XVI: To Do So Rightly
Woe to You
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It took more than two hours from when the first ships started to flee, but by the end, the Taldik Suggaja Nebula was empty of all but the tumbling clouds of coral debris that had once been Yuuzhan Vong warships, and the casualties and survivors of the First Fleet. Ralroost, scorched and seared a little, but still stalwart, still ready, watched over her charges as the squadrons and stacks formed up. Jaina nursed a mild headache, slouched on one of the seats halfway up the auditorium. Colonel Hamner spoke quietly into a comlink, while Captain Winger kept an eye on the hologram that now showed only friend icons.
Jaina didn't have the same adrenaline high and shakes like she would climbing out of her cockpit, but all the same, she couldn't help grinning a little each time she glanced at the hologram of local space. First Fleet had taken losses; that was unavoidable, but the preliminary reports had the mood in the 'Roost almost exuberant. Powerful enough that she was sure even non Force-sensitives could feel the bubbling, ferocious excitement among the sailors.
So far, the best ratios against the Yuuzhan Vong, had been around one-to-one. And that was when the Vong were outnumbered.
The bill for the Battle of the Nebula (though the final name was definitely in flux, with the 'The Great Rock-Breaking' being in contention) had over three-fifths of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet destroyed or considered severely damaged, in comparison to about one quarter of the First Fleet taskforce. Almost a one to three ratio, absolutely unheard of so far in the war. And for the First Fleet, the casualties weren't all total losses, either. Holding the field like this, actually driving the Vong back, meant that crippled ships could be towed back out again, or patched up enough to limp home.
Gently, Jaina massaged her temple, still wide-eyed and staring at the moving icons in the hologram as the taskforce reassembled itself. Wings of snubfighters were coming back in to be replaced by fresh pilots for combat air patrol, and pickets surged out to set up a cordon and watch for any potential Vong counterstrike. She doubted there would be any. They had trounced them today, spanked the scarheads and sent them home crying.
Sure, no yammosk - and she was sure Colonel Loran and other intel spooks were going to be pulling their hair to figure out just what that meant - but if she had to weigh killing a squid, or getting two thirds of a Vong fleet to burn, she'd taken the latter any day.
And a lot of the surviving ships, the ones crippled instead of blown apart, were because of her, Kenth and Alexandra. Because of her experience getting voided, because she knew what to look for with the suicide runs. It wasn't the same as slipping her crosshair over a jinking skip, or dumping proton torpedoes into the guts of a cruiser-analogue, but it mattered. It was something she could do, as a Jedi, but it was only really made possible because of her experience as a pilot.
It gave her ideas. Could she do it with the Rogues? Could she juggle tracking the wider battle while flying? She had with Jacen and Anakin, running the gauntlet at Dubrillion in their meld. It definitely was worth thinking about. Or if not the whole battle, just part of it. Watch over the Rogues, like their own little war coordinator. Keep them all coming back home to Ralroost each time. No more Annie Capstans.
The icons designating Rogue Squadron slipped up close to the 'Roost, and Jaina hauled herself to her feet. Colonel Hamner glanced up, read her desire on her face and gave her a sharp nod, cut with a smile. She tossed a salute to both the Colonel and Captain, both of whom returned it, and then darted out of the auditorium, making for the hangar.
She wasn't going to miss celebrating with the Rogues, not for anything in the galaxy.
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Anakin leapt after Tahiri, Vua Rapuung hot on their heels. The Shamed One cast aside the young Shaper he had held hostage, the Yuuzhan Vong woman stumbling, catching herself against a protruding lump of meat and tendrils. For a long moment Zal eyed her, his fingers tapping against the pommel of his power gladius. She stared back at him, eyes wide, face pale. Her blanched skin contrasted sharply the dark sacs below her eyes and her dark hair, messily contained in a bun. Her mouth worked, but no words were formed.
Instinct, prudence, told him to cleave the Shaper in two and be after his Jedi brother. She was an enemy, a scientist, a worker of evils and torture. The grim appearance of Tahiri spoke to that enough; yet he stayed his hand. Anakin had not slain her, ignoring the Shaper entirely to chase after his wayward friend. Neither had Vua Rapuung been moved to killing either, despite the Shamed One's vocal and evident animus against the entire Shaper caste.
Zal cocked his head, considering. The Shaper trembled, gripping tight the fleshy console she leaned against.
The chamber, the laboratory, bore nothing recognizable. His mind made potential analogues, but the fleshy, pulsating, quivering things scattered around were nonsensical. Anything might be some bio-computer, anything might be an archive of experimentation and torment done to Tahiri.
He'd trusted Anakin before, trusted him again and again. If Anakin had let this Shaper live…
Zal plucked two krak grenades from his belt, priming both. He met the Shaper's wide, terrified eyes and raised one eyebrow, hefting both grenades in clear view. Her breath caught. Zalthis tossed one to the left, the other to the right. He turned his back, bursting into a sprint to pursue the other two of this slapdash rescue team. He did not look back, exiting the laboratory into one of the living passages of the damutek, catching sight of Vua Rapuung far ahead. If the Shaper lived, she lived. If she died, she died.
The doubled krump of the grenades going off made the living floor underfoot tremble. Alarms wailed, moaning and watery, ululating and hooting from hidden throats.
Theoretical; exfiltration from an alerted enemy compound. Practical…
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Tahiri, all whipcord limbs and pounding bare feet, managed to keep ahead of him. Ikrit's lightsaber burned bright in her fist, the short blade still just as potent as any other.
"Tahiri! Tahiri, stop!"
She didn't. The damutek wailed endlessly, fit to wake the dead. There'd be warriors, and biots, and who even knew what kind of horrible defense mechanisms - like he was tempting fate, the walls, ceiling and floor squirmed, flexed, and clenched. Like a throat closing, like inflammation bringing swelling, the entire corridor pinched closed just behind Tahiri. Anakin whirled - and behind him, just behind Vua who was hot on his heels, the same thing happened.
"Use your Jeedai weapon, fool!" Vua spat. Muffled, from behind them, Anakin heard a spit-crackle of electricity. The tip of a power blade punched through the blockage. He lit his 'saber and slashed vertical, horizontal, diagonal at the barrier before them. Whatever the damutek was made of, was no vonduun or yorik; his blade ripped right through the living material and it even recoiled a little from the sudden cauterizing heat. Zal punched and ripped through the blockage behind them, grunting a little at the effort. Vua bulled ahead, setting his shoulder against the sagging flap Anakin cut and forcing his way through.
"It will not try again; the damutek lives and will fear the pain and know it will not work." Vua informed them. Tahiri, he sensed not far ahead, had to cut through a pinched hallway just like they had. All he could read from her was roiling, rolling fury, a thunderhead of crimson and lightning. Her thoughts were muddled and distant. She felt unfamiliar and it made him want to scream.
"Tahiri!" he shouted again, Vua and Zal following his lead, trusting he knew where in the unmarked halls to go. Anakin didn't have a clue how Tahiri knew where she was going, even though he suspected who owned the name she'd screamed. The ugly thought was that what the Vong had been doing to her, maybe she knew the layout of a place like this. Maybe she knew how to read differences in the color of the living walls, or maybe it was worse, maybe it was like his lambent - who chirruped happily in his clenched fist - and she could sense the building, or talk to it, or understand it…
She will not be as you know, Vua'd said. He'd said - assumed, even - that Anakin was aiming to kill Tahiri. He'd warned Anakin and told him that whatever was left from what the Shapers did, it wouldn't be the girl he knew.
She recognized him. He held onto that like a drowning man clutching a scrap of wood.
They caught up to Tahiri just a few minutes later, pursuing her halfway around the damutek, through several curving corridors and up a ramp. She stood braced, feet shoulder width apart, lips peeled back in a snarl as she set Ikrit's lightsaber against a smoking, steaming gash in an expanse of chitin.
"She's in here," Tahiri growled, Anakin's tizowyrm buzzing and making every word she spoke unsettlingly doubled. "She's in here!"
Vua cocked his head.
"Ah, Mezhan. Always paranoid, always fearful. That is arrduun, Jeedai. The Master Shaper has proofed her chambers against amphistaff and Jeedai blade, I see."
Tahiri whirled around and spat on the floor to the side.
"Don't speak to me, Shamed One," she hissed. Then her eyes flew wide and she looked mortified, free hand clapping over her mouth.
"I hear Mezhan's words flow from your mouth." Vua shot back, unphased. The emotion that rippled from him, wafting around him, flowing and swirling like heat-shimmer from the hollow shape of him in the world was tinted in dark and bitter amusement. Anakin clenched his fingers tighter around his lambent, around the hilt of his lit lightsaber.
"Zal, can you break through that?" He kept his focus on Tahiri. Every muscle was tight and locked, her cheeks hollowed and collarbones prominent in the neck of the robeskin. She looked hollowed out, thin and drawn, skittish and ready to bolt in an instant. He wanted to hug her, to just wrap her up and apologize over and over and over - Anakin kept his anguish from his expression. Zal sidled past, a wary eye on Vua and Tahiri both. He studied the carapace 'hatch', the way it sealed against the rugose living wall to either side. A few smoldering cuts there revealed subdermal chitin as well, indicating there would be as little success in cutting around the door.
"Do not kill the Shaper," Vua warned, as Zal rapped knuckles off the chitin door. "Kill her, and I will kill you. Do not step in the way of my revenge."
Tahiri hissed like a krayt dragon, glowering at Vua through her mask of dried blood.
"Your revenge, Shamed One? Get in line!"
"Easy, once she's in our custody, we'll…" he trailed off. They'll what? The damutek was still screaming alarms. He could feel the subtle swirls of Vong on the move, diffuse and hard to pin down, but evident enough. They'd be up to their necks in warriors in no time. Supposing they did have the Shaper, this 'Mezhan', then what? Just walk on out? He barely even registered Vua threatening Tahiri's life: threatening to kill people was as common as breathing to the Vong. It was basically Vua's way of saying hello.
As if reading his thoughts, though, Vua grinned.
"I have a most perfect plan, Jeedai." The Shamed One leered. "And have I yet led you wrongly?"
The smug look on Vua's face was almost enough to make Anakin want to disagree on principle. But then Zalthis punched a hole in the carapace door, chitin splintering and cracking, and there simply wasn't time to snipe back. The Ultramarine wedged fingers into the crater, getting both hands in there and flexed, fatigues strained around his immense biceps. Chitin crackled, split, and tore apart under his incredible strength.
Anakin's lambent saved his life. He was first through, reacting faster than both Tahiri and Vua, darting into the darkened chamber beyond as Zal ripped half the door away. He reacted so smoothly, so easily, that he did not even realize the danger until it had already been answered. This was the smoothness of being in tune with the Force, the fluidity of reading danger from those who meant him harm, and it was impossible against the Yuuzhan Vong.
Yet his lambent cried alarm to him, Anakin felt vicious intent and his lightsaber whipped, flicking out to clip one, two lengths of whip-cord thin, razor-tipped tendrils away a handsbreadth from his face. A tall woman, willowy and wrapped in a vibrant robe of crimson, pinks and greens, wore a sneer, one inhuman hand extended. It matched, mostly, the implanted one of the Shaper from just before; too many digits, covered in a leathery carapace. Two fingers pointed at him, both split open at the tips. Thin, flexible stings whipped back and retracted into her fingers, the ends of each smoking.
"Mezhan," he said.
"Anakin Solo, I presume." she retorted, in flawless Basic.
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Then, Vua tackled her about the midsection.
Mezhan Kwaad had a funny understanding of being a prisoner. Zalthis marched her along, one huge hand wrapped around what Vua called her 'Shaper's hand', engulfing it entirely. His other palm wrapped around her shoulder as he drove her along. Vua kept shooting looks at the Shaper, a dark and cruel look in his eyes. Tahiri ground her teeth, staying a few meters from Anakin and Mezhan both, distinctly separate from their little group.
The damutek still hooted and howled, but they only saw the backsides of fleeing workers or fearful eyes peeking out of side chambers. Mezhan was not driven along by Zal; she strode along as if they were her escort. She did not wilt under the furious gaze of Vua, nor the clenched-teeth animus of Tahiri. She held her chin up, a living headdress of writhing tendrils flexing this way and that.
"Oh, Vua. You are indeed a pitiable creature."
"That insults you more than I," Vua shot back. Anakin was starting to get the idea there was a lot more of a history there than just 'she probably screwed him over once.' "I promised this day would come, did I not? And here I stand, just as the Gods have decreed."
"The only God you should have ever concerned yourself with is the Pardoner. Perhaps you could have made a worthwhile living out of your worthless life - instead of allying with infidels and heretics."
Zal squeezed Mezhan's shoulder. Only a tightening of her jaw indicated any discomfort.
"Riina, do remember this lesson. Remember why the Gods arrange our castes so."
Tahiri bristled, said nothing. Ikrit's lightsaber remained lit in her hand.
The damutek hooted and wailed, and no one challenged them. Sweat trickled down Anakin's back. He waited for the other boot to drop. It was easy. It was too easy. Where were the warriors, where were the toxic gasses and poisons and biots, there was no way they could waltz into a place like this and just break Tahiri out, easy as that.
Again, Vua preempted him.
"I know Harmae. He will be waiting for us at every exit. We can stay within, until he is prepared and he strikes from all directions at once, or we can vacate the damutek, and pass into his grasp all the same."
"Harmae's the guy in charge?"
"Yes. He is simple minded and direct. Typical for a Carr."
"And you said you had a plan."
Vua sneered at Mezhan, gesturing at the Shaper.
"This one is high in standing. Her works on the Jeedai are valued. I do not know why you value living so, but if you wish to leave this moon alive, she will be our hostage."
Understanding hit Anakin, then.
"No way that will work. You want us to take one of the ships!"
That corvette-analogue he'd spotted on the way in. Not that big, maybe double or triple the size of the Falcon in length, sitting within the compound's walls alongside some coralskippers. It…just might work. That was always a bit of a snag in their planning, which was the 'way out' part. They figured to get back to the foothills and call in Sol and the Thunderhawk for extraction, but that ran the risk of the transport being hit by coralskippers on the way in. Or, they could try and make it all the way back there on foot, but when Zal and Anakin had made the trek, driven by Astartes biology and buoyed by the Force, it had been several days. They were blurry, he wasn't sure quite how many, but it was under a week.
Trying to do that with Tahiri in the state she was now? The Vong would be all over them, especially alerted as they were. But if they could steal a ship…
"How would we even fly it?"
Tahiri beat Vua to it, her voice low and subdued.
"I can talk to it, I think," she muttered.
Vua nodded. "And if she cannot, I can."
"Harmae will shoot it down before it could ever take to the sky," Mezhan cut in.
"Silence," Zal ordered.
The Shaper's lips quirked.
"You heard the Shamed One. I am simply too valuable. Your orders are without bite, heathen."
Zal's arm flexed and there was a splintering crackle. Mezhan went white, then grey, swaying on her feet. Ichor dripped from Zal's clenched fist: his clenched fist around her Shaper's hand.
"Bite this," Zal growled, shoving her along.
That proved enough to shut the Shaper up.
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To his eternal and continual chagrin, the Shamed One was proven right, once again. Exiting the primary ingress of the damutek, which opened freely at a taste of the Shaper's wrist, the motley group found Yuuzhan Vong warriors arrayed in battle-ready formation. He counted them instantly, unconsciously. Forty-six warriors, or about one fourth of what Vua Rapuung claimed present. They were professionally deployed, spread in a wide semicircle around the exit of the damutek. Some knelt, bracing long-barreled carbines that looked like polished wood. Behind them, he saw the damnable shapes of the massive, infantry-portable plasma launchers braced against shoulders. Others held ubiquitous amphistaves writhing in their grips. Some wore full vonduun plate, helmets showing only glinting eyes. Some wore the half-plate, limbs bare.
Before them all, with a twitching, curling cape draped from his shoulders, was their leader. His helm was tucked beneath one arm, the other clutching a short-bladed dagger with glittering, multihued scales. The Vong's face was intricately scarred, raised ridges intersecting and offset by round bumps and outlined by stark green tattooing.
Light was cast, banishing the night, by warriors holding tall poles, gleaming crystals set into wide, paddle-shaped ends. Lambents, Zal realized, recognizing the crystal Anakin still clutched in one hand.
The lead Vong held up his short dagger, sideways.
"Jeedai. Aistarteez. You stand no chance of escape. Surrender yourselves, and live." He did not even seem to register Vua and shamed him further by refusing to even recognize him.
Vua strode forward, heedless of rippling tension across the arrayed ranks of warriors. Carbines raised slightly, amphistaves stiffened.
"Harmae. You know me."
Commander Harmae narrowed his eyes, curled his lip. The expression was odious, given the torments and marks that twisted the alien's face.
"I do not know a Shamed One."
"I am Vua Rapuung!" he bellowed. "I was favored by the Gods! You stand in my shadow, Harmae Carr, and it is a long shadow indeed."
"Be silent! Already your life is forfeit; but your soul is not yet damned eternally. Stand aside, Shamed One, and perhaps Yun-Shuno will not cast you into the depths for this treachery."
Beside Zalthis, Anakin lit his lightsaber. The warriors flinched at the snap-hiss he'd grown to know well and blue light joined warm gold from lambents.
"Let him speak. If he's just a Shamed One, then who cares anyway?"
"You know nothing of our ways, Jeedai. You may not negotiate, you may surrender or die."
Anakin gestured toward Mezhan with his blade.
"If we die, she dies too."
Harmae puffed out his chest.
"I think not. You are Jeedai. We know of the Jeedai - you weep over taking lives. You would not kill a helpless prisoner."
Tahiri took a step forward, brandishing her own blade.
"You didn't want me to be a Jeedai," she snarled. "Well, congratulations. You did it. So Anaykin won't, but I'll gut Mezhan right in front of you all."
The Vong commander glowered at them all and did not appear to like what he found. The utter sincerity and promise of murder writ on Tahiri's bloodied face, the grim set of Anakin's shoulders. Nor his own looming presence behind Mezhan, the Shaper held at his mercy and only ever but moments from death if he should wish it. Her Shaping hand crumpled in his fist; her neck would be no different.
"If we must bandy like Intendants, then speak and be done with it."
Vua raised his arms, palms upward.
"I am Vua Rapuung! All know me. I was blessed by the Gods, and my Shame, I say, is false! It is the fault of Mezhan Kwaad, she who feared our love, she who turned on our affections, she who mutilated me and blamed it on the Gods who had ever loved me, all for fear of losing her position!"
Murmurs broke out among the warriors. Zalthis found himself rather dumbfounded. The concept of love and romance was rather foreign to him; understood in a general, theoretical sense, but as with emotions like fear, was quite excised from his psyche and stood to never bear a presence in his service as Astartes. Love, though, was a human emotion, a human concept, and he could scarcely conceive of such a wretched thing as Vua capable of anything but spite and bile. Vong did not love, they killed and consumed, as the xeno they were.
He tried to picture romance between Vong, given his limited understanding, and imagined an offering of tortured slaves or perhaps a selection of still-beating hearts.
Mezhan scoffed through her pain, only a slight quaver in her voice.
"He is Shamed. He is a joke among the Workers and a burden to the other Shamed. Who would believe anything he says?"
"This confounds me." Harmae declared. "The inane mutterings of a Shamed One are meaningless. Jeedai, does he-"
"I am not finished, Harmae Carr! I declare my Shame false, and that Mezhan must be compelled to speak the truth, for I challenge you for command! My rights and rank were stripped falsely, and I would reclaim them back. Here! Now!"
Warriors shifted their weight, a few casting sidelong glances about them. Vua jabbed a finger at Mezhan.
"Compel her! By her Domain, by her rank, by the Gods themselves!"
A warrior stepped forward, raising the barrel of their carbine to the sky.
"I would hear this," he called. "Who here served with Vua Rapuung? Who here could doubt his courage or his honor? Who would gainsay the Gods did love him?"
"Hul Rapuung," Harmae bit out. "Return to ranks." The warrior did as commanded, but Zalthis caught the spoken name.
"This is insanity," Mezhan said.
Harmae's lips were a thin line, his eyes narrowed.
"Pray tell, Shamed One. Should Mezhan Kwaad admit this heresy, and you were to challenge me; what result do you foresee?"
Vua set his chin.
"The Jeedai and Aistarteez go free. Mezhan Kwaad has failed - see! The Jeedai girl is Unshaped. I have made oaths - oaths before the Gods! - to repay their loyalty with honor in return."
Harmae shook his head.
"This is unacceptable. By command of my master, Supreme Commander Malik Carr, and the master of us all, Potent Tsavong Lah, I cannot lose a Jeedai."
"I bled sacrifice to Yun-Yammka. You would spit on the Slayer?"
More murmurs. Zalthis could feel friction in the air, turning tension, a shift as warriors fidgeted. Carefully, Zal reached down, wrapping his fingers around the grip of his blade. He kept his other firmly clutching Mezhan's mangled hand.
Anakin spoke up.
"If your Gods didn't support Vua, then how could all this happen? Mezhan failed to Shape Tahiri and now it looks like they let us capture your very important Shaper right out of her own chambers. Maybe Vua is right."
"An infidel seeming to know the will of the Gods. Ridiculous."
"You are no priest, Commander," called a warrior.
"Make the Shaper speak," another spoke.
"The Priests say every Jeedai is a sacrifice worthy of a thousand infidels; the Gods mark them as worthy!" yet a third added.
Harmae's teeth ground together. Zalthis could see the muscle in his cheek jumping, twitching.
"Mezhan Kwaad. You have failed, evidently, in your task of Shaping the Jeedai. That failure, and that failure alone, moves me to indulge the Shamed one once known to Domain Rapuung. You will answer any question put to you by that Shamed One, and you answer it truly. Your Domain shall pay the price if you do not. All who have been tutored by you shall pay the price as well. Do you understand? Now let us end this farce."
Mezhan suddenly wrestled and struggled in his grip, but she was but a mortal creature and she only succeeded in tearing a gasp of agony from her throat as the endoskeleton of her shattered hand ground together in his grip.
"I did not fail! It is incomplete!"
"You are compelled!"
In his grasp the Shaper struggled, anger and agony and indignation mixed together.
"Do so," Zalthis murmured in the Vong's own tongue, pitched low so only she might hear. "Or I will kill you now."
She sagged.
"Speak," Mezhan Kwaad hurled the word at Vua like a cast dagger.
"Mezhan Kwaad. Did you cause my implants to be rejected, my body to wither, my marks of rank to decay? Did you cause me to be stripped of my honour, my role and my dignity? Did you do this to me, or did the Gods?"
All the outer courtyard of the damutek was silent. Wind rustled. The distant jungle creaked and barked and chirruped with nocturnal life. Anakin and Tahiri's lightsabers hissed and spat, two bars of incandescent light.
He wondered what the Shaper was thinking, just then. Did she believe she had a future, a way out? Did she expect to escape this night alive, to return to her tortures and experiments? Did she weigh deceit on one hand, audacity on the other, and find the balance lacking? Or, perhaps, did she see the virulent hatred in Tahiri, understand the weight of what she had done, which she would never be allowed to survive. If not by the hand of the girl she had tormented, then by the hand of an Ultramarine, who would do so for his brother. Mezhan Kwaad would never leave Yavin 4 alive, and perhaps, in that long, drawn moment of tension as she made up her mind, she understood this single, bitter fact. Zalthis would never know. He could suspect, and by connection to the arrogance of Magi that he had heard of, told by other Ultramarines and by those who apprenticed to the tech-priests of Mars, he could reckon well what tipped her decision.
"Yes." She drew herself, voice gaining strength, losing the edge of pain. "That wicked, treasonous thing you see before you is my doing. I broke Vua Rapuung, I made him as you see - for there are no Gods, and his Shame is my will alone!"
The warriors erupted in a frenzy. Shouting. Bellowing. Their orderly organization broke, some shoving each other, some gesticulating, bellowing.
Vua appeared shocked. His dark eyes were wide, wide enough to see yellowed sclera. Harmae took a step back.
"Silence!" the Commander bellowed. "Silence! By the Slayer, comport as warriors!"
"Blasphemer!"
"Heretic!"
"Witch!"
Warriors heckled and howled, organization lost.
Vua threw back his head and howled, ululating and long.
"Zal, this is about to get ugly-" Anakin muttered, sidling closer.
"When the fighting begins, you must take Tahiri. Make for the ship. I will delay them."
The young Jedi Knight jerked his head toward Mezhan, who watched the chaos unfolding with a smirk on her tattooed lips.
"Don't leave her alive," Anakin said. Zalthis nodded.
"I will not."
Vua stalked toward Harmae.
"The Slayer smiles on me!" he bellowed. "I am Vua Rapuung! Commander of the Warrior Caste! I am the pride of Rapuung! Harmae Carr! Idig'kt kan esht kalduag!" The Shamed One broke into a loping jog, fists clenching at his side. Harmae backpedaled, dropping the ornate dagger, amphistaff slithering down his arm.
On both sides, despite the shock of Mezhan's pronouncement, all eyes were on Vua and Harmae. The Commander lashed out with his amphistaff at the Shamed One. It was over in moments. Harmae screamed, once, before his skull collapsed under repeated blows from Vua's hammering fists.
Climbing back to his feet, clutching one hand over a wound in his flank, Vua thrust a blood-and-brain spattered fist into the air.
"Let this be witnessed! The Slayer is satisfied!"
Anakin tried and failed to keep up with each new development. First, Vua was in love - in love - and it was with Mezhan Kwaad. Mezhan Kwaad? And then all his hints and intimations about 'getting revenge' clicked into place when he blamed her for his Shaming, but then other warriors actually spoke up for him, and then Harmae demanded Mezhan to answer -
And she outed herself as an atheist.
Given the shouted arguments and near-physical posturing going on among the warriors, that was probably as big a deal as Anakin suspected it was.
And there was Vua, covered in Harmae's blood, standing over the Yuuzhan Vong he had just mercilessly slaughtered in under thirty seconds. He basked in the chants of his name, coming from some of the warriors, fist punching at the air. From the throng, one stepped forward, saluting with fist to their chest.
"Honor to you, Vua Rapuung. I am Subaltern Tsaak Vootuh."
"Honor returned," Vua replied in kind, returning the salute. "Do you confirm my command?"
"I do not. I confirm the confession of Mezhan Kwaad and that your Shame is misplaced. But you know you must go before the Priests, Vua Rapuung. They will measure you and judge your Shame has ended."
"It never began," Vua fired back. "I have no need of redemption from prattlers that never once saw that my supposed Shame was manufactured. I suspect they were in league with Mezhan anyway."
"Be that as it may, but you cannot take command. That falls to me."
"I slew Harmae fairly, in the challenge!"
There were shouts of agreement.
"Vootuh, you grab above your station!"
"Eager to chase at Harmae's heels, eager to step into Harmae's vonduun!"
Clear divides were being drawn - warriors edging away from each other, shifting into two groups. It was almost as if he, Tahiri and Zalthis had been forgotten. Like they were suddenly wholly uninteresting in the face of this new drama of redemption and command.
"If you wish to challenge me, then do so." Vua gestured behind him, beckoning toward Anakin and the others. Cautiously, they advanced, stepping away from the damutek and onto more open ground. "I declare that the Jeedai Knight Solo and the Unshaped Jeedai are tools of the Gods. Infidels they may be, but they were placed on my path by the Slayer, so that I might find redemption! Is it not the word of the Chosen People that is our bond? As a warrior, is it not my honor to uphold my oaths?"
More shouts, murmurings.
"I say; let the Jeedai go. Let the Aistarteez go. Any who have faced them know them to be worthy foes. Let us face them again another day, on the battlefield, as equals, so that the Slayer can taste their blood properly given. Not butchered like a quednek by heretic Shapers."
"Again, I must say: you may not take command, Vua Rapuung. Warriors, take him into custody."
Only half, perhaps two thirds, shifted to stand behind Tsaak Vootuh. The other third stepped across that invisible line, arraying themselves beside and behind Vua. Including the one introduced as Hul Rapuung, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the former Shamed One.
This is it, Anakin felt. This is it. He took a deep breath, looking to Tahiri, who caught his eye. Everything was upended, but she was here now. She was with him.
"Do not shed loyal blood today. You have done a great thing, Vua, and you can do an even greater thing. With two Jeedai and an Aistarteez captured, you might even be named a Warleader."
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That, Anakin knew, was exactly the wrong thing to say. All Vua ever spoke of was his revenge, at all costs. No care for his life, or rank, or anything. Just to be vindicated.
"You cannot buy honor," Vua retorted. "Slink back to your rainbow-eyed master. I remember when our word was bond." He crouched down, held out a finger for Harmae's orphaned amphistaff, curled beside the cooling body of its master. The biot snapped out, mouthing at his digit with fangs retracted. Then it slithered into his grasp, stiffened and became a blade.
"Woe to the foes of the Slayer! Woe to the breakers of faith! I am Vua Rapuung, I am the Unshamed, and I salute you, Jeedai!" He raised his amphistaff and the cadre of warriors behind him bellowed as one. "Rapuung Remembers! Aihya!"
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The clash is sudden. It is violent. Bugs rip from carbines, striking vonduun with dull cracks of shattered chitin and spinning exoskeleton. Amphistaves whirl and whip. Zalthis pulls Mezhan along with him, trying to edge around the sudden throng of clashing Yuuzhan Vong. It is mind-boggling, to see them at each other's throats. Vua slashes the throat of one from ear to ear, laughing as he does. Anakin is with him, and Tahiri. He is slow when Mezhan, finding some new well of strength, braces a palm against his plastron and shoves, hard, hard enough that flesh tears, fractured bone parts, and Zalthis left holding the crushed remains of her Shaper's hand, the stump leaking blood and ichor. The Shaper stumbles back, clutching at her empty wrist and there is murder in her eyes. His blade is out, crackling to life. She might have all manner of tricks, creations: gasses or poisons, biots or more of those sting-whips she had struck at Anakin with. Mezhan Kwaad plunges her basal hand into a fold of her robes.
Tahiri is there, she is faster. Ikrit's lightsaber whips, and Mezhan's head bounces. Her body topples.
Zalthis inclines his head. The girl's eyes are hollow.
"Go," he intones. "Tahiri, Anakin, go. Make for the ship."
They do. Warriors see them, warriors break off from the clash over who will ascend to command. Thud bugs, razor bugs reach out. Zalthis interposes himself, taking them to his half-plate. Some slash his fatigues, leaving quick-clotting lines of red. Two warriors come forward, but Zalthis has more than his blade. His pistol blurs from his holster and four bolts put the warriors down. There are more coming, more than just were here. Lambent-light poles bob from around the Shaping compound. If there were forty here, then there could still be twice again that many coming. From the walls, from the fields, from beyond. The compound is not large, but it is large enough that it is a frantic sprint, chased by licks of plasma and whirring bugs until they stand in the shadow of the corvette-analogue.
It is sealed. There is no ramp, no embarkation plank.
Tahiri dithers, pacing, wringing her hands.
"Sithspawn," Anakin swears. "We need Vua." He looks back to the pitched battle. Neither of them can make out the former Shamed One, but they can see that the clash is shifting closer to them. Zalthis watches as one warrior, wielding a plasma spitter, takes a knee, aiming toward them, only to be brained from behind by another warrior who jogs out out of the scrum toward them.
"Hail, Jeedai. I am Ulvuarg Qesh. I stand with the Unshamed. If you are to leave, you must leave now. We are few, who stand with Iz'ann Rapuung. Glorious death comes this night, for any who stay."
"We can't get it open," Anakin gestures.
"Tsii dau atann," Ulvuarg says and strangely, the words do not translate. From below the prow of the ship, there is a wet snick, and then a span of the yorik coral hinges away on membranous filaments, a long and flexible muscle extending out and down. It looks for all the world like a long tongue. "Now go, and I weep that I shall die before we may face across the battlefield." Ulvuarg lopes away, swinging his amphistaff high.
Anakin and Tahiri vanish into the ship. Zalthis remains at the foot of the ramp - the tip of the tongue. He holds pistol in one hand, blade in the other. The Vong are focused on each other, but as squads close in from elsewhere, he sees them look between the knot of kinslaying and the corvette. Many change their course.
At range, his bolts are less effective. They spang and deflect from more heavily sloped vonduun armor. He has extra ammunition, but they approach from all angles. Some of those fighting with Vua manage to extricate themselves, interposing. From the main clash, a head lofts up on a spinning loop of blood to a sudden burst of cheer. Some warriors scatter, retreating. A throng pushes through, a seven in total. He recognizes the lead: Vua Rapuung.
He is bloodied, his robeskin slick with black blood in many places. Half a cheek is missing, baring rotted teeth. But his eyes are alight.
"Aistarteez. You are still here."
"Tahiri attempts to make the ship work."
Vua stretches his arms, heedless of deep gouges along his bicep.
"Then she must work swiftly. Or I will escort you to the Slayer's presence tonight."
Zalthis keys his voxbead.
"Anakin? Progress?"
His brother replies immediately.
"Tahiri tried on the cognition hood and freaked. It's okay, I'm calming her down, but it's going to take a minute before she can get this thing in the air without the ship trying to eat her brain. I think I'm going to have to be her anchor."
Zalthis nods. Honestly, it is better than expected. She is attempting to command a ship she had never seen, using alien means and, he suspects, false memories. From the name the dead Shaper called her to her confusion over Anakin, the hallmark signs are there of mental conditioning. A potential boon, if she can master it, or a catastrophe if she cannot.
"It may be some time."
Vua licks bloodied teeth.
"Then we draw blades together, Aistarteez."
They do, but Zalthis wonders why. So, he asks.
"Why are you doing, this, Vua? You proved you weren't Shamed."
In a moment of memory and reverie, he is reminded of Sol's demands of the dying Herglic, his need to know why he would sacrifice his life for an Astartes.
Vua points at the oncoming squads of other warriors, of those remaining that stood with Tsaak Vootuh.
"Too long have my brothers placed ascension over purity. Mezhan cursed me, but there are reasons why she felt free to spit on the Gods and spit on me in such a way. All I wish is that when I stand before the Gods, I may do so with my heart light and my honour untarnished." Vua glared at Zalthis, then, dark eyes hard. "You are an infidel, which makes you unworthy of honour. But I am of the Chosen People, so I will be judged. Know me by the quality of my foes, Aistarteez, and the Gods will love me."
Uncomfortably, Zalthis inclines his head. Vua's words ring entirely too clearly.
Then, there is little time to talk, for reinforcements are upon them.
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Tahiri is trembling, her entire body. Shivering and swallowed in the broad seat in the 'bridge' of the corvette, the soft and leathery thing adjusting itself slowly to her body. She holds a cognition hood in her hands, tears tracking down her cheeks, wetting dried blood slick again.
"It was in my head," she hiccups. "It was talking to me, and I…I wasn't me."
"You'll always be you," Anakin promises. He reaches out, squeezing her shoulder. He can feel the fleshlessness of the joint, the hard nub of her collarbone. "Tahiri, we can do this. Together. Trust me, reach out to me. I'll be your anchor."
She opens to him, for the first time since Ikrit died, since the Lady Starstorm fell from the sky. Tahiri is in his mind again, that warm place, but one that prickles like needles. He reaches toward it, and she meets him, tentative and skittish.
He doesn't realize that he leaned closer in body, as well as mind, until her lips touch his again. This time, for a long, infinite moment, there is just Anakin and Tahiri, just them, as he opens memories to her and she greedily rips through them, like she is reminding herself. A lifetime of friendship in a moment, years in a second. He leans back, she leans back, and her gold-green eyes sparkle. She knuckles tears away, takes a shuddering breath, and looks down at the leathery hood in her lap.
"Let's try this again," she murmurs. Then a spark, a hint, a fragment: her lips twitch. Not a smile. Not a smirk. Barely a ghost of one. "And let's try that…other thing later, when I'm not covered in blood."
Anakin laughs.
He loves her.
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Vong die. Zalthis hisses as an amphistaff catches, rips along his gauntlet. The tips of two fingers go with it. He retaliates with a punch to the face that spins the warrior's head around one hundred and eighty degrees. The way the compound is set up, the small little landing site is in one corner of the rayed design. It funnels the squads coming. The fighting is haphazard, with both Harmae and Vootuh dead. The loyalists attack because that is their order, but organization is lacking. Vua has only eight left of those who fought with him, and they use landed coralskippers as cover.
This is a new form of fighting, and one that Zalthis worries about in the war to come. This is not the massed infantry melee of Fondor, broken by only occasional barrages of bugs. This is combined arms. Carbine wielding Vong take potshots, firing smaller but far faster razor and thudbugs from range, harrying the defenders. Zalthis expends his bolts to kill those who bring the plasma spitters. Lambent-light poles bob and topple as their bearers fall, throwing mad shadows and bars of illumination this way and that.
He estimated there were three hundred or more at the high end for the garrison, a hundred at the lower. So far, no chazrach have been roused. In fact, neither he nor Anakin have seen any at all.
Time is ticking down. The squads that come he surmises were those that were already on alert for watch. Plenty more will come from the neighboring compounds. And then, there are the ships in orbit, with their own cadres.
"Status?" he asks again.
"Tahiri is talking to it. She's - well, she's convincing the ship to listen to her. It's not easy."
"Understood."
A bar of plasma, sudden and flaring and so bright he blinks spots from his eyes, spears from across the compound. It smacks into one of the landed coralskippers, erodes half of it away. Zalthis squints, eyes already adjusting back to the lambent-lit night. There - as shape. Lumbering, muscular, hunched, ambling from around several spiralling, shell-shaped domiciles. Its belly is swollen and heavy, dragging on the ground. A heavy, wobbling sack swells from under its chin; an engorged and distended throat-pouch. Stumpy, thick legs allow it to drag its bulk along the ground, a thick tail sweeping behind it.
It yawns wide and burps another stream of searing plasma. This stream smashes into the ground, ripping a channel of steaming glass ten meters long.
It could cripple the corvette. It will cripple the corvette.
It is a hundred meters or more away, on the far side of the open space of the compound. There are many, many Vong warriors loping into that space.
He feels slightly disconnected, as though he is a step behind himself. He taps his voxbead.
"When I asked eaerlier, it was not because I didn't know. It was because I had the answer."
He doesn't clarify. Zalthis blurs into motion, as fast as an Astartes can move, from motionless to a ground-devouring sprint.
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Anakin frowns. Tahiri, lost in the cognition hood, doesn't notice.
"What?"
"I am engaging a biot. Tentative classification 'Squat', it appears to be antivehicular."
"Oh. Be careful, Zal."
"Of course, little brother."
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His speed unmanned the Vong that might have tried to interpose. He knows that among mortals, they have a term for it. Transhuman dread. It is the feeling that no being that size should move at quite that speed. He understands that Astartes can feel the same, in the presence of a Primarch. He has never met his father, and wonders, for a moment, if he ever will.
Nonetheless, he is not unscathed. The meat of his left thigh is cored, a dull ache each time his foot falls, but the muscle is intact enough. A loss of efficiency, but not crippling. Plasma has seared close enough to singe his fatigues.
The creature sees him coming, of course. It spits its own ball, but the long wind-up to vomit the stuff makes it simplicity itself to avoid. The heat of it is incredible, even as it passes five meters to Zalthis' left to smear and splash along the ground. It strikes a knot of Vong warriors, fighting amongst themselves, and erodes them into ash. From a distance, it looks clumsy. Slow. Near, it has remarkable alacrity for its size. It whirls, swinging its heavy tail. Zalthis springs upward, clearing it with ease. It is the size of a landspeeder, just about, from nose to base of the tail.
When his boots touch down again, Zalthis is in motion. He dances close, gauging its hide. It is leathery, thick, and he has seen some biots shrug off even plasma bolts. He punches his blade into its side, palm planted on the pommel to drive it. There is resistance, like pushing through thick mud, and the beast hoots a shriek. His blade sinks to the quillons, stuck deep into its side.
The creature writhes and rolls, suddenly, against all logic and instinct. It is wounded in the side, it should roll away from the pain. Instead, it rolls on top of him. Zalthis is hammered flat, slammed hard to the ground under its bulk. His unhelmeted head bounces off the hardpacked dirt, stars momentarily bursting in his vision. Then he can see nothing at all and smell only the reek of stale urea. The weight is incredible, compressing his chest, constricting his breathing.
Maybe if the creature was smart, it could have suffocated him, but it continues to roll, right off him again.
Zalthis staggers back to his feet. He's lost his sword in its side. He draws his pistol instead, braces and sets his weight. He empties the entire clip, mass reactives bursting in its hide. Blood spumes. Leathery skin flutters in tangles and tatters like confetti.
It pivots fast, maw yawning wide. There is a golden glow in its throat, and his enhanced reflexes give him plenty of time to study in the interior of its mouth. He notices, with distant interest, that its mouth is mirrored and silvery, like the inside of a seashell. A thick, pink tongue flops, then retracts away. Fanged teeth, seared black, are as long as his fingers.
He judges where it might spit. He lunges to the left. It spits, passing by on his right.
The heat is incredible. It is searing. He can feel the sweat on his entire body dry instantly, his fatigues, still damp from the river, steam immediately. At first, he thinks he is unscathed. His right eye is fogged. Then the pain strikes.
It is shocking. He is intact, but the plasma passed so close that it seared away the fatigues from his entire right side, scorched the ceramite of his armor to bare, dusty grey. He raises fingers to his scalp and ash crumbles away from his scalp where hair had been. The entire right side of his face feels like it is on fire. His eye cannot focus.
But he is intact. All limbs. He flexes his fists. Sinks into a crouch. The pain is encompassing, but none of it is mortal. At worst - he will bear scars. What Astartes does not?
The creature rears up again, puffing out its throat. Another golden glow.
Zalthis springs into motion. The creature does not expect this - it's slitted eyes open wide and it backpedals. It is used to prey fleeing. It is not used to prey attacking. It twists its head away, but he has a grip on its upper jaw with his right hand. Fangs snap away from his clenching fingers. It lashes its head and yanks Zalthis along with it, lifting him into the air as it shakes its heavy head like a cyberhound. Holding on by only one hand, Zalthis lets the thing yank him up and into the air, all several hundred pounds of him.
Theoretical: use the strength of the enemy against them. Practical: as he swings, driven by the biot's wild thrashing, he uses the added momentum to punch his other fist into one wide eye. It bursts, sprayinq aqueous humor. His fist is inside its orbit and he spreads his fingers, gripping onto the skull itself.
Now it's the beast's turn to feel shocking agony. It trips over its own limbs, its own distended throat. Between his grip on its upper jaw, his fist punched into its eye socket, Zal plants one foot against its lower jaw, crunching more fangs, and bellows with the strain of forcing its mouth open. It thrashes, barely aware. Strangely, it makes no sound beyond huffing exhales of hot, metal-tinted breath.
Holding its jaws open, Zalthis yanks his hand out of its eye, plunging his hand into its throat up to the shoulder. Fangs skitter along his pauldron. He feels slick, slippery muscle. There. A valve. Clenched shut, thick around as his bicep. He grasps it, squeezing tight, and then -
Rips.
Tears.
In the beast's throat, there is a meaty pop.
Incredible heat washes over him, like an open fusion reactor.
Zalthis stumbles back, staring numbly at molten ceramite dripping from the stump of his left wrist. His hand is gone. Scorched bone protrudes from flesh liquified by heat. This time, there is no pain. Just an awareness of loss. A gap in his proprioception.
The biot is twitching. Plasma, white-hot, dribbles from its sagging jaws. It drips down its chin, scorching trenches in the leathery hide. More burbles out from newborn holes in its throat, its neck. It burns from the inside out. Zalthis paces around it, finds the hilt of his blade sticking out from between ribs. He plants a foot, grabs it with his right hand, and yanks it free. It hums, the gladius clean and shining metal, flickering with crackles from the power generator.
He turns his attention back to the greater skirmish. The corvette's boarding tongue is retracted, he can see. There are warriors below it, firing much, much smaller blasts of handheld plasma against its coral exterior. They won't damage it; it would be like shooting at a Stormbird with a lasrifle. There are dead and dying Vong scattered about. A closing circle surrounds Zal and the corpse of the biot. To his surprise, there are three other Vong within that circle. Two warriors, and Vua Rapuung. Rapuung has a shredded arm held against his chest. His skinned cheek leaks blood. His eyes are wide and bloodshot. They shine in the lambent light.
"Aihya, Aistarteez," Vua wheezes. "I told you the Slayer would feast tonight."
He has one hand. Bolt, or blade. His fingers tighten around the grip. He spins the gladius once, twice.
"He'll feast well," Zalthis promises.
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Tahiri is muttering to herself, hands smoothing over a membranous console. Nubs of nerve clusters protrude here and there. She looks slightly monstrous with the hood enclosing her head, but she radiates determination. The corvette trembles. Deep in his gut, his body is momentarily convinced that 'down' is behind him. More than once, Tahiri has swallowed a scream, going rigid until he took both her hands, talking to her, reminding her who she was, where she was, what was happening…
Each time was a slice to his heart.
"Okay," Tahiri mutters, voice muffled. "That's…that's basals…"
The bridge of the corvette is at the front, protected by transparent, crystalline slabs that serve the role of transparisteel. There's four panes, each a different size, without any symmetry at all. He can see outside, see the random clashes of warriors going on across the compound. Whatever Vua kicked off, it spiralled out of control and fast.
He sees the biot trundle into view, senses Zal's concern, followed by his focus. He watches the distant duel, mouth agape as he squints, trying to see it better. And Anakin feels the sudden backblast of pain lance through him, making him clutch at his unharmed hand.
"Zal!" he shouts.
"As soon as you are able, launch." the Ultramarine replies, voice crackly through the commbead.
"Get back here! We'll drop the ramp again-" there's a dull and distant thud that he hears more than feels through the ship. Then another.
"They are attempting ingress. Unless Tahiri can master the weapons, you must go."
The world narrows. It fades to grey around the edges as Anakin's chest squeezes tight. Not again. Not again.
"Zalthis, get back here, that's - that's an order."
He feels ridiculous phrasing it so.
"Live well, Anakin. Courage and honour."
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There aren't many Vong. Vua claimed there were perhaps three hundred in total, excluding those manning the ships. Some stood with Vua and his declaration of command, his beseeching to honour his oaths. Not just those initially present, but even some who arrived. Zalthis saw it happen: squads of warriors who would pause, argue, become animated, heated, and then blows would be exchanged.
It is shocking; the Vong have never appeared to have even a hint of internal strife. Now, more lay dead by the hands of each other than by his.
He spins his blade again. Tilts his wrist, so that he can see the small starbird etched there, bounded by a circle, set against a starburst.
Which is more worthwhile? To complete your duty; or do it rightly? Sannah was one Jedi. Tahiri, Anakin and Ikrit, they were three Jedi. Almost two dozen escaped aboard Temerity. The future of the Jedi Order, saved, as per the command of Lord Guilliman. Three children and an aging Master were losses, but counted against the rest, they could easily be deemed acceptable losses. Thus; the duty was done. The Jedi Praxeum evacuated, the Order's future preserved.
Captain Thiel obviously judged it so. He had made no moves to support Anakin and the others.
But to do it rightly. The spirit of the order. The meaning behind the pledge. To evacuate the Temple. To save the Order's future.
Zalthis has lived and breathed and slept and shat alongside Anakin for longer than he had the brothers of his new squad. He has known the Jedi like a brother, spoken to him on deeper topics, exchanged philosophy, placed his life in the other's hands. Some might see the future of the Jedi as simply the large class of youths. Zalthis can see better.
Practical: Anakin, Anakin is the future of the Jedi. Tahiri is too. Without one, without the both, he fears the Jedi have no future at all. He has seen how they operate. He has seen the selfless heroism of the boy.
To do his duty rightly, is to never abandon a brother. Not when he has pledged otherwise.
The Vong come as one. They do not bother with duels of honour, they do not call for surrender. They unleash a barrage of bugs from raised carbines. One of Vua's warriors steps before him, juddering and stumbling as he is perforated and battered. He topples, leaving Vua unscathed. Zalthis bears the storm, uncaring as razor bugs shed blood and thud bugs bruise.
He smiles, one corner of his mouth stiff from shining red burns that spread up his cheek and temple. A mark.
"Know this," he says, clearly. "You face a son of Macragge. Woe to you, for the Thirteenth is here."
Vua readies his amphistaff.
"For the Jeedai!" he cries. "For the Slayer! I am Vua Rapuung! I am Unshamed!"
Warriors leap forward.
He has no time for finesse, nor for thought. There is only action, reaction. Killing. His blade pierces into a mouth, through the back of a skull. Through cheek and ear, he rips it out. Amphistaves fall. A pauldron tumbles away. His shoulder aches. He spins, blade extended. Vonduun holds, parts. Bisected, two warriors collapse. Another slips on entrails. A glimpse of a mutilated, rotting face, alight with battlelust. Teeth biting, chewing into a neck. They fall out of sight. Gold plasma hisses past, splashes a warrior. He combusts like a torch, wailing. They do not care about friendly fire; they want him dead that badly. Zalthis grins; a baring of teeth that has no mirth. He kicks; a knee is forcefully reverse articulated. His stump, truncated ceramite gauntlet still cherry-red with heat, smashes into a face. Teeth scatter. An eyeball is ejected with force.
Monomolecular blades are nearly painless. From behind, he feels a line, a space pass through his body, just below what had once been his floating ribs. He reverses his grip, stabs the gladius backwards, feels impact, the weight of a body sliding away. Limbs are slashed away. Arterial blood sprays. Fingers hook at him. Grapple. Bodies weigh him down. Warriors pile onto him. He is suffocating, buried. Borne down to the ground, hemmed in by reeking sweat and dripping blood and this is not how he dies, in the dirt, on the ground - he is Astartes, he is transhuman, he is Ultramarine, he is a son of Guilliman, and no son of Guilliman dies like this - he is rising, he is standing like a towering phantine beast, set upon by carnodons, who rises once again under rending teeth and claw, who even as their throat is torn and hide is slashed, rises once again because this is not yet done.
He rises because the corvette is still on the ground, though through the soil he feels a shudder. Zalthis rises because he must, so he will. His sword is lost, so he crushes a warrior to his chest between palm and plastron. He shakes brains loose and grips the throat of another, swinging them into a third and bones snap.
Focus. Not yet done. Howls ring in his ears. Blades slice at him. Muscle is carved. His feet trample, crushing the fallen. A glimpse, a glimpse - a smiling face, cheek torn, rotten teeth exposed, a smiling face in peaceful repose, over a throat opened to the bone. Impact, impact, impact. Hammering at him, hooking at him, trying to bear him down, pull him down. Focus. Not yet done.
Cold in his gut, a blade-sharp biot, driven by snarling zeal. He takes it, he pulls it out, claims it as his. The edges cut as much as he cuts back, he loses a finger to the double-edged sword. But with it he kills again, again. To one knee. He cannot rise. His leg ends just above the ankle.. Grab by the braid, by the topknot, yank them down, tear them down, down to the dirt, crush beneath his fist. Focus. Not yet done.
The corvette lifts. It wobbles, it dips, it slides sideways and scrapes the top of the coral wall. The shrieking grind is deafening. The distraction is enough to pull another down to death.
It gains height. Zalthis watches. It gains height.
He hears a voice, a distant voice, but the words are lost. His voxbead is lost, lost in the dirt, lost underfoot. Along with his ear. He feels the voice, feels it in his chest, in his heart. Amphistaves fall.
That's it. Now he's done.
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Tahiri flew the corvette like a drunken smuggler, slewing it around sluggishly. The dovin basals kicked in pulses, pressing them back into their couches with sudden acceleration. Anakin was lost for words, slumped in the leathery couch beside Tahiri's, limbs slack, mouth open.
Zalthis was gone.
They were leaving the compound behind, and Zalthis was gone. He felt him, felt his friend - his brother's sudden calm. He was gone.
He barely noticed Tahiri crying out in warning, or felt the thuds and thumps as the corvette took hits. Coralskippers, probably, he thought distantly, wondering how those got into the air so fast. Part of him was screaming at him to wake up, pay attention, that Tahiri was no pilot and that if they got shot down, it was all for nothing, that Vua and Zalthis died for nothing at all, but he sat hollow and shocked.
It didn't even hurt. It was just…empty. Frank. Matter of fact. Zalthis was gone.
"Anakin! I don't know what to do!"
He blinked.
"Anakin!"
"Go low," he replied. "Keep as low as you can, that might give us some cover."
And for what? Their combeads didn't have the range to reach Sol at the Thunderhawk. Tahiri didn't even know which way to go. He reached out, for Sannah, but she didn't have the bond like he and Tahiri did. She might be asleep - no, she would be. All they could do is buy a little more time until they were shot down. And if they didn't die in the crash, they'd be captured. Both of them, this time.
No. He'd - no. Neither of them would be captured.
"It's two, there's two of them," Tahiri babbled, muffled in the hood. "The ship - it's hurting, it wants to fight-"
"Tell it to," Anakin said, voice hollow.
The corvette trembled.
"It did!" Tahiri cried out.
Practical. Stop wallowing.
Anakin jolted upright; the thought sudden and startling. Nothing through the Force, just the sound of Zal's voice, wry and low, with that ridiculous hypothetical he always used. He hunched forward, digging his palms into his eyes for a moment before straightening up.
"Just keep them off us. Go north, does the ship know what north is?"
Tahiri shook her head.
"Alright. Put Yavin on the, on the right side. Stay low and when you see the sea, go that way and up the coast."
If only he could contact Sol, get the Thunderhawk up. Two coralskippers were nothing, even Fiver might be able to distract them, let alone something that heavily armed and armored.
"Can I take guns?"
Tentatively, Tahiri pointed toward another hood, dangling from its vine-like cord. Bracing himself, Anakin looked at it with a shudder, then pulled it on his head. It felt claustrophobic and hot, his breath stifling, then it…his mind opened up and he felt the lambent trill in his pocket. From enclosing darkness to wide open skies, he felt like he was sitting right on top of the corvette, out in Yavin's air.
"Oh, wow," he breathed in shock.
"Right?" Tahiri called back. He tried to turn his head, but instead the view itself shifted and he felt his body stay in the same position. Movement, but without moving. His inner ear swam for a moment. That was going to take getting used to. Weird glyphs burned here and there in his vision, and then his nose was teased by the smell of something…sour? A little acrid?
Tahiri, sensing his confusion, answered.
"Sour is enemy contacts. If it smells sweet, it means you are locked on."
Smell based targeting. He shifted the view again, catching sight of a coralskipper trailing behind them. Gold plasma spat out, reaching for them and to his surprise - and a bit of pride - the corvette slewed sideways, the plasma going wide.
"Do we have voids?"
"I don't know how!" Tahiri wailed.
Anakin nodded, felt stupid, and then acknowledged out loud. Looking at the coralskipper focused in the view, enlarging the starfighter, cloyingly, sugar-sweet aromas cutting into the sour. That meant he was locked on, then? But how did he -
Plasma thumped out from right 'under' him, bright and flaring. The coralskipper easily dodged, but it lost a little bit of ground.
All he had to do was -
Another burst of plasma. At least it fired fast. Problem was, the second coralskipper angled in, ranging shots down that clipped and spattered on the dorsal hull of the corvette. Anakin could see the coral char, then melt. He caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth, sending more and more hyphens of contained starstuff at the 'skips, but they danced and evaded.
At least they'd left the Temple site behind them; by yavinlight and the enhanced vision of the hood, he could see the Escarpment whip under them. They were moving, really moving.
He took aim again, careful aim, hoping this time - another blast and the coralskipper tilted up, gaining altitude, arcing up, right up into a flaring lance of crimson light that threw hard shadows across the corvette's hull.
"Dead stars!" Anakin swore in shock, blinking hard. A much, much sharper sour smell turned his stomach but his heart soared as a dark, blocky silhouette roared past, spraying countless tracer shells out at the second coralskipper. In his ear, his combead crackled.
"Anakin? Throne, tell me that is you on that rock."
"Sol? It's us! How did you possibly know?"
Reaching out, he could sense not just Sol's hard mind, but Sannah too aboard. The Thunderhawk snapped into an impossibly sharp turn, pitching the nose up into a hard stall, tumbling backwards and lashing out a blast of thick laser light that pinned the second coralskipper through. Anakin gawped at the flying.
"We didn't. The Thunderhawk turned itself on and took off. Lucky that I had been keeping watch from the ramp, rather than patrolling outside."
To Anakin's amazement, there was a third sense too. Much more diffuse and simple, but when he prodded it, he felt something adjacent to interest, excitement, and maybe pride.
"Five-five-nine-zero-one?" he exclaimed.
[Affirmative], it sent back.
Anakin tugged off the hood. Tahiri relaxed a little, though she still sat stiffly.
"Follow our lead," Sol told Anakin, who relayed it to Tahiri. "There is not much range to the vox, so we will stay close. I can detect the ships in orbit on auspex, and they just passed over the horizon a dozen minutes ago. We have a window."
Luck. Pure, pure luck that the two cruisers would be out of line of sight. Luck, or the Force. The Thunderhawk led them into the dark, into the stars, engines burning blue and white. Tahiri lumbered the corvette along after them, Yavin 4 diminishing behind them.
But, if the Force was truly with them…Anakin looked to one of the empty couches on the bridge and sucked in a shaky breath. He realized Sol hadn't asked about Zal. He probably didn't even think he needed to.
How was he supposed to tell Sol?