Disaster!
In direct defiance of his Jedi General's Orders, Captain Kraken hass rammed the outsider "Dreadnought", killing most inside! Disaster became catastrophe when the captain of the alien vessel detonated his Warp Engines, causing a massive explosion, wounding the Republic's forces, and killing all survivors of the Outsider Ship.
It was into this grim scene that the rest of the outsider armada arrived.
Seeing no possibility for peace or understanding, Dr Shina strongly "Advocated" against Renphi's plan of action, and was removed from the bridge of the Honor Hound for her conduct.
Now she sits, confined to the laboratory with her colleagues, awaiting the consequences of the Jedi's actions...
The Ship quaked once more, resounding with a deep, thunderous thrum. The lights flickered around them, equipment both sensitive and mundane beeping and chiming as they came back online. Dr. Haknian was asked nicely, done tactfully and carefully. While the other two members of the science team were too timid to speak up directly to a woman as formidable as Dr. Shina, the ship was literally shaking apart around them! They were being confined to the laboratory! The time for timidity had long passed!
"What in the galaxy is happening here? Dr. Shina, what did you do?" The human accused, crossing his arms over the sterile white of his lab coat.
The Cerean scientist hadn't spoken since arriving almost five minutes ago in the custody of two Clone troopers. Dr. Haknian had known she had been conversing with the Jedi in charge of their expedition, but had been surprised to see her returned in custody. She didn't like Jedi, everyone on the science crew knew that fact about her already. But what could she have possibly said to goad a man as tranquil as Renphi into doing something like this?
She had spent the rest of the time after her return moping as if weathering some tragedy. The biggest tragedy, as far as the other three scientists were concerned, was that their lower ranking staff members had been confined to their quarters suddenly and without explanation. Dr. Haknian's accusation seemed to finally snap her out of her toroper, as her eyes raised and went wild.
"Me?! I didn't do anything but be the voice of reason! If you want to blame someone, blame the sith spawned jedi for this travesty!"
"Well we are going to blame you until you tell us what in the name of the many moons happened up there!" Dr. Haknian retorted.
At this, Dr. Shina relented. The cerean explained the events that had preceded her being sent to the laboratory, doing her best to be brief without sparing any detail
"Well clearly they are some kind of Religious society, with this Emperor of theirs either at or near its head. Fascinating." Dr. Turanni concluded.
"Always hammering religion into your anthropological studies, Turanni. The outsiders are obviously some kind of Autocracy, most likely an Empire if they have an emperor. Nothing religious about that." Said Dr Orthan, sneering all the while.
"Oh really? Because I'm pretty sure Dr. Shina described a ship, and I quote, "Covered in skull iconography and-"
"Wait, skulls? What kind of skulls?" Dr Haknian suddenly asked.
Dr. Shina felt a cold surge run through her from skull to spine at this.
"I...I can't be sure." She said, standing.
"But they looked like Human Skulls...and the statues were of Angels and men in armor. How did I not notice before?" she murmured.
"Notice what?" Dr. Orthan asked.
Dr. Turanni's face contorted in disbelief.
"A coincidence...we need more data." She asserted.
Dr. Orthan looked at her.
"What? What's a coincidence?" He asked.
"It must be." Dr. Shina said, now moving towards the main computer.
Between the four of them, they had some of the greatest minds within the entire republic. Mathematics, History, Hyperron Mechanics, Quantum theory, Xeno Anthropology, and Political Sciences were just small sampling of the subjects which each of them were well versed in. Dr. Shina's speciality was as a Hyperron Theorist, Mega-Hydrono Catalyst technician, and Political/Technological predictions analyst.
She was also, less officially, a slicer, and it was this skill set she now deployed as she hacked into the Honor Hound's databases, retrieving as many pictures and scans of the Outsider craft as she could, as well as the translation matrix for their language. Another tremor ran through the ship as she sent the data to Dr. Turanni.
"Will one of you clue me in already?" Dr. Orthan whined.
Haknian's eyes went wide, his hands dropping limpily to his sides as he guessed upon what Shina suspected.
"Don't even concern yourself with it." Dr. Haknian said.
"It is madness to even consider it."
"Consider what?!"
"This!" Dr. Shina said, turning on the holotable in the center of the laboratory and showing them a three dimensional image of one of the larger outsider ships.
It was massive, and covered from bow to stern in enormous stacks of weapons, but that wasn't the reason she displayed it now. The ship was built with layers upon layers of buttresses, statues, pillars, iconography and art which covered the whole vessel even more densely than the guns themselves.
Golden, angelic depictions of humanoids in robes holding aloft swords stood or strode in frozen rendition as statutes and mosaics. Twin headed avians stretched their wings in stylized, shining art across the hull of the ship. And the skulls, so many skulls. Human Skulls.
"It's impressive, but what is this supposed to tell me?" Asked the Doctor.
Haknian wiped his face and scowled.
"Orthan, are you dense? Think for a moment. They come from beyond the edge of the galaxy, their art is composed of human figures and human skulls, and if you had to describe that ship as something other than a ship, what words would you choose?"
Dr. Orthan shrugged.
"A temple?"
"Try a Cathedral." Said Dr. Turanni.
Again, Orthan shrugged.
"So what? They resemble humans, worship skulls, and fly around in Cathedral ships. What does that...Oh no."
"Oh yes!" Dr. Turanni said triumphantly.
"By the splitting stars, are you seriously suggesting they've returned? From Deep Space?! The karking-" Dr. Orthan started, eyes going wide as saucers.
The doors suddenly burst open then, and Dr. Orthan threw himself across the floor and under a desk. Standing at the entrance was Renphi and several clones, all armed. The jedi had his lightsaber out, its golden blade burning the air, humming hungrily.
"Come on! Now!" He ordered, and with a little coaxing from the clones, the scientist began to follow as he led them out of the laboratory.
There were fourteen clones of assorted ranks here, The captain of the ship and a sergeant leading the way, while Renphi brought up the rear, making sure no one fell behind. Between them all were the scientists, with Shina at the front of that group.
"What's happening?!" Dr. Shina asked as she jogged alongside the clone troopers.
"We've been boarded. A retreat has been called, we are escorting you to the escape pods now." One of the clones said.
The Cerean scientist felt desperate fear consume and replace the curiosity of her natural disposition. But at least the Laboratory was not too far from the escape pods. They reached the door access panel, and Shina felt her heart leap into her throat when she saw it. Smashed.
Someone had gotten here first, and had damaged the control panel to keep them from getting in. But she was relieved to find that it wouldn't be enough, as one of the clones retrieved a code cylinder from a belt pack. The trooper walked to the door and fit the slender tube into a slot in the wall, forcing the door to open.
As the durasteel door slid back, a massive, blue arm extended out from the now open room, seizing the clone and yanking him inside. The man screamed, but only for a second before his voice was drowned out by the sound of blaster fire. The thirteen other clones that were traveling with them had formed up opposite the door and began opening fire into the room. Shina stumbled away, falling onto her rear as she watched the clones empty their blaster packs into the escape pod's access.
Suddenly there was a sound, like thunder, but shorter, deeper. It shook the doctor to her bones, and her hands snapped up to her head to cover her ears, but suddenly found herself bewildered as a warm, wet sensation washed over her. Her hands pulled away, coated in deep, arterial red. It was hot, extremely hot, and yet her hands, her arms, her whole body felt cold. She looked up, blinking droplets of color out of her eyes, watching.
Five bodies went flying, falling into pieces with just two shots of whatever that weapon had been. The clone troopers it had struck turned into smeers of brilliant color against the back walls of the hallway. They didn't even scream, they were just dead, gone before they'd realized it. Someone was screaming for them. Dr. Shina looked back, expecting to see Dr. Turanni letting loose with all the force in her lungs, such was the wailing she could hear.
But it wasn't Turanni making the sound, that much was clear as Shina's eyes found the other doctor's face, skin paling, mouth pursed, eyes like bulginging. It was Dr. Shina herself who was making the noise, the realization terrifying her even more than the gory spectacle she was being forced to witness. She clapped her hands over her own mouth, regretting the action instantly as the bitter, powerful taste of blood touched her lips.
Renphi leapt across the corridor then, landing next to the door and seizing the code cylinder, which was still protruding from the wall. In the same instant, the large blue arm which had taken the first clone reached out and grabbed Renphi by the collar. The doctor had a better view of it this time, enormous, metal, mechanized.
But before it could pull the jedi into the room, Renphi twisted the cylinder, slamming the door closed on the arm. At the same moment, Renphi swept the glowing yellow blade of his lightsaber up, cutting through the thick limb as easily as through the bulkhead of a ship. Another bark of thunder rang out through the crack in the doorway, and Renphi side stepped the projectile, pulling the arm with him as he did and allowing the door to slam shut fully.
The dismembered limb clung tenaciously to him, and almost pulled the jedi down as it fell away from the door. It was heavy and when Renphi seized it by the wrist and tore it off, it took most of his robe with it. He spun, pulling the code Cylinder free from the wall and burning the input slot with the end of his lightsaber.
"We mussst hurry to the otherssside to reach the essscape podsss there. Now!" The Jedi ordered.
"Some of them are in shock, general." Said a clone kneeling beside Dr. Shina.
Was she in shock? Dr. Shina wiggled her fingers and toes, feeling them as cold, clammy, barely coherent extensions of her body. Her heart was racing, and she was sweating despite how cold it was. It was so cold, despite the heat of the blood which coated her, was that natural?
~No you idiot, you are definitely in shock!~ She screamed into the sluggish void of her thoughts.
With great effort, Shina slowed her breathing, reaching up to put a heavy hand on the clone kneeling over her, allowing him to help her rise to her feet.
"I'll be fine. I'll be fine." She said, arms and legs trembling now, but responding well enough
Dr. Turanni had also gone into some form of shock, but she was not recovering from it nearly as swiftly as Dr. Shina seemed to be. Dr. Haknian was up, helping to steady Dr. Shina, his own hands clammy and covered in sweat, but his face, at least, seemed controlled, disciplined, his expression not one of fear, but of concern. Not of helplessness, but of proactivity.
That gave her a bit more strength as they were all rushed down the corridor, towards the hangar. Numbly, she could barely feel her own footfalls as they left that stained place, and the monster behind the door. But even as they moved away from the bloody gate which constrained their enemy, Dr. Shina suspected they were not fleeing towards safety. Her suspicions were confirmed when the group of clones and scientists reached the broken doorway which led into the hangar.
There was fire, and screaming. All the starfighters and bombers had long since been launched, leaving the hangar a mostly empty expanse of flickering lights and intermittent walls of shadow. On the farside of the expanse, the still broadly lit sections revealed troopers, fighting viciously and dying in droves.
They were fighting...things, but what they were she could not discern. Morbid fascination seized her tightly as nearly a score of clone troopers, all standing in a brilliant line, seemed to...transform, blossoming like time lapsed roses, their upper bodies twisting into the air, white becoming fountains of cascading crimson. And the thing doing it to them, it was large, like a gundark, but thicker, and much faster. Was it a droid?
She had no time left to ponder as Dr. Haknian pulled her along. The battle was taking place at the far side of the hangar, and in moments, Dr, Shina realized why. A massive, alien drill tube, obviously the device they had used to board the ship, was protruding from the wall above them. The fight had started here, and moved to where it was now. But it wasn't just the boarding vessel which made that obvious.
It was the bodies. So many bodies. What the flickering light managed to illuminate was a scene straight out of a horror vid. Clones had been eviscerated, torn apart, physically crushed, and rent into halves. They lay in slick piles where they had fallen, some in firing formations, others in circles where they had attempted to surround something lethal. But Dr. Shina's wide eyes had barely witnessed a quarter of the carnage.
Troopers hung like grim banners from steel beams and rafters. They were in pieces, an arm here, a heavy, bloody helmet there, splayed out and left like gruesome parodies of the B1 battle droids the clones themselves left dismembered in their wake. If that hallway outside the escape pods had been the gates of hell, then the hangar was gahena proper. And then there was the smell.
It forced its way through all of Dr, Shina's mental defenses, cutting even through the torpor of her shock. It was thicker than the air, like a violating presence, stuffing itself into her nose, into her mouth, she could taste it! It was like rotten meat set next to a scented, cinnamon candle, but so much worse. Like feces and sugar mixed into a pot and set to simmer for days. It was more than Dr. Shina could handle, and she heaved for the second time that day, as did Dr. Haknian and Dr. Turanni, spilling their most recent meals onto the gore laden floor while Shina herself was just left gasping.
"They can't be humans." Dr. Haknian said, wiping his mouth.
"They just can't be…"
Dr. Turanni began to sob, falling to her knees and covering her eyes. Renphi went to her, but she seemed incensed, her limbs trembling as though she were caught in the throes of a seizure. Dr. Shina tried to force her eyes forward, trying not to notice the slaughter around her. Instead, she noticed the Captain of the clones, standing stiff as a statue, his eyes fixed on the battle being waged on the farside of the hangar..
"Oh skrog." He cursed.
"Come on, get her up. Get them all moving." He ordered, going down to one knee and raising his blaster rifle.
"One of those things just noticed us."
Dr. Shina rushed to where he was kneeling and came down beside the captain, following his aim to where the battle was taking place. Clones were dying quickly, and the lights at the far end of the hanger were completely shot out. She could see little more than shadows cast by flames, and muzzle flashes illuminating figures for microseconds at a time. Still, she squinted, she tried to see.
Dr. Shina guessed there were at least thirty clone troopers down there, taking cover in the flaming wreckage of an AT-TE they had brought up from the lower deck, presumably to help them fight the enemy off. They were firing, and despite the darkness, their shots certainly seemed to be tracking...something. Not droids, Dr. Shina was almost certain now. Too fast, too coordinated.
"Get going." The clone said, handing Dr. Shina his blaster pistol, holster and all.
Dr. Shina nodded hesitantly but took the weapon, managing to strap it around her waist despite her cold, trembling fingers. Just before she was made to move on, she thought she could make out silhouettes against the fires, but Dr. Haknian tugged her up and away before she could get a good look.
They both started running, supporting each other's strides as the scientists did their best not to slip and fall. They flinched as they heard blaster fire start up behind them. The Captain and several clone troopers had stayed back to buy them time, and were engaging the enemy even then. Following the other clones, they crossed the bloody hangar and entered another adjoining corridor.
As they began to make their way down the well lit, pristine hallway, Dr. Shina looked back. Dr. Orthan was running after them, two clones just behind him, and the Jedi, Renphi, was just in front of Orthan, carrying the still weeping Dr. Turanni in his arms, his lightsaber off but still gripped in his right hand. She turned to look forward and noticed the four clones in front of them halting, forming up at the bend ahead and creating a second defensive line.
"Onccce we get around thisss corner, it'sss a ssstraight shot to the room." Renphi yelled as he caught up to, and then passed Dr. Haknian and Dr. Shina.
"Keep running!"
For once, Dr. Shina obeyed his instructions with zeal, pumping her legs as hard and as fast as she could. As she ran around the bend, all four clones stationed there tossed their thermal detonators and turned away to take cover. She screamed, Dr. Orthan had still been behind them, but she couldn't hear her own voice as a thunderous explosion of air and heat gusted through the corridor and pushed her face down into the floor.
Stunned, she lay there, sure her nose was broken, half sure she had just been concussed. She would have remained there if not for Dr, Haknian's help, who had stopped to pull her up once more.
"They killed Orthan, they blew him up, they killed him!" she babbled.
Dr. Haknian was shaking his head, his lips moving, his face animated and terrified. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear him, realizing that a ringing in her ears was drowning out everything else, leaving her in eerie, inappropriate silence.
She looked away from Haknian, who was trying to pull her forward, her eyes darting back. She couldn't see the clones, not through all the smoke, but she did see blue flashes in the murk. And something else. There was something there… but Dr. Haknian yanked her forward hard, getting her attention back in front of her, and almost threw her with how hard he began to shove.
Dr, Shina felt a flush cover her face, recovering her wits and running at full sprint again, not needing to be pushed anymore as her scattered senses collected themselves. She could see it now, the door, Renphi had already opened it, and he was standing there, saber out and activated, Dr. Turanni cradled against him with his other hand. He was looking at something behind her.
The instant Dr. Shina reached him, he shoved Dr. Turanni into her arms roughly.
"Take her! Get out of here!" The Jedi ordered.
Dr. Shina almost stumbled with the sudden weight of her colleague, and turned to hand her off to Haknian. But he wasn't beside her any longer.
"Wait, where did-" She started, but Renphi cut her off as he shoved her into the room with a gesture of his hand..
"Go!" He said.
They were both thrown by what felt almost like a magnetic pull, and the Doctor was sent sprawling onto the floor, Turanni falling right beside her an instant before the door slammed shut. The fall had been hard, had half winded her, but Shina forced herself up. She looked around, they were in the prep room right before the escape pods. The walls were lined with shelves of specialized emergency equipment and supplies to supplement the basic stores already in the pods. She ignored these, turning to Dr. Turanni and grabbing the weeping woman by her shoulders.
"Come on Turanni. Up until now, we have to get going." Shina said as she tried to pull her colleague to her feet.
But she was limp, uncooperative, inconsolable and when Dr. Shina heard the muffled sound of lightsaber strikes just outside the door, she gave only one more hard tug before releasing the doctor and leaving her on the floor. The hallway was straight and narrow, terminating in an airlock door which led to the rows of escape pods. She got up unsteadily, and made for the door at a full sprint, something the Cerean regretted a moment later when the ship rocked, knocking her off balance and sending her painfully to the floor.
She fell badly this time, slamming her knee and shin against one of the protruding shelves of equipment. As she pulled herself up to her feet, the lights around her flickered, but steadied after a moment. The scientist hissed as she discovered that she could not put much weight on her injured leg, but saw she did not have much distance to travel. Wincing, finding that something in her equipment prodded painfully against her bruised waist, and leaning against the wall, she began to hobble her way forward until she noticed that Dr. Turanni had stopped crying.
"Turanni, get over here and help me get to the door panel." She said as she turned to look back at the other Doctor.
When she did look back she found the door to the corridor was open, and where Turanni had been only a smear of gore remained. Dr. Shina snapped her eyes away quickly, hobbling closer to the door, wincing again as she felt something hard prod against her and the wall. Her datapad?
Then she felt something else, in the wall, on the floor. It chilled her blood yet again, drove her fear into such a frenzy it was all she could do to not allow the darkness gnawing at the corners of her vision to devourer her. The feeling was of vibrations. Footfalls. She remembered then, in a sudden fit of desperate energy, that she still had the blaster pistol on her, and without thinking, without planning, drew it out from where it had been prodding her waist.
She spun on her good leg, ignoring the surges of agony which her injured leg protested with, and fired. Her unexpected shot flew through the air, clean and level despite her lack of training and current condition. It scorched the air of the hallway, sped through the door leading out and hissed against the wall. There was nothing there, nothing behind her.
The doctor held herself rigid, panting, sweating as she watched for movement, any movement. But as the tenth second slid by, there was still nothing, just the creaking of the ship, and the distant rumbles of weapons fire. Swallowing the lump which had formed in her throat, Dr. Shina turned back toward the door, pistol still in hand, making her way to the panel. She felt something again, another rumbling in the wall, more vibrations behind her.
She didn't turn this time, hobbling the last few steps to the control panel, feeling her skin crawl with each mechanical thump which rang through the wall she leaned on and the floor she stood on. Finally the Cerean scientist fell against the panel, and twisted painfully onto her back, gun out. Her pistol was trembling so hard in her hands that she doubted her aim would be able to hit any kind of mark this time, but that was beyond her concern.
Because there was no mark. The hallway, the prep room, the doorway, it was all still empty. She swallowed again, and tasted bile there. Was she going completely mad? Had she already lost her mind? Slowly, gingerly, she turned back towards the control panel, gripping its sides tightly as the ship creaked around her, almost as if in response to her own movement. She knew she didn't have her code cylinders on her, but the console before her was undamaged, so she resorted to her access code.
Dr. Shina began dialing it in, feeling the hairs rise on the back of her neck as she did. Something was wrong about all of this. Where were they?! What happened to the jedi? Why was Dr. Turanni a red smear, and yet Shina herself was still alive? And then a cold, black thought struck her, slid into her mind like an assassin's knife.
Her finger hovered above the last key, not having pressed it yet, a bead of sweat and blood dripping from the digit, and onto the panel. She released the blaster pistol, her grip failing her, allowing it to fall to the ground with a clatter. Hands numb, she drew out her data pad, and with trembling fingers, she opened up the translation matrix she had downloaded earlier.
"Ready for input." The Datapad chimed.
She took a deep breath, steadying herself as much as possible, given that she was almost certain that, despite present appearances, she was already as good as dead. She tried to speak, but coughed, and had to start again.
"W-What are you? What do you want?" she asked into the air.
The Data pad chimed again, and then, using her own voice, it repeated the sentence in the outsider language. She listened, holding her breath, her ears working like they had never worked before.
And it, whatever it was, answered. Its voice was deep, mechanical, but not born of a machine. There was too much emotion there, too much power, for this to be a droid.
"Response received." The datapad said.
"Translating…"
When it spoke a moment later, it did as it had with her, and used the outsider's own voice to speak the translation.
"I am an Angel of Death. And I have come to render judgment."
At the announcement of its last word, the ship's power finally failed, everything becoming black for a few, heart-rending seconds before the emergency lighting kicked in. Red stripes of hazy light overlaid everything, dying the room in a crimson sheen outlined in long, black shadows. Slowly, deliberately, she turned around. She needed to see it. And when she did, her breath was pulled from her body. Her eyes grew wide, but not wide enough to encompass the monstrous form of the angel of death.
It stood over two meters tall, and was as broad as a fully grown herglik. It almost resembled an archaic depiction of a knight of Zel, or other such ancient warriors who donned armor and swords to set upon their enemies. But the comparison didn't do the thing justice. It was more like those ancient men had somehow looked upon this thing, and had tried in vain to imitate the wonder of it. The terror of it.
The doctor found herself so overtaken by the innate power emanating from the thing, that it took her several seconds to realize that it was wounded. One of its arms, its right arm, was missing below the elbow. Looking to the opposite side for comparison, she saw that in its other, intact hand, it held something small and bloody, something which still dripped with ichor. She let her eyes wander back up to the softly glowing lenses of its head. It was looking down, directly at her, and the attention alone felt lethal, as if it could smash her flat with just its eyes. She wondered, briefly, why she was even still alive.
And then she remembered. It had been watching her type in her code, memorizing her security password. She looked down at its boot, the blue armor there more than just lit in red, but covered in it. Swallowing, she turned back around, looking down at the console. It hadn't shut off, still glowing a soft blue in the hazy light. It was still waiting for her last key.
Dr. Shina breathed in, feeling her mind frenzy behind her eyes, feeling her subconscious turning inside out in an attempt to save her. She breathed out and pressed the key. The console screen turned green, and the airlock opened. At the same moment, a bright, yellow beam of light sprang forth, humming in the air less than an inch from Shina's face. It was holding Renphi's lightsaber in its dripping fist. She knew what came next.
The blade pulled away as the being, the angel, reeled back its arm. Shina felt her lips twitch as she turned around one last time. Her heart was hammering, but her mind was oddly calm, it held the sword of light out like a proper executioner. It would end her cleanly, and at once. She watched it, and it watched her, hands at her sides, chin tilted up, eyes open. It gave Dr. Shina the slightest hint of a nod, and swung. She didn't have time to close her eyes, even to blink.
So she watched as the yellow blade flashed through the air, watched as the ventilation shaft to her right suddenly burst open, a bright blue saber flying out from it as Gaphin spun like a rotary blade through the air. He collided with and caught his master's yellow sword on his own beam of azure light. His face was fierce, full of fear and rage. Full of conviction, and purpose.
Even as Dr. Shina began to stumble back, Gaphin turned to her, eyes meeting hers for less than a second as he thrust his free hand in her direction. At the gesture, a force, like a wind, but stronger, more shaped, more focused, picked her up and threw her into the room beyond. Inside row after row of escape pods sat, awaiting use, and she landed almost inside of one, crying out as she fell again against her bad side.
She grabbed a handle near the door of the nearest pod and hauled herself up and over the lip, looking back to see Gaphin the padawan doing his best to hold the monster in the hallway.
He was much smaller than the "Angel of Death", and was combining that with his agility to bolster his advantage. But already she could see it wouldn't be enough, watching as the inhuman thing Gaphin contended with weaved and moved, blocking his strikes and nearly landing several of its own. The pace of it was making Dr. Shina disbelieve her own eyes.
How could something so large and so heavily armored move like that?! It defied all the laws and rules her mind had become so apt at mastering, and the sight of that massive thing rolling and spinning and ducking and striking with all the fluidity of a waving flame, plunged her into an unexplainable, but all too powerful terror.
With great effort, she tore her eyes away and crawled into the hatch, kicking the sealing trigger with her good leg, and watching the door slam shut. Sweating, tasting blood she knew wasn't her own, the doctor pulled herself up into a seat and punched the launch button. The seals holding the pod in the bay burst, and she was jettisoned from the meat grinder that the Honor Hound had become.
Dr. Shina huddled near the window, watching, but could not see the end of the fight. Still, she hoped to see another escape pod leaving after hers. She hoped to get some sign that she had been wrong, and that she was not the only surviving member of the crew, the only person to escape that slaughter!
What she saw instead was the wreckage of the fleet which surrounded her. No other escape pods detached from the smoldering, limping remains of the Honor Hound, and all around her, massive, godlike ships were firing weapons larger than star destroyers, mopping up the scattered remnants of the fleet. Starfighters and smaller craft still darted about, fighting for their lives as they were hunted down by the swarms of tens of thousands of what passed for strike craft among these new invaders.
The doctor felt her pod jerk suddenly, recognizing the loss of momentum that came with being seized by a tractorbeam. She pressed her forehead against the cool window, feeling her leg throb painfully, feeling her head ache, and feeling the blood, the blood of the clones, the blood of perhaps even Dr. Haknian, drying onto her skin and clothes. There was nothing more she could do, no more places she could run to as her pod was pulled in.
The ship which was pulling her in had not stopped its own movement, and that much was evident in how long it was taking to pull her in. Dr. Shina bit her lip as she was drawn further and further from the battle. She wanted to hope that she was being rescued, but the logic of that didn't sit well within her. Why wasn't the enemy pursuing? Why would an escaping ship even bother with her?
Soon she found the ship she was being pulled into was mostly unpowered, red emergency lights bathing the small hanger. She felt the last dregs of her adrenaline course through her as shapes approached the pod from the darkness, but she stayed put.
The armored hands that opened the pod were the hands of clones, and they quickly entered and ferried her out, carefully setting her down nearby in a crate within the dark hangar area. She was stunned, relieved, and deeply confused.
"What's going on?" She asked
A clone which sat beside her gave her a painful slap on the shoulder and a laugh..
"We are getting out of here, that's what." He said.
"But...but why aren't you already gone?" She pressed.
The clone removed his helmet and scratched his head, smiling with no small amount of chagrin. He offered her a bacta inhaler as the other clones went into her pod and began to dismantle its rudimentary hyperdrive. Bucket, which was what the clone called himself, explained that they had escaped the battle by shutting down almost everything and acting like a dead ship with burning engines.
And apparently the only reason this worked was because the ship was extremely close to being exactly that, and their navicomputer had been badly damaged.
"So you picked me up because you needed my hyperdrive computer?"
The clone smirked.
"Yoooouuu're Welcome!"
The clones wasted no time in hooking it up and getting it working, but Dr. Shina had collapsed flat on the crate and fallen unconscious long before they managed the jump to hyperspace.
And the doctor slept, and slept. She had no idea for how long, but what she did know was that when she awoke, she was lying within a medical bay, a recently created cast constraining her injured leg. She could tell she was on Rothana by the smell, ferrus and freshness, as well as by the model of the droid that was tending her. It had clearly just injected her with something to wake her up, and she could see why right away.
The doctor was surrounded by three Jedi, and a clone. The nurse droid that had been tending to her drifted out of the room, and one of the Jedi approached the right side of her bed. He kneeled down next to her, making it easy for her to watch him without moving her bandaged head. He had a kind, but concerned face. She did not know him.
"I understand that you've had...quite an experience, Dr. Shina. We hate to have to follow that up with questions so soon after what happened. But we are finding ourselves facing a little bit of an emergency, and we could use your help."
Dr. Shina chuckled at his understatements, and then laughed more loudly. In her mind the horrors she had seen still reached out for her, grasping at her. She laughed at them, she mocked them with her laughter, because she had lived. She had survived hell's touch, and now all it could do was scream at her in her own voice from the confines of her memories. Impotent, unreal, a failure.
She laughed and laughed because victory had never tasted so bitter, and yet so sweet. This seemed to greatly affect the clone and the youngest Jedi, but a raised hand from the one speaking to her was enough to calm them as her manic episode wore itself out.
"Tell me Mr….I'm sorry, what was your name again?" Dr. Shina asked.
"Please, call me Obi-Wan." He said.
"Well, Obi-Wan. Do you know anything about the Pius Dea?"