All That Remains: Ashes and Temples

"Captain, we have a realspace insertion danger close...nearly at locus!"

The call for evasives would be too late. If it hadn't hit them yet, they'd been spared the capricious cruelty of blind astronavigation. The tactical viewer was already highlighting the area over Ossus in which the large ship had fallen from hyperlight.

"Ship appears to be cruiser configuration sir, but I have no idea what I'm looking at."

Telemetry was flooding into Cirrsseeto's holographic interface, and a shape emerged in midair. His crew may not recognize what they were seeing...

...but Cirrsseeto certainly did. His eyes widened, turning back to the view of space and the planet ahead.

"Keep us on intercept, Kes."

Words spoken quietly as she surveyed the damage and the players of this game. Levantine looked as though she was about to check out, and the hull damage was plain to see. The others were worse off.

A frown, and the Lupine brought up a small holo of the other ships, recognizing immediately that familiar outline of Novgorod. Her eyes closed as her head bowed ever so slightly, shaking left and right in a slow motion. Of all the innocents, she would've never wanted to see Cirr brought into this horrid endeavor. To see her dear friend being used in such a way; used by the same man that had once used her.

"We're coming up on equidistant position from Levantine and Dauntless."

"All stop. Wait for my signal before raising shields."

"You want a line in?"

She leaned back in her seat for a bare moment before going forward, using the momentum to bring her up to her feet. Moving away from her chair and past the pilot's nest, the Lupine slowly moved up the shallow stairway that would set her on the wrap-around walkway in front of the forward viewscreen. A small bead of sweat was her only outward indication of the mental strain she had placed herself under; the act of masking the occupants of her ship from the Sith a great task indeed.

"Not just yet."

The Dark Lord's eyes fixed upon the strange ship as soon as it could be seen in silhouette against Ossus. It was unknown to him, and yet...something in the lines, the contours. It evoked an ancient aesthetic. Darth Decepis's greed and curiosity found power through the force, reaching out into space to give him knowledge. To his baleful chagrin, he was rebuffed. Something within this ship resisted him. A Jedi? Almost certainly.

So be it. Better to have all of his enemies gather in the open and be destroyed in one final strike.

"Gunner," the Sith Lord called, giving a slight turn in his chair. "Fire on the Levantine. Eliminate it."

He could see the readouts even as Raghus called out.

"Dauntless is firing, Captain!"

There was no way to retaliate. No time to evade. Their shields had become nothing but shreds.

"Hell of a way to go out," the lanky blonde growled to no one in particular.

"Looks like Dauntless is going in for the kill," Kes instinctively pushed forward the throttles, and as s'Il half-turned from her perch, she knew that her old friend - though no Jedi - knew her well enough to act accordingly.

Khera'va'ss'io lurched forward, his engines thrumming with power as he slid threw space, seemingly cutting the velvety blackness like some razor sharp knife. His graceful hulk swooped in to the path of the lancing green turbolaser fire.

"KHER, shields up!"

The spindly form of her ship's AI reacted instantly with a curt nod, his shields blossoming out to catch the volley. His larger half bucked, and those on the bridge weathered the buffeting without so much as batted eyes. They knew what they'd come to. But more importantly, the Levantine had been spared.

Now it was her turn to return fire. Yet, rather than the arsenal she'd brought with her, the lupine squared her shoulders.

She steeled herself, her crisp, black uniform spotless. Both hands going to clasp together at the small of her back, she looked back to KHER.

"I would like a line in now, please."

Though small in stature, Loklorien s'Ilancy stood tall, her eyes shifting to the spot that she knew would spring to life with the form of her husband.

His sallow eyes widened slightly at the sight of the incoming hologram, even as his hand rose to stay the gunner's next volley. What he was seeing was a ghost. And yet the veil had lifted. Decepis found the life force of his failed apprentice, clear and bright as a star.

The Dark Lord rose from his seat.

"Impossible..."

She let him stare, watching as he rose to his feet. The surprise in his voice was enough to satisfy her momentarily, and s'Il returned his shock with a level look of reproach. Like a mother casting disappointing eyes to a disobedient child, she allowed her gaze to linger.

Finally.

"Hello, Husband."

Hate-fired yellow eyes glared back at the visage of the Lupine.

"I left you to die." he growled, as if chiding fate, causality, and the galaxy itself for disobeying him.

"You did, didn't you." Her tone had very nearly a sing-song lilt as she spoke.

Her features betrayed nothing. No emotion. Simply a level expression that defied him as much as her inability to become one with the Force.

"And yet, here I am."

Her head angled slightly down then, as she looked at him from over the tops of her eyes as her voice became a low thrum.

"Do not act so surprised, Dan Thrule. You said so yourself, that we are both hard to kill."

His breath had caught in his throat the moment her body materialized from thin air, her voice cutting through the air on the bridge like a razorblade. His pulse quickened then, his eyes wide. She was alive?!

But it was what Dan said that snapped him from the shock, and Marlon Kori blinked furiously as he turned suddenly incredulous eyes to his superior.

"You what!?"

The Sith Lord's eyes turned to his underling in sudden annoyance. A hand that rested upon the ancient urn in Decepis' grasp raked fingers along the runic etchings along it's face.

"It is of no concern to you. You will obey me."

The terrible power of the dark side overrode any sense of surprise and betrayal. Marlon Kori belonged to the Dark Lord.

As he turned on Kori, s'Il used the momentary lapse to half-turn to KHER.

"Boost transmission," she hissed, "... I want every ship over Ossus to receive."

The avatar nodded in silence, his internal processors firing the holo of his Captain to each ship.

Satisfied, the elder Lupine once more turned back to the shimmering blue form of Darth Decepis.

"Thrule."

Her order was barked, arresting his attentions once more to her.

"I'll give you this one chance only," her entire demeanor became like a knife-edge, knowing that all over Ossus was now seeing and hearing her. She was a weapon drawn in protection, ready to be used.

"Stand down."

Aboard Levantine

Roused from his unconsciousness, Anbira came to on a bridge thick with chaos. The fear and despair hung as thick in the air as the smoke and the ozone stink of burned circuits. All around him, Anbira saw the stony, weary faces of the bridge crew still in fighting shape. Every officer at their post, and determined not to quit it until the fight was won or they were thrown into the maelstrom.

The next thing Anbira noticed was the quiet. The sounds of battle did not accompany the visual signs. There was an unnatural stillness here, like the center of a Kamino cyclone. The only thing to break that silence was the hologram at the fore of the bridge. It was the face of a woman he knew well, and one he did not expect to see again. The force of her words and her will soon drew eyes from their duty stations. Commander Dage was no exception.

Anbira slowly rose to stand, moving alongside the Levantine's skipper as everyone listened to the exchange.

The calm at the center of the storm was fleeting.

He knew it. That incredulous shock of those words uttered by Dan had been untrue. Or at least, he dearly hoped that was the case.

And as Knight Hicchoru moved to stand beside him, the lanky blonde couldn't help but slap a hand to the other man's shoulder.

"Ha!"

Samus Dage felt the first flutterings of hope, and as badly as he wanted to be patched back in, he knew that this conversation could only be between two people.

Aboard Novgorod

Captain Quez's staying hand was raised at his tactical officer to quell any possibility of misunderstanding. His face held staid composure, hiding the turmoil roiling his heart. Duty set against friendship. General Thrule had said that the Jedi had killed Lok, but here she was on the other side of the divide. If not that, then what?

He still had his orders. The Jedi were overreaching and threatening to usurp the Alliance. And even in that seemingly-airtight knowledge, his heart screamed against the notion.

This isn't right.

And even as he thought it, a fire stoked in his middle. He'd been placed in this chair because few people could make the difficult decisions. Well, they didn't get more difficult than this.

"Lok, how could you..." Cirr whispered almost inaudibly.

Darth Decepis stared across the chasm at his failed apprentice. She had failed him with her incompetence and lack of vision before, and now she foolishly sought to gamble everything in an insurrection doomed to failure. And yet...

The frown worn by the Sith Lord in it's natural state deepened severely as he felt the shift. The stirring of simple minds away from their intended purpose. Decepis sneered, grasping the urn in his hands tightly as he called upon the dark side to cement his hold over his minions. He'd come too far to be undone by his failed disciple.

"You won't stop me..." he goaded with a smile, "You feared me for years until you found the only thing you feared the most - being apart from me. Now, it's too late to make a difference. I will burn the feeble remains of the Jedi off the surface of Ossus, and scatter you across the stars as an afterthought."

The goading smile became a broad and wicked grin full of blackened teeth.

"I set this moment in motion a thousand years ago. I will rule this galaxy for a thousand years more after you and the Jedi have fallen to dust."

She let him speak, her mind and will working furiously as each word left his mouth. She began slowly at first, her thoughts reaching out beyond into the aether like searching tendrils. While there was no way that she could know everything of his power and strength, the Lupine had an intimate enough knowledge of the Sith Lord to work around many of his defenses.

He spoke of fear; her fear. Unsurprising. It was as a cycle. A well that was often revisited. In the past it had kept her tethered to him and under his heel. She'd been so terrified of being cast off that his lies and manipulations bound her tightly at his side, beholden to his every whim and desire. She had done such terrible things to remain with him, and each time he pulled at the delicate threads of her fears it brought her ever closer, entangling her in a web of lies that so very nearly destroyed her. But now...

Now it was tiresome.

Before, she had been half of a mind, unable to fully keep herself afloat. As a whole creature, the Lupine was ready to face her lifelong tormentor with grim determination.

There was no way that she would be able to salvage those aboard Dauntless, but she at least would have a better chance at those on the other ships of Task Force 42. The power she could feel from the Sith Lord was a familiar one; she had touched it herself, been almost swallowed by the evil it held. The binding strength of the Urn was great indeed, but even it had weaknesses. Weaknesses that only those who had touched it could know.

Like a wraith she slipped past each black, roiling arm that held firmly to so many souls.

Even as she watched the Sith Lord's frown deepen further, she drove onward. Her gaze never left his however, locked on his diseased, yellow eyes.

Invisible fingers wedged themselves into the cracks, prying away the layers of deceit that had wrapped themselves so tightly around the crew of Novgorod.

"A lot of things change in the span of a thousand years, Dearest."

A hand motion to KHER, and a split-second later the holo of the General was also projected to every ship in his fleet to allow all a view of the two who now stood facing each other.

Except, it was not General Thrule that their eyes fell upon. It was the Sith Lord, Darth Decepis.

A far cry from the man that they had all once known, the Sith was laid bare for all of those that she could pry from his grasp.

A trick of the eyes.

Captain Quez blinked in the moment of disbelief. Maybe what he was seeing was image degradation. The stirring around the bridge soon confirmed that it wasn't the case. The two holograms remained floating ahead locked in fierce debate. Commodore s'Ilancy, and...

...Cirrsseeto was at a loss for words. The hologram looked passingly like Dan, but as if he wore more time on his face than was possible. He looked beyond decrepit. Old, but also something unnaturally disturbing to his visage.

"Captain, what's going on?"

The voice of Yeoman Tashka broke Cirr's attention momentarily. He looked to the young officer, seeing the same concern reflected in her eyes. The same doubt. Everyone knew how tortuous this order was before. Now?

"What happened to the General?"

He turned back to the hologram, expecting to once again see the man he knew. The hero of the Alliance. He wasn't there. Or maybe?

Maybe he was.

A cold dread ran down Cirrsseeto's spine, and he licked suddenly dry lips.

"Somethjing terrrjible."

He'd lied to them about s'Ilancy, that much was true. And with a lie like that, he could be lying about so much more. How quick had he believed that the Jedi had betrayed them all? How had he let himself be deceived?

Cirrsseeto paced around the holographic visage of the man known as General Dan Thrule. Soon, every pair of eyes on the bridge were resting on the Captain once more. There were too many doubts. Whatever they did, they had to be right the first time. They wouldn't get a second chance.

"Open a shjip-wjide channel."

The comms officer complied, a trilling note sounding overhead indicating an all points announcement.

"Thjis jis the Captajin. As you know, we have been orrderred jinto battle agajinst the Jedji settlement on Ossus. Generral Thrrule says the Jedji have betrrayed the Alljiance and that the only way to save ourr cause jis to destrroy them."

His eyes tracked to the hologram of Commodore s'Ilancy.

"We arre an Alljiance of Rrebels. Most of us experrjienced the terrrorr of takjing that fjirrst step. Rrjiskjing jit all forr a futurre that prromjised us nothjing, but offerred us a chance jif we werre wjilljing to fjight. jIf our Alljiance jis gojing to surrvjive, then that spjirrjit has to carrry the day."

The crew on the bridge remained silent, and Cirrsseeto saw a hopeful glimmer in their eyes. The light within that compelled him onward.

"jI am about to djisobey a djirrect orrder. jI am about to commjit mutjiny agajinst a superrjiorr offjicerr jin open combat. Each of you now has a chojice. You may be compelled to rremove me frrom command and arrrest me. You may object conscjientjiously and qujit yourr post. Orr...jI hope that you rremajin at yourr statjions and fjight at my sjide. The Jedji arre not ourr enemy. They've come to ourr ajid everry tjime they'rre called. jI won't have thejirr ljight go out of the unjiverrse on my watch."

Captain Quez paused. If anyone on the bridge was going to act against this open mutiny, now was their chance. Lieutenant Col-Den drew his pistol from his holster slowly, his features full of conflict. Cirrsseeto tensed, his jaw tightening as he watched the man...as he placed the weapon in his Captain's hand and quit his post.

No one else moved. An eternity seemed to pass.

"Alrrjight..." Cirr breathed out, looking down at Col-Den's blaster.

"Then let's get on wjith thjis mutjiny. May the Forrce be wjith us."

Easing down into his chair once again, Captain Quez gave the hologram of s'Ilancy one more look.

"Be wjith us all..."

Moments later, Novgorod's engines lit in full sublight acceleration, breaking formation on Task Force 42's right flank as it set course to cross the divide.

Kori found himself gritting his teeth, unable to take his eyes from the holo. There was a small part of him, buried deep, that felt wrong, but it was overridden by something far more solid and unrelenting. His features twisted in a scowl, his brow furrowed as a lieutenant quietly addressed him.

"Sir, I think you need to see this," came the urgent whisper.

Tearing his gaze away, Marlon took the few short steps to the lieutenant's station.

"Yes?"

The officer didn't speak, only gestured to his terminal and the battleground it projected. It wasn't what he expected to see, and an instant later a hateful fury boiled to the surface, and he gave a snarl while turning to the General.

"Novgorod is breaking ranks, Sir! Keppler, as well!"

The Dark Lord could feel his hold breaking on the crews of the two rogue ships. A hateful frown crossed his features as he reclined in his seat.

"They are traitors to the Alliance. Kill them all."

With the order given, the remainder of Task Force 42 began to lock onto targets of opportunity. Turbolaser batteries began tracking the fleeing Novgorod and Keppler, raking them with quickly-intensifying fire as the two ships sped away.