Dark Matter: Episode 3

The reddish-brown droid recovered quickly, lifting itself up after its coiled landing to stand nearly three meters tall. It had six legs spread around its torso, each heavily armored. Two arms, armored and shielded, stretched out beneath two cannons mounted, ostensibly, on its shoulders. It barked loudly, demanding in its foreign, digitized modality something Sheefa was incapable of understanding. It turned slightly, scanning each of them rapidly, and her middle clenched tightly when it turned toward her mother.

"Go!" Vaux'avh shouted, pointing back, before emitting a guttural, challenging roar while charging both Toberin and Nazaya.

"Magnificent," Nazaya whispered, smiling proudly.

Sheefa drew deeply on the Force, leaping across the intervening distance and drawing the droid's attention before it could do more than take a step toward her mother. Her lightsaber connected solidly with the droid's shielded right arm, and the droid scurried to reorient itself toward her. A last-second dive and roll kept her just ahead of the cannonfire. The broad, armored arm swung horizontally, passing just over her head, and she bounced off of one of its own legs to deliver a diagonal slice across the chest. The droid roared and reared back, skittering out of her range while it reassessed her tactic.

Sheefa whirled, eyes closed while she deflected a barrage of rapid blaster fire. It came too quickly, from two different angles, for her to be able to focus on deflecting more than a handful back at the source. The droid strafed to its right, continuing its constant salvo while it circled her, and then dove forward. It brought its right arm in hard, driving several centimeters of its armor plating down into the deck where Sheefa had been standing a moment earlier, while the young Mirialan spun to the side. She brought her blade down just behind the thickest part of the armor plating on one of the left legs, severing it completely, and screamed when the droid sent her flying with a powerful backhanded swipe.

She groaned as she landed, rolling despite the sharp pain that told her that some of her ribs were broken. A quick glance told her that Vaux'avh was still launching a frenzied assault on the other two, managing to bounce back and forth between the Nazaya and Toberin and keeping them both busy. Can't keep that up forever, she thought. A quick glance, though, was all she could afford. Once the droid had taken a few steps to get a better angle, it resumed its barrage of blaster fire.

Sheefa stayed ahead of it this time, leaping up from her crouch and bouncing off the wall. The droid pivoted smoothly, pitching its shoulder cannons up and down to follow her. She left a trail of near-miss impact craters in her wake as she flew. She feinted low, and as soon as the droid leaned forward to try to get ahead of her, she popped up into the air with a twist and sent her lightsaber whirling end-over-end. The fast-spinning blade sliced through another of the droid's legs on its left side, and the droid screeched in anger as it started to tip backwards.

One of its right legs slid around on a track, each of them spreading out to balance the droid. Now only upright on four legs, the droid dropped down so that the joints and struts were behind the armored sections. This caused it to surrender its height advantage, and to lose some of its imposing size, but the onslaught of blaster fire resumed as soon as the droid righted itself. Sheefa was only able to draw her whirling blade back to her hand just in time before falling back into another defensive flurry.

Slowly, bit by bit, Sheefa was driven back. The droid kept its arms folded across its front, with as little exposed as possible, as it bore down on her. Seconds stretched out interminably as she searched and searched for a gap in the deluge, but none came. Blaster fire bounced all across the room, and it was all she could do to keep it from hitting her or her mother.

Distantly, she was aware that Vaux'avh had lost the advantage.

Sheefa adjusted her grip on her blade to free her left hand and reached out through the Force to grab one of the droid's dismembered legs. The hardened metal hurtled through the air and lodged deep into one of the cannons, silencing it, but the adjustment came at the cost of a round of blasterfire making it through her defenses and hitting her cleanly in her right shoulder. Sheefa screamed, but the window she gave herself was too short to waste.

She darted forward, sliding underneath the droid's legs while it attempted to assess its own damage, and popped up behind the torso where she delivered a staggering, stabbing strike straight down through the center. The droid thrashed, whirling to dislodge her, but Sheefa held on tightly while she carved her blade deeper and deeper. The cannons could not turn inward, and the droid unleashed a useless-but-terrifying salvo all around her as it staggered. The pain in her arm flared fearsomely as she took hold of the droid, through the Force, and hurled it with every ounce of strength she could muster.

Nazaya turned at the last minute, snarling, as the heavy frame crashed into her.

It was Toberin, though, who took maximum advantage of the chaos and landed a devastating blast to Vaux'avh's chest that sent the older Mirialan sliding across the floor with a grimace. Sheefa snared her sister's lightsaber as she vaulted over her, and unleashed a storm of twin-bladed assaults in a style that stunned and overwhelmed Toberin. The former Jedi Master yielded ground steadily, and frustratedly, as Sheefa vented her rage, but it was only a matter of time before the pain in her arm grew too great for her to continue to wield both blades so energetically.

An enraged counter-stroke from Toberin knocked her own lightsaber from her hand, and Sheefa returned to her usual single-bladed style. Her sister's hilt felt strange in her hands, unfamiliar, but the thrum of the magenta blade had an invigorating effect that she thought she could get used to.

Despite the raised stakes, dueling with Toberin quickly fell into patterns they had established over years of training. She knew exactly when he would attempt to sweep her legs out from under her. When his right shoulder dipped in advance of one of his many Force maneuvers. She saw him coming at every turn, from a kilometer away.

Unfortunately, so did he.

It was hard, being so close to him. Drenched in sweat. Her muscles singing with exertion. It was hard not to equate it to how good she had felt doing the same thing with him not so very long before. It was hard not to think of him fondly, or with love, as she had for years. It was hard not to feel turned on, as their training had often turned to foreplay. It was hard not to surrender, as she had surrendered countless times before.

Despite all of that, she only had to look him in the eye. There was no love there; only the maniacal determination to conquer her. To possess and own her. Theirs would not be a relationship, as she had always sought. The more she thought about it, the more she doubted he had ever wanted such a partnership. The more she thought about it, the more she knew that possession had always been his aim. The more she thought about it, the more sure she was that this was what had always been beneath the surface of the man before her. He had manipulated her, in her naivete, and she was angry.

Back and forth across the storage area, they warred. Evenly matched. A dizzying dance laced with near-misses and almost-hits. Narrow escapes.

Toberin's eyes widened, barely bringing his blade around in time to stop a rejuvenated Vaux'avh joining in the assault. Sheefa smiled at the sight of her sister wielding her blade, and took a step back. She could see her own fight against Toberin had been an exercise in endurance, one which Toberin was more likely to win given her injured shoulder. She lurked, though, staying just beyond his range to keep his attention split while she caught her breath.

When one of her feints drew his defenses enough for Vaux'avh to land a burst of Force Lightning, Sheefa felt a swelling of justice. Of righteous retribution. Not only for years of her own mistreatment, but the mistreatment of her mother. Planting her foot into the side of his head, while Vaux'avh had his blade tied up in a contest of strength, sent so much adrenaline rushing through her veins that the pain in her shoulder simply melted away.

For a few seconds. Toberin turned as he staggered, and unleashed a powerful wave of Force energy that knocked her clear off her feet. The impact with the ground drove the air from her lungs, and Sheefa felt every bit of that pain rush back in.

A heavy thud drew Sheefa's attention to the side as she struggled to get up to her knees. The droid rolled, and while she was fearful that it might get back up, the fear turned to sheer terror as Darth Nazaya rose from beneath it. The diminutive human smiled grimly at her before crouching and launching herself away and to her right. It took her precious moments to realize that Nazaya was charging at her mother.

"NO!" Sheefa screamed. She knew she couldn't make it in time and, in a last ditch effort, hurled a dislodged piece of the ceiling into Nazaya's way. The Darth snarled as she slid beneath it, fire-red lightsaber blazing, and when she got back to her feet, Sheefa was careening through the air on a ferocious impact trajectory.

Both of their hilts skittered across the floor, blades winking out, as the two of them rolled over and over. Nazaya ended up on top, with both hands gripped tightly around Sheefa's neck and a vicious twist to her lips. When the Darth reached one hand out to draw her blade back to her Sheefa threw everything she had into pushing Nazaya, dislodging her and sending her flying just in time to avoid the blade opening her up across her middle.

She drew her sister's blade to her palm and leapt to her feet in time to meet Nazaya's resurgent charge, and instantly knew the taste of despair. Nazaya was, as Vaux'avh had once said, a maelstrom. Fury and rage on a scale she did not know how to measure. It was all she could do to keep herself in between the Darth and her mother, to corral and distract. She knew, too, that every time she moved to protect her mother, Nazaya was knocking her just a little bit more off balance. When she moved close, pressing the Darth, she was overwhelmed, and when she put space in between them Nazaya closed on her mother. Where her fight against Toberin had been a contest of perseverance, she could see that the best she could manage here was a delaying action and a brief one at that.

She whined, parrying two quick strikes as fast as she could, and never saw the follow-up that pulled her feet out from underneath her. Sheefa fell hard on her back, hurt more by her head smacking against the deck than anything else. She rolled onto her side, trying to get up before more came, but the double vision turned her stomach and she vomited.

"It's a shame," Nazaya purred, as she reared back and kicked Sheefa hard in the ribs. "The Jedi wasted your years of training, and your rapist clearly didn't spend enough time breaking you of those bad habits. Her appetite did not serve you well." She planted her foot in Sheefa's side again, this time hard enough to knock Sheefa briefly into the air and back down onto her back.

Both of them turned, with varying expressions of awe, as Vaux'avh leapt across the room in a single bound. The orange-haired Darth grinned, evading the ferocious-but-predictable swing and immediately unleashing a powerful Force attack into the older Mirialan's spine. Sheefa cried out to her as she tried to get to her feet again, but Nazaya laid her out with another hard kick.

"Stop damaging her," Toberin snarled, as he hobbled across the room.

Sheefa crawled away from them, desperately trying to reach her blade so that she could defend herself, but Nazaya cruelly stepped down hard on her outstretched hand with the heel of her boot. Sheefa immediately pulled her hand in tight to her torso, mewling and cradling the broken bones.

"Stop!"

"Do not presume that my patronage is in any way tolerant of defiance."

Nazaya had no sooner turned back to address Toberin than she was spinning right back around to meet a savage series of swings from Vaux'avh. The older Mirialan landed a weak jolt of lightning to Nazaya's left leg, knocking the Darth down to her knees with a grimace, but Toberin matched her blow for blow. Barely. Sheefa's heart ached to watch her sister persisting where she herself was so close to spent. Vaux'avh fought rabidly, like the cornered animal she was, but the exhaustion was too much to stave off. Even in just those few seconds, Vaux'avh was tiring.

Nazaya remained down on her knee for too long for so glancing a blow.

"No!" Sheefa cried, seeing the ploy moments before it unfolded. Nazaya swept up, her blade arcing severely, and took Vaux'avh's left forearm off clean at the elbow. Her older sister staggered away and to her right, knees weak, and managed a few more feeble, one-handed swings before Toberin disarmed her and planted a foot squarely in her stomach, knocking her flat. Sheefa crawled, dragging herself along with her good arm, toward Vaux'avh, who was trembling and staring in disbelief at the stump.

"That was everything I could have hoped for," Nazaya lilted, her soft smile turned so much more gruesome for the blood on her teeth and chin. Sheefa slipped her mangled hand underneath her sister's head and drew it close.

"I'm so sorry," Vaux'avh sobbed.

"I know."

"Are you sure you still want her after this?" Nazaya asked, head tilted as she stared at Sheefa. "She's likely to fight you for the rest of her days now."

"I'm sure," Toberin grunted. Between his pale complexion and numerous injuries, it looked like there wasn't much keeping him upright either. "Just a different kind of challenge to break her now."

Sheefa reached out with her left arm, her good arm, over her shaking sister, toward her sister's magenta blade.

"What is she doing?" Toberin said.

Nazaya turned, eyes wide, and managed to groan, "Oh F—" before a massive eruption of the Force sent both of them flying across the room. The blast of it missed her, but the sound did not; a scream like Sheefa had never heard.

Sheefa sat up further, looking back over her shoulder, and stared, stunned, at the sight of her mother walking gracefully across the floor. Her white hair flowed behind her in waves, riding currents of energy. "Go," she said, not taking her eyes off of the two struggling to get back to their feet on the far side of the storage area. She was trembling, though. Shaking so hard.

"No," Vaux'avh moaned, as Sheefa struggled to get both of them up. "No!"

"We have to go," Sheefa groaned, dragging her older sister.

"NO!" Vaux'avh's legs were too unsteady to fight Sheefa, but that didn't stop her from reaching out. "Madral No!!!" Mother. It ripped Sheefa's heart open to know.

In her mind, Sheefa saw that same memory; Vaux'avh, as a child, a girl, being selected by a client, picked out of a line, pointed at by a full grown man expressing his will, but this time the memory continued. Someone stepping in front of her. Offering themselves up. Someone taller, who had been right next to Vaux'avh. Vaux'avh, who had been too young, and too afraid, and who lived with the shame of letting this happen. The guilt. Dozens of moments where their mother had sacrificed for her. Hundreds of times, under the worst of circumstances.

This was what drove her, what motivated her. For the first time, Sheefa could see Vaux'avh with clarity.

Their mother planted her right foot in front of her and leaned forward, arms drawn in tight to her sides, and loosed a ferocious scream that knocked Toberin down again and staggered Nazaya. The Darth, bleeding from her eyes and nose, smiled happily as she fought through the powerful flow one plodding step at a time. Like she was walking upriver.

"MADRAAAL!!" Vaux'avh shrieked, as Sheefa pulled her onto the elevator. The younger Mirialan slammed the elevator button with her elbow, and sobbed as the doors began to close. Her mother's smile was the last thing she saw. "I promised her!"

"N1," Sheefa yelled, activating the comm on the wrist of her sleeve. "It's time!"

"We have to go back!"

Sheefa wept as she scooped up her delirious sister, and the two of them hobbled through the halls. The cruiser groaned around them, protesting against the damage being inflicted upon it.

"2E set charges! We have to... we have to...to stop the..." Her older sister was making less and less sense, and fought her less.

"I promised her," Vaux'avh repeated, softer only for having completely expended herself. Sheefa braced herself with her elbow and forearm, shrieking every time the impacts sent a jolt to her broken hand. "I promised I'd go back for her."

Another vision. Their mother, one eye swollen shut from bruising, smiling at her and replying 'I know you will.' The voice echoed in Sheefa's head.

Back through the hallways. Back through the mangled airlock. The cruiser groaned again. Back through the freighter.

"I promised I'd save her."

2E was already waiting for them on the Conquest, attached to a hardpoint beside the door, and the two sisters collapsed in a heap as soon as they were through.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no—"

"N1!" Sheefa shouted, her throat aching, and the gunship peeled away.

"—o, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—"

Sheefa rolled onto her back, weeping openly, as Vaux'avh reached toward the door. Clawed at the porthole with her one good hand. They felt Nazaya's blade cutting into their mother as sharply as if it had struck themselves, and they froze. A wave of Force energy enveloped both the cruiser and the freighter, hitting the Conquest broadside with a terrific jolt, a blast Sheefa felt in her stomach more than her equilibrium just before a series of more traditional explosions ripped the cruiser apart, from back to front, in rapid succession.

Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom.

The freighter, too, disappeared in a brief-but-spectacular flare, and the Conquest was further rocked by blasts of radiation and expelled gasses. Nazaya's flagship, Gravesong, listed perilously as its lights went dim, a gaping hole in its side. Once the Conquest stabilized, it took a few more minutes for the two droids to silence the various alarms that were firing off, and a little longer to fix the problems to which those alarms were attached. The only sound left after that was the sound of Sheefa and Vaux'avh crying in each other's arms.

***

Vaux'avh stared up at the moon and smiled. "I swear she gets bigger every rotation."

"She does," Sheefa said, smiling softly. "Her orbit is decaying. Little by little."

"Do you think we'll get to see it?"

The younger sister, her hair a full, dark gray, shook her head. "2E thinks it will touch down well north of us."

Vaux'avh held out her arms, one original and one synthetic from elbow to fingertip. "I can't stop thinking about being there when it happens. Getting right underneath and hugging her one more time as she comes down."

Sheefa hugged her sister and kissed the top of her sister's white-haired head. "We have many years before that happens."

As the years had gone on, Vaux'avh had become more and more convinced that their mother was watching over them, metaphorically and literally, from the small moon that circled their home. So much so that she'd changed the informal name they'd given it from Tyer to Madral.