Baanu Rass, Tuesday Fandom time
Previous.
The good news was that the ship, the Tachyon Flyer, was in working condition and Lowie said it would be ready to fly before they went to attack the voxyn queen. The bad news was that they hadn't done it yet, they had no idea if Nom Anor knew where they were or what they were doing, and even if they managed to accomplish their task, they still had to get out of here. It wasn't exactly pessimism on Jaina's part, but rather a rational assessment of their situation in conjunction with the mission so far.
Lowie was on board the ship with Em Teedee, while the others hid on the slopes from which they were watching the cloning lab. They'd already secured a nicely delirious Raynar aboard, so all they would have to do was kill the queen, get back to the ship, and go.
This plan died the instant they saw their stolen ship flying away. Despite Anakin's order for comm silence, Jaina was one of the many who immediately tried to raise Lowie on the comlinks, and received nothing but static.
"Strange," Tesar said. "This one has always heard that nothing is more loyal than a Wookiee."
"That's right," Jacen agreed. "And Lowbacca is more loyal than most. Something is wrong."
If Jaina'd known about Murphy's Law, she would have wanted to get back to Earth, where she would find a way to locate whoever this Murphy person was and strangle him dead. Forget Force-choking. With her bare hands. When Anakin couldn't get Lowie on the comlink, she thought to switch frequencies to contact Em Teedee. He'd been switched off, but it would still work.
Droids, like anyone else waking up, sometimes took a second to process. "Oh dear, when did we launch?"
"Em Teedee, what's Lowie doing?" Jacen asked. "Why's he leaving?"
"Leaving? Why, Master Lowbacca is doing nothing of the sort. He's right here with..." He trailed off, then screeched, "Help! They're stealing me!"
"Who?" Anakin asked.
"Who? Lomi and-"
The response died in an all-too familiar static.
"Welk," Zekk finished. "Lomi and Welk."
Jaina felt something like a lead weight settle in her stomach. They'd been so close to getting Anakin out of here, and the longer he went without proper medical attention, the worse his chances got. And they didn't care. They were leaving him to die. It was something she didn't even want to think about, but it was one of those persistent little thoughts that refused to leave her alone no matter how much she tried to bury it.
Ganner was the one to say it. "Anakin, I'm sorry. Once we found out they were Dark Jedi, we should never have- "
"Yes, we should have," Anakin said calmly. "Without them, we wouldn't have made it this far- and I would have died in the arena anyway."
"Not anyway," Tahiri insisted. "We'll find another way off this rock."
"First things first. Let's concentrate on the mission."
The Vong saw the Tachyon Flyer take off, and the team- or what was left of it- watched as the coralskippers took off after it, firing. "I hope the scarheads catch them," said Alema bitterly. "I hope they dump 'em in a voxyn pen."
"I do not," said Tenel Ka. "Our friend Raynar is still aboard."
While Raynar's comlink buzzed static as the freighter took more hits from the skips, Lowie's was still silent. They'd left him behind, probably had decided even a couple Dark Jedi weren't enough to handle an angry Wookiee who'd had to leave his friends behind.
"We'd better do this now," Anakin said. "Jaina, keep an open channel to Raynar. Maybe we'll hear what becomes of him."
Getting into the cloning facility required opening the battle meld, taking out the four guards at the entry immediately. Their armor meant that they could only kill two straight off, meaning they had to get the others while running down the hill. Anakin wasn't keeping up, and Tahiri, Jaina and Tesar fell back to keep pace with him. "Go!" he ordered. "I'll catch up."
"When Jawas swim!" Tahiri snapped.
"Anakin, you're in no condition," Jaina reminded him. "Go back to the equipment pit and locate Lowie. Maybe if you find a safe place to hole up and go into a healing trance-"
"Too late for that," Anakin said honestly. "I'm seeing this through."
It killed her to hear that. She decided to try reason. "Even if it means putting others at risk? If you're slow, you're a danger to us all. At least try a trance."
He paused, and Jaina had hope that he would listen to reason, that he would go back and they could just finish this and get him taken care of because he wasn't getting better and everything he was doing was just going to make it worse.
"I'm going," he said finally.
She kind of wanted to burst into tears and stop and shake him till he agreed. She wouldn't do that. "I thought so."
When they got to the protective hedge at the bottom of the hill, it wasn't a surprise that vines came alive like snakes, striking at the team until they took their lightsabers to it to clear a path, the first ones through helping the next group. The Yuuzhan Vong, definitely aware of them now, fired a barrage of bugs at them, which took a couple of grenades to stop.
Only then did they continue through the hedge, and Jaina was about to be the next one through when their comlinks hissed static, and they all felt the ripple in the Force. That had been Raynar. The Vong could have taken Lomi and Welk for all she cared, but they'd just killed Raynar, who'd been too injured and medicated to have anything to do with it.
It wasn't that anything snapped inside her. Jaina was just done. They'd lost six members of their strike team now, probably weren't long from Anakin succumbing, and that was in addition to Chewbacca and Anni and Elagos and Miko and Lusa and everyone else they'd taken in this stupid war because they'd decided to take rather than asking. "They'll pay," she decided, and not just for this. "They will pay." She'd make sure of it. And she'd make it hurt.
"Then so will we," said Anakin from behind her, his tone warning. "We're here to destroy the queen, not take revenge."
"Right." Jaina stepped through the opening. "Revenge comes later."
Once through, it reminded her quite a bit of the jungles of Yavin, mostly due to the thick white vines rising out of planting bins from the ground, writhing in the air to attack and needing to be slashed away. Despite the fog hanging above them in the night sky, it wasn't difficult to see between the glow lichen and the light emitted by their own lightsabers and blasters as they tried to drive the Vong back.
When the bugs started flying again, Jaina drove a couple away with her lightsaber, not willing to take any more injuries than she already had on this mission. She'd be the one causing the injuries now, thank you. One warrior got close enough to try to bring his amphistaff down on her, and she reacted by pointing her lightsaber into his throat before he had the chance.
It was a true surprise when they were able to start forcing the Vong back, and the battle meld meant that they could all feed off the elation at getting through.
Off to the left, through a door membrane, were the voxyn pens. Jaina was one of the first to get there, and she was dimly aware through the meld that Tekli and Tahiri had had to leave with an unconscious Tesar. And it wasn't that she was unaware of what was happening to Anakin, still catching up, it was that she didn't understand. He called out something over the comlink about a Yuuzhan Vong impostor going for the pens, but between shooting at both Vong and voxyn now, and with horrible angles that didn't seem to hit anything, she didn't have too much time to worry.
She turned to Jacen and said, "Find us the queen."
Jacen nodded, knowing he'd have cover from the others. He led the way, not having any trouble dividing his concentration to shoot to defend himself.
They crouched behind a row of planting bins, returning fire when they had an opening. "She's there," Jacen said, nodding his chin just over the wall at one of the pens.
And of course it had to be that one. "Hutt breath!" Jaina swore into her comlink. "She's escaping."
"The impostor must have opened an escape tunnel," Anakin's voice replied. "Jacen, you're in charge. Take everyone and go after her."
It was a shock to Jaina that he'd said Jacen's name instead of hers. She'd always sort of been second in command, taking over for Anakin when he was unable to lead, and Jacen didn't even agree with anything Anakin did. She quickly suppressed all the natural feelings that came bubbling up and assessed the situation. She could see the voxyn escaping through a tunnel, and there were too many Vong there to get through them. "Can't get there, Little Brother," she replied.
"The path will clear."
Anakin apparently meant his words, as it wasn't long before the strike team heard a lot of blaster fire that wasn't coming from any of them. Jaina automatically went to give the order, but everyone already knew to get to their feet and go. The Vong that Anakin had caught in hiding understood too late that they'd have Jedi on them, taking them out as their reinforcements arrived.
A plasma ball roared through the door and set fire to a twenty-meter swath of cloning vines. Anakin charged back toward the melted membrane, miniature forks of lightning dancing of his arms and legs, a brightening aura around him that terrified Jaina when she saw him. Even as she cut down the warriors that made the mistake of getting in her way, her attention was divided, turning her head to see Anakin fire at more and more and more of them and never missing.
The volcano cannon that had set part of the lab ablaze roared again, and a sphere of white light blossomed in front of Anakin. He dived and rolled into the wall, hit boots first, sprang into a back flip, returned to his feet ten meters from the explosion.
Jaina screamed his name, but he didn't react except to speak to her directly through the Force. Go! She's getting away!
The Vong reinforcements kept pouring in, but Anakin kept shooting, dropping warriors as fast as possible. There was no way Jaina was going to stop fighting as they made their way toward the pens- she just didn't have it in her- but she couldn't look away too long. Anakin was out of charge, and had abandoned the blaster for his lightsaber, killing Vong even as he took hit after debilitating hit himself, the light around him growing brighter and causing more of a sinking feeling in Jaina's chest.
They got as far as a pit wall and Jacen tugged on her arm to pull her down behind it, but he was just as fixated on Anakin's battle as she was. The whole team was, though most of them had the sense to stay down. She couldn't. It was sinking in that this was it, that she was about to watch her little brother die, and she just couldn't.
Alema had the longblaster again, and she hadn't been expecting for Jaina to yank it out of her hands, nor did she fight her on it. Jaina propped the weapon against her shoulder, firing over the wall to cover Anakin, to give him more support. She didn't even know she'd started crying till she had to start blinking her vision clear, didn't exactly snap back to reality until she felt Jacen trying to pull her down again. When she went to swat him away, she saw that tears were streaming down his face. He knew what was happening just as well as she did.
She saw Anakin hazard a glance over his shoulder at her, and another thought came through very clearly. Go! I can't hold.
Jaina wasn't budging. When more warriors came, she fired. It was almost a childish reaction, something akin to watching the school bully beat on your little brother on the playground. She just wanted them to leave him alone, and upon Jacen saying her name far too calmly, she snapped, "No. Stop it," through a clenched jaw.
"We have to go," Jacen managed. "We can't stay here."
She turned and saw the others going on ahead, firing back at the warriors trying to block the path they'd cut out, and she didn't understand how they could all leave. She shrugged him off and peered back over the wall.
With one hand, Anakin reached to pull his last thermal detonator from his harness before the next wave of warriors could get to him. Go now.
Almost irritated at the constant order, Jaina commed back, her voice choked, "Anakin, I can't!"
He raised the detonator in his hand for them to see. Thirty seconds, he told them. Take her, Jacen. Kiss Tahiri for me.
The next wave was almost on him, and he turned away from them, throwing the grenade. Jacen didn't need any more prodding. "Jaina."
"No," she insisted, though she could barely see through the tears.
He stood, bending to actually grab her by the waist and pull her to her feet. He didn't dare try to take the weapon from her, but he grabbed her roughly by the arm to pull her along. Jaina fought him on it hard, trying to shove him away from her right up until the point where she realized her own fighting wasn't done yet, that she still had Vong to kill in order to follow the others out or to go back for Anakin, and Jacen was very definitely not letting her take that second option.
By the time the thirty seconds were up, they'd made it out of the cloning lab, and they'd all felt Anakin die.
Next.
[NFB, NFI, OOC more than okay as I need hugs now. Dialogue and some bits from Star by Star by Troy Denning. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON.]
The good news was that the ship, the Tachyon Flyer, was in working condition and Lowie said it would be ready to fly before they went to attack the voxyn queen. The bad news was that they hadn't done it yet, they had no idea if Nom Anor knew where they were or what they were doing, and even if they managed to accomplish their task, they still had to get out of here. It wasn't exactly pessimism on Jaina's part, but rather a rational assessment of their situation in conjunction with the mission so far.
Lowie was on board the ship with Em Teedee, while the others hid on the slopes from which they were watching the cloning lab. They'd already secured a nicely delirious Raynar aboard, so all they would have to do was kill the queen, get back to the ship, and go.
This plan died the instant they saw their stolen ship flying away. Despite Anakin's order for comm silence, Jaina was one of the many who immediately tried to raise Lowie on the comlinks, and received nothing but static.
"Strange," Tesar said. "This one has always heard that nothing is more loyal than a Wookiee."
"That's right," Jacen agreed. "And Lowbacca is more loyal than most. Something is wrong."
If Jaina'd known about Murphy's Law, she would have wanted to get back to Earth, where she would find a way to locate whoever this Murphy person was and strangle him dead. Forget Force-choking. With her bare hands. When Anakin couldn't get Lowie on the comlink, she thought to switch frequencies to contact Em Teedee. He'd been switched off, but it would still work.
Droids, like anyone else waking up, sometimes took a second to process. "Oh dear, when did we launch?"
"Em Teedee, what's Lowie doing?" Jacen asked. "Why's he leaving?"
"Leaving? Why, Master Lowbacca is doing nothing of the sort. He's right here with..." He trailed off, then screeched, "Help! They're stealing me!"
"Who?" Anakin asked.
"Who? Lomi and-"
The response died in an all-too familiar static.
"Welk," Zekk finished. "Lomi and Welk."
Jaina felt something like a lead weight settle in her stomach. They'd been so close to getting Anakin out of here, and the longer he went without proper medical attention, the worse his chances got. And they didn't care. They were leaving him to die. It was something she didn't even want to think about, but it was one of those persistent little thoughts that refused to leave her alone no matter how much she tried to bury it.
Ganner was the one to say it. "Anakin, I'm sorry. Once we found out they were Dark Jedi, we should never have- "
"Yes, we should have," Anakin said calmly. "Without them, we wouldn't have made it this far- and I would have died in the arena anyway."
"Not anyway," Tahiri insisted. "We'll find another way off this rock."
"First things first. Let's concentrate on the mission."
The Vong saw the Tachyon Flyer take off, and the team- or what was left of it- watched as the coralskippers took off after it, firing. "I hope the scarheads catch them," said Alema bitterly. "I hope they dump 'em in a voxyn pen."
"I do not," said Tenel Ka. "Our friend Raynar is still aboard."
While Raynar's comlink buzzed static as the freighter took more hits from the skips, Lowie's was still silent. They'd left him behind, probably had decided even a couple Dark Jedi weren't enough to handle an angry Wookiee who'd had to leave his friends behind.
"We'd better do this now," Anakin said. "Jaina, keep an open channel to Raynar. Maybe we'll hear what becomes of him."
Getting into the cloning facility required opening the battle meld, taking out the four guards at the entry immediately. Their armor meant that they could only kill two straight off, meaning they had to get the others while running down the hill. Anakin wasn't keeping up, and Tahiri, Jaina and Tesar fell back to keep pace with him. "Go!" he ordered. "I'll catch up."
"When Jawas swim!" Tahiri snapped.
"Anakin, you're in no condition," Jaina reminded him. "Go back to the equipment pit and locate Lowie. Maybe if you find a safe place to hole up and go into a healing trance-"
"Too late for that," Anakin said honestly. "I'm seeing this through."
It killed her to hear that. She decided to try reason. "Even if it means putting others at risk? If you're slow, you're a danger to us all. At least try a trance."
He paused, and Jaina had hope that he would listen to reason, that he would go back and they could just finish this and get him taken care of because he wasn't getting better and everything he was doing was just going to make it worse.
"I'm going," he said finally.
She kind of wanted to burst into tears and stop and shake him till he agreed. She wouldn't do that. "I thought so."
When they got to the protective hedge at the bottom of the hill, it wasn't a surprise that vines came alive like snakes, striking at the team until they took their lightsabers to it to clear a path, the first ones through helping the next group. The Yuuzhan Vong, definitely aware of them now, fired a barrage of bugs at them, which took a couple of grenades to stop.
Only then did they continue through the hedge, and Jaina was about to be the next one through when their comlinks hissed static, and they all felt the ripple in the Force. That had been Raynar. The Vong could have taken Lomi and Welk for all she cared, but they'd just killed Raynar, who'd been too injured and medicated to have anything to do with it.
It wasn't that anything snapped inside her. Jaina was just done. They'd lost six members of their strike team now, probably weren't long from Anakin succumbing, and that was in addition to Chewbacca and Anni and Elagos and Miko and Lusa and everyone else they'd taken in this stupid war because they'd decided to take rather than asking. "They'll pay," she decided, and not just for this. "They will pay." She'd make sure of it. And she'd make it hurt.
"Then so will we," said Anakin from behind her, his tone warning. "We're here to destroy the queen, not take revenge."
"Right." Jaina stepped through the opening. "Revenge comes later."
Once through, it reminded her quite a bit of the jungles of Yavin, mostly due to the thick white vines rising out of planting bins from the ground, writhing in the air to attack and needing to be slashed away. Despite the fog hanging above them in the night sky, it wasn't difficult to see between the glow lichen and the light emitted by their own lightsabers and blasters as they tried to drive the Vong back.
When the bugs started flying again, Jaina drove a couple away with her lightsaber, not willing to take any more injuries than she already had on this mission. She'd be the one causing the injuries now, thank you. One warrior got close enough to try to bring his amphistaff down on her, and she reacted by pointing her lightsaber into his throat before he had the chance.
It was a true surprise when they were able to start forcing the Vong back, and the battle meld meant that they could all feed off the elation at getting through.
Off to the left, through a door membrane, were the voxyn pens. Jaina was one of the first to get there, and she was dimly aware through the meld that Tekli and Tahiri had had to leave with an unconscious Tesar. And it wasn't that she was unaware of what was happening to Anakin, still catching up, it was that she didn't understand. He called out something over the comlink about a Yuuzhan Vong impostor going for the pens, but between shooting at both Vong and voxyn now, and with horrible angles that didn't seem to hit anything, she didn't have too much time to worry.
She turned to Jacen and said, "Find us the queen."
Jacen nodded, knowing he'd have cover from the others. He led the way, not having any trouble dividing his concentration to shoot to defend himself.
They crouched behind a row of planting bins, returning fire when they had an opening. "She's there," Jacen said, nodding his chin just over the wall at one of the pens.
And of course it had to be that one. "Hutt breath!" Jaina swore into her comlink. "She's escaping."
"The impostor must have opened an escape tunnel," Anakin's voice replied. "Jacen, you're in charge. Take everyone and go after her."
It was a shock to Jaina that he'd said Jacen's name instead of hers. She'd always sort of been second in command, taking over for Anakin when he was unable to lead, and Jacen didn't even agree with anything Anakin did. She quickly suppressed all the natural feelings that came bubbling up and assessed the situation. She could see the voxyn escaping through a tunnel, and there were too many Vong there to get through them. "Can't get there, Little Brother," she replied.
"The path will clear."
Anakin apparently meant his words, as it wasn't long before the strike team heard a lot of blaster fire that wasn't coming from any of them. Jaina automatically went to give the order, but everyone already knew to get to their feet and go. The Vong that Anakin had caught in hiding understood too late that they'd have Jedi on them, taking them out as their reinforcements arrived.
A plasma ball roared through the door and set fire to a twenty-meter swath of cloning vines. Anakin charged back toward the melted membrane, miniature forks of lightning dancing of his arms and legs, a brightening aura around him that terrified Jaina when she saw him. Even as she cut down the warriors that made the mistake of getting in her way, her attention was divided, turning her head to see Anakin fire at more and more and more of them and never missing.
The volcano cannon that had set part of the lab ablaze roared again, and a sphere of white light blossomed in front of Anakin. He dived and rolled into the wall, hit boots first, sprang into a back flip, returned to his feet ten meters from the explosion.
Jaina screamed his name, but he didn't react except to speak to her directly through the Force. Go! She's getting away!
The Vong reinforcements kept pouring in, but Anakin kept shooting, dropping warriors as fast as possible. There was no way Jaina was going to stop fighting as they made their way toward the pens- she just didn't have it in her- but she couldn't look away too long. Anakin was out of charge, and had abandoned the blaster for his lightsaber, killing Vong even as he took hit after debilitating hit himself, the light around him growing brighter and causing more of a sinking feeling in Jaina's chest.
They got as far as a pit wall and Jacen tugged on her arm to pull her down behind it, but he was just as fixated on Anakin's battle as she was. The whole team was, though most of them had the sense to stay down. She couldn't. It was sinking in that this was it, that she was about to watch her little brother die, and she just couldn't.
Alema had the longblaster again, and she hadn't been expecting for Jaina to yank it out of her hands, nor did she fight her on it. Jaina propped the weapon against her shoulder, firing over the wall to cover Anakin, to give him more support. She didn't even know she'd started crying till she had to start blinking her vision clear, didn't exactly snap back to reality until she felt Jacen trying to pull her down again. When she went to swat him away, she saw that tears were streaming down his face. He knew what was happening just as well as she did.
She saw Anakin hazard a glance over his shoulder at her, and another thought came through very clearly. Go! I can't hold.
Jaina wasn't budging. When more warriors came, she fired. It was almost a childish reaction, something akin to watching the school bully beat on your little brother on the playground. She just wanted them to leave him alone, and upon Jacen saying her name far too calmly, she snapped, "No. Stop it," through a clenched jaw.
"We have to go," Jacen managed. "We can't stay here."
She turned and saw the others going on ahead, firing back at the warriors trying to block the path they'd cut out, and she didn't understand how they could all leave. She shrugged him off and peered back over the wall.
With one hand, Anakin reached to pull his last thermal detonator from his harness before the next wave of warriors could get to him. Go now.
Almost irritated at the constant order, Jaina commed back, her voice choked, "Anakin, I can't!"
He raised the detonator in his hand for them to see. Thirty seconds, he told them. Take her, Jacen. Kiss Tahiri for me.
The next wave was almost on him, and he turned away from them, throwing the grenade. Jacen didn't need any more prodding. "Jaina."
"No," she insisted, though she could barely see through the tears.
He stood, bending to actually grab her by the waist and pull her to her feet. He didn't dare try to take the weapon from her, but he grabbed her roughly by the arm to pull her along. Jaina fought him on it hard, trying to shove him away from her right up until the point where she realized her own fighting wasn't done yet, that she still had Vong to kill in order to follow the others out or to go back for Anakin, and Jacen was very definitely not letting her take that second option.
By the time the thirty seconds were up, they'd made it out of the cloning lab, and they'd all felt Anakin die.
Next.
[NFB, NFI, OOC more than okay as I need hugs now. Dialogue and some bits from Star by Star by Troy Denning. I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON.]