Myrkr, Late Wednesday Fandom Time
Jul. 10th, 2013 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelikemesince"Anakin, this has to be done," Tahiri told him, unconsciously echoing what the older Tahiri back in Fandom had told him, "and you're not making it any easier with that big negatude."
They were crawling through a field of senalak, a pale grass-like plant that lashed out with a whiplike thorny vine when disturbed, but so far they were unscathed thanks to the Force wave Jovan Drark was using to clear them a safe path. and Anakin was still miserable over the loss of Ulaha and 2-1S but he couldn't help a tiny smile. "Same old Tahiri. Still lecturing me, huh?"
"You bet. So they were expecting us. You dealt with it, and now they aren't."
"Sorry," he said, turning to look at her. "Thought I had that stuff closed off."
She rolled her eyes and grunted something that might have been a Tusken expression of indignation, but he didn't recognize it. "You did, but this is me, Anakin."
The battle-meld had them all so attuned with each other that they were anticipating each other's thoughts by now, but that wasn't what Tahiri meant. He could lock his emotions down in the Force all he wanted, but she knew him better than anyone . . . which reminded him that he still had a promise to fulfill to her Fandom counterpart. "Tahiri --"
"Yeah?"
"We need to talk. Um. As soon as we get a minute, okay?"
"Yeah," she said, even though he sensed her apprehension in the Force. "Sure."
***
The plan -- such as it was -- now was to rescue the captive Jedi then double back to steal a rescue shuttle. Their jumpsuits were equipped with holoshrouds to disguise them as Yuuzhan Vong, and Tahiri was ready to tell them what to say, or translate as needed. It was simple. How wrong could that go?
Anakin was beginning to feel confident again; disposing of the few Yuuzhan Vong warriors between them and the captive Jedi had been easy. That confidence, though, was immediately dashed when he and Alema rushed into the chamber to find one of the two captives cutting a Yuuzhan Vong shaper into cubes with a Force web.
Dark Jedi. Perfect. Just what they needed, and to make it worse Alema was incredibly interested in that technique.
And just to top it all off, Ganner and Jacen commed in to report that the shuttle that had just landed, the one they were planning on stealing to make their escape, had been carrying their old nemesis Nom Anor.
***
Nom Anor, over a hundred warriors, and an odd birdlike being Jaina identified as Vergere, whose involvement in a Yuuzhan Vong assassination attempt on the Jedi was confusingly balanced out by her provision of a temporary cure for Mara's illness -- that was what stood between the strike team and the rescue ship. No one was happy about the two Dark Jedi, Lomi Plo and Welk, joining them; Zekk, who'd had a brush with the Dark Side himself a few years ago, was the most displeased of them all. That discord was going to be bad enough for the team without leaking into the meld, as it inevitably did.
Anakin was trying very hard not to let his own anxiety bleed into the meld, or even let on that his calm assurance was starting to crack. It seemed like it was all they could to do stay one step ahead of their plans crumbling, and this was a situation completely foreign to him, and even he wasn't foolish enough to think sixteen tired, injured Jedi and their one remaining combat droid were capable of taking on that many warriors all at once, definitely not quickly enough to keep from alerting others.
"We can escape into the training course," Lomi Plo said, coming to stand beside him; Anakin sensed a spike of fear from Welk. "There's an exit into the laboratory complex."
Jacen beat Anakin to the question. "What's the training course?"
"It's where the Yuuzhan Vong teach voxyn to hunt us," Lomi answered diffidently. "It will be dangerous -- but less so than the spaceport."
And there were live voxyn on the loose in there, naturally. Anakin had always joked that they never took the easy way. The joke was a lot less funny now.
Lomi led the strike team through a series of narrow tunnels into some kind of forest, warning, "Keep your weapons at hand. The trainers were working a pack when you arrived, and they pulled us out in a hurry. The voxyn could be anywhere by now."
It was only right about then that Anakin realized he'd long since stopped going over their plan point by point in his head. It wasn't as if there was a good reason to any more, anyway.
[OOC: NFI/NFB/TBC/OOC-okay, etc. Still Star by Star by Troy "Made of Evil" Denning. I freely admit I'm glossing over a lot of stuff. I hate this book. D:]
They were crawling through a field of senalak, a pale grass-like plant that lashed out with a whiplike thorny vine when disturbed, but so far they were unscathed thanks to the Force wave Jovan Drark was using to clear them a safe path. and Anakin was still miserable over the loss of Ulaha and 2-1S but he couldn't help a tiny smile. "Same old Tahiri. Still lecturing me, huh?"
"You bet. So they were expecting us. You dealt with it, and now they aren't."
"Sorry," he said, turning to look at her. "Thought I had that stuff closed off."
She rolled her eyes and grunted something that might have been a Tusken expression of indignation, but he didn't recognize it. "You did, but this is me, Anakin."
The battle-meld had them all so attuned with each other that they were anticipating each other's thoughts by now, but that wasn't what Tahiri meant. He could lock his emotions down in the Force all he wanted, but she knew him better than anyone . . . which reminded him that he still had a promise to fulfill to her Fandom counterpart. "Tahiri --"
"Yeah?"
"We need to talk. Um. As soon as we get a minute, okay?"
"Yeah," she said, even though he sensed her apprehension in the Force. "Sure."
***
The plan -- such as it was -- now was to rescue the captive Jedi then double back to steal a rescue shuttle. Their jumpsuits were equipped with holoshrouds to disguise them as Yuuzhan Vong, and Tahiri was ready to tell them what to say, or translate as needed. It was simple. How wrong could that go?
Anakin was beginning to feel confident again; disposing of the few Yuuzhan Vong warriors between them and the captive Jedi had been easy. That confidence, though, was immediately dashed when he and Alema rushed into the chamber to find one of the two captives cutting a Yuuzhan Vong shaper into cubes with a Force web.
Dark Jedi. Perfect. Just what they needed, and to make it worse Alema was incredibly interested in that technique.
And just to top it all off, Ganner and Jacen commed in to report that the shuttle that had just landed, the one they were planning on stealing to make their escape, had been carrying their old nemesis Nom Anor.
***
Nom Anor, over a hundred warriors, and an odd birdlike being Jaina identified as Vergere, whose involvement in a Yuuzhan Vong assassination attempt on the Jedi was confusingly balanced out by her provision of a temporary cure for Mara's illness -- that was what stood between the strike team and the rescue ship. No one was happy about the two Dark Jedi, Lomi Plo and Welk, joining them; Zekk, who'd had a brush with the Dark Side himself a few years ago, was the most displeased of them all. That discord was going to be bad enough for the team without leaking into the meld, as it inevitably did.
Anakin was trying very hard not to let his own anxiety bleed into the meld, or even let on that his calm assurance was starting to crack. It seemed like it was all they could to do stay one step ahead of their plans crumbling, and this was a situation completely foreign to him, and even he wasn't foolish enough to think sixteen tired, injured Jedi and their one remaining combat droid were capable of taking on that many warriors all at once, definitely not quickly enough to keep from alerting others.
"We can escape into the training course," Lomi Plo said, coming to stand beside him; Anakin sensed a spike of fear from Welk. "There's an exit into the laboratory complex."
Jacen beat Anakin to the question. "What's the training course?"
"It's where the Yuuzhan Vong teach voxyn to hunt us," Lomi answered diffidently. "It will be dangerous -- but less so than the spaceport."
And there were live voxyn on the loose in there, naturally. Anakin had always joked that they never took the easy way. The joke was a lot less funny now.
Lomi led the strike team through a series of narrow tunnels into some kind of forest, warning, "Keep your weapons at hand. The trainers were working a pack when you arrived, and they pulled us out in a hurry. The voxyn could be anywhere by now."
It was only right about then that Anakin realized he'd long since stopped going over their plan point by point in his head. It wasn't as if there was a good reason to any more, anyway.
[OOC: NFI/NFB/TBC/OOC-okay, etc. Still Star by Star by Troy "Made of Evil" Denning. I freely admit I'm glossing over a lot of stuff. I hate this book. D:]
