Chapter Text
Aithne Moran woke up in her underwear when the Sith started firing on Endar Spire. Not the nicest way to wake up, especially several hours before her shift was due to start, but from the rock of the ship and the firing she heard down the hall, she knew the situation was already bad and she’d have to jump ship fast.
The door whooshed open, and she fell into a combat stance at once, but it was just her barracks mate, a blond Alderaanian guy whom she’d never spoken to awake. Aithne relaxed.
Her barracks mate was not so relaxed. “We’ve been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet!” he yelled. “Endar Spire is under attack! We don’t have much time!”
Aithne blinked in the force of his adrenaline and fear, then turned away and crossed to the footlocker that held her supplies. “No, duh, we’re under attack,” she muttered. “Otherwise, I’d still be asleep.” She sorted through her things, trying to decide what to take with her. If they were evacuating, she’d need to travel light. She looked over her shoulder. “You got a name?”
Her tone seemed to calm the kid down somewhat. “Trask Ulgo,” he replied. “I guess we haven’t talked before this. Hurry up, we have to find Bastila! We have to make sure she makes it off the ship alive.”
Aithne grimaced. Republics. Always certain the fate of the galaxy swung on the actions of a single soldier. Well. It was what all the propaganda said. She pulled on her pants, long-sleeved shirt, and cargo vest, wishing they equipped their people like the fate of the galaxy swung on a single soldier. “Bastila’s that uppity Jedi the navigation officer keeps complaining about, right?”
Ulgo looked as horrified as if she’d just declared allegiance to the Sith. “She’s the commanding officer on Endar Spire!” he protested. Aithne leveled a look at him. All she’d seen since boarding the bucket a few days ago were a couple of bridge officers, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t true. To his credit, Trask flushed, even as more shots rocked the ship. “Well, no,” he admitted, “but she’s the one in charge of this mission. One of our primary duties is to guarantee her safety in the event of enemy attack! You swore an oath, just like everyone else on this mission. Now it’s time to make good on that oath!”
He glared at her. Aithne stared back, buckling a simple leather belt around her waist. One of the only concessions the Republic had made in equipping her for combat was to offer her one of the new stealth field generators. She’d considered it, if only to make them pay for it, but she’d never been good at sneaking around.
“Look, we haven’t met, so I’ll forgive that,” she said. “I swore that oath because I had no choice. Republic froze my assets on a visit home to Deralia and told me I could join up or take my chances with no credits and a ding on my ID. If I hadn’t been bored out of my mind anyway, I would’ve told them to jump off a cliff and gone smuggling, but as is, I don’t figure I owe them anything.”
Ulgo went pink, then pale, and Aithne knew he’d known about her. She nodded. Figured. Soldiers gossiped like domestic servants.
“Maybe not,” he conceded, “Look. I’ve heard about you: you’ve explored the farthest reaches of the galaxy. You’ve visited planets I’ve never even heard of. The Republic needs people with those skills and abilities, and right now, so do I.”
Aithne regarded him, then, as the sound of cannon fire emanated down the hallway and she felt the electric charge of failing systems in her teeth, she decided now wasn’t really the time for her to be petty. Anyway, her barracks was across the ship from the bridge and the escape pods. And Trask had come to wake her up. That said something, especially from a soldier as young as he was. He couldn’t be much older than twenty.
She sighed with unnecessary drama, more to comfort him than anything else—show she didn’t take this too seriously, that she wasn’t scared. “Firefights never wait until you’re ready for them, do they?” she asked. “I was asleep five minutes ago.” She popped a spare blaster and a couple of medpacs into her duffel and wrapped her hand around the battered hilt of her short sword. Melee weapons were better against current gen Sith armor and shield technology. “Let’s go,” she told Ulgo.
He looked relieved, then glanced behind him. “I think the door locked behind me because of the attack,” he told her. “But I’ve got the override codes. I should probably unlock it.”
Aithne raised an eyebrow at him and gestured at the door. “Well feel free.”
Trask worked with the door a moment, then turned back to her. “You had better take the lead,” he said.
Aithne wondered where all that Republic gung-ho spirit had gone, then took pity on Ulgo. He was really just a kid. “If that’s what you need,” she said under her breath, and started down the hall at a jog.
She was halted by a buzzing from her communicator. She brought it up and saw Major Onasi. She’d seen him once or twice while up briefing the navigators.
“This is Carth Onasi,” he was saying. A general broadcast, then. “The Sith are threatening to overrun our position! We can’t hold out long against their firepower! All hands to the bridge!”
The line went dead. Trask’s face had gone white. “That was Carth Onasi—”
Aithne cut him off. “I know.”
“He’s one of the Republic’s best pilots, though,” Trask said. Fear laced his words like a drug. He was talking more for himself than he was to her. “He’s seen more combat than the rest of the Endar Spire’s crew put together! If he says things are bad . . .”
Aithne interrupted him again. “Panic will get us killed, Ulgo. For now, just worry about the next ten meters, ok?”
Ulgo’s shoulders squared, and he nodded.
Aithne renewed the jog down the ship’s corridor. It looked bad. Conduits were sparking, and she could see some carbon scoring on the walls. The door ahead was locked. Aithne looked over her shoulder at Trask, but he shrugged. He didn’t have the codes for this one. Aithne breathed out through her nose and shoved her hair back from her face. She hadn’t had time to put it up in any way that would stay through an evac. She just hoped the whole thing didn’t come down and blind her in the middle of combat. The bucking of the ship made slicing the door a little more difficult than usual, but Aithne had considerable pride in her security skill. She’d opened the door in a few more seconds.
It opened to two uniformed Sith. Aithne raised her sword into the guard position, evaluating their stances, but Trask charged right in.
“It’s the advance boarding party!” he cried. “For the Republic!”
Aithne groaned. Force, he had a blaster, but instead of diving behind the door to shoot from cover, he was trying to close to melee range like the Sith didn’t also have blasters. If you had a melee weapon to take the fight to close quarters it was one thing, but if you didn’t have to risk the bolts, running across open ground was just stupid. The greenie was going to get himself killed. They’d shot him in the shoulder already.
Gritting her teeth, she ran across the firing path, and the craziness of the action took the Sith aback. She kicked out with her right foot, jolting the blaster rifle from one of them, and then stabbed up where his breastplate ended, up into his gut. She felt his armor crack, felt the sickening slide of blade into flesh. She used her foot again to pull her blade out and let him fall to the ground, whirling just in time to dodge the other guy’s shot at her unarmored back. She caught his gun in the crook of her upper and lower arm, wrenched it away, then brought the heavy hilt of her sword hard into his temple. There was another crunch of cheap armor, and he went down. Maybe dead, maybe not, but she wasn’t going to stick around and find out.
She turned to Trask. “You want to maybe survive long enough for us to get to Bastila?” she suggested, fishing into her bag and pulling out a medpac. The kolto inside would congeal the blood of his shoulder wound and kickstart the healing process. “You’re no good to her or the Republic dead.”
Ulgo was pale, his face taut and drawn with pain, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You saved my life. That was probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Aithne shrugged and knelt, searching the Sith bodies for supplies they might be able to use later. A replacement medpac, maybe. “I’m no good to Bastila or the Republic dead either. I need your help as much as you need mine. So.” She folded a few credits into her pack and looked up at him. “No more suicidal charges, maybe?”
Trask let out a laugh, then winced. “I’ll do what I can. But I’ve got a feeling that won’t be our last battle with the Sith.”
“Yeah. We should hurry.” Aithne rose and led Ulgo on toward the bridge. There were two more duos of Sith in the next room. If Ulgo was young, at least he took good notes, Aithne thought, and when he kept his head, he was a fair marksman. But as they made their way toward the bridge, anxiety mounted in her chest. They weren’t finding any survivors—just a lot of bodies in uniforms. The smell of ozone and burning was growing, and the sounds of fighting were growing rarer. The battle was going bad for the Republic. The shots from the Sith ships had stopped for now, but if their people cleared the ship? The Sith weren’t overly given to piracy or repurposing enemy resources. When they were finished with a Republic target, that target usually ended up so much space dust.
When they did open a door to a survivor near the bridge, Aithne almost cried out in relief, but the woman wearing an undyed linen robe was already engaged. Aithne’s hair stood on end as two plasma blades clashed with a high, unnatural sound very unlike that of regular swords or vibroblades, evidence of the super-deadly forces focused through the weapons.
The Jedi’s combatant was a muscular man in black robes, with purple tattoos under his eyes. “It’s a Dark Jedi!” Trask said unnecessarily. “This fight is too much for us. We better stay back. All we’d do is get in the way.”
Aithne glanced at him. Possible, but it was also just possible they could distract the Dark Jedi at a crucial moment, allowing his opponent to gain the advantage. More possible for Trask than for her, without her blaster, but she wasn’t going to dig hers out and leave herself vulnerable for an instant, in case the Dark Jedi decided to take notice of them anyway. Jedi were supposedly sensitive to the deaths of others, and if they did get killed and distracted the woman on their side, that would be counterproductive. At the very least.
The play of the blue blade on the red was mesmerizing. They flicked together at speeds swords and vibroblades could never manage—lightsabers cut the air as well as anything else in their way. You could smell them, like the fire off a comet in atmo. She wondered for a moment what Trask thought they would do if the Dark Jedi won, if that red lightsaber came for them next. The Dark Jedi wasn’t just big and better armed than they were: he was brutal. His face was set in aggressive, hateful lines, and he was feeding off it, feeding off that hate and anger. She could tell. It left a swooping feeling in her stomach, watching him, and she glanced at their Jedi, nervous.
But the woman didn’t look afraid. Her face was blank, serene, and her muscles didn’t shake as she met her combatant’s heavy strokes. She backed up, drawing him out. Then Aithne saw her shift her weight to her back foot, and she knew what would happen before it did. Her swooping stomach clenched as the woman counterattacked, striking below the Dark Jedi’s loosened guard. He fell to the deck smoking. The smell of burnt flesh joined the smell of burnt ozone and failing electric systems.
The Jedi turned to face them, her eyes lit in question. Then Aithne saw the bulkhead panel behind her turn red, stressed by systems within the ship. “Look out!” she cried, but it was too late.
The panel exploded outward, propelled by the force of overloading electronics. The effect was like a grenade going off. Aithne and Trask were knocked off their feet in the shockwave, and there was a soft, sickening gasp.
Aithne climbed slowly to her feet, aching all over. She looked down. The Jedi lay a meter or so from her dead enemy, impaled by shards of the shattered bulkhead. Around the points of impact, blood gushed from the wounds, and her clothes smoldered. Her eyes were wide open and already glassy in death, and where the bulkhead had been, a fire was burning.
Ulgo was shocked. “That was one of the Jedi accompanying Bastila,” he told her. He cursed. “We could have used her help.”
Aithne looked up at the hallway system. “We could use the fire suppressant systems.” She tensed as two Sith stepped around the corner. “Ulgo! To the left!”
She snapped a grenade from her belt, pulling the pin with her thumb, and hurled it at the men. They went down in the ensuing explosion.
She made only a cursory search of the four bodies in the corridor. The ship was getting more dangerous by the second. If the Sith didn’t get them, Spire itself might, now. Anyway, they’d made it to the bridge.
There were three Sith there and no Republics. Aithne body-checked the first one, moving him so he was between her and the others, while Ulgo knelt behind the open door and fired at them. “Wha—” Aithne’s Sith said, and he didn’t get much further than that before she’d stabbed him in the throat. She gripped him under the arms, carrying him in front of her as she closed with the second Sith by the cockpit controls. She saw the third guy stumble to his knees, down but not out under Ulgo’s fire. Trask would have him in a moment. Aithne dropped the corpse of the first Sith, ducked the pistol butt of the second, and used his momentum to elbow him in the side. The impact jolted painfully through her bones, but she felt his armor crumple, and the force sent him staggering away. She followed up her advantage, stabbing down into his off-side thigh, into the seam where his plates met, conveniently right over a major blood vessel.
He cried out, and in another three seconds, Aithne and Trask were the only two people left standing on the bridge. “Bastila’s not here,” he said. “They must have retreated to the escape pods! We better head that way too. The Sith want Bastila alive, but once she’s off the ship, there’s nothing stopping them from blasting Endar Spire to galactic dust.”
“Sith are wasteful that way,” Aithne commented. “Come on.”
They circled the bridge and opened the door to the starboard side. Aithne held up a hand then. A tingle had gone up her spine. She could suddenly feel a presence, like the overheated circuit about to explode on the other side of the bridge, but organic. It waited just the other side of the door that led to the airlock. The hum of another lightsaber being activated was just confirmation of what she suspected.
“Run,” she said.
But even as she started toward the starboard exit, Ulgo sent her sprawling. Her short sword was wrenched from her hands as Trask shouldered past her, bearing her weapon toward the Dark Jedi headed their way.
“He’d catch us!” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll hold him off! You get to the escape pods! Go!”
He ran bodily into the Dark Jedi beyond the door, and then the door shut behind him. Aithne heard the sound of a blaster being fired into the panel, locking it down from the other side.
She felt cold. So much for no more suicidal charges, she thought. She wondered why he’d done it. He knew he couldn’t take Dark Jedi. For that first time? Because he’d come to wake her in the first place? Or because he was a twenty-year-old gung-ho Republic, trying to save the galaxy? She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and bolted.
She had another couple vibroblades in her pack by now. He’d known that. Aithne got them out as she jogged, heading down the empty halls, and as she did, she felt the impact of a new cannon shot. Fear shot through her heart. She was alone—or alone enough the Sith weren’t sending anyone else over.
That was when her communicator buzzed. Aithne almost cried in relief as she turned her wrist up to see Major Onasi still there, still silhouetted by Endar Spire bulkheads. He was still onboard. “This is Carth Onasi on your personal communicator,” he told her. “I’m tracking your position through Endar Spire’s life support systems. Bastila’s escape pod is away. You’re Endar Spire’s last surviving crew member! I can’t wait for you much longer; you have to get to the escape pods!”
“I was off-shift,” Aithne found herself saying, like the major cared or needed to know. “I was asleep! Trask just—he just—”
“I know,” Carth told her. “Just get to me, soldier. You’re less than two minutes out, if you hurry.”
His voice was calm and steady, and Aithne nodded, new resolve surging through her. She hadn’t asked for this. To join the Republic, for the Sith to attack, for Ulgo to die for a stranger. But there it was—freedom, less than two minutes away. She was going to make it. Suddenly she knew it, like she knew her own name.
She fell on the two Sith in the next room, moving in a flurry of actions and reactions like people only experience when death is on the line. They were dead anyway, she thought, in the small part of the back of her mind that always regretted killing soldiers just doing their jobs. The Sith were already firing on Endar Spire; they weren’t waiting for these guys to get back to the airlock. At least the Republic doesn’t leave enlisted soldiers behind, however they get their people to enlist in the first place.
The major stopped her right before she got to the pods. “You’ve got a squad heading your way,” he warned. “They were almost on me. Now they’re more concerned about getting back to the airlock. I’m not sure how you got this far on your own, but you might want to look for some way to thin their numbers.”
Aithne scanned the room. “There’s a decommissioned droid over here,” she said. “Think I’ll activate some help. I’ve picked up some parts from the various piles of rubble lying around.”
She signed off the comm and got to work on the droid—a Republic assault model. Aithne liked droids. A lot of times, they made more sense than people, and they certainly acted in more logical ways. She patched the droids shields and programmed it to patrol, and then stood calmly to one side. Her heart rate was slowing. The pod bay was just across the next room. So was the major and an escape.
Another benefit of droids: pain didn’t slow them down. Her droid friend kept going until every one of the Sith next door had been slaughtered. It overloaded and exploded after that, but she didn’t need it after that. Aithne strolled into a room full of steaming corpses. The dead captain had a beautiful vibroblade on him, fitted for custom upgrades, though none had been applied. Aithne picked it up, turning it over in her hand consideringly.
Then she marched through the door to the escape pod bay. The major had kept his word. He was waiting for her. “Nice work with that assault droid,” he remarked. “There’s only one active escape pod left. Come on. We can hide out on the planet below!”
“Just the two of us?” Aithne asked, raising an eyebrow. Any planet with a Sith presence around it large enough to take down a Republic cruiser was definitely hostile territory. She wondered which planet it was, anyway. Had she ever visited before? She sized up Major Onasi. Of the two guys she’d met since the Sith had opened fire, he’d’ve been her choice of escape partner, she thought, with a pang for her young bunkmate. But Onasi was a vet. He looked like he was closer to forty than thirty, and he was a big Republic war hero too, if Ulgo’s reaction to him back at their barracks had been any measure. More than that, though, he didn’t look scared right now.
The major misunderstood her mostly sarcastic remark. He grabbed her bloody hand and looked her in the eye. “I’m a soldier of the Republic, like you. We’re the last two crew members left on Endar Spire. Bastila’s escape pod is already gone, so there’s no reason for us to stick around here and get shot at by the Sith. Now come on. There will be time for questions later!”
He was trying to comfort her, Aithne realized, with a vague sense of surprise. She’d needed it back by the airlock, but now . . . of course they had to escape together. She was just glad he’d waited. She stared into his amber eyes for a moment, tilting her head in confusion. “Sir, yes, sir,” she said, disengaging her hand and activating the panel to bring the escape pod online. “And thank you.”
Her thanks was soft, but it left Onasi looking at her just like she’d looked at him, like that was the last thing he thought she’d say when he’d kept back on a ship under fire with a Sith squad inbound and systems failing everywhere just to make sure she got out too. He stooped to enter the escape pod then, and she followed him, pulling the door shut behind them and engaging the airlock.
She strapped in as the major pressed the eject.
Aithne’s stomach dropped. She closed her eyes. She hated space travel without inertial dampeners. Escape pods weren’t built with them, and they only had rudimentary life support and temperature control systems. Her teeth rattled in her skull as the jets roared, and when they hit atmo of the planet below, she felt it like a punch to the gut. The straps of her harness cut into her shoulders. The g-forces around pressed on her chest, trying to drive the air out of her lungs.
A warm hand worked into hers, and she opened her eyes and met Onasi’s. Now he looked scared, she noted. There wasn’t a lot of satisfaction in the observation, but as the air grew hot around them and Aithne began to hear the shriek of wind and flame outside, she thought it was at least nice to know she wasn’t the only one. And that she wasn’t alone.
She hoped the pod was rated for the pressure of whatever planet they were over. She hoped they landed someplace they could survive. She hoped the impact didn’t kill anyone, that the impact didn’t kill them. “Take a dozen more Sith over the forces of nature any day—” she started, trying to smile at the major.
Then there was a bone-crunching crash. Aithne felt a sharp pain in her left side and a dull one in her head. The red emergency lighting went out with a sizzle and a pop. But then Aithne wasn’t in a position to be scared of the dark.