IX: Small
Slippery, lymphic fluid sluiced from Nen Yim as she rose from the steaming surface of the ceremonial bath. The liquid held no purchase on her, running in slithering tracks off her body, carrying away with it all impurities. Delicate incense tickled at her nose and filled the cavities of her sinuses with tingling coolness. Dangling from a spindly thicket of limbs waited a darkly toned oozhith, the living robe twitching and trembling toward her. She brushed her fingers along the surface of the biot and it rippled forward, wrapping firmly about her and sinking cilia into her pores with sparks of tingling pain. She shut her eyes, breathing deep the dizzying chemicals wafting in the bath's steam and the spiced emissions of squat amphibians that lurked in the shadows of the chamber.
She allowed the oozhith to settle fully about her slender frame, the robe a shortened version that left her arms and much of her legs bare. Carefully, she slicked back her short, dark hair and gathered it with the pinching clasp of a hook-wyrm. Steadying, she inhaled, exhaled and gently ran fingers over the back, the palm of her right hand.
Her pulse hammered deep in her chest, firm enough she imagined she visibly trembled with each thudding strike of her heart. Opening her eyes, she looked at her hand with the fascination of a newborn investigating strange appendages for the very first time. She turned her hand over, tracing faint scars that ran along the backside, a hitch just before the first knuckle of her third finger where it had snapped in her youth. It felt detached from her, as Nen Yim flexed her fingers and watched her knuckles whiten, watched tendons shift and flex.
The entire grotto itself pulsed faintly around her, muscular and wet, in time with her own heartbeat. Beyond the bath the grotto narrowed, puckering, until a single massive knot of muscle bulged where the ceiling met the floor. The center was a black hole, an empty socket that gazed deep at Nen Yim.
Her Master entered - if Nen Yim had not been ready, she would not have been ready. It was not her Master's role to chaperone her Adept; it was the role of the Adept to follow the steps as laid out in times long since forgotten to the microsecond.
Mezhan Kwaad nodded approvingly.
No words were to be spoken. Her Master would observe.
Carefully, Nen Yim knelt before the hole in the grotto. The very mouth of the biot, which was the room, and the room was it. The Grotto of Yun-ne'Shel, a most ancient and holy touchstone of her caste, the place in which ascension and ruination were forged in equal measure. Relative to the yammosk, though removed so far as to barely be cousin, the Grotto felt what the supplicant felt and fed it back, twice again.
Nen Yim reached out and placed her hand within the mouth of the Grotto. Gently, the lips closed about her wrist, soft and welcoming as a lover's, suckingly but gently to seal firmly about her purified skin. For a long, twisting moment, she felt only the flesh of the lips about her wrist. The Grotto bore down on her, magnifying the anxiety that she attempted to set aside; brewing deeper the anticipation.
Eight points poked at her skin, equidistant around her wrist.
Nen Yim braced herself.
Glacially slow, geologically sluggish, cosmically sedate, the octet of fangs sank into Nen Yim's flesh. Skin parted first, then thin fat layers beneath. She knew each and every facet of the body, honed through vivisections, dissections and long study on qahsa. She could visualize the pace of the slicing teeth as they ever-so-slowly cut deeper. She felt tendons snap.
Her breath grew ragged and choppy. Darkness vied with strange, floating white on the edges of her vision. Agony lanced up her arm, her body screaming in refusal.
Pain taught. All shied from pain, for pain was the lash. Pain was the lash, truth was the reward. Knowledge was the morsel teased from the conjunction of agony and truth.
She tried to cycle her breathing. Muscles parted. Nerves clipped and shrieked white-fire into her skull.
The Grotto's lips suckled and drew away the blood, obscuring her view.
Nen Yim bred pain and the Grotto fed, then returned it with interest.
The teeth met in the middle with a snick that she could feel, bone-deep.
The mouth rotated ninety degrees in the blink of an eye, the entire muscle knot squelching as it flexed. Her arm followed no more than a degree, even less. She slumped back, staring dumbfounded at the perfect, cleanly sheared stump of her right arm. Thick, glutinous saliva coated the anatomical cross-section of her wrist, mixed liberally with dark, nearly black blood. Only the thinnest trickle escaped the congealed blob.
The Grotto gulped.
Shakily, Nen Yim rose to numb feet. A shallow pool beside the ceremonial bath rippled and sloshed, occupants scenting blood in the air and growing ever more agitated. Beside the pool she knelt, watching dark shapes dart and skitter within the brackish water. Drip, drop fell her blood and the shapes scuttled with ever greater fervor. She dipped her stump into the pool.
Clasping limbs grasped at her wrist and Nen Yim felt the grind as corkscrew tooth tore into the marrow of her bones.
She thought she had known pain.
Her vision flashed, the world grew distant. The Grotto hungrily suckled on her agony and poured it back.
Nen Yim-
SHUN
An adolescent Yuuzhan Vong girl skips down age-worn grottos.
NO
Die, die.
A flower come to maturity under the warmth of loving sun bursts. A cloud of downy seeds scattered into the wind. The seeds are spiraled and they whirl and ride the currents. They will spread far and wide, until rich soil welcomes them.
The plant which birthed the flower dies, all nutrients consumed in the ripening of the grand fruit.
SHUN
Alien skies. A red world rises. Jungle storms. Look!
Alien skies. A red moon rises. Electrical storms. Look!
Alien skies. A peirastic Prince wails. Fire storms. Look!
NO
Metal towers, unliving constructs claw at bruised purple sky. Wind howls. Stars slide. Limositic lampreys nibble and gnaw. SHE STEPS ASIDE.
SHUN
VOICES CALL.
ONE VOICE CALLS.
ONE VOICE CRIES.
She follows the cry. She follows the wail. A Yuuzhan Vong girl skips, barefoot, down tired grottos. Old lambent lights flicker. Bioluminescent lichens sag. She follows the wail. Talons tangle in heavy curtains. IS THIS WORTH THE PAIN?
NO
One drawn name.
The Red Moon Rises.
Look!
SHUN
IN THE DEPTHS, THERE IS A CEPHALOPOD. IN HERMAPHRODITIC FORM, IT PASSES THE YEARS OF ITS SESSILE LIFE. IN FEMALE, IT BIRTHS A THOUSAND YOUNG. LINKED TO THE MOTHER, THE YOUNG DERIVE SUSTENANCE IN SYMBIOSIS, UMBILICAL TRADING NUTRIENT FOUND BY NUTRIENT GIFTED.
IN MALE, IT REELS IN TENDER MORSELS, IT SUPS OF ITS SPAWN. THOSE STRONG ENOUGH TEAR FREE IN BLOOMS OF BLOOD SNAPPED CORDS.
THUS: LIFE SPAWNS LIFE. DEATH CULLS LIFE. LIFE STRUGGLES. SURVIVES.
NO
Nen Yim started awake, tears of shame already welling in her eyes. Her wrist ached, but it was a distant and dulled ache. The nerves were dampened; pain was a teacher, but so too was pain a tool. No tool ought be used overoften.
Mezhan Kwaad knelt beside Nen Yim, primly perched and perfect, her robe arrayed about her long-limbed body.
"No shame is borne. No one has ever braved the Grotto without a lapse, the first time. You are strengthened for it, and when the time comes for your Master's hand, you will be ready and you will laugh at this memory."
"Master," Nen Yim mumbled, her voice soft and hoarse. She wondered; had she screamed?
"On your own, Adept," Mezhan Kwaad gestured for her to rise. Shakily, off-balance with her new-bonded right hand tucked to her chest, Nen Yim managed to make her feet. Then she allowed herself to look.
The biot was still seating itself, shifting a little with little twitches and jerks that raised hair along her arms and involuntary shivers down her spine. She could feel the anchors bored deep into her bones, feel the complex chelicerae within the hand's mouth teasing apart her tendons and muscles to digest and seal to itself. Dulled pain, no worse than a broken finger or two, accompanied, but Nen Yim could easily bear it.
Four fingered, just like her birth-hand, with two thumbs on either side of the palm. A thin but flexible carapace served as the top of her hand; many smaller and interlocking plates made up her palm. Each finger, she knew, bore retractable claws, pincers, and more in the complicated final joint. Sensor divots and knobs roughened her fingers.
She tried to wiggle her fingers, knowing nothing would result.
"It will be some days for the connections to seat themselves wholly. Your hand has taken well already." Mezhan Kwaad gestured at the thick, green-grey secretion already solidifying into a rock-like solidity between the mouth of the biot and her truncated wrist. "A few days after that and your brain will become used to the motions. A day of rejoicing, Nen Yim. You are an Adept in full, and I accept you as mine own. Together, we will shape Jeedai, glory, and our caste - and the future of the Yuuzhan Vong."
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The vivarium held a single occupant, curled into a ball on the bare nacre floor. The subject wrapped its arms around its head, fingers digging into the tough, leathery hide of the provoker spineray that clasped the nape of the subject's neck and crown of its head. The biot's long tail trailed downward, hooked by thread-thin tendrils into the subject's spinal column until it projected from just above the tailbone like an actual tail, running across the vivarium's floor and into a socket. The subject was hairless, the follicles extraneous and a potential interface problem for the spineray and other necessary biots. Szon-kalik tenders, relative to the implanter-beasts used for Warrior ascensions, plucked eyelash, eyebrow and hair. The subject appeared to find this greatly distressing, for all that the irritation should have been minor. Her Master took note of that, just as she took note of every little thing the Jeedai subject did.
When the spineray was first affixed, the subject had been sedated. Spinerays were fragile things before bonding, and the delicate process of interfacing with the subject's nerves could have outright killed both the subject and the spineray had it been interrupted.
The subject had objected to the spineray most vociferously, as Mezhan Kwaad had called it.
After the first grand mal seizure caused by the spineray defending itself, the subject learned not to attempt to remove it. It seemed to find a measure of relief by constantly scraping fingertips over the spineray's thick hide. It wouldn't harm the biot, so Nen Yim was of the mind of leaving it be. Mezhan Kwaad hadn't attempted to stop it either.
The subject was allowed a simple robeskin, similar to the ooglith masquer, though of different clade entire, to preserve modesty and simplify management of waste.
"Hm," Mezhan Kwaad hummed, delicately manipulating a nerve cluster in her hands. The subject twitched, huddling tighter and pressing their forehead to drawn up knees. "See that, Adept?"
Nen Yim nodded.
"Tell me."
Clearing her throat and resisting the urge to fiddle and pick at the healing seam of her Shaper's hand, Nen Yim straightened her shoulders and studied the subject.
"In a Yuuzhan Vong, stimulation of that cluster would have caused debilitating dizziness."
"Does the subject appear to be suffering similarly?"
"No, Master."
"Interesting. Like the previous cluster, which had caused pain no Yuuzhan Vong would have felt, this one maps to a different stimulus entirely."
She chose her words carefully; Master Mezhan had kept Nen Yim attending her from the very next day after the Grotto, uncaring that her hand was still seating itself. "Your mind does not need a hand to function," Mezhan Kwaad had said. Still, she wanted to show only her best to her Master, especially after granting her a hand! She had thought it would be years still.
"It this related to the problems with surge-coral?"
"Quite!" Mezhan favored Nen Yim with a close-lipped smile. She swelled with pride. "The surge-coral could not map properly onto the many species of this galaxy; the results were insufficient and worse, wasteful."
"But the protocols were followed…"
"You have accessed to the Third Cortex, Adept. Have you encountered mention of 'Human', 'Twi'lek' or 'Rodian?'"
"I have not, Master."
Mezhan Kwaad stimulated another cluster on the nerve-bundle. Inside the vivarium, the subject screamed and snapped rigid so quickly Nen Yim feared for permanent damage. Back arching, face locked in a rictus and fingers curled into claws, the Jeedai screamed, soundless behind the transparent vivarium curtain.
"Another unique reaction. The protocols, Adept, are the wisdom of the Gods, of course. How would we map the Jeedai's brain without the spineray? All the same, I believe you understand well the occasional shortcomings."
She swallowed. Even more carefully, Nen Yim weighed her words. The Master could not possibly know.
"Master? I am not sure-"
"Don't prevaricate, Adept. It puts my teeth on edge. I saw your work on Baanu Kor."
Nen Yim knotted her headdress into a humble bundle atop her head, cringing away from the Master. Schooling herself, she offered a short but meaningful bow.
"I did not know, Master. I am honored you reviewed my work-"
"It was optimal."
A tension she was not aware of released.
"Many would have stopped with the molding of tii, which would have been entirely ineffective. You applied the Vul Ag protocol, which has not been used in an endocrine cluster before."
"I thought it might make the outer osmotic membranes more efficiently transpire…"
"And it did so. The Vul Ag protocol does so quite optimally, though never in that circumstance. But why should it not? Merely because it had not been done before? This clearly occurred to you."
"It was logical, Master." She felt just slightly out of body, wrongfooted by the direction the conversation had taken. Mezhan Kwaad knew what Nen Yim had done, but praised it? Accepted it?
More shockingly - understood it?
Surely not. No, surely not. There must be a greater protocol beyond Nen Yim's bare knowledge and dipped toes in the Cortexes. There must be an analogue to what she had done, in the greater Cortexes where only Masters could swim. Mezhan Kwaad would tell her she was precocious, considering things revealed to her betters. That would be it.
She had just managed to convince herself when Mezhan continued, speaking almost offhand, still watching the subject as their limbs slackened and drool dripped from slack mouth.
"Logical. Because if a protocol causes a result, then that result might be used elsewhere, when relevant? Yes? That was the logic? It was well thought. Tradition and propriety are important, of course, but constant immersion in such qualities leads to hidebounding thinking. An Adept of mine must be agile and resourceful, capable of making those leaps of logic with which to use the sacred, unchanging knowledge-"
Nen Yim's heart hammered. The next three words burned into her mind.
"-in new ways."
If Mezan Kwaad knew that Nen Yim had dabbled in heresy, she would never have been promoted. She would not have a hand, she would not be here in this most secret and important of shapings. She would be already digested, nameless and forgotten and cast into a maw luur like so much waste. No Master would accept her.
But no Master would ever dare say such a thing as new ways of Shaping.
"I agree, Master," Nen Yim said in a small, awed voice.
"Good. Continue to do so and you - and I - will go far. Your Master's hand awaits in a pool in a day that draws ever-nearer. Help me to solve the mysteries of this new galaxy, and that distant day will speed to you indeed."
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Sun warmed his face and lit his eyelids red. In a rush of sluiced-away dreams and resurgent memory, the previous night - and all the nights before - returned and Anakin knuckled away sleep grit, untangling himself from his twisted sleeping bag. Unlike his foggy dreams which left only impressions in the jungle's morning sun, the impossible reality of two Ultramarines did not vanish on waking up.
There was Sannah's tent, the Melodie girl still sleeping inside. There was Solidian, perched on a fallen log and fiddling with his auspex. There was Zalthis, out of sight but easily in sense.
Even with Tahiri's muted pain throbbing in the corner of his mind, Anakin pulled himself to his feet with something approximating hope for the first time since true night abandoned the moon.
"Ah. Sleep well?"
Anakin interlinked fingers behind his back and thrust them out, groaning and coughing as he stretched aching shoulders and his back protested the roots and rocks last night's sleep inflicted. Shaking out the last of his sleep, stomping feet back into boots he didn't even remember shucking off, Anakin ran fingers through lank, greasy hair and swept it back from his eyes again. More gently, he prodded at Sannah through the Force, nudging at her toward awakening. Her mind shifted.
"Better than I thought I would. Anything happen?"
Sol shook his head, putting aside the scanner. His helmet was removed, as was one of his pauldrons, both resting against the log beside him. His chunky gun, his bolter, was easily at hand.
"Just a few curious creatures. Zal saw them off. You slept like the dead."
"Yeah, I still kind of feel like it too." He smacked his lips, mouth dry. Sol offered a canteen wordlessly. His mouth was foul, result of ration bars and rationing water and no time for anything hygienic. He could probably kill a Vong with his breath alone. Cold water tasting a little of metal woke him the rest of the way, blowing the cobwebs out from behind his eyes.
Nothing changed - Tahiri was still being - was still held by the Vong. He and Sannah were barely off the Ershasm Ridge, they were both exhausted from long days hiking through unforgiving jungle. He was covered in cuts, scrapes, bruises from bad footing and thick underbrush. He barely had the sketches, outlines of a plan.
Also, everything had changed. It wasn't just a Jedi-and-a-half against an entire Vong garrison; it was a Jedi-and-a-half and two Ultramarines. They had a way off world and a way out-system. Their entire ability to kill Vong had tripled. There was a real, actual place to leave Sannah at that would be safe. Anakin wasn't going it alone now.
So with nothing and everything different in the new morning, he took another slug of water from the canteen, swished it around his mouth and spat it into the leaf litter. A little bit better. His teeth felt less furry and his mouth less like a woolamander had done something unmentionable in it.
"How far is the Thunderhawk?" There'd been no real time to talk last night. He worried that they'd landed far, far away considering how fast he knew Astartes could cover ground. Leaving Sannah with the ship was the best choice, but if that added another full week or so just to get there, then another week or two to get back…
"It is up the coast. One hundred and nine kilometers, by my reckoning."
Alright. Not as bad. Still far, but not far far. Still, a hundred more kilometers in the jungle. Sighing, Anakin pulled on the Force, cycling it through his already aching feet and tight muscles of his calves, thighs while he fell into breathing exercises.
"We moved slowly," Sol continued, as if guessing Anakin's curiosity. "There was no way to know the auspex would link to your comm. We feared we would need visual contact, and your pod might have landed anywhere."
"Right." Lady Starstorm had been just above the clouds when it broke apart, the escape pod would've dropped off sensors almost immediately. And then, in the winds of the storm, it could've been blown dozens or hundreds of kilometers off course. That it came down still on the plateau, Anakin realized, was already beyond lucky. They could've ended up in the Ersham sea. "I think we'll have to go there, first. Sannah has to be somewhere safe-" and speaking of the Melodie, he felt her muzzy awareness pulse through the Force along with faint rustling in the tent "-and that's as good a place as any."
"Ah," From Solidian, Anakin got a passing sensation of chagrin. "There is another reason, as well."
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Ultramarines rations were different. The survival ones from Lady Starstorm were bland, chewy and made with an attempt at being palatable to a wide range of beings, which left them mostly just a little unsettling in texture and consistency. In contrast, the thick, rubbery sealed wafers that Zalthis offered as 'something different' were utterly flavorless and something like hyper dense bread. Neutronium dough. But it was different, at least, and after days of the same crap, over and over, Anakin gnawed on the corner of one of the bricks and stared, flat and unamused, at the two Astartes. Solidian worked a grey paste into chips and slashes that decorated his pauldron with a grinding, gritty scraping noise. Zalthis, done with his own wafer, having nearly inhaled the thing, stood with arms folded over his chest, lips sucked in and mouth in a line.
"It can't fly."
"It can, I am sure of it."
"You were shot down."
"There is plasma damage-"
"You were shot down and now you can't even turn it back on."
"Anakin, I assure you, the Thunderhawk is mostly undamaged, but neither Sol nor I have techmarine training. I can operate it, but I cannot fix it."
It wasn't like he worried that he couldn't do it. Two or so months ago, he'd told a gigantic machine beyond the comprehension of any technician or scientist in the whole galaxy to 'go to sleep' and it did. He could cobble together a convincing amphistaff proxy from some servos, synthirope and omnisocket gaskets. When he'd barely been able to form long-term memories, he'd turned the planetary repulsor on Drall on and pushed through a forcefield by understanding, intuitively, how it functioned.
So some battered up gunship? Sure. He could do that. Jaina made things; Anakin made them work. Sometimes, he wondered what he and his sister could do, together, if the universe ever felt like giving them a day off.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It was mostly the whole principle of the thing. They waited to tell him until the morning. And now Zalthis was looking like one of the trainees who got caught sneaking into the kitchens. A giant, mutated Human supersoldier wearing enough armor for a hovertank, and Zalthis looked embarrassed.
"By visual inspection, the engines are unscathed and the airframe is solid."
Anakin exhaled.
"I'll look at it. You couldn't have told me last night?'
Zalthis cast his eyes down. Not for the first time, Anakin wondered exactly how old his friend was. On Samothrace, after Obroa-skai, Zalthis had only said he wasn't sure what the conversion of time would be, that he was 'near' in age to Anakin. Right then, Zalthis looked it.
"You needed rest."
'We'll rest when Tahiri is safe and we're off Yavin. It's fine, Zal, I don't blame you. We need to drop by there anyway so Sannah'll be safe, so it's not like we have to change anything up."
The Ultramarine nodded slowly, then firmly.
"There is further supply; Sol and I took only enough for reconnaissance. There are heavier weapons aboard."
Anakin perked up. Sol was missing his big repeating blaster, so that sort of explained that. There had to be a story about how he had it in the first place: Sol hadn't had it on Obroa-skai, but Anakin recognized it as Merr-Sonn, probably a Z-something. He grew up around Jedi who had been special agents or special forces or just outright soldiers. He sort of knew guns. Well, there would be plenty of time between now and the Thunderhawk to ask about it.
Sannah ate her ration quietly, eyes still downcast.
They packed up quickly, Sol helping yank up the stakes to the tent while Zalthis jogged off to refill canteens at a nearby creek. He said Astartes could drink even the most polluted waters, so he would leave the vaporator-made stuff for Anakin and Sannah. He and Sol had just been drinking out of creeks and streams this whole time.
A small snag presented itself when the four of them, finally, set out. Sol had his auspex sensor out again to guide them back toward the Thunderhawk, but they'd only gone a few paces when the problem reared its head.
Sannah.
She was just as tired as Anakin was, her legs and feet killing her even though she soldiered on. He could feel her determination just like he could see the way she set her jaw and grit her teeth, even though she swallowed down winces with each step.
Her feet were blistered and worse - blistered, burst, blistered again and peeling. Anakin rocked back on his haunches, his friend looking away and off into the jungle. He didn't know she'd been keeping her boots on the whole time. They'd been soaked, dried, soaked again, then she slept with them on.
Because Sannah didn't really know any better. Melodies on Yavin 8 lived mostly around the caves and never wandered far. They wore sandals. At the Praxeum, at most, Sannah would've gone on day hikes with other trainees, always ending up back at the Temple for a jump through the 'fresher and a hot meal.
She's not Tahiri. She didn't grow up in the dunes of Tatooine where any mistake was desiccated death. She didn't go down to Vjun with him, she didn't brave the storms of Yavin and the rapids of rivers with him, she -
She wasn't Tahiri.
Sannah sniffled.
Anakin didn't decide to, he didn't even think. Sannah sucked in another shaky breath and he hugged her, pulling her much smaller body tight to him and wrapping his arms around her thin shoulders. Her little hands clutched at his filthy jumpsuit, the Melodie curling into his embrace. She broke down. Sobbing. Words tried to escape, words that sounded like apologies and sorries and can-you-ever-forgive-me and i-wasn't-strong-enough. Anakin just rested his chin in her dark hair and stared off, unseeing, into the jungle.
She wasn't Tahiri, but she was Sannah. His friend. She was why he came back.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, but he was sure she didn't hear it. Zal drifted nearby, glancing toward them both, toward Sol who kept his distance, back. Their unease and uncertainty was palpable. Sannah cried herself out, until her sobs became hiccups, until those became quiet sniffs. His jumpsuit was damp, his thighs cramping from crouching like this. It didn't bother him at all.
He rubbed circles on her back, like his mom did for him when he was a kid. When things got overwhelming, when the world pressed in hard and he just couldn't understand it. It wasn't often, it was just a few times - between her work, his own nannies - but he remembered each time.
"It's okay," he murmured.
"No it's not Master Ikrit is dead and Tahiri is - Tahiri is - and it's all my fault and now I can't even walk and you have to leave me behind and you've gotta - Anakin you've gotta - just leave me here and you have to save Tahiri-"
Anakin took her shoulders, pulling back and catching her brown eyes with his own blue.
"Sannah. We came back for you. Master Ikrit-" he swallowed the lump in his throat, ignored the soft, gentle weight that would never rest on his chest again "-knew what could happen. We couldn't leave you. I won't leave you now, either."
Sannah broke down again. Heavy footsteps thumped them both. Sol loomed over them, blocking out the sun.
"It occurs to me," the Ultramarine offered. "That you are very small." He knelt down. Even kneeling, he was a head taller than Anakin. Were she standing, Sannah would have reached just about his waist. Sol held out an arm. "Climb up."
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With Sannah riding in the crook of Sol's arm - the Ultramarine only had to keep his arm across his chest and the girl could perch easily on his forearm, they made surprising time. Anakin's everything ached, but he kept a steady draw of the Force that reinvigorated him, burned lactic acid from his muscles and made his steps light. Zal and Sol were machines, the former leading the way and blazing through the underbrush. Sannah dozed, her head lolling against Sol's pauldron where she leaned against it. They could get her into a healing trance, at the Thunderhawk.
At the end of the second day, Anakin could hear the sea.
And on the third, the hulking shape of the Thunderhawk revealed itself, buried under a remarkably thorough blanket of heaped branches and brambles.
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Sannah was in a trance, Solidian was sorting through weapons in the large central compartment of the Thunderhawk, Zalthis was patrolling and Anakin was realizing perhaps he spoke a little too soon. The electronic displays in the cockpit lit and received power, which was a good sign, but whatever logic the ship ran on was raising a sardonic eyebrow and eying him warily. The lump of metal like a coffin with a faint, blurry sense of life inside it didn't help with his concentration, nor how it conspicuously took up where a copilot might sit.
He allowed the Force to guide him, trance-like as he unfocused his eyes and let his fingers slide over controls, over consoles, over forests of strangely marked buttons, switches and toggles.
On Drall, the planetary repulsor spoke to him. It lit up before his eyes, with shining conduits of energy ghostlike in his vision. Everything was intuitive and understandable, like following a children's guide to a datapad. Step by step, welcoming him. His not-Vong combat droids, back at the Jedi Headquarters on Coruscant, they were more like a puzzle. Each part obviously was meant to fit to another, but there were so many and they had so many spots and places that they could join that nothing was absolutely clear. Jaina could probably juggle them and built a hyperdrive in her sleep, but each addition to the dueling droids was arduous.
The Thunderhawk, returning to his first thought, truly did feel like it was frowning at him. Asking: who are you? Why are you here? What are you hoping to accomplish? He felt the flows of power that rippled from battery banks, lighting the cockpit up and illuminating the compartment Sol worked in. He could feel blockages, like clots or sclerotic build-ups that stymied the energy. He flipped clicking switches, feeling how power draw switched from one conduit to another, running through the thick, armored airframe. What's this for, the Thunderhawk seemed to ask.
I'm fixing you, Anakin idly thought back. Threepio was talkative when he enjoyed a warm oil bath and Artoo blatted and tweetled about everything under the stars - and like his Uncle, Anakin spoke enough binary to follow along. The dueling droids kept quiet under his ministrations and other things just went along with Anakin's guidance.
Manual controls, apparently supplemented fly-by-wire systems in Imperial ships; half the reason they'd managed to pancake the Thunderhawk into a skidding landing during the storm instead of a nose-down plunge into ruin. They were sluggish, of course. He worked the stick left, right, feeling the way the ailerons grudgingly accommodated. Power assisted and managed by complex load-reducing systems - oh, there, there and there - but working. Alright.
He barely noticed the slow slide of light across the cockpit, as it crept up to his face, dappled and scattered by the sparser canopy this close to the sea. Hours passed in moving meditation.
There. No. There. Plasma dug into the hull, cut lines here, and there and over there too. The Thunderhawk felt like it watched him, perched on his shoulder, or just behind. Leaning close and second-guessing each reflexive diagnostic. Zal came back, swapped with Sol. Sannah stayed in a trance. Their mental presences moved and Anakin barely noticed.
The internal engine - which was a flaring, hungry fusion core - was unscathed. All shielding, all containment normal. A strong, firm heart. The problem was in the hits to the aft, which chewed up the rear fuselage something awful and let plasma spatter into internal machine spaces. Conduits were torched through, several important capacitors and transformers slagged. All the same, there were others. The gunship was almost ridiculously overengineered. Redundancies for redundancies, but none of them listened. Turn on here. Switch. Redirect. Why not? What was he doing wrong?
Anakin slumped back, dwarfed by the massive pilot seat. Scaled for an Astartes, in armor, he felt like a child in their parent's chair. Red diodes winked across half the controls. The answer was right there. The Thunderhawk could be fixed, but it was like it didn't want to.
"C'mon," Anakin growled. "Why won't you…" he trailed off, completing the sentence silently. Why won't you let me help?
[You aren't known.]
The words weren't words, and they weren't spoken in colloquial Basic, but Anakin almost dropped a spanner all the same.
"Sithspawn!"
[You aren't known.]
They carried weird emotions, intonation that sat close to meaning without quite touching it. A desire to recognize; a flash of warning. Caution.
"I'm Anakin?" he tried.
[You aren't known.]
"I'm here with Zal and Sol. They asked me to fix…you?"
It wouldn't exactly be the first time that a machine talked back, but it definitely was claiming the record for most direct. He always got impressions from things he fixed - maybe an eagerness to reveal its systems, sometimes a sluggish recalcitrance to power on. But nothing that ever had the texture of true words.
[Zal, known. Sol, known. You aren't known.]
"Right, I know. But they asked me to help fix you up, and I can, so…will you let me?"
The voice was a whisper and an intuition, brushing around his ear, tickling against the edges of the Force. He pushed back, focusing on how serious he was about repairing the gunship, on his concern over the 'mission', about the honesty he felt when he told the two Ultramarines that he could do what he claimed. He heard Zalthis clattering around in the troop bay behind the cockpit, felt Sannah's deep, dreamless slumber. The Thunderhawk, and he was pretty sure he was talking to the Thunderhawk, held its 'tongue' for a moment.
[Priority is mission. Zal is known. Sol is known. Authenticating for temporary permissions. In further communion; recommend clearer phrasing.]
Anakin huffed a surprise laugh - the thing had chided him on his accent.
Suddenly, at his will and his touch, everything just worked, just the way it should. He diverted to secondary backup systems, deactivating primary lines and cutting off blown transformers. The Thunderhawk worked with him, this time. His smile grew as the familiar, friendly sensation swelled through the Force. The way ghostly afterimages caught his eye, directed his darting fingertips, demanded a press or a flick or a spin of a dial.
Deep in the guts of the Thunderhawk, the satisfyingly familiar grumble of a repulsorlift engaging made the whole gunship quiver. He felt the engines cycle once, a low-power maintenance check, like clearing a throat.
His stomach growled. Outside was twilight.
"Wow. That took a minute." Affectionately, because he'd grown up around ships like the Falcon and the Jade Something or Another, Anakin patted the console on a bare patch of metal. "Thanks, Thunderhawk."
[Designation Five Five Nine Zero One Slash A. Thunderhawk is chassis generic.]
Anakin blinked.
"You're not called Thunderhawk?"
[Designation Five Five Nine Zero One Slash A.]
"Oh. Sorry."
That might have been the most surprising reveal of the entire day.
"Zal!" he called. The Astartes immediately leaned into the cockpit, glancing around at the fully lit controls and pure green status lamps; only a few marked out yellow or orange.
"I felt the ignition. Is it functional?"
"About seventy percent power, but she'll fly again. Also - why did you never correct me?"
Zalthis raised an eyebrow.
"It's not called Thunderhawk!"
The Astartes barked a laugh, climbing fully into the cockpit, filling the narrow space between the pilot seat and the coffin-filled copilot station.
"Thunderhawks rarely have names, only designations. Most don't last long enough to warrant bothering."
Something about that felt terribly wrong, especially with how verbose Thunder- no, how verbose 55901/a was. Even a mind-wiped astromech deserved a decent name. They'd have to fix that.
Feeling entirely lighter, Anakin spun the pilot's chair, grinning up at Zalthis. They had a ship. They had a hyperdrive. They had a way up and out. Sannah was safe, she was healing. Finally, there was nothing left between him and Tahiri.
"We've got some plans to make," Anakin declared.
----------------------------------------
Colonel Darklighter waved Jaina into his office, returning her parade-perfect salute with a quick gesture.
"Colonel, sir."
"Welcome back, Sticks."
His easy use of her callsign - her callsign, given by the Rogues - warmed her chest and Jaina let a tiny grin loose. She didn't mind: it was good to be back. The Ralroost had a smell she'd gotten used to, a blend of generic detergents for uniforms, a hint of ozone that every pilot brought back from the void, some kind of simple citrus probably inserted into the 'cyclers to keep the processed air from getting stale. It smelled like battle, it smelled like service, and it smelled like the Rogues. Gavin's office also had a constant, lowlying bite of old caf to the nose that mixed in distinct ways with the 'Roost's own scent. His desk was in disarray, scattered with datapads and 'cubes. Jaina had once wondered why she saw her father with multiple, when he still was General Solo. Why not just use one, she'd thought, until she learned about things like operational security and physical segregation of sensitive materials. His wall safe, where sensitive orders were kept on fingerprint biometric datachips was hinged open, revealing its interior bare.
"Take a seat if you like, Jaina, but this'll be quick. Sorry we don't have the time to welcome you back the right way, but - well, you saw the muster on the way up."
Did she. Everyone on Coruscant had. Guardian, surrounded by an absolute swarm of First Fleet, so much so that it covered half the sky each time the formation swept by overhead. Seeing a Super Star Destroyer in person, up close like this, had been surprisingly impactful. It wasn't the first dreadnought she'd seen, but there was something about the presence of the massive Star Destroyer that struck her, eying the steely blue hull and massive crimson firebirds on the flanks.
This was the kind of ship that her parents had fought against, the kind of ship that had been the terror of the Rebel Alliance that her family, in a lot of ways, had been the staunchest guardians and champions of.
It wasn't her first dreadnought, but Guardian managed to steal her attention until Ralroost was almost on top of her shuttle.
The Bothan Assault Cruiser was tucked in with the whole pack, in a slot near the MC90 Avaratraima and the ISD In Absence. Combat air patrols flew fast and thick and she wondered which squadron, which wing was out today; realized she'd probably not recognize them even if she knew.
So: yes, Jaina most certainly had seen the muster on the way up.
"I did, sir. I'm glad I could be back in time for…" she trailed off, gesturing sort of helplessly around. Something was up; First Fleet didn't roll up like this just to put on a show. Fleet tenders were nosing around and partnering up with cap ships as far as the eye could see. She could feel the energy in the air, the way the Force itself hummed with so many beings all thinking the same thoughts:
What's going on? What's the news? Where are we going?
And under it:
Will I die, this time?
Gavin laughed, mirroring her gesture.
"For 'that'. There's some new orders that came down from the powers that be. Classified, of course, but lucky for you, someone remembered just why we call you Sticks."
Jaina raised an eyebrow as Gavin gently hefted a small datapad in one hand, then underhand tossed it toward her, right over his desk. Surprised, she snatched it from the air by reflex alone, a little proud she didn't dip into the Force.
"It's keyed to touch and your serial number. Don't share it around, you know the drill."
A thought occurred. A rude one, an intrusive one that clenched her stomach.
"Ah, Colonel? I'm…I'm not being pulled off the Rogues, am I?"
She felt his surprise, then chagrin.
"No, not at all! You've still got that head plug-"
Jaina touched the cool metal of the oncocidal injector over her ear, realized, quickly brought her hand back down.
"-so you can't fly quite yet. I know, it's just another week. There's more in your orders, but gist of it is - High Comm wants the lid on all this shut. You know our new neighbors, the ones who don't make any noise?"
Don't make any - oh. Oh.
"Keep an eye out. An 'inner eye', I think Colonel Loran said. You've got contacts with your orders on who to go to. It's not me." Gavin held up his hands. "I'm just a fighter jock."
One who'd helped liberate Coruscant and had more than his share of blasterfights, but just a 'jock'.
"And when the head plug's out, you're back on the roster. It's all hands, Jaina."
The Colonel grew serious, even grave. He leaned forward, planting both palms on his high desk. She forced herself to meet his eyes.
"I know about Yavin."
Jaina did not flinch and did not look away.
"I'm sorry. I can imagine what you're feeling right now. I know. I can't say anything that will help."
Her tongue feeling thick and unwieldy, Jaina managed to speak.
"Anakin can take care of himself."
Aside from the almost crystal-clear spike of abject anguish that had yanked Jaina awake just a day ago and left her shaking in bed, soaked in sweat and tasting tears on her lips. She could still feel the gentle weight in both her hands and smell rotting leaves and freshly churned soil. Her little brother was strong, as strong as their Uncle. He second-guessed himself, but Anakin could do things Jaina never imagined. He'd had his trials, just like her and Jacen, and he'd grown up into a young man that still surprised her. He would be fine; there wasn't any other conceivable option.
"He's a Solo," Gavin said, like that was all that needed to be said. "But he's still your kid brother."
Jaina swallowed.
"I was surprised you put in to return early. You still had four days on convalescence."
"I need to do something, sir."
Gavin nodded.
"You need to not think."
Not think about her little brother left behind on Yavin for days now, not think about the home she secretly cared more about than Coruscant overrun by the damned scarheads, not think about how she wasn't there to fly cover. Not think about how Uncle Luke had helplessly hung his head and Aunt Mara had looked grim and severe, or even how her own mother had just taken the news in stride. Not think about how no matter how much she ached, she ached to burn ions and burn scarheads and fly like even General Antilles never could, that she'd be dead the second a dovin basal mine yanked her out far from the jungle moon.
Jaina spoke none what she'd mostly kept under wraps. Instead, she clenched her jaw and gave a tiny nod.
Gavin straightened up, rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. She felt his sympathy and didn't need it.
"Dismissed, Lieutenant Solo. Go read over your new orders. Briefing tomorrow, 0740."
She snapped another parade-perfect salute.
Older than his years, Gavin Darklighter returned it.