But the fact that she was worried about me was reassuring. It brought a smile to my face, knowing that even though the Little Jedi had every reason to cut me down, or to cut me out of her life for being yet another Sith corrupted by the Dark Side, she was willing to take the time to wonder if I was doing alright.
And I appreciated it.
I appreciated her.
...
The Little Jedi's eyes widened as I completed that thought, and she hurriedly turned away. How very odd. Eh, I could worry about that later.
Far above the roar of ion engines filled the sky, and a familiar red starship came into view. It did not circle much, having already landed here once before, before coming down on a mostly even patch of ground. The ramp lowered smoothly, and the ship's only human passenger bounded down while engaged in a heated debate with the droid at her side.
"Just because you were controlling the ship doesn't mean you get the kill credit," Razma argued with T7. The droid gave a belligerent-sounding series of whistles in response that I had neither the knowledge nor the willingness to translate. "I shot the missile, so it's my kill."
The droid responded with a noise I could best describe as cackling.
"Nestor, can you explain to…" my apprentice aborted her attempt to convince me to steal credit from a droid when she looked at my face. She blinked twice before she continued. "So that's what you look like."
"Ogle later," Natia snapped, rushing up with Bybon's floating behind her. Loa was close behind her, carrying Levin. "Get the ship prepped now."
"Just because you plan on it, doesn't mean I will!" she countered, but ran up the ramp nonetheless. The droid's cackling only got more intense, and I resisted the urge to sigh. At least there were no tabloid journalists to get a picture.
Turning to the rest of my group, I noticed that they were staring.
"You heard the girl," I said. "Ship now, ogle later."
"Sorry," the Jedi Knight said wincing slightly before jogging towards his ship. His padawan was at his side, an amused smirk on her lightly scarred face. "Just surprised, that's all."
"This face is a state secret, Jedi!" I shouted after him, stumbling a bit as I followed everyone else up the boarding ramp. "I would appreciate it if it stayed that way!"
The boarding ramp hissed shut as soon as I was aboard. Beneath my feet, the entire ship rumbled as the engines kicked into high gear. Blessedly, the inertial compensator meant that I was not slammed into the wall by the acceleration and was able to stumble into the ship's cockpit with the other uninjured members of the party.
Bybon and Levin, it seemed, had already been brought to the small ship's medical bay.
"Thanks for waiting for me," I snarked, hanging on to the edge of the doorway.
"You're welcome," the Jedi Knight answered dryly. The man had taken the controls now, putting us on an escape vector that was damn near vertical. "Pulling up sensors now."
A translucent blue hologram of Tython's orbital situation sprung to life above the center console. It gave me a stupendous view of the Harrower-class cruiser getting thrashed by the fleet I had assembled. My fleet was still split in two, bombarding the larger ship from above and below while it spun along its long axis. The wedge-shaped ship had stopped fighting back, opting to focus all its power on shields in an attempt to live just a little while longer.
Meanwhile, the number of freighters crammed full of slaves had reduced from six to a measly two. Both that remained were on top. The ships on the bottom evidently did not have a very high opinion of the rights of sentient life.
"Get me an open channel," I ordered, reaching for the microphone. The Jedi Knight flipped a few switches on his control panel and gave me a nod. "Attention Oppressor, this is Lord Nestor. Darth Angral is dead. Surrender now, and I will allow you and your crew to live. This offer expires in five minutes."
For several long seconds, I received no response.
"Lord Nestor, this is the Oppressor," a startingly young woman's voice called through. I almost recognized the voice, though the garbling and static induced by the comm link made closer verification a bit trickier. Still, for a young woman to be in command of a warship of that size… something was smelling fishy. "We are willing to surrender the ship to you in exchange for total amnesty and return to imperial space."
"Amnesty?" a third voice broke into the channel. Well, it was an open channel; interjections were to be expected. "After all you did?"
"You will be returning under my command," I said, ignoring the interruption. Earning the ire of the Alderaanians had not been my goal, but I could salvage it. Even if my command of them was tenuous at best, built on deception. "There will be a detour to Alderaan. Do I make myself clear?"
"Lord Varalica, you cannot seriously be considering this!" the same voice on the comm said. "After all these monsters did to the Republic, after all the innocents they've killed, you would have them walk free?"
"The man who ordered those attacks is already dead at my hand," I pointed out. "And I would prefer to drag a Harrower into orbit above Alderaan as proof of our victory. If you have further concerns, we can discuss them on a closed channel. For now, let's show our people back home what we can do when we stand together."
"Fine," the frankly insubordinate officer allowed. "Do as you will."
"Lord Nestor, I accept," the Oppressor's captain suspiciously young captain announced. "You may board when ready."
"Perfect. Please stand by," I said, gesturing towards the Jedi Knight to cut the channel, and he obliged. "And that's one more crisis deferred until later."
"How about we take that time to handle another crisis now?" the Little Jedi asked, and I got another wave of concern from her. "Before we charge head-first into possible enemy territory?"
"Little Jedi, I know you're the most dangerous thing on two legs in this spaceship, but even you have limits," I pointed out.
In response, the Little Jedi grabbed my left arm and twisted it around to bring it in front of my face. The whole things was red with blood, and I finally noticed a small puddle that had formed my my feet.
Oh.
That was a lot more blood than I had been expecting.
...
If I had a nickel for every time the Little Jedi stuffed my wounds with gauze, I would have two nickels. While those would have been a pleasant reminder of home, I would gladly have settled for a moment away from the peanut gallery.
"Why is he so comfortable with having a Jedi Knight jam gauze in his wounds?" Razma asked. She, and most of our not-so-little group, had crowded into the small med bay of the Jedi Knight's ship. Levin was there, drugged out of his gourd on painkillers, with his arm stumps wrapped in Kolto-soaked bandages to keep infections out. Bybon was there with only his right forearm given the Kolto-wrap treatment but without as many pankillers. Natia and Loa were there because their allies were there. Razma was there because I was there, and wasn't aware of how I operated.
"Probably because she's first-aid certified and none of the Sith are," the Jedi Knight's padawan commented, a wry smile on her face. Red-headed Kira Carsen had joined us in the medical bay for reasons she had not deigned to share. Hopefully, she was just here because she didn't trust us to be alone.
"I was certified," I muttered, craning my neck to glare more directly at the Jedi Padawan who fearlessly met my gaze. Reading her was beyond my abilities, however, and the Little Jedi did not appreciate having her patient squirming. With a grip as hard as iron, she pulled me back position: seated bare-chested and upright on one of the few stools aboard the ship.
Alas, nobody bothered listening to me.
"Why is it that you're willing to charge head-first into danger, but draw the line at self-surgery?" the Little Jedi asked.
"Because my suicidal charges are perfectly safe because they always work," I pointed out. "And the one time we try to lure someone into a suicidal charge, half of us get injured."
"Three out of eight, technically," Natia corrected, clearly choosing not to count minor injuries. Then again, neither had I.
The Sith Apprentice had very deliberately chosen to lurk as far from her injured allies as possible while still being inside the medical bay. In other words, the corner to the right of the entrance was hers. And she was looking at a cheap datapad that was little more than a translucent display screen. In other words, a holozine.
Oh no.
...
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