Eye of the Shadow - Pt. 8 - Escape and Evade
“This is utterly uncalled for and foolish. Why are you completing this senseless activity?” Bastila had no problem whatsoever expressing her dissatisfaction. Her laser-like focus on the mission always came first.
“Because I want to, Bastila. Isn’t that enough? Besides, this will mean hundreds of credits that we will have in case we need them to complete the mission. We aren’t going to get through a sticky situation with YOUR power of persuasion.” The criticism stung, but Serena’s comments were fairly close to the mark. They had less than one hundred credits in their possession.
“Do not attempt to cover your personal ambition with an argument in favor of the mission.”
“Please calm down. We have nothing to do until tomorrow morning when Canderous makes contact again. This isn’t going to affect anyone in a negative way. Marl is not likely to cause me any trouble. The Sith don’t seem to be panicking about the break in. I really don’t see any issue here.”
With a grunt of surrender, Bastila turned and exited the cantina, leaving Serena Kae to meet one last time with the grotesque Hutt who managed the dueling competition. Ajuur was eager to get his “Mysterious Stranger” back into the ring.
Unable to resist her role of mission mother, Bastila slipped into the crowd who were preparing to watch the match. She sat in a darkened corner and began to meditate with the purpose of possibly adding something to the engagement between the old dueling veteran and the former dark lord. As the fight began, however, Bastila realized that she need not participate in any way. Serena’s movements were a work of art. She positioned and repositioned her limbs and torso with effortless precision in a most elegant dance of body and blade. Bastila could feel every move as if she were making them herself. The Force had bonded them together allowing Bastila to experience intense emotions that were in fact being experienced by Serena. A flicker in the Force brought Bastila to a more conscious state of awareness. She began looking for the source and knew he was present before seeing him. Yagr was sitting in the stands a few rows below and about a quarter of the way around the ring. She recognized the man next to him as the doctor from the medical facility.
“You’re gonna stuff me where?” the doctor inquired a bit too loudly.
“Hush…it is the best way to get off of the planet. Do you want to save your hide or not? Of all the people on this planet, I respect and admire you most. I would fill a transport with the good people of this planet but I fear that I can only snatch a small craft. Those one man Sith fighters are…accessible…and they are interplanetary. It will be cramped, but we can get to another planet in the sector in only a matter of hours, and there we can either part company or get better transport.”
“I appreciate your thinking of me, but if what you say is true, there will be a planet full of people who will need my help.”
“LISTEN…” Yagr spoke with just a bit more intensity than intended. “You cannot help anyone if you are a puddle of plasma goo. You don’t seem to be getting what I am saying. It will not be long before the Sith run out of patience. They desperately want that lady who helped me, dead or alive. When those orbital weapons start, nobody is going to make it out of here, Forn. If you don’t want the ride, just say so.”
The good doctor thought for a moment, and then asked, “Ok, where do I meet you and what can I take with me?”
Yagr handed him a datapad displaying a map that denoted the spot where he would pick up the doctor. “Very little. Maybe a small bag with a change of clothes.” Forn nodded.
Bastila watched him discuss something with a look of sternness on his face. She was tracing the curves of his face with her eyes when he glanced back at her. She was startled just a bit by the sudden visual connection. His stare was penetrating. She felt like his eyes were evaluating or assessing something, sizing something up. He stood with his eyes locked on her then stepped into the crowd of departing spectators and disappeared. Bastila was so focused on Yagr that she had missed the end of the fight. It was apparent from the shapely figure of the one still standing that Serena had won. Before departing to her accomplish her own tasks, Bastila made a mental note to discuss Serena’s use of moves that reflected her Jedi training from years gone by. At least some of her old lessons were still intact in her heavily altered brain.
His effort expenditure had been minimal, but Yagr chided himself on the amount of noise made by the falling Sith corpse. He had rested in his blind waiting for the moment to act for nearly half the morning. He had made sure that Serena and Bastila made it successfully into Davik’s compound with Ordo before slithering off to a locale that would allow him to wait for the opportune moment to steal a mission-ready Sith fighter. As he concealed the corpse, he noticed some stirring in one of the Sith stations some ways down the corridor. There appeared to be some excitement, but he did not sense that it was aimed in his direction. He mounted the fighter, entered the cockpit, and began the startup sequence as he recalled the stolen instructions he’d loaded into his datapad.
Just as the sub-light engines began to ignite, a crowd of service personnel, pilots, troopers, and officers spilled into the open hangar space running at full stride. The crowd scattered towards various craft moments before the first plasma discharged crashed into some distant part of the facility. The scurrying crowd threw themselves to the ground, and then sprang towards their only possible salvation, the space craft around them.
Yagr closed the canopy and throttled up. Not a soul paid him any mind as everyone was focused on their own escape. More blasts rocked the facility as Yagr’s craft exited the hangar into daylight.
Fire and death were thundering down upon the city around him. His entire focus was on one life amongst the chaos. Several fighters and passenger ships could be spotted streaking for orbit as they made a final bid to save their lives. Yagr felt safe in possession of the stolen code that would get him past the blockade.The sleek fighter approached the rendezvous point where Yagr intended to pick up the doctor, Zelka Forn, but the frantic crowd made spotting one particular person nearly impossible. The concentration of plasma bursts was still several leagues from the rendezvous at that particular moment, so Yagr brought the craft into a hover. A surging mass of people approached the railing that ran along the edge of this elevated street. The fighter was hovering several dozen meters from the edge while Yagr scanned the crowd. Standing off to the side away from the crowd, he caught the movement of a dark skinned man waving a small white bag in the air. For several seconds, Yagr analyzed the situation: how to get the man into his craft with the panicked swirl of humanity so nearby.
Before he could reposition his craft for the attempted pickup, a tingle poked at the back of his mind followed by a change in the crowd below. In unison they all craned their necks to the sky to watch death coming for them. Yagr looked up to find an angry cloud of red bolts descending. He yanked on the control column and pivoted the thrusters to dodge the first bolts that he could see. A wave of energy spun the fighter as the plasma rounds began to land. Just as he righted the craft, he was able to regain visual contact with Forn. He was huddling under the awning of a partially crumbled merchant shop. A moment before he intended to make his move towards the doctor, a plasma blast landed not more than a few meters from where Forn was crouching.
“NOOOOOOOOO”, the pilot shrieked. The blast wave threw the tiny craft around like dust in a Tatooine dust storm. Yagr was beside himself and seethed with anger, frustration, and despair. He had committed himself to saving a single life from this Force-forsaken place, and he had failed that life. He turned to see the rubble of two dwelling complexes collapse onto the platform that held the portion of the city he had just been working towards. Under the force of detonations and crumbling buildings, the platform supports collapsed. Yagr could not tear his eyes from the sight of the ruin tumbling to the planet’s surface below.
Fly away Odace, you cannot do anything more for these people.
You Jedi are so heartless, Bastila. These people are my friends….MY people. I was a caretaker. Providing for their unknown needs and protecting them from unknown dangers. I can’t just fly away.
Odie, you can’t help them now. But there are others that you can help. The Force is closing this chapter and opening a new one for you.
Are you all safe? Did you get your people out?
Yes, we are exiting the atmosphere now. Will you join us?
No…
Maybe…