A flash of red-gold light lit up his cockpit as they sprayed outward, tagging various parts of the thing's solar panel.
Choosing rather to break off than risk any further damage, that had bought just enough time for Raven's TIE Defender to break off, entering the shipyard.
I supposed...her part in this fight is over. She must have been off to go pursue the two who landed.
Turning his X-Wing about, Dyrien brought everything to bear on the returning TIE.
<hr>
He narrowed deep, dark eyes as the hatch doors sealed shut with a loud snap, returning both gravity and oxygen to the room in an instant. Behind the safety of durasteel and transparisteel, he watched, hands clutching tightly to the metal object on his leather belt.
His orange and black cloak and hood draped over his body to add to the silhouette that shrouded his features. Perhaps the only possible sight one could make out over his visage were the implanted glowing red eyes, something enhanced through surgery that his master had assigned each of his three apprentices.
This man was the second of the three, identified by the orange flares over his shrouds. A thirst for battle began to touch his lips, like a lust in his body he craved a fight.
This feeling was only enhanced by the prickling sensations riding up and down his flesh like a thousand needles penetrating his skin. The allure of the Dark Side of the Force. It was so unmistakeable, so exquisitvely perfect.
Any doubts were washed away immediately with the dark nauseating feeling entering his innards. A feeling as unmistakeable as that of hot or warm.
That caused those battle-lusting lips to curl back into a wickedly devilish grin. A contented sigh whispered out in eager anticipation.
Come to me... he mouthed, watching the TIE Defender take up its final positions in the docking bay. It was undoubtably the source of the Dark Side he'd felt all along. It was undoubtably the same person he'd felt in space, the woman whom his master had taken such a keen interest.
Eilar smirked just a bit, unhooking the lightsaber from his belt finally, holding it out in his right hand, gripped loosely but readily. The Dark Jedi watched with blissful glee as the hatch to the Defender popped open, and a lean, feline like figure emerged, draped in the black flight suit of an Imperial pilot.
It was a necessity to fly in any of the TIE models. For the sake of speed, most of the normal essentials - such as life support and artificial gravity - had been completely removed, making the Imperial craft completely nimble and agile.
The pilot was kept alive only by his flight suit.
Though this apparently Force adept pilot was surprisingly small, even for a pilot. It was no secret that those who flew were generally shorter than the average military person, but their entire body was much smaller, much lesser shaped than any man he'd ever encountered.
Not to matter, he remembered well the holocrons of Master Yoda, and how he single handidly could defeat almost any Sith Lord in a duel of arms.
That thought caused a burning sensation of excitement to ride through his burning veins. He'd yearned since his graduation for a fight worthy of his skills.
Eilar and his brothers of the Dark Side, Yidren and Qal, were trained each in a special art, enhanced by the Force. Eilar had had the pleasure of being trained in the ways of martial combat, rivaled by none of the other students with his lightsaber or hands for that matter.
Qal had been trained to be an elite starfighter pilot, better than, possibly, even the pilots of the Republic's Rogue Squadron. Before he'd broken the Force Meld that had bound the three students, Eilar had felt his companion completely overwhelming the small strike force of Kiyarans.
Not since Corran Horn had he ever heard of such a skilled and able-bodied starfighter pilot.
Yidren had the most difficult and rigorous training of the three however. Being the eldest under their master, he was taught the ways of sorcery and Sith magic. The embers rekindled in the furnace of a Dark Jedi, there was no telling how powerful he would become.
If Eilar intended to become the new master, Yidren would be most difficult to dispose of.
But for now he remained loyal to a T...and their master had ordered the death or capture of this impudent Sith or Jedi figure that had emerged amidst the fighting between the Kiyarans and the Serasians.
Staring at the feline figure, he grinned pale ivory teeth. Accidents happened, in a fight...death sometimes could not be prevented.
To his utter astonishment, as the small figure removed their glaringly polished helmet, long, dark hair fell to their shoulders, bobbing there. They turned about, her deep green eyes staring about curiously.
Eilar would be fighting a woman.
Looking downward at the deck, he simply snarled lightly.
All's fair love and war.
With that assurance to himself he pressed the control panel nearby, hissing open the door before him with a start, squeezing the lightsaber he clutched tightly in his palm.
<hr>
Dyrien's eyes widened for just a moment as the TIE Advanced went screaming by his own fighter, green lasers leading the way and burning away what was left of his fore shields. Cursing under his breath he flipped a switch, evening them out and giving a hard right pull on the yoke while easing off on the left rudder, pressing down as hard as he could on the right.
The TIE Advanced was far quicker, but he just managed to align himself for one quick shot, his red-gold bolts blazing across the aft shields. The pilot however was good and was not going to just settle to lose his deflector shields after one run. Pressing his yokes first forward, he appeared to be going into a dive.
Expecting deception, the colonel pulled back hard with all his might, shooting his X-Wing as quickly upward as he could. The inertial compensator was unable to keep up, and he was glued back to his seat. Just as he'd suspected, the Advanced pulled up, and then shot itself straight once again, racing back toward the shipyard.
Dyrien did not miss a heartbeat and in the split second between the readjustment and the turn, he unleashed once again once he'd brought his vessel to bear once more. This time Gyro let out a whistle of what must have been droid excitement.
Across his HUD, the back of the TIE craft turned red, indicating a loss of shields. In an obviously panicked state, perhaps the first time that Dyrien had seen this one panic, the Imperial model craft dipped and swerved, a jittery tactic some pilots used in an attempt to simply minimize any number of hits.
Interesting... he thought,
this one thinks I'm good.
As some of the shields began to recharge, the Advanced did a sharp starboard turn, and again Dyrien was on him like stink on Bantha. While he came in though, he saw two other surviving X-Wings, coming in in a close formation letting loose their own series of blasts, hoping to score a few hits in for themselves.
None of them hit, but a concussion missile let out from the missile launcher of the Serasian fighter left an ionic trail in the flash of an instant. Before the Kiyaran pilot could respond, the warhead detonated itself against the duratseel hull, throwing sparks and debris out in every direction.
Utilizing the moment of panic, surprise and despair, the TIE Advanced pilot dipped once more, pulled up, and hovered underneath the incoming X-Wing, making a quick get away. Probably giving himself enough time to energize his shields enough for another pass.
Gripping tightly the yokestick in his hand, Colonel Dyrien re-aligned his starfighter in the same path as this tricky Dark Jedi, Serasian, whatever he was.
Quite frankly, he no longer cared. The only thing that mattered to him was that he walked away from this fight and that TIE Advanced didn't. He narrowed his eyes with grim determination and pushed down on the yokesticks at his feet.
Payback was a @#%$.
<hr>
The Imperial and Serasians ships approached one another carefully. Each side measured the other with a degree of caution. However on Seras one thing was drilled into the head of every commander:
The Serasian Regency would never know defeat.
So who better to not know defeat against than the Empire?
The two flotillas, as though the two largest children on the block sizing each other up before a fight, floated near one another in the Centari Quadrant. The commanders eyed one another, simply waiting for the other to make an action.
The Serasians did, in a blanket of turbolaser fire.
<hr>
Raven was more than a little taken back and startled by the feeling of the Force when she exitted her starfighter. As though to add to it all however, her heart raced at something she could not know and immediately conjured her lightsaber to her palm.
At that moment the door across from her hissed open, and she pivoted on the balls of her feet. A man stood there, draped in almost ceremonial garments. And yet he was barely clothed, with only loose black pants and an eerily familiar orange-black shroud that folded into a hood.
She had seen these before, in the museum in the Jedi Academy.
Her father and Kyle Katarn had held off the original men who wore them. Reborn Jedi he'd called them whenever he would recall his stories from the days of the Imperial Wars. He explained how their feelings in the Force felt wrong, as though they were intruders.
The feeling one got from a stranger entering your home. But this man did not feel that way, he felt like the rancid feeling of death.
The painful allure of the Dark Side. A cold and sullied feeling that left her alone, so completely alone. And finally, at that moment, at the feeling of another who so bitterly opposed all that was good, right, and truthful...she began to doubt herself.
Herself, Zerxes, the Sith, all this false bravado she had gone on about for so long. Her glory days as a Jedi occured to her, memories of her long walks and talks with her love Daren, the battles she fought against the Yuuzhan Vong, and the bliss she felt whenever she would see a child smile.
That was something that could never come from the Dark Side.
As though a light had been switched on inside her body, driving out the darkness, the entire exterior of Raven changed in an instant. The dark and vile figure that Zerxes had melded into her was gone.
The loving, almost childish Jedi she had always been was back.
"You are the one," she heard, echoing across the deck and bulkheads in the room, "whom my master has stated as disturbing our plans. It is you who defeated the Serasians." His voice was heavy and hateful, malice dripping from his tone.
She clutched her lightsaber in hand and spread her feet, shifting her weight and balance evenly.
"Aye," she called back, feeling the serenity that was the Force re-enter her, filling her body and ending the longing she so desperately had felt for so long. "And what does it matter to one such as yourself? I presume you be the one who shot down the poor captain outside."
Her eyes were like fire, though instead of a fire of harm and malice, one that would char all in its path, this was instead a warm flame, intended to heat the night. To warm the cold and help the weak. The fire that burned in her heart was one of light, not one of dark.
Adrenaline began to circulate through her body, in anticipation of undoubtable battle.
"Aye," he echoed, taking a step forward. In his hand she spied a metal rod, no doubt a lightsaber of his own. "That would be me. I offer you this chance once, woman of little accord, simply because my master so wishes it." He extended a black gloved hand, fingers extended. "Join us."
At any other time the offer would have seemed perfect, a chance to seize the reins of power from an obviously strong Dark Jedi and take under her command all his assets. But with this new hope that she felt inside of her, she had to do she could to supress a chuckle.
"Not in your wildest dreams," she remarked. Before the words even exitted her mouth the predictable
snap-hiss of his lightsaber reverberated throughout the room, his red blade emitting outward as he ran toward her. This was what he wanted.
In like she ignited her own blade, the white-purple shooting outward as though a testament against him. Holding the weapon downward in a defensive position, she waited.
<hr>
The X-Wings swerved and ducked under one another, now playing off each other in an attempt to destroy the pesky TIE Advanced that had found a challenge in the Kiyaran colonel. Ducking, weaving, and spinning, all four fighters moved in a seemingly ceremonial dance.
Two of the X-Wings had been obliterated, two very good friends of Colonel Dyrien, two very good men. Leaving only three behind, they were now trying all they could to pin down and keep the TIE Advanced between them.
Every once in awhile they would trade shots, sometimes damaging the Kiyaran starfighters, sometimes damaging the Imperial model craft. But surely the latter was weakening and it showed in his suddenly erratic behavior.
That was what Dyrien had wanted to see. Panic, erraticy, fear in the enemy.
Dropping down below the other fighters and lowering his speed, he moved in in an attempt to finish off the TIE Advanced once and for all.
<hr>
Raven took a quick side step in response to the first lunge, catching the arcing swing of the lightsaber with a snap of her wrists. The sound of crackling energy volleyed back and forth between the red and violet blades snapped throughout the hangarbay, seeming to only entice the Dark Jedi.
He was thriving on this and Raven could see it in his eyes, those deep, red eyes.
His strength was far greater than her's, and she knew in a match of brute force she would be no match. Therefore the Jedi girl withdrew her blade and took a step back, unbalancing the foe for just a moment.
At first he stumbled forward just a bit, but he rebuttled and managed to catch an incoming swing for his back by lifting his arms and twisting the pommel in his hands, catching the purple behind him.
A swift adjust of his footing let him throw the blade off and bring his arm around for a pair of slashes. Raven leapt backward, falling on her heels and letting the lightsaber she held drop to her waist before lunging forward with a thrust.
This two was caught and spun around by Eilan. That sinister grin played his features almost sadistically as he riposted the strike to be met with another parry.
A dance had begun between the two, a dance that no other pair of individuals could possibly hope to compare to. How could one keep up without the use of the Force?
Deadly sparks flew from their blades with each thrash and slam of the two opposing energies. Their feet slid against and moved about the floor, dragging with a scraping noise or thudding with a missed kick.
If one were to witness the event they would be forced to simply stand and watch, caught completely off guard by the illuminating light show dazzled by the parries and thrusts or slashes.
The Dark Jedi had to admit, for a woman she was surprisingly good. None had ever stood this long against him before, much less had not even begun to tire.
Dodging another pair of swings and then parrying a hack from above, he caught the attempt with a horizontal block. Again the two were caught together in a moment of crackling energy, though this time Eilan was forced to arch his back, much to his own surprise.
"Might I get the pleasure of your name?" he managed to ask amidst the press. Raven found herself caught off guard completely, almost disarmed by the statement. But at the feeling of his strength trying to throw off her blade, she rebuttled and took a step forward.
"Raven...Raven Skywalker," she responded, in turn withdrawing her hold over him and ducking instinctively. The Dark Jedi, as soon as he had been released, rolled the pommel about in his hand and slashed ferociously, a swooshing sound crying out as his blade hit only air.
Raven seized the opportunity and shot out her foot, twisting her body in a hard sweep. Coming in contact with the back of his legs, Eilan was thrown first into the air before slamming painfully into his back and hitting the floor.
His red lightsaber sizzled from his grip, sliding across the floor and deactivating without feeling the clutch of its master. Still clutching her's tightly, the woman jumped up herself, placing a foot on the chest of her fallen foe as though to brace him into place.
She aimed her weapon downward.
"Now I give you one chance...join
us," she insisted, in almost a pleading tone.
The Dark Jedi's expression softened, the light in his eyes seeming to dim. His entire body slowed, the tenseness almost disappearing completely. The calmness over his visage was almost eerie.
And for a moment Raven thought he would consider the offer.
A tense moment occured then, a moment of silence only violated by the hum of the Jedi's lightsaber that stood only centimeters from the man's face. His breathing was heavy, lifting her foot up and down as his chest heaved.
She felt his hand wiggle slightly, and a thought raced through her head. Before it could even register she heard an igniting snap.
Before wasting another moment she thrusted her blade forward. There was a grunt, a whining moan of the blade...and Eilan's wrist went limp, the strength of his body resigned to so little that he could not even hold his own hand.
Raven collapsed to the floor, disengaging her lightsaber and feeling the nauseating and macabre emotion that could only come from death.
The realization hit her and there was no way to deny it. She had just killed a man.
<hr>
Dyrien's HUD turned completely red as the TIE Advanced before him began to slow. Lazily it seemed as though it were turning, but there was no way the enraged colonel was going to let this chance slip by.
He squeezed down on the red trigger, letting loose wave after wave of scarlet blasts. His cockpit was lit up, smoke drifted and he could not see. But he did not care.
He did not let up, blast after blast after blast shot straight out. Gyro whistled something in protest, but Dyrien wasn't listening. He was too caught up in the pleasure of it all.
Finally, when he eased up on the trigger, he saw...nothing. To his absolute and complete pleasure, he saw nothing. Nothing at all but a few chunks of solar panel, indicating that at one point there had indeed been a starfighter there.
Once, but no longer.
As Dyrien eased back into his pilot's seat, he allowed a grin to play his features. A grin that was only enhanced by the calls of excitement emitted over the intercom from his fellow surviving pilots.
Vengeance was a sweet taste.
"
Mosquito Unit, report in please," he said into his comm unit, letting his X-Wing drift to almost no speed as it came over the top of the enormous shipyard.
"
Mosquito Unit reporting, we have seized most of the shipyard...the enemy is in full retreat, we have them pinned down in one section, but they have a hooded man with them and this is definitely complicating things," came back the unorthodox response. Dyrien blinked a couple times.
"What kind of complications
Mosquito Unit?" he asked cautiously.
"The Dark Jedi kind."
"Sir!" one of the two pilots, Captain Adalgi, cried out in fear. "Seven, eight, nine, twelve marks coming in at point five six."
Dyrien looked up at his sensors where several red blips had begun to surface. He felt panic began to seep into his system. Another pilot's voice blared over the comm.
"Another dozen sir," cried Captain Greten. "TIE Bombers."
And Gyro indicated that there were at least twenty four Interceptors...squints. So there were forty-eight fighters coming.
Forty-eight Serasians coming to level the shipyard. Rather destroy it than let the Kiyarans get their hands on it. Rather kill their own men then let them fall in the hands of the enemy.
"Reform!" he yelled, moving his X-Wing about to face the direction of the incoming fighters.
It was a horrific sight to see on visual...the forty-eight...sixty starfighters as numerous it seemed as the stars. Sixty starfighters against three X-Wings and an empty Corvette.
But if this was how he was going to go down...
"My men..." he said quietly, looking to his port out of the hatch to where he saw Greten pulling onto his side, exhausted and limping. He looked starboard, where the young Adalgi was frightened but ready, the ever valiant soldier. "Be ready...for if this is to be our end...let it be one that is written for all time in the archives of Kiyar..."
He looked back forward and pressed downward on his rudders. No one said a word, no one said a thing. They simply drifted into the fray.
