Live Through This

Chapter One: The Fourth Moon of Wrari

Rain fell in sheets over a jungle moon, and it was streaked with ash and smoke. It slicked the blackened stone, rinsed blood from the charred dead. The capitol city usually smelled of spices and engine oil, but that night it smelled of blaster fire and mud. There was no way out of that. No retreat. General Konni Nafai and her battalion marched forward with the thunder rolling over the city.

Her lightsaber illuminated her surroundings in green, rain clung to her lekku, dripped down her face and mixed with the blood that wasn’t hers. Her robes were waterlogged, tattered from the flood and shrapnel. She couldn’t see much around her, and the Force only helped so much because most of what she could feel through it was pure chaos. When they landed on the fourth moon of Wrarí, they didn’t know they’d be walking into a slaughter. But they were then in the thick of it, and it was Konni’s responsibility to get them through it.

The battalion advanced, mud rising nearly to their knees, armor smeared with wet soot. Konni ordered them forward, not even knowing if they could hear or see her in that rain. Somewhere to Konni’s right Starlight glided through the carnage like a wraith. Elegant, precise, too calm. Her blue blade danced in brutal arcs, and it was all Konni could see of the child she brought into a war zone. Too young, Konni thought. Too confident. Too fearless.

Just a teenager, and there she was, ankle-deep in corpses. She was still so innocent in so many ways. She clung to Konni like a child to a parent, looked up to her in all things that she did. And lately, that was warfare. And Konni was coming to realize that Starlight was a prodigy.

Konni’s gut twisted.

She should’ve left her behind. On the cruiser. On Coruscant. Anywhere but there. But Starlight was a commander now under the GAR rules. No one was sitting this one out. No thought was given to the fact that Padawans were by and large children. In the eyes of the republic they, and all Jedi, were beyond mortal. And it sickened Konni to see Starlight living up to that reputation, a blur of blue light and glimpses of a skeletal face slicing through droids.

The Givin were, of course, not skeletons. They just wore theirs on the outside. Starlight was a living, breathing, seventeen year old girl. She excelled at math and engineering like many of her species. She was a quick study with all of the healing and astronavigation Konni taught her. She liked to read holonovels and sleep in late. There were better lives she could be living, but Konni feared they had passed the point of no return. Her fate was sealed. Starlight's fate was, too. They were here. They were no longer peacekeepers.

A blaster bolt snapped past Konni’s ear cone, searing the thought away.

She raised her saber to meet the next barrage and threw it back toward the half-ruined towers ahead where the enemy was posted up. Droids fell like puppets cut loose. Their twisted metal limbs twitched in the rain like insects drowning. Konni, Starlight, and the 413th were within sight of taking the city. They’d already been at it for six hours, as they navigated the flooded city streets from where they landed on the outskirts. She didn’t know how much more of that they could take, but the end was finally within sight.

Then, a groan cut through the downpour.

From behind the bones of what was once a church in the center of town, an AAT tank emerged. Cannons swiveling, red optics cutting through the dark. Konni cursed.

“Down!” she shouted, and the word wasn’t even out of her mouth before the guns fired and the street exploded around them. Mud, bodies, fire, all lifted skyward in a single monstrous blast. Konni hit the ground hard, head below the floodwaters. A sharp pain spread across her ribs. She pushed herself up above water, took stock of her surroundings. Smoke rolled in, thick and choking. She couldn’t see anything, but the force told her that the tide had just turned, and they were no longer close to taking the city. They hadn’t expected or planned for the tank. They should have, but didn’t. They were tired, starved, and their numbers severely diminished. She could already tell that the tank took out several more.

Her ears were ringing and she could barely make out what the person beside her was screaming about. As the smoke lifted, she saw that one of her troopers was pinned beneath rubble, his lungs flooding with rain. Commander Hops was begging for her help, rushing and splashing through the mud, scrambling to reach her. General, please, you have to do something. She could hardly hear his words, but she could tell by the tone of his voice that it was a desperate plea. He had her by the shoulders, shaking her. He might have been crying, but drenched as they were she couldn't tell.

Hops was a reserved man, usually. It was almost more unnerving to see him that way than it was to see the young trooper’s head thrashing about in the floodwaters. She drew on the force and pushed the rubble from his body and, oh gods, there was no hope for this man. His brothers pulled him above the water but his chest was crushed. He had minutes left, and Konni decided to let him die in the company of his family rather than ordering them to abandon him and follow her.

She and Starlight could take out the tank.

She rose, leapt.

Rain and smoke parted as the force hurled her over the rubble, and she landed on top of a low building. Starlight was already in the thick of it, dancing through the rain with what looked like seven or eight troopers behind her, drawing fire away from the rest of the battalion. The tank was firing at her, and hitting only stone buildings, so far at least. Reckless girl, Konni thought as she jumped down and activated her saber.

“I’m going to take that thing apart, Starlight!” Konni yelled over the sound of thunder and blaster fire.

“Master?” Starlight shouted back.

“Just cover me!”

Konni moved. She landed on the tank’s hull, saber slicing through durasteel. She had no plan beyond destruction. This was day three of no sleep and a lot of stims, she was too wired, too angry. She ripped at the hull. The droid piloting the behemoth died before it saw her. A hatch burst open. A B2 battle droid lunged at her. It grabbed her arm and she could feel metal fingers grinding bone. She twisted in its grasp, aware that it had already broken her arm and if she wasn’t careful it would pull it all the way off. Luckily, it wasn’t her saber arm that it was crushing. She plunged her blade into the droid's face and screamed through gritted teeth as the thing went limp and she could pull her arm from its claw. She realized as she caught her breath that the tank was no longer powered. Her wild cuts into the hull apparently worked.

Konni’s boots hit the churned, soaked mud as she landed, her injured arm throbbed with every movement. She didn’t have time to assess the damage. She tucked it against herself and illuminated her surroundings in the green light of her blade. The 413th had reformed their line behind the tank's smoking ruin, using its husk for cover.

“Move up! Suppressive fire!” barked Commander Hops from somewhere behind her.

Konni barely heard it over the thunder.

What remained of the battalion moved with a collective limp then, pushing through the eastern avenue toward the inner courtyard of the town center, just beyond the ruined church. The remaining B1s and B2s had dug in ahead, the last line of defense before their makeshift base. Konni lurched to the forward line, wounded but riding the adrenaline suppressing the pain long enough to lift her saber again.

Then the second tank rolled into view.

“New contact, grid mark Echo-Seven!” called Hops, his voice hoarse. “Cover the Jedi!”

Konni swore. “Starlight!”

Already moving, the girl didn’t respond. Her blade flashing in the near dark as she leapt onto a crumbled bridge above the tank’s path. The 413th laid down suppressing fire, but the tank wasn’t made of soft hide. Its sloped armor shrugged off their DC-15s like rain off a leaf. It advanced, turret swiveling for a shot that would rip the front line apart.

“Hops! Get a squad to flank that thing!” Konni shouted over her shoulder.

“Negative, General,” Hops responded. “We were cut off left. Alley’s collapsed. No way to circle.”

Konni looked to the rooftops. The angles were wrong. No climb, no clear jump, except the one Starlight had already made.

Starlight landed atop the tank like a lightning bolt, saber slicing straight into the upper blaster housing. Sparks shot skyward. The main cannon jerked, its aim spoiled, the shot hitting empty air as the energy bled sideways in an unsteady arc. All Konni could see then was the glow of Starlight’s blade as it cut just as wildly as Konni’s had when she’d taken out the first tank. She was filled with panic, thinking of the droid that had just broken her arm, and how risky that move was for her, a grown adult and a Jedi. She followed Starlight’s path, aiming to bypass the droids and jump down onto the thing, but before she got there she saw a violent spray of sparks.

Konni felt the shift immediately. The droids beyond the tank faltered, as if something was momentarily off. Shots were going wide, all organization was lost, a mental ripple, a disturbance in the net of droid coordination.

The tactical droid.

Starlight’s blade went out and she emerged from the dark, soaked in black oil and rain, her gaunt face dripping with blood. “It’s done!” she yelled. “Tactical droid’s out!”

And just like that, the remaining B1s and B2s began to hesitate. Their fire became staggered. A few B1s twitched oddly, some walking straight into walls or turning their heads at awkward angles as their network collapsed into chaos. They weren’t anything without the tactical droid, especially in the rain and smoke and dark.

Konni exhaled hard. Her arm throbbed. Her ribs felt broken. But the battle was turning.

“Push forward!” she roared, voice raw. “Take the compound! Leave no comms intact. They do not call reinforcements!”

What was left of the 413th surged ahead, carving their way toward the shattered bones of the Separatist compound. Behind them, the tanks smoldered in the rain. It was over, but for the cleanup. The remaining droids were falling with ease, and she tried to breathe as they cleared the town square, but she still couldn’t. Her arm throbbed, her heart skipped. Their success meant nothing right then, especially when she squinted through the darkness and saw more broken armor on the ground than droid parts.

Someone gathered her from the flooded street and ushered her into what used to be the Separatist compound. It was one of her troopers, but she didn’t know which one. She realized that that was her Jedi control faltering, she had been drawing so heavily on her connection to the Force through the battle, and now that it was over she was in a daze. She sat on a supply crate and it took her a moment to realize that she was out of the rain. Starlight was next to her, and Commander Hops sat across from them.

“The trooper–” She began, before she even realized she was asking after him. Why was she doing that? “The one who was drowning?”

“Dead, Sir.” Hops said.

She nodded. She knew she should have been focused on what happened next, what the next move was. But she couldn’t forget the terror she heard in Hops’ voice as he begged her to help. He was back to his even keel now. Most would probably never guess him to be someone who’d ever cried, felt fear, or mourned. But Konni could still feel it on him. He was altered in a way that she wondered if he could ever heal from. “What was his name?” she asked.

“Bowie, Sir.” he said, “One of my batch.”

“I’m so sorry, Hops.” she said. She usually called him Commander. He liked order and ceremony. Konni was never much for it, but she could respect his adherence most of the time. On this night though, she couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t feel like a Jedi or a General right then. She felt like a wild animal caught in the headlights of an approaching landspeeder.

“Thank you,” he said, and she saw him falter a little bit.

Starlight curled around Konni’s good arm and rested her head on her shoulder. She leaned into the girl and in a quiet voice she said to Hops, “I suppose we should work out what happens next,”

He nodded, looking downward, exhausted. “Stims, bacta, and then we’ll worry about what happens next. I have men out securing the perimeter. We were safe for the moment. When the storm breaks, we’ll work on securing the city.”

“Right, when the storm breaks,” Konni said, wondering if that would ever happen, or if the water would continue to rise until it swallowed them whole.