Source of Origin: Chapter I

.:: Prologue ::.

Fading to White

She could only assume that she was drowning.

A southeast wind ran brisk currents through the tall, sun-bleached prairie grass and turned it into a seething golden ocean. The smell was incredible; she turned with a smile and a question already on her tongue-

The blossoming screams sent shivers of pained delight down her spine. Her own breathing sounded hollow and rattling as it skittered along the metallic interiors-

'-I already told you! We've lost the scouts that were supposed to screen our movements-"

A bubble of silence seemed to swell throughout the area, starting where the two of them stood, alone, in a silent battle of wills. It seemed as if all the known universe was holding its breath, waiting for the next stroke of doom...

'She doesn't appear to have weathered the journey well.'

Blinding light, the scent of sun-warmed skin...

'No. Even in these last moments, we can not forget that what we are asking of her mind is something that walks the razor edge between a miracle and an impossibility...'

Moans of the dying, the world was painted with blood. She was intoxicated with it; the pain and the glory a pleasant mixture that dispersed like cool water over her burning muscles and tendons, keeping her alert and alive when everyone else around her was falling-

'But she's come so far. Surely the worst has passed?'

Their laughter punctuated the anxious whispers that filled the high-vaulted marble hall. Three little spots of light, carefree and defiant as they darted through and scattered groups of their huddled, nervous peers-

'-Do you even remember? Can you? I stripped bare my soul and laid it at your feet, I ripped out my heart, still beating, and offered it up to you, -'

...The planet's slightly acidic rainwater had eroded away pieces of her face, but most prominently were two canyons that ran, like tear trails, down to her chin-

'No. The worst has only begun.'

Her mind was on fire, and the visions were burning along with the rest. She opened her mouth to scream, to protest as her soul was shredded and her psyche raped, but a flood of saline water filled her lungs and stifled her death cry.

.:: Chapter I ::.

Hang-Overs and Fireworks

'Wake up, damn you!'

Brin Ah'Dye stirred weakly, her head screaming protests at each movement. Strangely, she seemed to be responsible for only half of them.

'What's going on?' she tried to ask, but the question came out in a series of unintelligible Gammorean-esque grunts.

There was an aggravated sigh above her as Brin raised herself unsteadily to her elbows, still trying to figure out how the world could spin so much. She hadn't drank that much last night...

'Where's Lowethan?' Brin mumbled after flapping her arms pathetically at her sides for a moment.

'Your 'pazaak' partner from last night is undoubtedly at his battle station, probably firing on our own ships thanks to the hang-over you gave him.'

Brin's vision cleared just long enough for her to realize she was being dragged bodily from her bed by a robust ensign. His nagging voice sounded familiar...

'Trask,' Brin giggled, 'you've turned into a wookie!'

His only response was to release Brin's arms abruptly, dumping her hard on the cold metal-decked floor of First Lieutenant Lowethan's quarters. Brin's retaliatory swipe came five seconds too late, and in any case was a good three feet from where Trask had been standing.

'Sithspit,' the smuggler growled as she struggled to regain her feet, 'Trask, I take it back... you wouldn't leave a defenseless civilian alone to die, would you?'

Brin's dire situation was finally beginning to register in her synthehol-clouded mind. The answering silence ran ominously of her dwindling survival chances.

Sudden angry footsteps sent reverberating echoes through the smuggler's already bombarded skull, but a lopsided grin lit her face with relief.

'Trask, my hero! I knew you would never leave me-'

A gauntleted fist at her throat choked off the rest of Brin's sentence, and through blurry eyes the startled woman found herself staring up at the cold mask of a Sith grunt.

'Republic scum,' the soldier snarled contemptuously as he brought up and leveled his assault rifle at Brin's face in one fluid, calculated motion. Brin could only stare in wide-eyed disbelief as the soldier squeezed the trigger.

Exterminated like a flaming cannok in my panties, what a way to go out...

Brin's next thought was blown away, literally, by a miniature explosion. The air around her distorted and shimmered blue... and a moment later the smuggler opened her eyes, miraculously unscathed.

On cue, Trask came trotting back into the room with a spray vial and adrenaline stimulate in one hand. The sight of a gently smoldering Sith corpse practically fallen into Brin's lap was enough to stop the ensign in his tracks, and to render him speechless for a handful of seconds.

'So... since when do you wear force-field armbands to bed?' Trask asked conversationally after a moment of mutual staring.

Brin blinked down at her right arm where an Echani-made device was perched. The why's of what had just happened clicked into place, but not the how's.

'I've never seen it before in my life! And besides, I didn't have time to turn it on,' Brin began indignantly, but an especially violent shudder from the dying ship sent her body slamming against the bed and the breath whooshing from her lungs.

'Never mind that now! We need to move fast, and I can't drag you the whole way to the escape pods...'

Trask pushed the spray vial in the smugglers face and began pumping away, before Brin could recover her breath. Furious and in pain, Brin punched Trask's shin and gagged on the bitter-tasting mist, still fighting to make her lungs open. The thoughtful ensign was already shooting her up with the adrenaline stim before Brin finally recovered.

'Tach-brain! You wasted that first spray, whatever it was.'

Trask scowled as he dragged Brin to her feet and propelled her out the door.

'Don't worry... just a synthehol neutralizer.'

'I could have used that!'

'Well, you seem to be doing fine now.'

'That's because you shot a stim in me!'

Still bickering, the two sprinted down the winding corridors towards the Endar Spire's bridge.

Carth Onasi wasn't a betting man, but he knew terrible odds when he saw them, and right now the Sith battle fleet that was ripping through the ranks of the Jedi's borrowed ships was the clear and obvious favorite.

'Has Padawan Shan's party made it to the escape pods yet, corporal?'

The Iridonian flinched as his console spat a shower of hissing sparks at him, but managed to scan the read-out through the layers of acrid smoke that followed.

'Yes, Captain Onasi. Most of the crew has escaped as well, except for a score or so caught behind the lines of the Sith boarding party.'

The muscles in Carth's temples and jaw worked as he glanced up at the blast-shielded bridge doors that separated him from the Sith- and from the remaining survivors. His mind worked quickly, calculating a macabre set of values that only a veteran soldier could understand.

'Alright then, I want the bridge crew to evacuate as well, but leave behind a small detachment to finish up the lock-down sequences and computer wiping. Tell them to set the Spire on a five minute self-destruct command cycle and then to hurry their pubescent rear-hinds down to the escape pods. I'll wait for them there.'

'Five minutes is cutting it pretty close, Captain,' the Iridonian observed calmly as the console next to him discharged a small explosion, instantly killing the medic officer who had been monitoring the life-support systems.

Onasi released a quick hiss of pain as a sliver of near-molten plasteel embedded in his left shoulder.

'We don't have much of a say in the matter, corporal. I'll see you at the escape pods.'

Carth turned to the waiting group of bridge officers, but the Iridonian had one last question for his Captain.

'Sir, what about the people still behind the door?'

Carth glanced back over his shoulder at the corporal and met the Iridonian's gaze with a steely one of his own.

'I don't leave people behind, soldier, but I also known when it's time to cut our losses and save what can be saved.'

The young officer's face hardened and he opened his mouth to speak, but Carth had already turned away and was shepherding the majority of the bridge crew towards the starboard section and the waiting escape pods. Taking one last backwards glance at the heart, soul, and brains of the Spire, Carth Onasi suppressed a shiver of apprehension.

Then, the blast doors closed with a protesting sigh and the feeling passed.

Brin was not having a good day.

'Dammit, woman, at least move so I can save your hutt-spawned hide!'

Cursing and coughing on her own blood, Brin nevertheless managed an awkward roll to her right, leaving the way open for Trask to take out the Sith baddie who had been owning her ass.

A split second later, the staccato cough of a blaster being fired was heard and the silver-plated soldier crumbled to the ground.

'Thanks,' Brin managed as Trask hauled her angrily back onto unsteady feet.

A look of extreme distaste on his face, the ensign handed the battered smuggler a short length of bandaging material which she used to clean blood from her mouth and nose.

'Are you always this flaming clumsy when it comes to fighting?' Trask finally asked.

'Don't you get me started, Trask!' Brin erupted, her good-natured attempts to hold her peace out of gratitude for just getting saved vanishing in the blink of an eye, 'Need I remind you that it was your incompetence that has me staggering around like a drunkard on stims because... oh, wait; that's what I am! And by the way, while you get to hang back and pick off Sith at your leisure, guess who's your buffer? Why you would take advantage of a poor inebriated civilian and send her off as your shield and point I'll never know-'

'Because,' Trask cut in at last, 'if I put you behind this blaster you would probably be shooting me instead of the Sith-'

'Damn right I would be,' Brin muttered.

'-and we're going to need each other's help if we want to make it off this ship alive,' Trask continued loudly, his face a crimson mask of anger.

Brin Ah'Dye made a noisy sound of disgust in the back of her throat but managed to hold her tongue and pick up the lead once more. Thankfully, the next few intersections they passed were relatively empty, giving Brin time to adjust to the wrenching pain that was beginning to spread through her right ankle.

'Do you hear something?' Brin called back as they approached the next set of blast doors.

'Maybe,' Trask agreed but reached for the control panel regardless, 'only one way to find out, right?'

'Trask, wait a second-'

But the doors were already opening, and a flash of tangling lightsabers was the sight that greeted them.

Brin tried to bolt forward, but a restraining hand latched onto the woman's shoulder.

'What are you doing, we have to help the Jedi!' she shouted, surprising even herself with the urgency in her voice.

'Stay back unless you have a death wish, you crazy fool!' the ensign snapped, his grip unrelenting, 'This fight is too much for us.'

Brin stopped struggling and Trask cautiously dropped his restraining hold on her shoulder. The two stood nervously, watching the epic battle unfold before them.

The female Jedi was obviously a skilled combatant, and the better of the two duelists, but there was a dull edge to her movements that indicated extreme fatigue. Brin, in a strange moment of empathy, felt herself shift into the Jedi's position; felt the fraying of abused tendons scraping over kneecaps again and again, felt the unseen but ongoing battle of force powers, and gasped with pain when the dark one scored a glancing hit on the Jedi's left forearm.

Finally, with a thrust that seemed to amass all of her remaining strength into one final act of desperation, the human woman managed to lance the dark Jedi cleanly through the chest. Slumping from exhaustion and countless wounds, the Jedi warrior switched off her saber and turned to the two other survivors.

She opened her mouth to speak, when the nearby circuit conduit erupted in a spider-web of fatal volts. Brin and Trask flinched away, ducking their heads and shielding their eyes from the intense flare of light. There was an ominous dull thud, and then the light faded away.

Stunned and silent, the two companions threaded their way slowly through the rubble and stopped warily over the bodies of the two fallen Jedi.

'She's dead,' Brin observed pointlessly, solemn even in her drunken haze.

'We could have used her help,' Trask lamented, but already his eyes were scanning the hallway ahead of them and his hands were encouraging Brin to move on. Another set of violent shudders from the Spire underscored the ensign's unspoken urgency, but the smuggler was seemingly transfixed by the sight of the dead force-users.

'Let's go, Brin!'

'Don't get your power couplings in a tizzy,' the smuggler growled, crouching down and studying the bodies with an almost academic interest. After half a minute of fruitless searching, Brin was about to succumb to Trask's nervous hee-hawing when a glint of metal caught her eye.

Two lightsaber hilts; one black as jet and the other a well-worn, scarred cylinder of darithium steel lay almost side-by-side. For a microsecond Brin hesitated over the two sabers while everything else around her seemed to black out into meaningless background noise. She was making a choice that was somehow paramount in importance, but she knew nothing of why that should be or which way she should go.

Her hand stretched forward of its own volition, and in a daze Brin reached for a lightsaber, the choice seemingly made....

When Ensign Trask lost all semblance of patience and heaved the woman to her feet, shouting something that Brin couldn't yet hear. Her eyes still riveted on the two weapons, Brin made an instinctive swipe and managed to grab both. Sound and the world around her returned in a sudden rush.

'-you're going to be the end of us both! Why do you even need those lightsabers when you can kill just about anything by tripping over those bantha feet of yours?!'

Still just a little bit disorientated, Brin issued a weak chuckle.

'Ah, c'mon Trask, do you know how much some people are willing to pay for these things?'

Seemingly lost for words, Brin's companion let go of her with a shake of his head and stalked away, moving at a fast clip towards the sealed bulkhead that was their only way onto the bridge. The shaken smuggler followed at a much slower pace, her head throbbing almost audibly.

'Flaming emergency lockdowns,' Trask was muttering as he finished punching in his bypass code. Brin finally drew even with him just as the heavy bridge doors opened, revealing an Iridonian corporal manning the override panel on the other side and a handful of other lesser officers in a flurry of last-minute activity.

'Have we missed the party?' Brin gasped, giving into exhaustion at last and leaning heavily against the door frame, which was lucky because right at that moment a red blaster bolt split the air where her head had been a moment ago.

'Sith!' Trask bellowed, whipping around to face a small detachment storming up from behind.

'Apparently we are the party,' Brin sighed, turning back to the Iridonian in time to see him fall slowly to his knees, a scorched blaster mark square between the eyes.

Chaos ensued.

The Endar Spire was in its final dying throes, and Captain Onasi had no reason not to believe that he was the sole remaining survivor.

The explosions that had been periodic before were cascading at an almost constant rate now. With just one escape pod left, Carth had been getting only static for the last ten minutes from the bridge comm and was now prepping the final pod for launch. Taking a last glance at the pod bay computer console, Carth's rushed motions suddenly ceased.

The read-out had just indicated activity in the starboard corridor, past the bridge and the retreating lines of enemy soldiers.

Frowning, Carth consulted the PC blips of the crew. As before, the few remaining were static and unmoving- soldiers who had been cut down by the Sith or fatal explosions. There was no crew movement anywhere near the starboard corridor.

'Probably a lost Sith, cut off from his buddies,' Carth mused aloud. In fact, he was surprised that more Sith hadn't been pushing past the bridge after apparently slaying the skeleton crew he had left behind there.

A new edge of haste on his movements, Onasi sped through the last procedures and was about to enter the pod when the nearby console emitted a warning screech, as he'd programmed it to do when the blast doors just beyond the pod bay's were opened.

The Sith was moving faster than Carth had anticipated.

Cursing, the veteran soldier dashed towards the bay doors and flattened himself against the wall, approximately two meters from where the Sith would enter. Twin blasters drawn and ready, Carth steeled himself for what would come.

He had only a second to wait.

The bay doors opened with a drawn-out hiss and Carth was momentarily blinded by the column of sluggish gray smoke that billowed outwards, filling the pod bay with the sharp scent of burned plastic. Picking out a solitary shape in the thick miasma, Carth trained his blasters on the figure and called out a warning. The figure halted and turned slowly, hands open and empty above its head.

'Move slowly to your right,' Carth commanded, hoping to get a clearer shot as the figure left the obscuring veils of smoke.

'Hey, my mistake! Must have taken a wrong turn or something...'

Carth blinked.

The person standing in front of him was definitely no member of the Sith boarding party. A human woman in her late twenties to early thirties, she looked very out of place amid the gleaming steel and roiling smoke. Most likely that had something to do with her clothing- or lack thereof- and the vaguely cheerful expression on her face.

Carth Onasi lowered his blasters slowly, his face the picture of quizzical disbelief.

'Are you the last survivor?'

The woman's transparent face clouded over with sudden sadness and she nodded.

'Trask told me to hurry,' she explained gravely.

'Right...' Carth began uncertainly, still not sure what to make of this woman. She was clearly no soldier, but then what was she doing on the Spire?

'There's only one escape pod left, and we have about ten seconds until the Sith decide to blow this ship into galactic dust,' Carth explained as he hurried back to the remaining pod and opened the hatch.

'Roger, captain,' the civilian chirped with a lop-sided grin that sent Carth's eyebrows disappearing into his hairline.

'Mighty dark in here, isn't it?' she continued conversationally after scrambling into the cramped vessel.

Carth, right on her heels, deigned not to reply and instead applied his energies to sealing the door behind them and strapping the helpless civilian in while also dodging her attempts to kiss him.

Moments later, when the pod was just beginning to rip through Taris' outer stratosphere, the black void of space was wiped away by the blinding flash of the Endar Spire's explosive finale. Even Brin was quiet as the two survivors watched the last traces of their ship burn away and disappear into the endless backdrop of star-speckled space.

.:: Chapter II ::.

Planetfall

...coming soon to a theater near you!