What Must be Done

The emergency lights threw chaotic patterns of colour through the bridge and the emergency sirens screamed shrilly, mixing to a defening commotion with the shouts of the crewmen, the captain barking orders, and the rumble of nearby ion blasts. Through it all, Valen stood statue-like in her place on the command deck, looking out into the madness raging around her in space. Fighters rocketed by like insects on stimulants, the red and green of their turrets combined with orange explosions of a hit target danced across her sight like fireworks.

They had been fighting for what felt to Valen like days. The war felt like it had progressed a millenia. Battles always seemed to have a habit of making each and every exhausting minute feel like an hour. In the back of her mind, the presence of her Republic comrades was a steady pressure - a glow that over time, slowly dimished as one by one as their life-forces were exhausted. A large void of space seperated her from the struggle below, but her senses told her it wasn't going well. She forced herself to breath slowly, fighting down the worry and panic bubbling in her stomach.

There is no emotion...there is peace...

She recalled Revan's last speech to the troops on board Valen's command ship, the Titan Mar. Revan had always been a competent speaker, but that last rally before the breaking of the storm had sent the emotions of her army whirling with pride and optimism that flooded through Valen's senses as if her mental shields were a sieve. With a fevered passion, her Commander's voice had rung out that this was to be the final battle; this would be the end of the war, the crush of the Mandalorian threat in their own territory. Malachor V was to be a victory the Republic would celebrate long through the ages.

But they were losing.

'General Endac! General Endac!' A panicked call from behind her shook Valen out of her reverie.

'General Endac ma'am,' a young, hassled-looking officer ran up to her and smartly saluted, 'Admiral Karath to speak with you!'

'Thank you, Atran.' Valen replied, sweeping from the command deck and through the chaos of the bridge to the large communications terminal. A violent blast rocked the ship and Valen stumbled, forced to regain her footing. The large image of the stern Admiral momentarily flickered with static, and Valen had to force-magnify her senses to hear Karath above the scramble of noise where she stood.

'Ah, there you are, General.' he said. Karath's demeanor had always made her feel apprehensive. While she had no reason to suspect any guile in him, she had never felt comfortable with his sheer impassiveness. Valen knew the battle of Malachor raged around him too, but he spoke as if this were a protocol communication check. 'I trust all goes well?'

'Well enough.' She replied curtly. 'Red and Blue squad have taken out the flagship nearest to us, but we can't let up our defenses and extend our attack - our shields have already taken a significant amount of damage and we've lost a port-side ion cannon. What is it that you want, Saul?'

'I have received a signal from Revan on the planet's surface. She has defeated the Mandalore in combat; however this seemed to rally his troops more than we expected. We're outnumbered twenty to one at the moment, not counting their Basilisks. Our ground forces are being pushed back significantly. Revan will be evacuated shortly, and returned to the Leviathan.'

'She's leaving her troops?' said Valen. The shock of his news broke her fragile sense of calm. 'She...how can she...I doubt you're faring much better than I am up here...we can't afford give up the planet too, there's no way we could hold them off in space alone!'

'It's too late,' replied Karath, shaking his head. 'Two more of their drop ships have broken Hyperspace - we will be overwhelmed shortly, and we have lost too much ground. Those than can be evacuated, will be evacuated, which brings me to the alternate purpose of my communication-'

'- General Endac!' a voice interrupted from a nearby terminal

'- Revan wished to pass along a message to you-'

'General Endac!'

'What!' Valen snapped at the officer.

'We've received a distress call from the Ravager. Their port hull has been breeched and their frontal plasma cannon's down! General Oren Mardonis requests any aid you can spare, ma'am!'

'As I was saying,' Karath voiced with a hint of impatience, 'I have a message from Revan.'

'And what could my dear commander possibly have to say to me after abandoning her men to certain death?'

'She wished me to remind you that "You know what you must do".' Karath paused, allowing his words to sink in. 'And now I take my leave of you, General. We will be making the jump to hyperspace shortly, the Leviathan will meet you back on Coruscant shortly. Good luck to y-'

'Wait!' Valen panicked, all sense of the Jedi Code's mantra forgotten, 'You're leaving too? You would abandon hope so easily? There's...there's atleast ten-thousand men down there! Do you KNOW what you're asking of me?' She was shaking, her fists clenched and sight blurred. It burned like fire as it crashed with the adrenaline already coursing through her body, and she allowed it to consume her.

'It is not what I ask of you, General Endac,' Saul snapped at her, 'But what Revan asks of you. You have your orders, as I do mine. For the Republic.'

And with that, the screen flashed, and went black. Valen stared at it for several moments after, disbelieving.

"No...your place will not be with me on the battlefield," Revan said, shaking her head. She placed her hands on Valen's shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "There is something you must do for me - something crucial to the outcome of this war if the time of desperation comes upon us, if we fail...if I fail..."

A random crewman ran by, and Valen grabbed him by the shoulder, and spun him to face her.

'Private?"

'Y-yes ma'am?"

"Find Lieutenant Bao-dur....send him to me, immediately."

"Right away, General."

"...Something you must do for me..."

'Lieutenant Wills!' She said, turning to the solider that had interrupted her talk with Karath, 'The Ravager, I need to speak with General Mardonis.'

'It's too late, General," Wills said, hastily pushing buttons and glancing repeatedly to a small radar screen, 'Their communications just got cut, they're being swarmed with Mandalorian fighters, Green squad won't be able to hold them off much longer.'

"Regardless of the consequences..."

Valen's panic deepened. She left the terminal and returned to the observation deck. Past the battling fighters defending her own vessel, she could see the Ravager in the distance, looking like a child's toy surrounded by frantically zooming mosquitoes. Bursts of flame indicated that it was being fired upon, but the Ravager was not firing back.

Thousands on the ground...countless more on their ships - now unable to escape.

And I would doom them all

Malachor loomed lazily below, the purple clouds of its atmosphere swirled with abandon, oblivious to the destruction continuing both above and below it.

"You know what you must do"

The words echoed in her head. She did not bother to search for the Leviathan. Her sister and Malak were gone, an emptiness in the force where they had shone so brightly moments before. The burden of Malachor was now settled heavily on her shoulders. The tiny deaths she could feel in her mind were steadily increasing, but were now joined with larger echoes of pain -- Jedi...dying. Valen leaned against the railing circling the deck, and closed her eyes. Outside, the explosions and the screams of dying fighter pilots made no sound.

"You know what you must do"