VI: True Night

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Alebmos had no time to prepare as he would like. Ideally, he could prefer similar to the chamber prepared when questioning the Jedi youths. Time and preparation were maximal for success in greater workings of the Sea of Storms and the less of each currency he could grasp in his hands raised ever greater hazards. A quiet word to Captain Thiel kept the attention of Amalius on him, Varien also, while Alebmos paced out a square within the Audience Chamber at the apex of the temple. He placed booted heel to armored toe, spanning out his chosen space in the center of the chamber. The space was airy and vast, ceiling climbing high and tall, narrow slots served as windows as tall as a battle titan. The last, glimmering lights of Yavin's primary threw withering golden bars against the eastern walls and bits of the ceiling.

History here pressed heavy. History that Alebmos knew, made certain to know, had questioned Anakin the Knight and Katarn the Master and Tionne the Historitor. Recent history of betrayal, recent history of jubilation and victory, recent history of fear and relief.

All useful emotions. Useful memories, useful moments. Time was a suggestion in the endless Sea, where passions of people long extinct could cloud the future of peoples yet to be born. Alebmos would need the right string here, the correct story to pull upon.

Yavin was ever a sanctuary for the misbegotten and downtrodden. From the ancient Sith, fleeing persecution - rightfully earned or otherwise - to the warpspawned Melodies in their hidden caverns, to the Rebel Alliance facing down a worldkiller. This was a through-line that rang loudly in the ethereal channels of the sea. The holdout, the last stand, the redoubt before the hungering horde.

It rang in him too, it stirred breezes down long and orderly city streets as Alebmos sank into meditation and Khotta opened his eyes.

In stories, when the heroes are hard-pressed, with backs pressed to the wall and the pendulum swing of fate comes down, as night draws darkness like a shroud and the light of the sun passes away, there are worn grooves into the shape of stories for what will follow.

The Fall is a potent one. The light is gone and day is done and night will reign for ever. It is a mythic end that has potent meaning indeed, especially in the turbulent waters of the Sea that Khotta was trained in. The Galaxy had felt the cut of this story as a lash swung ten and ten thousand times as human worlds foundered and vanished, foundered and vanished, as a trillion trillion lives watched the dying of the light across the span of mankind's lost empires.

Rumor had it that older cycles of the Fall rang through long aeons past, before mankind had even left Terra, before mankind had even risen from the dust. Some say this had worn the first marks of the groove that would one day catch the wheel's of humanity's ambitions. That the path of Old Night was but another turn after greater empires had bloomed and withered.

Another shape is The Stalemate. When the heroes watch and wait wary, from high walls and high tension. Where the barbarians and the foeman that swarmed in beneath the stygian gloom of coming night surround the bastions and bulwarks and keep their own peace. A tension, a pause - this is a story of fate delayed, not denied nor delivered. A story without result, whose worn track is only a means to join to a greater tale.

There is The Flight. The heroes abandon their tall walls and through craft of cunning avoid the hungry eyes of their pursuers, where they take to themselves the umbra of unknowing, where they remake the meaning of darkness into a shroud, rather than a mark of doom. The dying of the light is reimagined, from the loss of hope to the birth of opportunity, where the end of one day is the beginning of another and the drawn skirts of darkness chuckle in conspiracy with the canny makings of the heroes.

The Jedi are too bright. They weigh too heavily and their press on the fabric of the story punches through shallower, rarer chances like The Flight. Khotta's sharp eyes peer to the horizon, across flats of waving green grass in perilous midnight sun as the Soundless Sea roils above. No, with a single Jedi, perhaps his shaping could take the track of The Flight, but with so many, the story recoils and rears away. They are too many and they are too bright, they are too noble and it leaves only one possible answer.

Khotta, even if he had other Stormseers, those with greater power and deeper souls, could not turn the shape of the story to The Triumph. The Yuuzhan Vong are too many and their silent darkness is too unknown for such an end - which leaves but one path left to tread, the path he knew would be their only option when he offered his service, when he spoke of the monsoon beyond the horizon.

The Trial.

The fields beyond his walls stir in sudden breeze. Rippling grasses swirl and whip. Cheek-biting wind moans past marble-faced towers, snapping and grasping at his simple toga. Behind are the tall gates, seasoned oak, armored in bronze.

Yes, The Trial. Yavin would have no other. This world had never seen The Flight, had never tasted The Stalemate, would never suffer The Triumph. It was a moon of old death and cold hope: The Fall and the Trial were only ever his options.

So be it.

A procession emerged from the swirling plainsgrasses beyond the Lonely City. They were pilgrims, bearing entreaty on their lips. Khotta lifted a cup with three handles, shaped of ceramic. The outside is glossy and smooth, the inside lined with gold.

The first cowled figure stops before Khotta. Road-dust clings to its robe. The breeze that ripples grasses to either side of the winding, packed dirt path tug not it its clothes. Claw-tipped red fingers emerged from voluminous sleeves, grasped at its lowered cowl and tugged back the hood.

'I am MASSASSI,' spoke the fanged mouth, in a visage of crimson. Its eyes were silver mirrors. 'I came to this moon in bondage and raised tall temples below the stars.'

'You did,' Khotta agreed. The Massassi held out a hand and clenched its fist. A single drop of blood fell, smoking, catching on the edge of the cup and sliding down. The Massassi squeezed tighter, more blood welled. Khotta gently placed his free hand over the mouth of the cup. The creature scowled, stepping back, tugging up its hood once more. Then it faded back, into the approaching line of supplicants.

The next took its place and reached for concealing hood.

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The monsoon was two hundred kilometers away, but only ten minutes after Alebmos excused himself for the peak of the Temple, the first growls of thunder rolled in the distance. Clouds already packed the horizon, cutting off the last light from the setting sun and eating up the starfield above. The hangar lights were cut off too, aside from some dark red hazards much deeper in around the turbolift. Everything had a bloody-tinge in the darkness. Tahiri was a dark outline, limned in red. Master Katarn was a sketchy shape in silhouette. Ikrit's reflective eyes flickered flashes of bright crimson when the angle was just right. Even the Astartes - Aeonid, Tercinax, Zal and Sol - were barely visible with their glowing eye lenses shut off and minimal status lights blinking dully. Anakin dropped his goggles back down, throwing the world into sharp-edged shapes of grey-green. Tahiri waved, her own face half hidden behind her pair of insectile, buggy lenses.

"I've contacted Streen," Kyle announced, having rejoined the rest in the hangar. "He said he'll try his best to help the storm along."

Anakin blinked - right! He'd honestly forgotten the older Master had a knack for working the weather, something he didn't use nearly as much since leaving Bespin for Yavin. Master Streen kept up his communion with animals and taught it as well. How to placate the beasts in the jungle, to divert a predator or soothe a fearful grazer. Jacen and Streen got along pretty well, that was for sure.

"The Temple's sensors are showing it's definitely on the move. Whatever Alebmos is doing up there, it's potent stuff. The first bands of rain should be here soon, and then the serious stuff will start in about an hour."

So far, the Vong seemed to be deciding on their next move. The charred corpses of the reptoids Alebmos killed steamed out on the tarmac and lumps of other dead, cut down by blasters or bolters were featureless outlines in the dark. Without the goggles, he'd be almost blind, he was sure. Smeary streaks of false color moved in the jungle but at the distance from the hangar to the edge, Anakin couldn't tell if it was Vong, scared runyips, or just the underbrush starting to move from the wind.

"Tarantula?" Aeonid asked.

"Ready. Two hundred bolts, hot and eager. Krak charges are set, to your command, Captain."

Aeonid nodded.

Anakin hated waiting. He hated sitting around, letting the Vong decide how things would go. Waiting around got people killed.

"Amalius? Varien? Any word?"

"The psyk's in his trance," came Varien's terse reply, vox-channels synched up with the Jedi's own comlinks. "There's movement, but the jungle is too dense."

"Fliers? Vehicles?"

"Nothing so far, Captain."

Anakin reached out again for the song of the jungle, reminded by the mention of Streen. He could feel the alarm of crepuscular and nocturnal critters, waking up to find strange smells and sounds in their territories. He felt a family of stintarils hissing from the upper branches of a tall Massassi tree, bobbing threat displays to interlopers. The jungle was irritated, but he didn't feel anything grander. No pockets of blind animal panic.

"I don't sense anything either. It must still all just be warriors and reptoids."

Aeonid's helmet shifted, the Astartes rotating slightly at the waist to peer out of the hangar.

"The vessels Temerity's long range auspex detected entering the atmosphere were large enough for their vehicle-analogues." The Force-sensitive Astartes growled. "They may be in reserve, not present at all, or deemed too dangerous. The Vong clearly want you all alive. Perhaps their creatures cannot be trusted to be so delicate."

Anakin thought of coming face-to-face with a Rakamat on Obroa-skai. Yeah, he could definitely agree with that.

"Captain, there were nonlethal options that Sol and I saw on Fondor…" Zalthis offered.

"Go on."

"Gunship-analogues. The locals called them 'delts', or 'deltas'. We did not encounter them directly, but Lieutenant Optarch said that in one area, they covered an entire arterial in webbing that could pin down a Russ."

Kyle's concern resounded in the Force.

"They could web up the whole Temple like that."

"Then we leave through the caves and blow the charges," Tercinax grunted.

"What about the freighters?" Tahiri cut in. She sidled up closer to Anakin, hand slipping into his. "Do you think they could catch one of those and pull it down?"

Zalthis and Solidian's helmets turned toward each other.

"Possible enough," Solidian allowed. "It's a threat, at the least."

Unpleasant memories of purella on Yavin, creatures on Dagobah and Tatooine rose in his thoughts. Tahiri was thinking the same, shared recollections reinforcing each other. It's always webs and spiders, he sighed. Next to him, Tahiri bit back a quiet little giggle.

"That'll be priority for any of your big guns," Kyle said. "Although…the monsoon that Alebmos is bringing it, that should keep any fliers grounded, shouldn't it?"

Given how the distant thunder was now almost a permanent, rolling and bassy growl to the east, Anakin certainly didn't want to imagine chancing that kind of weather in anything that weighed less than a few thousand tons. Even Jaina wouldn't want to risk that kind of turbulence, and that was before counting the lightning.

"Finally - your ship? Any news?"

"Vox is still clear and at last check in, Temerity's arrival remains the same. They are at full realspace extension drive, as fast as they can allow and still be able to slow in time to make orbit."

Master Katarn nodded toward Aeonid.

"Then let's all have one last bite to eat. We'll need the energy. It's going to be a long night."

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Anakin hurriedly stuffed the foil wrap of his ration bar into a spare pocket, leaping to his feet before the echoing thump-crack of a mass reactive faded. Simultaneously, all their comms lit.

"Movement, chazrach. Warriors sighted, just within the treeline."

Another thump-crack, then another. Amalius and Varien were making their snipers talk, up on top of the Temple. A heavy, hard weight thumped into Anakin's shoulder and almost unstrung his knees. Zalthis helped him keep his feet, the Astartes' chagrin making Anakin smile.

"Ah, apologies-"

Anakin rolled his shoulder, shaking out the limb.

"Just hit the Vong as hard," he joked.

"You've my word. Before the night's over, we'll fight side by side again."

"Wish we didn't have to. But it's probably gonna be soon."

The muted Force presence of the chazrach, even without the two Astartes watching from above, would've warned Anakin and the others regardless. He could feel their staticky souls on the move. Their minds felt a bit clearer than he remembered of the chazrach on Obroa-skai. Less muffled and a little sharper, enough so that he could actually get a vague sense of primal excitement and anticipation building.

Scrambling up the makeshift barricade of leftover supply crates, shuttles and other sundries, some dating back to the Rebel Alliance, Anakin elbow crawled closer to Tahiri, already up there. She'd passed on Master Katarn's recommendation to have a ration bar or two. Through their connection, he could feel her nerves almost overpowering her. She was breathing a cycle, a simple box technique they learned as very young trainees. Zalthis resumed his post on top an old Lambda shuttle's fuselage, the shuttle itself mostly just a stripped hull these days.

Green-grey outlines of chazrach scuttled around, rangefinder on the goggles saying they were way too far away for Anakin's middling aim with a blaster. Great, they had more of those clamshell shaped shields to hide behind. They formed up into groups, chattering and snapping at each other occasionally, before arranging into tight clusters, vanishing behind the broad barricades. Each was about the height of a Vong warrior and just as wide and looked for all the world like a seashell from the coral reefs of Dac.

"Krak grenades, Captain?" Tercinax asked over comm.

"Hold for now."

"Affirmative."

Each squad inched closer, lifting, carrying their shells, then plopping them back down after a few meters. They were so slow. It couldn't be a serious attempt to get into the Temple, could it? He could sense dozens, maybe hundreds of the reptoids out there, but once they got into range of the Exile's Tarantula they would be scythed down like bramblewheat by an ag droid.

"This cannot be serious," Aeonid voiced, mimicking Anakin's thoughts.

Ikrit, keeping close to Anakin and Tahiri, narrowed lambent eyes. "Any of us Jedi might use those seashells as plows to push the chazrach away. Surely they must know this?"

Anakin imagined catching one of those shell-barricades with a fist of telekinetically driven air, or maybe a torn-up shard of duracrete tarmac. Ikrit was right, the reptoids were so tightly packed up behind each that they could crush or at the least hurl back entire squads at a time.

"Still no fliers. Auspex remains clear of vehicle-mass movement."

Everyone felt tense. Anakin chewed on his lip.

Not even any bugs yet. Or warriors, but up top Amalius and Varien were keeping an eye out for the same trick of flanking around the Temple.

The dull red hazard lights flickered. Thunder cracked and boomed closer, lightning close enough now to shock out sudden shadows and white light outside the hangar. Each lightning flash briefly whited out Anakin's goggles, reducing them to a sleet of static before they refreshed. The jungle was moving, trees starting to creak back and forth as the wind picked up.

The Force felt curdled - not rotten but thick, strangely flowing. Up above, where Alebmos worked his talents, a cold pressure bloomed in Anakin's senses.

"Hm?" he asked, glancing to Tahiri. She raised an eyebrow, shaking her head. He thought he heard her whisper something.

More chazrach squads moved and arranged themselves, overlapping their seashells. They were easily in range for the Astartes, but none moved for their bolters yet. Maybe a third of the way across the tarmac outside. Something creaked, deep in the Temple, like the roots of the old construct groaned.

"This is unpleasant," Ikrit muttered, quietly enough Anakin figured it wasn't meant for anyone else to hear.

"Master Katarn? Should I trigger the droids?" Anakin asked.

"Might as well."

Anakin retrieved his jury-rigged control device from a pocket, found the toggle and flipped it.

Immediately, from their spots on the upper tiers of the Temple, ASP droids with hastily rigged up blasters attached along with old sentry turrets opened fire with prejudice. Red darts ripped down and the chazrach dropped their shells and hunkered back. At least the goggles had some good quality compensators - the bright blaster bolts were heavily filtered so Anakin wasn't blinded by the sudden blitz. Little scorched craters punched into the tarmac, pinged off the seashell barricades.

Solidian joined in with a shout, raking his rotary blaster left, right, left. Bright blue hyphens joined the stuttering crimson ones and Solidian's heavier blaster punched craters and holes into the seashells. Chazrach started to get injured. Die. Their little, flickering candle presences winked out.

The red hazard lights behind them flickered again. Was the Temple losing power? The monsoon wasn't even hear yet, still just the outer bands of it. Maybe the wiring was having trouble. Anakin patted Tahiri on the back, pushing the warmest, surest confidence he could imagine toward her, then slid back down to land, lightly, on his feet.

Behind them, at the far back end of the hangar, the turbolift doors were open. The access point down into the caves beneath the Temple, where Master Cilghal had been recovering and Jedi often liked to meditate or relax in the warm, geothermal waters.

For a long moment he was uncomprehending. He reached up and yanked off his goggles. They were still there. A dozen. Two dozen. More. Tall, rangy, muscular. Rounded armor.

Yuuzhan Vong.

Behind them.

He didn't have to say a word. Master Katarn, Ikrit and Aeonid Thiel - not to mention Tahiri - felt his abject shock.

One of the tall warriors moved - right past one of the wide hazard lights, momentarily blocking out the dull red glow.

The moment hung - frozen and paused.

"Jeedai!" one of them - Anakin couldn't tell which - bellowed. "Surrender!"

"You'll never have our children," Ikrit hissed back. The little Kushiban surged in the Force and a short lightsaber hissed to life, hanging in the air before him. Anakin had never seen his Master use his lightsaber, not once.

"Reoriented," Tercinax murmured over comms.

"Kill them," Aeonid commanded.

The Tarantula, deafening, roared. The Yuuzhan Vong howled. Anakin found his 'saber in his hand, azure and spitting, and he flung himself at the Vong.

Bolts ripped overhead, spitting out from the Tarantula, from Zalthis, from Aeonid and Tercinax.

Vong were struck over and over, juddering and dancing and ripping apart under the barrage. Solidian's blaster joined in. Blaster shots reflected off vonduun armor.

Anakin ducked, a thudbug whickering past his head. He batted down two razorbugs.

A warrior loomed up, backlit in red. Anakin slashed, crosswise. His 'saber didn't penetrate, but smoked a line across his vonduun armor. His Force-augmented strength staggered the Vong backward, then his head vanished in a welter of gore. Anakin was turning already. Four paws thumped off his side and Ikrit flashed past, just a glimpse of ruddy-brown and black-tipped fur, leading with short-bladed green lightsaber.

Master Katarn waded in against three Vong, his lightsaber a spinning net of energy that batted away hissing amphistaves, boiled venom into acrid smoke and put one on the ground immediately, arms truncated at the elbow.

Another warrior was flung back, the Force shouting around Aeonid as the Astartes thrust a ceramite palm outward. Anakin's trick of using the Force indirectly, to manipulate air instead was spreading.

The last of them, Zal finished with a precise shot to the throat. Vong bodies were strewn around the turbolift: scorched and chopped and dismembered. Black blood steamed, drooling into wide pools.

He felt Tahiri's nausea.

She'd been too slow in reacting. Too slow in joining in and now she came over on wobbly legs, eyes wide and mouth open.

"How did they know? How'd they know?"

Aeonid heaved a sigh.

"The blame is mine. Malik Carr's assault on Macragge's Honour demonstrated numerous biots. Many are being categorized still, but there were suspicions that several acted as living auspex. As sensors, to peer through hull…or stone. I should have remembered from the prepared brief."

Master Katarn shook his head in negation.

"No, I gambled too hard on it too. It's not just on you, Aeonid. We keep underestimating the Vong and it keeps costing us. I'll warn Kam - if the Vong are in the caves, they might make it far enough to find the transports, even if they're miles from here."

Aeonid gestured, waving Tercinax over. The open doors of the turbolift - and the Vong were willing to use a turbolift to get up from the caves - yawned ominously.

"I can detonate the charges and drop the car to the depths."

"This is your Temple, Master Katarn. Your order."

Kyle grimaced. "I hate to do it, since that was our out…but they know about it now. The monsoon will have to give us enough cover to move through the jungle to another entrance. The Blueleaf Temple?"

Aeonid pressed fingers to the side of his helm.

"Varien? Status on Alebmos?"

"An icicle, Captain. Hasn't moved at all."

"Very well. As soon as he returns to himself, tell him to contact me. We cannot relocate until his…ritual is over."

Varien's reply was wordless but Anakin felt, even through the Temple, the Astartes' disgust. They retreated back from the turbolift. Master Katarn and Ikrit drew on the Force, shaping barriers of telekinetic energy like blast shields. Tercinax flipped the cover of a small, handheld trigger system off, then clicked. The report was loud, but not as loud as Anakin expected. Tahiri yelped and they all listened as several tonnes of metal, cut loose, rattled and crashed and banged down the turbolift shaft.

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Their second gambit failed, the Vong took another moment to collect themselves. The chazrach kept their gains, behind overlapping seashell barricades. Blaster bolts still flicked down from higher up the Temple as the simple-brained ASPs and PKs caught movement and ineffectually tried to snipe it down. To Anakin's eye, it was pretty convincing the kind of 'clumsy' aiming a bunch of Jedi kids would have.

The storm worsened faster than anything Anakin had ever seen. Rain went from a few drops to a drizzle to a downpour to a deluge. Hail rattled and bounced across the landing field. Wind howled and he heard branches creaking and snapping off in the jungle. The nocturnal life of Yavin 4 buried themselves deep in burrows and trembled in terror.

"And we're supposed to go out in that?" Tahiri lay with her face cupped in her hands, propped up on her elbows. Her feet kicked in the air behind her.

She was still shaken by the slaughter by the turbolift. She couldn't hide that, not from him.

As soon as she said it, a massive, hundred foot Massassi tree by the edge of the jungle gave way. Wood burst and groaned, louder than the endless thunder as it majestically, terribly toppled.

"Oh. Awesome." she muttered.

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It wasn't a storm anymore. It was the fury of nature itself, riled to hostile life and lashing out at anything and everything. The chazrach had to retreat off the open landing field or else risk getting very literally blown away by the shrieking winds. Zalthis claimed his auspex read them as a hundred kilometer an hour, at least. Rain fell in sheets that blinded them to everything beyond the hangar.

Which was flooding, slowly.

"This…was not what I was expecting, you know," Kyle offered, conversationally.

Aeonid shrugged.

"I've little experience with psykery. But Alebmos comes well-recommended from Codicier Rubio and his service is longer than most others."

"I mean..no one can fight in that. Couldn't we just wait out the night in the Temple?"

No one was sure about that.

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The answer to Tahiri's question was, in a word: no.

"Biots, of some sort." Amalius gave the first warning.

"Size?"

"I cannot tell, Captain. The storm is eroding all auspex clarity. Large. Not 'rakamat' class, but significant."

Aeonid and Kyle fell into debate on the next steps. Aeonid felt that the initial attacks were from outriders, here to secure the Temple and prevent the Jedi from escaping while heavier forces caught up. Kyle argued that regardless of the biots, the Vong were putting in effort to capture Jedi, not kill them, so they didn't need to worry about plasma bombardments or anything like that. But the new presence underneath them had both the blademaster and the Captain uneasy. The Vong seemed to pull new biots out of thin air whenever they needed them.

Everyone kept looking to the still-smoking doors of the turbolift. There could be monsters down there, chewing their way right up and they'd never know it until the Vong were right on top of them, again.

The Temple was feeling less and less like a fortress and more and more like a trap.

"Master Ikrit? What do you think?"

"I think that the time is coming when we must act, and not react."

That was the problem on every level of the war, wasn't it? Reacting, never acting. The Vong attacked Sernpidal - they reacted by trying to evacuate. The Vong attacked Dantooine, they reacted by retreating. The Vong attacked Obroa-skai and Ithor and Fondor and Duro and all the others, and the New Republic reacted, reacted, reacted. Reacted by retreating, reacted by coming up with plans for counterattacks that relied on the Vong acting first. Reacted by withdrawing from whole sectors, reacted by arguing in the Senate, reacted by standing by and watching Jedi be sold out.

Even the Exiles were only reacting. Their world got attacked, and they just reacted by defending it and finally deciding to make a real treaty with the Senate.

No one was acting. No one was being proactive. The Vong had all the momentum. They got to decide where the fights were. They got to decide who died, who lived.

Master Ikrit's words were heavy in a way that Anakin felt meant more than just about the next thirty minutes, hour, day. His Master meant more than the immediate and it settled like a stone in Anakin's gut.

Even he had just been reactive. Shutting down Centerpoint. Reacting to the danger.

Right now. Evacuating the Temple, they were still letting the Yuuzhan Vong decide it all. The Praxeum was in danger, so all they could do was run away. No one even considered - "What if we could defend Yavin?"

Anakin cleared his throat, tapped his comm.

"What if we…went on the offensive?"

"In that?" Tahiri exclaimed.

"Well, we have them focused on the Temple like we wanted, but now we know they're down in the caves too. They've got biots coming and who knows what those are going to be, but maybe we shouldn't just wait around for them? Zal, on Fondor - you were telling me earlier that you and Solidian went after the Vong commander. And it worked, didn't it?"

"It did. Their captain, Tshek Ulm was leading a killteam after the very shields of Fondor. Had we not…the battle might have ended very differently."

"So let's go after them. Master Katarn, we can do a battle meld - like Jacen and Jaina and I did at Dubrillion."

Growing more sure, Anakin outlined the idea. Aeonid was probably the best of all the Jedi - Force-sensitives - present at telepathy, which meant he could definitely act like the anchor the way Jacen had. Aeonid was able to share words, clear words right into other being's minds. That was something that even Anakin and Tahiri couldn't reliably do, for all they had their own bond. The Astartes' mind was like a holocomm broadcaster. With Aeonid as the anchor, Anakin's experience with his siblings and Master Ikrit and Katarn's experience, they could forge a meld for everyone here. Astartes' auspex was blinded by the storm? They could share senses. Comms go down? They could share thoughts.

It would work. And they could make it across the plateau to the branch caves where the rest of the Praxeum waited, get aboard, and blast right off when morning broke.

"I hate the idea of going out in the middle of the night," Kyle admitted. "It's an awful situation. But the storm will stop them from using any bugs, it'll destroy their cohesion, and with a battle meld, we'll have a huge edge." He rubbed at his neck. "And as much as I hate the idea of tramping around the jungle in the middle of the night - in a monsoon - I hate the idea of getting pinned between Vong coming up from underneath us and coming from outside too."

"I will not have another in my head!" Solidian retorted, sounding more surprised than disgusted. Then he started, entire body stiffening as his helm snapped around toward Aeonid. Anakin bit back a laugh - he'd felt the ripple of Force as Aeonid spoke directly to Sol.

"You'll do as I command, if you're to serve in my Company. Adaptive Tactics, Solidian. Remark 101.x."

"'What wins the fight is what wins the fight.'"

"It should be emblazoned on our pauldrons," Aeonid said drily. "Perhaps I'll petition the Praetorium to accept it as our emblem. Varien? Amalius? You have heard it all?"

"Yes, Captain," Varien replied, voice tight. "I will obey your commands. The psyker, also, wakes."

"The 'psyker' does," Alebmos' rich voice joined in. "I will continue to shape the storm, but I have done all I can from here."

"Join us, then. We are quitting the Temple. We cannot bank on the 'mercy' of the Vong or their inclination toward capture instead of kill. Anakin has the right of it. They are off-balance. Practical: we keep them off-balance."

+By your guidance, Knight Solo+

Anakin closed his eyes, took a deep breath and sank into memories. The way Jacen and Jaina had reached out to him, pulling him into their existing twin bond. Seeing through their eyes, seeing his own TIE from Jacen's view while at the same time watching Jaina with his own eyes. Moving as one, across three bodies. Seeing an asteroid tumbling in from Jaina's eyes, moving Jacen's hands on the stick to move out of the way for Anakin to fire a burst of laser fire and shatter the rock.

He dredged up the sensation and shared it. Aeonid's regard was firm, like a teacher peering over his shoulder, looking at his notes.

One by one, presences lit in the meld. Tahiri burst in, golden fire. Kyle slotted into place with a wink over durasteel discipline. Ikrit was silver warmth. Zalthis joined most readily of the others, something like wide-eyed surprise as the Force touched him. Then Amalius, who felt as calm as a lazy river. Tercinax, with a sensation like wry amusement. Solidian, an embodiment of exasperation. Varien prickled, thorny, barely tangible at all. And Alebmos -

+Better that I remain without.+ the Lexicanium spoke as a whisper, not in the mind, but at each of their ears. +I will speak through the wind and continue to shape the Storm.+

Aeonid didn't argue, so Anakin trusted it was probably for the best. Given the churning, grumbling knot of Force around the psyker, he couldn't say he really wanted a sense of what was going on in there.

Especially once the three Astartes joined the rest in the hangar, descending down the secondary turbolift.

The psyker was encrusted in frost, caking his armor in creaking and cracking sheets of ice. His eyes were glowing white-hot with actual little licking tendrils of flames at the corners. Around his neck, his torc was the dull red of hot metal.

Definitely for the best to not have whatever was going on in there in the meld.

Tahiri agreed and Tercinax shaped out the gravelly equivalent of an Astartesian chuckle at Anakin's unspoken thought.

Oh. Right. Meld.

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After a minute, Anakin was soaked. His jumpsuit clung to him, bunching up uncomfortably under his arms and at his crotch, his boots filled with water. The rain wasn't coming down in drops, it was coming down in sheets. Waves! After three minutes, he threw his goggles away. The lenses were fogging, the seal at his forehead wasn't enough to keep them from filling with water and he couldn't even see his own feet. He drew on the Force, taking a deep breath and focusing it behind his eyes, like the trick Daeshara'cor had taught him. The Twi'lek said it could make all the difference in deep caves like on Ryloth or in smoky, dark alleys where recognizing the shadow of a blaster was the difference between life and death.

The jungle took on some more definition - more grayscale, color draining away.

Somehow, the hurricane winds moved around each of them. The howling noise wasn't any less, but falling branches fell to the sides. Trees that uprooted swung away. Hail crashed down everywhere they weren't. It was cold, it was wet, it was awful, but the storm welcomed them into it.

Blades lit. Green, blue. Power fields crackled.

Beneath a monsoon's swirling clouds, true night settled in full.

----------------------------------------

Even with the storm favoring them, visibility was minimal at best. They moved by sense of each other, spread out through the jungle. It was impossible to stick together completely, even with the meld. Constant lightning showed snapshots every few seconds. The Astartes were better off with their helmets and Anakin wondered who he had to bribe to get a suit of that armor for himself.

But a Jedi had far greater senses than just their eyes. Ikrit shared his connection with the flora and fauna. Where vines released chemical markers as they were cut. Where a soggy den of marsupials felt sudden fear as heavy feet trod overhead. And Daeshara'cor's trick worked well enough.

Lightning flashed. Anakin gasped, ducking. A hulking Yuuzhan Vong stumbled past, overreaching, and the amphistaff that should've taken the top six inches of Anakin's head instead slashed clean through a young sapling. The warrior hissed and recovered, amphistaff spinning around to an easy guard.

"Jeedai," he shouted, over the din of the storm.

"Me," Anakin agreed grimly. They came together, flashing blue blade and dark, rainslick amphistaff. Water flashed to vapor. The living blade lashed, suddenly serpentine and loose. He hooked it with his lightsaber, snapping the whip wide and to the left. Fangs flashed, inches from his nose. Before it could stiffen again, Anakin braced, kicked out at Yavin as he thrust out his hand at the Vong. Air compressed by telekinesis stumbled the tall alien, arms whirling wide - another blade, blue like his, jabbed up into vulnerable armpit. The warrior fell without a sound.

Tahiri heaved in deep breaths, her lightsabre outstretched. Anakin squinted against the deluge. Puffs of steam hissed from both their lightsabers.

Her distress was physical, muddied with elation and horror and his friend didn't have to shout the words over the storm.

She'd never killed anyone before.

He cut his own blade out. Tahiri's 'sabre stayed lit, throwing hard shadows across her blank expression. Her jumpsuit was as soaked as his, her hair matted down in tangled, ropey strings across her cheeks and neck. Common sense would say to tie it up and back, but Tahiri…was Tahiri.

Gently, he held out his hand. Her cold, small fingers wedged between his.

It's okay.

Another hiss-crack and the jungle was dark shapes over darker shapes again. Anakin pulled her close, close enough that she pressed against him, faces inches apart.

"We have to keep moving!"

Water ramped off her nose, spraying out like a faucet from her chin. It was torrential. Tahiri nodded.

"Master Katarn is calling us that way!" He pointed, jerking his head westward. Though the meld was far less rich in feeling than what he and Tahiri shared, every day, it was enough for clear impressions and strong, strong senses of direction. He could feel Ikrit and Kyle like bright bonfires, just like he could feel Aeonid Thiel and Zal and the other Astartes. They were muted and managed by Aeonid, but as they moved through the jungle, they could keep track even in the suffocating underbrush and roaring storm.

Anakin pulled Tahiri along and she let him, trusting him to lead. She'd follow.

----------------------------------------

Time didn't make sense. Everything was now. Everything is now. He feels the impact jolt up Master Katarn's arm as he drives his lightsaber through the abdominal plates of a warrior. The sensations from the Astartes are confusing and give him headaches. They move too fast, their eyes dart around so quickly that all the Jedi decided, almost immediately, not to try sharing senses. They group up unconsciously. Kyle and Aeonid, Master and sort-of-apprentice, along with Tercinax. Alebmos, Varien and Amalius. Zalthis and Solidian, who try to keep up with Anakin, Tahiri and Ikrit.

Alebmos can't fight as much; he's keeping his focus on the storm. It's not an accident that everything works. He didn't just pull the monsoon. He tells them - he is riding the storm. He is the storm and it answers to him. The winds that shriek along as fast as a landspeeder divert around them because Alebmos wills it. Hail avoids them, lightning strikes unerringly to disorient only their foes, because the storm knows them. It calls them friend.

Alebmos is the conduit, but Yavin fights for the Jedi.

The years that Luke built his Praxeum, so short against the scale of all space and time, left indelible imprints. Purging Exar Kun's evil, breaking the chains of the Massassi children's souls. Banishing the slivilith monster, excavating and removing Sith artifacts.

Filling the Great Temple with laughter and children's voices.

Alebmos only had to ask.

Yavin fights with them.

----------------------------------------

The Jeedai sorcery makes the air thick. He pants through his mouth, grateful to the blessings of the Shapers for his enclosing armor. Rain sluices from thick and redoubtable plates, most of his body blessedly dry under the embrace of his bonded vonduun. Its muscles are his muscles, its sinews his sinews - its life, his life. Ulvuarg Qesh lopes through a storm he has never believed could be such a thing, a storm like ancient tales that the priests weave. The last turning, he lived within the yorik coral spaces of Cool Deeps and before that, the stale ways of Ulnurem Raas.

To step beneath a wide open sky unmanned him. He took a moment to muster himself before surreptitiously letting blood from his palm in entreaty to the Slayer to overlook his moment of weakness. There was so much space! So much overwhelming and endless space. Life filled his lungs, the seductive scent of living…everything.

Then the Jeedai worked their sorceries. He saw chazrach boil and burst beneath cruel and evil lightning, before the world itself was perverted and subjugated by conjurations. This storm could be no natural thing, for all Ulvuarg had no experience with such things.

The wind screamed his name, over and over. The rain fell at angles that drove it, always, at the nictitating lenses of his helm, to blind him over and again. Hailstones left his back sore and bruised beneath his plate, his vonduun shifting in irritation.

And true lightning struck like lashes of amphistaff. One of his very brothers wailed in agony, caught aflame and slain. Calamitous noise defeaned Ulvuarg for a time, muting the fury of the storm.

The Jeedai have done this. They have taken a beautiful world and cursed it. Will it always be this way? He thinks it cannot. Jeedai cannot have that power. They cannot have broken a world so thoroughly. Yet it feels like the end, like the ground might heave and split and cast him away into the hungry void which is so close.

He slashes vines aside, he shoulders through brambles and thorns scratch without mark on his vonduun. Perhaps, he thinks - perhaps this is not the Jeedai. Perhaps this is the punishment of the Gods themselves, for the Jeedai's own defiance against the willing and appropriate submission offered by Commander Harmae. Yes - this rings truer. The Gods know the Chosen People can withstand these trials with ease, so they make the living world itself groan and resent the heresies of the Jeedai that taint its skin so.

Yes, Ulvuarg thinks, it is the Gods' will.

----------------------------------------

He's not sure who is more surprised. Him, Tahiri, or the five warriors they literally tripped over. Anakin rebounded hard off something unmoving and expected a tree, only for a flash of lightning to snatch silver light over the rounded shape of armor he knew and hated all too well.

Tahiri fights with him, back-to-back. Within the meld, their connection is more than it has ever been. He sees through her eyes. A warrior with amphistaff in double handed grip strikes downward, to cleave her from head to toe. She isn't strong enough to parry - Anakin knows this and so does she, because Anakin has tested his strength against warriors and Tahiri hasn't, so she borrows his experience. Her lightsaber flicks and diverts, not deflects, using leverage and the motion of the warrior to shift his center.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

And Anakin is there, tip of his own 'saber punching between chestplate and helm.

Through his eyes, Tahiri sees a warrior rip bugs from a bandolier. Anakin doesn't - he's focused on the dying warrior impaled through the throat. She catches the razor bug, then the thud bug.

Thanks. You're welcome. Any time.

They must have run into a larger patrol. Five warriors cut down to three, but then make more friends. Chazrach too. They feel them, at least, the little reptoids shivering and freezing. The hail has gotten worse, the rain turning into sleet. It's going to wreak havoc on the jungle. Anakin has never seen a storm like this, not in all his time on Yavin. Sleet! Hail!

Behind you.

In front of you.

I see.

Watch it-

Close!

Tahiri's stomach jumps and twists each time a chazrach dies. She's killing people. Beings. They want to kill her, but they're beings. She's killed things, never beings.

It still hurts her.

Anakin hopes it never stops hurting her.

Ikrit sees what they see. His Master is there, looking through Anakin's eyes. He sees warriors and he sees the razorbug that slices across Anakin's cheek.

It's shallow, just a cut. Blood mixes with rain.

Anakin! Tahiri!

+Hold,+ Aeonid commands. Commands.

He rips down a half-shattered Massassi. The upper half is gone, splintered away from a lightning strike. Anakin uproots it, because Tahiri has already taken its weight. She spins it, like a top. Anakin provides the fulcrum. Warriors shout as they are knocked aside, bruised but unbroken. That's okay. A warrior struggling back to his feet receives the root-ball, face first, at several dozen kilometers per hour.

Tahiri grabs hail from the air. Anakin aims for her as she whirls them in orbit around them both. Warriors circle them. The clash has left a clearing. Monoedged amphistaves and sputtering lightsabers leave nothing in their wake.

Anakin has fought a hundred warriors or more. Obroa-skai was a gauntlet. A few, each time, with Ascratus and Uncle Luke and Face and Zal and the others.

He has Tahiri. There are a dozen warriors.

Is it enough?

Do you need anyone besides me?

Do you need someone beside you?

Always. Back to back. Side to side.

Green and blue. Blue and green.

"Jeedai," spits a warrior. "You fight well. You are honor. Submit. Submit!"

His Basic is atrocious. Tahiri laughs. Even now, especially now, it makes him smile. It's that easy.

Taloned hands stroke bandoliers of bugs. They can't fly far in this insane wind and rain. They don't need to. The warriors are just outside reach of their 'sabers. Close enough.

"Tahiri, they keep asking us to surrender," Anakin says. He hears her words through her ears.

"That's not fair," she agrees.

"Hey, you guys," she speaks Anakin's words. "Maybe you should submit."

The warriors don't like that.

Anakin doesn't care. Neither does Tahiri.

The Force sings in them both. Green light takes a head. Blue light pins through an armpit. Amphitaves whip, whirl, weave, wrack. Fangs flash. Tahiri gries out, red line crossing her collarbone. He feels it. Anakin winces, tip of a stave punching through the meat of his outer thigh. A razorbug, blown off course, evades his 'saber. It takes the tip of his ear. Tahiri gasps at the pain of it.

Fangs flash. He sees them coming, he hooks an arm around her and twists her aside. Two sharp pinches. Fever-fire rushes into his bicep, ripping into the muscle - Tahiri wraps him in the Force and he aims. Blood spurts as if the amphistaff struck an artery. The venom squirts out with it.

The burn lingers, damage already done to tissues. His arm trembles.

This won't be it.

Because Anakin sees himself, he sees Tahiri. He sees them both, because he looks through his Master's gold-red eyes.

Ikrit springs into the clearing, twisting his body mid-flight. All four paws strike a Yuuzhan Vong at the back of his helm. Ikrit's 'saber, held unerring in the Force, spikes through the same warrior's eye. Before he falls, Ikrit uncoils into a leap that propels him up, past a thud bug, another. He redirects against the bole of a Massassi tree as large around as an airspeeder. Anakin's Master is a blur of soaked, matted green-black fur. His ears are pinned back, cutting teeth bared. Another warrior falls.

Every surface is a springboard. Ikrit is never not in motion. The Jedi Master karoms as if gravity is a suggestion. Kushiban are not hunters, naturally, in their ancient state. Given option, Kushiban prefer a state of peace and quiet. Anakin knows all this. He knows because Ikrit has told him of his kind.

But they are small beings in a large, large world. There were always predators. And Kushiban always defended their own.

Through Anakin's eyes, through Tahiri's eyes, Ikrit aims each leap. His back legs, powerful and enough to boost even a non-Jedi Kushiban to the height of a tall human, ring with the Force.

A warrior leaps for Tahiri, hand outstretched. She doesn't react. Anakin sees him coming, but stays focused on his current duel. Ikrit bowls the warrior over. They feel momentary pain from the Master as he strikes the far larger being far harder than he should. It's enough, knocking the warrior aside. The warrior doesn't rise as Ikrit springs away again.

Of course it was enough. They are Jedi. They have each other. They're Jedi.

Anakin laughs. Tahiri laughs. Is this what it's like? Is this what it was like? For heroes like Nomi Sunrider and Obi-Wan?

How everything works. Why do they need to worry about sensing the Vong, when they can see everything?

The Force sings in him. In Tahiri. In Ikrit.

Kyle's surprise is palpable. The trainees - Anakin senses them too. He gives a nod to Kam and Tionne Solusar. To Master Cilghal and Streen, who is outside the caves, head upturned to the storm. He's the one calling the lightning, Anakin realizes. He's helping Alebmos.

It's beautiful. It's-

Ikrit rebounds. A warrior hurls his amphistaff like a spear, to impale Anakin. Tahiri sees it and knocks it spinning aside, where the biot relaxes, serpentine, and vanishes in the underbrush. Ikrit pulls his lightsaber to him, aimed like a jouster-

The warrior catches Ikrit by the neck.

Anakin stumbles.

Tahiri flails, off balance.

Black, taloned fingers wrap around fur that shimmers silver. Wide blue eyes look up at the blank vonduun mask. Anakin can feel his windpipe collapse. He can feel the strain on his vertebrae. Tahiri gags, hands flying to her neck.

Master-

Boom.

The warrior tumbles, missing most of his chest.

+Not yet,+ Alebmos whispers into all their ears.

Zalthis lowers his bolt pistol.

"I heard," the young Astartes offers, as greeting.

Ikrit rises to unsteady feet.

The music is gone. Anakin is soaked and gasping, panting hard for breath. Warriors litter the forest floor around them. Tahiri doesn't realize she's crying. The tears mix with rain on her cheeks. She presses a hand to her collarbone, where blood still leaks from a cut. They're aching. His bicep is throbbing from venom. He has bruises all over.

Ikrit looks lost.

"How long?" The Kushiban manages to ask, voice trembling.

"It'll be dawn soon enough. Captain Thiel says the eye will be overhead soon."

Dawn. Soon. Time trickled back into motion.

Zal's words sounded true. The wind was lessening. The rain was getting lighter. They would be in the eye, soon.

----------------------------------------

Ulvuarg Qesh sneers down at piled corpses. A clearing was ripped into the jungle, full of cut vines and shredded undergrowth. Warriors are left where they lie, armor scorched and charred and seared. Jeedai weapons, like the one the Warmaster broke.

If this was the fury of the Gods, why did the Jeedai benefit so greatly?

----------------------------------------

They had to look a real sight. Master Katarn had a compression wrap around his chest, courtesy of Aeonid's medical supply. The glow in Alebmos' eyes had guttered down to a dull flame and his torc was more of a dull crimson instead of cherry red. Ikrit perched on Anakin's shoulder, like old times, but the Kushiban looked…well, like a drowned Kushiban, with how soaked he was. Tahiri clawed her tangled hair back into a ragged mane that fell down her back. All of the Astartes bore some kind of battle-damage, from plates with pieces missing from keen-edged amphistaves to chipped divots carved out by denser thudbugs. In Varien's case, one pauldron was bare silver metal, a near-miss from a Vong hand-held plasma searing away the paint.

But no one died. No one was even really injured: Master Katarn had suffered two cracked ribs and was the worst.

Ikrit cleared his bruised throat again.

Still, compared to the Solusars in their clean jumpsuits and Cilghal in her tunic, they had to look a serious mess. Soaked and bloody, most of it ichor from Vong. At least for the Astartes, their armor washed off easy.

There were some serious unmentionables stuck to Anakin's jumpsuit. Bolters were not clean kills.

Tionne broke down crying, pressing her hands to her mouth.

"You're all okay! We could feel you fighting all night. All of you…" she trailed off.

"And we weren't followed," Kyle assured them.

Aeonid agreed. "With the eye overhead and the storm calmed, auspex confirmed no motion tracks behind us. We are clear, for now."

Kam's gaze was sharp as he took in each one of them.

"Temerity? Are we clear to launch?"

Aeonid shook his head.

"Not quite yet. Vox is out from the storm - I will need to relay through the Thunderhawk. At last communication, the shipmaster told me he plans an initial pass to draw attention and attrit the Vong squadron. He will loop the moon, drawing away as many vessels in pursuit as possible. That will be our window: after the initial pass. We will meet Temerity as it passes overhead again."

"And how long?"

"An hour. Based on last communication. I will be more sure once I've re-established vox."

Aeonid left to do just that, with Varien and Tercinax. Amalius volunteered, with Solidian, to run pre-flight checks on Thunderhawk and Storm Eagle. Zalthis trailed after Anakin and Tahiri, after Ikrit bade his farewell and a desire to 'feel less like he'd been dragged through Dac's oceans.'

Tahiri tensed a little as Zalthis fell in beside them. The Astartes stood a head and more taller than Anakin in his armor, putting him far above Tahiri.

"Zalthis, right?"

The Astartes doffed his helmet, revealing blue eyes and tight, curly dark hair.

Tahiri sucked in a deep breath, visibly bracing herself.

"Thanks for saving Master Ikrit's life I thought he was going to die right there and I couldn't do anything but you killed that warrior and saved him and I wasn't being fair before and now I feel really bad about that-"

Anakin gently put an arm around her shoulders, feeling her shivering from the cold.

"Sentences, Tahiri," he said. Their old joke.

"Right. Thank you for saving Master Ikrit. And I want to say sorry for being kind of mean to you since you showed up but you came here to help all of us and…that wasn't fair." She ducked her head, scuffing her boot - boot, because Anakin had forced her to put on boots before they left the Temple - against the rough stone of the cavern.

Zalthis confusion was palpable.

"That is…fine? I accept your apology."

"I want to say thanks, too," Anakin added. "That was-" a knot caught the rest of his words. Tahiri's small hand rubbed against the small of his back and he swallowed. "That was close. Thank you."

Zalthis dipped his head.

"We came to help the Jedi," the Astartes said, looking abashed. "It would be a very poor performance if we failed at that."

----------------------------------------

In a change of clothes with adhesive bandages taped over the various slices and cuts he'd accumulated, Anakin felt a lot more like a real human being. There hadn't been much to do besides take a moment to clean up, suck down some water and put on dry clothes. All the trainees stayed shut up and belted in, just in case as the other freighters were powering up and coming online.

Lady Starstorm was an ugly old monster, but as the biggest, it was sure to draw the most attention. He slouched in the pilot's seat, shoulders hunched as he slowly punched through preflight. Thunderbolt and Celestial Dancer were already active, ready to go. Celador Sash and Dalliance were just about set too. The two Exile ships, Thunderhawk and Storm Eagle were ready and loaded up. Everyone was set.

Tahiri ambled in, sinking into the copilot's seat with a groan and a huff.

"I'm going to be black and blue over like, every single inch of me."

"Tell me about it," he replied idly, running tests on each repulsor. Lady Starstorm was an old YV-100, the main fuselage taking the shape of a fat, half disk with four big engines set into the flat part of the truncated disk. The cockpit occupied the end of a stubby neck that projected forward. All in all, it had the distinctive saucer design language Corellian Engineering was known for, but none of the later refinements in not being a hunk of junk.

Still, she'd fly, and she had laser cannons Anakin slaved to the pilot's controls. YVs could take a beating, lose three of the four engines and still limp along. The first four freighters would launch, escorted by Thunderhawk and Storm Eagle, since those were gunships. Fiver stood ready to cover with Anakin's XJ and the slaved flight of Z-95s, though they'd be more just there to soak up plasma than do any real damage.

Anakin would take up the end and just in case, Lady Starstorm had escape pods primed. If they had to sacrifice it, so be it, and Temerity would grab up the escape pods with him, Ikrit and Tahiri in them.

He'd tried to convince Tahiri to go with Kam and Tionne.

By tried, Anakin opened his mouth, saw the look on her face, and wisely closed it again.

Ikrit joined them, padding in. His ears hung loose and dragging on the floor and his Master seemed strangely subdued. Tahiri must not have noticed - or did - because she scooped up the Kushiban in a hug, returning to the copilot's seat. Ikrit snuggled against the girl, fur shading into a green that wasn't far off from Tahiri's eyes.

"I was-" her voice broke and Anakin pretended to be busy. She buried her face in Ikrit's fur.

"It's okay to fear, Tahiri," the Master said gently. "As much as death is a part of the Force as life, it's a rare being that doesn't face it without some trepidation. Zalthis was very timely."

All four engines checked out, just like yesterday. Repulsorlifts were green. Everything was good.

"I haven't stopped being afraid either," Anakin admitted. "I feel like I should, but…even with the battle meld and having you all with me, I was still almost as afraid as when I was alone on Dantooine."

"Fear is how life knows to be cautious. Never let it drive you, or own you, but respect the feelings that life provides. The Force lives in those - when danger threatens, do you feel love through the Force? Of course not! You feel a moment of fear when the Force whispers danger. It is drowning in those negative emotions that gives them true power."

Tahiri knuckled at her eyes, sucking in a shivering breath, blowing it out more steadily.

"Were you afraid?"

Ikrit winked.

"I was defending my students. Of course I was!"

Anakin took the lie as it was.

----------------------------------------

"Temerity is beginning their pass. Watch!"

Anakin craned his neck, peering up through the freighter's canopy. The cavern they'd all chosen was probably more accurately a ravine, with a narrow slice open to the sky above. It was how all the ships had made it in, carefully navigating through the slot down into the broad, open cavern it led into. Then again, stalagmites meant 'cave', so maybe cavern was right. The eye of the monsoon was overhead, revealing pale, pale blue skies of morning.

He wasn't as exhausted as Obroa-skai, but even drawing on the Force to infuse him, Anakin was imagining the bunk in the back of Lady Starstorm, once all this was passed. Maybe Zal could source them some chambers like on Samothrace. Those beds had been luxurious.

Threads of light flickered in that thin slice of blue sky. Faint, barely visible shapes moved.

"Temerity is engaging. Hold-" Aeonid's voice cut out for a second, the comms hissing. "One miid-roic has sustained damage. Non-critical, but significant. It is moving to a higher orbit. The second…is turning to follow Temerity."

Sithspawn. They had hoped to kill or outright cripple one of the cruiser-analogues, then draw off the other. Then they could have launched and gone straight for hyperspace to a rendezvous point just outside the Yavin system while Temerity shook pursuit.

But even with one damaged and in a higher orbit, it was still way too much of a risk to try running that blockade.

"Temerity will orbit the moon in thirteen minutes. I am transmitting synchronization for the operation. Mark."

Kam, Kyle, Streen and Cilghal all responded affirmative. Anakin saw the countdown appear, confirmed for himself.

Almost out. Almost out.

He hoped the Vong would leave Yavin alone once they knew the Jedi were gone. There wasn't anything else here for them. Over on Yavin 8, Suz Tanwa had taken down her outpost, hiding all the technology in the Melodie's caves. They could go underground and the Vong surely wouldn't notice them there.

Sannah had ranted about how they had to evacuate her people, but Anakin knew there was no way in the galaxy the Elders would agree to it. Besides, they could only hope to take away the younger Melodies. How could they evacuate all those who had Changed? They would need specialized starships with water tanks, or air-breathing systems for their gills. The Melodies had managed to stay hidden for thousands of years - the best they could hope for was for that luck to continue.

They didn't have a choice.

Minutes ticked by, tense. Anakin drummed his fingers against his thigh. Tahiri stared straight ahead, eyes wide, lost in thought. He kept distance, giving her space. Ikrit kept his own silence.

The timer ticked further.

"Mark."

Thunderbolt rose first. Celador Sash right behind. Anakin blew out a breath, thought of Jaina, and took the stick.

----------------------------------------

The holodisplay in the cockpit showed two tracks. Temerity, and the shuttle flight. Where they came together was where they had to be.

Coralskippers vectored in, as expected. Fiver broke off with a cheerful whistle, leading the clumsily synchronized Z95s after him. Storm Eagle pulled some distance with Amalius at the controls. Aeonid kept Thunderhawk leading the pack.

After the storm - which Anakin gaped at as they rose up into the enormous eye - it seemed so simple. Temerity had a single flight of Thunderbolts - a funny coincidence, given the freighter Cilghal was at the helm of - and they were tangling with 'skips already. The destroyer's nasty guns had swatted a squadron during its hard orbit pass, clearing the sky more. The cruiser-analogue chasing was slinging plasma and magma missiles, some of which were striking armor, but flashes of hot plasma and physical shells slammed back at the Vong warship, slowing it each time dovin basals tried to eat the incoming fire.

Lady Starstorm was a bantha to handle and she waddled up into the sky, grumbling as Anakin piled on altitude, rising up the massive walls of the storm's eye.

"Don't storms move faster than this?" Kam asked.

"I am retaining it for the time being," Alebmos returned, sounding way too smug.

Lightning flickered and crackled in the eye wall.

Tahiri smirked, leaning forward and flicking on the comm.

"Hey, tell Sannah that she's lucky she didn't go out in that mess. She'd've Changed, just from how soaked we were!"

Kam laughed and Anakin could picture the Master shaking his head.

"Sannah is over with Cilghal, but I'll pass it along."

The first flight of 'skips was getting close, but Amalius broke off Storm Eagle completely, arrowing right for them. Anakin kept an eye on the contacts winking on the sensor board.

"With me? No, Sannah is with Kyle."

One of the coralskippers vanished as Storm Eagle slashed in, Fiver riding wingmate.

"Uh, Sannah's not here…"

It was the tone of Master Katarn's voice that caught Anakin's attention.

The words ran through his head, clicked.

"Wait, what!?"

"Sannah boarded Thunderbolt!"

"She's not here."

"I saw her on Celador Sash-"

Oh, no. No. No no no. Anakin locked autopilot for a moment, eyeing the nearest coralskippers, then sunk into the Force. Tahiri bloomed next to him, a golden bonfire he always knew. Ikrit felt strangely diminished in her lap. Then he felt Master Katarn, Cilghal. The Solusars. Aeonid. Each of the trainees.

He felt overpowering guilt rolling off of Valin Horn.

And he didn't sense Sannah at all.

Stomach churning so much he tasted bile, Anakin refocused reaching down toward the Temple-

Maybe. Maybe a hint.

"Ask Valin," he gasped out, hands shaking.

Moments later, words Anakin wouldn't repeat filled the comm.

"He helped her hide! His father's sithspawned illusions - Sannah wanted to stay and help her people. She's at the Temple. She hid in her room."

Lyric could do that. She could muffle her presence in the Force. It was something that was innate, it seemed, to Melodie Jedi. Something of their upbringing with all the predators, made it second nature for a Melodie to go still and silent and pass out of notice. Lyric could do it and Anakin had forgotten Sannah did too. She hadn't, not since Anakin had been back, but he remembered her pulling off the trick in games of hide-and-don't-squeek. Everyone agreed it was super unfair.

"Anakin."

She was down there, in the Temple. She'd been there through the whole storm. All the fighting. What in Corellian hells was her plan? What was her stupid plan? What was she thinking? That she could just grab one of the leftover shuttles and hop over to Yavin 8? Fight all the Vong herself? Save the day?

"Anakin!"

They were going to find her and - the Vong wanted the Jedi alive. Why? What were they going to do? Sacrifice? Torture? Sannah - little Sannah. He gave her wokling rides and she taught them how to swim.

"Anakin!" Tahiri's scream jolted him - and his hands on the stick. Lady Starstorm wobbled. "Anakin, we can't leave her!"

They were the last freighter in the flight. All the others had the kids. It was just him, Tahiri and Ikrit.

He couldn't leave Sannah.

He couldn't risk Tahiri.

"Send Storm Eagle-"

"We cannot! Amalius must keep coralskippers off us."

More contacts lit the sensor board. Four squadrons total. It was going to be close as it was. It might not even be enough to get out already.

"Anakin! Don't you dare! We can't leave her! Anakin!"

Ikrit's eyes were blue, ice-blue. The Kushiban peered into Anakin from his perch in Tahiri's lap.

"The time comes to act," he said, cryptically.

"I'll get her," Anakin called over the comm. "Master Ikrit and Tahiri can take an escape pod-"

"LIKE HELL!"

"No, Anakin, there's too many 'skips to keep off unshielded pods."

He hadn't consciously done it, but Lady Starstorm was already nosing down. He knew where the Temple was. He'd always know.

"I am releasing the storm. Go with winds at your back, Knight Solo."

----------------------------------------

Lady Starstorm didn't so much land on the muddy, cratered tarmac outside the Temple so much as slam down so hard the landing gear collapsed. The freighter skidded into a half-spin but Anakin was already up and unbuckled, only the Force keeping him upright as he dashed down the corridors. One more orbit. Temerity could do one more loop. He had ten minutes. Ten minutes to get Sannah, get back to Lady Starstorm and get to orbit.

Ten minutes.

As the monsoon dissolved and the energies finally unbound from the psyker, he watched the other freighters, one by one, make it to the destroyer. Storm Eagle and Fiver managed to bag five coralskippers, while the Thunderbolt flight smashed in and knocked down six more. All the Z95s flamed out. Celador Sash and Dalliance lost shields and took hits, but nothing that made it through the hull or threatened flight.

The rest of the Praxeum were safe.

They'd made it.

Anakin pelted down the still-lowering ramp, leaping down and absorbing the landing with the Force.

Fear warred with anger. Sannah put him in danger - Ikrit and Tahiri too.

Tahiri mutely bolstered him and Anakin grabbed the Force with both hands, wrenching it into place. He peered through walls and Massassi stone and found the shadowy little whisper. Sannah.

He leapt. Twenty meters, straight up. He struck the Temple facing, leapt up again, pulling his lightsaber from his belt. Curtain stones had been lowered to seal off the opening between each tier - Anakin went through them. He raced down the halls, feeling Sannah's rising panic. She knew he was here. She knew. She knew they were here.

He blew the door of her room off the hinges with a brush of the Force. She huddled on her bed, curled up in a ball. He smelled something bitter.

Anakin grabbed her, the Melodie went limp as soon as he yanked her off the bed and slung her none too gently over one shoulder.

He couldn't even form words. How much time was left?

Lady Starstorm beckoned. The ramp was only half open, wedged against the landing pad. Anakin raced up it, pausing only long enough to fling Sannah into one of the passenger cabins and yank the door shut. He crushed the lock.

Hurling himself back into the pilot's seat, Anakin slammed thrust to full and the Lady lurched forward on hot ion trails, skipping and skidding. Metal shrieked and screamed as they bounced once, twice, then were airborne.

"You smell like…" Tahiri trailed off, nose wrinkling.

The chron said he had two minutes. Two minutes. Temerity was already clearing the horizon. The Thunderbolt flight was vectoring in. Rain hammered against the cockpit. Everything outside was grey as the monsoon ripped itself to pieces. The eye was collapsing. Get high enough, get out of the storm.

Contacts squiggled and squirmed on sensors, impossible to confirm. There could be a Super Star Destroyer flying formation with him in this murk and he'd never know.

Lady Starstorm groaned at the stresses of hurricane-force winds and engines slammed to maximum far too fast for her aging frame. She'd hold together. Anakin wouldn't allow anything else. He wouldn't.

Burbled words tried to make sense through comms.

The altimeter ticked higher. Higher. How much farther? This storm couldn't reach-

Just like that, they were out. The sun burst bright and searing. Tahiri cried out in surprise. The sensor board cleared.

They were surrounded.

A mass of yorik coral as big as a moon crashed down from above -

----------------------------------------

-Anakin blinked, back to himself a second later. Klaxons screamed, all the boards in the cockpit awash in bright red. Tahiri struggled with the webbing holding her in place. Ikrit was barking something, but with the wind, Anakin couldn't hear. Wind? How-

The canopy was cracked through, missing a chunk right near the top.

"Anakin? Anakin! That was one of their transports, it's grabbed onto the freighter! You need to get-"

Master Katarn's voice cut off abruptly, paired with a shriek of metal from somewhere aft.

"Escape pods!" he shouted. If Tahiri didn't hear him, she'd get the impression. Anakin struggled to undo his own buckles, yanking the straps away and freeing himself from the pilot's seat, just in time for the Lady to go into a spin. Gentle pressure surrounded him, kept him on his feet. Ikrit nodded his head, bobbing his ears.

Anakin and Tahiri stumbled down the neck of Lady Starstorm, Ikrit just behind. The freighter rattled and shook like it was coming apart - and probably was.

"Escape pods, starboard side!"

Eyes wide, Tahiri nodded.

"I have to get Sannah!"

Lady Starstorm ripped in half. The corridor twisted as it sheared, sunlight blooming in. Wind snatched away his cry of shock. He grabbed Tahiri's hand in vice grip. He didn't see Ikrit. The entire rear of the ship with the engines and cargobay dropped away, torturing his ears with a scream of metal parting like leaves.

A monster held what was left in its grasp. An ovoid of yorik coral, twice the size of Lady Starstorm with its entire ventral surface peeled open like lips, extruding a dozen muscled, scaled tentacles. Most were wrapped around the freighter, holding it in place. More slithered out of the Vong craft, grabbing onto the hull of the freighter and peeling it back more.

Lady Starstorm just ended barely two meters down the corridor. It just ended in a tangle of torn durasteel. The cabin he'd thrown Sannah into was thankfully just behind him. Yavin 4 sprawled out below him, the monsoon stretching from horizon to horizon. Above them was a Vong transport. Who knew how many warriors?

Numb shock was all he got from his connection to Tahiri.

Numb shock was all he felt.

There comes a time to act.

Even as half a ship, Lady Starstorm had repulsorlifts. There were still escape pods on the other side. They could get to the pods. They could break away from the Vong ship and land on repulsors.

A wilder thought - he and Tahiri and their falling trick. Would it work from this high? It couldn't - but the Force knew no limits.

He took a breath.

----------------------------------------

Zalthis stormed down the ramp of the Storm Eagle. He hurled his helm to the side. It clattered and bounced away across Temerity's extremely cramped embarkation deck. The destroyer had two, on either flank, primarily for receiving supply. Not for cramming in multiple Republican freighters, a Thunderhawk and a Storm Eagle.

Solidian chased him, but he had eyes only for the Captain's Thunderhawk. He leapt up on the ramp as it lowered, storming up to the cockpit hatch and wrenching it open.

Aeonid Thiel did not seem surprised, even with his helmet hiding his expression.

'Zalthis,' the Captain said.

'Why did you recall us? Captain? Why?'

Aeonid calmly unhooked his harness, rising from the Thunderhawk's throne, casting a sidelong glance at the embedded support servitor. Though of height, the Captain in his red-painted and crested helm gave Zalthis pause and he stepped back, letting Aeonid out of the cockpit.

'You wanted to return for Knight Solo.'

Captain Thiel did not mention the other two Jedi and did not need to.

'It is our duty. We were charged to evacuate the Jedi, all the Jedi!'

'Circumstances change. I am bitterly disappointed to make the order, brother. Knight Solo…Anakin…is resourceful and cunning. His Master is with him, and I am sure they will survive on the moon.'

Zalthis chewed on words, swallowed them. None were enough. His Captain had made up his mind. He had given his order, and as an Astartes should, Amalius accepted it, even as Zalthis argued.

He had nothing to say. Zalthis stiffly made sign of the aquila, stormed away. Still silent, Solidian followed. Captain Thiel descended the Thunderhawk's ramp, making for the Jedi Masters as they exited their own ships. Zalthis had no stomach to face the Republic Jedi, not while four of their own remained on the moon. Just beside the Thunderhawk, he cast about for his helm, didn't see it. Gritting his teeth, he keyed on his gorget vox, listening in.

He listened as the Lady Starstorm was reported dropping into the clouds and out of contact. He listened in as Temerity's command cadre calmly updated on the atmospherics report over the Temple Complex as Alebmos' wrathful storm expended its fury without the psyker's leash. He listened to the Thunderbolt flight as they kept coralskippers at bay. He felt dull thumps through his boots as the destroyer snapped jaws back at the Vong and as alien munitions bit into her flanks.

He listened as the Lady Starstorm burst out of the storm again - and then in horror as a Vong transport grappled hold of it. So close.

And he listened as Captain Thiel uttered the damning words, as half of Lady Starstorm was torn away. Temerity was to break orbit. Mainline extension drive to full. Make for the Mandeville.

Abandon Anakin.

----------------------------------------

Another tendril lashed out, snapping for Anakin's ankle.

"No!" Tahiri's 'sabre lopped off half a meter's worth, leaving the rest to whip back out of the bisected freighter. More nosed in. Muffled by the cabin door, Sannah screamed long and loud, wordless. Ikrit flattened himself to the deck, narrowly avoiding a tendril as big as the Kushiban as it lashed past.

Anakin felt, rather than heard a click at his belt. There was another lightsaber there, one much smaller than his own.

He understood too late.

Like in the jungle, Ikrit coiled his legs and leapt. Reflected from the far wall, then a capture tendril, then the ceiling.

"-Master!"

Ikrit alighted on the tendril Tahiri had just severed, digging claws into the scaly flesh and riding it as it retreated.

Bludgeoning another tendril out of the way, lightsaber cleaving halfway through the hardened appendage, Anakin skidded to the end of the truncated corridor.

Ikrit, impossibly, clung onto the Vong biot through his claws and the power of the Force. Even as it lashed, trying to unseat him, he set his wide blue eyes on the hulking Vong transport craft. Like prying fingers away from a prize, first one of the thickest grasping tentacles twisted and tore away from Lady Starstorm. Then another.

Anakin's Master was pulled deep on the Force. He could not touch the constructs of the Yuuzhan Vong, so he made do in other ways. He ripped durasteel sheets from the freighter's hull and wrapped them around the capture tentacles, using them to wrench them away. He tore sparking conduits loose and tied them like nooses yank away other tendrils.

The Vong craft trembled, as if in anger.

The Lady shook with another tentacle ripped off. Almost free.

Anakin couldn't believe it.

But even if Ikrit pulled them free, they could just grab the transport again. As if reading his mind, one of Lady's main structural spars peeled back like a hangnail, tipping back to point straight at the opened guts of the Vong transport. The wet, fleshy orifice that disgorged all the capture tentacles.

The Force pulsed.

The structural spar accelerated like a bowcaster bolt.

Ichor spewed and half the tentacles dropped slack.

Enough that Lady wasn't held anymore. And the freighter was missing half her repulsors.

It dropped like a stone.

Tentacles snapped, overstressed. Those inside the freighter were ripped out - with a wild shriek of terror. One tendril had wrapped twice around Tahiri's waist. He reached - her fingers - they touched -

Tahiri was gone, screaming.

He couldn't breathe. He felt the coarse scales wrapped around her waist. He felt the thin air snatch away her breath. Her terror was his. Her shock was his. His guilt was hers. His horror was hers.

Lady Starstorm tumbled away. The Vong craft shuddered, it's surviving tentacles lashing and writhing.

Master Ikrit was there. Tahiri wasn't alone-

Remember. Together.

Anakin felt Master Ikrit's life go out.

He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw creaked. Wind ripped tears from his eyes before they could fall. Sannah was still wailing, lost to panic so deep he couldn't even feel any thoughts from the girl. The freighter started to tumble, reaching the thicker atmosphere.

He felt Tahiri. He felt her. She was alive. She was alive and she was alive even as the Vong transport shrank to the size of his fist, then smaller.

Weightless in free-fall, Anakin grabbed his body in a fist of the Force. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up toward Sannah's cabin. The door ripped away at a glance. He grabbed the girl the same as he did himself, yanking her out. The escape pods. Other side of the ship.

Tahiri's terror shifted. He couldn't - if she - like Ikrit -

Anakin would die. He knew it.

Her terror shifted. To anger. To rage.

He laughed through tears. If Tahiri was angry, she was alright.

One escape pod was gone. The other…

The hatch irised open. He slung Sannah in, climbed in after her. The pod smelled like ammonia.

His fist hit the big red launch button. The hatch irised shut. The escape pod launched with a thump. It wouldn't fly, but it would land. He eyed the button again. Balled up his fist and hit it again. Again. Again.

I'll be back Tahiri. I'll be back and when I am - they'll pay. All of them.

----------------------------------------

Zalthis settled into the throne with nervous energy jangling through his nerves. He had the hypnoconditioning, but he'd never had the opportunity for hands-on. He relaxed as much as he was able and let his hands make their own motions. The ramp made the fuselage shudder as it sealed. The vox crackled to life. Words were meaningless. He ignored it. Taking the oversized controls, made distant through the interface of ceramite clad-digits, Zalthis centered himself.

Courage. And honour. And honour.

'We'd better go,' Solidian sardonically remarked and Zalthis nearly crashed the Thunderhawk into the ceiling of the embarkation deck.

'Sol!'

His brother eyed the embedded servitor and elected to stand, gripping an overhead bar.

'Me. We'll be damned together, brother.'

Zalthis swallowed.

The Thunderhawk rose before the disbelieving eyes of Aeonid Thiel, Kam Solusar and Kyle Katarn. It performed a textbook rotation about its vertical axis, then blasted into the void of space beyond the dim containment field so rapidly the backwash made both Jedi stumble.

Aeonid watched it go, denying a request to intercept.

He searched for what he felt.

Pride, he decided.