Crash and Burn

The white sun had almost risen to the highest point in the sky that day, a little bit less than two full days and nights after their arrival. Jacen dropped the nearly-empty pillowcase in front of the tent opening and sat down on the grayish ground, thinking that they were still in a dire situation. The few handfuls of acorns and tree nuts that he'd found would hold them out for a few days longer, at least. Buying time was important. He and Anakin were strong and young, though, and as long as they had enough water, they could survive a long time waiting for someone to come for them. He just didn't know if they could make it long enough.

Anakin came into the camping area then, with a rope laid out over his dirty blue shirt. One water keg was suspended from each end of the rope, and when full, they weighed ninety kilograms together. Anakin had barely broken a sweat.

"Practicing your telekinesis?" Jacen asked pointedly.

"Maybe," Anakin said, and he put the kegs down. "Don't worry so much. I'm not going to bring forth a new age of Dark Side domination just for using the Force to keep me safe and keep me from getting tired. It's not like we have a lot of fuel for our bodies." He pointed at Jacen's pillowcase sack. "Besides, I can't compete with the Stellar Empire."

"No, maybe not." Jacen welcomed the change of topic. "I'm starting to think they still do have Dark Jedi high in the government."

"It wouldn't surprise me," said Anakin, as he started to set up the portable water distiller. "It's the rule of two. If the Empress' advisor was a Sith Lord, then there's at least one more who might make a second. Maybe more pretenders, but even if they're pretenders they're Dark Jedi, or Nightsisters, or something nasty."

"That's probably right. It doesn't explain why they're so anxious to keep us away from Dantooine, or why they're holding up refugees on the Doldur asteroids, though."

"Not much we can do to figure it out from here."

Jacen had to agree with that, too. He opened up the pillowcase and shook out the nuts that were held in it, still in their hard shells. Then he pried off the shells with his utility knife, one by one, while Anakin purified their drinking water.

"How long is it going to take to get the message transmitter set up?" Jacen asked.

"However long it takes me to pull two and a half kilometers of wire from the pod's interior and build a solar panel. Lucky there's that much wire to splice together, but that's probably going to be six or seven weeks, if we both work on it. Twelve if I have to do it myself."

"Six weeks, all right. And you're sure that you can get it working and that we'll be able to send a message out to the New Republic?"

"No," Anakin admitted. "There are a lot of places that a crude machine like that can short out. Why?"

"Because I've been looking at the trees and I timed how long it took between sunset and sunrise for the past two nights. The days are getting shorter, and the trees have already shed most of their leaves. I don't know how long the years are on this planet but I think it's about three months longer than a standard year. I'll have a better idea after a couple more days. But either way, winter is coming, and that means that it's going to get a lot colder."

"Colder?" Anakin's face scrunched. The days, so far, had been bearable, but at night, the temperatures on the dry ground plummeted; cold enough, had there been more than the lightest frost, to cause snowfall and any moisture on the ground to freeze into sheets of ice. They'd huddled near a small fire to keep warm, and neither slept very well.

"Like I said, it's not even winter yet, but it will be soon. And by the time winter does get here we either need to be gone or we need to have done what the animals do - go south, towards the equator, where it's going to be more temperate. There's a herd of... of somethings heading this way from the north. If we can't be sure of calling a ship before the end of autumn then I think we should move."

Anakin stood up and threw his hands into the air. "Then how am I supposed to get anything built?"

Jacen didn't have an answer ready for that. "I... I don't know. We could take the parts with us, I guess-"

"We'd practically have to carry the entire pod!"

"All right, so we won't carry it. We can leave it where it is, and find a place to settle in for the winter, and then come back when it gets warmer."

"You think there's going to be anything usable left, after the pod's been exposed to the rain and snow for months and strange animals are running through?"

Jacen threw the last handful of nut shells onto the ground. "Why don't you come up with some ideas instead of just shooting down all of mine?"

"I don't have any ideas. I just know yours won't work."

"I want to get off this ball of rock just as badly as you do. Look, Anakin, let's not get into another argument. We don't have much time before we have to be out of this area because it's going to be very hard to find anything to eat and keep from freezing to death. Even if you do use all your Force powers to make heat - you can't just make fruit appear and we can't keep warm that way all the time. So I think we should take what we need, leave the rest, and hope that the parts are still usable in the spring."

Anakin sat down and leaned against the water kegs. "But I don't want to just settle down and stay. There's a war going on, and we're hiding out while everybody else fights it. No, no, don't say it, don't say that Jedi shouldn't be fighting. We should be doing something even if it's just guarding refugees and trying to keep displaced people from getting into their own fights."

"We don't know that. What if the war goes badly? What if being out here is the only thing that's keeping us from getting killed?"

"There's not going to be another Purge. There can't be, Jacen. The Force won't let it happen again."

"You feel the clouding in it too," Jacen said. "I don't know what's happening, and I can't guess. But we can't help anyone while we're here, and if we don't survive to leave the planet at some point, then we're going to be a lot more useless than if we wait awhile and then go back. Don't eat too many of the nuts; we're going to need them and I don't know how long it'll be before we find something else that's okay for humans."

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere far. I'm just going to meditate for a little while. We have to think of a plan, and you're right; mine isn't very good. But we have to go with it unless we can think of something better." He got up and went about two hundred meters away, where he sat on a boulder and tried to clear his mind.

The planet was starting to feel a little less alien to Jacen, although he still wasn't as attuned to it as he would like to be. The gravity felt normal - only a little higher than on Yavin IV - and while there weren't any sentient life forms on the planet unless they were weak in the Force and on the other side, there had been sufficientt time in the narrow life zone of the bright star for some creatures to evolve. There was some richer plant life to the south, and a hazy feeling that he guessed was several groups of animals in that direction. Others were north and west of them, also heading southward as they must be doing by instinct. If that instinct had helped them to survive for countless generations on this world, then that reaffirmed that he ought to do the same as they did.

Something streaked across the sky - perhaps a meteor, or - no, it was too regular to be a meteor. A small light separated into two as it got closer; it came in from the southern sky, and approaching them at a rapid pace. A starship! He breathed a sigh of relief and climbed down. "Anakin!" he shouted as he ran back to the camp. "There's a ship coming for us! We won't need the transmitter after all!"

"Who is it?" Anakin asked. He looked out over the land and found the approaching ship. "Jaina? Dad? Uncle Luke? It doesn't feel like any of them."

Jacen sighed and expanded his awareness, out towards the ship. A sensation of simmering anger hit him first, followed by anxiety, and a hungry sort of anticipation - battlelust and eagerness. He felt his cheeks go cold as the blood drained out of them. "They're coming for us, I think, but it's nobody we know. Probably the guys from Marstill."

Fear crossed Anakin's stubbled face, but only for a moment. His blue eyes turned to ice and he climbed to his feet. "We stand our ground."

"Against a Stellar Imperial troop carrier? They might have three dozen warriors!"

"You told me two days ago to grow up and let go of some things I was thinking. I think you don't want to take your own advice now. If there are thirty-six of them and two of us, then we can't play a fatal form of Pellet Collector, running around the grounds while they chase us from every direction. We split them up and fight them off."

"I don't want to call on-"

"Sithspit! When did you get to be such a pacifist, Jacen? It's not of the Dark Side to fight evil! And if you still can't wrap your mind around it then think of it as defending me." His brow creased and he looked up at Jacen. "You aren't going to make me face them myself, are you? We're stronger together than apart."

"No," Jacen heard himself say. "If it comes down to us having to strike back against them then I'll stand with you. But we don't attack; we defend. All right?"

"All right. I don't want to get into a tangle with them if we don't have to, but I don't think there's going to be any way around it."

The feeling of darkness was growing stronger. There was no mistaking now that a Dark Jedi was on the troop carrier and all logic and intuiton combined told Jacen that he and Anakin were its targets. It only took them a few minutes to bring down the tent and pack it inside the pod, and they had to leave behind the water kegs and ration box a short distance away. "Go northwest," Jacen said.

"But I thought..."

"There's a bit more vegetation in that direction; it'll give us cover."

They half-walked, half-ran down the hillside and away from the small comforts of the campsite, into uncharted and unknown lands. The almost-bare trees were a little bit thicker in the direction that Jacen had pointed out, although they had to wonder whether it would be much good against Imperial troops. What do they want? Do they just want information, or are they trying to kill us? Jacen thought as the hours passed and noon went into afternoon, and then into early evening. Can I bargain for Anakin's life with my own?

It bothered him that he recoiled from the idea and had to force himself to embrace it.

"Jacen?"

"What?" Both of them were panting now, trying to put more distance between themselves and their pursuers, until the inevitable clash.

"I think we need to turn around."

"Have you gone completely crazy?"

"I haven't, but they might have."

Jacen had been concentrating so hard on keeping track of the location of the troopers a few kilometers behind them that he barely noticed the change in the life signs up ahead of them. A hundred gray splotches were only slightly visible as outlines blocking trees and making shadows. He pulled out a pair of macrobinoculars and took a closer look.

"Blaster bolts! What are they?"

"You're the expert," Anakin said. "But I'm picking something up from them. They're hungry... and we would probably make good snacks."

"Not for that many creatures." The herd appeared to be comprised of about thirty adults and seventy or seventy-five juveniles, much smaller than the others. They had crinkled hides and stood on tall, double-jointed legs, three pairs each, connecting to a bulbous torso. It was hard to tell their exact height, but he guessed that the adults were around four meters tall, and the "children" about his own height. They appeared to be headless, but then a small round part of one extended from the torso on a long retracted neck, and its jaw opened, revealing four rows of bony teeth. It snapped off a thick branch and stripped it of all its leaves in three seconds. Jacen passed the binoculars to Anakin and said, "Well, they look like they're herbivores."

"Then why did one just bite a bird in half?"

"Okay, they're omnivores. We'll pass by them quietly. I'll tell them that we're not edible, and we'll let the troopers worry about them." He was briefly conflicted about having other creatures to come to his defense, even in such a tangential manner, but he reminded himself again that it wasn't just for him; he had Anakin's welfare to worry about as well, and as the elder brother, he had a responsibility to keep Anakin safe.

The six-legged walkers grew more and more agitated as the boys went nearer to them. Jacen briefly touched their primitive minds, trying to make some sense of their social structure, if there was any. He found the one that he thought was the elder of the herd, and tried to erase its thoughts of them. We're not here. Nothing is here. There is no danger.

Through the walker's eyes he saw weak herd members, brief memories of long snows, and a rage that boiled whenever anything smaller than them crossed their path. They were starving, and like Jacen wanted to protect Anakin, the walker king and queen had dozens of others of their kind that were in desperate need.

Jacen couldn't turn him, and now the walker king turned in a slow quarter-circle to face the Jedi Knights. His head shot out from his body, with three eyes, and his jaw open wide. The others began to extend their heads and necks as well, but then retracted, all but one - the walker queen.

"What are they doing?" Anakin whispered.

"Looking for lunch," Jacen said. "They're already watching us; whispering won't help."

"Back south, then?"

P-p-pew!pew!pew!

A cloud of dust rolled violently over them, partially obscuring the second volley of shots that zinged into the dirt less than a meter away.

Anakin took and activated his violet lightsaber in one smooth motion, and Jacen held his green one. "We're surrounded, aren't we?" Anakin asked.

Jacen opened his mouth to speak, but a third voice, a young male, drowned out the stammering assent that was about to pour forth. "There they are! I told you it was the Solo spawn. Odact, Baclaw! I want them captured and I want them alive!"

"Special Ops, set to stun," said a woman. She sounded mildly disgusted.

Twenty-four uniformed warriors in two companies stood at either side of a robed man. They were visible only as silhouettes, blocking the dimming light from the setting sun. All except the man in the center aimed their blaster rifles at Jacen and Anakin.

He only shot one arm forward in their direction. "Fire!"