Beyond the Brink - A Star Wars OC tale

Chapter 4

  The thief went to roll out of Chen's weakened grasp but barely made it a foot before he recovered, grabbing the black cloak and tugging them back to him. In the movement though, the thief turned decidedly and threw their weight directly onto him, splaying him right onto his back with a loud 'thunk'.

A breath later the thief had him pinned to the ground, knees pressed firmly to his forearms and gloved hands forced down upon his heaving chest.

Chen didn't speak, but his eyes looked as though they held the power of the storm that had followed them to the station.

Tzofi was so focused on his face that she never noticed his arm break free from the hold. With a ruthless strike, he knocked the thief's helmet so hard it made a deafening crack and retracted entirely, revealing a young lilac skinned woman.

The shock of that only made it halfway to Tzofi's gasping lips because with a thunderous clang something collided with the side of the carriage and she had to duck as a blaze of light and heat soared through the steel and straight over her.

Her ears rang, and smoke billowed into the space.

One of the sides of the carriage was almost gone, leaving only a crass, jagged hole. The edges of which roared with angry flames. Those flames also coated the debris of the wall that was now scattered around them all.

She looked over to find the thief and Chen unmoved by the blast, the tracker's face in a state of utter astonishment. But it took her a moment to realise, it was not from the explosion, or the flames surrounding him, or even the ship soaring alongside the moving train, blasters still smouldering from the shot.

No, his eyes were fixed on the beautiful woman peering down at him, holding a new blade to his throat.

Her hair was woven into two big braids on each side of her head, adorned with metal hoops, but a few strands had been pulled free in the scrummage and the nightshade coloured curls danced in the wind blowing into the carriage as it raced down the track.

With her features painted in firelight, she smiled smugly down at Chen and rammed the hilt of the blade into his temple.

Leaping off of him, she grabbed the crystal case as he grasped his head.

Tzofi tried to pull herself up onto her knees but her ribcage screamed in protest. Involuntary tears spilled down her cheeks at the searing pain. With a whimper, she eased herself back down and looked for Kareen's blaster, hoping the apprentice had dropped it in the panic of fleeing. No such luck.

Master Rhee still lay unconscious a few feet from her, no fiery debris had fallen directly upon him. She tried calling to him, begging to some cosmic force that he would waken to help them. But nothing.

The thief moved towards the hole in the wall and looked to be searching for something. The ship that had been following them had disappeared, but a small droid, no bigger than a generous hand sized ball, appeared out of the night and flew right up to the woman, shining its blue light at her, as if in conversation.

She nodded and the droid was gone again.

With desperation, Tzofi reached out her hand and called to the force, beckoning it to help her, praying she could hold the thief back long enough for Chen to get up.

A soft light touched the corners of the darkness behind her eyelids but it vanished at the sound of a laugh.

Tzofi opened her eyes to find the thief watching her with amusement twinkling in her eyes. Her eyes... Tzofi hadn't seen them in full until then. The woman's irises were a deep magenta at the edges but a glowing hue of that around the pupil.

Those sinister eyes vanished as the thief pulled the cloak over her head and jumped off of the moving train and slid down the snowbank.

Chen was in the place she'd jumped from in one blurred movement. Tzofi couldn't tell if that was from Chen's speed, or her struggle to hold onto consciousness, but when she looked at his face, it was a mask of lethal focus.

For a quiet second, it looked like he was considering jumping and following the thief, but then he was by Tzofi's side, trying to pull her to her feet.

When she winced loudly, he set her back down.

"We need to get you both out of here before that ship comes back." He said softly, assessing a cut on her head with a clinical eye.

"Master Rhee -" She began but voices broke through her words, and Lee entered the room, with Jedi and soldiers in tow.

Their back up had arrived.

Tzofi sat in the back of a small medics ship on the snowdrift and watched the chaos unfold as Master Rhee tried to calm the flailing students, Chen was preparing a group of soldiers for another excursion to find the crystal and medic teams were putting the dead and wounded onto stretchers.

Most of the dead were from the groups that had attacked them but a few of the fallen were some of their own. Three soldiers she didn't know, but had seen around the temple.

She'd been so relieved that all the students had made it out, but when she saw those bodies, their blood cutting through the snow like an angry crimson stain, a part of her cracked. A fracture that threatened to crumble something deep inside her.

Lee stood by the body bags, head low.

Had he known them?

"... We are to only disarm and arrest her. Do you all understand?" Chen spoke to the crew that would be following him.

A soldier bristled, stepping forward. "They killed three of ours!"

Chen's eyes narrowed but he didn't move. "And if we return the favour, we are no better than them. That is not the Jedi way." He looked the soldier over. "If you do not think you can follow your training, you may leave."

With a defeated grunt, the soldier stepped back in line.

They began hopping on their cruisers and Chen honed his eyes on the horizon. Tzofi could feel the force shifting as he accessed its power to track the thief. He clasped a bit of her cloak in his fist.

Tzofi's feet were moving before she could think why. "I want to come."

Chen didn't mask his surprise. "You can't come with that injury." He nodded to her bandaged torso.

"It isn't broken. I'm honestly fine."

Lies. She wasn't fine.

The part about her ribs not being broken was true, at least. They'd discovered a piece of jagged steel in her side, it had caused a gouge with severe bruising, and was marginally less agonising once removed, but it was still viciously painful.

"She's lying."

Lee joined them and if she'd had the energy, she might have thrown a swing his way. "Excuse me?" Tzofi's voice rose significantly. "And how would you know this?"

Shaking his head as if she was the one being difficult, Lee looked at Chen. "She's a terrible liar, that's why."

Chen looked between them both. " That's true." Tzofi's mouth fell open but Chen continued. "But I need anyone who is willing to help right now." He turned to her. "Just be careful, ok?"

Tzofi nodded. He'd said it like an older sibling ordering the younger to not get in the way, but there was concern there, and she felt a comfort in that. He would have her back.

"I'm coming too then." Lee moved towards a cruiser.

"Of course you are." Tzofi muttered under her breath and tried not to cry out as she maneuvered onto her cruiser and followed them towards the storm they'd been running from.