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nonelikemesinceThey'd killed at least nine or ten voxyn by now -- Anakin wasn't even trying to keep count any more -- and lost their last combat droid to a coralskipper attack, but the team was intact despite the growing tension in the battle-meld. Anakin wasn't willing to make it worse by adding his stress and concern to the mix, so he'd channeled his father's cocky overconfidence, hoping to reassure everyone.
He was probably overcompensating quite a bit.
"The Force has favored us today," Jovan Drark commed back to the rest of the team from the next chalk dune ahead where he and Lowbacca were inspecting an old Imperial AT-AT the voxyn trainers had added to the course -- part of their attempt to get the voxyn accustomed to the 'lifeless abhorrences' of machinery, according to Lomi. None of the captured vehicles in the course had the power capacity for them to make an escape, and there wasn't time for them to but if they could get a break from walking for a while, especially in this energy-sapping terrain, it would be a bonus. "The batteries still have a charge, but the power feeds have been isolated by mineral secretions."
"Secretions?" asked Jaina, sounding apprehensive.
"It appears to be an insect nest. Lowbacca is cleaning it off now."
Jacen chimed in, "What kind of insects? If they look like worms with legs --
"It's no shockapede hive," Jovan replied. "These are little flitnats, completely harmless."
That didn't seem terribly reassuring.
"They are an unnecessary risk," Lomi said when Anakin, surmising that her experience with the training course would give her a better idea, asked. "We have almost reached our destination. The main cloning lab is only a kilometer beyond that wall."
"About time," Zekk said dryly as he came to join them. "I was beginning to think you were stalling." Jacen had dropped the meld because with all the resentment and distrust in the group it was useless now, but no one needed it to tell that Zekk hadn't gotten any more tolerant of their Dark Jedi companions when he'd been making bitter comments at every opportunity.
"You will understand if I prefer alive over fast, Zekk," Lomi retorted. "Our fates will be the same in this."
"She's kept us out of trouble so far," Anakin interjected, more to keep Zekk from further agitating the team's fraying morale than to defend Lomi. He flashed a grin and tried to imitate his father, declaring, "Let's make the safe play and avoid the walker. We'll be done and on our way home in two hours anyway, four at the most."
He saw Jaina frown at that, and noticed her sticking by his side as they started hiking toward Jovan and Lowie and the AT-AT. "What are you doing out of line?" he asked, then in a much quieter voice that wouldn't carry to the others: "Is there something you want to say?"
She gave him a smile and put a hand on his arm. "There is. You're doing a good job, Anakin. If we're going to get this done, it's because of your confidence and determination."
No matter which version of Jaina said it to him, no matter how old he got, he was never going to get over how much of a pleasant and gratifying surprise it was to get a compliment from his sister. "Thanks, Jaina," he said, grinning and feeling much more relieved at least for the moment. "I know."
"Sure you do." Jaina said, hit him in the shoulder so hard he lost his footing briefly, and smirked as she informed him, "Just remember to keep your guard up."
Anakin mock-glared at her, happy to fall back on the familiar sibling banter and stop thinking about how, according to Ulaha's calculations, their probability of success dropped by 2 percent per hour . . . or how many hours they'd be behind schedule according to 2-1S if the droid was still around.
Too bad the moment was short-lived -- the flitnats were, indeed, a trap, and soon Krasov had to retrieve an unconscious Jovan while Anakin stood atop the AT-AT arguing with Jaina and Zekk about whether to call a retreat while they cut through the escape hatch bolts to get to Lowbacca, who had insisted on trying to salvage spare breath masks from the cockpit.
They were still working -- and Lowie had finally passed out from the flitnat venom -- when Ganner commed, "Anakin, there's a dust cloud coming up the canyon toward us, and I don't think it's a New Republic landspeeder. How about those orders?"
Sithspawn, it just kept getting worse. "In a second!" Anakin commed back in a snappish tone he immediately regretted. He knelt beside the hatch and ignored the few insects that flew up into his face and started biting when Jaina levitated the hatch door out of the way, in favor of reaching inside with the Force to get Lowbacca out. Even working as quickly as he could it was agonizingly slow: Imperial vehicles were never built to accommodate Wookiees, the flitnats burst out of the hatchway in swarms every time they had a chance, and their venom worked fast. He was dizzy and nauseated by the time they pulled Lowie out, though Jaina was in worse shape; Zekk had to help her jump down from the AT-AT, and when she landed she stayed down, trying not to throw up.
"What do you think now, young Solo?" Lomi asked, condescendingly. "Still determined to fight?"
He took a precious second -- every second was impossibly valuable now but he had promised not to act rashly -- to think about it. As Jedi, they had a certain value as living sacrifices to the Yuuzhan Vong, which had to be why Nom Anor was hunting them, but Lomi had also pointed out earlier that it would only go so far to protect them. "Blaster bolts!" he finally half-snarled out of frustration. As he helped Jaina back to her feet, he spoke into his comlink. "Ganner, let's go. Retreat."
Lando had been right. Neither option felt like the right one.
***
The next attempt to get to the cloning facility failed. So did the next, and the one after that, until they'd gone through every single simulated environment in the training course. The course was maintained by the vast number of slaves the Yuuzhan Vong had acquired through their conquests of various worlds, and having exhausted all their other possible routes the strike team was pushing through the slave city itself, in hopes of reaching the cloning facility through the voxyn warren itself. Through all of it they had to fight off repeated voxyn attacks; their stock of thermal detonators was running low, as were the power packs of their blasters. They were getting good at killing the things, and they'd reinstated the battle-meld out of necessity, but it was nothing but a staticky, chaotic mess of anger and negativity, with little useful purpose but to confirm they were all still alive.
Alive, and hunted, and getting rapidly worn down by the constant fighting and the knowledge that Nom Anor was always a step ahead of them with another trap. With the voxyn attacks coming in increasing frequency in the slave city, and the resultant collateral damage, undoubtedly their guilt at putting so many of the slaves in harm's way was another element of Nom Anor's plan.
As for their plan, the only thing it boiled down to any more was what Anakin told a disbelieving Lomi: "Kill the queen and destroy the lab, then hope we can steal a ship in the confusion."
There was so much doubt in the battle-meld, and so very much had gone wrong by now, that Anakin wasn't even trying to project easy confidence any more. He didn't think he had it in him, anyway. If not for Tahiri's stubborn confidence in him and the way she loyally leaped to his defense any time one of the others (though mostly Lomi and Welk) leveled criticism at him, he was almost convinced he would have given in to despair a long time ago. If not for that he'd almost certainly give in to it right now: with every kilometer they walked through the city, they were surrounded by slaves begging desperately for help, and Anakin could do nothing but apologize and tell them there was nothing he could do.
There wasn't a worse feeling in the multiverse as far as he was concerned.
"Stay sharp, everyone," Anakin ordered the group as they followed a set of voxyn tracks and descended down a sloping alley walled on either side with buildings so high it might as well have been a canyon. He'd almost have been relieved that the slaves had stopped to watch them from the mouth of the alley, seemingly unwilling to follow them down this route, except for how that was clearly a danger sign. "We need to make this work. If you can do something to keep the voxyn quiet, now is the time," he added to Jacen.
"I'll do my best, Anakin, but these aren't normal animals," Jacen replied, worn down enough that he didn't bother to hide his apprehension. "I can't just reach --"
Whatever his brother had to say, Anakin didn't hear it: he felt several Yuuzhan Vong presences through the lambent in his lightsaber, and drew his blaster as he whirled to see several human slaves, no, Yuuzhan Vong in ooglith masquers, pushing through the crowd toward them. One threw a small capsule onto the ground near Jacen's feet.
"Blorash jelly!" Anakin spat out a string of creative Huttese curses he'd picked up from his grandfather, sent a blaster bolt through the attacker's throat, and reached out in the Force to levitate Jacen off the ground and set him down somewhere clear of the jelly. He could hear the snap-hiss of lightsabers igniting around him, but when the impact of a blow to the head that threatened unconsciousness resonated through the meld he didn't need to hear Jacen's shout to know it was Jaina.
The crowd was in chaos now, too, threatening to stampede in their confusion and shock at the attack that had come from their midst; between them and the blorash jelly that their attackers kept flinging at the ground, the strike team was in no position to escape. Eryl was the first to succumb, taking a razor bug across the face -- and if the Yuuzhan Vong were throwing razor bugs at them now, then the intent was to kill rather than capture. Which meant they had to be close to the cloning facilities.
He pushed into the crowd, scattering arsensalts from his belt pouch to free the slaves trapped by blorash jelly, and passed by Tenel Ka, levitating a badly injured Jovan. Even a quick Force-brush in passing made him feel sick: he could feel Jovan's life fading out of the Force rapidly.
"Jaina's in trouble," Tenel Ka yelled. "They're trying to --"
No. They'd come this far without losing anyone else since Ulaha, only to lose two more because he'd failed to anticipate that Nom Anor would use the slave city to ambush them. He was not going to lose another member of his team because of his own mistakes, and especially not his sister. Lowie and Zekk were trying to fight through the crowd, and Alema was trying to hold off more attackers, and by the time Anakin spotted Jaina she was fending off two attackers with her lightsaber, despite the copious amounts of blood coming from an unseen head wound and the blorash jelly binding her to the side of a building. Figures, he thought, gathering the Force to him for a somersault. Good old Jaina, of course.
Mid-leap he sensed more than saw the two warriors hurling amphistaffs at him and swept his lightsaber out to knock one away --
And felt fire erupt in his gut, heard himself howl in agony, when the reptile head of the second amphistaff buried itself in his abdomen, twisted in the wound with the continued forward momentum of his leap, and drove itself in further with the impact of his landing.
"Anakin!" That was Jaina's voice, and he Force-guided a handful of arsensalts in its direction to free her even when all he wanted to do was collapse from the pain, especially when he ripped the amphistaff back out. He wasn't going to do that, though, not when Jaina was in trouble and he could just draw on the Force to keep him from collapsing. It was just one stupid amphistaff wound; it wasn't going to kill him.
"By the Sith, Anakin!" Jaina yelled, grabbing him by the arm as soon as they'd finished off her attackers. "Why'd you do something like that?"
"Like what?" Anakin asked, trying to sound casual, but he knew as well as she did that he'd lost his head. He'd broken his promise to the other Jaina, and that was worse than the physical pain. "We lost two, and -- I wasn't going to -- " The pain made talking more of a struggle than he'd realized. "You were in trouble, he finished weakly."
"And now you are." Of course she was lecturing him, even with blood still pouring into her eyes. "Anakin, this was really . . . Are you ever going to learn?"
The answer was no, and he couldn't say that. He couldn't get over the awareness that he'd really let her down. "See, I was right. I told Grandfather you'd yell at me at least a couple of times," he managed instead with a weak chuckle.
When they made it back to the rest of the team, Tahiri was at his side like a shot, and Zekk followed suit with Jaina. Anakin indicated Alema, still picking off Yuuzhan Vong with the longblaster, and said, "Call her off. Let's go before someone else gets killed."
"Anakin, how bad is it?" demanded Tahiri, ignoring the order in favor of trying to pull his arm away and get a look at his injury. "Let me --"
See how bad it was? She'd been so brave through all of this, cracking jokes and trying to keep spirits up, and he didn't want to be the one to put fear in her eyes now." Tahiri, stop," he said, gently nudging her hand away. "It's just a little cut."
[OOC: NFB/NFI/OOC-okay. One more post to come.
Content warning: swarms of bitey insects, blood, violence, NPC death, and serious injuries.
. . . I am just now realizing that I have now played at least 3 characters who have canonically dismissed mortal wounds with, basically, "Look, it's not that bad, it doesn't hurt!" As character types go, this is not something I intentionally aspired to, I swear.]
He was probably overcompensating quite a bit.
"The Force has favored us today," Jovan Drark commed back to the rest of the team from the next chalk dune ahead where he and Lowbacca were inspecting an old Imperial AT-AT the voxyn trainers had added to the course -- part of their attempt to get the voxyn accustomed to the 'lifeless abhorrences' of machinery, according to Lomi. None of the captured vehicles in the course had the power capacity for them to make an escape, and there wasn't time for them to but if they could get a break from walking for a while, especially in this energy-sapping terrain, it would be a bonus. "The batteries still have a charge, but the power feeds have been isolated by mineral secretions."
"Secretions?" asked Jaina, sounding apprehensive.
"It appears to be an insect nest. Lowbacca is cleaning it off now."
Jacen chimed in, "What kind of insects? If they look like worms with legs --
"It's no shockapede hive," Jovan replied. "These are little flitnats, completely harmless."
That didn't seem terribly reassuring.
"They are an unnecessary risk," Lomi said when Anakin, surmising that her experience with the training course would give her a better idea, asked. "We have almost reached our destination. The main cloning lab is only a kilometer beyond that wall."
"About time," Zekk said dryly as he came to join them. "I was beginning to think you were stalling." Jacen had dropped the meld because with all the resentment and distrust in the group it was useless now, but no one needed it to tell that Zekk hadn't gotten any more tolerant of their Dark Jedi companions when he'd been making bitter comments at every opportunity.
"You will understand if I prefer alive over fast, Zekk," Lomi retorted. "Our fates will be the same in this."
"She's kept us out of trouble so far," Anakin interjected, more to keep Zekk from further agitating the team's fraying morale than to defend Lomi. He flashed a grin and tried to imitate his father, declaring, "Let's make the safe play and avoid the walker. We'll be done and on our way home in two hours anyway, four at the most."
He saw Jaina frown at that, and noticed her sticking by his side as they started hiking toward Jovan and Lowie and the AT-AT. "What are you doing out of line?" he asked, then in a much quieter voice that wouldn't carry to the others: "Is there something you want to say?"
She gave him a smile and put a hand on his arm. "There is. You're doing a good job, Anakin. If we're going to get this done, it's because of your confidence and determination."
No matter which version of Jaina said it to him, no matter how old he got, he was never going to get over how much of a pleasant and gratifying surprise it was to get a compliment from his sister. "Thanks, Jaina," he said, grinning and feeling much more relieved at least for the moment. "I know."
"Sure you do." Jaina said, hit him in the shoulder so hard he lost his footing briefly, and smirked as she informed him, "Just remember to keep your guard up."
Anakin mock-glared at her, happy to fall back on the familiar sibling banter and stop thinking about how, according to Ulaha's calculations, their probability of success dropped by 2 percent per hour . . . or how many hours they'd be behind schedule according to 2-1S if the droid was still around.
Too bad the moment was short-lived -- the flitnats were, indeed, a trap, and soon Krasov had to retrieve an unconscious Jovan while Anakin stood atop the AT-AT arguing with Jaina and Zekk about whether to call a retreat while they cut through the escape hatch bolts to get to Lowbacca, who had insisted on trying to salvage spare breath masks from the cockpit.
They were still working -- and Lowie had finally passed out from the flitnat venom -- when Ganner commed, "Anakin, there's a dust cloud coming up the canyon toward us, and I don't think it's a New Republic landspeeder. How about those orders?"
Sithspawn, it just kept getting worse. "In a second!" Anakin commed back in a snappish tone he immediately regretted. He knelt beside the hatch and ignored the few insects that flew up into his face and started biting when Jaina levitated the hatch door out of the way, in favor of reaching inside with the Force to get Lowbacca out. Even working as quickly as he could it was agonizingly slow: Imperial vehicles were never built to accommodate Wookiees, the flitnats burst out of the hatchway in swarms every time they had a chance, and their venom worked fast. He was dizzy and nauseated by the time they pulled Lowie out, though Jaina was in worse shape; Zekk had to help her jump down from the AT-AT, and when she landed she stayed down, trying not to throw up.
"What do you think now, young Solo?" Lomi asked, condescendingly. "Still determined to fight?"
He took a precious second -- every second was impossibly valuable now but he had promised not to act rashly -- to think about it. As Jedi, they had a certain value as living sacrifices to the Yuuzhan Vong, which had to be why Nom Anor was hunting them, but Lomi had also pointed out earlier that it would only go so far to protect them. "Blaster bolts!" he finally half-snarled out of frustration. As he helped Jaina back to her feet, he spoke into his comlink. "Ganner, let's go. Retreat."
Lando had been right. Neither option felt like the right one.
***
The next attempt to get to the cloning facility failed. So did the next, and the one after that, until they'd gone through every single simulated environment in the training course. The course was maintained by the vast number of slaves the Yuuzhan Vong had acquired through their conquests of various worlds, and having exhausted all their other possible routes the strike team was pushing through the slave city itself, in hopes of reaching the cloning facility through the voxyn warren itself. Through all of it they had to fight off repeated voxyn attacks; their stock of thermal detonators was running low, as were the power packs of their blasters. They were getting good at killing the things, and they'd reinstated the battle-meld out of necessity, but it was nothing but a staticky, chaotic mess of anger and negativity, with little useful purpose but to confirm they were all still alive.
Alive, and hunted, and getting rapidly worn down by the constant fighting and the knowledge that Nom Anor was always a step ahead of them with another trap. With the voxyn attacks coming in increasing frequency in the slave city, and the resultant collateral damage, undoubtedly their guilt at putting so many of the slaves in harm's way was another element of Nom Anor's plan.
As for their plan, the only thing it boiled down to any more was what Anakin told a disbelieving Lomi: "Kill the queen and destroy the lab, then hope we can steal a ship in the confusion."
There was so much doubt in the battle-meld, and so very much had gone wrong by now, that Anakin wasn't even trying to project easy confidence any more. He didn't think he had it in him, anyway. If not for Tahiri's stubborn confidence in him and the way she loyally leaped to his defense any time one of the others (though mostly Lomi and Welk) leveled criticism at him, he was almost convinced he would have given in to despair a long time ago. If not for that he'd almost certainly give in to it right now: with every kilometer they walked through the city, they were surrounded by slaves begging desperately for help, and Anakin could do nothing but apologize and tell them there was nothing he could do.
There wasn't a worse feeling in the multiverse as far as he was concerned.
"Stay sharp, everyone," Anakin ordered the group as they followed a set of voxyn tracks and descended down a sloping alley walled on either side with buildings so high it might as well have been a canyon. He'd almost have been relieved that the slaves had stopped to watch them from the mouth of the alley, seemingly unwilling to follow them down this route, except for how that was clearly a danger sign. "We need to make this work. If you can do something to keep the voxyn quiet, now is the time," he added to Jacen.
"I'll do my best, Anakin, but these aren't normal animals," Jacen replied, worn down enough that he didn't bother to hide his apprehension. "I can't just reach --"
Whatever his brother had to say, Anakin didn't hear it: he felt several Yuuzhan Vong presences through the lambent in his lightsaber, and drew his blaster as he whirled to see several human slaves, no, Yuuzhan Vong in ooglith masquers, pushing through the crowd toward them. One threw a small capsule onto the ground near Jacen's feet.
"Blorash jelly!" Anakin spat out a string of creative Huttese curses he'd picked up from his grandfather, sent a blaster bolt through the attacker's throat, and reached out in the Force to levitate Jacen off the ground and set him down somewhere clear of the jelly. He could hear the snap-hiss of lightsabers igniting around him, but when the impact of a blow to the head that threatened unconsciousness resonated through the meld he didn't need to hear Jacen's shout to know it was Jaina.
The crowd was in chaos now, too, threatening to stampede in their confusion and shock at the attack that had come from their midst; between them and the blorash jelly that their attackers kept flinging at the ground, the strike team was in no position to escape. Eryl was the first to succumb, taking a razor bug across the face -- and if the Yuuzhan Vong were throwing razor bugs at them now, then the intent was to kill rather than capture. Which meant they had to be close to the cloning facilities.
He pushed into the crowd, scattering arsensalts from his belt pouch to free the slaves trapped by blorash jelly, and passed by Tenel Ka, levitating a badly injured Jovan. Even a quick Force-brush in passing made him feel sick: he could feel Jovan's life fading out of the Force rapidly.
"Jaina's in trouble," Tenel Ka yelled. "They're trying to --"
No. They'd come this far without losing anyone else since Ulaha, only to lose two more because he'd failed to anticipate that Nom Anor would use the slave city to ambush them. He was not going to lose another member of his team because of his own mistakes, and especially not his sister. Lowie and Zekk were trying to fight through the crowd, and Alema was trying to hold off more attackers, and by the time Anakin spotted Jaina she was fending off two attackers with her lightsaber, despite the copious amounts of blood coming from an unseen head wound and the blorash jelly binding her to the side of a building. Figures, he thought, gathering the Force to him for a somersault. Good old Jaina, of course.
Mid-leap he sensed more than saw the two warriors hurling amphistaffs at him and swept his lightsaber out to knock one away --
And felt fire erupt in his gut, heard himself howl in agony, when the reptile head of the second amphistaff buried itself in his abdomen, twisted in the wound with the continued forward momentum of his leap, and drove itself in further with the impact of his landing.
"Anakin!" That was Jaina's voice, and he Force-guided a handful of arsensalts in its direction to free her even when all he wanted to do was collapse from the pain, especially when he ripped the amphistaff back out. He wasn't going to do that, though, not when Jaina was in trouble and he could just draw on the Force to keep him from collapsing. It was just one stupid amphistaff wound; it wasn't going to kill him.
"By the Sith, Anakin!" Jaina yelled, grabbing him by the arm as soon as they'd finished off her attackers. "Why'd you do something like that?"
"Like what?" Anakin asked, trying to sound casual, but he knew as well as she did that he'd lost his head. He'd broken his promise to the other Jaina, and that was worse than the physical pain. "We lost two, and -- I wasn't going to -- " The pain made talking more of a struggle than he'd realized. "You were in trouble, he finished weakly."
"And now you are." Of course she was lecturing him, even with blood still pouring into her eyes. "Anakin, this was really . . . Are you ever going to learn?"
The answer was no, and he couldn't say that. He couldn't get over the awareness that he'd really let her down. "See, I was right. I told Grandfather you'd yell at me at least a couple of times," he managed instead with a weak chuckle.
When they made it back to the rest of the team, Tahiri was at his side like a shot, and Zekk followed suit with Jaina. Anakin indicated Alema, still picking off Yuuzhan Vong with the longblaster, and said, "Call her off. Let's go before someone else gets killed."
"Anakin, how bad is it?" demanded Tahiri, ignoring the order in favor of trying to pull his arm away and get a look at his injury. "Let me --"
See how bad it was? She'd been so brave through all of this, cracking jokes and trying to keep spirits up, and he didn't want to be the one to put fear in her eyes now." Tahiri, stop," he said, gently nudging her hand away. "It's just a little cut."
[OOC: NFB/NFI/OOC-okay. One more post to come.
Content warning: swarms of bitey insects, blood, violence, NPC death, and serious injuries.
. . . I am just now realizing that I have now played at least 3 characters who have canonically dismissed mortal wounds with, basically, "Look, it's not that bad, it doesn't hurt!" As character types go, this is not something I intentionally aspired to, I swear.]
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Date: 2013-07-11 01:18 pm (UTC)