There is something pure and elemental about a Jedi in full flow. From my vantage point, I crouched on my haunches and watched my team-mate methodically destroying an AT-PT while a second one tried to line up a shot on him. The dying AT-PT flailed about wildly as its pilot realised what the system failures his readouts were showing must have meant. My team-mate was thrown from side to side, his lightsabre blazing in one hand, his legs and body tossed wildly as the Imperial walker's leg lashed from side to side. Only his Force-powered grip kept him safe. I was tempted to help him but, damn it, he'd killed people when he didn't have to. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.
Actually, I was sure, but for the good of the mission I had to settle for not chopping both his hands off.
At least, until he'd finished helping me blow some stuff up.
Then I could do it.
And then he was flying, tumbling through the air in a controlled roll as the AT-PT let out one long, god-awful shriek before an explosion caved in its body, and it collapsed to the floor.
The Jedi snapped upright, ignoring the powerful laser bolts slamming into the ground around him. Then he waved his hand, and the firing stopped.
"Tempting," came a voice from behind me.
"Indeed. I had suspected, of course. The lure of the Dark Side is strong to one so... unchecked as he. So long has he sought to find his purpose. And now he has it. Perhaps. We shall see."
"And this one?"
"A chance for you to test yourself again. No tricks, this time. He is sly, but you, my apprentice, have the power."
"Always, master."
I let out a slow breath and wanted to curl up in a ball. I missed seeing Sahhar leap past me, but I raised my eyes in time to see him hit the top of his arc, some fifty feet up in the air, before dropping as lightly as a feather to the ground beside the second AT-PT, which stood silent and unmoving. However Josh had managed that trick - and after seeing his approach to anti-personnel work in our approach to the bunker, I had an idea, and not one that I liked - he had left the walker intact. I wasn't entirely sure that that was the greatest idea, although as there were several dozen walkers of various types in this cavern, what was one more or less?
A snap, a hiss, and a sizzling, burning blade materialised across my throat. Nodding would have been a bad move at that point, and so I settled for a sigh.
"You win," I said, trying not to move my jaw.
"You are pathetic."
"But I'm alive to know it."
"To walk away knowing that I am the better man?"
"To walk away knowing that you are the better fighter."
"You are an embarrassment."
"So I'm told. And you're about to lose your place as most favoured apprentice."
"The American is no threat to me."
"Really? Can you blow up a walker?"
"I pilot them," he sneered.
"Is that better? Hiding behind the armour? He doesn't need it. Which do you think your Master will be more impressed with?"
"My Master knows and appreciates my loyalty."
"Yeah. I bet."
"You will be silent."
"Or what? You're going to kill me anyway, right?"
"Yes. You are not attuned to the Force. You serve no purpose."
"Well, of the Force users in this place, two are Dark and one's standing in pretty deep shade, so I think I'm better off without."
"Truly the words of a jealous man."
"Bite me."
It was a dangerous move, but that's the advantage of staring certain death in the face - anything has to be better. I slammed my head back as hard as I could, and was gratified to know that I had been right - the back of my head cracked against his breastbone and he staggered back a half step, gasping for breath. I ducked under the blade and twisted back upright, turning to face my assailant.
It was, no surprise, Hierce, looking mean and compelling as he stood motionlessly before me. Tailored black robes swirled around him and a lightsabre pointed from his hand to the floor. I was distracted for a moment by the weapon.
"You didn't build that," I said.
"In all ways that are important, it is my own," he intoned. "I took what once was, and improved it. You may have begun the work, but it was a feeble attempt, the hurried effort of a non-Jedi. That it hadn't failed you before now was nothing short of remarkable. Now it is true to its purpose, the weapon of a Force wielder."
He held the weapon vertically, the blade centred before his face, the pommel running from his chin to the buckle of his belt. The metal gleamed bright silver, far removed from the tarnished aluminium and battered plastic that I had scavenged to repair and replace the original parts. Where once the controls had been a hodge-podge of mismatched dials and switches left over from my work for Terra Group, four dark red buttons were now positioned symmetrically along the pommel. Much longer than my original design, even the emitters had been altered from my blowtorch nozzles to stubby cones with heavy looking bases that looked as though they would serve as useful cudgels, in a pinch. In short, Hierce had evidently been inspired, shall we say, by another Sith apprentice, from many years before.
"You're not even imaginative. You stole your lightsabre's design from Darth Maul. Do you think that makes you his equal?"
"I am greater than he."
"I kicked your arse not so long ago. I can do it again."
"You were... fortunate. Now, with one strike, you would be dead."
"It's a possibility. What are you going to do about it?"
"Strike once."
"Bring it on."
The moment's hesitation as Hierce tried to work out why I was encouraging an armed opponent to strike at me was all I needed. I threw a thermal detonator at him and dived off to one side.
Hierce moved automatically, tilting his blade in a parry that caught the detonator a couple of feet away from him.
Of course, for a thermal detonator set on maximum yield, a couple of feet is nothing.
It exploded, and a maelstrom of flame and shrapnel erupted. For a split second I was certain that it was over, as easy as it could realistically have been.
Then Hierce blinked, and the explosion halted, frozen in mid-air as surely as if it were encased in ice. He waved his lightsabre in my direction and the flames were suddenly arcing at me.
I leapt to one side, landing clumsily behind the leg of an AT-ST walker. I rolled with a grunt, and looked up in time to throw myself flat against the ground as the piloted explosion seared over my head and burnt itself out against the rock floor of the cavern.
There's a lesson they teach you, whenever you learn self defence. It's a basic lesson, and comes right after 'kick men in the bollocks'. It's this: 'Everything is a weapon.'
So I rolled, pushed upright, snatched at the blaster pistol hanging from my belt and instead of firing at my opponent, I threw it at him.
He slashed at the gun and cleaved it neatly in two. Of course, in doing so, he sliced through the power pack, not something a Terran like Hierce would automatically think about.
That explosion stunned him, and he crashed backwards to the floor in a heap. His lightsabre clattered to the floor and shut off. Evidently he had equipped it with a dead man's switch, and a good thing - for him - too, as otherwise the blade would have sliced through his leg.
Still, he was down, and I was up, leaping forwards with Vickie's lightsabre clasped in my hands, blade igniting as I aimed my feet at his stomach. It was simple move: Crush his abdomen, and drive the blade home through a conveniently disabling part of his body.
Of course, when you're fighting a bloody telekinetic...
The Force blow snapped my head backwards. I felt like I'd dropped chin first across a steel bar. My momentum cancelled, I dropped brokenly to the cavern floor and lay in a stunned heap, sucking in great breaths and wondering how one could self-diagnose a broken jaw.
In the distance, through the ringing in my eras, I heard shouting and the clashing of lightsabre blades. I suspected that I was missing a wonderful battle between my team-mate and Sahhar. I wondered briefly if either man was giving a thought to the proceedings here.
Slowly, painfully, I rolled onto my stomach, and tried to push myself upright. All the aches and pains of the previous few weeks came rushing back, and assaulted me as surely as if each of my attackers were there and allied with Hierce. I stumbled to my feet, staggering drunkenly backwards as Hierce all but floated upright. With a wave of his hand, he was holding the two lightsabres. They ignited, and now I was facing down a duel-lightsabre wielding opponent.
Fortunately, at Sci's insistence, every member of Terra Group had to train for just such a situation. Even if most of them hadn't bothered, I had. Everything's a weapon, right?
Before Hierce could move towards me, I was off and running. He didn't have the freedom of movement that I did. In order to maintain his threat, he had to keep his lightsabres ignited, and that slowed his actions. Running around at full tilt with lit lightsabres is one of the first things that Jedi younglings learn at the Yavin academy. Fortunately, Hierce seems to have learned it as well.
I gained a few seconds lead and hauled myself up a rope ladder hanging from a walkway above my head. Setting a trio of charges, I found a safe spot and ducked. As Hierce turned down the aisle, I took a deep breath and triggered the charges.
The explosion, when it came, buckled the armour of the AT-ST, and for a second I feared that all that would happen would be the complete destruction of the walker's cockpit. Fortunately, I'd placed the charges in just the right place, and the momentum was enough to rock the AT-ST forward just enough that it toppled over and crashed to the ground, right where Hierce was about to step.
Damned Jedi reflexes.
I blazed away from my vantage point with my blaster rifle. Red bolts stabbed out of the darkness towards the useful guiding lights that he was holding. He ducked and weaved, and managed to send more than one shot right back at me, but neither of us managed a hit until, with my last shot, I managed to graze his hand. He let out a sharp cry of pain, immediately stifled as he turned the hurt and blossoming anger into a bolt of Force lightning that arced through the air toward me.
I held still, letting the lightning ground itself on the metal gangway, taking care not to touch the floor with anything but the rubber soles of my boots. I hoped dearly that that wasn't a trick he had permanent access to.
As the last of the lightning faded, I vaulted over the handrail and landed on the hip joint of an adjacent walker. Tossing my empty rifle far out along the aisle as a distraction, I shimmied down the walker's leg until I came to my target.
Vickie's lightsabre lay alone and still activated on the cavern floor, where Hierce's pained reaction to being hit had tossed it. I scooped it up and spun around, looking for my enemy. I ducked just in time.
The double-bladed lightsabre whirled over my head, Hierce's wild lunge leaving him open for a shoulder tackle. The intent was to end up with him on the floor, me atop him, pummelling his face until he was unconscious.
Instead, he rolled with the move, sending me up and over into another rough landing as I crashed flat on my back on the floor. Hierce kipped up to his feet and then somersaulted backwards, bringing his knees up to his chest and aiming the points at my stomach.
Unfortunately for him, my knee was aimed somewhere anatomically lower, and my legs are fractionally longer.
Hierce rolled off me, curled in a ball and moaning slightly. I knew that I only had seconds. Inexperienced though the Dark Side apprentice was, he surely knew how to shut off the pain that he was experiencing and return his focus to the job at hand.
It was my turn to kip up, a move I'd made a point of learning from Shalla, months before. From flat on your back, a simple flick of your legs takes you back on to your feet, and if you should happen to have a lightsabre to hand, well, a simple swing of it at your opponent will...
Completely miss him, because he's faster than you.
I swung around, not wanting to be caught unawares, but it was a futile hope. Hierce had disappeared into the shadows cast by the giant machines of war that towered over us. I debated returning to my mission, setting out to destroy the cavern and all that lay within it, but I was brought to a halt before I could take a step.
"Running away won't help her," Hierce's voice rasped from the shadows. I took a momentary satisfaction in knowing that I'd at least hurt him a little, although obviously not enough to keep him down.
"I didn't come here for her," I said, trying to keep my voice level.
"You tracked her across a desert, and just when you thought that you'd saved her, we took her. I am... impressed at your persistence, but it will make no difference. My Master will turn her, and then there will be four."
"Man, you're going to be last of four? Ooh, denied!" I turned slowly, trying to track his voice. My lightsabre hung in my hand, deactivated as I sought to deny him any advantage I could. Large spotlights hung from the cavern roof, but the light didn't reach anywhere. Still, Hierce was pale-skinned and fair-haired. It would only take one mistake, for all that he was swathed in black, for me to catch sight of him.
Some distance away, I could hear the clash of lightsabres and the roar of raised voices. I sought to tune out the distraction, letting my eyes flutter shut in an attempt to heighten my other senses.
It was, as you can imagine, a mistake.
Hierce leapt from the shadows, and I was unprepared. Really, it was such a stupid thing to do, but it worked against Terra Group's Jedi, because they tended to play fair, or at least had the respect not to strike when I was at my most vulnerable.
Hierce and I crashed to the ground, and his forearm pressed down on my larynx, depriving me of oxygen. I could feel my face begin to turn red as he pressed downwards, his eyes ablaze with anger.
"I shall be the greatest!" Hierce spat. "The Master needs me to lead his armies when we spread throughout the galaxy. The others are tools, and if they think that they will be more, I will kill them!"
He hauled me upright, and lifted me easily into the air. I hung feebly at the end of his arms, and while his grip around my throat was tight, I was able to breath a little easier.
Then he threw me across the aisle, and I collided with the win of a TIE Fighter. The breath was knocked out of me, what little I had to spare, and I crumpled painfully to the ground. There was the familiar snap-hiss of a lightsabre igniting - whose, I didn't know - and then I felt the distinctly unwelcome sensation of the wafer-thin blade slicing neatly down the mid-seam of my chest armour.
"Stand up."
It was ridiculous, truly. He was like a... I don't know. Like a surgeon. He slashed the twinned red blades at my armour, replicating cuts he'd made on my own body only hours before. Ryll-tainted bandages had already healed most of the physical damage, but I was nowhere near one-hundred percent fit. It had been one of the reasons Sci had assigned me the partner that he had, despite our rancorous relationship, for it would have taken a Jedi to protect me in a lightfight.
When the armour fell away, and Hierce saw the thick, white binding that appeared to be holding me together above the waist, he laughed. I let my face drop, and my hands hang limply at my side.
"You are no Jedi," he sneered, his accent becoming very thick. "And you are wounded, also. And this is the best that they can send against me."
"I wasn't sent against you," I said, playing the part of the wounded cannon-fodder a little thickly. I may even have trembled. "Our orders were to get in here and destroy the power source. You weren't part of the mission."
He stopped laughing.
"In fact, your Master got a mention, but my boss didn't say anything about you."
He was glaring at me furiously, eager to strike me down. I wondered briefly what was stopping him, but he was apparently savouring the moment.
"No, wait, there was something," I said, shifting my weight so that I was leaning against the TIE. I tried to appear cowed. "A small reference in the briefing notes." There had been no briefing notes.
"What did it say?" He leaned in closer to me as I feigned shrinking away from him, crouching slightly on my haunches. His lightsabre was pointing off to one side in order that he wouldn't accidentally disembowel one or the other of us.
"Fuckwit."
He reared back as I pushed upwards, putting everything I had into a single punch that connected sweetly with his shoulder. He screamed as his arm went limp, and I felt the satisfying sensation of separation as the joint gave way beneath my hand. The lightsabre clattered to the ground, and he staggered backward, clutching the shoulder that I had dislocated in our little fight the day before, and again now.
I had gambled - rightly, it seemed - on Force healing being a Light side power. Hierce had had his shoulder realigned, but it hadn't had anywhere near enough time to heal. He should have had a month; he'd had less than two days. Bacta would have helped, but from the look of agony on Hierce face as he tried to realign the joint, it didn't appear that he'd managed to spend any time in a tank. A shame, as I could have recommended it as a great place to collect his thoughts.
I scooped up Hierce's - my - lightsabre and swung it at him, the blade igniting and slicing across his chest, just below his heart. I followed up with a diagonal slash that shredded his designer Sith robes from left shoulder to right hip, and surely spilt some blood from the body beneath. I lashed out with my right foot, wincing as the sole of my boot caught him in the chest. He toppled backwards, and scrabbled frantically away from me as I walked painfully forward. New injuries were making their presence known to me. For a split second I could see various body parts forming an orderly queue so long that made its way out of my brain and down my spine. I chuckled roughly.
"And now you laugh?" Hierce said. "With me beaten and bleeding, you laugh."
"I am glad," I said, trying to ignore the aching tiredness sweeping across me. "I am glad that you will no longer be a problem. I am glad that you will no longer serve an evil man. You taint the universe with your actions, and perhaps you're redeemable, and perhaps not, but I don't care either way. You're scum, and for that, I'm going to-"
"She screamed," he said, eyes wide with fear as I raised the lightsabre above my head.
I paused, and looked down.
"She screamed for mercy. It did not take long. She was begging to join us, anything, she said, to make the pain stop."
I lowered the lightsabre.
"And what did you do?"
"We took our time. We had to be sure, we had to be certain. We took all that she was, and we rebuilt her. And we had fun doing it."
His eyes gleamed with delight as he stared at me. I felt ill, wanting to retch.
"I expected it to be far more difficult. But, in the end, it was easy."
He clambered to his feet, and with a contemptuous wave of his hand pulled the lightsabre from my grasp.
"The other one, he already dances on the line, of course. He will be even easier. Still, the ones who struggle, as she tried to, they are always so much... sweeter. And once you break them, they are so much more malleable. They have no ideas of their own. They become darkness, and it is for their Master to guide them. I shall make her my own. My Master will take the other one. He has ideas of his own, and will require that much more training to disabuse him of the idea that he has any say in the matter. Still, come the day, there will be four. Two Masters, two apprentices. I will not be the last of four. I will be equal with my Master and, perhaps, one day..."
He laughed, a smug, confidential chuckle as though sharing some great joke with me.
"One day, I shall stand alone, the greatest of all. Perhaps."
I stared at him in amazement, pain and anger momentarily forgotten. "You think that your boss is just going to let you take over?"
"I may have to... persuade him that it is the right course of action." He swung the lightsabre up, so that the point was aimed at my throat. "It is the way of the Dark Side. Always there is competition to see who is the most powerful. The Dark Lord who does not watch his back does not deserve to claim the title."
What can a person say to that? In the distance, I could hear the clash of lightsabre again. I wondered whether Sahhar was aware of his apprentice's planned treachery, and if he even cared. Ambition, lust, hatred... All tools of the Dark Side. And would Sahhar have any problems dispatching Hierce in a fight? I was holding my own, although Hierce had yet to unleash much of the Force on me.
"Now, you die."
And when you're going to die, anything is preferable, right?
So, as Hierce swings, I dive forward. The blow is aimed low, at my waist, so my leap carries me over the blade and within striking range of Hierce's face. Until he holds up a hand, and I stop. It's not even as though I hit something, rather all my momentum has been cancelled, and I hang in mid-air, as stuck as a carcass on a spit. Hierce gestures and I begin to spin slowly around, my body frozen as I rotate.
"To fight a Jedi, you must know their weaknesses," he said, walking around me. "He has greater senses than you, and faster reflexes. He has abilities you do not, and a weapon that can cancel out blaster bolts. He can block the input from his senses, and he can track signs of life in a cavern full of dead metal. He is everything, in fact, that you are not. You still fight, which some would consider admirable. I merely consider it futile. Futility is a waste of my time, albeit a diverting one. You have been entertaining, but your use is at an end."
"Did your Master teach you that?" I managed to squeeze out, despite my locked jaw.
"It is part of the teachings that he has shared with me - On the Superiority of the Dark Side."
I was helpless. Fit only to watch as he waved his hand again. Behind me, there was a tortured clanking noise, metal scraping against metal, and then a hefty crash as metal met stone.
There was more grinding, and another crash. Grind, crash. Grind, crash. Slow grinding. Hierce waved, and I turned upright, my rotation spinning me around so that I could see what was behind me.
An AT-ST walker was sinking down onto its haunches, slowly settling down until it was level with me. The open hatch and empty cockpit windows revealed Hierce's heretofore unexpected mastery of the Force - he was manipulating the machine's delicate controls by the Force, from his position some twenty metres away. I would have shivered, had my body even that much control over its own muscles.
But I wasn't afraid. After all, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering... Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Hierce wanted me to be afraid, and that wasn't something that I was prepared to give him.
"I will fire."
"I'm sure you will," I said. My jaw moved a little, and I wonder how much control he could exert over me when he was controlling the walker at the same time. "You're bad guy. Bad guys kill good guys."
"And the same is true in the other direction."
"Of course, but I am in the right."
"But you do not kill."
"I try and avoid it. I've killed seven people."
"Did that make your world a better place?"
"I don't think it made it worse."
My fingers were moving now. I was spun around, so that Hierce could look me in the eyes.
"Foolish being of flesh and matter. You have no understanding. Life is about power, and being strong enough to take that power. Who cares who lives, and who dies? I will be remembered as the most powerful Jedi ever, and no-one will know or care who died by my hand."
His grip on me was loosening, but there was still the small matter of the walker behind me. Still, he was close enough to be caught up in the backwash if it fired, so I was safe, sort of. Could he deflect a shot that big? Or use the Force to protect himself?
Possibly not.
Any time you attack a Jedi, you have to be prepared to have your arse handed to you. In a sling.
If it's a Dark Jedi, it'll be multiple body parts.
And if it's a Dark Jedi with a double-bladed lightsabre and a spare Imperial walker, well, it's nearly certain death.
In the end I decided, well, fuck it.
Hierce had been momentarily distracted as the battle between Sahhar and my team-mate grew a little closer. For a split second, I felt his hold on me lessen, and I made my move.
Pushing off nothing is difficult. You have to sort of throw your arms forward, and hope that that's enough to get some momentum going. It was enough - barely, I'd say - to take me clear of his control and I plunged floorward, tucking myself into a forward roll as I'd been instructed to do by my unarmed combat teachers.
I rolled, and brought myself upright a handspan away from him. I bought my knee up sharply, which he blocked. I fired a blow at his stomach, and he twisted out of the way. I swung my elbow, which glanced off the side of his head.
I pressed my attack, trying to keep him off balance. One, two, three punches all deflected until, finally, he made a mistake, and the fourth was shifted away from his chest and onto the dislocated shoulder.
Behind us, the walker dropped the last few feet as it slipped from his control. The crash as it collapsed upon itself was almost loud enough to drown out his cry of pain. I snatched the lightsabre from his hand, and brought it up and around, a wild swing that gave him all the time he needed to gather his senses enough to lash out at me with the Force.
I soared backward though the air, over the crumpled AT-ST, and back along the aisle. I landed heavily on the hard stone floor and skidded along its smooth surface, my momentum only slowed by the lightsabre that I had somehow hung onto, its blade scouring at the surface, digging deeper and deeper into the rock until it was buried o the hilt. The other end of the pommel pointed back in the direction in which I'd come, and I followed its line to see Hierce forcing himself upright. With a scream that made the lights in the cavern flicker, he wrenched his shoulder back into its socket. Panting heavily, he raised his uninjured arm, and I winced as the lightsabre that I'd brought into the cavern sailed out of the darkness and landed in his hand.
Glaring at me, he started moving. Slowly at first, then more quickly, and by the time he reached the disabled walker, he was running. A small jump took him up onto the cockpit, and then a higher, longer, more powerful jump, greater even than that which Sahhar had managed minutes beforehand, took him up into the air. As he reached the apex of his jump, the lightsabre activated, and he raised it above his head, clearly aiming for a downward strike that would cleave me in two and forever remove me from this life.
He dropped smoothly, controlling his movement, not wanting to land anywhere near my knees.
Only at the very last second did he realise that he was going to land next to the lightsabre still clasped in my hand.
On such mistakes does history turn. The slightest gesture of my hand, a searing beam of red-tinted energy erupts, and what was once a vital, powerful young man is spent.
The lightsabre clattered from Hierce's hands to the floor, the purple blade shutting off before it could slice through my arm.
Hierce's body, a look of frustrated regret on its face, slipped sideways, the sizzling blade tearing through his torso and then slicing neatly through his arm as it crashed to the ground. The other arm lay draped across my leg, but I was in no state to move it.
In the distance, lightsabres were clashing, and my team-mate was fighting the more dangerous of the two Dark Side adherents that we had met today.
There was nothing I could do for him.
It was all I could do to deactivate the red blades of the lightsabre Hierce had remade in the image of that of another apprentice, before placing it down by my side. I laid my head back against the cavern wall, and slowly gave into the unconsciousness that had been clamouring against the edges of my senses since Hierce's last strike.
As the darkness claimed me, the last thing I saw was a figure approaching, a glowing lightsabre in one hand. My team-mate, or Sahhar?
Nothing I could do about it.
Just before I went under, I felt a familiar presence in my mind. It was saying just one word.
"Goodbye."