Crash and Burn

Jacen lay on the grass, next to the flowing river. The light of the glaring white sun glowed only with the softest rays through his eyelids, and its warmth had long since dried him off - even his mop of tangled, too-long hair. With firm ground underneath him and gentle heat covering his body, he was near complete relaxation, and felt himself drifting off to sleep.

He heard a splash nearby and it was followed a second later by a few drops of water splattering across his bare legs. He reluctantly opened his eyes, and when he squinted in the direction of the splash, he saw Anakin standing where the water met the riverbank, only knee-deep. "Jacen," Anakin said, "you're all pink."

Jacen glanced down at his naked body. Not all pink, he thought, though the difference was academic. His legs, torso, and arms down to knobby elbows had turned a rather feminine and flowerlike shade.

"More radiation from the sun, because it burns hot," Anakin said. "We're getting sunburned faster than on Yavin 4."

Jacen sat up and tried not to notice that Anakin was as bare as he was. If he looked, even to poke fun at Anakin for getting burned as well, he'd end up staring at the young man's crotch or ass. Both were nearly perfect... and perfect places for Jacen to place his hands.

It occurred to him that Anakin never had a blow job, and that he felt a little sorry for Anakin for that very reason. Somehow he suspected that Anakin would enjoy it even more than he did, if that was possible; the dimming memories of lying on the forest floor with Tenel Ka sprawled halfway on top of him sent hot blood rushing down between his legs.

He sighed unhappily when Anakin threw a freshly washed rag over his face - the holey rag that once had been a pair of polymer fiber undershorts. Anakin sat next to him and slid his own clothes over slender limbs and looked pointedly at the parts that Jacen's shorts were supposed to cover. "I'm as horny as you are, but I'm hungry, too," Anakin said.

Jacen almost offered to "feed" Anakin with his own seed, while taking Anakin's at the same time, but he thought the better of it before he even opened his mouth to speak. As far as relationships went, they were in unknown territory, feeling their way along in darkness step by step. He didn't want to be too forward or pushy, and even though Anakin had been receptive to him thus far, Jacen couldn't help but hold some of his thoughts back.

He slowly pulled on his undershirt and pants, not needing his jacket. None of the fabric felt good on his skin, but he was thankful that if nothing else, his clothes had become very soft and didn't irritate his sunburn any more.

"Time to get to work, I guess," Anakin said. Jacen raised his eyebrows questioningly, and Anakin went on: "There's some kind of fruit on the yellow-leafed trees. The walkers can't get them because they can't climb."

Jacen warily looked at the trees Anakin pointed to; their trunks were almost slick, with little in the way of footholds for a creature that had no claws. The leaves were more than six meters above the ground, and indeed had round, brown objects clustered on some of the branches. "So what? They have enough food, at least now that it's spring. They've been on this planet for thousands of generations; we've been here for six months."

"Well, I want the fruit."

Jacen sighed. "So you're goint to climb up three stories to get them, when we have enough to eat here, too?"

"Why not? Are you afraid of heights?"

"You know I'm not. No, Anakin, you're not going get me to do whatever you want just by standing there and playing with the buttons on your trousers."

"You see a power struggle in everything," Anakin snapped, and he spun around as he refastened his pants. He headed for the trees alone and left Jacen at the riverside.

Jacen watched Anakin shimmy up the side of a tree trunk and disappear into a mound of yellow leaves. A few round objects fell out and smashed on the dirt, followed by a few more, and then fruit tumbled down from shaking branches into a pile.

Too high, Jacen thought. It's not going to work. Anakin continued to drop the fruit, though, letting the pieces splatter against the ground. Finally he came down, and his pockets bulged with intact pieces that he'd stuffed into them.

Anakin caught Jacen's eye as he jumped to the ground, clear of the oozing pile, and then he came over to hand off part of dinner. Jacen wordlessly accepted two pieces and brushed his lips across Anakin's cheek.

Anakin grabbed Jacen and gave him a short hug. "I told you I'd be all right," he said.

"I just don't want anything to happen to you, and especially not for a stupid reason."

Little Gray-horn led the herd of young walkers to the mushy fruit pile and she took the first bite. Then she gave a low roar and the others joined her.

"See, just doing my part." Anakin clapped his hand over the wound on his shoulder, which had already scabbed over. "I think we're their brothers now."

"Something like that," Jacen said absently. He was suddenly reminded of Jaina, for no reason that he could place, other than Anakin's words and a sense of Force strength nearby. It was perhaps as close as orbit, and Jaina was the only one that Jacen could still sense. It had to be her, somehow mostly masked by the Dark Side permeating the Force. "Jaina..."

"I wish she was here," Anakin mused. "Well, most of the time. And I wish she was here with a ship to take us home."

"You might get your wish. I feel something - someone. She's fuzzy, but she's here."

"Do you think Jaina found us?" The excitement was clear in Anakin's voice - along with a little disbelief, and a little bit of worry.

"I hope so. Can you feel anything?"

"Just a little, and I can't be sure it's a person." Anakin sighed. "You're the one with empathy, Jacen, and I might be her brother, but you're her twin."

Jacen was the first one to notice an unusual star in the sky, one that quickly grew brighter and moved like a starship. "There," he breathed. "Up, there, Anakin!"

Anakin clutched Jacen's shoulder, with a smile that Jacen knew would grow even brighter once the reality of being rescued sunk in.

The person in the ship was shielded, mostly impassive, and Jacen wondered for a frightening moment if he was, in fact, wrong about who it was. Perhaps someone else had come for them - but then, that was all right; they would be with their family soon enough. Jaina, is that you?

With no further warning, a green streak of laser fire erupted from the star that had split into two headlights in the waning dusk. The bolt exploded on the ground and threw up chunks of dirt and rock.

"That's not Jaina," Jacen gasped.

"Welk?"

Jacen frantically tried to connect telepathically with the pilot, using what little skill he had, and his efforts were thrown back against him. "I think so, and he brought a friend. But there's only one ship, and two of us. We'll separate and make them choose a target."

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Then they'll hit both of us!"

"Jacen, they don't want us dead. Last time, they only wanted to kill me. Maybe they still need a live prisoner, and if they do, then we have to stay together."

Kill Anakin and capture Jacen. I'm not going to let that happen, Jacen thought. Facing Sith tortures would be bad enough, but losing Anakin? That terrified him far more. He pulled Anakin against his chest and whispered, "All right, we're going to stay together. They'll have to kill both of us to get either of us, then."

Anakin was trembling, and Jacen noticed it acutely because he, too, couldn't quite rein in his fear. He would die if he needed to, but not uselessly. To bring down the Sith, or to save Anakin, yes, but he could no longer accept death due to mere pride.

They crept closer to the river, which still held much of the day's heat and might - might - better hide them from infrared scanners than land. Then again, the Sith probably didn't need to use infrared to track Jedi, but one less tool that they could use was one small advantage.

He heard more explosions and felt a few small perturbations in the Force. The laser fire came no nearer to them, but plowed down in seemingly random locations across the area where they and the walkers had made their-

"Anakin, they're not even firing at us. They're shooting down the walkers."

Both of them stopped and turned around. Most of the adults were dead, shattered on the dirt, and the others trying to run. They had no chance to outrun a Stellar Imperial starship, though, even if they were twice as fast as they were at that time.

"Can't we do something?" Anakin pleaded.

"I want to, but what? Bounce the laser beams off my lightsaber?"

"Uncle Luke would."

"You're full of shavit, because he wouldn't be that stupid. Blaster bolts are one thing and turbolaser is something else and a lot nastier. I'll do my best without putting us in the line of fire. If the Sith land and start coming for us, tell me. I'm going to talk to Gray-horn."

Anakin tried to hold Jacen back but let go when Jacen didn't move, except to sink to the ground. Jacen closed his eyes; they provided too many distractions. It was hard enough for him to locate any of the walkers, let alone a specific one. But after some searching he felt the mind he was looking for - scared, but fierce and proud, with the waning innocence of youth.

Leave, he urged. Take the others and run off in many directions, away from here, and away from each other. He projected his thoughts as pictures and actions and saturated them with urgency.

Gray-horn filled with confusion and stubbornness. He saw her surrounded by the other babies, all alive, though a few were slightly hurt. Then she stamped her six heavy feet in rage; even though he was deep in the thin and fragile strands of the light Force, he could hear the young ones howling. The last shot had killed the queen.

You are the herd queen now. You can't save everyone. Take a few, and go, and let Charger lead a few, and the others all split into small groups and go far away so that the fire from the stars won't find them.

Now the young queen had a reply, and he was able to understand it: You, follow me, and bring sister sky-eyes.

I can't go with you.

Then sister sky-eyes will watch you and keep you safe. Goodbye, brother two-legs. The herd separated into six groups, and one by one, the groups traveled away from the old campsite.

Jacen reluctantly said goodbye to Gray-horn and pulled himself out of the fog of his Force trance. Anakin was standing over him and quickly extended a hand to help him up. "They're leaving," Jacen said.

Anakin smiled with thanks and the two of them climbed down the muddy, sandy bank into the warm river. He sank into the water to his neck, and he and Anakin gripped each other's arms as they treaded water and let the current carry them. Neither of them were nearly fat enough to float without treading, so they conserved their energy, doing just enough to keep their faces above the surface.

"I don't think this is going to work," Anakin gasped. "Look!"

Jacen glanced over in the direction of Anakin's outstretched arm. The ship had landed and appeared to power down, and then, when the lights were out except for a faint glow in the cockpit, he thought he saw a ramp extend towards the ground. Then there was motion on the ramp - as though two dark figures were coming down.

Jacen quickly weighed their options. They could run and hope to keep running and hiding indefinitely, holding to the likely false idea that the Sith would eventually give up pursuit and leave. The other choice was to try to steal their unattended ship and turn the tables.

"We need their ship," he said.

"We can defeat Welk," Anakin agreed. "Unless he learned a lot of new tricks in the last few months that he didn't learn in the first twenty or so years. It's the other one I'm not sure about."

They were about equal in Force strength, and Jacen couldn't tell much else. He thought that the second Sith might have been someone he'd met before, and he'd never met the worst ones of legend, so that might have been a point against him (or her), or a point for him. That was an unknown.

But he couldn't afford to waste time thinking about unknowns anymore.

"We don't have to defeat them," he pointed out. "We just have to steal the spacecraft and get it to Kalla Tora, or maybe a little farther if that's not a safe place for Jedi anymore. No fighting unless we have to."

"But if we have to, then you will." Anakin's voice was hard.

"Yes, I will." Jacen kissed the top of Anakin's head and squeezed him gently. "We'll climb up and draw them over to us. I'll distract them and you make a run for the ship. Fly it over, pick me up, and we'll leave."

"Jacen, how are you going to do that? You have to jump pretty high to get onto a moving ship."

"Fly slow and leave the ramp down. I'll do all I can to get on board and if you're close enough to the ground then I'll probably be able to. But, Anakin - if I can't, you have to leave without me."

"No."

"I told you to do it. If you can get away, they probably won't kill me."

"I won't leave you by yourself." Anakin held onto Jacen as though he were drowning and Jacen was the only one close enough to save him.

"Then you're going to have to really fly well."

"I'm a Jedi Knight. We don't go into things thinking of failure."

"It's worse not to have a plan for when things go wrong," Jacen said.

"Then - fine. I'll do what you say." Anakin's tone conveyed otherwise, but Jacen knew what he was doing; forestalling an argument. And that was probably best, he realized, because there was no time left for it.

Jacen saw the two figures just as he and Anakin got back onto drier ground. They were nearly the same height, and one of them was clearly Welk, and the other a female, probably human. They both were dressed in black, without cloaks, and carried lightsabers, and now he was convinced that this time, Welk was not the only Sith Lord that they would have to face.

Jacen took a deep breath and kept his right hand close to his own lightsaber handle. "Can't handle a Jedi by yourself, Welk?" he asked. Anakin stayed near him, but started inching away with each step, so that he would be out of their line of sight when he went for the ship. "I guess your training wasn't worth that much. I thought the Dark Side was supposed to be the faster path."

It was the second person who spoke to reply, though. "You talk too much, Jedi Solo," she said. "There are two of you and two of us. That is fair."

"What are you doing here?"

"You will find out. Welk, catch the younger Jedi Solo and bring him back to the ship. He is unarmed. Don't fail this time." At those words, Anakin took off running, with Welk in close pursuit.

Jacen followed after Welk, but only managed to go a few steps before his danger sense convinced his body to throw itself to the ground. A red blade swung in an arc that would have lopped off his right arm at the shoulder if he hadn't fallen out of the way. Now Anakin and Welk were too many steps away from him for him to catch up, and he had to trust that Anakin would be able to do his part and let Jacen concentrate on dealing with Welk's companion.

"I've seen you before," Jacen muttered as he picked himself up from the ground. "You're... that senator. Quoll."

"Was," the woman said. She held her lightsaber as if to strike at him again, but he eased himself out of her reach, and she didn't make any sudden moves. "You may think of me as Darth Inferna."

"Should have known you were with the Sith. I never liked you much."

"Not fond of Jedi myself," she snarled back. "Not after what you did to the Empire, and more recently, to my sister."

With her features now illuminated by the two saber blades, Jacen saw a resemblance between her and the woman who led the troops against him and Anakin the year before. That was her sister, the witch of the Imperium, he thought. And this is the witch of the Sith. She's worse than the other one was, by far...

Bloodthirst could be turned against the one raging, but that was absent here, replaced by icy cold. It was with calculated hatred instead of wild wrath that she leapt forward and swung her lightsaber at him, and he was barely able to block the cut. Thoughts of getting away without fighting fluttered away, and now he was only concerned about keeping her away from Anakin and trying to stay alive long enough to make that possible. Jacen put everything out of his thoughts except that goal and dealing with the threat directly in front of him.

Inferna was a faster duelist than Welk, and less sloppy, although no stronger in the Force itself. Jacen realized early that he was not going to get a clean strike against her unless she did something foolish, and worse, her control was too smooth to make that opening likely. But he kept on the defensive, blocking every hit without leaving himself stumbling to give her an easy one, in hopes of goading her into the kind of rage that might lead to a foolish move. It might make her even stronger for a little while, but it was his best chance.

He was in his element now, focusing wholly on defense without aggression. He could last a long time in any activity without wearing himself to exhaustion, especially now that his health had improved a little bit. Inferna came at him faster and faster, and her red blade was a snapping blur that he couldn't keep track of with his eyes. Only the Force moved him from one position to another, to lock that red blade for a fraction of a second against a green one.

Suddenly, Jacen felt a blunt pain against his entire torso, and the ground blasted away from him. He struggled to suck in a shallow breath as the heavy gust of sudden wind pushed him higher into the air - and then it released him as quickly as it hit him, and he began to fall from fifteen meters above the ground.

Jacen drew energy underneath him and gently re-directed the air upwards to slow his descent. He landed hard - hard enough to jar his legs and hurt, but not enough to break them or twist his ankles and knees out of position.

Now Inferna was angry; the telekinetic throw had failed to do much to him. She came upon him with her blade swirling a figure-eight, but he caught it at the center and pushed the saber aside. It was going to take more than slightly above average dueling skills and a bit of fancy telekinesis to destroy this Jedi Knight.

Then she pulled back, a few steps away from him, and stopped. She deactivated her lightsaber and dropped it on the ground before falling to her knees. Not a good trick, Jacen thought, but he wasn't sure exactly what kind of trick it was. Did she really overextend herself with the Force? Was she forcing him to make a choice between striking an unarmed foe or letting a Sith Lord go?

Jacen's answer never reached his mind in a whole thought. She raised her head, and a fraction of a second later, he felt something explode around him and through him, and pain ripped through him. His body was no longer in his control; every muscle pulled tight, and a cry caught in his closed throat. The sudden muscular contractions threw him backwards to the ground, and in that moment of searing pain, he was powerless to break his fall and unable to fall upon the Force to soften the impact. His head slammed into the dirt, and he felt himself sinking into it, into darkness.

Jacen felt like he was submerged in a pit of inky-black tar. Consciousness slowly returned to him, and first he realized that he was still alive. He pulled in a shallow breath, one that sent little needles of pain through his chest. His whole body ached and throbbed and the rancid smells of old sweat, urine, and feces filled his nose and made him gag. Bile shot up his throat and into his mouth, but he couldn't spit anything through the rag tied tightly around his head. He swallowed and fought a losing battle against a cough that racked his body and rattled it against a hard pole.

He felt the pole that he was tied to, in a kneeling position, with ropes around his wrists and ankles on the other side of it. His eyes adjusted slowly to dim light, and he found himself at one end of a short, plain corridor. Something moved out of the shadows to his left. He felt the tension around his cheeks release, and sour saliva dripped out of his mouth as bony, cold fingers removed the rag.

"You failed," Inferna said. "We caught you and your brother."

Jacen worked his jaw around and tried to speak. At first, his words came out slurred and unintelligible, but finally he was able to form them: "Where did you take me?"

"You're on my ship," she said. "We haven't left your planet. We won't leave."

He leaned against the curved surface behind him and tried to think. His arms ached and his knees trembled. "Where's Anakin?"

"You'll see him in a minute." Inferna stepped away and picked up a small device, the size and shape of a game controller, from the floor. She tapped two buttons on it and the pole began to warm and vibrate. Jacen felt his nerves twitch, and pain saturated his whole body. He gasped and arched his back as much as his position would allow, but refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

"Not enough," she muttered, and touched another button. This time he lost all sense of thought, and fell into the blinding brightness of white-hot agony. It dimmed and set him gently back into the corridor after what felt like several minutes, but Inferna had not moved a millimeter, and he realized that he had only been plunged into the white for a few seconds.

"We're ready," a second voice called out. He immediately recognized it as Welk's.

"Bring him in," Inferna ordered.

Welk wheeled a stretcher into the other end of the hallway. Anakin was lying on it, stripped and held tightly by metal rings around his arms and legs. Jacen watched Inferna leave his side and travel to Anakin's, and she slipped a pillow underneath his head. He's alive, Jacen thought, and a glimmer of hope sparked inside him. They might be able to get away yet, particularly if Inferna left Welk to keep an eye on them. Jacen tested his own knots, and found that he couldn't undo them, but they were just loose enough that he might be able to work his hands out if given enough unsupervised time.

Inferna turned on another set of lights, illuminating the far end of the corridor. Welk handed her a plain toolbox, and she opened it slowly. "I see you got into a fight," she said, and her fingers traced the edges of the scars lining Anakin's side and back.

"Your sister," Anakin spat.

"She was such an angry girl," Inferna said, as though disapproving. "It does not surprise me that she would attack you. Your kidney is mostly dead; I'm surprised you haven't gotten sick from that yet. You have a lot of necrotic tissue in there."

"The Force keeps it from decaying."

"Surgery would work better. I'll cut out the dead tissue for you and you won't have to waste your energy that way anymore."

What's she doing? Jacen thought wildly. He had a depressing thought; perhaps the Sith weren't trying to get information from them after all. Maybe they had decided to try to turn Anakin, and would turn the brothers against each other.

Don't let that happen, Anakin, he thought. He loved Anakin, and was sure that the feeling traveled in both directions. They were brothers, they were friends, and they were Jedi, and had developed a deeper affection that strengthened their bond, almost to rival that of him and Jaina.

I won't, Anakin thought back, and he lifted his head to find Jacen's eyes. He sent a small ripple of that love across the room, and when it reached Jacen, it softened his pain and sent his mind into calm peace for a few moments. Then Inferna grunted with disgust and slapped Anakin.

She pulled a small vibroknife out of the toolkit and it came to life in her hand. It hummed steadily and she tested it against the corner of Anakin's pillow. A piece neatly sliced off, but she deactivated the blade and selected another one.

This one had a harsher sound, and took longer to cut through the tightly twisted synthetic fibers of a second corner. This time, the cut was jagged and rough. "Better, don't you agree, Welk?" she said.

"I defer to your judgment, Dark Lord Inferna," he said.

"Smart boy." Inferna nodded and began to wipe some of the dirt and grime from Anakin's side.

"When am I going under?" Anakin asked.

"Tighten his bindings, and then keep an eye on the elder. This is going to take all night and most of tomorrow." she said to Welk, and finished with the rag before she answered his question. "Jedi Solo - you're not."

No matter how many times Anakin called to him, no matter how many cries for help were attached to his name, Jacen couldn't answer. His body was trapped, and his voice could do nothing. Anakin, I'm sorry, he thought, and was not surprised when the thought dispersed and dissolved before reaching its frantic target.

Tears dripped down Jacen's face. "We'll break you yet, Jedi," Welk sneered, but Jacen didn't waste any of his strength arguing with him. He only closed his eyes and wept silently, in confusion and desperate misery.