Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ankh-Morpork Guard" data-source="post: 3669035" data-attributes="member: 10079">Chapter 497: Coincidence?When Venda’s transport exited hyperspace, she was surprised to find more than just the usual traffic that came and went from the busy planet of Fondor. Instead, she found a battle...and a vicious one, at that. It took a few moments after glancing at the sensor panel on the side of the cockpit to actually determine what was going on, though. There were hundreds of ships, a great many of which were displaying New Republic IFF signals, another large amount displaying Hapan signals, and with the others just...blank. That meant Vong, probably.    Venda shifted her chair to look out the viewport to see it with her own eyes. To the right, only half-visible was Fondor and its various, distant shipyards. Everywhere else, off a ways from her ship a safe distance, were various grey sections of space that were ships, and flashes of red, green, and orange. Laser fire.    Her ship sat there, in the outer reaches of the system for a long five minutes as she just stared at it all, her mind working. The Jendari gave her the coordinates to Fondor. They sent her to Fondor. She’d never, in all of her life, heard of a Jendari in the galaxy before...and now, apparently, they knew about Fondor. And they’d given Venda a simple set of coordinates as she was leaving to go there. Did they know there was a battle?    At this point, Venda found she couldn’t put that out of her mind. Everything about it was odd and...    She felt a ripple in the Force that caught her attention and caused her to turn to look at the sensor board. Nothing. She looked back out at the viewport and then saw something. It was the same beam of energy that Rulae had seen, but Venda was able to watch the destruction from farther out as the beam cut through a huge swath of ships.    In that moment, a racking scream echoed through her head, causing Venda to double over and almost curl up in an odd pain on the control consoles in front of her. Thousands of people, in one instant, had just died. Thousands...and they weren’t Yuuzhan Vong. She wouldn’t have felt that.    As Venda recovered her breathing, she looked up to see no more flashes of light. Reeling from the pain in the Force and trying to figure out what was going on, she turned again to look at the sensor board. There were a handful of Hapan signals and the what was left of the un-marked ships were moving off...retreating.    The Yuuzhan Vong were falling back.    But...    What had that been? It had killed so many! From the looks of the sensor board, mostly all Hapans, too! Was that how they were going to have to defeat the Vong?! If that was the point the war had reached...should they even continue fighting?!    The feeling of pain through the Force had faded, though it was hard to shake the echo of it out of her mind. But despite this, she felt something else. It was distant, like a tiny candle burning far away, but it was there and...and calling out.    A Jedi?    Grasping onto something she could understand, Venda focused on the feeling. It was faint. Faint and...fading. Injured? Maybe. Calling for help. But it faded in and out. No, it wasn’t fading it just wasn’t consistent! And it felt vaguely familiar...    Considering what she just saw, there were many, many other things Venda could be doing. In fact, the comm board was beeping. Likely a New Republic ship noticed her and was trying to figure out who she was. But that could wait. Everything could wait. There was a Jedi alive somewhere in there and he needed help...and for all Venda knew, she was the only one who heard it.    Venda clicked off the comm message, too busy focusing on the faint feeling through the Force to bother with anything else, but did make sure to transmit an...Old Republic IFF signal. At least it wasn’t Vong. Then, taking the ship’s controls, Venda followed the Force and took the ship in towards the system.    It wasn’t long before Venda was passing wreckage of Hapan starships. Large, circular panels from their mighty Battle Dragons were everywhere. It had been a huge fleet...and one shot from something had reduced it to nothing. Venda made sure not to look too close, for fear of seeing bodies. Here and there, she could see movement, but it always, thankfully, turned out to be New Republic starfighters heading back to the main fleet, which was still a good ways off to her port side. There hadn’t been any other efforts to contact her, and no one had fired on her, so Venda figured she was safe for the moment. The Navy likely had their own problems to deal with.    In another few moments, she was maneuvering through what looked like a small asteroid field. But Venda knew better. This was what was left of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet that hadn’t retreated. Here, she couldn’t identify what was what. It all looked alien and oddly disturbing to her. After being able to speak with a starship, it was hard to fly through the debris of other living ships, despite not knowing their sentience, without seeing them as gutted life forms with their insides strewn across space for everyone to see.    Someone...please...anyone...    Words.    There were no images, but she felt the words. Venda cut the thrust to the engines and looked around, both with her eyes and through the Force. She was close. The feeling wasn’t much stronger but it was clearer now that she was close. Or now that she thought she was...there!    Quickly, Venda adjusted her heading and directed the ship towards a point not far from where she was. It looked to be on the edge of the Vong debris, and it took some very careful maneuvering to not run into anything. She soon wasn’t following just the Force, either. There was a glint of metal that caught the light of Fondor’s star, and she knew exactly where she was headed now.    When Venda got the ship a little closer, she saw a small escape pod. Small was an understatement. It was only a few meters long, if that. She got in close enough to use her ship’s meager tractor beam and carefully pulled the small escape pod in close. The ship she was given by the Jendari was just large enough to pull it into a cargo bay, and so Venda, after quickly checking that the bay could be sealed safely, opened it, carefully pulled the pod in, and then closed and re-pressurized the cargo section.    And then, immediately, she got up and headed there. It was a short walk to the cargo bay, and the ship was old enough to have a small green light next to the door to indicate it was pressurized. She’d never actually seen one of those before. Where did the Jendari get this thing?!    The door swished open easily when Venda hit the switch, and there, sitting rather unceremoniously in the small cargo bay, was the escape pod that suddenly looked a great deal smaller now that she was right next to it. It took a bit of searching, but Venda found the hatch, noted there were no viewports of any kind, then just opened the thing, hoping that the sudden silence in the Force wasn’t due to a death.    Opening the hatch was easier thought about than done. When she twisted the lever around then pulled on it, the thing didn’t move. Venda grumbled something under her breath that even she wasn’t sure of, and then just pulled harder. There was a hiss, a crack, and then the hatch snapped open to reveal two occupants crammed into the tiny escape pod that barely had room for one.    Staring up at her with wide eyes was Tobias, the last person she’d have ever expected to find...and he looked like as surprised. He was also covered in blood and other liquids that she decided were best left unidentified, and looked, generally, terrible. Crammed next to him was the Omwati Jedi Master who she barely knew, and Venda quickly realized that Master Ral wasn’t moving...though she could feel him through the Force. Unconscious, then.    But she just stood there staring, and Venda had a very good reason for it.    The Jendari had sent her here.    They had sent Venda to this battle all the way across the galaxy from the Alraxian Empire without an explanation, just a smile and a set of coordinates that she for some reason decided to follow. And there, at those exact coordinates, she’d just found the son of the Empress floating in an escape pod, and looking like he’d just barely survive the fight of his life.    There was no such thing as coincidence. The Force had a way of making things happen as they should, when they should. But this was different. This wasn’t the Force.    The Jendari had sent her.    They knew. Somehow, they knew.</blockquote>

Verification