Kazdan Paratus, former head of the Jedi Technical Division and one of the few surviving Jedi Masters of Order 66, surviving all the way up to2 BBY even.
Sadly, he paid for his survival by going mad in Legends, but none of that madness was on display now as the Shien master was using his defensive style and lightsaber pike to expertly keep the First Brother's much more aggressive style at bay, blocking and parrying strikes with ease while at the same time using his free hands to use the Force to control his his droids and even occasionally fire off a push or telekinetically throw something at the fallen Jedi.
Sadly, I couldn't really take the time to appreciate the spectacle since we were still in the middle of a battle!
"Now's our chance! While everyone is distracted!" I told Rowv as I fired several sonic blasts at the troopers not being overwhelmed by the junk droids.
"A jetii…" Rowv said in shock as he watched the two Force users clash blades. "I had thought they were all slain…"
"Yeah, Imperial propaganda tends to be less than honest on a good day, but we can't focus on the awesome fight right now!" I roared at her, tearing her eyes from the fight and instead towards one of the few landed Nus nearby. "We need to jack a ship and get out of here! And I don't like the idea of abandoning our rescuer, so we will need something with more space and range than our stolen fighter. You with me?"
"I shall stand by your side," Rowv nodded with conviction, which was good enough for me.
"Then let's move!" I yelled as we ran into the ongoing battle between clones and droids, Light and Dark, almost like a Clone Wars in miniature if one thought about it.
We dodged or blocked blaster bolts, struck back at distracted troopers whenever we could, and in general did the best we could to not make ourselves a target as the two sides sorted out their differences, running over corpses both organic and metallic the whole while. Thankfully the junk droids seemed smart enough not to peg us as enemies, and while the troopers would have no problem with that they were too busy with their new foes to really pay attention to us as we ran over to the Nu. Luckily for us, or due to the pilots' orders, the ship hadn't tried to take off or even close its boarding ramp!
I guess the chaos of battle was really messing with the decision making process of its pilots as the ship was dinged from all over from stray blaster bolts.
"The pilot and the gunner seats can be brought down with a press of a button from the boarding area in the chin of the ship," I informed Rowv as we got closer to the ship. "I'll handle them, you secure the rest of the ship to make sure no other troopers are still on board, got it?"
"It will be done!" Rowv roared as, despite her injuries she quickly rushed past me with a limping run and up into the ship, blades drawn and ready to slice any enemy they came across.
"Glad to see her fighting spirit hasn't diminished at all," I commented to myself as I ran up after her and quickly pressed the button to the pilot's seat, which rapidly lowered it down, much to the clone pilot's shock as he saw me.
"What the-?!" he started, reaching for what looked like an emergency sidearm, only to be stunned by my pistol for the effort.
"Sorry buddy, but we need the ride," I stated as I quickly unhooked the pilot clone from his seat and with my suit's enhanced strength bodily tossed him out of the ship's boarding ramp before me before quickly moving to repeat my efforts with the gunner seat.
Unfortunately, this one must have seen what just happened to his brother, so when I pressed the button to lower his seat he already had his pistol raised and pointed at me.
"Stand down, insurgent, or else I'll-" he tried to threaten me, only for Rowv to grab his head from behind and, with lethal quickness and inhuman strength, snapped his neck with a sickening crack.
"The ship is secure," Rowv told me easily as she quickly unhooked the newly-made corpse from its seat and tossed it out of the ship. "There were no others inside besides these two."
"Right… good job…" I said in a slightly sick tone after what I just witnessed, which was crazy given the amount of people I had already killed in arguably worse ways, but I focused past it thanks to the continued sounds of battle outside. "I'm gonna take the pilot seat, you stay by the hatch and signal the Jedi to jump in, got it?"
"I'll inform you when all are aboard," Rowv nodded as I quickly climbed into the pilot seat and pushed the button to ascend upwards to the transport's actual controls.
"Okay, military model, but at least to all those cheat lessons I know what most of this stuff does," I muttered to myself as I quickly started up the ship's engine and grabbed the controls. "We're lifting off!"
I felt and watched as the Nu shuttle rose into the air and its wings unfolded, but keeping the front hatch open as I carefully flew the ship around the battlefield. I made note that despite the clones being outnumbered and surprised the tank-born soldiers were still holding their own decently well, likely due to the fact that Kazdan was too focused on the First Brother to direct them better, and under proper leadership might even rally, especially if the other Nu that was attempting to make a floating landing and that was unloading more troopers could help them turn the tide.
I couldn't allow that to happen, quickly priming the front facing lasers cannons, targeting the other shuttle, and opening fire.
With its shields apparently down, and striking its opened up front, the effects were as spectacular as they were grisly as the ship violently exploded and tossed troopers in all directions, if they weren't already disintegrated from direct laser fire that is. This completely destroyed whatever chance the clones had to potentially fight against the junk droids, and sadly for them I wasn't finished.
I quickly turned the ship's guns on the battlefield itself, blowing up groups of clones and any organized resistance that I could see, making the rest easy prey for the junk droids. Due to my actions, no trooper would leave this planet alive today.
I didn't have to do what I did… but these troopers had heard me diss the First Brother earlier and the last thing I needed was any of them surviving and reporting my words to their higher ups. I hated it, but my continued survival relied on there being no witnesses…
Speaking of which, while I was doing my horrid harvest, I watched as the First Brother was being pushed back by Master Kazdan, the smaller Jedi proving his vastly superior skill, experience, and fighting style against the much more aggressive Inquisitor. Even from this distance I could see the rents and burn marks in the latter's armor while the former looked practically untouched.
The duel was already over, it was just a matter of just how it was gonna end.
And end it did, not a few moments later, as the First Brother attempted to buzzsaw Kazdan with his lightsaber with what I imagine was a scream of pain and rage, channeling as much of the Dark Side as he could in an attempt to break through the smaller Jedi's defenses, only for the Shien master to halt the attack and strike through the circular gap of the Inquisitor's own lightsaber with his pike to stab him right in the heart.
The First Brother looked down at the lightsaber in his chest in seeming shock, his helmet having been damaged to reveal a single eye, before it was pulled away. His lightsaber deactivated as he beheld the burnt hold in his chest, looked up at Kazdan, before he fell forward onto the ground and his grip on his weapon completely loosed. He was dead.
And so ended the tragic tale of one of the Emperor's many pawns… dying on a world of trash alone.
Sadly, I couldn't think more about it as the ship's sensors screamed at me about those patrolling V-Wings quickly coming up on us.
"We gotta go!" I yelled through the ship's speakers to Kazdan as I flew closer to him, who had apparently picked up the dropped lightsaber, making him turn his head up at the ship. "We got fighters inbound!"
I watched as the Jedi leapt several meters up easily, unsure if that was due to the Force or his robot legs, through the ship's boarding ramp.
"We're clear!" Rowv informed, while I was already closing up the boarding ramp and gunning the engines.
Unfortunately, V-Wings were much faster than our current ship, and a group of them were already on our tail and blasting at us, only stopped by our shields. But at the rate they were going, they'd eat through them before we could even leave the atmosphere. And unlike Bracca, I doubt I would be able to dogfight-escape these ones easily.
"We got hostiles on our ass!" I informed my passengers. "And I don't think I can shake them!"
"Fly the ship near the river of plasma!" Kazdan ordered me. "Quickly!"
"Not sure what the plan is, but alright!" I answered as I did as I was told, quickly flying the ship near said location and flying over the large amounts of dumped plasma as the V-Wings followed us.
I soon learned just what Kazdan had in mind, however, as from the trash piles on either side of the plasma river large blaster bolts and even mounds of trash were directed towards the V-Wings' way, seriously throwing them off if not damaging or even destroying them! Was Kazdan doing the same trick he did with those junk droids earlier on whatever the heck was still out there? Either way, it was working!
"We're clear! Let's get the hells out of here!" I announced as I aimed the ship upwards and sought to quickly break the atmosphere and gravity well so we could jump the heck out of there, even going so far as to already start inputting jump coordinates before more alerts went off, making me curse. "Scratch that! We got more fighters inbound!"
"Keep the current course!" Kazdan ordered me.
"But if I do that-" I tried to argue, to no avail.
"Do it! You must trust me!"
"Fuck! Fine!" I said as I kept moving towards the larger mass of V-Wings head directly our way, soon seeing them through the cockpit window as they zoomed our way and were already firing at us at maximum distance. "If there is another plan in the works that doesn't get us blasted out of the sky, any time now would be nice!"
"Fear not, for we have our own allies," Kazdan said cryptically, only for my sensors to go off all of a sudden and then stare in shock as a little swarm zoomed past me and into the V-Wings.
Said swarm was made up of vulture droids, HMP gunships, tri-fighters, and even old scarab droids! Sure, all of them looked like they had seen better days with missing parts, armor paneling, weapons, and honestly looked like most were half-scrapped and barely flying, but they were there dogfighting with and in a lot of cases smashing directly into the V-Wings! It certainly wasn't a beautiful fight, but goodness was it pragmatic as the V-Wings suddenly had to focus more on surviving than intercepting us as I flew through the chaotic ball of violence in a panic, still taking more hits than I liked, but shields holding, before coming out the other side and breaking atmosphere.
"We're through!" I announced as I finished inputting the coordinates and got us out of the planet's gravity well. "Jumping now!"
With those words, I flipped the lever and we jumped, real space quickly expanding and finally giving way to hyperspace.
I engaged the autopilot and just leaned back, finally letting out a sigh of relief at the fact that we were finally safe… for the time being at least. There were still a lot of steps to do before Rowv and I got back to Ord Mantell, and there was still the matter of their rescuer too. But first, I had to not make a similar mistake again.
I lowered the pilot seat and quickly walked into the troop hold, noticing Rowv treating her injuries with a medpac and Kazdan quickly focusing his eyes on me as I walked in from where he was seated on the floor.
"Okay, I'm sure you have a lot of questions, Master Jedi, but before anything else we need to search this ship and rip out any tracking devices or anything like that, ideally before we leave hyperspace," I told him. "We don't want a repeat of what happened to us back in the Raxus system before we ran into you. Can you help at all?"
Kazdan stared at me for a moment before nodding. "I can."
He said nothing else as he got up on his actual legs and started using his robotics limbs to search the ship without any input.
Okay, all power to him, especially if he can Force sense the tracking device or something.
Before I went to help him, however, I checked on Rowv as she finished patching herself up.
"You okay?" I asked before realizing that was a pretty stupid question, all things considered.
"I am injured, but I am no longer at risk of dying ingloriously," Rowv assured me as she showed off her bandaged wounds. "I, however, might need to seek out your medical droid once we return to the Sleipnir and make use of its services if I wish to be in full combat condition within a reasonable timeframe. I do not look forward to the experience."
"Yeah, I hate visiting the doctor too if I can avoid it, but sadly sometimes it's needed, like when you have a bunch of rusty metal stabbed into you," I joked a little to cover up my real concern. "Just take it easy for now. Once we find that tracker and get rid of it we'll stop over on some random planet, ditch this thing, and then take a transport over to Ord Mantell, just to be safe."
"A wise precaution," Rowv nodded before continuing. "I was not expecting to do combat with a dar'jetii this day, though it was quite the experience and I must better train myself for potentially another in the future. My people have stories, but…The jetii… how did you know he would come to our rescue?"
"Because he called for help," Kazdan spoke up before I could, stepping up to us with a device in hand that I assume was a tracking beacon of some kind before he disassembled it and stopped it from blinking/transmitting anymore as he reduced the whole thing into pieces before my very eyes with the Force itself. Seriously, one second it was whole, the next all the parts that made it up floated apart and were like a small cloud in his hand before letting them all drop and clink onto the floor. "By using a Jedi only emergency code that only those of the Jedi Order should know about… but I do not recognize you."
"Yeah, didn't really expect you to, since I was never a member of the Jedi Order," I admitted while rubbing the back of my head awkwardly.
"Truly?" Kazdan asked in an unbelieving tone. "Not even a member of the Service Corps, perhaps?"
"Nope, not anything like that," I said, carefully speaking the technical truth to the empath sensor currently in front of me. "I just know stuff, and one of those things was rumors about a Jedi hiding out on Raxus Prime. When that Inquisitor showed up, I figured calling for help on the off chance there was a Jedi around willing to save us was better than nothing since, despite the good showing Rowv gave, I did not like our odds about getting out of there at all. This is especially because what we did on Raxus Secundus did not earn us any friends with the Empire."
"But it did earn us great glory," Rowv commented with a proud smile.
"What did you do?" Kazdan asked with a raised eye ridge.
"We blew up an Imperial base, so some friends of ours could retrieve an asset that was in Imperial control," I admitted flat out, though keeping the details under wraps for now. "We had an escape plan, but sadly due to some damage to the ship we commandeered we couldn't immediately jump out of the system and had to make an emergency landing. And since I didn't account for a tracking device, like an idiot, they caught up to us pretty fast. Oh, thanks for the save by the way… and sorry about ruining your hiding place."
"No… I should be thanking you for your actions, for they forced me out of my state of inaction," Kazdan said with a depressed tone. "It felt… good… to act as a Jedi again."
"Well, you're welcome?" I asked more than said. "Honestly, any enemy of the Empire is a friend to us, especially when they are sending Dark Siders after people who can't really defend against space magic all that easily."
"That is where you are wrong," Kazdan suddenly said, stopping me short. "For while I believe your words that you were never a member of the Jedi Order, which still does not explain how you know that emergency code, the moment I saw you and what truly spurred me into action was one simple fact… you are strong with the Force."