All That Remains: The Breath of Life

[Byl Laprovik]

(OOC: Thread takes place two days after All That Remains: Trio)

Dac to Hoth was clear across the galaxy. Even slipping along the Hydian Way meant it took a good couple of days. Ever since Byl had received a mysterious message promising answers, he'd been singularly focused on his task. They'd left that night, gathering what supplies they could aboard an old Incom A-23 Treeduster that he'd been able to wheedle out of the fleet's motorpool, thanks to a favor he'd cashed in with Jane Starborn.

Now that they'd cut into sublight and were beginning atmospheric descent to the ice planet, Byl's cagey nature started to take over. He kept on top of his instruments, his eyes flitting about as thin cloud cover gave way to a white-blasted landscape.

"James, we're coming on approach to the old Echo base."

Even that name sounded familiar, even if the memories that might tie him to the spot didn't exist.

"I'm gonna do a quick pass. If it's hot down there, we need to be ready to leave in a hurry."

She'd come with him. It meant so much to him, even though he hated that solving this mystery meant possibly putting her in harm's way. She would've taken it hard if he'd turned her away.

[James Prent]

"Right. Hot." James was in a cream colored parka, the fur lined hood resting on her shoulders as she sat in the co-pilot's seat with the crashwebbing holding her in place. "Hot on Hoth. And y' say y' don't have a good sense of humor." She pulled on a pair of gloves and wiggled her fingers to make sure they were in all the way as the shuttle looped lazily around the old Rebel base.

She sat up straight and peered out the transparisteel window. "Looks pretty quiet from here. T'me." James looked over at Byl, watching how intent he was on what he was doing, and her heart clutched a little in her chest.

[Byl Laprovik]

He smiled at her observation of the unintentional joke. Levity was so rare for them to enjoy.

"Well, relatively speaking, I suppose."

His heart was racing. They were so close. And that's when he saw the smoke on the horizon. Byl's smile vanished.

"There!"

The Alliance operative jammed the atmospheric accelerator, and they picked up speed to head towards the thin grey plume easily visible through the white. As they got closer, he could see the source of the smoke - an immense sprawl of ruined durasteel rained down from a cliffside. This had been where Echo base's ion cannon was situated. The twisted rubble they could now plainly see looked as if the enormous weapon had simply crashed down from its perch. Byl couldn't see any tell-tale scorch craters to indicate a turbolaser barrage or any other capital ship bombardment.

"What the hell happened down there?"

[James Prent]

She looked away from him reluctantly, the acceleration pressing her back into her seat as she looked out the window. "Nothing good." As she said it, her stomach lurched, and she pressed her hands against her belly as nausea washed over her. "Something bad," she winced. "Feels real bad, like spoiled seafood leftovers for dinner. Ugh."

With some effort she shut away the strange sensation, the sick feeling disapating as Byl looked for a place to land.

[Byl Laprovik]

Byl turned to look at her with concern. He knew these feelings she got. Knew it wasn't as mundane an explanation as she offered up.

"Hang on, I'll find us a landing zone close to the base.

The plains before the cliff of echo base were largely flat and unremarkable, and Byl was able to easily put their shuttle down just fifty meters from the outskirts of the rubble. He opted not to power down, running the ship hot in the chance they had to beat a retreat from the planet. Nothing about this made any sense yet, and the Alliance Operative was on edge. Retrieving a blaster from the storage locker next to the cockpit, he punched the gangplank, only to have the air nearly wrenched from his lungs by bitter arctic blasts of air. Drawing his parka hood tight and making sure his goggles were snapped to his head, he took James' hand in tow and trudged ahead.

From their vantage below, it didn't look any better.

"It looks like the entire superstructure of the cannon collapsed inwards on itself!"

Byl shouted over the whipping wind, heading for the wind break that the debris offered.

[James Prent]

"If you say so!" She shouted back, her face obscured by the fur lined hood and goggles. Her slight frame buffeted by the wind, James was happy to cling to Byl's hand as if he were a tether holding her to the ground, struggling with her free hand to replace the weather tech fabric that was supposed to be protecting her lower face.

As they drew nearer the wind lessened, blocked by the twisted durasteel. James released Byl's hand, stamping her borrowed boots in the snow a bit and adjusting her cold weather gear so that it hugged her body more tightly. "Have you been here before?" she muffled through the scarf.

[Byl Laprovik]

"I..."

Byl stopped in his tracks, looking back at James and her question.

"...I realize this might sound daft, but it feels like I have. I don't remember a bloody thing, naturally. I know this base, however. Like the back of my hand."

Why were they here? What was he to even look for? Byl slowly turned back to the wreckage.

"We're here. I thought...I don't know what I thought. That there would be some kind of answer in plain sight."

There was no one but them. The damage to the cannon looked fresh, however. There was smoke, and no accumulated snow on the wreckage.

[James Prent]

"Might as well check it out then," she said, trudging forward. James bent over into the wind as she rounded a piece of durasteel, staggering sideways and then falling into a snowdrift that had built up against a few other bits of broken ion gun. She struggled for a minute, flailing energetically to attempt to leverage herself out, then stuck her hands into the snow, trying to find something to push up against.

She touched something soft. "Byl!"

[Byl Laprovik]

He rushed to where she'd fallen, offering a hand.

"Are you okay?"

But she was. That wasn't why she'd called for him. He saw where her hand had disturbed the snow, and saw the contours of a almost completely hidden leg amongst the drift. Wordlessly he helped her up, working with rising frenzy to pull away metal plates and twisted debris from around them.

He'd been too late.

The feeling welled up in the pit of his stomach. A terrible panic threatening to overtake him.

[James Prent]

She fell to her knees in the snow, on her own terms this time, and helped him clear the snow away from the leg. It was attached to a hip and to head... There was another person draped over the first, face down in the snow. Byl was moving efficiently, and gently pulled the smaller body off the first. Her heart sank as she recognized the man underneath. "Jedi Vymes," she said, tearing the bothersome scarf from her face, stripping off a glove and going for his neck in a useless display of checking for life.

James looked up and saw a streak in the sky. She pointed wordlessly for Byl's benefit, but he was arranging the other... the other... It was Loklorien. James had a flash of the twisted evil she'd seen layered over her friend's face so long ago, the sense of it strong and thick in the air, and she froze in shock, her mouth falling open. She barely even registered the faint throb of a heart beat against her fingertip.

[Rev Solomon]

The previous night, in a tiny cell of an ancient monastery on Generis, Solomon's dreams were troubled. He'd seen a desperate duel that raged through caverns of snow, a brutal exchange of power that shook the ice mount to its very foundation. He'd seen the flash of a hidden blade, a spreading slick of blood across the snow, a creature of darkness crawling over her prey to hear his last, gasping words. He'd seen the grim visage of a man in black, a figure so dark he obscured everything around him. He'd seen the moment of betrayal, the savage onslaught of crimson lightning, a great sphere of metal rolling down like a stone covering the mouth of a tomb.

He'd awoken in a sweat with his brothers and sisters surrounding him - only then did he realize he'd cried out in his sleep. And he knew then that the time had come for him to leave Generis.

The shuttle Exodus was still in orbit awaiting his signal. He'd called it down to the monastery and set for the Hoth system with all available speed. He'd emerged from hyperlight mere minutes after Byl and James, and, detecting their ship skimming the surface near the old Rebel stronghold, he trusted his instincts and mapped his own approach to the same site.

As the agent and the adept dug at the loose, powdery snow, the roar of repulsorlifts shouted down the howling wind. A Theta-class T-2c shuttle, emblazoned with stripes of medical blue, sent up a whirlwind of snow as it descended over the mountain and landed a hundred meters or so down the slope from the ion cannon's crater.

[Byl Laprovik]

He pulled her free and looked at her face. The face he knew only by dossier. The one who was supposed to hold the answers he was looking for.

She was broken and bloodied every bit as Zem Vymes. Byl felt for a pulse that was feeble and flagging. Her color was as pale as the snow she was couched in. All Byl knew was how to survive.

As if it was his own life on the line, Byl hooked his arms underneath Loklorien's own, cinching her up so that he could drag her to the ship.

"She's alive!"

But not for long. The panic shook in his chest, mingling with the reverberation of a shuttlecraft swooping overhead. Someone else was coming. Again, Byl survived.

"James, get to the ship!"

Byl pulled his blaster from its shoulder strap, approaching the shuttle with intent to kill.

[James Prent]

Lok flopped back into the snow as Byl abandoned her to face the new threat, and James jerked upright as he ordered her back to the ship. Her first instinct was to run -

- then she turned back to the bodies in the snow. She stepped over Zem, kneeling between the two, and put her hands on their foreheads. They were cold, so cold... James opened herself up to the Force.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon stepped onto the boarding ramp as it descended and was met immediately by a storm blast of icy wind. He was wrapped tightly in robes and scarves underneath his beaten nerfskin overcoat, and still he felt the chill cutting straight to his skin. But the cold was not the only threat to meet him on Hoth.

Another man, similarly shrouded, marched toward him through the snow with a blaster aimed at his heart. Solomon raised his left hand to calm him, but the first bolt was already flying.

Three blaster bolts in quick succession burst harmlessly into sparks against the preacher's palm. He tugged through the Force, and the blaster twisted out Byl's grip, hurtled through the air, and smacked into Solomon's waiting, three-fingered hand.

As he continued to approach, Solomon held the blaster in plain sight and pointed it to the sky. "I am not your enemy," he shouted over the wind. "I'm looking for Loklorian s'Ilancy."

[Byl Laprovik]

Disarmed nearly effortlessly by a man who had the appearance a Jedi, Byl stopped in his tracks. He didn't have time to play his cards close to his chest. Looking back, he saw James huddled over each of the two broken Jedi, and the Alliance agent turned back to Solomon.

"She's dying."

How she'd even lasted this long in the state of her injuries and the desolation of Hoth's bitter cold, he had no idea. But he did know they were a long way away from anything resembling a medical center. Byl didn't have time to explain any further, and rushed to James' side. Her eyes fluttered closed as she laid hands on each of the Jedi before her.

"James?"

[James Prent]

The cold had induced hypothermia, which was likely how there was still life in the cold bodies. Zem had a grievous wound through his abdomen but the cold had slowed and stopped the flow of blood. Loklorien's injuries were more complete, an overall short circuiting and burning of her nervous system and internal organs. James didn't know how she knew this, and she didn't know where to start and what th' hell am I doin' gettin' involved is how I get hurt but it was right and the Force was flowing through her and into them and back into her.

The snow around them whirled up into the air, and James bent low over the two in the snow, her forehead touching her knees. Connections were made, mysterious intricate connections that she couldn't even begin to understand but they were knitting together as she emptied herself into first Zem, and then Lok.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon tucked the blaster into his belt and ran across the snow field to where James was crouched beside two stricken bodies. Panic and despair welled up inside him at the horrific sight, but he drove them both away - he didn't have time for either.

"Zem," he said, seeing the Jedi master's gray, frostbitten face. "Merciful God..."

Cautiously, he drew closer and knelt beside James, careful not to disturb whatever she was doing. When he opened his senses to the Force, he saw to his surprise that the diminutive woman was channeling energy into both of them, extending her consciousness into their broken bodies. A new arrival to Ossus, perhaps? He certainly didn't remember seeing her around the Wheel.

"My shuttle is configured as a medical transport," he said over his shoulder. "I've got some emergency supplies, and two beds. We should get them in out of the cold."

[Byl Laprovik]

Byl nodded. It was a pragmatic suggestion and even if they could save Loklorien and Zem, exposure to extreme sub-zero would be doing them no favors.

Still, James didn't move. Fixed to the spot she was absorbed in the moment.

"James?"

She didn't so much as flinch. Byl eased a bit closer.

"James. We can't stay here."

He reached to place a hand on her shoulder, drawing back nearly instantly as a tingling sensation shot up his arm the moment he'd made contact with her. It was like touching a live wire. No pain, but a distinct sense of power and warmth. He turned to the other Jedi.

"What's she doing?"

[Rev Solomon]

"It's a healing trance," Solomon replied. "Has she ever done this before?"

Byl's expression was such that he needn't have asked. What the young woman was doing was instinctual, and though it was common for latent gifts of the Force to manifest in times of dire need, it was dangerous. If she extended herself too far into the wounded, she might no longer realize where her energies ended and theirs began; she could pour her entire self into their injuries, and then there would be three Jedi dying on the ice.

Gently, Solomon pressed his hand against James's shoulder, and he felt the same current of warmth, which turned to heat at the stubs of the fingers that had been sacrificed to Loklorien's saber gauntlet.

"James," he said in a calm, firm voice. "You've got to pull back. Let's get them to safety, and we can treat them together."

[James Prent]

Zem's innards needed attention; the liver had been perforated by a sharp weapon but with encouragement the cells reached out for each other, the tissues weaving back together. A small electrical current to the cardiac muscle returned it to a normal rhythm, and then Loklorien's body received her full attention. The nerves and muscles were heavily damaged, bones were broken from the convulsions, skin was burnt from contact with electricity.

James... you've got to pull back.

Bones were last priority, first the most sensitive areas were touched, the restoration beginning at the spinal cord and blossoming outward along the nerves like spring flowers opening in the sun. James could still feel Zem's heart beating, the cold lungs expanding and drawing in a frigid breath. Outer, superficial injuries like frostbite would wait, but she encouraged the warmth in the center of their bodies, the Force whispering and guiding, making everything obvious.

Let's get them to safety, and we can treat them together.

She couldn't let Lok die, and now she'd started she didn't know how to stop without causing the fragile systems to collapse completely. James' mouth opened but no sound came out, her lips moving.