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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 2485981" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 264: AftermathIt took an eternity, but finally, Shadow managed to get Jyren responding again. After an even longer time she got him away from the hangar and they headed back to what was definitely the main bridge. It wasn’t all over. There was still the matter of the war droids. But it took far too long to actually reach the bridge again, as Shadow was forced to nearly carry Jyren the entire way. She was ignoring the burn marks and cuts across the walls as she retraced their steps. This was not the time to dwell on what had happened...at least, not for her. One of them had to remain focused.    Reaching the still lightless bridge nearly a half an hour after Ket had been killed, Shadow looked around to attempt and identify things. But the few consoles she could see under the windows were nothing like she was used to. It was nearly identical to the controls of the ships in the rest of the galaxy...something Jyren should be familiar with.    “Hey,” she said quietly, poking him in the side as she took his arm off of her shoulder. She turned to face him and looked up into eyes that were far too out of focus for him to be actually seeing, “Hey...come on, Jyren. I need your help.”    He didn’t react, and so she attempted another strategy. [We don’t have time for this now. Please...wake up, Jyren.]    His eyes glanced down to her, and though she didn’t feel like it, she forced a weak smile on her face. Shadow was no expert on making anyone feel any better, but at this point, she wasn’t above at least trying. When she came to decide he was finally paying attention, she motioned over to one of the center consoles under the largest of the window sections, “I need you to bring the systems online. Find out what you can about the rest of these ships and how many droids there are.”    Slowly, Jyren nodded, and she helped him over to the console. For a moment, he just stared at it, but then seemed to find the right thing and hit a couple of switches. On the window, a series of glowing symbols appeared. Jyren looked up and stared at it with confusion on his face. Shadow ignored it a moment and instead focused on trying to remember how to read Mrrakesh. It had been a long time.    “The middle one,” Shadow said, pointing to it but not actually touching the window. Jyren glanced from her and then to the symbols. After a moment, he reached up and touched it, and the entire ‘screen’ shimmered before another series of symbols and a couple vertical bars appeared.    Looking it over, Shadow relayed the information, “I think the ships are all slaved to this one.”    “And the droids?” Jyren’s voice was almost surprising to hear, as it was the first thing he’d actually said for over half an hour.    “It looks like these are all of the ships...” Shadow trailed off a moment and sighed, “I think they’re all here.”    Though he didn’t say anything else, Shadow picked up on a thought that appeared through the chaos that was still engulfing the link. Latching onto it and making sense of it, she nodded, “Can you plot the course?”    Jyren looked up at the odd symbols, “Read them for me.”    It took another half hour. After confirming that all of the ships were definitely slaved together, the only trouble was reading through the subsections to find the way to plot courses and then Jyren was able to work things out from there. When it was done, his eyes shifted from focusing on the symbols to the nearby Alraxian star.    “It will take an hour,” Jyren spoke very quietly as the scene outside the viewport began to shift.    They stood there in silence then, Jyren simply staring out as the star came into the center of the viewport. Shadow watched it a moment before sighing to herself and looking over to Jyren. The obvious things had been solved...but there was still a handful of others that needed to be dealt with. Later, though.    “Lets go,” she said, bringing an arm around his waist to walk him back to where the X-Wing was. Even for Shadow, the next few things were simply a blur. Unimportant and easily glazed over as her mind was dwelling on the other things. The next thing she knew they were back in the X-Wing and she was shakily flying them out of the hole and back to Alraxia below. Thankfully, none of the ships around them fired their weapons, but that was one of the smaller things Shadow had made sure was disabled while the course for the ships was set. She could fly the thing straight, at least.“They’ll come for the ships, won’t they?” Jyren’s voice made her jump, as it broke the(admittedly uncomfortable) silence without any warning.Though she had a slight idea of what he meant, Shadow was not ready to believe he’d been digging through all her thoughts just yet, “What do you mean?”    “The Mrrakesh,” he clarified in the same deadpan, half-whispered tone, “They’re going to come for these ships.”“They’ll come for more than that,” she whispered, now angry at herself for not hiding those thoughts in the link. It was not something he needed to worry about. It was her problem. She was the Empress now.    But Jyren also quickly picked up on what she had hinted at, “An alliance?”    “That’s what they’ll call it,” Shadow said with a slow nod as the X-Wing slowly began its descent through the planet’s upper atmosphere, “But the Empire will just become a property of their Coalition.”    She said ‘the Empire’...she meant herself. But at this point, those two were one in the same. Jyren let out a long sigh, the loudest noise he’d made yet, “And there’s nothing we can do?”    “It will ensure peace,” Shadow whispered, trying to convince herself of that as much as anyone else.    “So make your people slaves instead of letting Halpak slaughter them?”    Blunt words...forceful, and with a touch of venom attached. Especially in the ‘your people’ part. Especially since Jyren sure as Hell meant himself more than anyone else. It silenced Shadow for a long time. Even though it was utterly tactless, he was right. He was right and she knew it before he’d even said it. She turned to look over the mountains below as they passed over them. There had to be a way...some loophole or...    Her mind latched onto something. An idea that would be pushing everything, but could possibly work. In front of her, she saw Jyren’s ears swivel back in her direction. Obviously, he picked up on it through the link. So very quietly, she said, “I have an idea...”    Like everything through the entire flight, the majority of the conversation was held through the link. Emotions and feelings relayed the necessary information far better than any words could.    “And...you’re sure it would work?” Jyren finally asked, sounding more like his old self again. There was at least a genuine sense of surprise, bordering on shock, that was seeping into his tone.    Shadow shook her head, “I’m not but...”    “But its worth a try.”    She nodded. It was worth a try. Was worth a try and... “It would make our people feel stronger if we are all unified.”    “So this is going to have to be public?” Jyren nearly whimpered. So he was as worried about it as she was.    But again, Shadow could only nod, “I don’t like that anymore than you do...but after everything that has happened and all that we’ve said and done...they expect it anyway. And we’ll have to no matter what...my mother would have...have seen to it...”    Jyren nodded slowly, and then mumbled very quietly, “So do we get to start using my name or are we still stuck with BlueIce?”</blockquote>

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