The Other Outcast/story

Try though he did, Rune could not suppress a shiver as he took his first step out of the bacta tank. The inside hadn’t exactly been calibrated for comfort, but the deck felt glacial under his bare feet. The patient room was dim and cramped, most of its space being taken up by the tank and a few other medical devices.

Neatly folded on the bed in front of Rune was a familiar uniform: a dark combat vest with a blood-colored robe, and on the floor before it his boots. Both looked brand new. The absence of his lightsaber was worrying, but even as he stood there shivering, his whole being tingled with glee as he remembered that he was alive!

Not that he hadn’t realized it before. There had been periods of lucidity inside the bacta tank, during which he had been able to recall what had happened. He remembered being alongside a dozen of his brothers, sprinting through the labyrinthine corridors of Cairn Base to deal with a pair of Jedi intruders. He remembered leaping down upon Skywalker and Katarn from a hangar bay catwalk, remembered the bloodthirsty ecstasy of finally crossing blades with the hated Jedi Knights. And he remembered the contest's dreadfully sudden ending: feeling the uncommon agony of lightsaber blades raking his chest and his back, then tumbling against a nearby crate, unable to catch himself, unable to scream or ask for help...

But all that pain was gone now, and Rune was whole again. He remembered the words of Master Desann in the Valley of the Jedi: You have been reborn in the glory of the Force!

Now I’m reborn again, thought Rune as he donned his pants and boots. His satisfaction was short-lived, though, as his ears registered a familiar throbbing, mechanical wail—Cairn Base was on full alert.

A murmur in the Force gave him a few seconds’ warning before the door hissed open and harsh gray light spilled into the room. Having only just gotten into his vest, Rune whirled and snarled against the glare, ready to lash out at whatever idiot nurse or medical droid was disturbing him.

But a heartbeat later, he reined in his anger. The intruder, fully suited in cortosis-melded shadow armor, was not someone to snarl at. As the Artusian Force-crystal embedded in the armor’s chestplate radiated an emerald glow, so it and the tall, broad-shouldered man wearing it exuded dark power. The shadowtroopers were Master Desann’s elite, and as far as Rune knew, only one had been assigned to stay and guard Cairn Base rather than join the assault on Yavin IV.

Instinctively, Rune stood up straighter. “Vrekis? What’s happening? How long was I—”

“Five standard days.” Vrekis' helmet vocoder filtered his voice much like those of the common stormtroopers, but Rune had trained with this man before he’d earned that armor, and knew that he sounded just as gravelly and harsh without it. “The droid says you’re fully recovered. We need you ready for battle. Now.”

“But what’s going on?” protested Rune, still blinking against the harsh light from the doorway. “What happened to Katarn—and Skywalker?

“They both escaped.” Vrekis paused, perhaps taking a deep breath. “Master Desann and Admiral Fyyar are dead.”

“What?”

“Their mission has failed; the Doomgiver was destroyed at Yavin. We are all that’s left.” Vrekis’ manner was like all the shadowtroopers’: stony and dispassionate. He could have been a droid.

Rune, on the other hand, was left reeling and dazed, as though the light from the doorway was a c-beam lamp, burning into his eyes. His jaw went slack, and words fell out of his mouth. “How could—”

“There is no time,” said Vrekis, cutting him off. “We’ve been warned—a Rebel fleet is inbound from Ord Mantell and will be arriving today. Within hours. Cairn Base is evacuating. Be in the briefing room in ten minutes.” He slapped a lightsaber hilt into Rune’s hand.

Rune stared numbly down at the weapon. It was undecorated and utilitarian, nothing but smooth black metal, mass-produced and identical to all of his brothers' lightsabers. His original one must have been destroyed in his duel with the Jedi. In any case, this one belonged to Rune now. He sucked in a breath and asked, “Where are we evacuating to?”

“An outpost near the Aeten system. We’ll receive new orders there.”

“Orders from who?” Rune’s jaw clenched as he raised his eyes toward the optical lenses of the shadowtrooper’s helmet. Emergency or not, he resented being barged in on by his superior before he was even finished dressing—and he was angry with himself for keeping the man here by talking so much.

“No more questions. Be at the briefing,” Vrekis told him, and was gone.

Left alone, Rune’s thoughts whirled until they became a cyclone of dread and agitation. After a moment of indecision, he hurriedly pulled the robe on and clipped the lightsaber to his belt. Urgency ran through his body like an electric current; there was no time for thinking.

Raising the dark red hood to shadow his face, Rune stalked from the medbay and found the asteroid base roiling with frantic activity. Olive-uniformed Imperial workers hauled crates and pieces of equipment on repulsor-sleds. Stormtroopers either sped through their patrols or rigidly stood guard. Officers and administrators strutted about as they always did, shouting to be heard over blaring alarms and crackling intercoms.

Anger stewed and simmered inside Rune as he marched down wide hallways and through chaotic concourses. Stress and determination and fear saturated the Force, and the Force flowed into him, sharpening his senses, if not his mind.

Shadowtroopers may have been the ones with full armor, but the Reborn had masks of their own, and Rune employed his here. His half-shrouded face was a permanent scowl, a fiery sneer. Despite their urgent occupations, none of the base personnel were too busy to notice him; a mere glance was enough to send workers, troopers, and officers alike scrambling out of his way.

Show no weakness, Master Desann had said. Show only ferocity. Flaunt your power before lesser beings—make them all see that you can use it at any moment. Show how little their lives mean to you. They see only a part of the universe, but you have been reborn—stronger. With eyes that see.

The rush to the briefing room gave Rune some sense of balance and clarity. Upon reaching it and finding a seat among his brothers, though, his anxiety soon returned. Addressing them was the base commander, who fretfully paced about before a holomap of the facility.

True to Vrekis' word, the Doomgiver had indeed been lost at Yavin, along with Master Desann and Admiral Fyyar. Desann’s apprentice, Tavion, was thought to be dead as well, and the cursed Rebellion was quickly tightening a noose around what remained of their forces.

Following the Doomgiver's ill-fated departure, the Star Destroyer Resolute II had come to protect Cairn Base. Now it was their only hope of escape, and a small fleet of transports and shuttlecraft were already ferrying personnel and cargo aboard. The incoming Rebel forces promised to be overwhelming, but it was thought that their aim was to capture the facility intact.

Thus, the evacuation depended first upon the Resolute II and its fighter screen. In the event that Rebel forces managed to board the space station, it would be up to its complement of stormtroopers and the Reborn to hold them off. Cairn Base had been critical to the shadowtrooper project, in terms both of research and production. The precious cortosis shipments from Bespin, as well as all other materials related to Admiral Fyyar’s work, had to be kept safe from their enemies.

As for the Reborn themselves, clustered near the front of the briefing room, there were twenty-five left, counting Vrekis and Rune himself.

We are all that’s left, the shadowtrooper had said in the medbay.

Toward the end of the briefing, the base commander spent a moment babbling about rendezvousing with allied forces after reaching the Aeten system. Apparently they were going to see if Fleet Admiral Pellaeon could find a place for them under his command. That answered one of Rune’s questions, but he still many more left over—and they weren't questions that anyone in the room could answer.

The briefing ended. Men streamed from the room, and the crowd swept Rune out into the base's still-bustling corridors. Suddenly unable to bear all the shouting and activity, he took a random turn and marched as fast as he could, trying to outpace it. The Rebels weren’t attacking them right this minute. If only he could have a few moments to himself to think...

---

In a section of the base protruding from the misshapen surface of the asteroid, Rune found a nondescript control room on a deck that had already been cleaned out. He strode—or fled—between banks of dead screens, abandoned consoles, and ionized computer cores to the end of the room. There he stopped at a wide viewport, not quite panting, where he pulled his hood back—pulled off his mask—and tried to tune out the drone of the alarm.

Just a kilometer away he could see the blocky central module of Cairn Base, standing monolithically where the rock’s heart used to be, and beyond it an equally massive rounded structure, shaped somewhat like a giant cork, where cortosis processing was located.

The Resolute II loomed a short distance above and away from the central module’s gaping docking bays, its sword-point hull angled vigilantly out into the asteroid field. Evacuation craft streaked back and forth between the destroyer’s belly hangar and Cairn Base’s nexus, while quartets of TIE Fighters and Interceptors followed restless patrol vectors, glinting like the stars themselves as they wove between the drifting lesser asteroids of the Lenico Belt.

Rune gazed balefully out at the Star Destroyer, the apparent hope of salvation for himself and his brothers, and saw the hollowness of that hope. Master Desann was dead, and so was his cause. We are all that’s left, he thought. A remnant within the Remnant. A fragment of a fragment.

How many times had he been forced to watch as catastrophe befell the Empire that had done so much for him? He had still been a teenager, proudly serving in COMPNOR’s Sub-Adult Group, when the Emperor had perished at Endor. Though decimated as every good citizen was, he’d devotedly gone on to join CompForce. And then had come the downward spiral of eight bitter years as the Empire continued to splinter, reeling and shuddering beneath the blows of the odious rebel scum without, and the infighting of craven opportunists within.

It was Master Desann who had finally given Rune hope for a new future, one free from the scourges of rebellion and warlordism. His cause had seemed so noble, so certain, so true—not at all like the duplicitous power grabs of so many pretend emperors before him. After being purified and reborn, Rune had sensed the difference, both in his new master and in himself. He had a destiny, one that would be his for the taking with the power of the Force.

Or so he had thought until Katarn and Skywalker had struck him and his brothers down in a moment. Until he’d emerged from the bacta tank to find the reborn Empire strangled in its crib and the galaxy falling to pieces yet again.

And now they were going to run to Pellaeon, an aging, Forceless bootlicker, and beg for a place among his forces. If the reborn Empire was dead, then this man’s “true Empire” was destined for ruin.

“That is not my destiny,” Rune told himself through gritted teeth. He was Reborn; he had not been given the gift of this power for no reason. He had a destiny… somewhere.

His hungry eyes followed one of the glinting cargo shuttles on its return trip to the asteroid base. The central module was riddled with hangar bays, and where there were hangars, there were ships—all hyperdrive-equipped except for the TIEs. But all the hangars were in use and heavily guarded. Rune would have to wait for the right opportunity to…

He bit his lip worriedly. The right opportunity to what? He had come here to think, but now his thoughts were racing off in directions that they had never gone before, and he was struggling to keep up, to stay on firm footing.

With a silent, numb shock, he realized that there was no firm footing anymore. For the first time since childhood, he was entertaining thoughts of dissent, disobedience, desertion. The Empire was doomed. Nothing was unthinkable anymore.

Rune almost jumped when the door behind him opened; he’d been so absorbed in his thoughts that the Force’s warning almost failed to register. But as he came back to himself, he felt an essence like his own: restless, alert, smoldering with power. As Rune raised his hood, a voice called his name. It was familiar, but strange in its tone, almost cautious.

That meant nothing to Rune. It was another blasted interruption—but it wasn’t Vrekis.

Show no weakness. “What do you want?!” Rune barked as he turned away from the viewport.

Nelvish stood halfway to the door. The dimness of the room deepened the blue hue of his robe to midnight and shrouded his face completely—but Rune could practically feel the other man’s glower—equal and in answer to his own—as it cut through the dark. “We’re needed on Deck 8, Sublevel 42. What are you doing here?!”

“Nothing—I am only thinking.” With that, Rune stalked toward the door, his fists clenched. Still as a rock viper, Nelvish watched him approach as if wary of an attack, then spun and went send by side with him.

Without trading another word, the two returned to the mayhem of evacuation and started to make their way through the assembly module. Rune was glad he was at least moving again, otherwise he might not have been able to contain himself. His mind was a torrent of emotions—much anger and frustration, but also awe and even fear, the last of which he had hardly known since the Force had been given to him.

Rune knew that he had taken a chance, and done worse, by wandering off alone as he had. It was not merely suspicious, but unlike him. From the Sub-Adult Group to his entire career in CompForce, he’d never been one to disobey expectations, let alone orders. He had been much the same with the Reborn.

“We’re fortunate to still have you with us, brother,” Nelvish remarked, his tone cold and mirthless.

“Yes…” Rune drew out the word in a rasp, trying to divert as little attention as possible to conversing. “There may be a fierce battle ahead of us.”

“Indeed. Perhaps the rebels will be bringing some of their Jedi with them. Then you will not be alone among us, brother.”

Rune stole a glance at his companion. Most of Nelvish’s face was obscured by the dark blue hood, but his jaw was set in a wicked grin that made his thoughts perfectly clear.

“Yes, I would be eager to avenge myself—and Master Desann. May the Force be with us," Rune agreed, nodding with slow gravitas, as though the two of them had shared in the discovery of some profound, galaxy-shifting truth.

Privately, Rune felt certain that if the Force was with anyone on Cairn Base, it would keep the Jedi far away from them. Again he was surprised at his own behavior; it was the first lie he could remember telling in his entire adult life.

His face contorted with contempt—or would have, had it not already been set in such a mode. In this very facility, Katarn and Skywalker had cut through at least a dozen Reborn with ease. Soon afterward, Master Desann himself and his shadowtrooper army had been destroyed by the Jedi—and this fool wanted a fight with them! Whether or not the Reborn lived to escape Cairn Base, they would skewer themselves on their enemy’s lightsabers the first chance they got!

The inferno inside Rune grew. That is not my destiny, he repeated silently. It would not be his destiny because he was different from the rest of them. In light of the Doomgiver’s destruction, he now saw that his brush with death was the greatest gift he could have asked for—because it had made him different.

Despite knowing of their own master’s fate, none of the other Reborn understood the threat posed by Skywalker’s minions. They all thought themselves invincible. Only Rune had been freed of this delusion; only he had faced any Jedi and survived.

He was reborn again—perhaps not stronger, but with eyes that could see. Master Desann’s words in the Valley of the Jedi had carried more truth than he’d imagined.

A narrow, winding corridor opened out into a curved, high-ceilinged room featuring a massive conveyor belt meant to transport half-finished Rapid Deployment Pods for the Doomgiver. There were no pods left, of course, and the place was instead being used as a throughway for evacuation traffic. Ahead, a pair of stormtroopers jogged in front of a train of six repulsor-sleds laden with cargo. A party of workers hustled alongside, most of them lugging tools or smaller bits of equipment. One of them lagged near the back, trying to coax a trio of astromech droids into hurrying up. An Imperial officer in a grey uniform and cap also accompanied them—but his hands, of course, were empty.

The two Reborn made to pass the procession, giving it a wide berth. “Why are we bothering to take all this refuse?” commented Nelvish.

Rune scowled at the repulsor-sleds—which is to say, he looked at them. Some were loaded with crates, which could have contained anything, but a few were carried seemingly random pieces of machinery, such as droid parts—and not even parts for the Mark-1 sentries, but for binary loadlifters at that.

A warning in the Force cut through the fog of Rune’s ruminations and drew his eye to a particular spot on one of the sleds, where several folded-up droid arms—each one double the size of any Human one—were stacked. A heartbeat later the top one, having not been properly secured, slipped its restraints and tumbled off the side of the vehicle, very nearly landing on a nearby worker’s foot.

The convoy lurched to a halt. Fingers were pointed and shouts erupted on all sides, and the offending sled’s pilot leaped from his station to retrieve the fallen part.

Too strong to remain completely suppressed any longer, Rune’s frustration burst out of him in a cruel, throaty laugh. The officer and the workers glanced at him, and their bickering voices turned notably shriller and more frantic. The two Reborn drew near and Nelvish seemed to slow his pace a bit, perhaps waiting for his partner to act first.

Flaunt your power before lesser beings. Make them all see…

But all Rune did was laugh again and pass the procession. It was tempting to make an example of some of them, but somehow it just wasn’t in him to bother. Speed them up or slow them down, what difference did it make when the Empire itself was lost?

Rune had no time to be dismayed at that thought before a voice boomed over the intercom. “Alert! Rebel ships have dropped out of hyperspace and are entering the Lenico Belt!”

Nelvish broke into a run—and Rune, at a loss, did the same.

---

The twenty-five surviving members of Desann’s Reborn army felt and heard nothing of the turbolaser and ion cannon blasts that pounded Cairn Base’s shields as the freight turbolift carried them down through the heart of the facility. Nor did they see the TIE pilots locked in stomach-twisting duels with rebel X- and B-wing starfighters as they shepherded evacuation ships into the Resolute II’s belly hangar. But all of these things and more came to them in a way as the Force bathed them in a sort of outer glow of the battle.

At the front of them, Vrekis cocked his head and brought a finger to the side of his helmet, listening to something on its built-in comlink. “Rebel boarding ships are inside the Harbor,” he announced dispassionately. The Harbor of Cairn Base referred to the massive ventral docking bay where the Doomgiver had been berthed just a standard week before.

Rune stood near Vrekis, his arms crossed, surrounded by his blind brothers. Their mental essences pervaded the Force, flooding it with their pent-up fury, their almost childlike anticipation, and Rune had no choice but to breathe it in. He shared in it just as he had before facing Katarn and Skywalker, and with each passing moment he became more and more one of them again.

I can’t be, a small part of him thought. I have a destiny—

As the turbolift slowed, Vrekis turned around and spoke, as he always did, without preamble. “The rebels must not be allowed out of the Harbor until the last shuttles are ready to leave. Gates one through three on Sublevel Seven lead to the reactor complex—Atlan, you’ll go there with…”

He rattled off several names, then went on like that, splitting them up into several groups assigned to different sections of the Harbor. He ended with, “Jakkara, Koresh, Rell, and Rune—you and I will get off here on Sublevel One and stop them from getting up to the hangar bays. Understood?”

“Understood,” answered the Reborn together. Rune looked from side to side, trading obscure glances with a few of them. Most wore the amber hood, but a few others had red, a few more blue or green, but every one of them looked the same as Nelvish, or even Rune himself. They all had the mask, but Rune knew what was underneath theirs just as much as his own.

Looking ahead, he realized that Vrekis was the only one he feared; one only became a shadowtrooper by proving himself stronger, more capable, more cunning than all the rest. There was still much about the Force that Rune was ignorant of. Were those who were stronger able to read the thoughts of the weaker, just as they all could anticipate the motions of their enemies in combat? Would Vrekis be able to sense his disloyalty?

There was no way of knowing. Then again, if Rune didn’t live through this battle, it wouldn’t matter what he had thought or desired.

The turbolift stopped and opened its door with a jolt, and then he was running with Vrekis and the other three Reborn.

With Force-enhanced speed, they streaked through defensive checkpoints and overtook squads of stormtroopers laden with heavy blasters and other equipment. Rune felt as though his destiny was receding behind him, but with each meter he crossed, the less he cared, and the little part of his mind that cried futilely for him to stop grew quieter and quieter. Just as well—stepping out of line while surrounded by the others was a death sentence, and if he stopped thinking those rebellious thoughts altogether, there was no need to worry about Vrekis sensing them.

The last doorway came into view; in wordless accord Vrekis and the Reborn’s lightsabers hissed to life in their hands, and Rune let his concerns slip away into the frozen heat of his blade. The five warriors burst through the threshold and onto a large cargo staging area like shockball players into a packed stadium. Dead Imperials and chunks of smoking metal littered the floor, and the ragged survivors of a stormtrooper platoon hunkered behind makeshift barricades—mostly cargo containers—as they tried to hold off an advancing swarm of hostile soldiers. The appearance of lightsabers brought a spray of blaster fire their way, but the Force was with the Reborn, and their shining blades twirled and spun to intercept the shots even as they skipped over the treacherous terrain.

The boarders’ faces were exposed—Humans, most of them—beneath large, neck-guarding white helmets, and they wore either blast vests or light armor. As Rune and his brothers broke ranks and charged the intruders at full speed, he saw eyes widening with alarm or narrowing with determination. Rebel scum, he thought, showing his teeth.

He became part of a wall of destruction, a bloody tide crashing into the rebels and carrying them away. Sparks flew as bloodshine blades swatted bolts into the floor and cut blasters in half. Panicked cries and yelps joined the pulse of energy weapons as rebel marines backpedaled or tried to leap out of the Reborn’s way. Lightsabers traced sweeping arcs through the air; severed arms flopped to the ground, molten arcs were slashed through armor, and still-helmeted heads tumbled from shoulders and bounced across the deck.

Slashing to his right, Rune split a marine in two from shoulder to hip. Guided by the Force, he ducked under a burst of three bolts from his left, then kicked the rebel who had fired them in the ribs. The man stumbled away, almost regaining his balance before Vrekis slashed through his lungs. The shadowtrooper was only passing by and spared neither victim nor ally a glance.

The Reborn spread out farther as they finished clearing the platform. Rune felt flashes of darkness in the Force as Vrekis and Koresh each telekinetically crushed a marine’s neck some meters away. Goaded on by the rush of battle, Rune pursued a lone rebel to the edge of the platform, deflecting his hopeless shots before launching him howling into the abyss with a Force push.

Rune’s eyes lost the flailing body in its descent, and his Force sense, too, failed him. There were too many lives, too many deaths, all too close together. Pausing there on the platform’s edge, he was briefly overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the Harbor. Without the Doomgiver’s command tower filling its center, he saw a panorama of firefights raging on every level. Hundreds of troopers and marines swarmed between folded-up docking claws and air lock tubes, and across gargantuan conveyors like kretch insects picking over a half-stripped carcass.

In the Harbor’s cavernous center, laser bolts flew in every conceivable direction, forming a dazzling tempest which was being weathered by the compact hulls of at least two dozen rebel boarding craft. Rune was familiar with the class: the old Delta-class DX-9 troop transport. Cumbersome but quite durable, their repulsorlifts emitted a deep, penetrating groan as they deposited fresh squads of marines onto the networks of platforms and catwalks that banded each sublevel of the Harbor. As soon as each transport was emptied, it would drop back down through the bay’s atmospheric shield and out into the void, where dogfighting starfighters blurred past.

Squinting down through the aperture, Rune wondered if the Imperial fighter complement was doing as good a job of keeping a clear way for their transports as the rebel ones were for theirs.

To his left, Koresh—one of the green hoods—shouted at him over the noise of battle. “Let’s move, Rune! We’re needed on the next platform!”

With a nod, Rune turned, and the two jogged to catch up with their brothers as they started across a catwalk. Vrekis alone actually waited for the pair and brought up the rear.

Rebels had overrun the next loading area and were already shooting at the Reborn as they approached. Again Rune and the others went in as a unit; together, they were strong with the Force indeed. Scarlet energy pulses slashed their way, then slashed back into those who had fired them. Two marines at the back of the squad lobbed fragmentation grenades, but Vrekis reached out with the Force, and the explosives veered off into space, exploding harmlessly one level down.

Undaunted, the rebels intensified their fire and spread out, hoping to catch the Reborn in crossfire as they closed in. However, the Reborn only intensified their own defense, and the faster their victims fired, the faster they died.

Soon the second slaughter came to a close; the remaining three rebels tried to retreat through a wide doorway into the rest of Cairn Base, only to be showered with bolts from within the corridor. Seconds later, a squadron of stormtroopers charged out onto the platform. Several of them toted PLX-2M portable missile launchers, while the four at the rear were lugging E-Web heavy repeating blasters. As the former spread out across the platform and the latter began setting up their emplacements, one lone trooper looked at the group of Reborn and pumped a fist into the air.

Glory for the Emperor! thought Rune, a crazed smile warping his face. Looking about, he caught sight of Vrekis near the platform’s edge, and his brothers starting to gather around the shadowtrooper there. Rune joined them, and together they peered out into the chasm and found that the fighting was only intensifying. Among the standard rebel troop ships still swarming into and out of the Harbor, there was now an incoming complement of Gamma-class ATR-6 assault transports. In every respect the bigger brother of the Delta-class, these lumbering winged beasts were twice as large and boasted heavier shields and armor, not to mention greater firepower. Mercifully, the rebel gunners seemed reluctant to use their turbolaser turrets inside the Harbor.

One of these assault transports touched down on a loading dock one level down, its repulsors giving off a deep, penetrating growl. The Imperials there were dug in already, but the kell dragon had thick hide (as they say), and both their E-Web fire and the occasional salvo of missiles failed to punch through the vessel’s deflector shields. The marines scampering from its hatches proved less impervious.

But even as the Reborn’s eyes were about to wander away from that spectacle, the Force held them there. True, rebel strategists were contemptibly indifferent to the lives of their own men, but this was not what it seemed. The air crackled with an omen of rising hostile power—and Rune recognized the omen.

He was not surprised, then, when the real danger revealed itself; when another barrage of missiles streaked toward the landed transport, over the heads of crawling rebel soldiers, only to inexplicably arc upward and loop back upon the stormtroopers who had fired them, the explosions swallowing them up before they could even scream. Charred pieces of plastoid armor and chunks of E-Web guns rained onto the dock.

Smoke billowed as rebels clambered to their feet. A handful of their number stood out: Humans with a handful of aliens, wearing not armor but dark-colored flight suits. Pilots, one would assume, but there was no mistaking the metal hilts clutched in their hands, nor the dangerous glare of their presences in the Force.

“JEDI!” shouted Koresh, thrusting a finger as if he was the only one to have noticed.

Vrekis spoke into his comlink. “Atlan, Jedi sighted on Sublevel Two, Section Five-G. Meet us there, and we’ll pin them between us.”

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 coursed through the Reborn. He had a score to settle with the Jedi; 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 troops 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 Zabrak Jedi 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 appeared at the opposite side 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 is 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 block 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 crossed the distance with a Force leap 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 the Jedi and bringing his lightsaber down to split him in two. But the bloodshine beam of plasma only sizzled through metal, and he 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 Reborn 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, keeping his blade toward Koresh, and glanced from one Reborn to the other. “I’m afraid I’m short on credits,” he replied, deadpan. “I’ve been going easy on you. You’re on the wrong side. Surrender.”

Rune coughed, clenching down on his pain with sheer will, regathering his power—or trying to. Out there on the catwalk his head was clearer than it had been in the thick of battle, and the Jedi’s words rattled him. With Master Desann dead, the Empire would never be reborn. In a way then, he was on the wrong side—not that the rebel terrorists and their Jedi lackeys were the right side, but still...

“You are a coward—afraid to fight us!” the green-hood snarled. Illumined by the fierce glow of his blade, Koresh’s face was split by a maniacal grin.

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—both of his legs were gone at the knees. Amazingly, the alien Jedi kept hold of 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 to the alien’s aid too late, and slashed her across the chest. The woman fell, her sun-yellow blade vanishing as she joined the dismembered bodies sprawled 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 was low and arctic. “Oh, it does, does it?”

Then he was a living bolt of azure lightning. Closing in on Rune, he feinted on the left, then kicked him in the chest again. Rune staggered back, his breath leaving him in a throat-scorching rush.

The green-hood lunged for their enemy’s back, but the Jedi spun toward him. There was a curving blue-white flash, then a shrill howl as Koresh’s red 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 a Force attack. An invisible wave caught him up like a leaf and flung him over the catwalk’s edge.

Tumbling 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. 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 had fallen from. Compared to before, the Harbor was remarkably quiet, with the report of energy weapons and explosions intermittent and staggered; 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 shambled 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 his 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.

---

After following the inactive conveyor system through the belly of Cairn Base for a while, Rune exited through a maintenance hatch, then lost himself in a maze of deserted corridors and turbolifts where there was nothing to hear but the vain blaring of alarms. Knowing that his comlink could be tracked, he had discarded it while leaving the Harbor. He felt strongly disinclined to inform anyone in the facility that he was still alive. He’d certainly had enough of battle for a day—and perhaps a lifetime—especially since surviving his fall had sapped most of his Force strength.

Rune’s precognition was the first power to show itself diminished when he stumbled across a quartet of rebel marines who were being held up by a locked door. He didn’t sense the men until he had turned a corner and almost walked into them. Startled into a frenzy, Rune drew his lightsaber and cut them down before any could get a shot off. In the wrong place at the wrong time, he thought as he sliced a hole through the door.

The room beyond turned out to be an abandoned security station. After making sure he was alone, Rune powered up a console and patched into Imperial comlink frequencies. His ears were assaulted by a battery of battle reports: stormtroopers methodically falling back toward the main hangars, junction by junction, though at several points the Jedi were cutting through them before they could retreat. From the sound of things, Cairn Base’s evacuation was down to the last round of shuttles, and they were due to leave in thirty standard minutes.

There was no mention of Vrekis or the other Reborn. Rune doubted any had escaped the Harbor alive. Without them, he doubted that the hangar defenders would stand any chance of withstanding the Jedi once they arrived.

With feverish speed, Rune typed at the console again and switched over to subspace radio signals. Again the speaker erupted with dire reports, this time from the TIE pilots who still swarmed about between the compromised base and their mothership. As the briefing had warned, the rebels had brought overwhelming force; sustained turbolaser fire from two rebel Star Cruisers was pushing the Resolute II’s shields to their breaking point.

Rune cut the audio feed and ground his fists against the console screen. What he was expected to do, of course, was head to the main hangars and help defend them. If he survived that battle, and if the shuttle he ended up boarding was not disabled or vaporized by rebel starfighters, and if the Star Destroyer remained operational long enough to clear the asteroid field and make the jump to hyperspace…

So many ifs—he was being buried beneath an avalanche of impossibilities. Even if he did make it out of the system aboard the Resolute II, what then? He would live on, writhing forever in the brittle, lifeless iron grip of the Empire.

Never, Rune told himself yet again. I have been reborn again. I have a destiny.

He gritted his teeth, feeling himself infused with a final reserve of fresh strength. It was the strange new strength of defiance. He would not follow their plan—however, he still needed a plan, and he needed it now. He needed a way off this station, away from this system, now.

There has to be a way…

Refocusing his eyes on the screen, Rune began to cycle through Cairn Base’s security cam footage, not knowing what he was looking for. Split-second vignettes played out before his eyes: firefights, men marching or running or falling and dying. Dead bodies crumpled in blaster-scorched halls. Empty junctions, workstations, hangar bays…

Rune froze on one particular feed, showing a hangar separate from those being used for the evacuation. Halfway inside Cairn Assembly, it was far too small for unloading heavy equipment. Rune guessed that it was a maintenance bay for space tugs, but at that moment it was hosting a lone starfighter. It was a peculiar variant of the rebel T-65 X-wing, with three additional engines and an expanded cockpit, allowing for a living co-pilot in place of the usual astromech socket.

At once Rune understood. While most of the Jedi were wreaking havoc in the Harbor and the Cairn Nexus with the regular soldiers, two of their number had snuck onto the station through the back door, as it were. And they had left their ship unattended.

---

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.

He got his feet back under him and started walking again; inebriated by triumph as much as by pain, he felt lighter than air. At the hallway’s end he barely remembered to press the door panel, and barely noticed as he passed by machine shops and storage rooms. Finally the diagonal slit of the last door parted before him, and his eyes beheld his salvation in the little hangar beyond, cast in a subtle electric-blue tinge by the glow of the bay’s atmosphere field.

Still in something of a daze, Rune dragged himself toward the starfighter. He was hardly a crack pilot, but he was familiar enough with Incom designs that he would decipher the controls quickly enough. Once he was outside, the rebel ships would not realize that this X-wing was stolen, until it was too late to stop him.    He was almost close enough to lay a hand on the nose of the craft when he heard footsteps from the corridor behind him, closing fast—someone was running.

“You!” exclaimed a familiar voice.

Instantly Rune’s ecstasy was shattered, and his blood was brought to a boil. Turning, he laid eyes on the blue-hooded figure who filled the doorway. His knuckles cracked as his fists clenched, one of them around the hilt of his lightsaber.

“Nelvish… Just walk away. Now.” Rune’s voice was low and furious, his eyes aglow with savage hate—but it was a hollow, impotent rage, not meant even for Nelvish so much as for the situation itself. He had survived so many trials and ordeals, culminating in his almost unthinkable victory over Vrekis. But now that escape was truly within his grasp, here was another obstacle: another brain-rotted Reborn, ignoring the peril of the rebel attack, chasing him down in order to avenge Vrekis’ death. Rune’s last enemy had found him when his strength was spent.

Like the drone he was, Nelvish was immune to intimidation. With his face cloaked in the darkness cast by his hood, all that could be seen of his face was the glint of his teeth, shown in a pitiless sneer. “I don’t think so, Rune,” he retorted.

“Then you will DIE!” Rune bellowed as his lightsaber snarled to life; he would wait no longer, would suffer no more delays.

But neither, it seemed, would Nelvish, who drew his own weapon and closed the distance between them with a Force-powered leap. Frantically Rune lurched aside; had he waited another millisecond, the other Reborn would have landed on top of him with bone-crushing momentum.

Rune recovered himself and launched a vicious slash from the side, aiming for decapitation, but Nelvish was quick on his feet and solidly blocked the blow. Red clashed with red, but all too quickly Rune’s doom was apparent; he was sapped and sluggish, while the other man had saved some energy for this moment.

It was over before they knew it; Nelvish slashed, shunted their blades aside, and slashed again, leaving a sizzling yellow-hot wound across his chest. As the blue-hood withdrew two paces, Rune moved to the side as if to circle around him, astonished at the familiarity of the pain. After two steps he collapsed.

As he lay convulsing on his side, Rune raged numbly in silence at the unfairness of his fate and the loss of a destiny that he had never even had a chance to truly discover—and all because of Nelvish’s mindless tenacity in hunting him down.

That train of thought ended, however, when his fraying consciousness realized that Nelvish was not leaving the hangar, not running back to rejoin the doomed evacuation. Instead he had closed down his saber and turned toward the landed X-wing. With a wave of his hand, he telekinetically pulled the cockpit hatch open, then caught onto the edge of the hull and pulled himself up and inside.

Though it still burned as hot as any lightsaber, Rune’s anger was eclipsed by shock. He realized then that he had been so intent on chasing his own destiny, a new one free of the Reborn and of the doomed Empire, that it had never occurred to him that someone else might have chosen the same path.

Pulling his hood back, Nelvish went to work on the X-wing’s controls, and the deck began to gently vibrate as its engines powered up. As his final seconds slipped away from him, Rune’s eyes scaled the starfighter’s hull to its cockpit, coming to rest on the co-pilot’s chair, which mocked him with its emptiness.