A Hero Lost: A Star Wars AU

Chapter 26: Left Behind

First Sister awoke with a gasp, and then coughing.

The first thing she noticed was the pain in her upper right arm. Then, she noticed she was surrounded by smoke and sparking equipment.

She was on his tail. She nearly had him. But that blasted traitor, Rubal, come out of nowhere and blasted her to bits.

Rubal. How the kriff did she not see that coming? He had insisted that Lux was spared, and now, she was left with a mess. What would she tell Vader?

"Hopefully that blasted Admiral survived," she mumbled to herself.

Hopefully Vader would forgive her if he didn't. It was Rubal's fault, after all, not hers.

First, she Force-pushed open the hatch with her left hand to try and release some of the smoke.

Then, she looked over at her right arm to see the cause of the pain, only to find that she had been impaled by a shard of debris.

She forcefully removed it using the Force, and then proceeded to yell in pain.

Blood oozed out of her arm, and she scrambled for the on-board emergency first aid kit.

Finally, after finding it, she rolled up her sleeve and dealt with her wound, disinfecting it and wrapping it in bandages.

After her wound was dealt with, she climbed out of her TIE, coughing. She sharply inhaled the fresh air.

She desperately tried to climb down off of the pod, but slid down it's edge after failing to grab something with her right hand. 

It seemed to her like she wouldn't be able to use her right arm properly for a while.

Fine, I'll just choke that kid to death next time I see him, she thought.

She looked around. She was stuck next to a river in the canyon.

Looking up into the sky, she saw the burning remnant of her flagship, the Dominix, burning through the atmosphere and hurtling towards the planet.

Finally, she got out her commlink. She pushed a few buttons to call up the Megathron, one of the three--or now, only two--ships she commanded.

"Captain Giribaldi, do you read me?" she said into the commlink. "This is First Sister."

"We read you," said the voice of the captain. "Where are you?"

There was audible alarms and footsteps coming through the audio as well, clearly dealing withwhat happened to the Dominix.

"Next to my crashed TIE at the bottom of a canyon," she continued. "I need a pickup."

There was silence between the two of them.

"You mean to say... you crashed your ship?" Giribaldi replied.

"Rubal... it was Rubal!" she yelled. "That blasted traitor! Why, we put him in a commanding position on one of the Empire's most elite task forces and he repays us with this!?"

"...Didn't you leave him for dead once?" Giribaldi continued.

"Stop asking me these questions!" First Sister yelled in reply.

If he were in front of her right now, Giribaldi would be dead meat.

"Also, about that Admiral..." Giribaldi continued.

"What?" First Sister replied.

"We found his corpse drifting through space. looking at the body, he was shot with a blaster before he was charred by the ship's explosion. Stands to reason he was killed by Rubal or Bonteri. Though, if it makes you feel any better, we managed to get a hold of your lightsaber collection"

She was now truly scared. The Admiral that Darth Vader had told her to protect was now dead. Hopefully Vader would forgive her, since it wasn't her fault. At least he would never get to know what happened in that cell.

What was she thinking? Did she just lose control? Was there something about him that just kept  compelling her to rethink everything!?

"First Sister, are you still there?" Giribaldi asked.

"I'm... fine, thank you," she replied. "I... I'm just thinking about how I'm supposed to tell Lord Vader about this."

"He won't be pleased," Giribaldi replied. "But it was Rubal's doing, not yours. Unless he decides to punish you for not catching on to his treason."

"That's what I'm most afraid of," First Sister continued. "Now can I please get a shuttle or something? I need to get to the command center."

"You don't want to come back up here?" Giribaldi asked.

"Are you braindead!?" She scolded him. "My ship just blew up and I was only there to interrogate Bonteri, who, mind you, has now escaped. I have no need to return to orbit and I will resume overseeing the total annihilation of these rebels!"

"Well, glad to hear you're still commited," Giribaldi replied. "We're still unloading all the shuttles from what happened on the Dominix so it might be a while until we can send one down."

"Well, so you're just going to leave me down here!?" She yelled.

"Well, I just said-"

"I take priority!" She continued.

"What, you want to run out of fuel over the Onderonian jungle? Go ahead. Look, I know you're mad after what happened, but I'm telling you, I can't send a shuttle down right this instant or it'll fall out of the sky!"

Her anger ran hot, but the captain had a point.

"Fine," she replied. "Take your time. Just don't take too much time."

The commlink turned off.

It was out of view now, but she heard the rumbling and metallic groaning of the Dominix crashing and hitting the ground.

"Well, this is a mess," she said.