Dorn: A Star Wars Story

47. Ithan Ruana

"Wonderful! Now we're down a friendly destroyer and one more place to land!" Peavey sounded more than a little upset as I watched an A-Wing spin wildly out of control as she passed it by. "We need to keep the Apalis in one piece!"

"If we can keep this momentum up, we'll be fine." I heard Balos utter a "whoa" as I saw him spin out of the way of a burning X-Wing shot his way by Tarkona.

"Is anyone else concerned that we haven't seen more ships yet?" Tarkona finally jumped in, his voice hinting at worry for the very first time. "There's suspiciously few here for an invasion force."

I was noticing that myself. This fleet was about a tenth of the size of what I was expecting, and frankly... That was worrying. I couldn't get suckered into genuinely believing that we were walking out of this without a serious fight. The fact that they only had a handful of cruisers and bombers at best was making all of the little alarm bells in my head go off. Surely, they hadn't decided to just come at us with that... right?

"Maelstrom Leader, this is Ahuff aboard the Apalis. Don't know if you're feeling as anxious as I am, but I think we may need an exit strategy soon. Ideas?"

"Being honest," I sighed and looked around as I caught sight of the Summa shooting a bomber down out of the sky. "Yeah, feeling anxious, too, and not at the moment."

"Kinda agreeing with the Admiral here, Vengeant," Hipshot came on over the comms. "Call it instincts, but I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

Something was making me itch about the whole mess.

"There might be," I muttered, turning my attention downward to Ismaren's temple. "I'm going to try something."

"Try what?" Nyra asked. I could hear worry in her voice.

"Appealing to my Sith grandfather's Jedi nature. It's still in there somewhere, I'd wager. I'm going to try to find it."

"Dorn, are you absolutely mad?" Thesh's voice came back over the comms and I honestly couldn't blame him for asking.

"Maybe," I began turning my interceptor towards the temple when I saw an X-Wing breaking off from the pack and shooting down towards it. "Oh, I don't think so..." I followed behind it. It wasn't an X-Wing I recognized, but it was an older model - Empire era at the latest. I knew those ships well. Too well, I would almost argue. They brought back flaring memories of living through strikes and bombings on destroyers and the Summa. It got there a few minutes before I did, but I set her down next to it and jumped out, making my way to the temple as quickly as my legs would let me dodging the occasional lightning strike as I entered into the dark, low overhang of the temple.

I ran through the halls, the only sound being my feet pounding against alien stone floors. Something thrummed in the center of my chest, roiling inside of me angrily and putting every single one of my nerve-endings on edge. I was hypersensitive, almost like I knew that the moment I roudnedthat final corner I knew that I was about to see something that was going to make everything absolutely worse than the situation already was, and there was only a single being in the entire galaxy that was capable of that.

Sure enough, there he was.

Venn.

He was standing before the misty apparition of Ismaren, who was looking greatly unbothered by the entire scene unfolding before him. I had no idea what was even supposed to be happening, but Venn held something in his hands. From what I could see, it looked like an old stone idol...

"This will finally destroy you! Then I can get rid of all of you Ruanas once and for all! Every last one of you!" Venn's voice was breaking when he screamed at Ismaren, and he sounded absolutely insane.