Fire. Pain. Anguish. Death. Nigel had felt these before, but not nearly as strong. Dark brown bangs, darker and shorter than his sister Andrea's, lifted from his work on the ion engine of the X-wing. He gasped in horror as he realized from where the feelings had come. From whom. He dropped the hydrospanner as sheer horror stunned him A blank, unseeing look of pain covered his face.

Lieutenant Eva, whom he had recruited from the New Republic, had been briefing him about the readiness of his ship--and who he was only paying marginal attention--stopped. "Sir?" she called once, twice, thrice, before realizing something was very wrong. She pulled out her commlink, set it to the frequency she knew he and the other Jedi aboard used. They thought she didn't know, but she knew everything. It was her job, afterall.

She paged his friend, that Jedi, Nichole. Eva didn't like her much. She kept Nigel from his job. But Eva needed her all the same. She knew they were close, how close she wasn't sure. She had an idea, though.

Nichole answered in her categorically annoyed tone, as if Nigel always bothered her. "What do you want?"

"Nichole, it's Eva. Something's wrong. Marceau's gone blank."

There was a pause, then "Blank? What do you mean blank? I mean, sure, sometimes he looks kinda stupid, but--"

"No, there's nothing on his face. He was working on the engine of his X-wing a moment ago, and now nothing."

"Have you tried talking to him?" She asked, as if that would fix everything.

"Maybe you should see him for yourself."

"Sithspit. I'm winning this hand, too."

She blinked as she stepped out of the turbolift, and there he was--unmoving, just like Eva had said. Nichole crossed over to the X-wing, auburn pony tail swinging in her wake, eyes a shade lighter than Nigel's fixed on his form. She had saved him from the Dark Side and the Imperial Royal Guard long ago, and it looked like now she'd have to save him again. "Nigel?" she asked tentatively, as if he was something to be feared. Well, some people feared him, but not her. Not normally. Now was definitely not normal.

She mounted the ladder up to the cockpit, Eva left standing on the durasteel decking. Nichole crossed over the X-wing to where Nigel knelt, still as a statue. She knelt in front of him, looking into his dark brown eyes, stretching out to the Force. She probed around for his presence.

Feeling nothing at first, she dove deeper into his mind. There. In the farthest corner, seemingly huddling and shivering in agony, she found his presence.

She reached out for it in the Force, and it contracted sharply. She withdrew from the Force immediately; this was all unexpected. Nigel didn't do this. Ever. She slipped her arms around him, pulling his unresisting figure closer to her own. She hugged him tight, tears welling in her eyes as she sat down on the wing's sloping shield generator; his limp form slid into her lap.

"Don't you dare leave me, you hear?" Delving into the Force once more, she searched for his presence. She found it again, and only with the love of their bond did she overwhelm him before he could withdraw.

Instantly, she knew what he knew, felt what he had felt. Her body convulsed once in pain, while in the Force their essences intertwined, embraced.

She brought him back with her as she withdrew from the Force. He blinked rapidly, eyes focusing first on his location, then on Nichole's face, which was barely centimeters from his own. Then he felt her arms tight around him.

He looked into her eyes and smiled weakly. She responded with her own and was the first to break the silence. "Don't you ever do that again." She tried to sound angry and upset. She failed miserably.

"Eva?" He called down to her, "Take us to Coruscant."

"Oh! But, sir--" she sounded surprised to hear him again.

"No buts. Do it. And get Azrael on the line." He hugged Nichole tightly in the silence that followed.

"Chris, I'd like you to meet my brother Nigel and his friend Azrael." Nigel bowed slightly, removing his helm with a quiet hiss to reveal himself. His short brown hair was pasted to his scalp, and his brown eyes seemed to pierce Chris as they shook hands. Azrael stood mutely aloof, content with his identity remaining hidden.

It was the wedding reception. At the wedding Nigel and Azrael had remained on either side of the large wooden doors, statuesque in their crimson Imperial Royal Guard armor. Nigel was a former Guardsman, brought from the Dark Side by Nichole. Azrael disliked Nichole for that. Nigel had been a good Guardsman, but as a Light-sider, he could no longer hold that position. Nigel maintained his armor, nonetheless.

Andrea positively beamed, and Nichole looked pleasing, if a bit uncomfortable in her lavender dress. Nichole was used to wearing combat fatigues, or her Jedi robes. Anything but dresses. Chris wore his uniform, almost as uncomfortable as Nichole was, the monochrome of colors matching Andrea's bone white dress and her ivory skin, her brown hair and greenish eyes all making a pleasant antithesis.

Nichole and Andrea pulled away from the small group, easily tracked in the overall group at the reception. Azrael remained aloof while Nigel stepped closer to Chris. "Harm her and I will destroy you," he breathed quietly to Chris, then gave him a brotherly grin and hug. Chris gasped for air under the pressure of the crimson armor, blinking at the sudden change of attitude. However jovial he was now, Chris knew Nigel had been deadly serious when he uttered those words.

The spaceport comforted Chris more than Andrea could possibly imagine; the Western spaceport in particular. Whereas the security forces caught simple thieves, Chris knew how to blend in among the crowd, and knew how to get to places that weren't on any map or blueprint. Places that comforted a wounded soul or lonely being without narcotics or cheap entertainment. Thoughts of a wounded soul brought back memories of his childhood on Corellia, and the time he spent with his childhood sweetheart. Fenig by name, Feni to Chris; she always knew how to heal his soul. He'd had to find new places to heal himself when his mother moved them to Coruscant, but he wholly wanted to be back in those days right now. Back in Feni's arms in their tree watching the stars come out.

He was on his way to one such place now, hunched over in an abandoned sewer pipe. This one he'd found rather quickly, as the spaceport naturally drew him in. Abandoned, however, did not mean unused. The rust and waste encrusted pipe reeked of coolant, trash, and the corpse of the occasional unlucky Rodian.

He had discovered the place one night when one of his mother's lovers threatened the two of them. He had fled at his mother's wishes, and he'd never seen him again. A shaft of light illuminated his form, was broken into shadow, and enlightened him once more. Down the pipe, the drains repeated the process intermittently. People. he knew he was under the main lobby now. Farther down, the shafts of light were broken less and less intermittently. Those were the docking bays for private ships. Farther down, there was nothing but blackness.

He continued down the pipe, past even the intermittently blinking drain shafts, and began counting the unlit drain shafts. The darkened drains were the abandoned docking bays. They, however, were on maps. Tourists were urged away from these areas. These docking bays were closed down at the height of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion to house refugees. Closed down meaning the eviction of street gangs and stim addicts.

There. The twenty-third unlit shaft. The bars of the grate had been pried apart long before Chris journeyed here. He stood in the gap and hauled himself up into the shaft. As he began his upward climb, his darkness-adjusted eyes noticed something strange. There was a pale blue light filtering into the shaft. Has part of the roof collapsed? He wondered. As he reached the top and crawled through the hole wrought in the grate, he found that someone else had discovered his haven. The blue light was coming from a holoprojector displaying an underground Porn-holo, thugs passed out on the oily duracrete floor, in tattered chairs, or on olive-painted ammo crates. The rest was taken up trash, bunks left from the refugee occupation, and various pieces of arms. "Uh oh, " he muttered, eyes growing wider and mouth pressing closed in realization. He made to drop down through the pipe he had come up through.

"Hey! Where d'you think you're going?" He was grabbed by his collar and hauled roughly from the drain shaft.

Red warning lights flashed violently. An annoying buzzer that couldn't be silenced at the sensor officer's console turned on. Lieutenant Li'a'kurg warbled a few expletives in his native language, then swiveled in his ancient chair and began speaking in Basic. This happened every time someone exited hyperspace where they shouldn't have. Most times it was a tramp freighter and an inebriated captain. "Sir, sensors have picked up a mass shadow exiting hyperspace at a non-standard and illegal exit point ninety-six kilometers--" a rapid beeping indicating another exit cut him off. Now there were two drunken captains. Great.

"What does it all mean?" exclaimed Major Likings, Li'a'kurg's superior, who in Li'a'kurg's humble opinion wasn't suitable for his job, or for that matter, anything above and including a used bantha salesman.

"It means that we have two--no, three--ships ranging between, " he paused, glancing at the board and blinking large watery eyes, "light cruiser and destroyer in weight. I suggest you notify the admiral, sir."

His console rapidly beeped again, and on the other side of Coruscant, a myriad of mass shadows was decanting from hyperspace and registering on his screen. These caused Li'a'kurg to hiss a rather detailed expletive in his native tongue about where this fleet could shove itself.

High above Coruscant, the sky flickered a light emerald as the double layer of shielding came online. Traffic was diverted in massive rivers to any available landing space; news bulletins were interrupted with emergency broadcasts. Pandemonium erupted as the public sought refuge as far away from the sky as possible. Militiamen were recalled to active duty over the commnet.

Aboard the defending fleet of three MC-90s, the command MC-100, and the various corvettes and gunships stationed above the planet, the level of activity rose dramatically as the blue battle-lamps overtook the regular lighting, and klaxons sounded thrice.

Chris awoke to the steady pounding of feet that he felt in his head. No. That wasn't the feet. That was the headache he had, which he figured originated somewhere out of view, about six centimeters from his right temple. He was bound to a rusty I-beam for a lack of better furniture, wrists locked by a single synthetic cord. Hey, only the cheapest for my pals here, his pain-wracked mind managed wryly. He was tied up for a lack of a better place to be put. The comforting weight of his NR Starfighter Command ID inside his pocket was missing, meaning they had searched him and found it and wanted to interrogate him. Obviously their plans had somehow changed during the time he'd been out.

He wondered why the thugs were running about so frantically. A raid? No. They look...scared. At any rate, they weren't paying attention to him, and it worked well for him as he frantically tried to rip the fibers of the cord on the I-beam as more cognitive powers returned to his aching mind.

His commlink beeped several times beofre the cord ripped. He was surprised he still had it on him. These guys are either amateurs or stimmed out. He rose to his feet, padding his pockets until he found it. He then bolted out of the building, flicking it on and holding it up to hear and be heard. How long was I out? "Madison."

"Madison! Where the hell are you?" the high-pitched voice of his squad leader drilled into his ear canal. He had to wince her voice was so loud. His squad leader was also a fellow recruit from the Academy, and she managed to convey her message every time she spoke. She was a bit shorter than Chris with short brown hair and a smile that Chris thought was cute when it was present. He'd had a crush on her the first semester at the Academy, and got over it when she'd started dating another recruit. She was honest, and caring, and obviously very worried about Chris at the moment.

"Ah... social visit." He never managed to drop the joking, which was why he was still a flight officer. How he managed the stay in the Corps with a discipline record like his, he and his friends could only wonder. He guessed, correctly, it had something to do with Andrea.

"Get to the hangar already. If you haven't heard, it's a Vong attack." The connection died.

He stopped in his tracks. Vong attack? Had he heard her right? He hurried off across the duracrete of the spaceport to find out.

Continued in Part Three