14

ABOVE DAGOBAH

ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE

The cargo bay came alive with the quick staccato movements of lightsaber against twin electrostaffs. Ageless Void brought the blue beam of his lightsaber up in a g’tskvi defensive position from Form I, shuffle-stepped backwards, parrying both of the Wookiee’s staffs as they spat out arcs of purple electrical energy that stung as they licked up and down his arms. The two enemies swiped viciously at one another, both half forgetting their training and resorting instead to an almost animalistic, predatory brawling.

Their weapons crackled and hissed and spat out sparks whenever they clashed, as Ageless’s blue blade performed great, sweeping arcs to cover the many lines that Vicious One’s twin electrostaffs attacked simultaneously. Ageless performed a triangle step, ducking underneath one of the swings to his head, then shuffle-stepped backwards and angled off to the right to avoid a jab from the other staff. Vicious One lunged at him, hammering at him in repeated attacks both high and low, giving him not a moment to breathe or recover—

Ageless struggled to keep up. He could barely move, for he had already been shot several times, one of them in a glancing blow to his left leg, which off-balanced him. The flurry of attacks was almost too much to keep up—parry, push step backward, slash, parry, parry, parry, angle out and away, duck, parry, counterattack, angle out and rush in, push-kick to the Wookiee’s midsection to create space—

The Wookiee gave vent to a primal roar and came back at him with uncommon speed for his size, each electrostaff spinning and buzzing like Tangran’auuk wasps.

Ageless resorted to Form I—the Shii Cho method of lightsaber combat—of which he was barely above a novice, and combined footwork from Teräs Kasi and Udas’mon, checking the Wookiee’s elbows with his free hand whenever he managed to successfully perform an outside deflection. He parried again, checked his enemy’s hand, hugged his lead leg against his enemy’s lead leg and performed a shin-press, displacing the Wookiee’s considerable weight before sweeping the foot out from under him.

The Wookiee stumbled sideways, and his next swing was too wild, too telegraphed, and Ageless slashed at one electrostaff’s midpoint, its massive handle and its most unprotected section, cutting it in half. Immediately, both sides of the electrostaff stopped spitting electrical energy and the Wookiee flung the half he was still holding into Ageless’s face and busted his nose. Ageless heard the sickening crunch, felt the blood running down his lips and chin, and knew that it was broken.

The Wookiee picked up a plasteel crate single-handed, and flung it across the cargo bay at Ageless, who dived to the ground, rolled out of the way, and sprang back up to his feet just in time to meet the charging Wookiee’s remaining electrostaff. Their two weapons crashed in hideous crackling sounds and set off sparks of white and purple light, and Ageless was barely able to summon up the temerity to get his feet properly in line for Makashi, Form II of lightsaber combat, the dueling-centric form that concentrated on lightsaber-on-lightsaber combat.

The footwork included a few wider stances for asserting one’s dominance and keeping oneself from being pushed backward, while also combining a few light-footed movements for dancing out of the way, for those times when the practitioner ran out of room. As for the lightsaber work, Makashi called for the blade to remain mostly on centerline, covering the most vital points of a practitioner’s body to defend it, while also sending the blade tip forward in a testing, questing search for the enemy’s hand, to “de-fang the snake” as they called it in Teräs Kasi.

And Ageless’s training in Teräs Kasi came in handy here, too, as that martial art had originally been developed to fight against Jedi, to go for quick kill shots, even when the practitioner was unarmed. He deflected the next blow, swept the electrostaff out of the way with a highline Makashi technique, then performed a forward-male triangle step straight out of Teräs Kasi, angling to one side and keeping the electrostaff occupied by continually pressing his saber’s blade against it. Wookiees had their kidneys a bit higher than Humans, and behind a much thicker ribcage, but a much more sensitive organ was slightly below the waist, and Ageless threw a hammer fist at it.

And got a response.

Vicious One grunted and bent over briefly, just enough time for Ageless to dance away from his enemy, disengaging for a moment. It was just long enough for him to reach the point where he’d seen his holdout blaster, lying there on the floor. The Wookiee had knocked it out of his hand at the start of combat and now Ageless stepped on the weapon to mark where it was—

But he couldn’t pick it up just yet, because Vicious One was already recovered and lunging at him with a series of spinning attacks, the two buzzing ends of the electrostaff coming at Ageless’s face, again and again, forcing him to defend high. Then the Wookiee suddenly swung low at his legs, glancing across his right thigh and would have deadened Ageless’s leg if he hadn’t been wearing padded armor pants.

He shuffled back, kicking the holdout blaster around with him like he used to do when playing toffaball back hom, making it so that it followed him wherever he went. He needed to find a moment to bend down and pick it up, but his enemy was relentless, and never gave him that chance.

—a Dathomirian Witch’s strength flows from the Force, same as a Jedi’s—

The voice floated through his mind, and even as he parried the next assault, Ageless could hear Master Yoda as if he was somewhere in the room. He quickly went through the small orbit breathing exercise, even as he deflected the next thrust at his midsection and checked the Wookiee’s lead leg with another shin-press.

Vicious One turned, spinning around to deliver a backfist to Ageless’s jaw. Ageless tasted copper, and he heard something crack. Blood flew from his mouth and splattered across the floor. He backpedaled, kicking the holdout blaster along the floor, bringing it with him, waiting for his moment—

The electrostaff batted away his lightsaber blade with such force it felt like it would yank his shoulder out of socket, and then Vicious One thrust one end of the staff into Ageless’s midsection and it took the wind out of him, and some of the electrical shock actually made it through his padded armor and he felt half the muscles in his body seize and he fell backward on the floor.

He landed hard against the deck. The Wookiee raised the electrostaff above his head like an axe, and was about to bring it crashing down on Ageless’s skull…when suddenly Ageless saw green light flash across the Wookiee’s face. He felt heat all around him. He felt heat inside him. He knew the stoic flame was in his empty palm.

The Force is my ally!

Acting on instinct, he shot a clawed hand out at Vicious One and watched in cold detachment as a lance of green energy leapt from his fingertips and pierced his enemy’s chest, then part of his right shoulder and stomach. They were small tendrils, almost like emerald daggers. The Wookiee recovered fast from his shock, but it had given Ageless a moment to roll backwards over his head, spring back to his feet, and bring his lightsaber up to deflect the next attack.

And Ageless had picked up the holdout blaster on his way back up. He held it in his left hand. His whole left arm had been debilitated since it took a blaster shot at the start of the battle, and half his body had been stunned by the electrostaff, but he dug deep within himself to call upon the Force, pulling it into his pores, feeling it cascading throughout his limbs, allowing him a greater range of mobility.

Ageless alternated between deflecting attacks using the saber in his right hand and shooting Vicious One with the blaster in his left. Blood poured from where the Wookiee had taken the green daggers, but his species was notoriously difficult to kill, or to even stun, more so now since he was wearing heavy armor and so they threw everything they had at each other. Ageless’s battle cries reached a crescendo that matched the Wookiee’s roars.

The enemy was relentless.

—but so is the Force—

The enemy had incomprehensible power.

—and so does the Force—

Master Yoda’s voice sailed through his mind between heartbeats, giving Ageless greater focus, helping him to expand his awareness so that he caught every small motion of the Wookiee that would help predict which direction the next attack was coming from. Ageless wasn’t seeing the future, Master Yoda had already told him that power would likely always be beyond him, but he was able to enhance his already honed ability to gauge his enemy. Ageless saw how the Force could amplify one’s trained abilities, almost like the way a powerful stimpack could revitalize someone injured, except even more so.

The Wookiee kept coming, kept trying to force Ageless against a wall or a pallet of crates to corner him, to limit his movement. Here, Ageless had to resort to Form IV, Ataru style, using the highly aggressive strikes, channeling the Force into his wrist and hands, meeting ferocity with ferocity. He noticed at once that this gave Vicious One some pause, had him stalk around for a few seconds to reassess his Zabrak enemy, then launched himself again.

Ageless’s lightsaber crackled with each impact against the electrostaff as he pulled his concentration deep within, focusing on his own perfection of movement rather than whatever the Wookiee was doing. He sought perfection of movement, making himself almost absent of the conflict, disconnected from the outcome, simply reacting to stimuli.

He did as Master Yoda had taught him: Absorb what techniques are useful, discard those that are useless, and create what is essentially your own method.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Ageless fell into a flow. Inside deflection, check the Wookiee’s arm with an elbow strike, answer the incoming motions with Shii Cho footwork and meet the central strikes to push them aside, attack with aggressive Ataru strikes to force an opening and fire his blaster on centerline. A couple of blaster bolts struck the Wookiee’s stomach, demoralizing him until—

Vicious One suddenly held his electrostaff in a double-fisted grip and swung so hard across Ageless’s ribs that he was sure they’d cracked. Once more, all the air in his lungs was expelled and he reeled, staggering backwards—

He resorted to Makashi footwork and bladework, protecting his own centerline while trying to get a free shot in at the enemy’s head. Vicious One was a genetically-altered Wookiee, part of the Empire’s top-secret “Kashyyyk Project,” he moved like the vat-grown freak that he was, unafraid of pain or death.

Vicious parried away Ageless’s blade, batted the barrel of the holdout blaster so that its next shot went sailing past, and angled his body and side-kicked Ageless in the gut, knocking the wind out of him yet again and sending him crashing into a stack of crates. Ageless fell over, shoulder-crawled backwards while firing from the floor, lighting the Wookiee up enough that his fur even caught fire inside his vac-suit.

But Vicious One wouldn’t stop coming.

Ageless performed a kip-up, whipping himself back onto his feet and parrying the next blow, performing an inside deflection and then a headbutt, raking his horns across the Wookie’s face, firing on the Wookiee’s centerline once again and this time he saw a spurt of blood come from his enemy’s mouth.

Vicious One staggered backward—the first time he’d done that, the first time he’d ceded any ground at all—and brought his electrostaff up to block Ageless’s attack. That freed up his entire head. Ageless shot him squarely between the eyes and the Wookiee’s head snapped back and he dropped his electrostaff. Fell to his knees. Sagged. It seemed like he would fall over. Then, suddenly, while Ageless was huffing, gasping for breath, the Wookiee launched himself back to his feet and his claws came shooting out from his hands, punching through his vac-suit gloves and slashing across Ageless’s face, tearing away strips of flesh even as Ageless roared, spun, and brought his saber around to cut diagonally across the Wookiee’s body.

Vicious One fell in two halves, each half hitting the ground with a resounding thud.

Ageless stood there, knees wavering, his mind almost empty of everything except the swaying, almost appeasing tide of the Force, no receding. Blood poured from his face, forming pools on the floor.

It was then he became aware of an alarm, which he was pretty sure had been going off for a while now.

A proximity alarm. That’s what it sounds like. It’s the—

He suddenly heard the squeal of an astromech, and saw R4 come trundling around one of the pallets.

“Sir!” said R-3PO. Ageless turned, blood falling down his face and neck. The protocol droid had been blasted in his chest at the beginning of the fight, and was now crawling over to him. “Sir, Arfour says the docking umbilical has been torn away. I went ahead and sealed the doors. It appears a new ship has entered the system and is approaching from polar orbit. It’s now chasing the Lambda craft that took out our engines. We may be saved!”

Ageless wobbled on his feet. He knelt down before he fell down, and took a deep, steadying breath. Calmly, he said, “Med bay. Now. I need a stimpack, some temporary synthflesh, a kolto injection and probably a couple of bacta patches, stat.”

* * *

ABOVE DAGOBAH

ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT

“Got a lock on something,” Namyr said, hands racing across sensor controls. Energy sensor reports came pouring in, replete with bounce-wave readings and heat spikes. “Looks like two ships, both cold, engines off but one of them appears to be on standby…” She trailed off, squinting at the neutron-imaging screen to get a better look at the two ships’ silhouettes, and a weird structure connecting them. It only took her a second to realize what it was. “There’s a docking tube extending from the Lambda.” She checked their profiles. “Yeah, that’s definitely a Lambda, and it’s definitely docking mid-space with a YT shuttle.”

“I’m registering oxidation marks across the YT,” Kevv called from his twin cockpit.

“Same. Seems to me they ambushed him, damage on the tail end seems consistent with knocking out his engines, and now they’re doing a boarding action.”

“Think they’ve got him yet?”

Namyr’s hands gripped the flight controls, her gut was tight, her mind racing with possibilities and lines of approach. “If we can see them, it’s a good bet they can see us. They’ll be breaking loose the docking tube very soon, then turning around and targeting us back.”

“Do to them what they did to Ageless?”

“Hell, yes. Exactly what I was thinking.”

“I like the way you think, boss lady,” the Duros said. Targeting solution locked in, Arykyds armed and ready to fire.”

“We’re about to see if that Ithorian got a good deal on this ship. Ready the dorsal quad laser, then give me control. You have full flight control, I’m going weapons-active. Soon as your missiles strike, push in, attack speed, and I’ll concentrate all firepower on their engines.”

“Wait!” Kevv said, looking at a sudden engine flare showing on his scopes. “The Lambda’s tearing away, leaving the docking tube behind! They must’ve spotted us—”

“Scrap that plan, then! Move in now!”

“You got it, boss lady,” Kevv said, and she could hear the thrumming and high-pitched whine as engines cued up. “Hang on, it’s about to get bumpy.”

* * *

ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE

Ageless limped down the corridor to the med bay, leaning against R4, who was also dragging the limp body of R-3PO behind him using a magnetic cord that extended from one of his open panels. When he reached the med table, he flopped down and allowed the auto-doc to do its work of diagnosing his many problems. Six robotic arms extended from the auto-doc’s housing and began staunching the blood flow with coagulant sprays and injecting him with stims. Delicate robotic pincers applied salves of kolto, and long syringe-fingers gave modified kolto injections to his arm, shoulder and leg. His body armor and shirt were sliced cleanly off, so that the auto-doc’s arms could overlay several bacta patches against his ribs.

Ageless was already having trouble breathing, and knew that the Wookiee’s strike against his ribs had at least cracked one or two. He went deep into Force meditation, running through cycles of small orbit and managing the pain. Later, when he had a moment to think, he would need to go through the lessons of his grandmother that Master Yoda had given him, see if she had anything in her studies on alchemy to deal with serious injuries like this.

“Ossus!” the Dark Voice insisted, and it came into his mind like a bantha stomping on his brain.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ageless. “Stay away from me—”

“Ossus!”

“I said keep out of my head!”

“Sir,” said R-3PO. “Who are you talking to?” The protocol droid was paralyzed on the floor at the moment, but still able to talk and function otherwise.

“No one,” Ageless said through gritted teeth. “It’s nothing.” He tried once again to go through small orbit exercise, summoning his calm. “It’s nothing.”

* * *

ABOVE DAGOBAH

ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT

As soon as Namyr saw how difficult the chase was going to be, and how surprisingly elusive this Lambda-class ship was, she handed full piloting controls over to Kevv and took the weapons controls upon herself.

She fired in short, controlled bursts, and the Ascendant’s quad lasers bore into the Lambda’s shields, which had already been weakened by the Arakyd missile strike against the shield generator’s main housing. Namyr watched the Lambda zig and zag, and deflected just a few points off its starboardside, shooting where it was going to be if it maintained its heading.

Kevv was the better pilot, and he knew what she was trying to do without having to ask. They’d been working together for over a year now and knew each other’s methods. When the Lambda sent two missiles back at them, Kevv angled forward deflector shields to take some of the hit, but also pulled a high-press maneuver, snap-rolling away in case the deflectors didn’t cut it, doing it with such force it strained the inertial dampers and artigrav, pressing Namyr against her restraints.

“Getting a heat bloom from her engines!” Kevv shouted. “Think she’s about to perform a quick jump out-system!”

“It’ll be a micro-jump,” Namyr said, straining against the temporary g’s to stare down into her targeting computer screen. The artigrav reasserted itself and she fired another salvo, which glanced off the target’s portside shields. “He can’t have had enough time to arrange a safe jump with his navicomputer.” She lined up one more shot on the Lambda’s tail end, and fired. It lit up, flashing bright orange a second before the Lambda shot off at lightspeed.

“Dank ferrik!” Kevv shouted. “Think he made it? Or blew up in hyperspace?”

“No telling. But if we wanna stay safe then we can’t stay here. Turn us back towards Ageless’s ship, he may still be dealing with whatever boarding party is left.”

“Should I try hailing him?”

“Why not? See if he answers.”

As Kevv angled them back around towards the YT-2400 freighter, whose last known name was the Hard Leaf but new transponder was registering it as the Dathomirian Curse, Namyr looked out her forward viewport at the destruction. Pieces of the Curse were orbiting slowly around it, having come off during its fight against the Lambda. The ship looked badly beaten, but not entirely scrap. “I’m not seeing any signs of core leakage or radiation spikes. If her core is still intact, she should be able to limp outta here—”

“I’m getting a reply!” Kevv exclaimed.

“Play it.”

After a few seconds, a familiar gravelly voice came over comms. “—unknown vessel, I thank you for your support. To what do I owe this unexpected support?”

Namyr looked across at Kevv in his twin cockpit. They both smiled. Namyr tapped the switch to reply. “Hi, Ageless. You were looking a little overwhelmed there. Kevv and I thought you could use a hand.”

After a long pause, that gravelly voice spoke again, this time with perhaps a hint of humor. “Just when I thought the universe was done throwing me surprises.”

“What can I say? It’s good to have friends, Ageless.”

“Are we?”

“What?”

“Friends.”

Namyr glanced over at Kevv, who looked a little worried. “We didn’t come here to kill you if that’s what you’re thinking.”

After another long pause, Ageless replied, “I don’t trust the Rebellion farther than I can throw a wampa up a hill on Malastare.”

“Does that mean you won’t invite us aboard?”

“My ship’s half crippled, so I doubt I could keep you out if I wanted.”

Kevv chimed in. “If you want us to leave, Ageless…”

“Just need a little verification it’s you. Namyr, where were we the last time we spoke?”

“Cloud City.”

“And what was the last thing you said to me?”

Namyr smiled. “May the Force be with you.”

Another pause, this one much shorter than the others.

At last, Ageless said, “You are cordially invited to come aboard. Unarmed. I don’t want to see any weapons. Welcome to the Dathomirian Curse. I have to warn you, though, I wasn’t expecting guests, I haven’t had time to clean up.”