Hard for you, Xeth, from a kneeling start.
Music- The Clash of Lightsabres (end part of Luke vs. Vader fight, ESB)
Through the blinding snow, you try to start running., The snow seems to suck at your feet; your clothes aflame and bodies burnt, you barely seem to move.
Xeth, you pull yourself to your feet and start to stumble down the peak. The Thrael still seems to be following an erratic firing paterrn, sweeping its laser all around you guys as you start to move.
Steam and water flow all around from the heat of the weaponry assault on this area, the biting cold made worse by your stinging eyes. The laser spins around once more, bearing down on its target.
There is a loud scream.
Vera, you feel pain and anguish, and you turn as Xeth's lightsabre drops to the ground, the blade turning off before it falls, the hilt burying itself in the snow. He is tumbling down on one side, separated from his right leg that lies nearby. He turns once more and lies still.
Xeth lies completely motionless, his pain made numb by the intense cold and the overwhelming pain.
No! No! I have failed!
He considers trying to inspect his injury, but decides not to, should the machine decide to finish him.
I've been defeated by a mere machine! The Force was not with me in this fight! I should have thought things out...should have...
He slowly loses consciousness...
Heh, feel the loyalty...
One more sweeping beam from the Thrael, and its work is done.
it has been cutting away the fragile supporting ice that holds this part of the peak to the strucutre of the ground. The angle of the ground beneath you starys to give way sharply, as the peak starts to give way, the enormous fall below, the tumbling ice above. Soon, you are falling, everything around you giving way.
On Charaeus, the Ziggurant is dying; explosions streak across it over and over and over yet still it stands, as if indesftructible, until suddenly, as if now hollow on the side, the building gives way, and starts to implode in upon itself in a vast billowing cloud of dust...
... as the peak gives way at the same time, cie shattering all around. You see your asailant hovering away; it has no eyes but somehow it seems to be staring at you all.
Then, you see a mountain of ice falling atop of you.
Then there is no more.
----
Rekiarius Control
There is a dark room, operated by a few technicians, with a man in a central chair.
The only light comes from the enormous bank of monitors on the rear wall, showing dozens of images from the surface of the planet, where the Jedi were tracked from the moment they drew near.
"Strategy and tactical programme."
The images on the screen are now replaced by dozens of other images. Most are from a planet a long way away, an arid, mostly unknown world known as Arminium. There, the dozens of screens show endless shots of Jedi warring against Battle droids, images captured by a similat set of unseen cameras, data transmitted by a long dead man two years ago.
Marcus spinning at a crowd of droids. Roan, wounded, making a desperate strike at a droid on the bridge. Gallagher's early, clumsy strokes as he learned how to fight. Jelena, slow, measured, careful. Vlad, undisciplined but fast, striking foes at random.
Xeth, launching a Flying Charge towards many foes.
But a few other pictures as well. a Jedi on a jungle world being blasted down by endless volleys of firepower, firing from the point of view of the camera. Another in the desert, sliced in two by a beam. A female Jedi in a space liner, her body reduced to nothing by the tissue disruptor.
"Update and improve."
And now, a few new pictures appear in the record- of Jedi figthing in the ice.
In the room, an aide approaches.
"Director, we have confirmation. The Battle Variant 50 has neutralised the Jedi intruders."
"But of course it has."
Click-click
"Send orders to the fleet. The invasion is to commence."
-----
End credits
The Jedi misdirected. The Renegades overmatched. The Union is victorious.
Beyond the personal fates of the heroes, something greater is at stake. The fate of a world- and the impact on the future.
Everything is to play for. The story continues in the future, in Renegade Episode IV- 'Battlefield'
END