Chapter Seventy Three
Tassadar’s body was falling, and his mind with it. This was not the momentary disorientation of submersion in the disembodying rift, the wrenching descent that merged into eternity. This was reality. Real wind lashed at his face and kept his eyes closed fast. Real pain burst from his gut.
He flailed, and his arms tossed lamely back and forth against the rushing air current before they were pushed again against his armored sides. He forced one eye open and absorbed a plane of solid, dark blue, broken by the crests and smooth sides of tiny, pale forms. Pain from the wind and from his midsection forced the eye to close quickly, but the Protoss knew.
Freefall, headfirst and a thousand meters above the surface of an unknown ocean. In his best condition, the impact would be fatal.
He attempted to summon the energies of the High Templar to him, imagining a psionic cocoon that could encase his wounded body and willing it to be. Sparks crackled down his arms, but he could manifest nothing more. The exertion prompted a flare of pain from the gash, and Tassadar could feel the soft tissue of his belly tearing and bleeding into the whipping air. Rumbling with aggravation that bordered on panic, he compelled the atmosphere around him to shift and darken, hoping to form a cushion beneath his tumbling form. The Dark Templar technique was rewarded only with more pain.
It’s not the fall that kills you, Tassadar.
The Protoss forced open an eye, but he didn’t need to. Kerrigan was plummeting beside him now, and feel the sneer on her cracked lips as clearly as he could see it.
Today, that honor is all mine.
Tassadar felt the weight of a clawed hand pressing down on his chest, and his world convulsed. He felt what little energy he had not expended in the futile attempts to save himself from the fall leach away at her touch, and he almost black out. Sheer will and self-preservation instinct saved him from that fate, and when he recovered, the fall had ceased and he was adrift again in the vital, inter-dimensional ocean.
Impulsively, he funneled the ambient energies into himself, desperate to replace what Kerrigan had taken from him. The renewed power flowed into him and he was suddenly refreshed and able to think clearly again, but the respite did not last. As abruptly as the planar juxtaposition had come, her essence assaulted his again, and he felt himself dragged back towards the great quartet of upwellings. He attempted to resist and pull away from the Dark Queen, but her hold was too tight, and he could only bide as she selected a pinpoint of variance from the converging currents and tossed them both into it.
In a baked, rocky desert, Tassadar felt his face ground into the dry sand. Within a murky river, he all but drowned. An alien city on an alien world saw him smashed through dense glass until blood flowed from a hundred cuts. In the blackness of deep space, he froze and asphyxiated at once for an endless second.
Again and again, Kerrigan threw him into the real world, wounding and humiliating the Templar in new and excruciating ways. Again and again, the rifts opened around them and Tassadar felt his strength renew, only to be torn away with the next forced emergence. By the third fleeting, agonizing episode, he knew he was beaten; with his refilling reserves of power and her knowledge of the terrible, inter-planar expanse, she could cast him wherever she wished, wearing away at his ravaged body with each successive trip. Even resisting the fresh influxes of energy couldn’t break the cycle; somehow, the ambient power of the rift seeped into him all the same, and Kerrigan gleefully renewed her assault.
Tassadar did not know how many times he was thrown into realspace and then recalled. The myriad of sights and pains flickered across his failing senses and flowed together in his mind, until he could barely summon a coherent thought from the torturous morass. The moons of Aiur. The dark ravines of Shakuras. Human faces. Protoss faces. A familiar starfield, spread out before him like the pages of a book. Whether these were new images, memories, or delusion, he no longer could clearly discern.
When the Templar at last heard his name, he only recognized it because the psionic resonance was clear meant for him.
Glorious, Tassadar, glorious! You truly are a credit to your species. It’s fitting that you are one of its last remnants. Any number of lesser creatures would have succumbed to my onslaught, but your body still lives and your sanity is still intact.
Kerrigan filled his perception, and he could see her eyes once again. They were wide and filled entirely by the jet of her pupils, engorged on the very essence of the flow between universes.
I hope you have saved enough of yourself to appreciate this moment, good Templar. The broken shell that your core will soon become is more than sufficient to draw the energy I need from this realm. The portals are already forming and closing at my whim. With you, nothing will be impossible!
A conduit?
The singular thought pierced the swirling fog of Tassadar’s intellect. She had referred to him as a conduit before, but he had disregarded the word in his zeal. Now, however, her full meaning took shape before his mind’s eye. Before, he had assumed that Kerrigan had needed to sap his own psionic energies to control the rifts, but plainly, they were not nearly enough. Instead, he had only survived so long because the inter-dimensional space had replenished him with each visit. Even now, he felt the endless ocean filtering through psychic pores, clearing away mental debris and focusing his thoughts. The amount of energy available must be limitless, more than Tassadar could hope to ever control or comprehend.
No, the Protoss corrected himself. It was more than any mortal being could reckon with.
Realization swept away his pain. For one precious moment, he perceived the majesty of the great, lost plane about him, untainted by Kerrigan’s cancerous presence. He saw the endless currents of fundamental energy that bound universes together, each a small facet of a whole grander than any who had not encountered it could comprehend. He felt the glow of uncounted stars across uncounted realities, each one with its own distinct warmth. He touched the life-force of beings separated by more than space and time, and yet undeniably attuned to the same vastness.
He felt a profound sadness as the moment of clarity faded away, eclipsed once more by the corrupted human’s power, but his resolve did not waver. He was a Templar, a son of Khas, and he would see his mission through.
Tassadar could feel Kerrigan’s essence closing upon his, her tendrils already outstretched.
This time, he did nothing to resist. Tassadar opened himself to her, intertwining light and dark energies and unfurling them into the waiting maw.
I am yours, my Queen. Eternity awaits.
Kerrigan drew in the Protoss in greedily, seizing hold of each morsel of consciousness and each strand of power with unsurpassed relish. To Tassadar’s surprise, the sensation was not at all unpleasant. It was as though he was falling into a deep slumber, with bits of musing and memory drifting off into the ether before his mind succumbed to soft, dark relief.
Distantly, almost oblivious to Kerrigan’s voracious feeding, Tassadar set what remained of his being to one task. He reached out into the flow submerging him, willing it align with his diminishing being. As a minute ripple emanated from him through the trackless reach, an unpleasant smothering intruded upon his last, sheltered thoughts, but he did not attempt to repel it. The intruder became as much a part of him as the endless vital sea and the cooling ember of his own mind.
The exertion robbed the Protoss of the last extremity of his will, and silent numbness descended upon him, an entire lifetime of weariness. There was little left to resist the pull of sleep. A few words and cherished memories were all that he had kept with him. For the second time in his life, High Templar Tassadar settled into a deep, untroubled dream.
The Queen of the Zerg continued to devour the other’s pith, utterly unaware of his fading thoughts. Years of disappointment, boredom, and meticulous planning had made her victory all the sweeter, and when Protoss light and dark gave way to the pure, untainted stream of cosmic essence, she could not contain herself. Energy flowed into her at an awe-inspiring rate; by herself, she had never been able to absorb even half of what now poured in effortlessly, invigorating every corner of her consciousness. Even in the depths of the inter-dimensional realm, she could feel the flow of universes quicken around her. The sensation was intoxicating, and she drank even deeper.
Grand designs formed in her head, products of long hours of brooding as she waited for her machinations to work their way through the Alpha Quadrant. Immediately, she dismissed them; they were small, fancies of a mind still restrained by the confines of her own limited reality. The Queen of Blades could do far better. Soon, she would surpass even the creators of the device that made her dreams manifest, and her empire would encompass four universes and beyond. And then? She would be a god.
Perfection.
Suddenly, the self-ordained deity had an urge to test her new powers. She had all the power she would ever need to control the rifts now. Indeed, she was so saturated with new energy that she was beginning to have difficulty thinking clearly. With a certain amount of reluctance, she savored the glorious flow a moment longer, and then let it go.
The stream continued its course into her, funneling through the seething shell of her exposed intellect, which grew in volume and intensity with the influx. Slightly irritated and increasingly uncomfortable, the god tried to release the flow again.
It was only when her second attempt failed that she realized that every trace of the Protoss’ mental energy had dissipated, and in its place, the great cosmic tide had formed a new current, one that flowed directly into her. There was nothing to let go of.
The painful overabundance of energy arcing through her became excruciating, and the god felt fear. She lashed out at the void, ramming the rending tentacles of her will into its widening stream, but they flared and burned at the ferocity of the torrent. The god tried to withdraw them from it, but the psychic emanations had already melted away, replaced by new strands of streaming energy that joined their primary in its inalterable course. New and unimagined torment washed over her as more energy poured through the fresh tributaries.
The god’s perceptions pulsed with obscuring luminance, and the realm around her began to dissolve into a haze of blinding light. Rage, confusion, and fear melted into an incoherent miasma, a thundercloud assailed endlessly by barbs of jagged lightning that settled upon her conscious thoughts, disrupting and drowning them. Self-preservation instinct alone emerged uncompromised, burned free of ambition and Zerg biological engineering.
She thrashed desperately, clawing at the eddies and currents of the plane, conscious of nothing other than a desire to escape the pain that was overwhelming her. The exertion only brought a sensation of bloated, tired numbness, and her aimless throes redoubled.
No longer really aware of her psychic presence in the void, the god thought she could feel her corporeal form wrapping itself back around her. For a moment, the presence of skin, bones, and blood was comforting; this was something she could control, something she could fight back in. It was still hers, and nothing could defeat such a perfect form.
But even as she tried to settle into the body and move her limbs against the suffocating blackness, her extremities lost feeling. She looked at a hand, only to see it scored with blazing rifts that belched helixes of black and blue-white light. The fissures spider-webbed down her arm, and she felt her legs and torso dissolving with the same piercing luminance. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lower jaw had fallen slack and useless, cracked with an inner light that was not her own.
As her eyes went dead, splintered by the sundering light, a single thought blazed in her mind, and her form ignited like a sunrise. The last mental wall breached, a wave of energy burst from what was left of Kerrigan, turning aside lesser flows as it propelled that final memory across timeless space.
Eternity awaits.
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Jacen’s eyes flashed open and his mouth gaped wide, its edges flecked with froth. A long, strangled scream issued from him, lingering in the chamber’s high corners before echoing out into the dusky sky. He could do nothing to silence the wail; every fraction of his willpower was focused inward, and it was all he could do to keep his sanity under the assault. The Jedi’s frame convulsed violently and his back arched sharply upward. His arms lay limply to either side, pinned to the floor by unseen hands.
The lithe form of Aayla Secura kneeled over the man, straddling his chest as her palms pressed against his skull. Her eyes bored into Jacen’s, piercing them with malice that had brooded and festered for decades before the Twi’lek’s birth. Invisible, corrosive energies poured from her fingertips, products of dark arts that no Jedi had ever dared employ. The gleeful, crooked grin that split her youthful features was borne of an ancient bitterness few living beings could comprehend.
The being beyond Aayla’s darkened eyes was known by a hundred names, on a million worlds. Darth Sidious. Senator. Supreme Chancellor. Master of the Sith. Schemer. Enslaver. Murderer.
Emperor.
Palpatine delved into the young Jedi’s mind, shattering mental barriers and peeling away unwanted memories with a surgeon’s practiced skill and a gourmand’s appetite. He leafed through guarded secrets and peered at unvoiced thoughts with contemptuous ease, relishing the agony that each new incursion unleashed upon his victim.
“I had forgotten how invigorating it is to break a conscious, unwilling mind,” he hissed with breathless exuberance, leaning closer and digging Aayla’s fingers into Jacen’s scalp. “And you, young Solo, are most worthy of the effort. All this, and you still resist me? If you survive, you will make a fine agent of my will. I am in need of replacements.”
Jacen gagged and ground his teeth. His neck bent against the Twi’lek’s grip, but she held his head fast.
“I’ll… I’ll never join you!”
The wicked grin on Aayla’s faced widened. “Still so naive. Look at this face. Look at your pretty, alien friend. She resisted me, too. When I was forced from my old body and found her mind, she was as defiant as you are now. Empty Jedi platitudes diluted her thoughts and pointless restraint bound her power, but I dug past them. I found a seed in her, a fragment of doubt, one that dwells within all those who possess power but not the will to wield it. She had seen the pure, uninhibited truth of the Dark Side, and felt its might. It was a simple matter to nurture that seed; it thrives upon emotion, and your friend was a sea of anger and desire, barely muzzled by her masters. Yes, in the end she tried to fight me, but blind serenity and restraint cannot withstand the truth of nature.”
“The Light that you worship is nothing, Jedi. A pale illusion conjured up by those too cowardly to harness the full power within them. There is only the Dark Side, and it is the Force. I am the Sith, Solo, and the Force serves me. Secura could not deny my power, and neither will you.”
Fresh torment lashed at Jacen as Palpatine tore deeper into his mind. The Jedi knew what the intruder desired, and it was all he could do to keep it from him. When their minds had touched, the Sith glimpsed recent memories, and that meant that he had seen Kerrigan and her rifts. Jacen knew that Palpatine and the Zerg Queen shared more than a fondness for deception; both nursed an insatiable need to dominate. If the fallen Emperor found one of the ancient’s gateways, darkness would descend as surely as if Tassadar failed in his crusade.
And so Jacen resisted. He had been trained to oppose mental incursions, but this attacker was unlike any his masters could have anticipated. Palpatine’s will towered over his own, and as the Sith Lord’s assault continued, he knew that no secret could be sheltered for long. Each barrier he erected withered away under Palpatine’s gaze, and each failed effort racked his mind, boiling away memories and miring thought. Sanity itself was beginning to give way before the dark mind, and Jacen knew that once that was gone, nothing stood between Palpatine and his prize.
You can’t win this way. Withdrawing and defending won’t keep him out. The voice was his, eager and reassured. But there is another way. Fight back.
Palpatine was too strong. Jacen wasn’t prepared to face the destroyer of the Jedi Order alone. Even Master Skywalker was barely able to withstand the dark being’s might.
But Luke did survive. He did not best Darth Vader by retreating and hiding. He did not endure Palpatine by retreating inside of himself. He lashed out, and his anger gave him power.
But Luke refused to give into the Dark Side.
And his refusal almost killed him. You are alone, Jacen. No one is here to save you.
Jacen summoned the few comforting thoughts he could, flickering candles against the pounding thunder of the Sith’s advance. The faces of his family, proud defenders of the Light all. The Jedi Praxeum, where he had learned to control the power within and use it to protect others. The Code, clear and calming. Laura, determined and beautiful.
Each was part of him, and he would not betray everyone and everything that mattered to him. There were worse things than death.
But you will not be the only one to die. Once Palpatine has broken you, just as he destroyed Aayla, he will know of the rifts. Even if Kerrigan does not spread her ruin across space and time, he will. Do you think Mom and Dad will be safe, then? Will Laura?
The serene images shattered. Jacen was alone, trapped by the impending storm.
What good is the Light if it cannot save what you love?
In a moment of clarity, Jacen saw Aayla’s face, less than a meter from his own. Her lips were still frozen in a vile sneer, and her pupils were void-like slits, wreathed in flame. The man could still remember her as she had once been, could still see her confident smile and feel the kindness in her eyes. He missed the familiar face, longed for so achingly that the pain almost overshadowed the searing of Palpatine’s intrusion.
Their eyes were locked. Jacen realized that he loathed the creature that had robbed Aayla of her body, and now peered out with such arrogance and disdain. He hated Palpatine.
His chest tightened, and he could feel it warming from within. Jacen’s jaw closed, and he felt his lips draw back into a sneer.
The huge double doors at the throne room’s end began to move. Immediately, Palpatine pulled back from Jacen, breaking eye contact and removing Aayla’s hands from the man’s head. The sudden cessation of the mental assault and release of pressure shook the Jedi’s world, and his thoughts scattered. The kindling flame in his chest guttered, and he fell still.
Palpatine rose slowly, eyes fixed on the doors as they parted.
“Lord Vader,” he said through Aayla’s curled lips. “Unannounced, as always.”
Darth Vader pressed into the open chamber without a word. His black facemask was fixed and emotionless, but the rest of his figure was alive with energy. His heavy cape whipped behind him with a force that surpassed that of the chilling wind. His armored chest and broad shoulders heaved noticeably with every step, and each mechanical breath was a hiss. He held a lightsaber in his right hand, its crimson blade harsh against the dimming light.
“How goes the campaign, my lord?” Palpatine asked, outwardly unmoved by the other Sith’s approach. “I trust that nothing untoward has drawn you back to Coruscant? I have endeavored to fulfill your wishes to the best of…”
The gloved fingers of Vader’s left hand wrapped around Aayla’s throat and he yanked her from the floor. She made no attempt to resist as he brought her face centimeters from his own.
“My son is dead,” Vader said, his voice slow and raw.
Aayla’s mouth opened and her neck bulged, but no sound emerged. Rather than relax his grip, Vader tightened it, burying his fingers in blue flesh.
“Who did this?” Even through his suit’s vocalization system, the words trembled with rage. “Who killed Luke?”
A hand rose to claw at Vader’s iron grip, and Aayla gritted her teeth. After a moment’s pause, Vader’s fingers loosened fractionally, barely enough to allow the Twi’lek a strangled breath.
“It… it wasn’t me, my lord.” The voice was weak and subdued, and Aayla looked away as Vader pulled her closer still.
“Then who?” the Sith demanded. “Look at me! Who killed my son?”
When Aayla’s head turned to face Vader in full, her look of muted dismay had been replaced by an evil grin.
“You did. For all your efforts and all your power, you could not save him, and so you left. You left him here. You left him alone. He died because of your failure and your weakness.”
Vader froze.
“Don’t be so distressed, my lord,” Aayla sneered, her voice swallowed by Palpatine’s. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.”
Her hands shot forward, pressing against the cyborg’s plated chest. Lightning arced between her outstretched fingers, and Vader’s front vanished in a burst of light. He fell backward, roaring as blue-white spasms coursed over his torso and down his arms. Free of his grasp, Palpatine alighted easily on the throne room floor.
Several meters away, Vader picked himself up off of his back and rose onto his haunches. His dark cloak hung loosely about him, smoking with the energy of Palpatine’s lightning. He stared at the gloating Twi’lek face.
“I destroyed you,” he said, the fury in his voice momentarily dulled by disbelief. “I felt you die.”
Palpatine shook his head slowly.
“I taught you better than that, my apprentice. You know the power of the Dark Side better than anyone, and you know that I have mastered its every facet. I once offered you the power to stop death itself. That power was not a lie. You were simply too weak to wield it.”
Lightning leapt from Palpatine’s fingertips, but this time Vader was not caught off guard. He cast back the folds of his cloak and thrust the blade of his lightsaber out in front of him, catching the crackling teeth of energy as they arced through the air towards him. The jagged, luminous tendrils wrapped around the column of light and surged down it towards Vader’s hands, but he angled the weapon downward and the flow reversed, sending a cascade of searing energy into the solid stone at his feet.
Palpatine interrupted the attack and withdrew his hands. His back straightened, and he flung the slender arms of his new body out to either side. Two pommels flew from his hips, landing and igniting in waiting palms. Vader raised his own blade from the floor and lowered his masked helm.
“No hidden pawns this time,” Palpatine said, mirroring the other’s stooped pose. “No reprieve and no mercy. Just as it is meant to be.”
Both leapt forward in the same moment. Palpatine closed the gap in a heartbeat, leading with a pair of high, parallel slashes. Vader’s blade caught the blows in the same movement, sweeping them aside in a swift, brutal stroke. Palpatine’s attack had left his flank completely exposed and Vader powered through towards it, angling his lightsaber under the Twi’lek body’s outstretched right arm. Even as the towering cyborg brought his weapon against the other’s ribcage, he bent his legs and rolled under the blow. In the same movement, Palpatine swung himself forward under Vader’s extended arms and brought his blades against the man’s thigh.
The lightsabers barely scorched the black padding of his leg before the limb surged away from them. Vader smashed his knee into Palpatine’s chest and the smaller figure fell backwards. He moved to follow up on the blow, but his adversary had already recovered, somersaulting back from her compromised position and landing on her feet several meters away, completely unfazed by the punishing impact.
“How marvelous it is to be young!” Palpatine shouted, twirling both of his weapons in full circles.
Vader was already in motion, covering the distance between them with a long stride and aiming a diagonal cut at Palpatine’s unprotected neck. Palpatine dodged the blow easily and pressed his own attack, chopping at Vader’s right shoulder with one blade and following immediately with the next. The first gouged the surface of the reinforced composite covering Vader’s upper torso, but he recovered in time to repel the next, locking the green and blue beams with his own and regaining his footing.
He bore down on the crossed blades, pushing them back towards their master. For an instant, the Sith were eye to eye once again, their respective masks lit by the lightsabers’ eerie glow. Then Palpatine gave way, leaving Vader to compensate for the force of his own assault as he made for his legs once more. Unable to sidestep the incursion, Vader brought the butt of his lightsaber down on Palpatine’s neck, forcing him to divert his course and withdraw.
The dueling figures repeated the cycle of parry and riposte several times, moving back and forth across the wide chamber floor. Each time, Darth Vader pressed a strong, focused attack, throwing his physical might and force of will behind a single, devastating blow. Each time, Palpatine’s slimmer, younger, lighter body would deflect or dodge the strike and lunge into counterattack, using multiple blades to feint and slip through Vader’s defenses. After every exchange, one or the other would give ground, they would share a swift series of probing attacks and parries, and begin again.
With every bout, they moved closer towards the gaping, open edge of the blasted chamber. Vader could see that Palpatine was guiding them there, but he did not care. Rage still coursed through him, and all he could do was press onward. Shadowy faces and distant, instinctual warnings lurked at the edges of his consciousness, but an inferno of anger kept them at bay. The creature before him had to be destroyed. That was all that mattered.
Palpatine’s lips creased with mocking confidence.
When they were little more than a meter from the brink, Vader launched another assault. Aayla blocked the blow, let it slide away from her, and then moved to flank her opponent once more. Rather than attack his legs or torso, however, she used one blade to punch several neat holes in the dense fabric near the edge of his cloak. Leaping back from the chamber’s precipice, she reached out for the material and swept it towards the blasted rim. With uncanny precision, the trailing edge of the cloak found its way to the brink and the holes she had cut aligned with contusions in the melted surface.
Vader jerked after her, only to find himself pinned by the small of his back. He cast a confused, withering look back at his cloak, and Palpatine charge forward again, scoring a gash on Vader’s upper right arm. The man hissed with mounting fury, and hauled against his caught raiment. Woven of the blaster-resistant fibers, the cloak would not yield, and Palpatine moved in for another swift clip.
The Twi’lek face flashed across Vader’s vision, and he saw the gleeful sneer upon it. The other Sith was toying with him.
“Your anger gives you power, Vader,” Palpatine said, withdrawing from the edge again. “But it controls you. It always has. Fury exists to be dominated and bent to one’s will, just as the Force does. I have mastered both. You are their slave. One such as you is fit only to kill and intimidate, never rule. How can you control an empire if you cannot command your own emotions?”
“Perhaps you are correct, my master.” Vader grabbed his cloak with his free hand. “Perhaps I cannot command this empire. Perhaps I am still a slave. But I can kill, and whatever trickery you used to escape me last time will not save you again.”
With a single movement, Vader tore his cloak away. The reinforced fabric shredded against his might, leaving only ragged scraps protruding from his armored back. He cast away the rest, and it fell from the precipice into the descending night.
Palpatine crossed his blades in front of him.
“We shall see.”
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The Rift
Moderator: LadyTevar
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Jacen heard the crash and sizzle of crossed lightsabers. He opened his eyes and saw flashes of blue, red, and green played across the dark ceiling far above. For a moment, he was disoriented, distant and shivering in the cold. Then, in a rush, everything came back to him. Aayla. Palpatine. His own brush with the Dark Side. Everything.
He turned his head on the flat, hard stone. Halfway across the chamber, Aayla… Palpatine stood locked in combat, Jacen’s lightsaber clutched in his left hand. Against him was a figure he had seen only in old holo-vids and fevered imaginings. Darth Vader stood as imposing and terrible as he had ever imagined, a tower of rage with a crimson blade in his hands.
Two nightmares warred almost within arm’s reach, and Jacen knew he could not delude himself into thinking it all a dream. His head ached from the Sith’s intrusion, and embers of hate still flickered at the back of his mind, waiting to be fanned again.
Grim realities played across his mind as the two fought, oblivious to their prone spectator. Aayla’s dark fate and Palpatine’s thirst for knowledge of the portals loomed heavily over him, but somehow the moment of hatred and rage that had almost taken hold of him dominated his thoughts. He had experienced the Dark Side before, but never in such a fundamental and visceral way. This time, it had not been borne of some external force or basic survival instinct.
The impulse to embrace the Dark Side had descended from reason. Calm, altruistic logic, cherished in Jedi philosophy, had compelled him to embrace everything he had spent a lifetime resisting. Had Darth Vader not intervened, and Jacen not lashed out in hatred, Palpatine would have broken him and taken his secret. The Light had not been enough.
Now, the two great evils of Jedi parable fought before him for reasons he could only guess at. If one, malice and greed, was victorious, he would undoubtedly return to Jacen and finish his gruesome feast. If the other, temptation and anger, prevailed, he would have to face a new and unknown danger.
Jacen tested his strength, and found he could barely push himself upright. He lacked the energy to run, much less fight. There was one reserve still available to him, but…
No. I will not give in. Not yet.
The lingering flame behind his eyes receded further, but it did not vanish. He still felt his loathing for the creature inside of Aayla, and he did not have the strength or the will to suppress it entirely.
Jacen pushed himself to the closest wall and sank back against it, allowing the spectacle of the duel to wash over him.
Darth Vader was now firmly on the defensive. Each time he attempted to land a critical blow on Palpatine, the Sith used the speed and flexibility of his younger, unencumbered body to evade the attack and retaliate. Palpatine’s hits were minor, some almost cosmetic, but they landed with each clash, and it was plain that the mounting number of gashes across Vader’s body were beginning to take their toll. Already slower than his opponent, Vader’s movements were becoming more sluggish still, and it was all he could do to rebuff Palpatine’s more brazen attacks.
Yielding ground with each engagement, Vader eventually found himself pinned against the far wall of the throne room. Taking advantage of the Sith Lord’s loss of mobility, Palpatine hammered at him from both sides, using his lightsabers to threaten Vader’s flanks in a quickening, erratic series of slashes and jabs. At last, one found its way past the cyborg’s defenses, and Palpatine barked a laugh as he drove one blade into Vader’s hip.
Thinking his victim pinned and distracted, Palpatine slashed his other edge at Vader’s neck guard. Rather than try to avoid or deflect the blow, Vader switched his lightsaber to one hand and wrapped the free arm around the one that had delivered Palpatine’s first strike. The forward lurch and added pressure drove the blade deeper into his side, But Vader pressed on, throwing his weight into Palpatine and pushing off from the wall. The decapitating cut gouged the wall uselessly, and Palpatine was swung around and smashed bodily into the vertical surface. He gasped, the smile gone, and felt the bones in his pinned arm creaking under Vader’s brawn.
He flicked the wrist of his trapped limb, raking a lightsaber blade across Vader’s back, but the masked titan did not loosen his grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Palpatine saw a descending flash of red. Unable to avoid it physically, he pushed against the down-crashing arm and blade with the Force, willing it to bend away. Vader immediately recognized the exertion and countered the immaterial blast with one of his own, but the distraction was enough to loosen his hold on Palpatine’s arm. Releasing its weapon, the thin Twi’lek limb slipped free.
As Palpatine ducked from the wall and spun away around Vader, Jacen could see that her escape had not come without a price. The arm, formerly enclosed in a long, black glove, was bear, its covering discarded in Vader’s grasp. Just below the shoulder, smooth, blue skin gave way to a landscape of charred rot. Down to its emaciated, almost skeletal fingers, the arm was blackened with horrific burns that cracked the skin into jagged, irregular scales. Between the fissures livid, whitish growths bubbled and sprawled, spreading tendrils of tumor-like tissue around the elbow and down the forearm.
The Jedi’s heart quickened at the gruesome sight; with the revelation, the darkness he felt radiating from Aayla’s body became all the fouler, as though Palpatine’s last façade had been tossed aside. The loss effected Palpatine as well, and he hissed with rage, throwing himself against Vader before the other could fully disengage from the wall.
The lost lightsaber flew back into Palpatine’s hand and his assault on Vader renewed with ferocious vigor. The masked Sith managed to avoid being pinned once more and maneuvered the fight back into the open chamber, but he did so at the loss of any fresh initiative. Palpatine was a blur of light and motion, flanking, striking, and withdrawing faster than Vader could effectively track him.
With a stifled grunt, Jacen pulled himself onto his feet and slowly rose, using his wall for support. His eyes were fixed on Vader as the man wearily blocked another volley of blows. It was clear that he was losing, and as Jacen watched him yield step after step, it was plain that he wouldn’t last much longer.
In some ways, Darth Vader was as dark and twisted as his master, but Jacen knew that the threat Palpatine posed was far greater. The Emperor was a true agent of the Dark, merciless and insatiable. For all his crimes, Darth Vader had once been something more, and Jacen knew that, deep inside of him, some part of the good that was Anakin Skywalker still clung. Palpatine had no such inhibition.
Unless…
Jacen’s gaze focused on the putrefied arm. He paused a moment, took a deep breath, and pushed off from the wall.
Snarling, Vader lowered his guard, allowing a pair of blows to etch deep gouges in his chest plate. The interface panel on his chest began to spark, but he ignored it. Disregarding Palpatine’s attacks, he freed himself to launch one of his own and did so with reckless abandon, bringing his saber to his side and charging forward, intent upon slamming his full force into Palpatine’s unarmored flesh.
Rather than attempt to spin around the blow, Palpatine leapt back, barely avoiding a vicious, horizontal chop that easily could have bisected him. Exhaling through clenched teeth, the Sith drew Jacen’s green blade back and then whipped it forward, releasing the pommel as he did. The lightsaber became a spinning disk of light and whistled through the air, aimed perfectly for Vader’s black helm. Still charging after Palpatine, Vader swung his saber hard and wide, dashing the projectile from the air and sending it spinning away.
Palpatine had vaulted upward immediately after tossing the blade, propelling himself vertically more than three meters. Distracted by the lightsaber, Vader did not see him move, and found the space in front of him empty. He began to slow, only to feel the weight of two feet slamming down onto his shoulders. Reeling from the sudden impact and his own momentum, Vader could do nothing more than glare upwards as Palpatine, balanced precariously on rounded pauldrons, plunged his remaining blade downward. The blue beam punched through the shoulder plating of his sword arm, barely missing Palpatine’s foot as it plunged deep into machinery and flesh.
Vader roared, staggering as Palpatine pulled his weapon free of smoking armor and jumped from the cyborg’s frame. The towering Sith collapsed onto his knees and clutched at his wounded side. The right side of his torso sagged, its arm flopped uselessly against the floor. Vader’s lightsaber rolled from limp fingers, silenced.
“A pity,” Palpatine said, his voice dripping with disdain. He rounded the heaving form with jaunty ease, seemingly undiminished by their contest. The only hint of frailty was a slight tremor that ran through his despoiled fingers as they lowered the tip of their blade below the chin of Vader’s mask.
The kneeling Sith turned his faceplate upwards to stare into Palpatine’s sneering visage. He was silent, save for the weakened, rhythmic sigh of his breathing.
“I had great hopes for you, Lord Vader. You had limitless potential, once, but you have squandered it at every turn. Failure has dominated your life and consumed everyone you have ever cared for. Your mother, your wife, your son; all dead because you lacked the strength protect them from your enemies and from yourself. And now, at the end, you have only your life left to lose. You have failed to best me, and for that, I shall do what your old master should have done so many years ago.”
The humming tip of Palpatine’s edge probed towards the base of Vader’s neck, but stopped abruptly, less than a centimeter from the black plate. He stiffened and looked up from his defeated foe, eyes wide. Then, in a swift, fluid motion, he spun away from Vader, brining his lightsaber up just in time to intercept another blade. Green and blue beams of energy strained against one another, hissing and crackling in the dusk.
Above the crossed blades, Jacen Solo stared into Palpatine’s eyes, his gaze resolute.
“I am no fool,” the Sith snarled. “This creature surprised me once. Never again.”
“You are overconfident, Emperor,” Jacen replied. “I resisted you. Darth Vader resisted you. If you couldn’t break a failure and an ignorant boy like me, how could you truly break a Jedi knight? I know, deep down, she’s still fighting you.”
Jacen thought he could see Palpatine’s lip tremble slightly, and that was enough to bring a tired smile to his own face.
The reaction was enough to provoke the Sith into action. With terrifying speed, he disengaged from Jacen’s lightsaber and slashed at his chest. The Jedi deflected the blow, but Palpatine struck again and again, battering at the other’s blade until he was able to flick it from his grasp. In an instant, Jacen felt a hand clench around his throat and the shaft of a lightsaber align beneath his chin.
“You do not need your tongue to tell me what I wish to know, Jedi,” Palpatine hissed. “Be silent.”
“You’re afraid!” Jacen gasped through the vice-like grip. “Afraid that I’m right. What’s the matter? Couldn’t get rid of her as easily as you thought?”
Jacen felt the agonizing tendrils of Palpatine’s will encroach on the verges of his conscious mind, but he did not retreat from them. He would not withdraw this time, would not accept defeat.
“I know you can hear me, Aayla! This isn’t his body, and he doesn’t have your mind! Whatever he’s done, tried to show you, made you do, I know you’re still in there! Look at your arm! That’s all he is! A scar! A parasite! A weak, defeated thing, afraid of what you can still do!”
The hand at his throat tightened with unnatural strength, and Jacen began to gag.
The blood-shot coronas around the pupils of Palpatine’s eyes shimmered with rage.
“Your friend is dead, Solo, not even a memory! Soon enough, I will show you the despair that I showed her.”
Jacen’s eyes bulged and the veins on his neck swelled, but he still managed to mouth a few words.
“Just… a… scar.”
The skin at the base of his jaw flared with pain as scattered hairs burst into flame from the intensity of the blade.
Jacen closed his eyes.
Kill me. That’s all I can ask for now.
There was a hissing whoosh from somewhere behind Palpatine. A lightsaber reigniting. Jacen braced himself, expecting the beam at his throat to leap forward. Hazily, he imagined what it would feel like as the column of heat cleaved through his neck, half saw Palpatine spinning back to face Vader once more as his head tumbled to the floor.
The blow did not come. Searing heat still racked his nerves, but it did not resolve into the overwhelming pulse of the lightsaber itself. Disoriented, Jacen opened his eyes a crack. Through the dull glare of the blue edge, he could see Aayla’s face, still only centimeters from his own. The Twi’lek face was a mask of bewilderment far greater than his own, fixed squarely on the hand that still held the weapon in place.
A hand which refused to move from Jacen’s throat.
There was a brief, bubbling hiss and a muffled thump. The eyes widened, fixed Jacen with an unknowable, strangely vacant stare, and then rolled into white orbs. Aayla’s body fell back, crushing hand and lightsaber falling way with it.
Jacen watched her hit the floor and crumple like a discarded doll. The Twi’lek’s back was marred by a long, deep gash that stretched from hip to shoulder. The man stared at the smoking, blackened mark for a long moment, mute, utterly lost in the moment.
After what could have been seconds or an age, Jacen felt his legs begin to give way and had to focus, catching himself before he joined Aayla on the cold floor. Beyond the limp form, he could see Darth Vader, stooped and sagging towards his injured side. The Sith’s red-bladed weapon hung loosely from his left hand, its tip gouging the polished stone.
Vader was not staring at the fallen figure. The darkened lenses of his mask displayed muddy reflections of Jacen’s pallid features, and the Jedi could feel that the man behind them was utterly fixated upon him. He could feel new tendrils of consciousness, touched with the same aura of darkness that Palpatine’s had possessed, but… something more, as well. Curiosity. Trepidation. And suddenly… hope.
Without a second thought, Jacen opened his mind fully to Vader. Memories poured forth, everything that the Jedi could bring to mind and fragments even he could barely recall.
Reminiscences flashed before his eyes. He lay wrapped in his mother’s arms, cooing softly as her calming voice lulled him into sleep. He scampered about the floor of the Millennium Falcon with his brother and sister as their father chuckled over them with the tall, kind-hearted Chewbacca. He stared in wonderment at his first lightsaber as it ignited in his grasp, Uncle Luke’s steadying hands on his shoulders.
He could feel Vader watching alongside him, utterly engrossed by each fleeting recollection. Almost tenderly, the man sifted through Jacen’s childhood, lingering over images and sensations as though they were his own, reluctant to let any fade away. When they came to Jacen’s years as a learner at the Jedi Praxeum, discovering the ways of the Force under Luke Skywalker’s close, careful tutelage, a swell of emotion washed over Vader, but he endured, savoring every snippet of memory Jacen could offer him.
As quickly as they had bubbled up, the recollections drifted back into Jacen’s subconscious, and the two were alone in the darkening throne room again. The man across from Jacen stood outwardly unchanged, his battered, dark armor and swept helmet sinister in his weapon’s crimson light. But as the Jedi looked more closely, felt beyond the battle plating and life support mechanisms to the mind beneath, he found something new.
Slowly, Jacen extended an arm towards the other.
“Anakin?”
Aayla’s crumpled form convulsed. The movement, at first a few reflexive finger tremors and waist motions, moved swiftly up her back and arms, until her neck began to twitch. All at once, her back arched and she flipped over, limbs splayed wide. Both men took a sharp step away from her, but before either could make any other move, the Twi’lek’s chin shot into the air and her eyes and mouth opened wide.
There was a shriek, an echoing, ethereal wail that seemed to resonate from the foundation of the palace itself. Icy wind suddenly whipped across Jacen’s face, not from the open Coruscanti sky, but rather the space just in front of him. In a moment, it was a howling gale that meshed with the otherworldly screech and overwhelmed all other sensation. Gritting through the assault, Jacen saw that a hazy light had begun to pour from Aayla. It surged from her mouth and eyes in streams of dense mist that collected a meter above her face, swirling with formless, shadowy patterns. As Jacen watched, the cloud became a thunderhead, charged with violent cracks of lightning.
A wrinkle on the billowing surface of the phenomenon flowed through the churning winds until it faced Jacen, and he could see that it was a face, barely recognizable, but dreadfully familiar. Lightning coursed into its eye sockets, and the visage flared into life. The shapeless maw of its mouth gaped hungrily, and the entity coalesced around the face and surged forward, straight at the Jedi. Jacen’s body seemed to be rooted in place, and he could do nothing but watch as the cloud enveloped him and the savage, crackling light and shadow became his world.
“No!”
The booming voice cut through the roar of the gale, and Jacen suddenly felt himself falling. In a moment, he was flat on his back, free of the entity’s overwhelming presence. The swirling form still hung above him, but there was something else inside of it too, now, a thrashing mass of black. A glint in the corner of his eye caught Jacen’s eye, and he turned his head to find Darth Vader’s lightsaber pommel on the floor several meters away, abandoned by its master.
The wailing of the gale sharpened into a screech that seemed to shake the stones on which Jacen lay. The thunderhead churned and compressed, its surface immersed in a storm of arching lightning. The entity disappeared into the swirling light, and when it cleared, Darth Vader stood alone. The reinforced composite of his armor ran like melted glass and the rest of his suit was bathed in bluish fire that constantly guttered and reignited, burning away fabrics design to withstand the harshest extremes of nature.
And yet, the man beneath stood straighter and prouder than Jacen had ever seen before. His right arm still hung limply at his side, but he seemed untroubled by it, his posture wide and steadfast even as his vital coverings melted into the whipping air. As Jacen raised himself onto his arms, the man turned to face him. The sharp, intimidating contours of his mask had dissolved away, leaving a soft, muddy mass and wide eyes that glowed with residual light.
“Tell Leia that I’m sorry,” he said in a voice that bore no hint of artificiality or anger. “Tell your mother that I’m proud of her. And when you see Luke again, let him know that… that I love him. Let him know that I always will.”
With that, he turned away, stared out at the boundless night sky, and began to run. In a few long strides he was at the brink, and he plunged over it without hesitation. The man plummeted swiftly past darkened windows and vast supports, shedding corroded coverings and trailing a wreath of barbed electricity that still lashed at his body.
As he felt his flesh begin to dissolve into the rushing night air, the man sensed the other mind near his own, and knew it perceived everything he did. But as the world melted away into crisp, white light and the other felt fear, he found only a settling calm. Dark memories faded with sight, and for the first time in far, far too long, Anakin was at peace.
------------------------------------
Deep within the Forerunner device’s computer system, Cortana registered another fluctuation in the structure of the rift network. This one was much like the first she had perceived, just after accessing the machine’s navigation and targeting processor. Smaller and somewhat muted, it nonetheless sent a ripple across the plot of three-dimensional space that represented the functional aspect of the portal device. The AI could only guess at the cause of the distortions, but their effects were all too apparent. They swept over the minute lines and horizons that connected the four major convergences of activity on her plot, bending them out of shape and causing their anchor points to drift.
Her frustration and agitation mounted as she tried to keep track of several strands she had focused on as possible egress lines from her own anchor point. The technology she was trying to comprehend and manipulate was quite unlike anything she’d been programmed to encounter, and her brief experiences with Forerunner virtual systems and half-blind rift travel were the only reasons she wasn’t entirely overwhelmed.
The rapidly-ticking mission clock in the back of her mind wasn’t helping matters.
Desperate to keep a hold on the shifting, immaterial pathways, she focused on the course of one of them as it wound into a major convergence point. Suddenly, she realized that it terminated quite close to the epicenter of the most recent fluctuation.
Things have a way of blowing up around you, Chief, whether you set them off or not. Let’s hope you’re consistent as I know you are.
---------------------------------------------
“Jacen?”
Aayla lay against Jacen, her head cradled in his arms.
“Yes, Aayla. I’m here.”
She was silent for a long moment, her breath slow and labored. Only one eye was open, its heavily-lidded orb defined by a clouded iris of hazel.
“It’s gone.”
“Palpatine is gone. For good. You beat him, Aayla.”
She coughed weakly.
“I did nothing. I fell. I failed.”
Jacen shook his head and placed a hand on one of her limp lekku. It was as cold as the night air.
“If that was true, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. You fought him. You resisted the dark, and now Palpatine is gone.”
“No. No, I didn’t resist the dark. I tried to use it. I wanted revenge, Jacen. I wanted it so badly. I needed to destroy him, and I didn’t care how I did it. And it worked. At least, I thought…”
She paused.
“I failed the Order.”
“That’s not true…”
“Yes, Jacen, it is. You might not understand now, but I hope that you do someday.” She paused again, waiting until Jacen looked her squarely in her open eye. “To be a Jedi is never to succumb. Never to compromise what we believe in for personal reasons. What I may have done at the end doesn’t atone for my failure.”
Jacen held her gaze. “You’re still a good person. You did what you thought was right. You did what you had to.”
Aayla’s eye lingered on Jacen for a moment in silence, and then slid shut.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
Jacen tried not to glance at her withered body. Even without much training as a healer, he knew that she was well beyond help.
“I can carry you,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “We should get going soon. I wouldn’t really choose this place to set up camp. With all the trouble, I forgot to bring blankets.”
The Twi’lek didn’t reply.
“How about it? Aayla?”
Jacen looked down at her calm, set features, and knew.
-------------------------------------------
R2-D2 hummed and beeped busily as he interfaced with the security routing hub that was imbedded in one wall of the small communications room. Aside from the holographic projector that took up one corner of the space and the large section of grating that the Master Chief had forcibly removed to reveal the hub propped against another wall, there was plenty of room for the astromech to bustle from port to port as he looked for the correct data feed and plumbed tertiary networks for lightly-encrypted backdoors. The Chief and Reginald Barclay stood well out of his way, flanking the chamber’s only door as they waited.
After a few minutes, R2-D2 disengaged from the last access slot and turned to face his new human companions, emitting a triumphant tone.
“What’s it saying?” the Chief asked Barclay.
The engineer stared at the droid curiously.
“I’m not sure, but it does sound happy.”
The tone went flat with tired exasperation, and R2 made for the door. It opened automatically and he rolled out into the hall without incident. Cautiously, the two followed.
“We must be being followed,” Barclay remarked as the trio moved down a long, windowless hallway, identical to virtually every other one they had encountered on the level. “Imperials don’t give up so easily. I mean, we’re still in their facility. They should be able to track our every move, and I don’t see why they’d let us avoid them like this.”
The Chief was somewhat annoyed with Barclay’s nervous chatter, but he had to admit the man made a good point. They hadn’t run into as much as a cleaning droid since Barclay had been freed. They’re progress hadn’t been exactly covert, and the only real effort they’d made to cover their tracks were the astromech droid’s periodic stops next to control terminals. At first, the Chief had suspect that the little machine was simply locking doors and checking floor plans, but the fact that they’d avoided patrols for so long indicated that the droid was more skilled than he gave it credit for.
Indeed, each passing minute that they didn’t come face to face with a squad of stormtroopers made him more and more suspicious of the astromech. It was clearly more than just a piece of service of equipment, and neither man could guess why it had been attached to Darth Vader’s detail. Nevertheless, it was keeping them alive and out of enemy hands, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.
Besides, there was a more pressing concern on the Chief’s mind.
“Sixteen minutes until pickup,” he muttered, checking his mission clock for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Are we close to where you were dropped?” Barclay asked.
The Chief checked his motion tracker, still mostly useless, and took stock of their recent movements.
“We should be close to the evac point, but we’re still thirty levels too high.”
Barclay frowned.
“Then shouldn’t we be looking for lifts? I know you don’t want to use them, but what other option do we have? The service tubes didn’t work out.”
They had attempted to descend by way of a service conduit they had located, but it was only traversable for a few levels before it split into dozens of smaller channels and pipeways. Plainly, the architects of the facility had been somewhat more security-minded than the designers behind most Starfleet vessels.
Slowly, the Chief nodded.
“We’ll have to use them. Hopefully, your little friend can keep the lifts covered and working all the way down.”
As if responding to the conversation, the R2 unit issued a few high notes and turned down a side passage. After a dozen or so meters, they came to another doorway, and R2-D2 indicated towards it with a spin of his head. With Barclay covering him a safe distance down the hallway with his blaster rifle, the Chief backed next to the door, opened it, and after a ‘clear’ signal from the engineer spun inward, weapon at the ready.
He found himself in a small turbolift chamber. Five doors adorned the bare walls; three leading to awaiting turbolift shafts, his entryway, and another on the opposite side of the room that looked as though it had been sealed shut with a welding torch. Beyond it, muffed shouting put the Chief immediately on edge. He might have withdrawn outright, had it not been for the room’s occupants.
Leaning against the far turbolift, Jacen Solo sat with his lightsaber lit in one hand. Propped next to him, the frail, limp body of a blue-skinned woman lolled, her eyes closed. The Chief immediately recognized Aayla Secura, remembering the desperate flight from the Poloon system, where he’d seen her last.
“Chief,” Jacen said, clearly exhausted. “I’d been hoping you’d find your way here soon. I ran into some trouble on the way, and I’m not sure how long it’ll take them to get through.” He nodded towards the partially-melted door.
Keeping one eye on the door, the Chief moved to Jacen’s side, Barclay and R2 close behind. The Jedi nodded weakly when he saw the astromech, but the droid showed no sign of recognition.
“Does she need medical attention?” the Chief asked kneeling next to Aayla. He knew the answer before Jacen responded.
“She’s one with the Force, now. I just couldn’t leave her here.”
The Chief nodded, turning his attention to the young man. There would be time for questions later.
“What about you?”
“I’m just… tired.”
“Chief,” Barclay said anxiously. Jacen’s sudden appearance had been enough to mollify his nerves briefly, but a low banging had begun beyond the sealed door. The R2 unit added his own warning tone.
“Can you walk?” the Chief asked Jacen.
He nodded, quite unconvincingly.
“Barclay, help the Jedi into this lift.”
The ride was cramped but uneventful. R2-D2 took a few moments to negotiate with the lift computer, but it quickly dropped them the number of levels the Chief indicated, and they exited into yet another empty hallway. Nonetheless, the Spartan felt particularly compromised, burdened now by Aayla’s body, even though he hadn’t objected to Jacen’s request to bring it along. The Jedi moved quickly enough with Barclay’s support, and within a few minutes, they were back on ground the Chief recognized.
Their luck didn’t hold.
After passing through several abandoned security checkpoints, the Chief walked headfirst into a pair of Imperial personnel. Fortunately, the technician and black-uniformed army officer had their backs turned to the doorway, occupied with a security display, and the Chief had time to shift Aayla to one shoulder and level both before they could do more than draw their blaster pistols. Nevertheless, one managed to key an alert button on his comlink before he fell, and although no audible alarm sounded, the Chief knew their time was up.
The rest of the way to the long, windowed hallway was a running gunfight. Evidently, the facility’s guard had been deployed in full force to try and locate the intruders, and the R2 unit’s diversions had done little more than slow their search. They ran into two more pockets of soldiers before rounding the corner into the dead-end hallway, and could hear more echoing down the corridors after them.
“I don’t see anything,” Barclay said as they came to the end of the passageway, now brightly-lit against the night sky. He eased Jacen, who now barely seemed to be conscious, against a wall. The Chief did the same, laying the Twi’lek out near where the rippling distortion had appeared before.
“It hasn’t been reactivated,” he replied. The clock was at two hours, fifty-eight minutes. They were early.
Shouting emanated from down the adjoining hallway, and the sound of multiple, rapid footfalls soon joined it. The Chief checked the ammo in his blaster and indicated that Barclay do the same. Unimpressed by the remaining load-out, he glanced down at Jacen’s lightsaber and considered briefly, but decided against it. If the guns weren’t enough to buy them time, he wasn’t about to go down waving an energy sword like a lunatic. That only worked if one could see the blaster bolts coming, and even he wasn’t that fast.
“Grab Solo!” the Chief ordered. “Get as close to the wall as you can!”
Barclay hurried to comply, fumbling with his blaster as he pulled the other man against the flat surface.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, ten seconds.
The Chief kneeled a few meters in front of Barclay, placing himself directly in any attacker’s line of fire. His shields wouldn’t take many blaster bolts, but if worse came to worse, it could buy the others a few more seconds. Just as he lined his rifle up, the first white-armored head appeared, right in the iron sight.
He smiled. Sometimes, it was the little things.
After the first three troopers dropped without firing a shot, their pursuers smartened up somewhat and slowed their advance. Readjusting his sight, the Chief could tell that they were massing just out of view. At least three officers, judging by the voices, and probably five times that number in grunts. Fleetingly, the Chief wished he’d saved one of the jury-rigged phaser grenades from the assault on Kerrigan’s citadel.
“Brace yourself!” he called backed to Barclay. “They’re about to make a push!”
By way of response, a blaster bolt tore down the hallway from behind him and nearly took the shoulder off of a trooper who’d edged too close.
That’s the spirit.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Time.
Three stormtroopers appeared at the end of the hallway, E-11s blazing. The Chief responded in kind and knocked down one before the others could even draw a bead on him. He felt three shots sheer over his head, and gasped as another punched him in the gut. His energy shield exploded with luminescence, and the indicators on his HUD burned bright red. The barrier wouldn’t withstand another direct hit.
The surviving soldiers had already disappeared from view, however. The Chief was momentarily confused, until he saw the squat, cylindrical device rolling down the hallway towards him.
Ah.
“Cover!” he yelled over his shoulder, swiftly backpedaling.
There was no response.
For a terrible moment, the Chief expected to find Barclay with a gaping hole in his chest, but when he reached the end of the hallway, there was no one there at all, save Aayla’s body. It only took the Chief a moment to realize that the once-solid wall was rippling like pond water on a windy day.
The Spartan didn’t pause. In an instant, the Twi’lek was in his arms, and in the next, Coruscant, the ambling grenade, and throng of shortly bewildered soldiers were memories.
The last thing that the Chief registered before he slipped into the rift was the mission clock, displaying 3:00:11:70.
Funny. Very funny.
He turned his head on the flat, hard stone. Halfway across the chamber, Aayla… Palpatine stood locked in combat, Jacen’s lightsaber clutched in his left hand. Against him was a figure he had seen only in old holo-vids and fevered imaginings. Darth Vader stood as imposing and terrible as he had ever imagined, a tower of rage with a crimson blade in his hands.
Two nightmares warred almost within arm’s reach, and Jacen knew he could not delude himself into thinking it all a dream. His head ached from the Sith’s intrusion, and embers of hate still flickered at the back of his mind, waiting to be fanned again.
Grim realities played across his mind as the two fought, oblivious to their prone spectator. Aayla’s dark fate and Palpatine’s thirst for knowledge of the portals loomed heavily over him, but somehow the moment of hatred and rage that had almost taken hold of him dominated his thoughts. He had experienced the Dark Side before, but never in such a fundamental and visceral way. This time, it had not been borne of some external force or basic survival instinct.
The impulse to embrace the Dark Side had descended from reason. Calm, altruistic logic, cherished in Jedi philosophy, had compelled him to embrace everything he had spent a lifetime resisting. Had Darth Vader not intervened, and Jacen not lashed out in hatred, Palpatine would have broken him and taken his secret. The Light had not been enough.
Now, the two great evils of Jedi parable fought before him for reasons he could only guess at. If one, malice and greed, was victorious, he would undoubtedly return to Jacen and finish his gruesome feast. If the other, temptation and anger, prevailed, he would have to face a new and unknown danger.
Jacen tested his strength, and found he could barely push himself upright. He lacked the energy to run, much less fight. There was one reserve still available to him, but…
No. I will not give in. Not yet.
The lingering flame behind his eyes receded further, but it did not vanish. He still felt his loathing for the creature inside of Aayla, and he did not have the strength or the will to suppress it entirely.
Jacen pushed himself to the closest wall and sank back against it, allowing the spectacle of the duel to wash over him.
Darth Vader was now firmly on the defensive. Each time he attempted to land a critical blow on Palpatine, the Sith used the speed and flexibility of his younger, unencumbered body to evade the attack and retaliate. Palpatine’s hits were minor, some almost cosmetic, but they landed with each clash, and it was plain that the mounting number of gashes across Vader’s body were beginning to take their toll. Already slower than his opponent, Vader’s movements were becoming more sluggish still, and it was all he could do to rebuff Palpatine’s more brazen attacks.
Yielding ground with each engagement, Vader eventually found himself pinned against the far wall of the throne room. Taking advantage of the Sith Lord’s loss of mobility, Palpatine hammered at him from both sides, using his lightsabers to threaten Vader’s flanks in a quickening, erratic series of slashes and jabs. At last, one found its way past the cyborg’s defenses, and Palpatine barked a laugh as he drove one blade into Vader’s hip.
Thinking his victim pinned and distracted, Palpatine slashed his other edge at Vader’s neck guard. Rather than try to avoid or deflect the blow, Vader switched his lightsaber to one hand and wrapped the free arm around the one that had delivered Palpatine’s first strike. The forward lurch and added pressure drove the blade deeper into his side, But Vader pressed on, throwing his weight into Palpatine and pushing off from the wall. The decapitating cut gouged the wall uselessly, and Palpatine was swung around and smashed bodily into the vertical surface. He gasped, the smile gone, and felt the bones in his pinned arm creaking under Vader’s brawn.
He flicked the wrist of his trapped limb, raking a lightsaber blade across Vader’s back, but the masked titan did not loosen his grip. Out of the corner of his eye, Palpatine saw a descending flash of red. Unable to avoid it physically, he pushed against the down-crashing arm and blade with the Force, willing it to bend away. Vader immediately recognized the exertion and countered the immaterial blast with one of his own, but the distraction was enough to loosen his hold on Palpatine’s arm. Releasing its weapon, the thin Twi’lek limb slipped free.
As Palpatine ducked from the wall and spun away around Vader, Jacen could see that her escape had not come without a price. The arm, formerly enclosed in a long, black glove, was bear, its covering discarded in Vader’s grasp. Just below the shoulder, smooth, blue skin gave way to a landscape of charred rot. Down to its emaciated, almost skeletal fingers, the arm was blackened with horrific burns that cracked the skin into jagged, irregular scales. Between the fissures livid, whitish growths bubbled and sprawled, spreading tendrils of tumor-like tissue around the elbow and down the forearm.
The Jedi’s heart quickened at the gruesome sight; with the revelation, the darkness he felt radiating from Aayla’s body became all the fouler, as though Palpatine’s last façade had been tossed aside. The loss effected Palpatine as well, and he hissed with rage, throwing himself against Vader before the other could fully disengage from the wall.
The lost lightsaber flew back into Palpatine’s hand and his assault on Vader renewed with ferocious vigor. The masked Sith managed to avoid being pinned once more and maneuvered the fight back into the open chamber, but he did so at the loss of any fresh initiative. Palpatine was a blur of light and motion, flanking, striking, and withdrawing faster than Vader could effectively track him.
With a stifled grunt, Jacen pulled himself onto his feet and slowly rose, using his wall for support. His eyes were fixed on Vader as the man wearily blocked another volley of blows. It was clear that he was losing, and as Jacen watched him yield step after step, it was plain that he wouldn’t last much longer.
In some ways, Darth Vader was as dark and twisted as his master, but Jacen knew that the threat Palpatine posed was far greater. The Emperor was a true agent of the Dark, merciless and insatiable. For all his crimes, Darth Vader had once been something more, and Jacen knew that, deep inside of him, some part of the good that was Anakin Skywalker still clung. Palpatine had no such inhibition.
Unless…
Jacen’s gaze focused on the putrefied arm. He paused a moment, took a deep breath, and pushed off from the wall.
Snarling, Vader lowered his guard, allowing a pair of blows to etch deep gouges in his chest plate. The interface panel on his chest began to spark, but he ignored it. Disregarding Palpatine’s attacks, he freed himself to launch one of his own and did so with reckless abandon, bringing his saber to his side and charging forward, intent upon slamming his full force into Palpatine’s unarmored flesh.
Rather than attempt to spin around the blow, Palpatine leapt back, barely avoiding a vicious, horizontal chop that easily could have bisected him. Exhaling through clenched teeth, the Sith drew Jacen’s green blade back and then whipped it forward, releasing the pommel as he did. The lightsaber became a spinning disk of light and whistled through the air, aimed perfectly for Vader’s black helm. Still charging after Palpatine, Vader swung his saber hard and wide, dashing the projectile from the air and sending it spinning away.
Palpatine had vaulted upward immediately after tossing the blade, propelling himself vertically more than three meters. Distracted by the lightsaber, Vader did not see him move, and found the space in front of him empty. He began to slow, only to feel the weight of two feet slamming down onto his shoulders. Reeling from the sudden impact and his own momentum, Vader could do nothing more than glare upwards as Palpatine, balanced precariously on rounded pauldrons, plunged his remaining blade downward. The blue beam punched through the shoulder plating of his sword arm, barely missing Palpatine’s foot as it plunged deep into machinery and flesh.
Vader roared, staggering as Palpatine pulled his weapon free of smoking armor and jumped from the cyborg’s frame. The towering Sith collapsed onto his knees and clutched at his wounded side. The right side of his torso sagged, its arm flopped uselessly against the floor. Vader’s lightsaber rolled from limp fingers, silenced.
“A pity,” Palpatine said, his voice dripping with disdain. He rounded the heaving form with jaunty ease, seemingly undiminished by their contest. The only hint of frailty was a slight tremor that ran through his despoiled fingers as they lowered the tip of their blade below the chin of Vader’s mask.
The kneeling Sith turned his faceplate upwards to stare into Palpatine’s sneering visage. He was silent, save for the weakened, rhythmic sigh of his breathing.
“I had great hopes for you, Lord Vader. You had limitless potential, once, but you have squandered it at every turn. Failure has dominated your life and consumed everyone you have ever cared for. Your mother, your wife, your son; all dead because you lacked the strength protect them from your enemies and from yourself. And now, at the end, you have only your life left to lose. You have failed to best me, and for that, I shall do what your old master should have done so many years ago.”
The humming tip of Palpatine’s edge probed towards the base of Vader’s neck, but stopped abruptly, less than a centimeter from the black plate. He stiffened and looked up from his defeated foe, eyes wide. Then, in a swift, fluid motion, he spun away from Vader, brining his lightsaber up just in time to intercept another blade. Green and blue beams of energy strained against one another, hissing and crackling in the dusk.
Above the crossed blades, Jacen Solo stared into Palpatine’s eyes, his gaze resolute.
“I am no fool,” the Sith snarled. “This creature surprised me once. Never again.”
“You are overconfident, Emperor,” Jacen replied. “I resisted you. Darth Vader resisted you. If you couldn’t break a failure and an ignorant boy like me, how could you truly break a Jedi knight? I know, deep down, she’s still fighting you.”
Jacen thought he could see Palpatine’s lip tremble slightly, and that was enough to bring a tired smile to his own face.
The reaction was enough to provoke the Sith into action. With terrifying speed, he disengaged from Jacen’s lightsaber and slashed at his chest. The Jedi deflected the blow, but Palpatine struck again and again, battering at the other’s blade until he was able to flick it from his grasp. In an instant, Jacen felt a hand clench around his throat and the shaft of a lightsaber align beneath his chin.
“You do not need your tongue to tell me what I wish to know, Jedi,” Palpatine hissed. “Be silent.”
“You’re afraid!” Jacen gasped through the vice-like grip. “Afraid that I’m right. What’s the matter? Couldn’t get rid of her as easily as you thought?”
Jacen felt the agonizing tendrils of Palpatine’s will encroach on the verges of his conscious mind, but he did not retreat from them. He would not withdraw this time, would not accept defeat.
“I know you can hear me, Aayla! This isn’t his body, and he doesn’t have your mind! Whatever he’s done, tried to show you, made you do, I know you’re still in there! Look at your arm! That’s all he is! A scar! A parasite! A weak, defeated thing, afraid of what you can still do!”
The hand at his throat tightened with unnatural strength, and Jacen began to gag.
The blood-shot coronas around the pupils of Palpatine’s eyes shimmered with rage.
“Your friend is dead, Solo, not even a memory! Soon enough, I will show you the despair that I showed her.”
Jacen’s eyes bulged and the veins on his neck swelled, but he still managed to mouth a few words.
“Just… a… scar.”
The skin at the base of his jaw flared with pain as scattered hairs burst into flame from the intensity of the blade.
Jacen closed his eyes.
Kill me. That’s all I can ask for now.
There was a hissing whoosh from somewhere behind Palpatine. A lightsaber reigniting. Jacen braced himself, expecting the beam at his throat to leap forward. Hazily, he imagined what it would feel like as the column of heat cleaved through his neck, half saw Palpatine spinning back to face Vader once more as his head tumbled to the floor.
The blow did not come. Searing heat still racked his nerves, but it did not resolve into the overwhelming pulse of the lightsaber itself. Disoriented, Jacen opened his eyes a crack. Through the dull glare of the blue edge, he could see Aayla’s face, still only centimeters from his own. The Twi’lek face was a mask of bewilderment far greater than his own, fixed squarely on the hand that still held the weapon in place.
A hand which refused to move from Jacen’s throat.
There was a brief, bubbling hiss and a muffled thump. The eyes widened, fixed Jacen with an unknowable, strangely vacant stare, and then rolled into white orbs. Aayla’s body fell back, crushing hand and lightsaber falling way with it.
Jacen watched her hit the floor and crumple like a discarded doll. The Twi’lek’s back was marred by a long, deep gash that stretched from hip to shoulder. The man stared at the smoking, blackened mark for a long moment, mute, utterly lost in the moment.
After what could have been seconds or an age, Jacen felt his legs begin to give way and had to focus, catching himself before he joined Aayla on the cold floor. Beyond the limp form, he could see Darth Vader, stooped and sagging towards his injured side. The Sith’s red-bladed weapon hung loosely from his left hand, its tip gouging the polished stone.
Vader was not staring at the fallen figure. The darkened lenses of his mask displayed muddy reflections of Jacen’s pallid features, and the Jedi could feel that the man behind them was utterly fixated upon him. He could feel new tendrils of consciousness, touched with the same aura of darkness that Palpatine’s had possessed, but… something more, as well. Curiosity. Trepidation. And suddenly… hope.
Without a second thought, Jacen opened his mind fully to Vader. Memories poured forth, everything that the Jedi could bring to mind and fragments even he could barely recall.
Reminiscences flashed before his eyes. He lay wrapped in his mother’s arms, cooing softly as her calming voice lulled him into sleep. He scampered about the floor of the Millennium Falcon with his brother and sister as their father chuckled over them with the tall, kind-hearted Chewbacca. He stared in wonderment at his first lightsaber as it ignited in his grasp, Uncle Luke’s steadying hands on his shoulders.
He could feel Vader watching alongside him, utterly engrossed by each fleeting recollection. Almost tenderly, the man sifted through Jacen’s childhood, lingering over images and sensations as though they were his own, reluctant to let any fade away. When they came to Jacen’s years as a learner at the Jedi Praxeum, discovering the ways of the Force under Luke Skywalker’s close, careful tutelage, a swell of emotion washed over Vader, but he endured, savoring every snippet of memory Jacen could offer him.
As quickly as they had bubbled up, the recollections drifted back into Jacen’s subconscious, and the two were alone in the darkening throne room again. The man across from Jacen stood outwardly unchanged, his battered, dark armor and swept helmet sinister in his weapon’s crimson light. But as the Jedi looked more closely, felt beyond the battle plating and life support mechanisms to the mind beneath, he found something new.
Slowly, Jacen extended an arm towards the other.
“Anakin?”
Aayla’s crumpled form convulsed. The movement, at first a few reflexive finger tremors and waist motions, moved swiftly up her back and arms, until her neck began to twitch. All at once, her back arched and she flipped over, limbs splayed wide. Both men took a sharp step away from her, but before either could make any other move, the Twi’lek’s chin shot into the air and her eyes and mouth opened wide.
There was a shriek, an echoing, ethereal wail that seemed to resonate from the foundation of the palace itself. Icy wind suddenly whipped across Jacen’s face, not from the open Coruscanti sky, but rather the space just in front of him. In a moment, it was a howling gale that meshed with the otherworldly screech and overwhelmed all other sensation. Gritting through the assault, Jacen saw that a hazy light had begun to pour from Aayla. It surged from her mouth and eyes in streams of dense mist that collected a meter above her face, swirling with formless, shadowy patterns. As Jacen watched, the cloud became a thunderhead, charged with violent cracks of lightning.
A wrinkle on the billowing surface of the phenomenon flowed through the churning winds until it faced Jacen, and he could see that it was a face, barely recognizable, but dreadfully familiar. Lightning coursed into its eye sockets, and the visage flared into life. The shapeless maw of its mouth gaped hungrily, and the entity coalesced around the face and surged forward, straight at the Jedi. Jacen’s body seemed to be rooted in place, and he could do nothing but watch as the cloud enveloped him and the savage, crackling light and shadow became his world.
“No!”
The booming voice cut through the roar of the gale, and Jacen suddenly felt himself falling. In a moment, he was flat on his back, free of the entity’s overwhelming presence. The swirling form still hung above him, but there was something else inside of it too, now, a thrashing mass of black. A glint in the corner of his eye caught Jacen’s eye, and he turned his head to find Darth Vader’s lightsaber pommel on the floor several meters away, abandoned by its master.
The wailing of the gale sharpened into a screech that seemed to shake the stones on which Jacen lay. The thunderhead churned and compressed, its surface immersed in a storm of arching lightning. The entity disappeared into the swirling light, and when it cleared, Darth Vader stood alone. The reinforced composite of his armor ran like melted glass and the rest of his suit was bathed in bluish fire that constantly guttered and reignited, burning away fabrics design to withstand the harshest extremes of nature.
And yet, the man beneath stood straighter and prouder than Jacen had ever seen before. His right arm still hung limply at his side, but he seemed untroubled by it, his posture wide and steadfast even as his vital coverings melted into the whipping air. As Jacen raised himself onto his arms, the man turned to face him. The sharp, intimidating contours of his mask had dissolved away, leaving a soft, muddy mass and wide eyes that glowed with residual light.
“Tell Leia that I’m sorry,” he said in a voice that bore no hint of artificiality or anger. “Tell your mother that I’m proud of her. And when you see Luke again, let him know that… that I love him. Let him know that I always will.”
With that, he turned away, stared out at the boundless night sky, and began to run. In a few long strides he was at the brink, and he plunged over it without hesitation. The man plummeted swiftly past darkened windows and vast supports, shedding corroded coverings and trailing a wreath of barbed electricity that still lashed at his body.
As he felt his flesh begin to dissolve into the rushing night air, the man sensed the other mind near his own, and knew it perceived everything he did. But as the world melted away into crisp, white light and the other felt fear, he found only a settling calm. Dark memories faded with sight, and for the first time in far, far too long, Anakin was at peace.
------------------------------------
Deep within the Forerunner device’s computer system, Cortana registered another fluctuation in the structure of the rift network. This one was much like the first she had perceived, just after accessing the machine’s navigation and targeting processor. Smaller and somewhat muted, it nonetheless sent a ripple across the plot of three-dimensional space that represented the functional aspect of the portal device. The AI could only guess at the cause of the distortions, but their effects were all too apparent. They swept over the minute lines and horizons that connected the four major convergences of activity on her plot, bending them out of shape and causing their anchor points to drift.
Her frustration and agitation mounted as she tried to keep track of several strands she had focused on as possible egress lines from her own anchor point. The technology she was trying to comprehend and manipulate was quite unlike anything she’d been programmed to encounter, and her brief experiences with Forerunner virtual systems and half-blind rift travel were the only reasons she wasn’t entirely overwhelmed.
The rapidly-ticking mission clock in the back of her mind wasn’t helping matters.
Desperate to keep a hold on the shifting, immaterial pathways, she focused on the course of one of them as it wound into a major convergence point. Suddenly, she realized that it terminated quite close to the epicenter of the most recent fluctuation.
Things have a way of blowing up around you, Chief, whether you set them off or not. Let’s hope you’re consistent as I know you are.
---------------------------------------------
“Jacen?”
Aayla lay against Jacen, her head cradled in his arms.
“Yes, Aayla. I’m here.”
She was silent for a long moment, her breath slow and labored. Only one eye was open, its heavily-lidded orb defined by a clouded iris of hazel.
“It’s gone.”
“Palpatine is gone. For good. You beat him, Aayla.”
She coughed weakly.
“I did nothing. I fell. I failed.”
Jacen shook his head and placed a hand on one of her limp lekku. It was as cold as the night air.
“If that was true, I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now. You fought him. You resisted the dark, and now Palpatine is gone.”
“No. No, I didn’t resist the dark. I tried to use it. I wanted revenge, Jacen. I wanted it so badly. I needed to destroy him, and I didn’t care how I did it. And it worked. At least, I thought…”
She paused.
“I failed the Order.”
“That’s not true…”
“Yes, Jacen, it is. You might not understand now, but I hope that you do someday.” She paused again, waiting until Jacen looked her squarely in her open eye. “To be a Jedi is never to succumb. Never to compromise what we believe in for personal reasons. What I may have done at the end doesn’t atone for my failure.”
Jacen held her gaze. “You’re still a good person. You did what you thought was right. You did what you had to.”
Aayla’s eye lingered on Jacen for a moment in silence, and then slid shut.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
Jacen tried not to glance at her withered body. Even without much training as a healer, he knew that she was well beyond help.
“I can carry you,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “We should get going soon. I wouldn’t really choose this place to set up camp. With all the trouble, I forgot to bring blankets.”
The Twi’lek didn’t reply.
“How about it? Aayla?”
Jacen looked down at her calm, set features, and knew.
-------------------------------------------
R2-D2 hummed and beeped busily as he interfaced with the security routing hub that was imbedded in one wall of the small communications room. Aside from the holographic projector that took up one corner of the space and the large section of grating that the Master Chief had forcibly removed to reveal the hub propped against another wall, there was plenty of room for the astromech to bustle from port to port as he looked for the correct data feed and plumbed tertiary networks for lightly-encrypted backdoors. The Chief and Reginald Barclay stood well out of his way, flanking the chamber’s only door as they waited.
After a few minutes, R2-D2 disengaged from the last access slot and turned to face his new human companions, emitting a triumphant tone.
“What’s it saying?” the Chief asked Barclay.
The engineer stared at the droid curiously.
“I’m not sure, but it does sound happy.”
The tone went flat with tired exasperation, and R2 made for the door. It opened automatically and he rolled out into the hall without incident. Cautiously, the two followed.
“We must be being followed,” Barclay remarked as the trio moved down a long, windowless hallway, identical to virtually every other one they had encountered on the level. “Imperials don’t give up so easily. I mean, we’re still in their facility. They should be able to track our every move, and I don’t see why they’d let us avoid them like this.”
The Chief was somewhat annoyed with Barclay’s nervous chatter, but he had to admit the man made a good point. They hadn’t run into as much as a cleaning droid since Barclay had been freed. They’re progress hadn’t been exactly covert, and the only real effort they’d made to cover their tracks were the astromech droid’s periodic stops next to control terminals. At first, the Chief had suspect that the little machine was simply locking doors and checking floor plans, but the fact that they’d avoided patrols for so long indicated that the droid was more skilled than he gave it credit for.
Indeed, each passing minute that they didn’t come face to face with a squad of stormtroopers made him more and more suspicious of the astromech. It was clearly more than just a piece of service of equipment, and neither man could guess why it had been attached to Darth Vader’s detail. Nevertheless, it was keeping them alive and out of enemy hands, and for the moment, that was all that mattered.
Besides, there was a more pressing concern on the Chief’s mind.
“Sixteen minutes until pickup,” he muttered, checking his mission clock for what seemed like the hundredth time.
“Are we close to where you were dropped?” Barclay asked.
The Chief checked his motion tracker, still mostly useless, and took stock of their recent movements.
“We should be close to the evac point, but we’re still thirty levels too high.”
Barclay frowned.
“Then shouldn’t we be looking for lifts? I know you don’t want to use them, but what other option do we have? The service tubes didn’t work out.”
They had attempted to descend by way of a service conduit they had located, but it was only traversable for a few levels before it split into dozens of smaller channels and pipeways. Plainly, the architects of the facility had been somewhat more security-minded than the designers behind most Starfleet vessels.
Slowly, the Chief nodded.
“We’ll have to use them. Hopefully, your little friend can keep the lifts covered and working all the way down.”
As if responding to the conversation, the R2 unit issued a few high notes and turned down a side passage. After a dozen or so meters, they came to another doorway, and R2-D2 indicated towards it with a spin of his head. With Barclay covering him a safe distance down the hallway with his blaster rifle, the Chief backed next to the door, opened it, and after a ‘clear’ signal from the engineer spun inward, weapon at the ready.
He found himself in a small turbolift chamber. Five doors adorned the bare walls; three leading to awaiting turbolift shafts, his entryway, and another on the opposite side of the room that looked as though it had been sealed shut with a welding torch. Beyond it, muffed shouting put the Chief immediately on edge. He might have withdrawn outright, had it not been for the room’s occupants.
Leaning against the far turbolift, Jacen Solo sat with his lightsaber lit in one hand. Propped next to him, the frail, limp body of a blue-skinned woman lolled, her eyes closed. The Chief immediately recognized Aayla Secura, remembering the desperate flight from the Poloon system, where he’d seen her last.
“Chief,” Jacen said, clearly exhausted. “I’d been hoping you’d find your way here soon. I ran into some trouble on the way, and I’m not sure how long it’ll take them to get through.” He nodded towards the partially-melted door.
Keeping one eye on the door, the Chief moved to Jacen’s side, Barclay and R2 close behind. The Jedi nodded weakly when he saw the astromech, but the droid showed no sign of recognition.
“Does she need medical attention?” the Chief asked kneeling next to Aayla. He knew the answer before Jacen responded.
“She’s one with the Force, now. I just couldn’t leave her here.”
The Chief nodded, turning his attention to the young man. There would be time for questions later.
“What about you?”
“I’m just… tired.”
“Chief,” Barclay said anxiously. Jacen’s sudden appearance had been enough to mollify his nerves briefly, but a low banging had begun beyond the sealed door. The R2 unit added his own warning tone.
“Can you walk?” the Chief asked Jacen.
He nodded, quite unconvincingly.
“Barclay, help the Jedi into this lift.”
The ride was cramped but uneventful. R2-D2 took a few moments to negotiate with the lift computer, but it quickly dropped them the number of levels the Chief indicated, and they exited into yet another empty hallway. Nonetheless, the Spartan felt particularly compromised, burdened now by Aayla’s body, even though he hadn’t objected to Jacen’s request to bring it along. The Jedi moved quickly enough with Barclay’s support, and within a few minutes, they were back on ground the Chief recognized.
Their luck didn’t hold.
After passing through several abandoned security checkpoints, the Chief walked headfirst into a pair of Imperial personnel. Fortunately, the technician and black-uniformed army officer had their backs turned to the doorway, occupied with a security display, and the Chief had time to shift Aayla to one shoulder and level both before they could do more than draw their blaster pistols. Nevertheless, one managed to key an alert button on his comlink before he fell, and although no audible alarm sounded, the Chief knew their time was up.
The rest of the way to the long, windowed hallway was a running gunfight. Evidently, the facility’s guard had been deployed in full force to try and locate the intruders, and the R2 unit’s diversions had done little more than slow their search. They ran into two more pockets of soldiers before rounding the corner into the dead-end hallway, and could hear more echoing down the corridors after them.
“I don’t see anything,” Barclay said as they came to the end of the passageway, now brightly-lit against the night sky. He eased Jacen, who now barely seemed to be conscious, against a wall. The Chief did the same, laying the Twi’lek out near where the rippling distortion had appeared before.
“It hasn’t been reactivated,” he replied. The clock was at two hours, fifty-eight minutes. They were early.
Shouting emanated from down the adjoining hallway, and the sound of multiple, rapid footfalls soon joined it. The Chief checked the ammo in his blaster and indicated that Barclay do the same. Unimpressed by the remaining load-out, he glanced down at Jacen’s lightsaber and considered briefly, but decided against it. If the guns weren’t enough to buy them time, he wasn’t about to go down waving an energy sword like a lunatic. That only worked if one could see the blaster bolts coming, and even he wasn’t that fast.
“Grab Solo!” the Chief ordered. “Get as close to the wall as you can!”
Barclay hurried to comply, fumbling with his blaster as he pulled the other man against the flat surface.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, ten seconds.
The Chief kneeled a few meters in front of Barclay, placing himself directly in any attacker’s line of fire. His shields wouldn’t take many blaster bolts, but if worse came to worse, it could buy the others a few more seconds. Just as he lined his rifle up, the first white-armored head appeared, right in the iron sight.
He smiled. Sometimes, it was the little things.
After the first three troopers dropped without firing a shot, their pursuers smartened up somewhat and slowed their advance. Readjusting his sight, the Chief could tell that they were massing just out of view. At least three officers, judging by the voices, and probably five times that number in grunts. Fleetingly, the Chief wished he’d saved one of the jury-rigged phaser grenades from the assault on Kerrigan’s citadel.
“Brace yourself!” he called backed to Barclay. “They’re about to make a push!”
By way of response, a blaster bolt tore down the hallway from behind him and nearly took the shoulder off of a trooper who’d edged too close.
That’s the spirit.
Two hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Time.
Three stormtroopers appeared at the end of the hallway, E-11s blazing. The Chief responded in kind and knocked down one before the others could even draw a bead on him. He felt three shots sheer over his head, and gasped as another punched him in the gut. His energy shield exploded with luminescence, and the indicators on his HUD burned bright red. The barrier wouldn’t withstand another direct hit.
The surviving soldiers had already disappeared from view, however. The Chief was momentarily confused, until he saw the squat, cylindrical device rolling down the hallway towards him.
Ah.
“Cover!” he yelled over his shoulder, swiftly backpedaling.
There was no response.
For a terrible moment, the Chief expected to find Barclay with a gaping hole in his chest, but when he reached the end of the hallway, there was no one there at all, save Aayla’s body. It only took the Chief a moment to realize that the once-solid wall was rippling like pond water on a windy day.
The Spartan didn’t pause. In an instant, the Twi’lek was in his arms, and in the next, Coruscant, the ambling grenade, and throng of shortly bewildered soldiers were memories.
The last thing that the Chief registered before he slipped into the rift was the mission clock, displaying 3:00:11:70.
Funny. Very funny.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Oh you tease. Just one more chapter after this, and an epilogue perhaps?
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
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- Joined: 2007-12-22 11:11am
- Location: United States
Words seem inadequate, Noble Ire, when one attempts to summarize one's feelings upon reading such an unbelievably epic conclusion to this story.
Though I am glad that all of the main characters, even Barclay, survived the journey, I feel compelled to say a little requiescat in pace for Aayla, Tassador, and Anakin. You honored them all, a thousand times over.
I can only echo my fellow esteemed readers' hopes for an epilogue.
Though I am glad that all of the main characters, even Barclay, survived the journey, I feel compelled to say a little requiescat in pace for Aayla, Tassador, and Anakin. You honored them all, a thousand times over.
I can only echo my fellow esteemed readers' hopes for an epilogue.
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
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Vehrec
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2204
- Joined: 2006-04-22 12:29pm
- Location: The Ohio State University
- Contact:
Luck. He's always been lucky, so we might just consider that a portion of that luck. It's all over but the victory celebrations, so I hope he gets a chance to put that luck to good use by takeing a couple month's pay from some poor sods.
That was an epic ride, and a nice note to end it on.
That was an epic ride, and a nice note to end it on.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)There will indeed be an epilogue.
And I'm glad people got the last few lines. The reference was a bit esoteric, but I thought it worked.
And I'm glad people got the last few lines. The reference was a bit esoteric, but I thought it worked.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
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Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Well, now that this is mostly almost finished, what's next? We expect great things from you, Noble Ire... 
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
Originally, I had planned a sequel to The Rift, but due to the time commitment involved and other factors, I think that will have to be shelved for now. However, I have been toying with a ideas for a few short stories set in the story's universe. I also plan to write a bit for the "EU-fic" project, college schedule permitting.Master_Baerne wrote:Well, now that this is mostly almost finished, what's next? We expect great things from you, Noble Ire...
The "big" project on the horizon for me, though, is an original work I've been playing around with for several years. I've actually started a few drafts and put them up here and there, but with The Rift ongoing and other considerations, they never really went anywhere. I'm not sure if I'll actually put the new version online (it would be nice to have something I could actually try publishing, if I got that far, and internet exposure can be problematic for that), but if it gets off the ground at all (a big if, to be sure), I will be looking for editors and peer-reviewers.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
-
Master_Baerne
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1984
- Joined: 2006-11-09 08:54am
- Location: Wouldn't you like to know?
Well, I wish you luck with that.
Conversion Table:
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
2000 Mockingbirds = 2 Kilomockingbirds
Basic Unit of Laryngitis = 1 Hoarsepower
453.6 Graham Crackers = 1 Pound Cake
1 Kilogram of Falling Figs - 1 Fig Newton
Time Between Slipping on a Banana Peel and Smacking the Pavement = 1 Bananosecond
Half of a Large Intestine = 1 Semicolon
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Themightytom
- Sith Devotee
- Posts: 2818
- Joined: 2007-12-22 11:11am
- Location: United States
Either way I still thought it was better read my comments many chapters back (near chapter 55).Themightytom wrote:it certainly has the virtue OF BEING FINISHED!!!!fusion wrote:This is just epic. A fic that has surpassed many. Once again I will say this: this fic surpasses Starcross in quality.
Thank-you for the fic
It is very well done.
I appreciate the favorable comparisons, but I don't think its fair for people to be bashing Starcrossed for a lack of updates. I know how difficult it is to find time for fanfics when there are pressing concerns offline (and non-pressing ones, for that matter). I have no doubt that Stravo has a far more taxing schedule than I do, even at my busiest.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
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The Vortex Empire
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 1586
- Joined: 2006-12-11 09:44pm
- Location: Rhode Island
Doesn't change the fact that this was better.Noble Ire wrote:I appreciate the favorable comparisons, but I don't think its fair for people to be bashing Starcrossed for a lack of updates. I know how difficult it is to find time for fanfics when there are pressing concerns offline (and non-pressing ones, for that matter). I have no doubt that Stravo has a far more taxing schedule than I do, even at my busiest.
Epilogue
Jean-Luc Picard cradled the small, glass teacup in his hands, enjoying the warmth of the brown, steaming liquid inside. He held it beneath his nose and inhaled deeply, allowing the rich, faintly citrusy aroma to wash over him. When the rising tendrils of vapor had thinned, he raised the cup to his lips and sipped the infusion delicately.
Bitter.
Frowning, Picard lowered the cup and placed it on the long, uncluttered desk before him. He looked at it for a few moments, and then sighed. For some reason, the ship’s replicators didn’t seem to be capable of producing a good cup of Earl Grey. He pivoted his chair away from the cup and removed a datapad from the desk. The captain reminded himself to have a technician come in to look at his ready room’s replicator as soon as one was available. Non-essential food processors were quite low on the Enterprise-E’s maintenance schedule of late.
Picard activated the tablet and began to scan through its contents. He had read it all before, multiple times: damage reports from his engineering crews, after-battle statistics for the entire Allied fleet, preliminary surveying of Earth’s surface. The captain thumbed past recent reports from ground teams dispatched to the planet’s surface to begin the task of wresting Earth from the Zerg. Kerrigan and her Celebrates were gone, but her forces still infested every continent, feral and unpredictable. Some early estimates placed their numbers in the billions, and no one was sure if the creatures would simply die off without their masters, or if every last one would eventually have to be hunted down. Either way, the battle to reclaim Earth was far from over.
To say that the push to Kerrigan’s fortress and the corresponding orbital engagement had been costly was a drastic understatement. The commanders of the Allied Fleet had known going in that they were fundamentally a diversion for the ground assault and would be both outnumbered and pinned against Earth’s atmosphere, but that didn’t lessen the sting of the losses that they had sustained. Of the five space-borne battle groups of the Fleet, numbering 278 hulls at the beginning of the battle, only 104 had survived until Kerrigan fled Earth and the Zerg defense collapsed, and well over half of those had suffered severe damage. Picard’s group Vulcan and the primarily-Klingon Qo’nos had been hit the hardest, with the latter suffering almost total losses. General K’Nera had barely survived the annihilation of his battle group, and only a dozen functioning Klingon ships were left in the Allied Fleet.
The statistics belied the valor and skill of the Fleet’s commanders and crew, however. Reviewing the disposition of the enemy force and the suicidal ferocity of the Zerg counterattack after the fact, Picard was astonished that at any of them had survived at all. The performance of Lt. Commander Addel’s fighter squadrons and the Millennium Falcon were particularly outstanding; they had scored three confirmed Cerebrate kills and formed the lynchpin of both the initial breakthrough and Battle Group Earth’s deployment, at the cost of six starfighters and pilots. General Solo alone had destroyed more infested vessels than the Enterprise’s entire combat squadron.
Accounts from the African savanna told a similar story. Only a handful of the troop-laden hulls had made it past the Zerg aerial defenses, and most of the soldiers who fought their way to the Kilimanjaro hive were wiped out, but small strike teams under the command of the Master Chief, Major Truul Besteen, and Commander Worf had nonetheless managed to disrupt the enemy perimeter and deliver High Templar Tassadar to his target. Kerrigan had fled, and both she and the Protoss were now missing, but her fortress and the alien transportation device that it housed were in Allied hands.
All told, Earth had cost them more than 30,000 lives. Flipping through column of names and serial numbers, Picard told himself that it had been worth it. He knew that their sacrifice had been necessary, and indeed, vital; without their Queen, dead or in flight, the Zerg were beaten.
And yet, the victory seemed hollow.
Through the small window of his ready room, Picard could see a small portion of the Earth’s gentle curvature rolling by. He saw flecks of green on a plain of dusty brown, and a matte of dark blue beyond. Humanity’s cradle had survived the infestation. It had been scarred and beaten, but it would flourish again, in time. But, as for its children…
A short while later, the room’s door chirped.
“Come in,” Picard said. He had left the datapad at his desk, and was standing at a wall terminal.
The door slid open and Fleet Admiral Nechayev walked in. Her poof of blonde hair bore a few more strands of white and her cheeks a few more wrinkles, but she seemed outwardly much as she had been before the final assault. The real change in her had taken Picard several meetings to recognize, but as he moved to greet her now, it was impossible to miss. The keenness in her tired eyes was dull now, and her air of determination spent.
Nechayev eyed the terminal.
“I’m not interrupting anything, I hope.”
Picard shook his head and stepped to one side, revealing the screen. It displayed a bright, outdoor scene, a cobble-stoned street lined with colorful cafes and low, antiquated buildings. In the background, a silver spire soared into the cloudless sky, glinting in the sun.
“Just reminiscing.” He glanced back at the image. “Paris, just off the Seine. I always used to visit this street during stopovers at Earth. There was a little bakery there, and…” Picard trailed off. “I’m sorry, Admiral. You didn’t come here for this.”
Nechayev lingered on the scene. “I visited Paris once, when I was nineteen. I always wanted to go back, but I never had the time.”
Picard looked at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly.
“There is always something like that, isn’t there? The little things you always expect to come back to, until they’re gone.” He exhaled, took one last look at the airy, cheerful glimpse, and deactivated the display.
“Please.” Picard indicated to a chair, and both officers seated themselves at the desk. “Tea?”
Nechayev passed a critical eye over the full cup. “Yours didn’t suit you?”
The captain grimaced slightly. “Ah, yes. The replicators aren’t quite up to specifications at the moment. Something else, perhaps?”
Nechayev waved a hand. “No, thank you. Frankly, though, I could have used the caffeine an hour ago.”
Picard nodded. “Commander Suran.”
“The Romulans are leaving the system as we speak. I tried to convince the Commander to stay until after the memorial ceremony, but he insisted that the Romulan Senate demanded the immediate return of his task force. I have no doubt of that, but it was plain that he still doesn’t buy our claims of innocence.”
Picard sank back into his chair and steepled his hands in front of his chest. “Suran is an intelligent man. There was never much chance that he would believe that the timely and unwilling arrival of his task force or the phantom Zerg fleet were random occurrences. He suspects, and for all Cortana’s efforts, there’s a good chance that he’ll find something to link the incident back to us.”
The circumstances surrounding the entrance of Suran’s unit of warbirds late in the battle were still top-secret, known only to Picard, Nechayev, Cortana, and a handful of others. The ships had served to disrupt the enemy assault and significantly boost the morale of the Allied forces in their darkest hour, and Picard was certain that they had played a crucial role in staving off the all-out massacre that should have occurred. As far as most everyone knew, Romulan crews included, the Star Empire had intended to aid their humanoid compatriots all along. Suran and his officers were hailed as heroes, and the Commander had decided to keep the truth of the event under wraps. Nevertheless, the task force had sustained significant casualties for its efforts, and Picard knew that Romulans were not prone to let mysteries go unanswered and misusage unavenged.
“We’ll have to hope that Cortana is as good at covering her tracks as she says she is.” Nechayev shook her head. “We can’t risk antagonizing the Romulans right now. As things stand, they’re the only major power in the quadrant with anything approaching an intact military and infrastructural base. If we keep them the champions of this thing, they might just give the rest of us time to get back on track.”
Picard leaned forward, his eyebrows raised. “Back on track, Admiral?”
Nechayev sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, Captain. Kerrigan is gone, one can only hope for good, but she left a mark unlike any we’ve ever had to deal with before. Most of the Federation is like Earth, half-dead and covered in feral Zerg. The Council is all but gone, and Starfleet is what little we have assembled in orbit. The Klingons, the Cardassians… they’re even worse off than we are. How can things go back to the way they were?”
Picard waited quietly for her to continue, but he could see the answer on her face just as clearly as he felt it in his own gut.
“We can’t,” she said at last. “Maybe the machine buried in that mountain down there holds an answer to our problems, or perhaps our Alliance friends do, but as things are now, the Federation is finished. We may have taken back Earth, but what we started there can’t be recovered. When Kerrigan started this war, she killed the Federation just as surely as she killed the seventy billion that followed it.”
Picard nodded stiffly. He had come to that realization before the battle for Earth had even commenced, but to hear someone like Nechayev voice it so definitively truly drove it home.
The admiral allowed the thought to settle for a minute, and then pulled something from a pocket of her uniform. It was a simple, black box, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand as she offered it across the desk to Picard.
“This is why I stopped by,” she said. “Take it.”
With a moment of hesitation, Picard picked the box from the woman’s hand and turned it over in his own. He didn’t need to open it to know what lay inside. A small, golden bar enclosing a line of four pips. The mark of the admiralty.
When Picard made no sign of opening the box or speaking, Nechayev continued.
“The Federation may have been defeated, but Starfleet remains. This Fleet, and all it stands for, still remains. There are billions of people out there right now, Vulcan, Klingon, Cardassian, and human alike, celebrating what we accomplished here. They needed heroes, and now they have them. Every single man and woman who fought in this system is a hero, both for what they did, and what they represent.”
“But more than heroes, they need leaders. There are far too few left, and this struggle is far from over. We need good men, officers who are able to inspire and willing to take chances. You are a good man, Jean-Luc, and a one of the finest soldiers I’ve ever had the privilege of serving with. Duty demands that you take the next step.”
Picard stared at her for a long time, and then looked back at the box. With a nudge of his thumb, he pushed the top up, just enough to see the bit of metal inside.
“I suppose I won’t have to worry about being stuck at a desk if I take this now, will I?”
At last, Nechayev cracked a thin smile.
“You may miss that luxury yet, Admiral. I know I do.”
---------------------------------------------------
The Master Chief stood at ease in the turbolift, watching soft lights rush by as the capsule propelled him along the Enterprise-E’s length. The space was vacant and quiet, save for the soft hum of the electromagnets that guided the compartment through its shaft. To the Spartan, it seemed like days since he had found such a calm spot. The rest of the vessel was crawling with engineering teams and reassigned crewmen who had lost their own ships during the battle, but not here.
And yet, he was not alone.
“Sometimes, I wonder if you ever take this thing off,” Cortana groused, making little effort to hide the playful tone the Chief knew so well. “I think an occasion like this might benefit from a bit more human interaction on your part. Not everyone can see past the stoic and battle-hardened veneer you like to carry around.”
The Chief looked down at the dull green plating of his MJONIR armor. He had taken the time to clean and polish it, but the suit still bore months-worth of dents and burns from a dozen battles. Its internal components were even worse for wear; if he ever made it back to the UNSC, the Chief wouldn’t envy the technicians assigned to repair it.
“Maybe that’s the way people should see me,” he replied. “This suit is what I am.” He could tell Cortana was about to fire back with something, and hurried to cut her off. “Besides, I lost my luggage somewhere around Reach. If you see a tailor who sells UNSC dress uniforms, let me know.”
He heard the AI laugh, and almost laughed himself. Having her back, close to his thoughts, was an enormous relief, enough to dispel the residual tension of the mission to Earth. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to have the little, faintly cool presence at the back of his mind, and now that it was back, he never wanted to let it go again.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Cortana said. “Anyways, I don’t really mind. I’m not that good at social events. I’d much rather tag along in here and let you do all the talking.”
“Sure. That’ll happen.”
The turbolift came to a stop and the Chief stepped out. Immediately, he was thrust back into a stream of activity, and moved out of the way as a group of ensigns hurried into the empty lift. The corridor beyond was lined with dotted with exposed wall conduits, and as the Chief moved into it, he had to navigate around small knots of engineers as they replaced fried isolinear chips and realigned loose wiring.
“So, why did you decide to come up?” he asked as he walked. “I’ve heard about the progress you’re making with the Forerunner portal, and I thought I’d have to go planetside again to dig you out of it.”
“It was hard to leave.” She was suddenly engaged, energized by the change of subject. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve found in its data cores. Kerrigan’s story about the multi-dimensional empire you told me about? I’m beginning to believe it. I’ve found primary subroutines in the targeting array that seem to lead to three other installations like the one under Kilimanjaro. It’s a good bet that there’s one in our reality, and High Templar Tassadar’s, and the Alliance’s. I haven’t translated nearly enough of the functional programming to know for sure yet, but I think that the off-location anomalies in each universe are each tied to their respective facility.”
“Any word on Tassadar?”
Cortana took on a more somber tone. “Not since the last time you asked. I’m still keeping an eye on rift activity as best I can, but I haven’t seen any movement since I pulled you back. The system registered some pretty big distortions, and if he was actually in… whatever the space the rifts exist in is when they happened, my hopes for him haven’t improved. Of course, the same goes for Kerrigan.”
She paused briefly.
“Did you tell the Jedi?”
“I did,” the Chief said. “But I don’t think I had to.”
Cortana was silent for a few moments before continuing, her vigor restored.
“I’m making good progress on codifying the device’s functional characteristics, but something that’s been bothering me about it is the rifts that Kerrigan projected all over place, like the one that caught us. I haven’t been able to figure out how to open any new ones, but I’ve found several of the anomalies that she made, still open – I’m not certain yet, but I think a few of the stable ones might even lead back to Covenant space, or at least our own universe. In any event, I think I’ve uncovered a few drivers related to remote rift creation, but the thing is, I haven’t found anything that should be able modify temporal correlation.”
“Meaning?”
“Time, Chief. You remember when I accidentally dropped the Republica near Reach. The Covenant Armada was still bombarding the planet; somehow, travel through the rifts had brought us back twenty-one days. When we escaped and ended up back in this reality, what should have been well under a month was actually seven years. Jacen Solo also reported displacement; in his world, the Galactic Empire had fallen from dominance decades before. In short, there is an obvious temporal element to the rift device’s functionality.”
“But I can’t find any evidence of it. From what you saw on Coruscant and what little data I’ve been able to gather from the anomalies that are still open and connected to the device, the timeline of each universe is both unitary and constant with every other one. Unless I’m wrong, the current, fourth-dimensional coordinate of each reality, the ones we’ve seen most recently, are the only ones that an individual traveling through an anomaly could reach.”
“So, no more time travel.” The thought suited the Chief just fine.
“Not unless I can figure out how Kerrigan did it. Maybe there’s an element of the device beyond its physical components. We know she was a powerful telepath. Perhaps the rifts respond in a way that I can’t predict to extra-physical stimulus. Solo’s abilities are different, at least as I understand it, but perhaps if he were to come back down to the facility and…”
“Later,” the Chief said firmly, stopping in front of a set of wide doors, set with Starfleet’s arrow-and-streak emblem. Numerous, muffled voices sounded from beyond.
“Of course,” Cortana said quickly, turning her attention back to their surroundings. “So… this is the place, I believe. Shall we?”
-----------------------------------------
Jacen Solo sat near the corner of the Enterprise’s banquet hall, wedged onto the sill that framed one of the wide windows lining its outer wall. Positioned with one leg propped on the narrow platform and his arms crossed, he looked out, lost in thought. To his right, Earth’s southern hemisphere hung, full and beautiful for all the dark marks scratched and spattered across its surface. To his left, a mass of bodies stood, each lost in their own thoughts, overcome by reverent silence.
The memorial had drawn people from all over the Allied Fleet, and, as word of the costly victory had already spread far across space, beyond. Jacen had seen Captain Picard, Commander Data, Worf, and much of what remained of the Enterprise-D’s crew, spoken briefly with a few of them. Admiral Nechayev and Captain Gehirn were there, along with several other high-ranking officers of the Fleet. General K’Nera was not among them, still confined to medical quarters for injuries sustained during the assault.
Others were in attendance, as well, dressed in a hodgepodge of crisp dress uniforms and hastily-cleaned combat fatigues. Major Truul and the Master Chief stood across the room from him, both looking distinctly uncomfortable. Closer to the center, Commander Addel was in a place of honor, his face a mask of pride and sadness.
Just within view, behind a rank of rank of Klingons and Cardassians in full battle garb, Jacen could see another contingent, arrived from Bajor only hours before. Captain Ryceed was there, pale-looking and off-balance, but resolute. She was supported by the First Minister of the Bajoran people, one of a handful of chiefs-of-state who had traveled to Earth for the ceremony.
And, standing with them, surrounded by Chewbacca and the newly-reunited C-3PO and R2-D2, were his parents.
Tell Leia that I’m sorry. Tell your mother that I’m proud of her.
Anakin’s words had stayed with him constantly since the flight from Coruscant, and his mother’s appearance instilled them with fresh potency. Even now, in the middle of the packed hall, he wanted to go to her, tell her everything that had happened, tell both his parents who he really was. The urge to establish a connection with them had been there since he had first seen them on the Alliance flagship, but now it was all but irresistible.
And yet, he did resist, if only for a little longer. Their lives were already changed utterly from the pasts of the Han and Leia he knew; Jacen didn’t want to complicate things any further, for his sake as much as theirs.
Still, if Cortana couldn’t figure out a way to get everyone home, truly home…
Patience. One way or the other, the time will come.
The ceremony was somber, quiet, and low-key. Nechayev and few others had already spoken of valor and sacrifice, and now Picard was adding his own words, a solemn remembrance for the fallen. In spite of himself, Jacen slipped back into his thoughts, his eyes fixed distractedly on the slowly rotating orb beyond the window.
He remembered Aayla, valiant and strong, and yet sorrowful in the end.
He remembered Anakin, resplendent in the Light, redeemed again as he had fallen, to protect what he loved.
He remembered Commander Riker and so many others, lost before they could see the triumph their labors had bought.
And he remembered Tassadar. Events on Coruscant had pushed the Templar’s last, desperate request from his mind, but there, in the reflected light of the scarred world, it came back. He had wanted the Jedi to do what fate had not permitted of him. The Protoss needed a savior, if there were any left to be saved, and that burdened had fallen to Jacen.
But was he ready to be a savior, even if he did find some way to reach Tassadar’s people? Now, more than ever, he was unsure. That wrenching moment in the Emperor’s throne room was still with him, the pure, unrelenting logic of the darkness, and the power he had touched in its course. More, he remembered the Templar’s own view of the Dark and the Light, and how they had seemed to coexist in him. What would he find if he sought out more of the mighty species? What experiences and arcane wisdom might color his inner being?
He was afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid of the past. Afraid of himself.
There was movement close by, and Jacen looked up. Laura had taken a seat next to him, and was watching Picard intently as he continued his commemoration. As Jacen stared at her, brooding thoughts diminished in the glow of her skin against the distant stars, a smile spread across her lips. She turned slightly to face him, and extended a hand.
He took it.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's that. I'd like to thank everyone who helped make The Rift possible. Were it not for the continuous commentary of the readership over the last few years, I doubt that I could have finished it. I especially appreciate the constructive criticism I've received along the way; input on my prose and thematic style has both improved the quality of The Rift and my overall writing skill. Those who have contributed through proofreading and editing deserve particular note; after slogging through nearly four hundred thousand words, many of them misspelled, forgotten, or substituted in bizarre ways, I've developed a new respect for those who edit for a living.
I hope that everyone has enjoyed The Rift, and that I'll be able to provide you all with another diverting bit of writing in the near future. Now, one last indulgence...
May the Force be with you, always.
(I would have preferred to end this by having the screen fade to black as John Williams blares in the background, but, alas, this medium is somewhat limiting technically – there’s always next time)
Jean-Luc Picard cradled the small, glass teacup in his hands, enjoying the warmth of the brown, steaming liquid inside. He held it beneath his nose and inhaled deeply, allowing the rich, faintly citrusy aroma to wash over him. When the rising tendrils of vapor had thinned, he raised the cup to his lips and sipped the infusion delicately.
Bitter.
Frowning, Picard lowered the cup and placed it on the long, uncluttered desk before him. He looked at it for a few moments, and then sighed. For some reason, the ship’s replicators didn’t seem to be capable of producing a good cup of Earl Grey. He pivoted his chair away from the cup and removed a datapad from the desk. The captain reminded himself to have a technician come in to look at his ready room’s replicator as soon as one was available. Non-essential food processors were quite low on the Enterprise-E’s maintenance schedule of late.
Picard activated the tablet and began to scan through its contents. He had read it all before, multiple times: damage reports from his engineering crews, after-battle statistics for the entire Allied fleet, preliminary surveying of Earth’s surface. The captain thumbed past recent reports from ground teams dispatched to the planet’s surface to begin the task of wresting Earth from the Zerg. Kerrigan and her Celebrates were gone, but her forces still infested every continent, feral and unpredictable. Some early estimates placed their numbers in the billions, and no one was sure if the creatures would simply die off without their masters, or if every last one would eventually have to be hunted down. Either way, the battle to reclaim Earth was far from over.
To say that the push to Kerrigan’s fortress and the corresponding orbital engagement had been costly was a drastic understatement. The commanders of the Allied Fleet had known going in that they were fundamentally a diversion for the ground assault and would be both outnumbered and pinned against Earth’s atmosphere, but that didn’t lessen the sting of the losses that they had sustained. Of the five space-borne battle groups of the Fleet, numbering 278 hulls at the beginning of the battle, only 104 had survived until Kerrigan fled Earth and the Zerg defense collapsed, and well over half of those had suffered severe damage. Picard’s group Vulcan and the primarily-Klingon Qo’nos had been hit the hardest, with the latter suffering almost total losses. General K’Nera had barely survived the annihilation of his battle group, and only a dozen functioning Klingon ships were left in the Allied Fleet.
The statistics belied the valor and skill of the Fleet’s commanders and crew, however. Reviewing the disposition of the enemy force and the suicidal ferocity of the Zerg counterattack after the fact, Picard was astonished that at any of them had survived at all. The performance of Lt. Commander Addel’s fighter squadrons and the Millennium Falcon were particularly outstanding; they had scored three confirmed Cerebrate kills and formed the lynchpin of both the initial breakthrough and Battle Group Earth’s deployment, at the cost of six starfighters and pilots. General Solo alone had destroyed more infested vessels than the Enterprise’s entire combat squadron.
Accounts from the African savanna told a similar story. Only a handful of the troop-laden hulls had made it past the Zerg aerial defenses, and most of the soldiers who fought their way to the Kilimanjaro hive were wiped out, but small strike teams under the command of the Master Chief, Major Truul Besteen, and Commander Worf had nonetheless managed to disrupt the enemy perimeter and deliver High Templar Tassadar to his target. Kerrigan had fled, and both she and the Protoss were now missing, but her fortress and the alien transportation device that it housed were in Allied hands.
All told, Earth had cost them more than 30,000 lives. Flipping through column of names and serial numbers, Picard told himself that it had been worth it. He knew that their sacrifice had been necessary, and indeed, vital; without their Queen, dead or in flight, the Zerg were beaten.
And yet, the victory seemed hollow.
Through the small window of his ready room, Picard could see a small portion of the Earth’s gentle curvature rolling by. He saw flecks of green on a plain of dusty brown, and a matte of dark blue beyond. Humanity’s cradle had survived the infestation. It had been scarred and beaten, but it would flourish again, in time. But, as for its children…
A short while later, the room’s door chirped.
“Come in,” Picard said. He had left the datapad at his desk, and was standing at a wall terminal.
The door slid open and Fleet Admiral Nechayev walked in. Her poof of blonde hair bore a few more strands of white and her cheeks a few more wrinkles, but she seemed outwardly much as she had been before the final assault. The real change in her had taken Picard several meetings to recognize, but as he moved to greet her now, it was impossible to miss. The keenness in her tired eyes was dull now, and her air of determination spent.
Nechayev eyed the terminal.
“I’m not interrupting anything, I hope.”
Picard shook his head and stepped to one side, revealing the screen. It displayed a bright, outdoor scene, a cobble-stoned street lined with colorful cafes and low, antiquated buildings. In the background, a silver spire soared into the cloudless sky, glinting in the sun.
“Just reminiscing.” He glanced back at the image. “Paris, just off the Seine. I always used to visit this street during stopovers at Earth. There was a little bakery there, and…” Picard trailed off. “I’m sorry, Admiral. You didn’t come here for this.”
Nechayev lingered on the scene. “I visited Paris once, when I was nineteen. I always wanted to go back, but I never had the time.”
Picard looked at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly.
“There is always something like that, isn’t there? The little things you always expect to come back to, until they’re gone.” He exhaled, took one last look at the airy, cheerful glimpse, and deactivated the display.
“Please.” Picard indicated to a chair, and both officers seated themselves at the desk. “Tea?”
Nechayev passed a critical eye over the full cup. “Yours didn’t suit you?”
The captain grimaced slightly. “Ah, yes. The replicators aren’t quite up to specifications at the moment. Something else, perhaps?”
Nechayev waved a hand. “No, thank you. Frankly, though, I could have used the caffeine an hour ago.”
Picard nodded. “Commander Suran.”
“The Romulans are leaving the system as we speak. I tried to convince the Commander to stay until after the memorial ceremony, but he insisted that the Romulan Senate demanded the immediate return of his task force. I have no doubt of that, but it was plain that he still doesn’t buy our claims of innocence.”
Picard sank back into his chair and steepled his hands in front of his chest. “Suran is an intelligent man. There was never much chance that he would believe that the timely and unwilling arrival of his task force or the phantom Zerg fleet were random occurrences. He suspects, and for all Cortana’s efforts, there’s a good chance that he’ll find something to link the incident back to us.”
The circumstances surrounding the entrance of Suran’s unit of warbirds late in the battle were still top-secret, known only to Picard, Nechayev, Cortana, and a handful of others. The ships had served to disrupt the enemy assault and significantly boost the morale of the Allied forces in their darkest hour, and Picard was certain that they had played a crucial role in staving off the all-out massacre that should have occurred. As far as most everyone knew, Romulan crews included, the Star Empire had intended to aid their humanoid compatriots all along. Suran and his officers were hailed as heroes, and the Commander had decided to keep the truth of the event under wraps. Nevertheless, the task force had sustained significant casualties for its efforts, and Picard knew that Romulans were not prone to let mysteries go unanswered and misusage unavenged.
“We’ll have to hope that Cortana is as good at covering her tracks as she says she is.” Nechayev shook her head. “We can’t risk antagonizing the Romulans right now. As things stand, they’re the only major power in the quadrant with anything approaching an intact military and infrastructural base. If we keep them the champions of this thing, they might just give the rest of us time to get back on track.”
Picard leaned forward, his eyebrows raised. “Back on track, Admiral?”
Nechayev sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, Captain. Kerrigan is gone, one can only hope for good, but she left a mark unlike any we’ve ever had to deal with before. Most of the Federation is like Earth, half-dead and covered in feral Zerg. The Council is all but gone, and Starfleet is what little we have assembled in orbit. The Klingons, the Cardassians… they’re even worse off than we are. How can things go back to the way they were?”
Picard waited quietly for her to continue, but he could see the answer on her face just as clearly as he felt it in his own gut.
“We can’t,” she said at last. “Maybe the machine buried in that mountain down there holds an answer to our problems, or perhaps our Alliance friends do, but as things are now, the Federation is finished. We may have taken back Earth, but what we started there can’t be recovered. When Kerrigan started this war, she killed the Federation just as surely as she killed the seventy billion that followed it.”
Picard nodded stiffly. He had come to that realization before the battle for Earth had even commenced, but to hear someone like Nechayev voice it so definitively truly drove it home.
The admiral allowed the thought to settle for a minute, and then pulled something from a pocket of her uniform. It was a simple, black box, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand as she offered it across the desk to Picard.
“This is why I stopped by,” she said. “Take it.”
With a moment of hesitation, Picard picked the box from the woman’s hand and turned it over in his own. He didn’t need to open it to know what lay inside. A small, golden bar enclosing a line of four pips. The mark of the admiralty.
When Picard made no sign of opening the box or speaking, Nechayev continued.
“The Federation may have been defeated, but Starfleet remains. This Fleet, and all it stands for, still remains. There are billions of people out there right now, Vulcan, Klingon, Cardassian, and human alike, celebrating what we accomplished here. They needed heroes, and now they have them. Every single man and woman who fought in this system is a hero, both for what they did, and what they represent.”
“But more than heroes, they need leaders. There are far too few left, and this struggle is far from over. We need good men, officers who are able to inspire and willing to take chances. You are a good man, Jean-Luc, and a one of the finest soldiers I’ve ever had the privilege of serving with. Duty demands that you take the next step.”
Picard stared at her for a long time, and then looked back at the box. With a nudge of his thumb, he pushed the top up, just enough to see the bit of metal inside.
“I suppose I won’t have to worry about being stuck at a desk if I take this now, will I?”
At last, Nechayev cracked a thin smile.
“You may miss that luxury yet, Admiral. I know I do.”
---------------------------------------------------
The Master Chief stood at ease in the turbolift, watching soft lights rush by as the capsule propelled him along the Enterprise-E’s length. The space was vacant and quiet, save for the soft hum of the electromagnets that guided the compartment through its shaft. To the Spartan, it seemed like days since he had found such a calm spot. The rest of the vessel was crawling with engineering teams and reassigned crewmen who had lost their own ships during the battle, but not here.
And yet, he was not alone.
“Sometimes, I wonder if you ever take this thing off,” Cortana groused, making little effort to hide the playful tone the Chief knew so well. “I think an occasion like this might benefit from a bit more human interaction on your part. Not everyone can see past the stoic and battle-hardened veneer you like to carry around.”
The Chief looked down at the dull green plating of his MJONIR armor. He had taken the time to clean and polish it, but the suit still bore months-worth of dents and burns from a dozen battles. Its internal components were even worse for wear; if he ever made it back to the UNSC, the Chief wouldn’t envy the technicians assigned to repair it.
“Maybe that’s the way people should see me,” he replied. “This suit is what I am.” He could tell Cortana was about to fire back with something, and hurried to cut her off. “Besides, I lost my luggage somewhere around Reach. If you see a tailor who sells UNSC dress uniforms, let me know.”
He heard the AI laugh, and almost laughed himself. Having her back, close to his thoughts, was an enormous relief, enough to dispel the residual tension of the mission to Earth. He had almost forgotten what it felt like to have the little, faintly cool presence at the back of his mind, and now that it was back, he never wanted to let it go again.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Cortana said. “Anyways, I don’t really mind. I’m not that good at social events. I’d much rather tag along in here and let you do all the talking.”
“Sure. That’ll happen.”
The turbolift came to a stop and the Chief stepped out. Immediately, he was thrust back into a stream of activity, and moved out of the way as a group of ensigns hurried into the empty lift. The corridor beyond was lined with dotted with exposed wall conduits, and as the Chief moved into it, he had to navigate around small knots of engineers as they replaced fried isolinear chips and realigned loose wiring.
“So, why did you decide to come up?” he asked as he walked. “I’ve heard about the progress you’re making with the Forerunner portal, and I thought I’d have to go planetside again to dig you out of it.”
“It was hard to leave.” She was suddenly engaged, energized by the change of subject. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve found in its data cores. Kerrigan’s story about the multi-dimensional empire you told me about? I’m beginning to believe it. I’ve found primary subroutines in the targeting array that seem to lead to three other installations like the one under Kilimanjaro. It’s a good bet that there’s one in our reality, and High Templar Tassadar’s, and the Alliance’s. I haven’t translated nearly enough of the functional programming to know for sure yet, but I think that the off-location anomalies in each universe are each tied to their respective facility.”
“Any word on Tassadar?”
Cortana took on a more somber tone. “Not since the last time you asked. I’m still keeping an eye on rift activity as best I can, but I haven’t seen any movement since I pulled you back. The system registered some pretty big distortions, and if he was actually in… whatever the space the rifts exist in is when they happened, my hopes for him haven’t improved. Of course, the same goes for Kerrigan.”
She paused briefly.
“Did you tell the Jedi?”
“I did,” the Chief said. “But I don’t think I had to.”
Cortana was silent for a few moments before continuing, her vigor restored.
“I’m making good progress on codifying the device’s functional characteristics, but something that’s been bothering me about it is the rifts that Kerrigan projected all over place, like the one that caught us. I haven’t been able to figure out how to open any new ones, but I’ve found several of the anomalies that she made, still open – I’m not certain yet, but I think a few of the stable ones might even lead back to Covenant space, or at least our own universe. In any event, I think I’ve uncovered a few drivers related to remote rift creation, but the thing is, I haven’t found anything that should be able modify temporal correlation.”
“Meaning?”
“Time, Chief. You remember when I accidentally dropped the Republica near Reach. The Covenant Armada was still bombarding the planet; somehow, travel through the rifts had brought us back twenty-one days. When we escaped and ended up back in this reality, what should have been well under a month was actually seven years. Jacen Solo also reported displacement; in his world, the Galactic Empire had fallen from dominance decades before. In short, there is an obvious temporal element to the rift device’s functionality.”
“But I can’t find any evidence of it. From what you saw on Coruscant and what little data I’ve been able to gather from the anomalies that are still open and connected to the device, the timeline of each universe is both unitary and constant with every other one. Unless I’m wrong, the current, fourth-dimensional coordinate of each reality, the ones we’ve seen most recently, are the only ones that an individual traveling through an anomaly could reach.”
“So, no more time travel.” The thought suited the Chief just fine.
“Not unless I can figure out how Kerrigan did it. Maybe there’s an element of the device beyond its physical components. We know she was a powerful telepath. Perhaps the rifts respond in a way that I can’t predict to extra-physical stimulus. Solo’s abilities are different, at least as I understand it, but perhaps if he were to come back down to the facility and…”
“Later,” the Chief said firmly, stopping in front of a set of wide doors, set with Starfleet’s arrow-and-streak emblem. Numerous, muffled voices sounded from beyond.
“Of course,” Cortana said quickly, turning her attention back to their surroundings. “So… this is the place, I believe. Shall we?”
-----------------------------------------
Jacen Solo sat near the corner of the Enterprise’s banquet hall, wedged onto the sill that framed one of the wide windows lining its outer wall. Positioned with one leg propped on the narrow platform and his arms crossed, he looked out, lost in thought. To his right, Earth’s southern hemisphere hung, full and beautiful for all the dark marks scratched and spattered across its surface. To his left, a mass of bodies stood, each lost in their own thoughts, overcome by reverent silence.
The memorial had drawn people from all over the Allied Fleet, and, as word of the costly victory had already spread far across space, beyond. Jacen had seen Captain Picard, Commander Data, Worf, and much of what remained of the Enterprise-D’s crew, spoken briefly with a few of them. Admiral Nechayev and Captain Gehirn were there, along with several other high-ranking officers of the Fleet. General K’Nera was not among them, still confined to medical quarters for injuries sustained during the assault.
Others were in attendance, as well, dressed in a hodgepodge of crisp dress uniforms and hastily-cleaned combat fatigues. Major Truul and the Master Chief stood across the room from him, both looking distinctly uncomfortable. Closer to the center, Commander Addel was in a place of honor, his face a mask of pride and sadness.
Just within view, behind a rank of rank of Klingons and Cardassians in full battle garb, Jacen could see another contingent, arrived from Bajor only hours before. Captain Ryceed was there, pale-looking and off-balance, but resolute. She was supported by the First Minister of the Bajoran people, one of a handful of chiefs-of-state who had traveled to Earth for the ceremony.
And, standing with them, surrounded by Chewbacca and the newly-reunited C-3PO and R2-D2, were his parents.
Tell Leia that I’m sorry. Tell your mother that I’m proud of her.
Anakin’s words had stayed with him constantly since the flight from Coruscant, and his mother’s appearance instilled them with fresh potency. Even now, in the middle of the packed hall, he wanted to go to her, tell her everything that had happened, tell both his parents who he really was. The urge to establish a connection with them had been there since he had first seen them on the Alliance flagship, but now it was all but irresistible.
And yet, he did resist, if only for a little longer. Their lives were already changed utterly from the pasts of the Han and Leia he knew; Jacen didn’t want to complicate things any further, for his sake as much as theirs.
Still, if Cortana couldn’t figure out a way to get everyone home, truly home…
Patience. One way or the other, the time will come.
The ceremony was somber, quiet, and low-key. Nechayev and few others had already spoken of valor and sacrifice, and now Picard was adding his own words, a solemn remembrance for the fallen. In spite of himself, Jacen slipped back into his thoughts, his eyes fixed distractedly on the slowly rotating orb beyond the window.
He remembered Aayla, valiant and strong, and yet sorrowful in the end.
He remembered Anakin, resplendent in the Light, redeemed again as he had fallen, to protect what he loved.
He remembered Commander Riker and so many others, lost before they could see the triumph their labors had bought.
And he remembered Tassadar. Events on Coruscant had pushed the Templar’s last, desperate request from his mind, but there, in the reflected light of the scarred world, it came back. He had wanted the Jedi to do what fate had not permitted of him. The Protoss needed a savior, if there were any left to be saved, and that burdened had fallen to Jacen.
But was he ready to be a savior, even if he did find some way to reach Tassadar’s people? Now, more than ever, he was unsure. That wrenching moment in the Emperor’s throne room was still with him, the pure, unrelenting logic of the darkness, and the power he had touched in its course. More, he remembered the Templar’s own view of the Dark and the Light, and how they had seemed to coexist in him. What would he find if he sought out more of the mighty species? What experiences and arcane wisdom might color his inner being?
He was afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid of the past. Afraid of himself.
There was movement close by, and Jacen looked up. Laura had taken a seat next to him, and was watching Picard intently as he continued his commemoration. As Jacen stared at her, brooding thoughts diminished in the glow of her skin against the distant stars, a smile spread across her lips. She turned slightly to face him, and extended a hand.
He took it.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, that's that. I'd like to thank everyone who helped make The Rift possible. Were it not for the continuous commentary of the readership over the last few years, I doubt that I could have finished it. I especially appreciate the constructive criticism I've received along the way; input on my prose and thematic style has both improved the quality of The Rift and my overall writing skill. Those who have contributed through proofreading and editing deserve particular note; after slogging through nearly four hundred thousand words, many of them misspelled, forgotten, or substituted in bizarre ways, I've developed a new respect for those who edit for a living.
I hope that everyone has enjoyed The Rift, and that I'll be able to provide you all with another diverting bit of writing in the near future. Now, one last indulgence...
May the Force be with you, always.
(I would have preferred to end this by having the screen fade to black as John Williams blares in the background, but, alas, this medium is somewhat limiting technically – there’s always next time)
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
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White Haven
- Sith Acolyte
- Posts: 6360
- Joined: 2004-05-17 03:14pm
- Location: The North Remembers, When It Can Be Bothered
Seriously, seriously excellent work, Noble Ire. I'm just glad I didn't notice this in the beginning chapters, or this would have been a most frustrating wait. Easily one of the best fics I've read here, even if it does scream for a sequel to be written. And...er...so do I.
Easily one of the best fics I've read here, even if it does scream for a sequel to be written. And...er...so do I.
Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'
Fiction!: The Final War (Bolo/Lovecraft) (Ch 7 9/15/11), Living (D&D, Complete)
Well, I believe a hearty 'Congratulations' are in order to commemorate the completion of this magnum opus - for there really is no other word in my lexicon that more adequately encapsulates this story. The quality of the writing and of the characterizations, your style of prose... it just suits this story so well.
I also congratulate you for resisting the author's urge to, as you put it some time ago, "wrap everything up with a neat little bow." On the one hand, though I was looking forward to seeing everyone get back to their 'original' timelines more or less intact, I think such a trite and predictable conclusion would have been a disservice to a story of this magnitude. I have long held that one of the most interesting qualities of The Rift is that there were undeniable consequences to all the universes that were touched by Kerrigan's madness. None of them will ever be quite the same again, and there is something to be said for that.
Of course, while I do wonder what happened in the GFFA after Palpatine and Anakin's deaths and in Halo after the Covenant leadership was prematurely decapitated, I am, in a sense, glad that you left these questions unanswered. (For a future sequel, perhaps?)
I also congratulate you for resisting the author's urge to, as you put it some time ago, "wrap everything up with a neat little bow." On the one hand, though I was looking forward to seeing everyone get back to their 'original' timelines more or less intact, I think such a trite and predictable conclusion would have been a disservice to a story of this magnitude. I have long held that one of the most interesting qualities of The Rift is that there were undeniable consequences to all the universes that were touched by Kerrigan's madness. None of them will ever be quite the same again, and there is something to be said for that.
Of course, while I do wonder what happened in the GFFA after Palpatine and Anakin's deaths and in Halo after the Covenant leadership was prematurely decapitated, I am, in a sense, glad that you left these questions unanswered. (For a future sequel, perhaps?)
"There is a high statistical probability of death by gunshot. A punch to the face is also likely." - Legion
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
"The machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only though the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the machine!" - Paullian Blantar, Iron Father of the Kaargul Clan, Iron Hands Chapter
Well, what a journey! I remember reading this from the beginning, all those (almost exactly 3) years ago. Every time I saw there was an update to this story, I'd eagerly read it and always feel bad when it ended, unfinished.
Hey look, it's finished now!
What a magnificent piece of work. I look forward to reading more of your work, Noble Ire!
Now, let's get this thing in the Completed Fanfic subforum!
Hey look, it's finished now!
What a magnificent piece of work. I look forward to reading more of your work, Noble Ire!
Now, let's get this thing in the Completed Fanfic subforum!
Vendetta wrote:Richard Gatling was a pioneer in US national healthcare. On discovering that most soldiers during the American Civil War were dying of disease rather than gunshots, he turned his mind to, rather than providing better sanitary conditions and medical care for troops, creating a machine to make sure they got shot faster.
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The Grim Squeaker
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 10314
- Joined: 2005-06-01 01:44am
- Location: A different time-space Continuum
- Contact:
All done. Yay! As fine a piece of fanfiction as I've ever read . (Coming from me that means a lot )
. (Coming from me that means a lot )Photography
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
I'm glad you appreciate the story's concluding environment. I was somewhat worried about the degree to which the various subplots and character paths of The Rift are unresolved, but then again, as you say, there was no way I was going to end it with everyone's ducks back in a row, so to speak.Dominus wrote:I also congratulate you for resisting the author's urge to, as you put it some time ago, "wrap everything up with a neat little bow." On the one hand, though I was looking forward to seeing everyone get back to their 'original' timelines more or less intact, I think such a trite and predictable conclusion would have been a disservice to a story of this magnitude. I have long held that one of the most interesting qualities of The Rift is that there were undeniable consequences to all the universes that were touched by Kerrigan's madness. None of them will ever be quite the same again, and there is something to be said for that.
Ah, yes. That. I suppose I'll try to contact one of the forum admins about it.Hawkings wrote:Now, let's get this thing in the Completed Fanfic subforum!
Anyway, I don't think I'm going to write a full-blown sequel to The Rift, at least not right away; there are too many other projects I've been letting languish while this one was finished. However, there is obviously a great deal of material for expansion, and I have been toying around with the idea of a series of short stories set in The Rift's multiverse. I can't give any timetables, but keep an eye on the Fanfics forum.
Thanks again for all the comments, guys. They mean a lot.
The Rift
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
Stanislav Petrov- The man who saved the world
Hugh Thompson Jr.- A True American Hero
"In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope." - President Barack Obama
"May fortune favor you, for your goals are the goals of the world." - Ancient Chall valediction
