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Beyond - Legends Dark Paths (Jacen, Tahiri, Anakin, Jaina, Jag - 5 years after "The Unifying Force"!)

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Thrawn McEwok, Sep 26, 2003.

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  1. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    The planet loomed ahead, sparkling seas and steel-blue mountains wrapped together in a loose shawl of pale clouds. The warship was behind him, closing fast.

    And as usual, Gry Falconer was caught in the middle.

    Grimacing, he wrenched the rudder to the left, slewing away a split second before the warship opened fire again. Lances of light streaked past his canopy, brilliant against the star-strewn blackness, and the big fighter shuddered as several shots clipped his shields on the port quarter.

    Come on, he thought, as the fighter leaned reluctantly into the turn. There was a sluggish drag on the stick, and the bows were coming round far slow than he would have liked. Far slower than they should have.

    The hits he had already taken must have done some damage, he realised - or else the snarling radiation from the overheated engines was fouling his etheric rudders.

    But the shield held, and he grinned as the fighter finally completed the turn, and he felt the belly plating graze the planet's upper atmosphere. The stick wrestled in his hands, and red-gold sparks began to shower past the canopy as the nose shields dug into the air at several times the speed of sound, but for the first time in several days, the sense of immediate danger faded in his mind.

    He almost enjoyed this part.

    And if he could get low enough, down among the iron-hard mountains of the planet's primary continent, he'd be able to shake off the warship's sensor lock, and lurk for long enough to let let the engines cool off. Maybe even set her down to repair some of the damage. And decide whether to continue with the mission, or return to report its failure.

    Then, for the second time in seconds, instinct saved him.

    Twisting up and away to starboard, he was levelling out on a new course before he realised what he was doing, watching in horror as a beam of fire as wide as the fighter's hull was tall scored through the sky where he had been an instant earlier, shredding his port shields, and making alarms scream in his ears.

    Turbolaser! he realised. They want me dead.

    Behind him, the warship was coming round into a shadowing orbit, unprepared to pursue him into the atmosphere, where the superiority of his spaceframe's flight dynamics would really tell.

    Instead, they were just opening the range and bringing their main batteries to bear, knowing that he didn't have the speed and shield-strength - or the suicidal courage - to attempt to break orbit and try to run past them for open space again.

    As he swung around, and stared up at the warship, he saw another flash of light as the turbolasers fired again, and he twisted the helm hard over to the right, flipping the fighter up on one wing as he twisted right round and pointed his bows at the planet's shoulder. He was still high enough up to see the stars in the sky. Half a continent was spread out below him, a vast expanse of ocean up ahead.

    For a moment, his hand hovered over the turbo switch. Although his sensors had picked up some traces of hyperemmission systems on the surface, they were so scattered that they hardly affected the planet's biosphere at all. If he miscalculated...

    But they were firing at him with heavy turbolasers.

    He flipped the switch, and felt the physical kick against the back of his couch as the injectors pumped their power into the engine core. The fighter lept forward, blazing a trail of roaring fire as the heat exhausts ignited the air around his stern. For fully five seconds, he held his shuddering course, holding as steady as he could on the planetary horizon. The ocean flashed past below him, and then the coast of another continent, grey mountains rising up in the interior. Smiling again, he eased forwards on the controls.

    Slamming on the brakes, shedding velocity and altitude with violent speed, he levelled out above the treetops fifty miles inland, and jinked away. The last seconds of his descent from low orbit had been a blur, but he was flying slow enough now to get a close look at some of the terrain - the way the t
     
  2. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Well, I think that needs some tweaking still, but you get the idea....

    ;)

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  3. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Oooh... I like it! But isn't it spelt 'Sergeant'?
     
  4. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    Nope. [face_mischief] :p

    A 'serjeant' was a type of medieval soldier less 'important' than a 'knight', who could ride alongside 'knights' in the charge, but whose mount, training and equipment was less specialised for that purpose. Think of a dragoon compared a cuirassier, or an AFV alongside a Main Battle Tank, if that's any use to you. Or a VSD alongside an ImpStar, or an Imperial Army trooper alongside a stormtrooper.

    In the medieval military orders (Templars, Hospitalers, etc.), 'serjeants' - often apparently from a slightly lower social background - fought alongside the 'knights' - and basically, I've borrowed the term from this context for the non Force-sensitive fighter pilots within an order of Force-adept 'knights'...

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  5. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    So there's still some Jedi left? I take it Gry's a serjeant rather than a knight, as it was instinct tat saved him rather that the Force?
     
  6. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    I don't think I said any of that, did I? The narrative of this fic' (which isn't, I think, quite the same thing as the plot?) is driven by unanswered questions...

    To say that Gry Falconer isn't a Jedi Knight would be misleading in two simultaneous, contrasting, and almost paradoxcal ways at once... but it would be equally misleading to say that he was a Jedi Knight...

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  7. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Ouch... you're making my head hurt...

    So you're saying he's probably Force sensative and doesn't know it and there's also some other conection aswell...
     
  8. Master_Ponta

    Master_Ponta Jedi Master star 4

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    Feb 11, 2003
    Very cool!
     
  9. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Blended: um, no... :D

    Ponta: thanks!
     
  10. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    "Commander," she heard the sensor specialist say, a defensive grind to his gravelly voice. "We lost the signal. I can refocus...."

    He trailed off weakly.

    For several long seconds, no-one spoke. She listened to the silence, smiling slightly, savouring it.

    She could hear the steady note of the hyperdrive, the low hum from the computer stacks and the power-transfer conduits, and the soft symphony of sounds made by the varied respiratory systems of the Purity's flight deck crew - eleven sentients belonging to seven varied species.

    But she suspected that none of the rest of them would be able to hear much more than the rapid beating of their own hearts.

    She knew that their eyes were shifting towards her, one by one, as each of them found the courage to look away from their screens. She tried to imagine how she seemed to them - a slim figure at the front of the bridge, standing with her back to them, staring out the main viewport at the sea of stars and the shimmering expanse of New Alderaan's oceans. The muscles of her shoulders were tense beneath the thin fabric of her tunic, gloved hands clenched tightly in the small of her back.

    She hid her smile, and, slowly, she turned round. Her gaze swept the flight-deck, looking each of the Specialists and Technicians in the eye for just a moment, until, finally, she was looking at the sensor specialist.

    He was a Mon Cal, and she remembered thinking when she first met him that his mottled skin - the colour of cured fish - was an unhappy match with the battered khaki coveralls which passed for a uniform aboard the Purity. But now, the memory seemed oddly out of place. He was just a member of her crew, in the same drab, anonymous coveralls as all the rest of them - old New Republic battledress, stripped of all rank insignia and unit patches. And she realised she couldn't remember his name.

    She sighed, frowning slightly.

    "We lost the signal?" she repeated, her grey eyes glinting like flint. "No, Specialist. You lost the signal." She paused, as if considering something, smiling faintly, then glanced towards the far corner of the flight deck, and the tall, still figure who stood there. The final member of the Purity's command crew. The one who did not breathe. Her smile grew, and became a grin.

    "Tenkay?" she asked

    In front of her, she saw the sensor specialist's eyes go wide with alarm, and her own grin grew wider still.

    "Commander!" he protested, his voice loud with outrage, glancing at Tenkay, and then at her. Still smiling, she watched with some satisfaction as he faltered under her iron gaze. "I... I... please!"

    A blur of movement, almost too fast for the eye to follow. A shot flared out, followed by a scream. It was all over before she even had time to blink.

    The sensor specialist was clutching his wrist, grimacing in pain, and staring in something like indignation at the figure in the far corner of the flight deck. Slowly, YVH 327-10K took one step forwards out of the darkness, his autobaster levelled, a whisper of smoke rising from the cooling vanes around the muzzle.

    Without taking her eyes off the sensor specialist, the Commander stepped away from the viewport and, crouching carefully, picked up his holdout blaster from where it had spun to a stop in the centre of the deck.

    "Losing the sensor lock was bad enough," she whispered. "But pulling a gun on me, Specialist? To say nothing of thinking that you could be quicker on the draw than Tenkay?" She grimaced, as if in disgust "That was just stupid."

    The Mon Cal tore his eyes away from the droid, and turned back towards her, staring in horror as she drew the big blaster-pistol holstered at her hip. Perhaps he was screaming. She found that she never heard the screams any more.

    "Specialist," she heard herself say as she raised the barrel, holding it steady, the muzzle barely three feet away from the chest. "You have committed a capital crime against the New Constitution. As Commander and Representative aboard this warship, I am required to impose s
     
  11. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Oooh. An evil Antilles? Nice. ;)

    She reminds me a bit of a 40K commisar. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not yet sure.

    Winter! Yay. But isn't her surname Celchu rather than Celcheu?
     
  12. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Oooh. An evil Antilles? Nice.

    Evil? No, just differently good.

    She reminds me a bit of a 40K commisar. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not yet sure.

    No idea. Never given it so much as a passing glance, I'm afraid - but someone mentioned Ibrahim Gaunt (who I'm almost ashamed to admit I've even heard of) with regard to the concept of the 'hero' over in the asylum recently, and the possibility of a similarity did cross my mind post facto... which probably proves something about viral memes...

    Outside of SW itself, my main inspiration was flicking through the standard history of the GRU in an idle moment... and some old comic-book cliches from my youth...

    To say anything more would negate the narrative purpose of the fic...

    Winter! Yay. But isn't her surname Celchu rather than Celcheu?

    Probably.

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  13. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Colonel-Commisar Ibrahm Gaunt, actually. ;) You've never heard of warhammer 40k?> I'm suprised. Some of the writing in this fic reminds me a bit of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels... this stuff is better than those books, but there's something similar...
     
  14. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Oh, I've heard of it, but that's about all, I'm afraid.

    On reflection, I'm at a loss to say where the 'style' is coming from in any precise way. I know I am trying to write in a particular style, and I think I know basically what I'm trying to achieve, but I can't put any precise finger on it... there may be some influence from the pulp sf at the Baen Books Free Library, but I don't think that's all it is...

    Which is odd.

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  15. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Cool site. I'll check out some of the stuff there next time I have a free moment. :) Which will probably be never, so I'll use it as a good way to procrastinate net homework instead. ;)

    With some of my stuff, I don't try to write it in any particular style; I just write it as it comes. However, I'm just writing a Vignette narrated by a bartender in Mos Espa, so I'm writting it with his 'voice'. It's great fun, but it's a lot harder than I expected. :)
     
  16. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Cool site. I'll check out some of the stuff there next time I have a free moment. ;) Which will probably be never, so I'll use it as a good way to procrastinate net homework instead. ;)

    Time mismanagement? All you ever need to know...

    With some of my stuff, I don't try to write it in any particular style; I just write it as it comes.

    Nothing wrong with that!

    However, I'm just writing a Vignette narrated by a bartender in Mos Espa, so I'm writting it with his 'voice'. It's great fun, but it's a lot harder than I expected. :)

    I think I know what you mean...

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  17. Master_Ponta

    Master_Ponta Jedi Master star 4

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    Feb 11, 2003
    Cool.

    Winter! Oohh! This is good!
     
  18. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Jacen Solo stared up into the cloudless sky of New Alderaan. To the naked eye, there was nothing except light and air and the wheeling birds overhead - but in the Force, the warship in orbit burned star-fierce like a second sun.

    Within the light, maybe with a different aspect of the Force, Jacen could sense the individual personalities of the warship's crew, like voices whispering over a static-washed comm-channel. He narrowed his eyes instinctively against the glare, trying to focus his mind more sharply on them.

    Then, quicker than thought, one voice cried out in sudden terror - and fell suddenly silent.

    He took a sharp breath, and felt a shiver of fear from Tahiri beside him. Turning towards her - a heartbeat too quick - he saw her trembling like a taut wire in the wind, staring at him like a stranger.

    "N-no," she stammered, looking away, her eyes flashing frantically. Through the Force, he could see what she saw - the cabin, the tall pine on the far side of the meadow, the mountaintops - the familiar landmarks of their home, all alive in the Force. But she hardly seemed to recognize where she was.

    "It's okay," he said, wrapping her in his arms, running one hand through her hair, soothing and strengthening her with the Force. "It's okay, baby. I'm here. Come on, look at me."

    She buried her face in her cloak, and started to cry, sobbing and shivering like a wounded animal.

    "Make it stop," she pleaded. "Please, Anakin, make it stop."

    "Let it out," he whispered, wincing inwardly. "Let it all come out. It's going to be okay, Tahiri. It's going to be okay. I'm here. It's going to be okay. Come on, baby, look at me."

    He felt the grief well up inside her like, and she started to struggle, moaning something in Tusken or Yuuzhan Vong. He just tightened his tender grip, wrapping her in himself.

    "I'm not going to lose you, Tahiri. I'm not going to let you go...."

    "No!"

    She twisted away suddenly, slipping out of his grasp. She took two quick steps away from him, and he stepped after her, reaching out with the Force to catch her.

    "Tahiri..."

    She paused, and turned back towards him, her hair tangled, her face tear-stained and twisted with pain and despair.

    She stared at him, a warning glare in her molten eyes - and he felt her slip away from him in the Force.

    Then she blinked, and turned away agan, fleeing for the embracing darkness of the woods.

    Jacen just stood where he was, and watched her go.

    There was nothing else he could do.
     
  19. Master_Ponta

    Master_Ponta Jedi Master star 4

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    Feb 11, 2003
    What!?!

    :eek:

    :eek:

    :cool:

    That was good, even though I'm not sure I understood it. :p

    Keep up the good work!
     
  20. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Master_Ponta: thanks! The shooting of the sensor specialist was the catalyst... I hope that much was clear...

    But thanks!

    :)

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  21. _Jedi_of_Destiny_

    _Jedi_of_Destiny_ Jedi Padawan star 4

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    May 17, 2003
    I echo what Master-Ponta said. Didn't really understand but I liked it anyway. :p
     
  22. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    _Jedi_of_Destiny_: Thanks :D And I like your poetry, too!

    I'm in a quandry here, though... things aren't supposed to 'make sense' inasmuch as you're only supposed to see what you're supposed to see (hence the radical curtailing of the scene aboard the Purity)... but if the narrative and the immediate motivations of the characters aren't making sense, then I have problems...

    Basically, if it's not clear that Tahiri's 'turn' was brought on by Liberty Antilles shooting the sensor specialist, then that's a problem... everything else... is just what it is...

    One thing I will say, just to tease my loyal readers (I count three ;) :p)... post after next, we finally get to see what Anakin's been up to since Star by Star...

    - The Imperial Ewok
     
  23. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Cool post. Anakin? Mwahahahahahahaaaa...
     
  24. Thrawn McEwok

    Thrawn McEwok Co-Author: Essential Guide to Warfare star 6 VIP

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    May 9, 2000
    Gry Falconer thrashed his way forwards through the trees, wincing every second step as the strained muscles of his left thigh twinged. He suspected that the bruises would be black and blue by the time he managed to take his gear off and inspect it, but he knew that the injury itself wasn't serious enough to warrant immediate attention - or even the though that he was giving it. It was simply a painful reminder of his own clumsiness. He'd forgotten how wild truly untamed woodland was.

    The trees were widely spaced on the slope above the river, slender, smooth-barked trunks reaching straight up like spears all around him, blossoming into a thick canopy of leaves several feet above his head. The few superfluous branches lower down at his level were light and easily bent back out of the way, and with the low morning sunlight slanting in from the south, it wasn't even that dark.

    But the wild, tangled undergrowth, hardly disturbed by ruminant animals, was slow going - two or three feet high in places - and he'd tripped several times over trailing roots and old hoojib-holes as he fought his way upstream.

    Hence the leg.

    It would have been easier, he reflected, if he'd kept to the bank of the stream, or struck out at the start for the bare ground above the treeline. If he'd bothered to think what he was doing, rather than set off in a straight line that had no rationale behind it, except perhaps that it cut across the contours of the slope at the most awkward angle imaginable.

    But no. Thinking what he was doing wasn't his strong point. So now he was thrashing his way through the trees, shoving the branches out of his way with his gloved hands, and letting them whip back against his helmet.

    He was, he conceded, enjoying himself immensely.

    Or would have been, if it hadn't been for his blasted leg.

    Several seconds later, he stumbled to a stop, standing on the edge of a narrow gully carving down between the trees, carrying a small brook down from the hills to join the bigger stream below. He swayed uncertainly, loose soil spilling out from under his toecaps, and put one hand out towards the trunk of the nearest tree to steady himslef.

    The tree leaned away from him at the slightest touch, and he yelled in alarm as as its roots tore out from the loose soil under his feet. The world swayed alarmingly, and he tried to scramble back to safety - but his leg betrayed him, and the ground gave way beneath him, sending him tumbling headlong down the bank, landing hard and pitching forwards into the stream with an emphatic splash.

    He lay there for more than a minute, face-down in the mud and laughing out loud, feeling the coolness of the shallow, swift-running water seep through the armoured fabric of his flighstuit.

    Then, finally, he hauled himself to his feet, and stumbled down to the mouth of the gully. He stepped out into the sunshine - and turned suddenly to his right, just in time to see a flailing figure tumbling towards him along the riverbank, a frantic whirl of flapping robes and wheeling limbs. He just had time to realise that he was looking at a blonde-haired human female in loose, dark clothes before she hit him squarely in the chest. He bounced backwards two steps, wrapping his arms around her to stop them both from falling over.

    "Hey," he said, looking down at her - a slim girl in a sodden brown robe, smeared with mud. The top of her head came up not much further than the middle of his chest, and the robe was a heavy thing of dark homespun, almost like sackcloth - filthy and ragged, with shapeless sleves and a crude cowl. She didn't seem to have much on underneath it.

    But her eyes had held his attention from the first moment - brilliant, beautiful eyes.

    She was staring back at him, and he realised, slowly, that she was older than he'd first thought - perhaps twenty or twenty-one, with tanned skin, unkempt, sun-blonde hair, and two short, jagged scars cutting upwards between her eyebrows, scars which he somehow knew she had been marked with as a deliberate disfigurement.

    "Y
     
  25. SpeldoriontheBlended

    SpeldoriontheBlended Jedi Padawan star 4

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    Apr 12, 2002
    Oooh, coolness. His quest? Oooh, more coolnes! :D
     
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