The Force gave Alyi supernaturally quick reflexes. Few Twi’leks had ever moved like she did, and even among Twi’lek Force Users her response times to danger was phenomenal. It was the part of using the Force she’d gravitated too the most naturally. The part she saw, in time, that she’d been relying on for far longer than she’d been aware of the Force’s existence as a real phenomena. The part that had saved her life countless times, and was currently the only thing buying her the few precious seconds of life she was experiencing.
But it wasn’t enough to buy her safety, or her survival.
Kelda was helping her. Deflecting blaster bolts as they poured down the hallway and trying, unsuccessfully to push their attackers away.
Normally that would have been enough to decide any battle. Regular storm troopers wouldn’t have withstood Kelda’s first telekinetic shove. Rattling them into the walls would have been more than enough to leave them addled and disoriented so that, worst case, Ayli could shoot them all (or run away, but Ayli hated running from Imperials).
These storm troopers were unaffected by Kelda’s Force techniques though.
No.
Not unaffected.
Protected from them.
Ayli had sensed that the Elders were doing something, taking a hard to discern action against Nix and herself. Apparently the Silent Enclave had developed a technique to shied and empower others with the Force.
It was an ability that was blatantly at odds with their espoused tenants, but discovering that the Enclave’s Elders were complete hypocrites was like discovering that it was a bit hard to breathe in space – unpleasant but far from surprising.
“Ayli!” Nix yelled from the cover of the room Ravas had tossed her into.
Ayli couldn’t look to see what Nix was doing, but the Force told her that Nix was reaching out to deflect the blaster bolts too.
Which helped.
With Nix turning some of the fire aside, Ayli was able to start weaving a few inches closer to the shelter of the room Nix was in.
But the room Nix was in was not a shelter.
Ayli felt, more than saw, the attacks aimed at Nix. Two of the Elders had been tossed into that room first.
They weren’t in the best of the shapes, but neither was Nix.
Ayli couldn’t help herself.
She flung her arm sideway to shove one of the attackers away from Nix.
And promptly caught a blaster bolt with her forearm.
For a moment, adrenaline kept her going. She didn’t feel the pain. She wasn’t distracted. She was able to keep deflecting the other blaster fire that was coming at her.
But only for a moment.
As soon as the burning agony from her arm registered, her concentration was shattered.
She survived for another moment thanks to Kelda’s effort.
And the moment after that thanks to Nix pulling her to safety, though that cost her another hit from a bolt to her right lekku which was so instantly painful that she blacked out.
Unconsciousness lasted seconds but those seconds were long enough to shift the battlefield.
When Ayli blinked the pain out of her eyes, she found Nix and Ravas both holding fully energized Rexnarian Vibroblades. They were nasty weapons and the blood that coated them said they’d been put to nasty work.
The two Elders were dying. Mortally wounded from a number of rather brutal knife strikes. With medical attention they could probably be saved, but bacta tanks weren’t exactly plentiful in the middle of a firefight.
“We can get you out of here,” Ravas said, as a wave of suffocating pressure landed on all of them.
The knife Ravas had been holding dropped to the floor as she and Kelda faded and winked out of sight.
“That’s the other Elders,” Nix said, trying to catch her breath. “We’re cut off.”
“The storm troopers are advancing,” Ayli said, calling the fallen vibro blade to her hand. She still had her blast rifle but having options was always a good idea.
“Can you stand?” Nix asked.
Ayli tested her leg and stifled a scream.
“No. Which means I get to stay here,” she said. It was more than the Rebellion’s standard procedure. It was their only path to victory.
“We both do,” Nix said. “I don’t have any feeling in my left leg yet. Stupid stun blades.”
“We can’t defend ourselves here,” Ayli said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not going to let them kill you,” Ayli said, desperation waking her Dark Side even more than the pain had.
“We’re not going to die here,” Nix said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how, but we’re going to…oh.”
Without warning she threw herself over Ayli, forming a human shield against the blastwave which ripped the hull wide open.
Hull breeches were not, at any point in Ayli’s life, good things.
Any point up until that precise instant.
She felt the mass of storm troopers, Force protected though they were go spinning out into the void and the pounding of automatic blaster fire quieted.
The rush of air of which had slammed her and Nix against the remains of the wall to the destroyed hallway continued to gush out. Star Destroyers are large enough that even multi-room holes in their superstructure are nowhere near capable of venting a meaningful amount of their atmosphere.
A weird whine went through the deck beneath her and the torrent of air slowed leaving them happily able to breath rather than enjoying the embrace of the hard vacuum like the Storm Troopers were.
“The deflectors modulated for atmosphere. Wow the pressure seals must be wrecked if the systems defaulted back to that,” Nix said, gazing out as though she could see the innards of the ship and was watching them work.
“What was that? Someone’s engaged the flagship?” Ayli asked, her senses scrambled as much from the explosion as from the pain wracking her body.
Head wounds uniformly suck among all of the galaxies many species. Lekku wounds were far worse though.
Or at least Ayli was prepared to testify to that fact under her current circumstances.
“Not just someone,” Nix said, a delighted smile lighting her face like a sunrise.
“There’s no airlock left, so I’m docking here. Anyone shoots at me and I’ll be firing another proton torpedo at you.” Goldie’s voice ran out from an external speaker system loud enough to rattle the durasteel deck.
Before Ayli could question the arrival, she heard the crash of metal on metal and felt a hard jolt go through the deck. Goldie’s idea of ‘docking’ was a trifle more destructive than most and Ayli was beyond certain that the threat to unleash more proton torpedoes at point blank range had been made in ernest. Fortunately that did not prove to be necessary since the enemy combatants who would have provoked such an action were in the process of drifting away into the void.
“Found them, Nulo, bring the medkits,” Lasha the Horizon Knight said, drifting into view in one of the EVA suits from Goldie’s stores.
“Are they hurt?” Goldie asked, her mechanical voice the precise sort of emotionless to serve as a prelude to cataclysmic levels of violence.
“We’re fine. Slightly shot up, but your timing was impeccable,” Nix said. “Tend to Ayli first. I just need a stim for my leg.”
Lasha took one look at both of them, closed her eyes and waved her hand back and forth.
“You need wound sealant, and she needs burn care,” Lasha said, while Nulo was on hand to provide before Lasha could finish speaking.
Being tended to by a medic wasn’t a new experience for Ayli, though being tended to by one with Force sensitivity was new. Lasha didn’t need to ask where things hurt, or if the treatment was sufficient. Also, Lasha had apparently brought along some very high end medical products, because the anesthetics had brought both her arm and lekku pain down to an annoying ache and Ayli could almost swear that her skin had started regrowing already.
That the medical supplies had the same branding as the ones from Goldie’s stores didn’t make a lot of sense, but Ayli had more important things to worry about.
“How did you find us?” she asked, amazed that the Elder’s cloaking field hadn’t made that impossible.
“Deduction,” Nulo said, as she held her hands against Nix’s side where a stab wound had left her bloody and bruised.
Which also didn’t make sense. Stab wounds and bruises are produced by very different sorts of trauma.
“I knew you’d be on the flagship since that had to be where the Elder’s ran,” Goldie said over the comm that Lasha was carrying. “From there I just had to scan for your entry point and then look for heat signatures.”
Muffvok whuffed a few times.
“We helped from there,” Nulo translated. “Its really hard to sense anything here, but the pain from these wounds stood out.”
“If you can move them, we should get out of here,” Goldie said. “Aunt Sali is keeping them busy but I’m not exactly in a good spot if any of the Tie’s they’ve scrambled come to check out what’s happening.”
‘You need to take off, now,” Nix said.
“Nope. Not leaving without you,” Goldie said, her adamant tone the exact same one Nix was using.
“We can’t leave. We had to stop the Elders now,” Nix said.
“You’re not in much shape for that,” Lasha said.
“We’re doing to have to be,” Ayli said, rising to her feet and finding her leg shockingly firm and supportive. All she had to do was limp a little and she was fine.
“What you have to do is get to safety, which is not here,” Goldie said. “Let Aunt Sali blow up the Elders.”
“They have Kelda and Ravas,” Nix said.
Goldie was silent for a long moment.
“Bantha poodu,” she said at last.
“Yeah. It is,” Nix said. “I’m not sending you away though. We need you. Just not right here.”
“Where do you need me then?” Goldie asked.
“If we’re not onboard, you can unlock your thrusters and hit maneuvers than even the inertial dampeners won’t hold up to, right?”
“Yes?” Goldie asked hesitantly.
“I need you to crash a Tie-Fighter into the docking bay. More than one if you can.”
“That’s going to make getting you off this ship a bit difficult,” Goldie said. “Not impossible, but why do you want me to block off your primary escape route.”
“Because I don’t want the Elders escaping either.”
“And then I come get you?”
“Not quite. There’s one more task I’ll have for you.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know yet. Just get close enough to comm us after you take out the docking bay. The pieces will be in place by then.”
“That sounds terrible. I hate this plan.”
“You’re the only one who can make it work.” Nix’s words were fond. And manipulative. And honest. It was probably the combination of the three that won Goldie over, though Ayli suspected that getting to destroy a docking bay was a serious enticement all on its own.
“And what are you going to be doing?” Goldie asked.
“Rescuing Kelda and Ravas,” Ayli said.
“And putting a stop to the Elders and their Imperial backers,” Nix said. “I think the Force is fed up with all of their nonsense.”
“This is outside our usual purview, but I’d have to agree,” Lasha said. “Even with whatever this horrible thing they’re doing to the Force, I can still feel the pull to finish this here and now.”
“I would object and say you don’t have to, but we could really use your help,” Nix said.
“They can empower regular soldiers,” Ayli said. “And the Imperials are never shy about expending legions of Storm Troopers, especially if they feel personally threatened.”
“That sounds difficult to fight against,” Lasha said. “Which means you will likely need these.”
From her sack, she draw forth a pair of hilts and handed Ayli and Nix the lightsabers they’d left on Goldie when a stray thought months earlier had told them it might be a good idea.