which did not set him at ease. As a pause ensued, the Reborn recalled fearfully wondering whether or not Vrekis could perceive his thoughts of disloyalty. He supposed that he was about to find out.
“There’s no need,” Vrekis intoned, then nodded toward the door Rune had just come through. “We need to get to the main hangars. The last shuttles will leave soon.”
“Of course,” Rune agreed, then led the way. Putting his hand on the panel to open the door, he pretended to stumble and leaned against it for balance. Then he pushed off and spun, his blade surging to life with all the blinding speed that his fury and rage could spawn.
Though Vrekis’ shoulder pad seemed to partially deflect the blow, it nevertheless shaved off a layer of armor, leaving a glowing white-hot notch in its passing. Whether the shadowtrooper had failed to foresee the attack or else simply been too slow was impossible to tell. To his credit, though, he didn’t waste a breath expressing surprise or ordering his subordinate to stand down. When Rune followed up with a two-handed strike at his neck, Vrekis deftly parried the blow and instantly had one of his own at the ready.
As the two faced off, Rune might have wished he was back in the Harbor fighting the Jedi, had he a free millisecond to think at all. Vrekis’ bladework was methodical and relentless, and his moves had just as much demonic speed as they did strength. Clashes of bloody light dazzled Rune’s eyes as their twin weapons met with voltaic squeals and snarls of energy.
With his sole chance of freedom so close, Rune held nothing back, once again forgetting about his misgivings and doubts in order to fall back on his training; this was survival, nothing more or less. His style duplicated that of his opponent: brutal and two-handed, all power and precision. His only hope was to overwhelm Vrekis, to bash through his defenses and strike a weak point in his already-damaged armor.
Challenging a shadowtrooper would have been an uphill fight under any circumstances, but Rune felt his strength start to bleed away after only a few exchanges. Shockwaves of agony ripped through his muscles with every block and slash. Sweat ran into his eyes, and feral snarls and barks of rage issued from his throat. The two circled one another, dodging and sidestepping, their wide, sweeping moves carving molten lines into the walls and floor.
After ducking low under a sweeping chop that would have cut him in half, Rune struck at the shoulder he had hit before, hoping to reach bone this time. But Vrekis’ blade caught his in a bind and twisted it away. Crossed close to their points, the two beams went high, raking the ceiling, then came down across a nearby viewport. Rune looked away as the transparisteel cracked and burst in a shower of transparisteel shards.
Despite not seeing the next blow coming, Rune had just enough of the Force to guide his weapon in a block. However, the strength behind it pushed him against the wall beside the destroyed window. Desperate to head off the next attack, Rune put all his strength into an underhand blow, but aimed it at Vrekis’ weapon rather than the man himself. Red crashed against red, and the shadowtrooper’s lightsaber spun out of his grip and clattered to the floor meters away, its beam vanishing into the hilt with a hiss.
With a wild laugh of triumph, Rune stepped toward his unarmed opponent. In lieu of another wide swing, he went for a deep stab, aiming for the center of Vrekis’ chestplate, where a Jedi had already left a hole in the shadow armor there. But fatigue had caught up with Rune; his limbs felt as heavy as collapsium, and his decisive finishing move had all the speed and grace of a drunken Gran brawling in a cantina.
Vrekis easily sidestepped, then darted forward. Strafing to get away from the wall, Rune pulled his saber back into a tight guard and flicked it sideways into Vrekis’ ribs. The weak blow failed to penetrate the shadow armor, however, and Vrekis bulled into Rune and knocked him to the other side of the hall.
It was all the Reborn could do to keep from maiming himself with his own otherwise-useless lightsaber as he flopped onto his back. He kept his guard up, sort of, expecting to have to fend off his enemy from the floor. But the shadowtrooper remained where he was, framed before the shattered viewport. One black-armored hand was extended, and there was a metallic clacking as the hilt of his fallen lightsaber came bouncing across the deck.
In those precious seconds of respite, Rune took note of his opponent’s position and decided on the manner of his last attack. Even if it failed, it would buy him enough time to get up so he could die on his feet.
While Vrekis pulled his saber the rest of the way into his hand, more concerned with it than with his immobile opponent, Rune called on the Force and pushed as hard as he could. The shadowtrooper flew backward through the window, his free hand grasping for its rim and missing by a millimeter. A full-throated but impotent roar faded down into the assembly bay for several seconds, then abruptly cut off.
Wheezing through gritted teeth, Rune gazed warily at the spot that Vrekis had just vacated, waiting for him to leap back into view. But the moment went on and on, and at last the Reborn let his lightsaber power down. Klaxons still rang and a distant explosion rumbled somewhere else in the station, but otherwise, right where Rune was, things were quiet.