A Father's Blade: Chapter Fifteen

Rand sits in the cockpit of the Nicholas, his Corellian Engineering Corporation YT-1930. It really is not his ship, but is the one provided him by Corellian Intelligence for his mission. He watches the blue swirls of hyperspace, an almost hypnotic twisting of light and color. The navicomputer beeps, and he looks down, watching the numbers scroll down from five. He reaches forward and grabs hold of the hyperspace levers, pushing them forward as the countdown hits zero.

The lights and colors vanish, replaced by the stretched lines of stars which compress back down to single, cold pinpoints of light. Hanging off to port is the viridian jewel which is Kashyyk.

He sighs and shakes his head, cursing his luck once again for having been assigned this mission. He brings the sublight engines online and feeds them power – causing the entire ship to shudder.

His eyes widen in surprise as a half dozen indicators switch from green to red, and a dozen more indicators which should be red flicker to green. He presses a few buttons on the console and a display flickers to life – showing the sublight engines, and the problems associated with them.

The ship lurches again, and Rand unbuckles himself, standing up and turning towards the interior of the ship. He sees a flash of blonde hair dart towards the common room from the direction of the cabins and then a Wookiee howl of surprise.

He rushes forward, turning towards the common room, just in time to see the blonde – a young kid – yank open the pressure door to the engine compartment, a billow of black smoke pouring out from the room.

The girl darts into the smoke and Rand yells out, "Hey kid! What do you think you're doing?"

From behind him, he can hear an unfamiliar voice, "Noelani!"

He turns to see a dark-haired teenager standing near the corridor that leads to the crew cabins. He turns to the Wookiee.

"Do you know what these two kids are doing here?"

Waroo growls a negative, and he sees the soot covered blonde stick her head out from the engine room.

"Do you have a hydrospanner? I need one now!"

Growing angry, Rand steps forward into the engine room, coughing at the smoke. He strains his eyes, seeing a flash of yellow near an open access panel to the sublight engines.

"Just what the kriff do you think you're doing to my ship?"

The girl throws a quick glance over her shoulder at him, disdain easily evident on her oil-smudged face. "Saving us. Haven't you ever heard of engine maintenance? Now, where's the hydrospanner – I can't tighten these things enough by hand."

Rand turns away, wondering about the wisdom of listening to the girl, and then rushes to a cabinet and pulls out a hydrospanner. He returns to the engine and sticks it into the opening, where the girl is leaning into the inner workings of the machinery.

"Here," he brusquely states even as he wonders at the girl's sanity as she pokes around a live engine the way she's doing.

He tries to see into the dim engine compartment as she yanks the tool from him, unable to see anything save the occasional flash of blonde hair. "I hope you know what you're doing in there."

"Me too, now go try to restart the engines."

Rand frowns as he considers what the girl is saying, finally stating, "That could kill us."

She pulls out of the engine and turns on him, fire flashing in her blue eyes. He notes that she is young, at most thirteen standard.

Her voice is filled with annoyance. "Crashing will kill us. Now go!"

He blinks his eyes as he realizes that he's jogging down the corridor towards the cockpit, having already ran through the common room. For a moment he wonders what happened, and then decides it doesn't matter as he slides into the pilot's station. He pulls the engines offline, and notices that they are quickly falling in towards the planet. Only a few dozen kilometers from the atmosphere with that number rapidly dwindling.

Uttering a prayer to whatever higher powers the blonde in the engine compartment believes in, Rand brings the sublight engines back online, feeding them power.

The ship lurches as she comes back under control, and the warning indicators all flash away from red – with a worrying large number of them staying yellow. Yet he still lets out a sigh of relief, he can happily handle yellow.

They pull up out of their uncontrolled descent, assuming a more safe entry vector. Rand contacts the space port at Rwookrrorro, asking for permission to land. As he receives it, he turns control of the craft over to the automated landing system and then shakily gains his feet, and walks back to the common room.

He finds Waroo towering over the two teenagers, and crosses his arms, frowning at them. The boy has reddish-brown hair and brown eyes, and appears more wary of Waroo and himself then the blonde does. Finally, he asks the first question, "And just what should we do with the two of you?"

The two share a quick look between themselves and then the blonde replies, "Well, since we saved your lives, you could always drop us off whatever planet we're landing on and forget we exist."

Waroo growls a question at them, and though the two look at him, neither go to answer it. After a moment, Rand translates.

"He wants to know why you think we should let two stowaways loose on his homeworld."

Again that shared look, and the blonde speaking, "Because we saved your lives?"

Rand frowns for a second, and then goes to the weapon locker. He pulls out two pair of stun cuffs and a blaster. Turning back to the stowaways, he trains the blaster on them, while tossing the cuffs to Waroo.

He laughs at the look of outrage and indignation which crosses the blonde's face as the Wookiee places the cuff on the boy. He frowns as she yelps when he grabs her arm to put them on her.

The boy speaks, "Be careful you hairy oaf! She's got a broken arm."

The Wookiee growls at the boy, a response that needed no translation, and Rand's admiration of him notches up a bit as he doesn't back down from the Wookiee's aggression. Yet Rand notices that Waroo is gentler with the girl now that he knows she is injured.

Once they are both in the stun cuffs, Rand gestures with his blaster towards the holotable. "Go ahead and make yourselves comfortable. Kashyyk security will be here to pick you both up soon."

Then he walks back towards the cockpit, to contact planetary security and tell them about his two stowaways.

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Kyp leaves hyperspace. The blue and orange ball of Ambria, with her massive network of stone and ice rings, lies dead ahead of him. He accelerates towards the planet, reaching out once more to Tahiri in the Force. She still feels muted and blunt in the Force, but there is more of her presence and he can feel her control of her Force presence now. She acknowledges him in the Force, a quiet prompting which equates to "hurry."

Kyp pushes down the throttle and his X-Wing jumps forward quickly breaking the atmosphere, ignoring the startled cries of planetary control. He can see the red and orange from flames licking the sides of his spacecraft as he breaks the border between space and air, coming in at a slightly too sharp of a trajectory. He flashes over the single settlement on the planet. A sonic boom traveling in his wake, rattling some of the older buildings.

He sees Tahiri's ship settled on the tarmac, and banks around it, firing his braking thrusters and repulsors simultaneously, coming to a halt in mid air and drop the last five meters to a landing. Even as the ship is falling, he pushes open the canopy and uses the Force to fling himself up and out of the X-Wing. With a back flip he lands in a crouch beside the Stolen Star.

He looks towards the ship, trying to figure out what to do now, as the Force suddenly screams out in warning. In an eyeblink his saber is out and the blaster bolt is being sent back towards the landing strut from which it came from even as the sound reaches his ears.

He rushes towards the rear landing strut, and grabs the tunic of the human writhing in pain from the blaster wound to his shoulder, kicking the odd looking blaster away from him. He growls as he hauls him up off of the tarmac.

"Who are you?"

The man coughs up blackish blood, and grins as his face splits down the middle rolling backwards and down the body. In surprise, Kyp drops the man, who rolls and stands up, towering over Kyp, as the masquer finishes as a pile of empty flesh as the warrior's feet. An amphistaff uncoils from the warriors arm, hardening into blade shape.

Kyp reignites his saber as he takes a step backwards and says, "Oh."

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Tahiri rocks back on her haunches at hearing his neck snap - her eyes focus on his dead, lifeless gaze and the shock of taking a life with barely thinking about it rolls over her. She shakes off the shock, and quickly strips him of his uniform and dresses in it. She frowns as it conforms to her body as if it were a living shift of the Yuuzhan Vong. Then she hefts his body up onto her cot, pushing his dead form into the same shape that she usually made. Covering him with the sheet, she turns away and walks towards the door, calmly stepping through as the energy field flickers into non-existence.

She pauses at the unfamiliar corridor and looks back and forth.

Sighing, she opens herself to the Force, and feels the bright, shining presence of Kyp Durron. She sends a feeling of urgency, and then focuses on where she should be heading. Shrugging, she turns left and confidently walks down the hallway. Coming to a cross corridor, she turns right and walks on.

She comes to a large blast door. Frowning, she walks closer and her badge glows for a second and then the doors slowly rumble open. Tahiri cautiously creeps forward, wishing she had her lightsaber. She finds herself in another long hallway, this one darkened and filled with viewing windows.

She steps up to the first window and looks in with a deep sense of horror slamming into her. Within the room is a young, blue-skinned Twi'lek girl – not much older than Noelani. One of her lekku has been amputated, and scars adorn half of her face, and dance down the arm closest to Tahiri.

Images that she had ripped from Thesim's head flash through her mind's eye and she knows that this is one of the people who he violated and tortured.

Anger rips away the last of the fog which has clouded her brain since awakening in the cell. An anger based on her experiences at being captured and shaped. Anger due to the fact that this innocent girl is being tortured in the same way.

Growling, she reaches out with the Force and grabs a hold of the window and then yanks. With a squeal of stressed metal and the roar of crumbling ferrocrete, Tahiri pulls the window from the wall. She clenches her fist, and the transparisteel window partly shatters and partly crumbles into a ball which she then drops. She looks into the room to see the girl huddled in the corner- she stretches out her hand, making a "come here" gesture.

"It's okay, I'm a Jedi, come on we're getting out of here."