Operation Arrakis: Aftermath

by Josh Cochran

I stood frozen for a long moment after Sahhar's dramatic exit from the universe before I realized that his lightsaber still hummed in my left hand. My own, in my right, was silent. Strange--I didn't remember turning it off. I stared at it for a long while as my mind struggled to remember where it was and what it was doing. For a long, panicked moment I couldn't remember where I was or what I was doing there, and wasn't even entirely sure who I was.

The world came rushing back to me in a single instant. The mission. Sahhar. The shield. My friends.

Oh my God. What have I done?

I saw the last two weeks all over again, but this time I saw them clearly. Fighting with Mike in Paris. Fighting with Vickie in Paris. Fighting with Brad in Paris. Losing control of my anger. Unleashing my baser emotions on the people who'd stood by me through the worst times of my life. Letting feelings that should never exist bubble to the surface.

Kissing Becki. Leaving Thayer to die.

Hoping he would.

So I could kiss Becki again.

My knees buckled and I almost collapsed to the ground, but I forced myself to stay on my feet. The people I'd so mistreated were here, now, still in danger. The absolute least I could do was to get them out of this place. I'd indulged my own emotions to the detriment of others long enough. I owed it to them to take care of them first - for once.

There were no sounds of battle in the cavern, so Mike's fight with Hierce must have ended. With a fresh pang of guilt I realized I didn't know how it had come out. Surely I would know if something had happened to Mike, wouldn't I? But I knew the real answer to that. I had been so focused on my own desires while fighting Sahhar that I wouldn't have known if the world came to an end.

I searched with both my eyes and the Force and found Mike a short distance away, wounded and slumped on the floor but alive. As I came near, though, his eyes fluttered and closed, and I rushed to his side. I slid my lightsaber into the holster on my thigh and finally deactivated the blade I had taken from Sahhar and dropped it to the ground. Through the Force I could feel that Mike still lived, and a check of his pulse confirmed it. His heart beat was irregular and I guessed his blood pressure was probably high, but with medical treatment he would be fine.

I left Mike where he was briefly while I set the final charge, the one I was about to place when Sahhar appeared. I checked the signals from the demolition charges on my datapad. This cavern was well covered, and I read charges scattered throughout the rest of the facility as well. It seemed the rest of the team was accomplishing their missions, too. I went back to Mike and gathered up the lightsabers strewn around the floor: Sahhar's, Mike's, which Hierce had heavily modified, and Vickie's. I dropped them into Mike's backpack, which I strapped to my back, and then very gently lifted Mike and carried him over my shoulder. I didn't bother to look back as I left the cavern. I would remember its every detail for the rest of my life.

---

Twenty minutes, three wrong turns, and a handful of comlink conversations later I emerged from a subterranean tunnel into a corridor intersection where the rest of the team waited. They looked tired, and a few carried injuries they hadn't when we entered this God-forsaken place, but they were all alive and moving under their own power. Except Mike, who was starting to get heavy.

Sci looked at my own variety of cuts and burns, then at Mike's, and said, "Sahhar?"

"Dead now," I said. "Hierce too."

"Will Mike be all right?"

"He needs some patching up, but he'll live. How did you guys do?"

Sci held up a datapad. "We got their computer system; anything we didn't finish off here we can do later. Turns out Sahhar was working with--"

"Leonia Tavira," I cut in. He nodded.

"And a traitorous New Republic colonel named Zturk, who we couldn't convince to come with us peacefully." He slipped the datapad into a pocket. "Cracken's not going to like hearing that Tavira's still alive."

"I wasn't too crazy about it myself. As long as we get her off our planet, though, I'll be happy. Did anyone find the shield?"

"I've got charges on both the shield generator and the base's main reactor," Brad said. He cast a wary glance at Fes before continuing, "We also got more than our share of Imps."

By his second sentence I wasn't hearing him, because my gaze had fallen on Becki. Her head was bowed and her eyes didn't look up to meet mine, even though I was sure she knew I was looking at her. It was impossible not to see the expression, or total lack of one, on her face. Her cheeks had no color, just a pale, almost grayish tone that perfectly matched her expression.

I knew what she was thinking, or at least I thought I could guess what she was thinking. What would anyone be thinking in the presence of a man who had left their fiancé to die? I deserved whatever thoughts were going through her mind right now. I had no hope of fixing this; any relationship of any kind with her was now lost to me forever. I could only try to do the most honorable thing I had left to do.

"Let's get the hell out of here," I said. "Grace Two, I need you to bring the Red Home and meet us at the rear entrance. Then we'll go find Grace One."

My comlink crackled immediately and Noreh's voice came through my earphone, calmer than I'd last heard it but still tight and angry. "He's already aboard. I'll have the ship at the entrance in two minutes. Do you have any casualties?"

She meant Have you gotten anyone else killed today? "One unconscious, several walking wounded. No fatalities."

"I'll have Raymond prepare medbay. Red Home out."

"Our entry point is this way," Fes said, indicating one of the branching corridors. "What are you doing?" he asked when he saw me working on my datapad one-handed.

"Arming the charges," I replied, "In case we run into trouble on the way out. Think we can be out of here in ten minutes?"

"Certainly," he said.

"Ten minutes it is, then," I said as I completed the arming sequence. "Let's move."

If finding our objectives in the base had seemed slow, getting back out felt like an eternity. At each turn I hoped to see the tunnel out, but all I saw was corridor after empty corridor. Sahhar's forces must have evacuated. Could they know about his death? Had Tavira or one of his other officers seized their opportunity to grab their own private army? That wasn't a pleasant thought, but as long as we separated them from their heavy weapons I would be satisfied.

Still, as we moved through the base toward the exit, a strange sense of unease grew in the back of my mind. It was a dark thing, like the shadow of the Force I'd felt in Sahhar's presence. No, that wasn't right either. It was more active than a shadow. It whispered to me, calling my name softly like the wind through the bare branches of a tree. This place was full of the Dark Side, and I had to ignore it until we were safely away from here. If ever a place had deserved a fiery destruction, this house of evil was it.

I tried to hurry the group through the corridors faster, but the feeling only became stronger the farther we went. We passed a side corridor where the whisper became nearly a shout and began to feed again as soon as we were beyond it.

"Wait..." I said, coming to a sudden stop.

"What?" Sci asked.

"Here, take Mike," I said as I handed him off to Brad before he could object. I looked down the side corridor reluctantly, not sure if what I was about to do was a good idea or not. "I have to check on something," I said and started slowly down the hall.

"We don't have time for this," Cheriss objected. "We've got less than five minutes to get out of here!"

"It'll be okay," I said. "I'll be right back."

I didn't wait for a reply before moving on down the hallway. I followed the feeling as it grew stronger and soon stood before a nondescript metal doorway. It looked ordinary enough, but the lingering stench of Sahhar's presence in the Force hung over this place. This must have been his quarters. What was a low whisper at first was a constant scream here, penetrating my skull and threatening to overwhelm me.

The door was locked, of course, so I pulled my lightsaber from its holster. I hit the button and...nothing happened. I hit it again and still the blade didn't appear. Conscious of both the call from the other side of the door and the ticking of the clock I dropped it back into its holster and grabbed the first lightsaber I could lay my hands on in my backpack. Sahhar's, unfortunately, but I didn't have time to care. I lit the blade and drug it along the inside of the door frame. The door sprung open.

Sahhar's quarters were smaller than I would have expected, but just as dark. The lights were on but most of the room still lay in darkness. The source of the Force disturbance was toward the back of the room, in one of the deepest shadows. I followed the feeling straight to it. Sitting on a ledge between a pair of dark candles was a rough cube of a stone so dark gray it was almost black. Symbols I didn't recognize were carved into every surface, and a malevolent red glow leaked through the openings. There was no doubt that this was the source of the disturbance.

A holocron. A Sith holocron.

I picked it up and its soundless scream died off instantly. It filled my hand nicely, and felt very comfortable resting there in the palm of my hand.

A little too comfortable. I shook my head and dismissed the hazy, pleasant feeling that was starting to gather there. No, I said to myself. You almost got lost once. It won't happen again.

I rushed back to the team and found them still waiting, though some looked like they wouldn't be for long. I handed the holocron to Sci and said, "Lock this up with a code I don't know."

Sci didn't say a word. Jedi or not, he probably knew what it was as soon as he saw it. He just nodded and placed the holocron in his pack as we continued in the direction of the exit.

We never encountered anyone else in the base. Very shortly we found ourselves back in the main intersection where we'd all come together less than two hours ago. It felt like an eternity. We started up the tunnel to the surface, all of us breaking into a jog as we started up. Fes took Mike's feet and Brad his shoulders. They did an admirable job keeping up, but they had the same motivation the rest of us did: How much longer?

We passed the guard shack and the soldier I'd killed earlier - I didn't want to look at his body - and emerged on the surface. I had to hand it to Noreh - I couldn't have landed the Red Home so close to the entrance. We dashed up the lowered ramp into the ship and I punched the intercom just inside the cargo bay.

"We're on, Noreh. Let's go."

"Affirmative," she said, and even before she was done I felt the ship lifting off. "We've been tracking some transports taking off from the base."

"Let them go," Sci said. "We don't have the resources to go after them." His eyes were following Brad and Fes as they carried Mike toward the medical bay. When the intercom clicked off he joined them. After a moment spent looking painfully lost, Becki followed them.