Star Wars (Legends):The Friend of my Enemy. Book:1

Prologue (Disaster)

Star Wars: Friend of my Enemy

Prologue

Location: Rebuilt Uroro Station in Orbit above Shedu Maad. One year after the events on Base Prime

The battered shuttle glided towards the station trailing streams of plasma, flame and debris. it was clear she was coming in unguided under her own momentum. To say the shuttle had exited hyperspace was generous. Hyperspace had simply rejected the craft as just too pitiable to be retained within its glowing swirls so it had vomited her out. Hails had gone unanswered; not that any response was expected given the condition of the vessel.
The expression on Lando Calrissian's face was one of disbelief as much as it was one of pain and helplessness. The shuttle, healthily armed yet stylish and elegant, was nothing to Lando, he had a fleet of shuttles alone. It was replaceable, it's contents were not. Just then the shuttle, or what once had been a shuttle, unnaturally slowed and shifted direction being drawn by tractor beam into the landing bay which was occupied by Lando, some maintenance crew, Jagged and Jaina Fel, and Kyp Durron. All eyes locked on the shuttle then on Lando then back to the shuttle like some practiced synchronization seemingly meant to darken the already black situation.

"Why are people, so Damn predictable; Stop Staring, Just Stop!" was his mental response to the heavy barrage emanating from all those eyes.

Just then, the klaxon of the emergency alarm began to sound accompanied by flashing red lights and...
" Stop! Just Stop! Just Stop!..."

His mental pleadings broke down into a simple mantra, if not completely blocking out the wailing sound and strobing lights, at the very least muffling them to white noise. Although he barely noticed when the flaming hulk had past through the atmospheric barrier, his legs took notice and propelled the bewildered rest of him forward. He may have heard Jaina behind cautioning him or pleading with him, he just couldn't lock on to her. To him it was just meaningless, predictable....
"Stop, Stop, Stop..."
the inner mantra growing louder.

"That doesn't even make sense he thought: " Stop what? Jaina? Her meaningless words? The Ship? This moment in time?"
But the inner Klaxon sounding in his mind was every bit as real to him as the one coming from the speakers of the bay: " Just Stop, Please Stop...". It felt like it would never stop.

When the tractor beam gently rested the ship on the landing pad, there was nothing gentle in the way the previously floating pieces of burning debris, that had been peripherally caught by the tractor beam along with the ship, had crashed to floor. The all too familiar smell of scorched metal and burning plastoid wafted up from the mess, causing choking coughs to spontaneously erupt around the Bay. The impromptu procession lead by Lando, ran past the hunks of ship just as emergency fire suppressant systems activated.

Like the aim of a highly trained sniper, the foam emitting from the end of the now active and self targeting nozzles, hit the flaming debris and only the debris as Lando and the others made their way to where the landing ramp would descend... that is, if it would have been possible for the ramp to descend. The shuttle had been unceremoniously placed on the deck without its landing struts deployed. It looked less like a composite of highly advanced technology and more like a mortally wounded Drexl whose rider had failed it, leaving it a dying mass on the ground never to soar again. The image wasn't a random one for Lando. It was one he had seen countless times hanging in his head office foyer of Tendrando Arms Corporate headquarters on Coruscant. From a bygone era, the old republic relic was used as a subliminal warning to perspective and current clients alike: "Don't end up like that dying beast betrayed by the ineptitude of inferior would-be saviours, invest your safety with Tendrando arms."

The irony was masochistic: His shuttle was now the dying beast, soon followed by his hopes and deepest held dreams. "Please Just Stop! Just Stop!" he was roaring in his head as he clawed desperately at the place in the hull he would normally enter the craft. Master Durron beside him, seeing his desperate pain and fighting back feelings of helplessness and rage himself, without a word activated his lightsabre and with the determination and accuracy only a Jedi Master could muster, made four deep slices into the hull beside Lando. With the cutaway piece held in the grip of the force he drew the slab of haul with its molten dripping edges back to reveal the newly made hatch with its glowing border.

Lando, not even hearing the crash as the metal slab slammed to the floor, vaulted through the opening into even more caustic smoke, which in addition to aggravating his cough now threatened to blind him with burning tears.

He kept moving forward calling, through coughing fits, the only names that existed in the universe in that moment in time : "TENDRA! CHANCE! TENDRA! CHANCE!".

All the while the voice in his head still Bellowed: "STOP! PLEASE STOP! JUST STOP!"
He wasn't headed in any particular direction , his autopilot just kept him going forward until he reached an obstacle then he would turn and resume his forward pursuit in the new direction.

"Lando! Lando! Over Here!!"
Lando latched on to the direction of those word like a hawk bat. In a single choking sputtering breath he was there in front of the escape pods . His inner roar was now a desperate supplication to the void. In Jagged's arms was the battered body of Lando Jr.
"NO! JUST STOP! STOP! STOP!".
Instinctively Lando reached out with both arms to take his Son while spilling out the words: "Oh Chance, my sweet boy, it ok,Daddy's here."
But Jag backed away with the youngling still gripped tight. "He's alive Lando! But I got to get him outside to the med droids right now; I've got him, you go get Tendra" Jag said.
Lando placed his hands on his son and instinctively wanted to hold him so tight he would be absorbed into him, siphoning the pain from his too battered too little body. "Lando if I don't get him out of this smoke he's not gonna make it".

Before Lando's mind could decide whether to punch Jag or embrace him in a crumpled mess, Jaina called out the only thing that could have dragged him away: "I found her! She's here! Lando? LANDO!" He had no choice. "Go! Save my son Jag" Lando pleaded.

He was then in motion again headed to the cockpit, although a piece of his heart did not depart from his son. Before he could brace himself, he was there... in the... cockpit? The command centre of the shuttle had been reduced to a cave, lit only by the odd shower of sparks coming from an endless supply of cables and wires that had been freed from the walls, ceiling and consoles. Jaina was sitting on the floor with a long bundle of burnt and bloodied rags draped over her lap.
"Jaina! Where is..... (no not rags)TENDRA!"
He rushed over to his loyal Strong pillar that had held up his world for the past 3 decades.
Her Body was a sick parody of the ship she was in: Broken and a thread's breadth from....
"PLEASE STOP! PLEASE STOP! STOP!"
The loop continued to play between his ears instead of through them. In the last 5 minutes, he had experienced more pain, more fear than he had in the entirety of life. He didn't think he could survive 5 minutes more in this reality.
"Lando" she said in a halted weak voice that warmed his heart and chilled his soul. "Chance?... I...I...did Cha... Chance?..."
Her voice collapsed into coughs and moans.
"You did it" soothed Jaina, looking more maternal than Lando had ever thought possible. "You got your baby to safety Tendra".
Tendra's face responded to Jaina's revelation by relaxing all its features almost to the point of drooping with the sole exception of the corner of her lips that bore the smallest hint of a satisfied smile. Out of those lips came one final gurgling exhale.

At some point, Lando's memory hadn't retained when precisely, he had embraced Tendra, both of them curled up in Jaina's lap. Jaina, would always be Han's little girl to Lando and like her mom was small in stature as but in that moment she felt like an ever stretching nebula encapsulating him with his wife for all eternity. And at that moment without any encouragement the incantation being chanted in his brain stopped. It all stopped.