Author: Darth Marrs
Summary: 150 years after the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi of the Star Wars galaxy once more face extermination at the hands of a new Empire and a new breed of Sith. This is the story of one young Jedi named Siana Delun who escapes the massacre and finds herself crashing on a planet far, far away. Lucky for her, she discovers friends. Unfortunately for her, she discovers even more enemies.
Rating: Mid-to late Teen
Disclaimer: If I owned any of this, I wouldn't be writing fan fiction.
Notes: The Star Wars universe is AU. As the story progresses I'll point out what differences, and why. Assuming anyone cares, of course;)
Everything else should be considered canon in its respective shows as of the date indicated in the story. For those wondering, there is a smattering of X-Files, Star Wars, Star Gate and Star Trek, with a few cameos later on, but Roswell forms the backbone of the story. The Pod Squad are in it from start to finish. All 240,000 words of it. I hope you enjoy these first two chapters.
* * *
Part One: A Very Long Day
When the fish that travels over both land and sea
is cast up on to the shore by a great wave,
its shape foreign, smooth and frightful.
From the sea the enemies soon reach the walls.
Century I, Canto 29
The Prophecies of Nostradamus
Chapter One: From A Galaxy Far Far Away
Ossus, Auril Sector
130 ABY
2 Days following the Fall of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances (GFFA)
Siana Delun screamed as the red and black-tattooed Sith warriors cut through the small number of Jedi left who tried to make a perimeter.
“Do not fear, Delun!” Master Skywalker told her as he lifted his own light saber in one hand, and a second taken from a nearby fallen Jedi in the other. “Go with Shado and Cade, now! We’ve summoned your guardian!”
Behind the Jedi Master, waves of red lightsabers and white storm trooper helmets came rushing on, while overhead Imperial fighters swarmed across the skies. Surrounding buildings exploded under the orbital barrage, throwing everything into chaos.
In all her life, Siana had never felt such fear as she did at that moment. Still, when she felt a soothing hand on her arm, she forced herself to be calm and turned to see a Rutian Twi’lek staring at her compassionately. “Come on, Siana,” Shado said. “The younglings need us!”
Nearby, she saw Cade staring at his father and Master Sazen even as he shepherded the younglings into one of the waiting Jedi shuttles. Around them, the new forests of Ossus burned. With a muffled sob, Siana turned and ran from the attack with Shado by her side.
Behind her, she heard Master Skywalker speak words that would burn into her mind for the rest of her life: “I am Kol Skywalker, servant of the Living Force. None of you shall pass!”
There was an explosion ahead of her, and Siana sucked in air as she realized a squad of storm troopers and Sith had flanked them. She reached for her purple lightsaber at the same time Shado ignited his blue double-bladed saber, and the two leaped toward their enemies, while behind them Kol Skywalker and Wolf Sazen by themselves held off an army of Sith and stormtroopers.
The fighting became a blur. Siana lost her fear and pain in the will of the Living Force, letting it guide her as she spun, flew and cut through the fanatics attempting to kill the Jedi younglings. Nearby, she felt Shado twirling savagely as he cut down all who blocked their way, until at last they cleared a path for the younglings, who ran without needing direction as soon as it was safe.
She found Shado staring at her. “What?”
“I’m in awe, Padawan,” the Twi’lek said. “What a powerful knight you will be!”
They heard a cry of agony and turned to see Master Skywalker twitching under a shower of Sith Force lightning. Sazen was down as well, clutching the stump that was once his hand. Cade ignored both Shado’s calls and her own and ran to aid his father and master.
“Talleth, get the younglings out!” Siana called to another padawan near her own age. Talleth complied and the first of the Jedi shuttles launched.
She turned to rush forward when Shado caught her. “Get out of here,” he told her. “I’ll get Cade and the rest of the younglings. Get a shuttle and go, while you can!”
“I can’t leave you!” she said.
Shado leaned close enough for her to feel and smell the passage of his breath across her face. “Siana, you are the last of your family. For your parents. For your grandparents. For the guardian of your line, you can and will go! Now!” He pushed her away, his blue lekku flailing, before turning to go after Cade.
“Force preserve us,” she whispered as the tears again sprung to her eyes. Somewhere out on the grounds of the temple, her mother and father lay dead. Her grandparents as well. Even old Rana, her great, great, great grandmother, the oldest human alive, had finally succumbed.
Overhead, another shuttle lifted off, only to explode under a barrage of orbital fire. Siana doubled over with the pain as she felt twenty youngling lives snuffed out. With a cry of despair, she threw herself into one of the remaining shuttles, ran to the cockpit and lifted off. She began rolling the ship left and then right as soon as she was airborne in an attempt to evade the oncoming barrage. As soon as she was clear of the foliage, she ignited the thrusters and sent the shuttle barreling toward the sky.
Even before she left the atmosphere, a swarm of Predator-class fighters began firing on the heavily armored shuttle. She evaded the fire as best she could, until at last she broke through the atmosphere into empty space. Ten thousand kilometers away, she could see the gray arrow’s point that was a Pellaeon-class Imperial star destroyer firing on the surface.
Sparks began to fly from control panels as laser bolts began taking their toll She grabbed the hyperdrive lever, said a prayer to the Force, and then pulled. The stars began to twist into a familiar blue tunnel. Just as the ship was about to enter hyperspace, however, one of the Predators got off a lucky shot that hit the motivator.
The tunnel started collapsing. “No!” Siana cried. She gasped desperately at the Force, throwing raw Force power at the motivator at the same time as she increased power through the engines. The damaged motivator flared a dangerous red through the panels at the rear of the shuttle cargo area, and suddenly the blue tunnel shifted to red, and the shuttle blasted into a type of hyperspace she had never seen or even heard of.
The passage buffeted the ship brutally and tossed the young padawan from her seat. Elsewhere she heard another loud thud and feared something else had broken, but she did not have time to check it out. She picked herself back up and managed to strap herself into the crash webbing just as the ship lost all semblance of control and began tumbling through the red hyperspace tunnel.
The shuttle burst out of hyperspace with a flare of Cronau radiation and a flash of fire from the motivator. Almost immediately, the shuttle began tumbling uncontrollably. In the cockpit, every alarm the shuttle had was howling.
Siana grabbed desperately at the flight controller and fought to level the shuttle out. She just managed to stop the stars from spinning around so violently when a blue orb suddenly dominated the window.
Already the planet’s gravity had seized her ship. She tried to activate sublight, but when she hit the switch, the engines behind her exploded and the lighting in the cockpit dimmed. “By the Force,” she whispered. “I’m going in blind!”
Plasma began glowing along the leading edges of her ship. She closed her eyes and sent a prayer to the Force. As if in answer, the back-up systems in the shuttle activated and power surged through the cockpit.
“At least I have control thrusters,” Sienna said aloud. She looked at the Navcomp, hoping for an ID of the planet. She had originally intended to head toward the core where the remnants of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances still held some Jedi-friendly worlds.
The computer, however, had no information about the planet, or even… “This can’t be right,” she said. “Computer, verbal interface, confirm location.”
“Unable to confirm,” a pleasant masculine voice responded. “No known star configurations. High probability of extra-galactic location.”
Extra galactic
“Please note we are entering the atmosphere of a Class IV planet without functional shields or sublight engines. Emergency beacon activated. Recommend crash webbing and foam be deployed.”
“I can’t fly in crash foam,” Siana said. She was coming in on the night-side of the planet, and in so doing could see cities evident over all the continents. Her sensors picked up several satellites as well, so at least she was crashing on a space-faring planet.
The shuttle hit the atmosphere like a rock hitting water. The shock of the impact took Siana’s breath away and spun the shuttle violently into another uncontrolled tumble. The tumble continued even as the flaming shuttle broke through into the atmosphere. Siana’s efforts to level the flight were hampered by the lack of her port-side stabilizer, which appeared to have burned off either in re-entry or in the barrage of fire over Ossus.
“Surface impact in five minutes, recommend deployment of crash foam,” the computer’s voice said happily as around her air and fire roared.
She kept her hands on the flight controller and poured the Force, her muscles and every once of willpower into leveling and slowing the ship. “Impact in three minutes, recommend deployment of crash foam,” the computer said.
“Frak you,” Siana said in a very un-Jedi-like manner. The shuttle finally stopped tumbling just long enough to give her a good look at a moonlit lake rushing toward her.
“Impact imminent, recommend deployment of crash foam,” the computer said helpfully.
Siana pulled the crashfoam lever and held her breath as the white foam bubbled instantly into the whole cockpit. Then she felt and heard a roar, and everything blacked out.
* * *
Chapter 2: Crashdown
Lake Sumner, New Mexico
Thursday, January 17, 2002
8:45 p.m. Mountain Time
Michael Guerin bent over a carefully made pile of logs, surrounded by a ring of stones, and held out his hand. The center of his hand took on a red glow, and from the center of the pile of logs, flame erupted. Behind him Maria Deluca set up their tent on the shores of Lake Sumner.
When he knew she wasn’t looking, Michael turned and stared over his shoulder, astounded as always at how lucky he was. Maria was a marvel to him, a young woman of grace, intelligence and beauty with the voice of a sultry angel who, despite her many qualities that made her perfect for a truly deserving man, seemed to like him instead. He still did not understand what it was about him that she loved, but he was forever grateful that she did. Evidently, Maria’s mom saw that love too. For the first time, Amy Deluca actually gave her daughter permission to go camping with Michael.
“Fire’s done,” he said. “Need help with the tent?”
Maria straightened and stared at the unrecognizable pile of fabric. “How did I get stuck with tent duties?” she demanded.
Michael shrugged, held out a hand, and the fire roared over their heads before settling back down. “Alien powers. I don’t need matches,” he said with a smirk.
She sidled up to him and gave him a long kiss. “At least we know my spaceboy is good for something. Now, are you going to help me?”
“Yeah.”
He returned her kiss and started setting up the tent. Around them, the night was absolutely still save for the twinkling of lights from the small subdivision across the lake.
For those not born or bred in the true Southwest, the silence might have been intimidating. There was no beautiful forest surrounding the lake, nor any mountains. It was rather a large pond in the middle of a desert, with only an occasional juniper or cottonwood tree to break the monotony. It was where Michael and Maria had been born (sort of, in Michael’s case) and the only nature they knew. The January evening was still bitingly cold, with tufts of snow hidden in low spots, or at the leeward sides of the occasional trees that dotted the arid landscape.
As she kissed him, Maria felt the heat radiating off Michael’s body. Snuggled against him, Maria knew she would be more than warm enough that night. She basked in his heat, and the moment. It was, she realized, one of the few occasions where the two of them were acting like a real couple. Granted, she was not a great fan of camping, but camping with Michael alone… Michael could be rude, insensitive; even mean. But when they were alone, he was...still rude and insensitive, she admitted. But often times he was also selfless, loving and supportive, and everything a boyfriend was supposed to be. And he was getting better all the time.
Michael had the tent nearly assembled when both heard the crack of what sounded like thunder. They looked up into the cloudless sky, until in the west they saw it. A fireball was falling through the sky. “Wow,” Maria said.
“Wonder what it is?” Michael said.
They continued watching as the fireball seemed to get larger. “I don’t know,” Maria said, her voice rising an octave, “but I’m pretty sure it’s coming our way! Michael!”
Michael responded instinctively. He grabbed Maria’s shoulders and threw her down inside the tent, and then threw himself over her just as the fireball struck the water a few hundred yards away in a small inlet on the southeast corner of the lake.
Water vaporized in a plume and began falling almost like rain. The tent blocked the water, keeping both dry. When the worst of it passed, Michael climbed out of the tent, jumped to his feet and stared. He held out a hand absently to help Maria out as well, but did not take his eyes from the object jutting out of the water. “That’s alien,” he said with absolute certainty.
“Are you sure?” Maria asked, recovering quickly. “Looks military to me. Look—it even has running lights.”
Michael turned and stared. “Maria, if that were military, it’d be in a thousand pieces by now. You saw how fast it came in. Look at it. It looks like it just fell a few feet instead of crashing in a fireball.”
Maria pursed her lips in thought. “Okay, so it’s alien. So what do we do?”
“We check it out!” Michael said, as if the question was completely moronic. He began running toward the shore with Maria a step behind.
“Michael, what if it’s a bad alien!” she said.
“I’ll deal with it,” he said firmly as he continued to run. They reached the shore nearest the crash. A few nearby bushes had been singed, but otherwise nothing looked too damaged. The object itself was obviously a ship of some kind, perhaps twice the size of a commuter jet but smaller than a 737. Michael could see why Maria thought it was military—the ship had a green, khaki-like color to it, but it was so blocky, without recognizable wings or engines, that he couldn’t believe it would be able to fly using conventional military technologies.
The water was cold, but he ignored it as he splashed in until he was waist-deep. He came to the still steaming surface of the ship. “Michael!” Maria called from shore. “I can see lights coming around the lake. And that might be a helicopter coming!”
Michael ignored her as he put a hand to the surface and concentrated. Light blossomed from the center of his palm, and matching light began steaming from the ship’s surface. A moment later, Michael’s power burned a door-sized opening into the tilted side of the ship. Water began seeping in as he climbed in himself. The interior was covered in thick white goo that seemed to be melting even as he touched it.
Aside from the goo, he had to admit a little disappointment in how completely mundane everything looked. There were benches and seats with exotic but still usable seatbelts just like any military transport. He began moving forward, using his power to melt away the foam, until he reached what looked like a cockpit.
That’s when he found her. He knew immediately she was not military just from the odd robes she wore. But what really convinced him was the strands of blue hair now visible in the midst of the melting white foam. He moved to her side and felt her cheek—it was still warm and flushed, though she herself appeared out cold. He lifted the hair, and in the single white light of the cockpit, he could see the blue went all the way to the roots—it was not just a dye job.
He glanced over the controls and stared at the script. He recognized what had to be words, but not the alphabet. He did know, however, that it was not Antaran script, so she was not one of his own kind.
He tugged at the alien woman’s seat belt, and then resorted to using his power to snap the cables. She fell sideways into his arms and he began carrying her. Finally, he had no choice but to throw her over his shoulder. When he did so, he heard a faint moan of pain, but nothing more.
Grunting at the exertion, Michael climbed up the steeply inclined interior until he reached the hole. Only in so doing did he realize just how deeply the craft had embedded itself in the lake. Maria stood on the shore, her hands to her face. “Michael, I can see helicopters coming!”
Michael saw lights in the sky, still distant, and knew they had little time. “Help me!”
“The water’s freezing!”
“Maria!”
“Oh, all right,” Maria said, yelping as she stepped into the cold water of the lake. She was up to her shoulders, shivering violently, when Michael lowered the girl down. “Is she one of you?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Michael said. “But she’s not from around here.” Michael hopped into the water himself, took the girl, and the two of them stumbled toward the shore. “Your trunk!” Michael said.
“It’s a hatchback,” Maria reminded him.
“We’re not staying, pack the stuff over her!” The back seat was already folded down from their trip up. He placed the unconscious girl with the blue hair in the back of the hatchback, and then quickly disassembled the tent and placed it, still loose, over her. They quickly packed the rest of their things just as the helicopter arrived, blowing dust everywhere.
“Michael!” Maria said suddenly. “Our clothes! They’ll know we’ve been in the water.”
“Right.” Michael ran a hand over his clothes. Where the hand passed, the moisture disappeared, leaving him dry. He did the same for Maria and was just finishing as the first car from the subdivision across the lake arrived. More were on their way.
“Are you okay?” a massive Hispanic man with a goatee called as he climbed out.
Michael waved. “Yeah, close call, though, huh?”
A moment later the Army helicopter landed and twelve very heavily armed soldiers jumped out and ran toward the shore. “Wow, you guys got here fast!” the Hispanic man said.
The soldier in charge shouted orders to his men and then stepped directly in front of Michael. “Has anyone approached the craft?” he said.
Michael and Maria both shook their heads. “It’s in the middle of the water,” Maria pointed out helpfully.
The soldier looked both of them over, noting the dry clothes with a nod. “Folks, this was a Pegasus transport that suffered an engine malfunction. We may have people aboard we need to rescue. I’m going to have to ask you all to leave the area. We have other choppers coming.” He pulled out a notepad. “I just need your names and contact information in case we have any questions for you.”
“Carlos Guevara,” the large man said as he rattled off his phone number. “I live across the lake.”
The soldier, who Michael noted was a sergeant, nodded. “And you two?”
“John Love,” he said, and gave the phone number to the Pizza place near his apartment.
Maria stared at him a moment, then smiled. “Margarita Salt.” She gave the phone number of Michael’s one-time dance instructor.
The sergeant didn’t even bat an eye. “Thank you, kids. Now, get going. We’ll call you for your statements.”
They turned, gathered their tent and soggy picnic basket, and climbed into Maria’s Jetta. The fire had long been extinguished by the crash.
They drove away in silence, making sure to stare straight ahead, as behind them more helicopters arrived. As they got on 203 leaving the park, they could see in the distance behind them a line of headlights approaching from the southwest.
Only when they were on Highway 84 heading back to Fort Sumner did she dare turn in her seat, lifted a flap of the tent, and stared at the girl. “She looks human,” Maria whispered. “I wonder who she is?”
“Don’t know,” Michael said as he drove. “But whoever she is, we can’t just turn her over to the government and let them do to her what they did to Max. We can’t.”
Maria looked away from the beautiful alien at Michael, then leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I know, Spaceboy,” she whispered. “We’re doing the right thing. We’ll call Max, and everything will turn out all right.”
Michael drove for a moment, and then said, “I love you.”
“I know,” Maria assured him. “I love you too. But you’re still going to owe me a nice dinner for this one. And you actually have to pay this time.”
Michael grinned. “Done!”
Behind them, the first response team of soldiers quickly formed a perimeter around the shoreline while a lone figure in a black overcoat watched. He stood near a lone juniper tree as soldiers inflated rafts to post a line around the ship in the water as well. Their orders were simply to isolate the craft until the isolation team arrived.
The soldiers were so busy establishing their perimeter that they did not at first notice the lean figure standing in the hole that somehow had been burned into the side of the ship. With the only light coming from flashlights, it should not have been surprising how easily the figure evaded attention.
The man in the overcoat noticed, however, and watched with interest as the figure launched himself into the air to a height beyond any possible human reach. Flying over the water and the heads of the soldiers, the figure landed lightly five feet inland from the sergeant overseeing the operation.
The sergeant turned in time to see a flash of red before his head went tumbling away from his body toward the water. The other men, instantly recognizing a threat, opened fire with every weapon they had.
Blue lightning flashed through the air and men screamed in agony. The beam of red flashed again, and some fell headless to the ground while others died sizzling under the barrage of blue lightning. In less than a minute, a full dozen soldiers lay dead.
The meter-long beam of red light faded back into what looked like a black cane, and the thin figure turned toward the man in the overcoat. The figure spoke words the man could not understand, but the threat was obvious.
“I am not one of those humans,” the man in the overcoat said in contempt. “I am not so easily defeated.” He pulled a gun from inside his coat. Before the man could fire, though, the dark figure burst forward with incredible speed. With a flash of red light, the man looked down at the severed stump of his wrist and a sizzling red beam impaling his chest.
He looked back up at the dark figure, smiled, and stepped back off the red light sword. He held up his hand, and the figure watched with a tilted head and narrowed red eyes as a bud broke through the cauterized flesh. The bud expanded with astounding speed, breaking into appendages that were obviously going to become a hand. In moments, there was absolutely no sign the man in the overcoat had been injured, except for the blackened hole in his clothes.
The dark attacker paused and spoke again, but again, the language was nothing heard on Earth. The man in the overcoat grinned evilly. “You do not want me or my kind as an enemy,” he said.
The alien returned his grin, activated his light sword, and then cut the man into fifty separate pieces in the course of five seconds. To those pieces, the dark figure pointed his hand and unleashed a maelstrom of blue electricity that cooked every piece of flesh until it blackened and boiled.
By the time the isolation team arrived, there was no sign of the dark figure, and the decimated man in the black overcoat was reduced to a pool of black oil.
* * *
Somerset, England
Friday, January 18, 2002
3:58 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) (Thursday, 9:58 p.m. MST)
In a beautiful country estate coated in a thick blanket of white snow, a well-manicured man sipped warm tea while staring out the window of his study into the early morning darkness.
He was an elderly gentleman with rheumy, sorrowful eyes and hair as white as the snow outside, which itself was still shrouded in the pre-dawn darkness.
The gentleman did not sleep very often any more, not since having to fake his own death several year before. He was waiting for his murderers to find him, as he knew they would in time. He had kept ahead of them for the past few years, but knew his time was fast running out.
Rather than death, however, what startled the gentleman was a ring from his telephone. He put his tea down and answered the phone without turning on any lights. On the other side, he heard a constant thrum of background noise as if the caller were in a plane or automobile, and a low, raspy voice. “A ship has crashed.”
“One of them?” the well-manicured man said.
“No. Something else. Something came out of it and killed one of them. Truly killed it. Shortly afterward they came for me.”
The gentleman nodded, though no one could see him. “What are they doing now?”
“They are trying to cover it up. But they can’t. Too many officials know about the crash.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We direct other assets to the party.”
The gentleman sighed. “The Syndicate is all but gone, my friend. You and I are all that remains. We have failed.”
“We have. But others might not.” For the first time ever, since hearing the speaker on the other side a lifetime ago, the gentleman heard a hint of hope in the other’s voice. “I’m on my way to him now.”
“Do as you must, then,” he said. He looked up and saw a shadow standing less than a foot away that was not there a moment ago. “It seems you are the last one left now, my friend. My time has come.” He put the phone down.
The shadow struck. In a beautiful country estate in Somerset, England, a well-manicured head fell to the floor. His body fell a moment later.