D E S T I N E D
TALAY
MANDALORIAN BUFFER ZONE
HIGH REPUBLIC SOUTHERN SYSTEMS
Smoke rolled low across the broken ridge, clinging to the rock as if it refused to leave, it’s thick darkness melding into the indigo hue of Talay’s perpetual shadows.
Bastila Sal-Soren cut through it anyway.
Her purple lightsaber snapped to life mid-stride, the hum clean and immediate as the first stormtrooper rounded the outcrop. He didn’t even manage a full syllable before the saber tore through white armour in a spray of sparks. The body hit the ground with sparks and the smell of burnt ozone.
From her flank another trooper fired.
Bastila didn’t bother slowing down. She angled her blade, sent the bolt screaming off into the rocks, and took his rifle with a sharp, horizontal cut.
“See,” she called over her shoulder as blaster fire erupted around them, “this is the part where people usually say ‘we should’ve brought Brandyn.’”
A volley of red bolts chased her as she vaulted over a collapsed barricade, cloak snapping behind her. She landed hard among the troopers, saber flashing in tight, brutal arcs. No flourish. No mercy. One went down clutching a smoking chest plate; another was lifted bodily off his feet and slammed into the duracrete with enough force to leave him reconsidering every life choice he’d ever made.
To her right, blaster fire answered back at the coming Stormtroopers, it was quick, it was violent and and very much not from a Jedi.
It was her sister, Blaire. Not the more common of combinations, but when the emergency alert had sounded they had been mid-flight back to Naboo after the Mon Gala N1 race and one thing led to another.
Bastila felt the familiar spike of fear and adrenaline through the Force, threaded with something stubborn and unyielding. Blaire took cover behind a shattered supply crate, leaned out, and fired a controlled burst that dropped one trooper and sent another scrambling for cover with a scorched pauldron.
“Because,” Bastila continued, as she deflected a bolt aimed squarely towards Blaire’s hiding place and flicking it into a rock face before crashing down herself behind the crate with a smirk to her sister, “he would’ve cleared this in five minutes and then lectured us about situational awareness.”
The Imperial warband had turned the Republic outpost into a graveyard by the time they had got here. Burned comms. Torn banners. Clone bodies still cooling where they’d fallen. This wasn’t a patrol, this was ground burning as they retreated from the core. They wouldn’t have stayed here long, not if the two Sal-Soren’s hadn’t rocked up.
Bastila exhaled once, sharp and controlled, and rose from behind the crate, before pressing forward again.
“Left flank,” she called, already moving. “And if you get hit, I’m not carrying you. I’m emotionally available, not heroically."
She didn’t look back. She trusted Blaire, she would work on her own instincts which while not as trained as the three Jedi siblings, were fine tuned and sharpened through experience beyond any of them.
Boots thundered in the distance. Imperial voices cut through the smoke, she could hear orders being barked, which meant the formation was tightening. More troopers? Heavier kit? There was someone competent in charge it seemed.
Bastila angled her blade downward, purple light washing over scorched stone and broken armor.
“On the bright side,” she added dryly, “if we do survive this, Brandyn never gets to say ‘I told you so.’”
