FicWad

The talks go on far longer than Chas Uliar would have expected them to, and he has plenty of time to get rid of his swoop and find a spot in the corridor outside D-1's forward hangar where he can wait. This pleases him, at first, for he assumes that this means the Chiss Commander may have a way to force even Jorus C'baoth to bend his stiff neck and listen, but both the pleasure and the hope that this thought has brought with it have faded by the time he's been waiting for almost twenty minutes. By then, his internal tension has had a chance to start fade away and then start ramping back up again. Scowling, he checks the time yet again. What the brix is keeping Pressor and the others? Where the blazes could they be? He could just call Pressor and ask, of course. But comlink conversations among different Dreadnaughts run through a central switching node. If C'baoth has taken over the comm system like he's taken over everything else, that would show that Uliar isn't on D-4 like he's supposed to be and tip C'baoth off to the fact that something's up. Finally, just about when he's given up on trying to come up with another way to find Pressor, he sees them coming down the corridor towards him: the familiar dark-haired form of Dillian Pressor, striding along next to his red-headed wife, Athyn, with Jobe Keely, Brace Tarkosa, Sivv Rhishian, Zhandral Mosh, and Troileisia Grassling all in tow. It may not be the full committee (which consists of ten), but it's more than half of it, even without Uliar, which means there's enough of them present for a majority vote, if necessary. He has a feeling that this will probably end up being a good thing, and their resourcefulness in thinking of that instantly mollifies most of his anger over the time it's taken them to get here.

"Sorry for the delay," Pressor explains, voice pitched low, as they meet up in the corridor outside the door where the meeting is still apparently going on. "I thought we'd get here faster and be less likely to attract attention if I loaded everybody aboard one of D-4's shuttles and had Mosh fly us across instead of dragging everyone in along the corridors and turbolifts like an impromptu parade. We waited down in the hangar where the Chiss Commander's shuttle docked, but after awhile when nobody showed we started worrying that we might've missed him somehow. What's going on? It seems like we should've at least heard something, by now. Surely a silence like this can't be a good thing . . . " Dillian's voice trails off as he frowns anxiously, blue eyes peering nervously over Uliar's shoulder.

"They're still in there," Uliar shrugs back helplessly, jerking a thumb at the closed door behind him. "I tell you, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to worry that - "

He doesn't get the chance to finish his sentence, though. A desperate scream of denial - unmistakably the voice of Jedi Knight Lorana Jinzler, who has been the kindest and most helpful of all the Jedi still aboard Outbound Flight - cuts him off abruptly, only somewhat muffled by the closed door. Uliar and the others just stand there for a moment, stunned. If something is going on in there that's bad enough to make a Jedi scream -

"Ah, frell!" Dillian Pressor curses, voice low and vicious. "I knew I had a bad feeling about this!"

Then, before Uliar or anyone else can even begin to say or do anything to stop him, Pressor reaches out, snags the blaster from out of the security rig on Sivv's belt, palms open the door, and charges headlong into the room.

***

Turning at the sound of the conference room door sliding open, hope rising in her throat, Lorana has enough time to register the sight of Dillian Pressor's deathly white and grimly determined face before her gaze is caught by the sight of a security blaster in his right hand, and then several things happen in quick succession. In a blur of motion, the chair that Jorus C'baoth had been sitting in less than a minute earlier leaps upward from the floor into the path of a rapid succession of half a dozen blaster shot, its arms, back, and seat shattering into a shower of fiery sparks as the shots expend their energy there. A curt gesture from C'baoth's right hand, and the small blaster is ripped violently away from Pressor's grip, even as his finger is moving to depress the trigger a seventh time, nearly ripping off that finger with it.

And then C'baoth goes absolutely berserk.

He screams, a horrible shriek of rage and betrayal that is so terrible and so full of power that it seems as if it could and will set the very air on fire. Lorana jerks back reflexively as the piercing sound cuts through her ears -

- and an instant later nearly topples back into the floor as the Force equivalent of the scream slams into her.

It is like nothing Lorana has ever experienced before. The utter, animal ferocity - the utter loss of every shred of self-control - is so absolute and unreasoning that it's like standing alone in the middle of a sudden violent storm. Wave after wave of fury sweeps over her, ripping through her shields and battering her mind with a numbing combination of hatred and pain. Dimly, she senses Mitth'raw'nuruodo slump forward, released from C'baoth's murderous hold. One of his hands instantly reaches out to grasp at her arm as if to help steady her, even though the Chiss Commander should, by all rights, be at least half unconscious from the attack against him. She wobbles like a drunkard and just barely manages not to fall, using the surprisingly strong hand upon her arm as a focus to help keep her anchored in place. Helpless, unable to do anything to help Pressor, she sees him staggering under the assault, hearing him howling in pain of his own as he claps his hands futilely over his ears -

- and then, from C'baoth's outstretched hands, a blaze of blue-black lightning erupts in a volley of hatred and fury. Lorana winces in sympathetic pain as Pressor is thrown backwards through the still open door and across the corridor into the far wall. Through the crackle of the lightning, she hears Chas Uliar shout a denial and Athyn Pressor scream her husband's name as she leaps for him, jumping as if she means to put herself between Dillian and C'baoth and block the dark lightning pouring from C'baoth's raised hands bodily -

- but before she can do so, Lorana, unable to think of anything else to do to help, reaches out through the Force to trigger the door's mechanism, sliding it shut and therefore cutting the flow of dark energy off mid-salvo. C'baoth immediately screams incoherently in rage, swinging back around towards her, his hands still streaming jagged flows of dark lightning -

- and Lorana sees, again, the image of Obi-Wan and Anakin, tumbled together on the floor at the end of a sparring match, lying cheek to cheek, Obi-Wan thumbing off his lightsaber even as Anakin lets the deactivated hilt of his own lightsaber drop carelessly to the floor so that he can reach up to brush his Master's mussed hair back out of his face. Taking a deep breath, she whispers, "Oh, Force, Obi-Wan, please, let this be right," and then launches herself across the room, lightsaber in hand, igniting the green blade and raising it in one smooth motion even as she throws herself swiftly forward, catching the unnatural lightning and bending it back towards the figure of the man who had once been her Master, even though the shock of its impact upon her blade jars her so badly that she staggers, shoved back half a pace by the strength of the blow.

C'baoth cries out in furious surprise as his own dark power is thrown back at him and immediately lowers his hands, cutting off the barrage of unnatural lightning. "So you, too, would turn against me? You, too, are a part of this conspiracy?" he then demands, voice rising from an angry bellow to a berserker's shriek. Drawing himself up to his full height, he calls out, cackling in such a manner that she knows, instantly, that his mind has broken in such a manner that it can never be mended again, "Come, then, Lorana Jinzler! Come, and meet the doom that awaits all such traitors!" Then, as he throws his arms wide in invitation, she acts.

Boldly taking the leap that will close the space between them, she throws herself at him bodily, lightsaber lowered but angled up like a javelin. His maddened eyes seem to realize, at the last possible instant, that she is not actually obeying his command, and he begins to lower his arms and step away, but by then she is already there, lightsaber driving forward in a vicious arc, spearing through him all the way up to the hilt, and then they are falling, her momentum and the shock of being spitted like a kabob for roasting serving to topple them to the ground in a parody of the tumble that she'd seen Anakin and Obi-Wan take.

She has enough time to register the sound of Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo hoarse and yet still oddly musical voice, shouting out a constant stream of alien words that sound, to her, like a cross between furious and amazed invective and the issuing of an actual sequence of orders to some other party, and then the world erupts around her in a blaze of blue fire and pain.

And then, for a very long time, Lorana Jinzler knows nothing more.

***

The instinct to protect and to posses are both undeniably all-consuming and surprisingly unexpected.

Lorana Jinzler is, without question, the most fascinating individual Mitth'raw'nuruodo has come across since his surprising first encounter with Jorj Car'das. There are no words to encompass her magnificence. She blazes like a creature of fire, somehow given flesh. The feeling of familiarity, of almost homecoming, is like nothing he has ever experienced before. It is . . . most deliciously intriguing. Even as she is. He finds his gaze drawn to her, again and again, his interest so thoroughly caught that the knowledge that Jorus C'baoth is also in the room and as much a threat as he has been warned of, if not more, keeps trying to slide from his awareness. He finds that his eyes seek hers out again and again, entirely of their own accord, even when C'baoth is speaking and he should be paying greater heed to the man, at least, if not his words. The man is quite obviously unstable and even more dangerous, if only because of his madness. And he is the one person present who has the power, still, to ruin the plans Mitth'raw'nuruodo has for Outbound Flight/. He should be minding C'baoth, not gazing at Lorana Jinzler like one who has never seen an attractive woman before! It would be deceptively easy to envision Lorana as a Chiss, though, if not for those wonderfully mesmerizing pale eyes. If these Jedi were at all familiar with him (not his people. /Him/, specifically), Mitth'raw'nuruodo would suspect that they had introduced Lorana Jinzler into these talks specifically as a trap, for him. It would not have required much effort to learn his weaknesses. Nearly any of the peoples of the Chiss Ascendancy could have listed them, easily enough. His kind is very well-documented among the Chiss, if not nearly so well-known. They've had a name for his kind since before their written records became consistent enough to tell the history of their people. /Visnea/-born (/visnea being equal, from what he can tell, to some sixteen hundred years, as they measure time in this so-called Galactic Republic). They are not quite so rare as that (century-born might be closer to the truth), but the trappings of ancient legends are difficult to dispel, with the gods-touched.

Gods-touched! The Chiss outgrew their need for the endlessly petty and poorly disguised anthropomorphized beings known as deities several thousand years ago (in the wake of that last terrible civil war about which so little is definitively known aside from how near they came to absolute annihilation), abandoning the limitations and breaking the chains of organized religion for the freedom and the limitless potential of individual worship, the society as a whole choosing to reject the empty trappings of religion and to embrace both morality and spirituality in its stead. Yet, somehow it seems that they cannot escape the lingering power of the old gods. The irony is almost amusing, in an odd way. But then, Mitth'raw'nuruodo does have an odd sense of humor, what with being gods-touched and all. It is always this way with visnea/-born. Oddity. Difference. A natural embodiment of all that is not ordinary coupled to a willing embracement of strangeness tends to yield uniqueness and a love of both newness and knowledge. Limitless curiosity and distinction as well as distinctiveness, both in thoughts and actions, are the hallmarks of the gods-touched. Their love of originality and dissimilarity always leads to a great need for understanding (facts as well as knowledge and practical experience) and a hunger for originality and change. Those who are visnea/-born know no greater excitement than novelty, nothing more maddening than a mystery yet unexplored. Those things that are genuinely different or new, those things that seem to break all the natural rules of the universe, those are all the things that a gods-touched Chiss will desire, above all else.

For one such as Mitth'raw'nuruodo, to discover a true novelty is to fall into an ecstacy of helpless fascination. If the Jedi or this Galactic Republic truly wished his harm, they could not devise a better trap for him than Lorana Jinzler. He would suspect duplicity, given how closely she follows on the heels of as great a curiosity and challenge as Jorj Car'das, were it not for the fact that Car'das' very nature would forbid such a thing. And as for Lorana . . . well, he cannot be sure, of course, but he rather suspects that, unless the plan were hers and she truly saw a need for it, she would die before playing the bait for such a trap. Of course, many would doubtlessly be puzzled by his fascination with her. Mitth'raw'nuruodo has, since coming into contact with the K'rell'n traders, conducted careful research into the specifics of both human physiology and appearance, including that which is apparently widely accepted in the so-called Galactic Republic as the ideals of human beauty. So he is aware that most humans would not consider Lorana Jinzler a particularly beautiful woman. If she were not a Jedi and if she did not have that sense of charisma and power to her, coupled with an obviously greater than normal intelligence, Lorana likely would have been accounted ordinary by her own people. That does not change the truth of her, though. Mitth'raw'nuruodo is equally aware of and equally unmoved by the fact that even the most open-minded among his people - who tend to be put off by beings of similar appearance who lack the Chiss coloration - likely would not appreciate her as she deserves.

There are sentient beings other than Chiss within the Chiss Ascendancy, of course, but it has taken hundreds of years, in each instance, for the Chiss to truly become entirely accustomed to those species. There are more than a few among the Chiss who still are not overly easy with those few member species of the Chiss Ascendancy who imperfectly resemble the Chiss. And while there are still occasional rare instances of live births among the Chiss who, though some genetic flaw or other (usually serious) medical condition, fail to exhibit or to fully conform to the full range of Chiss coloration, such flaws can and almost always are (with a few exceedingly rare exceptions) immediately addressed and successfully resolved by medical professionals. There is a fairly common Chiss genotype that yields red-black instead of blue-black hair, but most red Chiss (including Admiral Ar'alani) choose to dye their hair while in public, to avoid attracting unnecessary notice. (They have a lingering mythology all their own, those red Chiss. Given the weight of the folklore surrounding the gods-touched, Mitth'raw'nuruodo cannot blame them for hiding their difference, rather than willingly shouldering such an unnecessary burden.) The initial less than favorable responses of such normally open-minded individuals as his own brother and Admiral Ar'alani to the K'rell'n traders, though disappointing, are not entirely unexpected. And those two do seem to be adjusting fairly well to the strangeness of beings who look so much like themselves while still being so very obviously alien. Mitth'raw'nuruodo is quite certain, though, that even the most accepting and open-minded among his people would take exception to the tone of his thoughts, regarding Lorana Jinzler, who is, quite simply unutterably exquisite in his sight. It is almost enough to worry him.

Almost.

She has no true notion of her own appeal, though. The realization is both staggering and undeniable. The young Jedi Knight grows discomfited beneath his fascinated gaze, her face and throat gradually coloring in a manner he has come to recognize (mostly from observing Car'das) signifies embarrassment. There is no awareness of her own charm in the way she holds herself or puts herself forward. She does not hesitate to speak her mind, even in the face of her superior's obvious ire, but there's not even a hint of an attempt to use her gender as a tool of persuasion. The way she holds herself reminds Mitth'raw'nuruodo of Ar'alani and others like her, but even such dedicated Chiss warriors do not forget either their beauty or their potential appeal to others. After all, attraction, like all other emotions, is a potentially deadly weapon in a warrior's arsenal. Lorana, though, seems utterly unaware of any possibility of personal appeal tied to her physical appearance. It is entirely extraordinary. A true mystery. Her layered robes cannot hide the long clean lines of what is clearly both a warrior's physique and a woman's form, and her appeal is so natural, her charisma so palpable, her attractiveness so all-pervasive, that any man or woman who values the spark of fire over the sullenness of submission, who is drawn to fierceness and to spirit rather than languid delicacy or empty artifice, whose desire is aroused by intelligence and independence, would surely find her maddening. It is not difficult at all for him to imagine her in the colors of his own people (resonant blue, agonizingly beautiful, shivering to black up at the outermost edges), her lightly tanned skin a deep, rich blue and her already dark hair blue-black as his own. If not for those penetrating light eyes (a gray so pale that it is almost silver, from some angles), ghostly pale and full of a grace that pierces him and makes him shiver all the way down to the very core of his soul, she might be Chiss, embodying all that is Chiss in a way that many of their blood actually fail to do, some of them spectacularly so. There is undeniable power in her, and intelligence, and beauty, and she is entirely mesmerizing. Her ignorance of her own appeal only makes her that much more intoxicating.

The more she speaks, the more he wishes to never cease listening to her.

Such fascination has its price. It always does. Mitth'raw'nuruodo ends up misjudging C'baoth because he is no longer paying a proper amount of attention to the madman. He does not realize that Lorana has fallen silent because C'baoth is using this Force to choke her into silence until after his proclamation, regarding C'baoth's true nature, has stunned the man into releasing her - leaving her gasping like the victim of an attempted strangling - and into attacking him. The sensation of being thrown back in his chair, pinned in place, and choked by something he cannot touch to ward off or otherwise act against in order to save himself is novel enough that he knows it will stay with him. It is the involuntary cry of despair loosed by Lorana, though, as she reaches out to try to save him, that will warm his soul and kindle his strength against any dark dreams or creeping fears that might seek to arise on account of the first true proof offered up to him of this mysterious Force. And the touch of her slender hands, fingers sliding helplessly along his collar and throat, brands him. The moment her skin makes contact with him, an inexplicable blazing heat shoots into and then swiftly spreads all throughout his body. It is like being seared with hot embers and set on fire. Fire that burns but does not pain. Or rather, fire that wracks his body with exquisite agony. The sensation is both far too real and wholly impossible, and the entire experience is too bizarre, too ineffable, to put into words, even when he tries to explain it to himself, afterwards. In the instants that the contact and the sensations last, he is so stunned that he could no more have analyzed it all than he could have plunged his hands willingly within the heart of a blazing fire and then held them there to deliberately grasp hold of and count handfuls of live coals. Blissful warmth, an ecstacy of heat . . . he imagines it must be like what moths must feel, in those last few delirious instants before the dancing flames consumes them. It is . . . intoxicating. Energizing. Maddening. Dangerous. (Even the memory of that bizarre heat, later, will be enough to awaken a strange longing in him, almost like hunger.)

When C'baoth loses his hold over him, the first thing Mitth'raw'nuruodo does is to reach out and grasp Lorana's left arm.

The outpouring of C'baoth's insane fury feels like a frigid wind blowing across his soul. The longer the madman rages, the more bands of ice seem to latch around Mitth'raw'nuruodo's chest, choking off his breath once again and making black dots swarm across his field of vision, bleeding into one another like spreading puddles of old-fashioned ink. An abyss seems to yawn beneath him, threatening to swallow him whole into its vast nothingness, and only the scalding heat of Lorana's arm beneath his right hand keeps him anchored, saving him from a helpless tumble down into that black and frigid void. When she reaches to draw her lightsaber and flings herself at Jorus C'baoth, his heart feels as if it will burst from the strain of not falling. Everything within him screams a desperate negative, and yet he cannot draw enough breath to give it voice. Somehow, though, he fights off the ice that seems to have flooded his veins and clogged the fist of his heart. He screams again, silently, an agonized howling of his inmost soul - resistance, fear, determination, raw stubbornness utterly set against the notion of failure, absolute refusal to fall, complete and utter negation of the possibility of losing Lorana now, when he's only just found her - and then, digging down deep, finds the strength to fling himself forward, after her, the act of moving dislodging the ice in his throat and giving his defiance furious voice. One motion, to push himself forward. Another, to grab her. And then a third, to pivot to the side and fall away, allowing his body to cover her much slighter form, as C'baoth's form explodes like a punctured balloon, a whirlwind of cold and wholly destructive power exploding outward in every direction, consuming the former Jedi Master's flesh even as it bursts into existence, and he is certain that this is the end, then, no hope for it. He might succeed in saving Lorana, but he will fail, after all, fall without finishing the plans he has set into motion -

- only, it does not happen. It will be a long time, though, before Mitth'raw'nuruodo will ever be certain, afterwards, just what it is that does happen next. There is simply . . . a sudden awareness of something outside himself. Beyond himself, beyond this room, this ship, beyond all the parts of the known universe that the Chiss have given name to. A source of power outside himself, like but unlike the strength within his own flesh, the true source of his strangeness, his difference, that which makes him /visnea/-born, gods-touched and weird even among a people as unusual as the Chiss. He feels it, a source of undreamed of energy, flowing all around him, and instinctively grasps after it, as involuntarily as reaching for a weapon when threatened or a shield when endangered by fire. He focuses all of his considerable will upon it, that strange source of power, warm and bright, somehow like and yet unlike the strange heat in Lorana's touch, and he reaches for it, desperate to lay claim to it before it's too late, before the explosion of cold, vile power from C'baoth can reach them. He stretches out after it, all his will driving that action, and he touches it, pulls it in to him, and spins it out, like a cocoon, until it completely covers him and Lorana both, working feverishly, pulling the flows of power tight -

- and then the whole world explodes into blinding, deafening, smothering whiteness.

But not pain.

And not coldness.

Could it be . . . perhaps . . . that they have survived?

The vaguely ticklish sensation of his face being buried in the depths of a thick mass of silken hair is what finally convinces him. That, and the sweetly fragrant scent - alien perfume, something at once floral and spicy, intensely sweet despite its strangeness - that makes him want to stay exactly where he is, for several long moments, before enough awareness of the situation trickles back in past that blanketing whiteness to make him aware enough of the particulars of his current position to realize where he is. Lorana's body is both distressingly limp and distractingly soft beneath him, and his body feels flooded with heat, much less strange than before but no less exquisitely painful. He aches to touch with purpose, deliberately, but fears what might happen, if he should reveal the truth of his desire. Only . . . does he truly desire her? Is that what this is, this aching heat that urges him to act, driving him to behave in ways and to accomplish things that are so far beyond the previous limits of his understanding? Not only attraction born of fascination, mesmerism, enchantment, maddening intoxication, the normal bewitchment that always comes with each new mystery, every new revelation, but simply just actual physical desire? Could it be possible that . . . this . . . is merely physical? Merely? Merely! Oh, gods-touched, indeed! And his brother will kill him, and rightfully so, for such thoughts. Dishonorable! Unasked for attention, a potential ally, unable to refuse or even protest any advances, liberties, ktah! What is the matter with him?! Up, up, immediately, up! He must get off of her, before any greater insult can be added to what he has already given! And hope for a chance to tender formal apologies later. There is noise - noise from movement - somewhere nearby. Not C'baoth, surely, after all of that. But another human male did try to intercede, when C'baoth snapped. Also, C'baoth spoke of other Jedi, somehow listening in on their supposedly private meeting. The noise might be help coming. Or it might be a pack of angry, confused, and now leaderless Jedi. Jedi with questions that Lorana, from the laxness of her body, will not be in any condition to answer any time soon.

No/. Don't think of that. /Do not/. Dishonor leaves a mark on the soul that is never easily erased. Consider anything but Lorana Jinzler, for the moment. The whiteness remains like a blanket draped across his face. He needs to open his eyes. If someone is coming, he needs to be able to see them. Blink. Or pry the lids back manually, if necessary. But the needs to see must be met, somehow. However might prove to be necessary. /Whatever is necessary.

Reminded of his duty, he climbs, with grim determination, back to his feet, adjusting his stance so that it is wider than normal to give him more stability when his treacherous body tries to sway. A sequence of several dozen rapid blinks finally convinces him that he is not actually unable to see but has simply been temporarily flash-blinded, and a swift, cursory examination of himself reveals that he does not appear to be hurt, beyond what the painfully tight Force-hold and the attempted Force-choking inflicted on him by C'baoth caused. A glance downward reveals that Lorana is insensate but otherwise apparently unharmed, curled in around herself like a child. Mitth'raw'nuruodo is, to his shame, still looking down at her when the noise comes again, from the corridor just outside of the room. Lorana's deactivated lightsaber is lying practically at his feet, just a little bit off to the left. The decision to reach for it is instantaneous, instinctive. The metal shapes itself to his hand as if the weapon belongs there, his fingers sliding down along the cool length of metal and synthetic grips, adjusting to the oddly weightless feel of the weapon and then thumbing the activator switch as if it were an act as well known as any everyday practice. A stream of bright green light immediately fountains out of the hilt, frozen laserfire, making the purple stone of the activator switch shine weirdly in the eldritch light. Nodding in satisfaction over the weapon, he steps forward, carefully positioning himself over Lorana's prone form, and then raises the ignited lightsaber in high defensive position, familiar from the days when he learned the skill required to wield actual physical blades.

If the Jedi or any other occupant of Outbound Flight chooses to react badly to Jorus C'baoth's death, now, they will not be able to come at either him or Lorana easily, now. The threat of the lightsaber and the delay it inspires should be enough protection. Hopefully. Delays tend to foster thought, after all . . .

Grimly determined, Mitth'raw'nuruodo carefully blanks his mind of expectation and settles in to wait for whatever will happen next.

***

Chas Uliar regains consciousness to find the haunted looking visage of Jedi Master Ma'Ning bending over him, his right hand pressed gently to Uliar's forehead. "Where - what - ?" he stammers, shaking his head groggily.

"Your name is Chas Uliar and you are a Class 4 Reactor Tech aboard a combined ship known as Outbound Flight that has an extragalactic expeditionary mission. The Jedi Master who championed this mission, Jorus C'baoth, turned to the Dark Side and attempted to murder Chiss Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo with the Force. Jedi Knight Jinzler tried, unsuccessfully, to stop him, and her cries alerted you and your friends to the struggle. A crewman by the name of Dillian Pressor sought to intervene and was struck with a blast of Force lightning. Is any of this sounding familiar to you, yet?" the powerfully built balding man asks in return, his dark eyes looking hollowed out and more than a little bit shell-shocked as they hold Uliar's gaze.

"I remember - I remember a scream. And an explosion. Blue fire, blasting open the door and coming out towards me and the others . . . " Uliar lets his voice trial off with a frown. "Wait a minute - where's Knight Jinzler? She was still in there with that crazy old man!" he cries, struggling to stand up in spite of Master Ma'Ning's attempts to keep him down on the floor. He shoves out hard, thrashing wildly, until finally, with an impatient shrug, Ma'Ning lets go of him and rises in one swift, sure motion to his feet, crossing his arms and staring down at Uliar in obvious challenge. With a snarl of effort, Uliar gathers himself up and pushes away from the floor, staggering once and nearly falling before he finally regains his feet. The first thing he sees are the Pressors - Athyn clinging desperately to Dillian while Jedi Master Evrios escorts them to a nearby speeder clearly marked with the sigil of the medcenter - but his eyes quickly search out the shaky but otherwise apparently unhurt figures of the other committee members, mixed in among the other thirteen fully trained Jedi of /Outbound Flight/, all of whom look just as stunned as Ma'Ning. A moment later, the extent of the damage registers on him, and he understands just why everyone looks so shocked and shaken.

There is a gaping hole in the wall of the corridor centered around where the door to the conference room used to be. Most of the entire wall of that room is gone, nothing left of it but a ragged metal rim and a pile of melted slag on the floor that is still faintly glowing. For a moment he can't even begin to imagine how the eight of them managed to escape that holocaust blast as relatively unscathed as they apparently did, but then he sees the burn pattern on the floor, a semi-circle of char where the carpeting in the corridor has been reduced to fine layer of greasy soot, and he understands that they've all simply had the good blind fortune to be outside of the actual blast radius when whatever it was that happened had happened. Now that he thinks about it, he can remember seeing the blue fire coming towards him, and then being hit with what had felt like a solid wall of not heat but rather searing cold, hard enough to have been lifted off of his feet and flung back towards the far wall of the corridor. He, and the others, must have been caught by the shockwave coming off of the explosion, which would explain why he remembers being thrown but isn't hurt aside from the bruises caused from the impact with the wall. Lorana Jinzler, though, was actually in the room with C'baoth when the explosion happened, just like the Chiss Commander. Which is why what he sees within what's left of the conference room stops him in his tracks, reducing him to standing and staring with his mouth hanging open, shocked utterly speechless for perhaps the first time in his life.

The room looks like ground zero for a combination electrical storm and flash fire. There is nothing left in it - not the table, not the chairs, not the carpet, nothing - and what he can see of the far walls, which has been scoured clean of its coverings, all the way down to the durasteel, is criss-crossed by what looks like snaking ropes of electrical burns blasted into the metal like miniature lightning bolts. A thick layer of carbonized soot covers the bare floor and is smeared upon the walls - which, to Uliar at least, look warped, bowing slightly outward as if the same rapidly expanding shockwave that had thrown him and the other committee members off their feet and back across the corridor also slammed into the durasteel walls with enough force to make them buckle - and a rain of extremely fine ash and particulate matter is still sifting its way down to the floor, so that everything he views is through a thin mist of gray haze. But that ashy fog does nothing to disguise what lies at the center of the room, at what should be the heart of the destruction. There, in the middle of the conference chamber, where a table used to be, is a clear space about two meters across. The blast has destroyed everything around the area, but even though the floor within that circle has apparently been scoured clean by the same cold fire, there are two figures within it who appear to be unharmed. At its center is Jedi Knight Jinzler, curled up like a child hiding from a nightmare. And standing over her, with Lorana's own lightsaber held ignited and in an obviously protective manner between her and anyone who might seek to come after her, is the Chiss Commander himself, looking perhaps a little bit worse for wear but otherwise more determined than hurt or even surprised, his features as set and hard as if they've been carved from a block of blue-tinted ice.

The instant Uliar's eyes meet that red gaze, the Commander's glowing red eyes narrow as he raises his chin challengingly and declares, in a voice of adamantine, "I owe this Jedi Bendu my life. Until I am certain that none of you mean any harm to her, /none shall pass/." There follows a stream of what sounds, to Uliar, more like a passage of densely layered orchestral music than the speech of one man alone, though he can tell, from the look in the Commander's eyes, that the blue-skinned near-human is probably saying the same thing again, with perhaps a more elaborate warning, in his own language.

"Great stars!" Uliar breathes, stunned. "What the gfersh happened?"

"We think that one or the other of them instinctively managed to encase both of them in a bubble of the Force, which protected them against the dark energies C'baoth called upon and released in the moment of his death," Master Ma'Ning replies with a shrug. "The Commander, though, is understandably leery of answering any questions, since he knows that we failed to perceive and act upon both Jorus C'baoth's obsession with control and his growing power-lust, and Knight Jinzler isn't exactly in any shape to answer any questions."

"Have you tried explaining to him that you're all a bunch of blind morons who refused to take Bendu Master Kenobi's concerns seriously while he was here and then failed to listen to Lorana, too, when she started to worry and tried to warn you about how the Dark Side was growing around C'baoth? Or would that make you look too bad in front of the foreign military dignitary who almost got murdered by the crazy old hawkbat the lot of you failed to keep in check?" Uliar asks, not bothering to keep the bitterness from his voice.

"We have tried to apologize and to explain that we mean Knight Jinzler no harm," Ma'Ning replies stiffly. "Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo insists that it is by our actions, and not our intentions, that we will be judged."

"Is that all? Spast! Why didn't you say so before?" Before anyone else can stop him (or his nerve can fail him), Uliar strides forward purposefully, crossing the corridor, stepping over the melted remains of what used to be both a door and a wall, and pacing all the way to the edge of the two-meter-wide stretch of clean space in the center of the former conference room. "My name's Chas Uliar. I'm one of the fifty-thousand plus passengers on this ship. My friends and I are here because we wanted a chance to speak to you before you left and we figured that tyrant C'baoth wouldn't allow it. C'baoth was a stubborn, arrogant, power-usurping old busybody who thought it was his right to dictate every aspect of our lives, but you can't judge the Jedi based on his actions alone. Most Jedi are more like Knight Jinzler than C'baoth. And even C'baoth can't have always been all bad, because the son of a Murglak actually taught Lorana how to be a Jedi. C'baoth is just one person - one who took on a position of power that wasn't really his to take. He had most of those," he gestures curtly back over his shoulder with a right thumb, "under his thumb, sure. But then, he had most of us pretty well cowed, too. We could have fought harder to get him removed from power, so this isn't just a failing on the Jedi's part. Sure, the Jedi may not be perfect, but then, neither are we. And I can't believe that they'd do anything to hurt Knight Jinzler. If one of them tried to approach you earlier, I can pretty well guarantee it was because that Jedi was simply worried about her, just like I am. I don't know a whole lot about the Force, but I know enough to hazard a guess that being at the center of a Force-storm like that isn't a good thing, and I'd imagine that being forced to strike your own former Master down would be a pretty darn traumatic event. Plus, the position that she's lying in isn't exactly reassuring. And even though she may not look hurt, physically, she might be wounded pretty badly in places you can't see, because of her connection with the Force. A Jedi could see into those places and make sure she really is okay. I sure couldn't. I don't have any Force-sensitivity to speak of. And while I can't know if you've had any training in the Force, Commander, I can guess, from the way you're reacting, that you would have checked her already if you knew how to. Which means that you're going to have to trust us enough to allow another Jedi to get close enough to examine Lorana properly. I understand that coming over here to speak to us at all was a gesture of good faith, on your part, and I can see," Uliar continues with a grimace, "how that's blown up in your face. Literally, unfortunately. But Commander, you need to remember that, if you're going to judge us on the actions you've seen, then that means that we have the right to judge you and yours based on what you do here and now. And if you won't move from there, then that means you're going to have to abandon your fleet, because I can guarantee that none of us are going to just let you walk out of here with Knight Jinzler thrown over your shoulder like a trophy taken from the spoils of war," he promises, his own face and voice hardening determinedly, unconsciously shifting into a more balanced fighting stance when the Commander's eyes momentarily flick away from Uliar's face and down towards Lorana's prone body. "And that means that if the rest of your fleet decides to take a shot at us when you don't come back, we will fight back and we will win, because your fleet won't have anything that can stand against our Jedi, with you here."

Uliar's desperately blunt and unabashedly rough honesty is, apparently, the correct path to take with the Chiss, because the Commander's eyes narrow thoughtfully in response before, with a nod, he abruptly thumbs off the lightsaber and takes a careful step back away from Lorana Jinzler's prostrate body. "Very well then. For honor's sake, I shall allow Outbound Flight a second chance. I will give you and your Jedi an hour to examine Bendu Knight Lorana Jinzler and to discuss the information that I shared with her and the former Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, which C'baoth assured me the other Jedi were somehow privy to. I will contact Outbound Flight again when that hour has passed, to learn which decision, if any, has been reached. Until then, this discussion is over. I will return to my ship now," the Chiss declares. Then, with careful precision, the Commander circles around Lorana, walks up to Uliar, thrusts the unconscious Jedi's lightsaber unceremoniously into Uliar's hands, and then circles around him as well, walking to the blasted hole where the door used to be and striding through it out into the corridor, where he immediately calmly but briskly walks off in the direction of the hanger where his shuttle is still docked.

Uliar is so stunned that it's all he can do to hold on to the lightsaber without dropping it. By the time he manages to turn around to track the Commander's progress, the Chiss is already turning a corner in the hallway and passing out of sight. With a sigh, he announces to the room at large, "Well, that went well, I suppose. We have an hour, anyway." Shrugging pragmatically, he then calls out, "Master Evrios, you should probably come and get Knight Jinzler. And somebody should take this lightsaber before I inadvertently turn it on and then accidentally poke out my eye or kill somebody. And while I'd dearly appreciate it if someone would share this information the Commander told C'baoth, I think we should take this discussion up to where Captain Pakmillu is. This is his ship, after all. We've been given a second chance, here, and, if we don't want to blow it, we all need to work together so we can prove ourselves worthy of it. So come on, people, hop to! We only have an hour! We can't afford to waste any time. Something tells me the Commander isn't going to look favorably on any requests for extensions," he adds grimly as he makes his way back out into the corridor, hands outstretched to thrust Lorana's lightsaber out to Jedi Master Ma'Ning as he goes by, heading quickly for the nearest turbolift.

Thankfully, the others fall in behind him without any protest. A few minutes later, they're all on their way up to the bridge of D-1, Lorana Jinzler's unconscious but apparently truly unharmed form being carried along in Master Eviros' arms.

With any luck, she'll wake well before their hour deadline is up and be able to help them deal with the Chiss Commander whose life she saved when he calls, demanding a decision.

***

The Force ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn gazes, with more than a little concern, after the rapidly retreating figure of Chiss Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, a worried frown gradually etching ghostly furrows across his brow. Finally, unable keep his peace, he turns towards the Force spirit beside him. Although he knows, logically, that none of the living being aboard Outbound Flight can possibly hear them, the scene that he's just witnesses has rattled him badly. So when he asks his questions, he is careful to send the words directly to his mentor's mind, rather than simply speaking them. Is his reaction to Lorana normal, for him?

He's just had most of his latent Force-sensitivity rather forcibly awakened, Qui-Gon. It's understandably somewhat disconcerting.

A little miffed by Revan's apparently offhanded shrug, Qui-Gon persists, stubbornly pointing out, I understand that, Master Revan. But his reaction to Lorana before the struggle -

Qui-Gon. We really don't have time to suffer through another round of that endless argument about the ridiculously destructive nature of your Order's stance on attachments. And even if we did, I'm quite certain that you know my opinion on the matter thoroughly, by now. Those boys of yours are a natural pair-bond: denying that union a form of natural expression will do naught but cause confusion and suffering that will lead to foolishness and wreck havoc on the galaxy! Your Order does nothing but contribute to its own eventual destruction, in enforcing such damaging rules as this impossible prohibition against attachments, Qui-Gon!

But, Attachment? /Qui-Gon demands, aghast. /Master, we've just observed nearly every warning sign of obsession that there is in your Mitth'raw'nuruodo, just now!

The cold glare that Revan turns on him rocks him back on his heels. Qui-Gon. Don't refer to Mitth'raw'nuruodo as if he were a possession of mine. And don't assume that the Chiss are in any way comparable to the mental and emotional cripples that your Order names Jedi.

But - !

Must I remind you of our agreement, Qui-Gon Jinn? The iciness of the question, delivered in a peremptory tone that reminds Qui-Gon, rather shockingly, of the fact that Revan Maloch once chose to become a Dark Lord of the Sith, essentially stops him in his tracks.

. . . I . . . no, Master, he replies, ducking his head down slightly to avoid Revan's mercilessly frigid gaze.

Good. Try to keep in mind, young one, that Mitth'raw'nuruodo has been raised primarily as one gods-touched. He is . . . inclined towards difference, even as he has been primed to be a catalyst of change. But he is still Chiss. In such matters as this, his honor would never permit him to seek to take that which is not freely offered. He will apologize, later, for the 'liberty' he took in covering her body with his own, to protect her from that blast.

The frown returns, unbidden, prompted by the unexpected softening in Revan's tone. Greatly daring, he risks trying to frame another protest. Yes, but -

Qui-Gon. Mitth'raw'nuruodo is very young. He's had very little experience with women. He is gods-touched, according to the customs of his people. And he just had quite a bit of his Force-talent rather forcibly called on. He didn't even have a name for the true source of his difference, before now, Qui-Gon. Give him a while to adjust and yourself an opportunity to actually learn something about both him and his people before you attempt to judge.

The reminder that Mitth'raw'nuruodo is Chiss and not human should not have been necessary, and yet he finds he has somehow managed to lose track of the fact that the young Commander has been raised by a distant offshoot of humanity with absolutely no real memory of their human roots. Properly chagrined, Qui-Gon has the good grace to flush and bow his head down in agreement. Oh. Of course, Master. Forgive me. I had forgotten the Chiss are not near-human in the way I am accustomed to thinking of them.

Understanding will come, if you allow yourself to approach them with an open mind and to remember that the Chiss are distinctly separate from humanity as it is known in the Galactic Republic. But enough of this! They've managed to make an initial agreement, despite C'baoth's insanity. Neither side will seek to move against the other, now, unless severely provoked. We should check on Car'das. Come along, Qui-Gon. There will be plenty of time to observe Mitth'raw'nuruodo and the Chiss later.

Yes, Master Revan. One last thoughtful glance over his shoulder, at Lorana's still prone form, and Qui-Gon obediently turns towards his teacher, holding out his arm and bracing himself for the lurching whirl of nearly instantaneous travel, by way of the Force, that Revan will use to shift them from the Dreadnaughts of Outbound Flight to the proper hull bubble of the warship of the Vagaari Miskara.

***

The pulsating hyperspace sky flows past the Vagaari warship, closer and more vivid and more terrifying than Car'das has ever seen it. With only a single layer of thin plastic between him and those waves, he can't shake the sensation that at any moment they might break through and snatch him away from even the precarious safety of his hull bubble, leaving him to die alone in the incomprehensible vastness of the universe. He's tried closing his eyes and turning around so that his face will be to the hull. But somehow that's only made it worse. The knowledge that it will be a six-hour journey back to the Crustai base - six hours of uncertainty and mental agony along with the emotional strain of the hyperspace sky beating against this transparent coffin - is an inescapable as it is terrible. Less than an hour into the trip, he seriously starts to wonder if he will be able to make it through the journey with his sanity still intact. He never has the chance to find out, though. Less than two hours after leaving the Geroon homeworld, the hyperspace sky suddenly coalesces into starlines and collapses back into stars. Then, while he's still reeling in shock, there's a click from somewhere beside him

"Human!" the Miskara's voice snarls into his ear.

Car'das instantly jerks away, in the process banging his head painfully on the cold plastic. What in the worlds - ?

"Human!" the voice comes again, even more furious than before.

And this time he realizes that it's coming from the diamond-shaped device he'd puzzled at earlier - which is, apparently, the Vagaari version of a comlink. Reaching awkwardly over his shoulder, he grabs it. "Yes, Your Eminence?"

"What is this trap you have led us to?" the Vagaari instantly demands, his tone sending a shiver through Car'das's body.

"I don't understand," Car'das protests, honestly not knowing what the Miskara is talking about. "Did your people get the wrong coordinates from the transport's computer?"

"We have been brought too soon into crawlspace," the Miskara bites out, his tone making it clear that he would be just as happy to be biting off Car'das' head, instead, if only he could. "The stolen ship net has been used against us."

Behind Car'das comes the subtle clicking of locks as someone prepares to open his prison. "But how could the Chiss have planned such a thing?" he asks, fumbling to get the words out before the door can be opened. If he were to be brought before the Miskara now, he would likely die a quick and very uncomfortable death. And that would do neither his companions nor Thrawn nor the members of Outbound Flight any good. "They must have been using it on someone else, and we just happened to run into it."

"With all of space to choose from?" the Miskara instantly shoots back. Still, despite the scoffing tone, Car'das thinks he can hear a slight dip in the other's anger level. "Ridiculous."

"Stranger things have happened," Car'das insists, feeling sweat breaking out on his forehead as he tries to fight back the panic that wants to overtake him. Nervously, he then adds, "If faced with a rich enough prize, I'm certain the Chiss Commander would find a way to use the ship net he stole from you to his advantage."

Behind him, the hull cracks open. Car'das tenses, but the Vagaari outside merely thrusts a set of macrobinoculars from the Chiss shuttle into his hands. "Look forward," the Miskara's voice orders. "Tell me the story of this vessel."

The door is slammed shut again behind him. Exhaling some of his tension, Car'das activates the macrobinoculars and obediently raises them to scan the sky in front of him. Thankfully, the object of the Miskara's interest isn't hard to locate. It's a set of six ships, big ones, arranged around a cylindrical core with tapered ends.

Outbound Flight.

Car'das' heart leaps within him, and he forces himself to take a carefully calming deep breath before he opens his mouth to speak. "I've never seen anything like it," he truthfully tells the Miskara. "But it matches the description of a long-range exploration and colony project called /Outbound Flight/. There are fifty thousand of my people aboard those ships, with enough supplies in the storage core to last all of them for several years."

"How many fighting machines will they have?"

"I don't know," Car'das admits. "There'll be some, certainly, most of them probably the bigger tripod-type droidekas to be used as colony boundary guards. There'll likely be a few hundred of those. Most of their droids will be service and repair types, though. They probably have at least twenty thousand of those types."

"And these mechanical slaves will have the same artificial brains and mechanisms as the fighting machines?"

Car'das grimaces at the question, his stomach turning over queasily. It's pretty clear where the Miskara is going with this, and he doesn't like it, even though it will doubtlessly make his task much easier, in the long run. "Yes, they could probably all be adapted to combat of some sort," he finally agrees, even though he doesn't particularly want to. "But the people there aren't going to just hand them over to you. And those Dreadnaughts pack a lot of firepower."

"Your concern is touching," the Miskara replies, his voice thick with sarcasm. "But we are the Vagaari. We take what we want."

There's another click then and the comlink shuts off. "Yes," Car'das murmurs, shaking his head sadly. "So I've heard."

***

"There," Mitth'raw'nuruodo declares, pointing out the Springhawk's canopy. "You see them, Commander?"

"They're a little hard to miss," Doriana grinds out, his throat tight as he gazes out at the hundreds of alien ships that have suddenly appeared at the edge of Mitth'raw'nuruodo's gravity-field trap. "Who the blazes are they?"

"A nomadic race of conquerors and destroyers called the Vagaari," Mitth'raw'nuruodo replies with a disconcerting note of satisfaction in his slightly lower than normal voice.

Almost an hour previously, when Mitth'raw'nuruodo had returned from his visit to Outbound Flight with his throat turning ugly mottled shades of green and purple and a color so dark that it looked almost black against his blue skin and his voice reduced to a hoarse rasp, Doriana had felt a wild hope kindle in his heart and immediately had tried to convince the Chiss Commander to open fire on the combined ship. Unfortunately, since he hadn't waited for an actual report of the events aboard /Outbound Flight/, he's fairly certain that he'd only ended up angering the young Commander by urging him to an action that would require him to break his given word. Since then, he has done his best to stay out of the way, hanging back and keeping his mouth shut, trying to repair the damage by simply quietly waiting for an hour to pass and, thus, seeming to honor the (foolish) pledge that Mitth'raw'nuruodo made. The sudden appearance of a third force (and second alien fleet) on the scene quickly drove him to break his silence and approach the Commander, though. And so now, heart racing, he nervously asks, "What are they doing here?" clenching his hands hard enough to drive his fingernails into his palms in an effort to distract him sufficiently to keep his voice from shaking. "How did they find us?"

"I would imagine we have Car'das to thank for that," Mitth'raw'nuruodo calmly replies. "As it happens, this system is on a direct line between the last known Vagaari position and my Crustai base."

Doriana just stares at him, utterly dumbstruck. "What, you mean Car'das betrayed you? /Car'das/, of all people?"

"Car'das has his own concerns and priorities." Mitth'raw'nuruodo lifts his eyebrows pointedly at Doriana. "As do we all."

There's no real answer to that - or at least none that Doriana is actually interested in voicing. "What are we going to do about them?" he asks instead, after several awkward heartbeats of silence.

"Let us wait and see their intentions," Mitth'raw'nuruodo declares, turning back to gaze out the bridge canopy. "Perhaps they will be cooperative."

Doriana frowns back at him, not bothering to hide his confusion. "Cooperative how?"

But Mitth'raw'nuruodo only smiles faintly in return. "Patience, Commander. Let us wait and see."

***