A Father's Blade: Chapter Eighteen

Noelani's world is darkness. Unending, perfect darkness. There is neither pain nor pleasure, love nor hate, good nor evil. No worries or responsibilities. No concerns over who her birth parents are. No memories or awareness.

It is a comfort to no longer worry over such things.

A large part of her relishes the darkness, the void. The unyielding emptiness.

Yet if there is anything her short life has taught her it is that such comforts rarely last.

Existence once more intrudes into Noelani's awareness. At first it is subtle, the introduction of smells. Warm compost. Mildew. The heavy scent of water and life and death.

Next existence makes itself known in a much more tactile way, the subtle jab of a stick poking in her back, a network of dull aches and pains across her entire body.

Finally, everything that has happened slams into her like a bolting bantha. Tahiri's disappearance. Her capture. Chase rescuing her. Escaping the prison where they were held.

Groaning, she opens her eyes in the deep gloom of the forest floor, her hand still tightly clasped around the metal pipe. A comfortable warmth seems to seep from the very metal of the device. She lifts it up and looks at it closer, recognizing it finally as a lightsaber hilt. Frowning she rolls over, getting to her knees and pushes herself up, trying to figure out what a lightsaber was doing stuck in a tree branch on Kashyyk.

She looks around the deep forest, nearly as dark as night on Ossus. A perpetual fog seems to blanket everything, muting even the sounds of the animals she can sense through the Force. Surrounding her are the various branches and vines which slowed her down enough so that she survived her fall through the trees. She shakes her head, getting the leaves and small twigs out of her hair.

Looking down at the hilt in her hand, she presses the ignition button and with a snap-hiss an indigo-colored blade flashes into existence. Something nearby squawks at the sudden onslaught of sound and light, and the undergrowth rustles as it darts away.

She waves the blade around experimentally for a few minutes, getting the feeling of the weapon, a sense of its weight and construction.

Then she shuts off the weapon, and wonders just how she can get back to the Wookiee city in the treetops.

Looking up, all she sees are trees, and leaves and the occasional vine stretched between branches. For a moment, she almost gives into despair, but the warmth from the saber seems to keep her from doing so.

Frowning, she begins to slowly walk forward, hoping to find some means of escape from the depths of the forest.

She sees a flash of polished titanium and a dim red glow. Frowning, she steps towards the underbrush, wondering what manner of thing this could be – and lets out a yelp as the Hunter stands up, its eyes flashing to life, brightening.

She takes a couple steps backwards, looking around for a means of escape, or a weapon to defend herself.

"You have disobeyed a direct order to surrender, and as such have been reclassified as an escape risk. Surrender now or this unit will be authorized to use class-3 measures."

Suddenly remembering the lightsaber hilt grasped tightly in her hand, she snarls at the droid, "Shove it, you walking trashcan!"

The droid's eyes seem to take on an ominous tint as it raises its right hand, pointing the blaster attached there towards Noelani.

She stretches out with the Force, feeling the microcurrents of energy collecting in the droid's blaster, readying the tibanna gas to be transformed into a blaster bolt.

Everything pushes her to move her saber up and level the blade with her heart. She does, and a second later the discharge of the blaster booms on the forest floor. Noelani can feel the pressure of the bolt striking her saber, and watches in amazement as it careens off on a wild tangent.

She twists her saber up and over so that the blade is leveled above her right shoulder just as another bolt strikes it.

She jumps forward, her saber slicing in, scratching a long furrow down the droid's chest, even as the gun-arm tracks her movements. She lands and immediately pushes herself up and backwards into a flip, a blaster bolt landing in the ground where she had just been.

She looks at the droid, and notices that metal is filling in the deep furrow which she had just cut.

In outrage she yells out, "Hey no fair! You're not supposed to do that."

The droid doesn't respond, just merely sends another blaster bolt towards her. To her amazement, her blade is there once more, but she can feel the muscles in her arms quivering from the exertion of deflecting the blasts and her half-healed broken arm has switched from a dull ache to a sharp, biting pain.

And for the first time since landing on Kashyyk, Noelani begins to despair.

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Waroo sniffs the air as Pollitichuk settles into the seat across from him. He sets a tumbler of bloodwine in front of Waroo and one in front of himself. In his other paw is a glass of some generic whiskey for Rand.

[So, why does the son of the mighty Chewbacca now speak for the Corellians?]

Waroo bares his fangs, and replies, [Do not attempt to dishonor or mock me. The reason I speak for the Corellians is because the Honorable Han Solo believes in their cause. That is reason enough for me.]

Pollitichuk chuffs with laughter. [Good, I had hoped that your spirit had not been broken by too many years away from the Forest.]

[Tell me why you have brought us here.]

[Because I too believe that it would be in our best interest to side with the Corellians. If we can convince Jowdrrl to accept that, then we can take it to the Council of Elders.]

Waroo takes a draught of his bloodwine, glancing at the human sitting to his left. He knows that the human can understand Shryiiwook, and for a moment wonders why he has not spoken up or offered his opinions.

[How do you propose we convince Jowdrrl?]

Pollitichuk leans forward, lowering his voice to a bare whisper, [She will either listen to reason, or we shall remove her from her office.]

Waroo can feel his eyes widen as he leans back in his seat, his mind racing as he considers the implications of Pollitichuk's thinking.

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Tahiri creeps forward, her commandeered blaster rifle held loosely in her hands as she peers around the corner, hoping to not run into any more of the guards. She glances behind her, looking at the two dozen children ranging from eight standard years to a few years older than her own apprentice, and representing a multitude of species, everything from human to Twi'lek to Zelosian.

She closes her eyes, centering herself, dispelling the hate and anger at the type of people who would torture innocents such as this.

Then she reaches out to her apprentice, trying to find her in the Force. Feeling how far away she is from her. Tahiri frowns at that, for a moment she wonders why Noelani feels so small through their training bond. Then she realizes the reason. There are interstellar distances separating the two of them.

She feels a niggle in the Force, and spins around, raising her rifle just as a trio of guards come jogging around the corner. Before they can bring their own rifles to bear, she has pulled the trigger twice, shifting the gun slightly each time.

The bolts strike true, burning a hole in the chest of two of the guards. The third manages to get his rifle up and fires a shot.

She ducks to the side as the bolt flies harmlessly past her head, and fires her rifle again without aiming. Her bolt strikes the guard in the shoulder, spinning him around and dropping him to the ground.

She straightens and notices a couple of the older kids arming themselves. For a second she almost tells them to not too, but then shrugs her shoulders, and turns away, once more looking around the corner.

Seeing no one there, she goes forward, relying on the Force to guide her, hoping that it is leading her towards an exit.

What she finds instead is a blast door that will not open. Cursing she slams the butt of her rifle against the door, and turns around in a circle, looking for another direction to travel.

Then she catches the scent of molten metal, and spins around to look at the blast door. There in the middle of the door, the metal has begun to glow orange.

She takes a step back, watching as the door melts and stretches out with the Force, feeling Kyp on the far side.

Before long, there's a large hole in the door, and Tahiri darts through, ignoring the slight burn she gets from the still hot metal.

She grins at Kyp. "'Bout time you showed up Durron."

"It's nice to see you too, Tahiri. Want to tell me who your friends are?"

Tahiri glances at the group of kids who have slowly came through the blast door. "They're what BioTech is doing here."

Kyp looks at her, the confusion evident on his face.

She cocks an eyebrow at him. "Do you want to talk about it now, or discuss it in Council where it's more appropriate?"

Kyp coughs slightly. "Probably Council."

"Good, now get on your comlink and get us some reinforcements from the Defense Fleet and close down the spaceport while you're at it."

Kyp gives her a look, as if he's about to argue with her, but then pulls out his comlink and begins quietly speaking into it. While he does that, she turns in a slow circle, looking around the corridor, wondering where the next set of guards are going to come from.

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Cere stares at the holocam monitors, switching her attention between two in particular. One shows the blonde Jedi, Tahiri Veila escaping from the holding pens, followed closely by the two dozen of the most promising specimens. The other monitor shows a middle-aged man – a Jedi – as he slices his way through their security with an utter abandon and ease.

She tightens her lips, suddenly afraid of what is going to happen to her. Sighing, she turns away from the bank of monitors and sits down at her desk. She pulls up the command system for the compounds central computer – and quickly begins typing away at her keyboard.

The command flashes on the screen before her, asking if she is certain she wishes to format the central core.

Her hand hovers over the key to accept the command, as she wonders if there is some way that she can trade the knowledge found in the core for a lighter sentence.

And Cere has no doubt that once the Jedi are through with her that she will be sent to some penal colony out on the Outer Rim. And that that is probably a best case scenario.

For the first time since taking this position, she wonders how she managed to allow Kar Illam talk her into doing what she does here. She knew it was against the Alliance's Ethics rulings. Yet to be honest with herself, the thought of the cutting edge research appealed to her. And Illam played to her vanity.

She shifts her hand over away from the accept key, and quickly jabs the key to cancel the command. She grins, knowing that there is enough incriminating evidence in the central core to indict everyone in BioTech's upper management. She starts to work on an encryption algorithm – something that should allow her to barter this information for some type of lighter sentence.