FORTY.
revival!
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Rubble sprays across the floor from the shredded window. Zoya picks her way quickly around it as she follows close behind Cara, pressing against the wall and out of view of the enemies littering the empty square outside the building. Din and Greef shield themselves on the other side of the opening, blasters at the ready. As she watches, Din inches slightly forward to examine their opponents, Death troopers encased in slick, obsidian armor. It barely gleams underneath the sunlight, as if the sun itself is afraid to touch the onyx figures, heavy weapons held at the ready.
Zoya nearly trips over the limp body of a fallen Stormtrooper propped up against the wall, her boots slick from the crimson mosaics scattered across the floor as she fumbles to move back out of their line of sight, eyes wide and shocked and painted every color of an exploding supernova as she finds Din's visor. She's sure her fear is sketched in plain lines across her face, but in the moment, she can't find it within herself to care enough to wipe it away.
Whirring engines and the hiss of brakes signify the arrival of an Imperial Troop Transport slipping into the barren square. Ivory troopers cascade from the opening doors, blasters aloft and pressed against their shoulders. As soon as their boots hit the dirt, they advance towards the cantina where Zoya and the others hide.
Cara's eyes are angry, the violent surge of a thunderstorm. They lock onto Greef. "Four Stormtroopers?"
Zoya's jaw is a hard line, her teeth clenched together so hard that they feel like they might crack into pieces. "I think he must've meant four hundred." Her stare has the razor sharpness of gleaming silver knives.
He has the slight decency to look ashamed for a split second, but he doesn't answer as the wave of new troopers pour into the empty space behind the Death troopers. They're a sea of shining pearl, a massive threat unlike any Zoya has ever seen. At the most, she's been on the receiving end of two blasters. Maybe three. Never this many, never this many weapons pointed her way, ready to burn and slaughter, bloodlust thick in the air.
Zoya's fingers dig into the handle of her blaster, feeling the grooves in the metal cut lines into her palm. She offers a prayer upwards to whatever gods may be listening.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Get us out of this.
"This is bad," Cara says.
Zoya grips her weapon harder. "Say I'm dreaming."
"I wish I could."
"Kuiil?" Din says into the commlink. "Are you back to the ship yet?" When no answer comes right away, he continues, voice urgent, raising every hair on the back of Zoya's neck, "Are you there? Do you copy?"
"Yes!" Kuiil's voice comes through, and Zoya releases a breath.
"Are you back to the ship yet?" Din repeats.
"Not yet," Kuiil replies, the sound of rushing wind enclosing his words.
Din's fingers tighten around the commlink. "Get back to the ship and bail." He doesn't miss the way Zoya's shoulders go slack when she realizes what he means. For a beat quicker than a second, Din thinks of how terrified she'd become, folding herself tight into his arms, when she thought he'd been hurt. "Get the kid out of here, we're pinned down!" His voice cracks on the last word, and he bites his tongue, angry at himself.
Kuiil doesn't answer, but Din's message is clear enough.
Zoya leans back against the cool expanse of the wall, feeling it seep through her shirt. Every thread of hope shrivels as she hears Din's words. He doesn't expect them to make it out, not if he's sending Kuiil and the child away. The child. She squeezes her eyes shut, pictures the way the little creature catches at her fingers, gurgling happily. A single tear, glittering and full, attempts to pry its way through her closed eyelids.
She dashes it away before it can fall, wiping it roughly on the material of her pants, trying to swallow past the lump in her throat. She'd never been afraid to die since Ayaan left and never came back, never before a single bounty hunter changed her entire life, never before actually finding something in this forsaken, broken galaxy to care about besides what happened in the next second, the next breath, besides running so fast that even the wind couldn't keep up. She's never wanted a future, not until Din, not until the child, and now all the emotions in her chest are swelling up so quickly that she almost cannot breathe.
Cara, focused on the Death troopers and Stormtroopers outside, doesn't see the turmoil roiling beneath the smooth, tanned skin of Zoya's face, but Din does. Through the helmet, he sees the anguish across her face, littered through her eyes like fragments of dying stars, and he feels the same ache in his own chest.
He knows that they don't have much of a chance, that it's worth it, to let the child get away. He only wishes that he would have tried, at least a little, to get Zoya and the others to go with Kuiil instead of bringing them here, where it seems as if their lives may come to an end.
Abruptly, a ship emerges from the sun, the roar of its engines splitting the sky. Leaning forward, Zoya's eyes adjust to the bright rays. When she makes out the model of the ship, her chest empties and her head clears, devoid of all thought.
It's a fucking TIE fighter.
The fighter screams as it descends from the sky like an archangel, wings black as night as they fold together. Steam rises from the ship as the hatch raises, gears whirring mechanically, Zoya's every heartbeat punctuating the eerie stillness of the troopers outside. Two men descend from the fighter, dressed in capes of cascading onyx and shining, inky armor that's so dark it seems to absorb the light tumbling from the sky above. Before the menacing figures are close enough to see clearly, Zoya presses back against the wall on Cara's other side, squeezing her eyes shut.
One of them speaks loudly without hesitating, voice echoing out across the empty space. "You have something I want."
"Who the hell are they?" Cara says sharply.
Zoya watches Din carefully as he stares out at the men, unmoving, and wonders if he knows them.
"You may think you have some idea of what you are in possession of, but you do not," the man continues.
Din raises the commlink once more. "Kuiil, are you back to the ship yet? They're onto us." No response. Zoya stares at the comm. "Kuiil, come in!"
"Maybe he tucked it away," she whispers, and Din looks up at her. "And he's just getting into the Crest."
The man outside isn't finished. "In a few moments, it will be mine," he calls, voice level and soft and ominous.
"Kuiil!" Din hisses into the comm. "Do you copy? Kuiil!"
"It means more to me than you will ever know," the Imperial says.
"Kuiil! Are you there? Come in, Kuiil!" Din's voice is panicked. "Kuiil! Are you there? Do you copy? Kuiil? Kuiil!"
"Mando," Cara says. "Why isn't he answering?"
Din glances up. "I. Don't. Know."
"We can't fight them all," Greef says lowly.
Cara dares a look out the window, ducking back almost immediately, shoulder brushing against Zoya's. "Is there another way out?"
"No," the Guild leader responds. "That's it."
Holding on tightly to her blaster, Zoya mutters a hushed curse, even the rough word trembling as it falls off her tongue.
"What about the sewers?" Din says suddenly.
"Sewers?" Greef says, dumbfounded.
Din nods. "The Mandalorians have a covert down in the sewers. If we can get down there, they can help us escape."
"Yeah, sewers are good," Cara says.
Zoya releases a breath. "Sewers are amazing."
Din presses a button. "Checking for access points." Using his visor, he scans the room thoroughly, a timer ticking within his head.
Cara leans out again. "What the hell are they waiting for?"
It's almost as if her words summon movement, as a beat later, a group of Stormtroopers marches out into the circle of Death troopers surrounding the two men, carrying something heavy between them.
The ex-shock trooper's eyes narrow. "Hold on." The troopers start positioning the barrel of some sort of weapon upon the stand. "They're setting up an E-Web."
Zoya's eyes flick between Cara and the drawn look on Greef's face. "What is that?" she says cautiously.
"It's over." Greef's eyes are unseeing.
"What the hell is it?" Zoya snaps.
Cara presses her lips together. "A heavy weapon. Fucking takes out as many soldiers as you can count in the blink of an eye."
Before Zoya can succumb to the rising panic in her throat, Din says abruptly, "I found the sewer vent."
"Let's get the hell out of here," Cara replies.
Moving quickly in sync, Cara and Din dart over to one of the walls away from the window, ripping furniture and debris away from the covering of the sewer as Zoya and Greef remain beside the window, waiting for an onslaught. She keeps her eyes focused away from the opening to avoid her fear, watching as Din and Cara pull on the metal bars, grunting with the strain of their efforts. Greef, watching the troopers outside, jerks his head back to face them.
"It's assembled," he warns. "How long until that thing's cleared?"
"Blow it," Cara says, stepping back.
"I'm out of charges," Din replies.
Unwilling to wait, the ex-shock trooper strides to her heavy weapon. "Get out of the way," she commands.
Moving quickly, she sets her weapon upon the metal grate, a barrage of bolts flooding from the mouth of the heavy blaster. The sound of the blaster-fire is so loud that it rings off the stone walls of the cantina, burrowing deep into Zoya's ears.
"Your astute panic suggests that you understand your situation," one of the men says from outside, the same one that had been speaking before. "I would prefer to avoid any further violence and encourage a moment of consideration. Members of my escort have completed assembly of an E-Web heavy repeating blaster. If you are unfamiliar with this weapon, I am sure that Republican Shock Trooper Carasynthia Dune of Alderaan will advise you that she has witnessed many of her ranks vaporize mid-descent facing the predecessor of this particular model." Cara steps forward, eyes hooded, and trepidation curls smoky, desolate fingers around Zoya's shoulders.
The man continues, "Or perhaps the decommissioned Mandalorian hunter, Din Djarin, has heard the songs of the Siege of Mandalore, when gunships outfitted with similar ordnance laid waste to fields of Mandalorian recruits in The Night of a Thousand Tears." Though Zoya cannot see Din's face, she knows that it must be a blanket of shock. His arms hang limply at his sides, and he no longer focuses on trying to remove the sewer grate, locked upon the gaping window.
"I advise disgraced Magistrate Greef Karga to search the wisdom of his years and urge you to lay down your arms and come outside. The structure you are trapped in will be razed in short order and your storied lives will come to an unceremonious end," the man tells them.
A beat, and a new voice rises, deep and strong, presumably from the other that had come from the TIE fighter. "And Zoya Vitaan, reckless runaway and failed student, escaped convict and only daughter of Vésma and Akiv Vitaan, I ask you to come freely, weapons lowered, and surrender. You will be accepted with open arms and your talents will be nurtured and cultivated, as they were always meant to be. Run towards something, instead of away from it."
Everything dulls to a muted roar, vast oceans in the distance, waves swelling into a hurricane that places Zoya at its eye. Her vision goes blurry, focusing on that voice, that voice she'd know anywhere, the voice she never thought she'd hear again, and a shard of what feels like ice impales her heart, even though she knows it's nothing but dread, because who else would have known how to say that last phrase to her in the same way he had?
And this time, when her tears fall, she isn't aware of them, doesn't move to swipe them away, even as they glitter on the curve of her jawline, threatening to fall, as she's become numb to everything but that voice.
Her lips tremble, on the verge of splintering, exploding like the collision of two magnificently burning stars, and when she speaks, her voice is barely a breath.
"Ayaan?"
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well.