Star Wars: Offspring

Chapter 7

He opened his eyes. The sky was stuck somewhere between dusk and evening. There were stars in the sky and a moon sliding in slow motion across the pink and purple sheen covering the horizon. There was a battle happening in the atmosphere. Starfighters of various types were streaking in all directions in groups of three of four. Flame streaks with smoke tails were traveling in pairs after them, chasing their targets, and occasionally catching them. Explosions bloomed with bright incendiary colors. White hot debris fell to the ground from suspended, sparkling dust clouds. Streaks of blue and green reached up into the sky, tracking their prey like fingers of energy dancing on the stars.

He was standing in the middle of a valley littered with felled tree stumps. The ground was scorched black and there was scattered fires randomly dotting the surface. The air smelled of brimstone and burnt flesh. The horizon was miles and miles of forest from one vanishing point to another. Somewhere beyond his view, there mewed the cries of the wounded and the dying.

On the other side of the valley, he could see silhouettes of warriors gathering together, running, jumping over obstacles. Some were lifting up arms and making taunting gestures. He sensed the hostility and aggression in the force, heroic desperation, selfless sacrifice, and utter hopelessness.

The crowd across the valley gathered together and shouted. A dozen crimson red lightsaber blades became visible, a dozen more, and then the number doubled again. The crowd began to advance. He patted his waist and his right handed slip holster looking for his weapon. A surge of panic raced up his spine. He suppressed it. He backed up and realized he was up against a wall of a cliff about twice his height.

He spun around to climb up it, but before he could, the opposing force poured over the top in to the valley. Robed warriors, Jedi, about half the number of red sabers launched acrobatically over his head and sped forward. After them was a mixed group of beings, in various armor, energy and mêlée weapons in hand. They began to unleash a rainbow of fury, energy bolts of green, blue, yellow flying across the divide toward the dark warriors.

Red blades sent the energy bolts upward into the sky, others returned them back toward the senders. The dark army sent a barrage of red laser fire at the advancing army. Jedi weapons ignited and intercepted most of the volley. Personal energy shields sizzled as some of the bolts struck home. There was still a great distance to cover.

The sky overhead went black with movement, black clad soldiers, regimented and orderly. Row by row, they poured over the wall, firing in unison. Their direction was guided by a soldier brandishing a blue lightsaber. Where his blade pointed, a school of bolts would launch, raining destruction where they landed.

A handful of white armored warriors flew over the wall. They rode on seats of flames, hovering meters above the ground, strafing randomly. They fought with different types of weapons, poisons, projectile explosives, sonic weapons that paralyzed, wave generator cannons, all mounted on their bodies.

After several minutes, the two armies collided in the center of the valley. The dark army, ferocious, unified, fighting savagely and sparing none in its path. The red blades lead the other dark beings to their own death. The light army fought with honor. It was a mix of planets and societies joined together against annihilation. He could feel the differing priorities, the mix of agendas, conflict even among them. But the threat of the dark army unified them, petty rivalries were pushed beneath the surface, grudges forgotten, only survival mattered.

He saw dark warriors with yellow eyes under control against their will. He saw a warrior in black armor and a warrior in white armor fighting back to back, one with a lightsaber and the other with twin blasters. He saw a double-sabered Jedi defending the limp body of a fallen female soldier.

He became breathless, suffocating on the sights and smells of the battle. Tears ran down his cheeks and cut lines through the soot and dust on his face. His sight blurred slightly and he was overcome by unnamable emotions. Again he suppressed them.

There appeared luminous force presences being driven about the battlefield on armored beast, healers, soothing the wounds of the injured, being protected by a dozen alien species. The dark army fitted their wounded with painful looking cybernetic implants or strapped proximity explosives to their critically maimed and dead.

 The battle teetered towards the dark army’s advantage. One by one colored lightsabers blinked out. Flying warriors were knocked out of the sky. The suffering of all the different beings overcame him and made him despair. The colors in the sky melted away to back. There were no stars, just falling embers of debris. The moon was gone. Hope was disappearing, annihilation was coming, he could feel it.

Before he gave in to despair, he heard another lightsaber come to life. He heard thunderous roars from behind him. Over the wall cascaded several tribes of wookies, roaring and clawing, bearing teeth. Emerald beads launched from bowcasters and made holes in the opposing army. In the middle of the wave, he saw a woman, young, fit, in the middle of an acrobatic leap over the wall and into the field of battle. She carried a glowing magenta blade, she had curly, shoulder length hair, radiating in all directions, tamed with elastic bands and ties.

She was the fury of the light. Waves of force energy rippled out from her presence. The light army parted to make way for the new allies. The wookie phalanx cut into the lines of the dark army. Their eyes were aglow white, with force perception. Their fury was controlled but savage. More waves of dark army warriors descended on them. The battle was even again. Despair shrunk away. Hope returned.

But then the ground started to shake. The rumble unsettled both armies. Magma cracks weaved lightning bolt patterns in the ground. In the center of the conflict, what appeared to be a mountain rose up slowly, chunks of earth and tree stumps falling away as it ascended. As it rose, it appeared to be the head of a large being. Eyes appeared on the mountain, oversized, yellow, filled with hate. Something like a large mouth appeared and jutted flames and curses from within it.

As is ascended out of the churning lava a neck was visible. It was not covered in skin or stone, but bones and internal structures were visible. Transparent arteries and veins pumped liquid flames and hatred up to and from the head. Tree roots, long and winding hung off the head an across its shoulders like organic hair. When the shoulders emerged, they were proportionally small, almost childlike.

The head was fed by something darker than the dark side of the force, something otherworldy, something alien. All over the battlefield stones and tree trunks were levitated. Beings were lifted off of the ground involuntarily. None could resist its power. The dark army receded, just as taken aback by the events. The light army scattered, leaving the woman with the magenta blade standing alone in front of the evil manifestation.

She took a running start towards the monster. The leap-frogged up piles of debris until she was chin level with it. She took a force enhanced leap through the air and brought her lightsaber in a back handed grip with both hands, aiming it forward above her head. The head’s jaw dropped and it lurched forward hungrily and swallowed the woman mid-flight.

The battlefield went silent. The air remained still for several minutes. Then the face made an expression of confusion and then anguish. A white light grew within the flaming maw. It became blinding, hot. The head thrashed and rocked back and forth in torment. The increasing white light reached out to everything left standing in the valley.

He screamed at the top of his lungs. The battlefield was consumed by the light. He raised his hands to cover his face. His fingertips were burnt off of the bone. Parts of his face peeled off in strips. The pain was unbearable. The world ceased to exist altogether.

His scream carried him back through to reality.