The Battle of Coruscant -- The Jedi Temple: Archive Mainframe

[GABA]

Snaking her way around the shelves, Ebberla found the hall unnaturally clear, she recalled her doppelgangers, the illusion evaporating from existence. Crouching down, she moved silently to the overlook ledge of the archives, she perked up her hearing, the clicking of the static orders gazed past her ears, however, there was another voice, she could only connect it to the Sith who destroyed the power generator earlier.

The Jedi Master peeked over the ledge, wrapping her presence in the ripples created by the Force. She felt something off in the Force, the living Force crying out and silenced as she heard the sound of thumps on the archive’s hard floors. She felt a sense of danger, an explosion rocked the temple, shaking the foundations of the building, cracking the windows and knocking over shelves. The Jedi covered her head as debris and dust showered down around her. The path she took to get inside the archives was now caved in, a nice large hole in the temple wall, Delun would have been impressed.

Ebb quickly glanced behind her grumbling, watching the smoke billow, the turbo laser fire crisscrossing in the sky through the cracked and crushed windows. The Dark Side was growing stronger; it was tempting her, trying to eat at her, forcing thoughts of uncertainty and doubt to bubble to the surface, expose them and exploit them. However, Ebb knew better, where there was darkness, there was light, she held them both within her, as is, as it always will be.

The Jedi gathered the Force around her, judging the distance from her position to the ground level before leaping over the ledge. The feeling of weightlessness was briefed as she anchored herself to the floor, absorbing the shock of contact as her feet slammed into the floor. She minimized her presence, not to reveal her full signature in the Force, the blonde Sith Master was softly illuminated by the emergency lights that flickered in the destruction two stromtroopers slumped at her feet. The Jedi Master gave a wry grin.

“I hope you’re going to be helping cleaning all this up.” She quipped tilting her head to the rubble and debris that litter the archives, “Would be a shame since they just rebuilt it.”

 

[Kiro]

As the Jedi appeared out of the darkness, her presence mostly concealed within the Force, Raide returned the Corellian's smile with one of her own. "Of course, Master Jedi. I have no intention of being stuck in this dusty old archive." While the Sith and the Jedi were as diametrically opposed as any two sentient beings could be, there was still no reason for either of them to be rude or overly hostile towards one another. The Sith had, after all, won. The Jedi were broken. They just didn't realize it yet.

Glancing back over her shoulder at the doorway which was now just so much rubble which trapped both Masters Jedi and Sith within the archives, the short blonde woman let out a sigh as she sheated her sword. "It's a shame these Archives are so valuable ,and equally delicate... if they weren't, these brave soldiers," The Sith nudges one of the deceased Stormtroopers with the toe of her chromed boot. "Would carry their standard-issue thermal detonator. We could have cleared the rubble with that."

 

[GABA]

Ebberla let out a huff, her eyes narrowed in dissatisfaction as she realized her current option to exit was now unavailable. She watched the Sith Master sheath her sword and kick the boot of the stormtrooper. She was right, if only they had their thermal detonators, they could have made a new exit. Now their options were limited, with the back way blocked too, they would need to get creative. At least Ebb would, that is if the Sith would let her since she wasn’t going to sit and wait for a squadron of stormtroopers to dig them both out.

The Jedi clipped her hilt back to her belt, folding her arms as she circled the Sith Master and the two dead troopers. She thought for a moment, stretching her memories back to see if she could recall anything that would help them out. The temple shook again from the outside explosions, more rubble and debris were shook loose from the archives, causing Ebberla to pause in her step to hold her balance. Finishing her circle she strolled over to the window, the brilliant colored blaster fire burned through the air, the looming Imperial Star Destroyers brought a sense of awe to the Jedi, and never had she thought she would have seen them on Coruscant.

Though something else would catch her eye, a tiny fireball, to what she had suspected was once a ship, a fighter or even a small carrier even, had a particular trajectory. Ebb took a step backwards, a sudden flair of her danger senses engulfed her thoughts, if she had felt it, she knew the Sith behind her would have too. The Jedi took another step backwards, this time bigger, “Uh, yeah, we need to get out…now.” She called out, turning on her heel and pointed to the window at the end of the archive hall and began to run, waving for the Sith Master to follow.

She removed her grappling spike launcher, securing it to her blaster, she knew of an exit, it wasn’t ideal, it was dangerous, but it was much better than being burned to a crisp by fireball. Ebb grabbed the Sith Master’s hand, pulling the woman closer to her before throwing them both out the window of the archives...

 

[Kiro]

Ebberla was quite correct. Raide's danger sense was screaming inside her head, and her eyes were roaming over the Archives, searching for a possible escape route. That was until the Jedi pulled her in tight, and hurled them both at a window. One hand quickly wrapped itself around the tall, shapely, Corellian woman for support, while the other extends towards the window. A blast of pure telekinetic energy eminates from the hand, shattering the stained glass and showering the shards out and away from the two Force Sensetives. It was better than both of them being shredded when going through it themselves.

As the two women fell from the main Temple spire, the petite blonde clung to Ebberla's body for support, and in the hope that the Jedi would have some trick up her sleeve. One arm was coiled around the Jedi's waist, while the other clutched at her neck for support, and in an effort to avoid becoming a red smear on the permacrete below, the Sith mustered as much of her Telekinetic ability as possible, pushing up against them both, to decelerate their far too rapid descent.

 

[GABA]

The women fell with the rain of glass shards, the tower above them exploded as the fiery ship debris collided with the spire. The Jedi Master could feel the heat from the explosion and thanked the stars she wasn’t still in there. The Force twisted and turn to the Sith woman’s command, Ebb could feel their descent slow and it was enough for Ebberla to focus her aim to the spire that was undamaged by the collision.

She pressed the trigger on her grappling spike launcher, the hook igniting from the barrel looking for a catch into the building’s permacrete side. Ebberla braced herself, pulling on the Force to strengthen her arms to withstand the tug. The fiber wire pulled tight, swinging the two Force users into the side of the tower. The Jedi hit first letting out an ooff as the weight of the Sith Master pressed into her also.

Ebberla looked down and frowned, they were a good twenty feet from the ground. The Corellian let out a laugh at their close encounter and then looked back up, black smoke and fire billowed out from the archive and Ebberla let out another chuckle of relief. However, the grappling hook succumbed to their weight, dropping the two women. The Jedi braced for the impact, the Force flowed through her legs and body, absorbing the shock of the landing, cracking the permacrete beneath her feet.

Pushing the Sith off her, Ebberla took a few steps back, removing the spike launcher from her blaster and holstering the two items.

“I’ll take an IOU, by the way, doesn’t have to be now, but you know when it’s convenient for me.” Ebberla winked and lifted her wrist to speak into her comm. Her astromech droid, Arnine, beeped in response to her activation, “Hurry Arnine.”

The Jedi gave a nod to the Sith woman and jogged over to the ledge of the temple as she waited for her ship and in that moment, it seemed to hit her. Everything about war, the Jedi, the Sith, life and death as she watched from afar seemed surreal. The waves of the Force washed against her, light and dark, the epic struggle as one tried to dominate the other, this was what chaos was as she observed bodies falling, one right after another. The panic, the fear, the hopelessness that dominated the core and all she could only do was ask why. She felt her legs weaken, sadness bubbled in her heart, and her emotions collided in an attempt to subdue her to their own will. However, there was something else Ebberla felt, an urge to be stronger, she could feel the cries of those who still needed help, it wasn’t entirely there on Coruscant, but a distant cry, one she knew she would need to answer.

Ebberla Daw would continue to fight, she had to.

"Take a circle, Arnine." Ebberla spoke into her wristlink and removed her grappling spike launcher and attaching it back to her blaster, the front gates of the temple were swarming with Sith, she needed to adjust those odds and leaped...

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Across all means of communication, be they nearby HoloNet screens, personal communication devices, military communication systems, and more, a small hologram of the injured Alliance Chief of State, Nathanaeu Bastele, appeared before everyone who could see it. His face was shredded, with one of his eyes practically hanging from the socket. His body was torn apart, with his insides visible. It was a gruesome sight, showing just how bad the battle was. If the Chief of State could be this hurt, anyone could. Anyone could be killed.

But he had a message to send, one more important than what happened to him. It was garbled, with the chaos of the battle and Sith jammers preventing it from fully being reached, but there was enough to understand what Bastele was saying:

"This is Nathanaeu Bastele. A Sith warship… descending… Jedi Temple. I don’t know… planning but... If you can hear… evacuate or head underground… all costs. Coruscant… gone. The Alliance is falling. Save yourselves and… Force… with you."

With that, the transmission faded away. The end of the Alliance had come.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Life itself was dying. Coruscant, in this moment, was the closest any mortal would ever come to understanding what it would be like if Death reached out its cold hands and reaped the Force, or God, or nature, or whatever it was that made the universe spin. On the surface, and even in orbit, every living thing felt the destructive power of what the two tiny figures atop the hull of a Star Destroyer were doing. Life was being drained, sucked into the blackened and decrepit soul of a curse called Skywalker.

Those adept in history might have drawn a comparison to the ancient Dark Lord of the Sith called Darth Nihilus, a devourer of worlds, and life, and all the energy around him. Like that Dark Lord of old, Andraste was a wound in the Force, craving all of its energy and devastating everything in her path. No being escaped feeling its impacts; they felt drained, weak, like even the simplest of tasks required strength of herculean proportions. Escaping Coruscant, or even hiding, would feel like an eternity.

The planet itself was breaking. As the Empress drained the life and energy from all around her, the Dark Lord Vereor was ravaging the surface. A storm of pure Force energy was growing; lightning, real lightning and not artificially created from satellites, struck down from the clouds from all directions, in all streets and crevasses in the city, tearing swaths through buildings and dirt. The energies even reached into space, tearing apart ships and disrupting systems on so many others. The wind howled all through the sky, and tornadoes formed to destroy the artificial world that they were touching down on.

The temperature was dropping. At once it felt sickeningly hot but also colder than the snowy wastes of Hoth. The rain falling from the sky froze, turning into shards of ice as it fell, stabbing through the heads and bodies of countless thousands, if not more. The carefully constructed weather of the once-great capital of the Republic and the Alliance was torn asunder. The planet itself was now just as much the enemy of the Alliance as the Sith.

Yet at the center of all this madness was something beautiful. At the Jedi Temple, above which the Imperial Star Destroyer sat, a beautiful aurora was forming. Dark and dangerous energy collided into a green display of dancing lights, one that could have been a calming sight were it not for the life being drained from everything below it. At the core of this beauty, though, was something rotten, for the light was not a mere byproduct of the attack. It was the attack itself. The dark energies and lightning being displayed was the eldritch energy sucked into the very heart of this labyrinth by the Dark Lord himself, a reflection of the souls being sacrificed for more power.

Anyone with any sort of psychic awareness, be they Jedi or anyone even remotely attuned to the Force, could feel as those souls were taken and twisted into a dark purpose for which the Force should never have been used. It was a warning, a reminder of what the Chief of State said across the HoloNet.

Leave or die.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

On the far side of the roof from where Ebberla was, Jhon was sitting on what remained of the roof in what would look like a meditative state, but he was fully awake. He was injured, his leg having a gash on it with blood oozing out, but he was using the Force to control it for now. His true wound was his failure here on this very roof, where he had just fought Tyrn Lightell, a man consumed with hatred for him and who now went by the name Darth Bhalr. It was where Jhon tried and failed to redeem Tyrn; it seemed within reach, but Kara… Kara was unable to help.

Tyrn left Jhon to wallow in self-pity. Tyrn could have killed him, but he knew that Jhon had always let guilt eat him up inside. Jhon always was consumed by his mistakes until they broke him, as it did all those months ago when Jhon ran half-cocked into Imperial space after he thought Andraste was dead. But that wasn’t who Jhon was anymore. Tyrn was wrong. Whereas Jhon would have once felt the weight of his failure, now he felt… was it bliss? He couldn’t tell. All he knew was what he felt through the Force, what he felt from Tyrn, that the boy he failed on the Serendipity was still in there somewhere, and redemption was possible.

It meant redemption was possible for Jhon’s old apprentice, the woman now consuming herself with the energies of the Force on the hull of the Star Destroyer that hovered over him.

Jhon felt the icy chill of the environment changing as Andraste sucked the life and energy out of this planet. He watched as lightning and pure Force energy danced around in an electric light show above him, and he knew what it meant. He knew what they were doing. Unleashing that amount of raw energy would consume this planet and leave it as nothing more than a withering husk of what it once was. Everyone and everything in its path would die.

The old Jedi Master tried to reach out through the Force, tried to make contact with Andraste, but she was blocking him out. He could tell she knew he was there, watching her. Part of him wondered if this assault of raw energy was meant for everyone, or just for him. He could feel the life being drained from him. He could feel himself dying. For the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to. He was over his guilt, he didn’t wallow in it anymore, and now he knew what his mission in life was. He knew what his destiny was, and that was to ensure that his apprentice was saved.

She was only a dot on the tip of a leviathan of a starship now, but he could see her clear as day. Despite the energy he was losing, despite it taking a miracle of strength for him to stand up, he did so. He looked right at her, watching what she had become. It was gut-wrenching, like his heart had been ripped from his chest, to see what he had allowed her to become. He remembered the moment it happened, on Lehon, when he faked his death and that of her daughter. In a single instant, she went from being the scared young Padawan he once knew, to the monster capable of destroying an entire world. But just as it was his doing that she became this wound in the Force, so too would it have to be his doing to make sure she was stopped.

The road to Andraste’s redemption would be paved with the blood of trillions, but he had to hope, he had to know, that it would somehow be worth it. That’s what kept him going now. It’s why he had to escape this planet.

 

[GABA]

It was like a brutal kick to the chest, nothing that she had felt before. The Chief of State warned of something big was coming, even the Sith and their lackeys were beginning to fall back, leaving the warriors of the Alliance to decided their own fate. Though it didn’t stop some from attempting one last strike against the Corellian, the sparks from their blades caught in the wind as it was taken up by incoming coming storm. Arnine chirped loudly from her wristlink, she let out a groan, overcoming her opponent’s strength, throwing him off balance. The droid chirped again, this time with a little uncertainty.

“I heard you the first time!” Ebberla yelled over the Force’s storm’s booming winds, her Sith opponent taking the hint and retreated from the rooftop. Lightning begun to strike all around, in her lifetime, she had never seen such a sight, not even the storms on Corellia were so devastating, but there was something amiss about this storm, something darker, more sinister. She stood there for a moment, feeling the Force as it screamed under the wills of the two Sith above her, she knew there was nothing more she could do, not now, save the fight for another day.

“C’mon Arnine.” Ebb said into her comm and activated her locator. The air chilled, frost crept along the cracks of the broken temple, each her breaths heating the air in front her. Ebb suddenly felt terrible, her energy suddenly drained, like a bad case of influenza. The Force hesitated to her beckoning as she looked for a source of energy, she recognized this feeling, she had felt it once before in the mere moments before the Empress had torn the Force from her.

The Jedi shot another glance to looming super star destoyer, she immediately knew who was in attendance and spat an Olys Corellisi curse.

The craft circled the temple before landing safely near Ebberla; she ran to her ship, climbing onto the wing giving Coruscant one last look before leaping into the cockpit, but Arnine caught her attention. “Now what? I thought you wanted to leave?” she yelled out over the howling wi as she read the sensors from the droid. She stood up and looked seeing the figure across the roof, sitting, stationary, the changes in the air didn’t seem to affect them. The droid let out a chirp, “Yeah, stay here.” She said leaping once more from the cockpit.

Ebberla cried out to the Jedi, reaching into the Force to sustain her own energy in the storm as she approached them, but as she neared, it became apparent who it was. “JHON!” Ebberla yelled over the winds, she picked up her pace, reaching the Jedi, “Jhon?” She crouched down in front of him, she felt something cold and wet beneath her knees: blood.

“C’mon, Jhon, it’s time to go.” She said looking for a response from the elder Jedi; she had not seen him since their encounter on Ord Mantell, she had so many questions for him still, but nothing seemed to matter now, he was hurt, and they were in danger, they needed to leave.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

The winds were starting to pick up even more. He could barely hear the calling of his name, as Ebberla shouted across the rooftop for him. He should have been able to hear her through the Force, but he could only just barely make it out. It should have been loud, raging with power and fear, but it felt distant. The Force was hurting. Almost nothing could be heard over its cries. What Andraste was doing… this was a power the Force never should have been used for.

It was a power only a Skywalker could unleash.

Lightning began touching down all around him, striking what remained of the Jedi Temple, and bringing parts of its walls and ceilings crumbling down all around them. Tornadoes formed only a few hundred meters away, moving closer to the temple, threatening to wipe it off the face of the map. Whether through the storms or through the attack itself, Jhon knew this temple would be gone in moments.

He thought back to earlier in the war, when he watched over a hologram as the previous temple was destroyed by a bomb. It went up in flames, bringing the entire structure down around him. It was shortly after that he became Grand Master. From where he was standing now, he could look down and out at the very spot where he led a candlelight vigil in front of the smoldering ruins of the temple. Hundreds of thousands of Jedi, politicians, soldiers, civilians, and more all came there to pay their respects. It was funny to think that, at the time, that attack seemed like the worst that could befall Coruscant.

Now this temple, the one that Jhon had commissioned, would be destroy along with the Coruscant itself. And he had to go, lest he be destroyed with it.

Jhon looked back up at the Star Destroyer, shivering as he did as the warmth was sucked away from the air. He could see Andraste only as a faint dot, with energy building all around her. And yet, he smiled. Not for the woman who was about to unleash this destructive power and kill trillions, but for the frightened girl he found all alone in an orphanage on Corellia; the girl who was never happier then when she was smelling the flowers in the gardens of Empress Teta; and for the girl who, in spite of spending years with the old Emperor, ran to Jhon when she wanted to save her daughter. It was that girl who Jhon chose to remember, and he knew that, one day, he would see her again.

So without guilt, without wallowing in the past, Jhon chose to turn away from her now and limped his way over to Ebberla and her ship. As he climbed onboard and Ebberla told him that it was time to go, he thought about looking back towards Andraste one last time, but he didn’t.

“Yes,” he said instead, smiling as best as he could. “Yes it is.”

 

[GABA]

The winds threatened to pick them both up if they were carefully, Ebberla helped Jhon into the cockpit; a space behind the seat, never meant for another person, but it was enough room for now as the Jedi worked quickly. She wrapped the flight suit around Jhon’s leg and connected the life support box, the pressure bladders used from keeping pilots from getting g-LOC would help keep the bleeding in Jhon’s leg under control. Arnine beeped with worry and Ebberla nodded jumping into her seat, the cockpit hatch sealing shut as she hit the thrusters, shooting the craft off the roof of the temple.

“Shields.” She commanded the winds outside threatening to take the star craft where it wanted, debris was flying everywhere, she could no longer rely on her vision to see where she was going as she readjusted the sensors. Ebberla listened to the Force carefully, it was in pain as it cried, it’s waves stung, it reminded her of the cries she heard as it was ripped from her.

She could hear the cries of the trillions who could escape, the trillions of those who tired, but were failing as she punched through the clouds, crossing the atmospheres into space. Death, it was so heavy, it wasn’t like the death she was once tempted with, one of peace, this death didn’t intend for those to rest in peace, there would only be pain, no one would experience death, only an eternity of suffering. There was a cry inside her, a ping of guilt as she left Coruscant.

Arnine squealed as they passed through the cross lanes of blaster fire, the Imperium and Mandalorian forces were picking off Coruscanti escapees as they burst from the atmosphere of Coruscant. Alarms sounded in the ship and Ebb quickly switched them off to keep concentration. The Jedi weaved in and out of the paths of enemy fighters, Arnine giving warning of her engine’s energy capacity as she took a sharp turn. She flinched, the Force still raging on the world below them.

“Warn me when they get to twenty percent, otherwise fire up the hyperdrive, as soon as we clear those interdiction fields, we’re getting out of here.” The droid beeped with a slightly concerned, “No, let me pilot, you just keep everything running.” Ebberla hit the thrusters accelerating the ship as it kept to the gravitational pull of the world, her goal was to sling shot herself past he interdirection fields without burning out her engines. The overall goal would be not to fly into any oncoming ships, however, Ebb placed her faith in the Force as she shifted the ship’s trajectory, shooting the craft south of Coruscant’s southern pole.

Warning lights flickered back to green, giving the Corellian the clear for her jump, the droid whistled in response, “To Ando Prime,” Ebberla replied, “It’s time to visit some old friends.” The Jedi entered the coordinates and within moments, the ship blinked into hyperdrive, leaving behind the Force torn world of Coruscant.