Ashes of a Soul

[Aeron Djo]

Location: Unknown Regions, Maena, near the Unit

Aeron awoke to a burning pain in her lungs. She was disoriented, didn't know where she was and why she was hurting. She coughed. Then a horrifying realisation hit her: she was alive. A cough merged with a sob. The skin, where the salty tears touched it, burnt. Her chest contracted in terror, stifling her shallow breath. She pressed her eyes shut and a whimpering sounds escaped her lips before she buried her face in her arms and wept freely - and found relief.

The tears worked their magic and calmed her, dulled the pain. She was left weak and exhausted and with only a dim sense of existential miserableness.

***​

​

The volcanic surface of the planet looked oddly colour-coordinated with the three Black Squadron X-wings that were shooting along at minimum altitude. Supposedly this godforsaken planet was a source of androcite, and they had set out to investigate whether the valuable mineral could be obtained. It had been a long and lonely hyperspace jump here and Aeron had had time to think too much. It seemed all pointless. She had lost everything in the battle for freedom but her own life. Her sons were dead, untimely, and the Galactic Alliance itself had fallen apart, leaving all ripe for the taking of the Sith or the First Order. There was nothing left to fight for - nothing left to live for...

A thought formed that was translated into action in the fraction of a second. Aeron barely knew what she was doing when she flipped her fighter sideways, ramming its wing into the ground and sending it into a grotesque spinning motion. Her consciousness blacked out.

***​

​

She could barely see outside through the cracked, but unbroken, canopy. She tried to unbuckle the seatbelt, but her fingers lacked the strength. After some fumbling she succeeded in unfastening her helmet and let it drop in her lap. She leaned back into the seat, resting her head against it, and felt... nothing. The emptiness was merciful, and it felt possible to sit here and wait for death. From hunger or from thirst, or from a failure of her lungs - in one way or another it would come.

But it didn't.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

In the two million years since Idd-yha had erupted, the planet had resurfaced itself. The great dead volcano that now housed the massive New City had once exploded and turned a fertile planet in to a wasteland plagued for centuries by heat and ash and rebirth. Maenans had a reputation for resilience, and for good reason: they were raised by a world that had survived a cataclysm nearly unheard of. In the millenia since that time, many areas had healed in to grasslands - somewhat unhealthy, dry lands but still more than ever could have been expected by those who’d been alive to see the original damage. Some areas remained deeply volcanic, great stretches of black rock and rivers of magma.

But it was over those grasslands that the crashing x-wing soared, its scream drawing the gazes of several farm workers as they toiled over ash-onions and root vegetables that had learned to thrive in such sickly soil. The descent mattered little to them as long as it didn’t destroy any of their harvest - otherwise, it was a passing distraction, an oddity in their day as it rolled wing over wing and kicked up dirt in a plume seen several miles away.

They went back to picking.

______​

​

“Dad, check it out!” murmured the little girl, pointing at the hissing wreck that had crashed not too far from where they camped. Her father - a veteran of several Galactic wars turned quiet hunter who was trying to forget it all - could not have missed it. He’d seen plenty of x-wings in his time. And he knew not to trust anyone who sat inside of one. Pretty words. Lies.

“Yes, I see it Asha,” he said, keeping any emotion out of his voice.

“Should we go help?”

“No,” he said almost immediately, going back to tying together the legs of the Muer he’d just shot. It’s antlers were enormous - it would fetch a serious price at market. He was trying very ardently not to think about seeing one of his squadmates lose his head to some Jedi on Alderaan.

“But Dad - what if they’re alive? Wouldn’t you want someone to help me if I crashed? We can’t just not check!”

You wouldn’t ever be one of them - claiming justice, righteousness, kindness. Good. It’s all a lie. At least here we’re honest.

“I’m going to check!” she said, taking his silence as acquiescence. With a sigh, he dropped his work and followed her.

The nose of the x-wing had dug itself in to the ground on impact, a chorus of electrical crackles emanating from within its shell. Asha, young in years but grown in mind as all children from Maena were, did not need to be told to steer clear of the storm going on within the metal, instead picking her way over clods of upturned earth to get close to the spiderweb cracks of the cockpit. It made it hard to see inside, but the fact that a woman sat inside was still unmistakable.

“Dad! I think - yeah, I just saw her move! She’s alive!” Asha’s fist knocked on the glass, trying to catch the pilot’s attention. “Hey! We can help - how bad are you hurt?” she yelled, assuming a crash like that had resulting in at least a few scratches. Most likely worse.

_________​

“Ma’am,” came the soft interruption, not unwelcome. She hadn’t told anyone that she didn’t want to be disturbed - otherwise, nothing would have broken her concentration unless it was dire. Today’s problem didn’t require silence. She was simply checking the progress of dishes full of her most recent attempt at a colorless, odorless nerve gas from a bacteria harvested on Corellia following Belphaegor’s recent excursion.

“Pardon the interruption, but we just received reports of a fallen x-wing a few miles off the Unit,” said the suited man, his uniform crisp and clean. Matsu noticed most details.

​

“I’m assuming something is unique about the craft, to bring the news to me,” she said, looking back to her work.

“Yes ma’am - at first we thought it was an A’zan-ix attack. They don’t usually go after craft so small, but since the shield was put up around New City they’ve been hungrier and will attack anything. But none have been spotted in the area. Reports state that the x-wing seemed to crash deliberately. It took a sharp turn that doesn’t appear to be mechanical failure. There were no attempts to pull up.”

Matsu paused, putting down her tweezers and looking up at the officer once again.

“Where?”

[member="Aeron Djo"]​

 

[Aeron Djo]

Aeron’s reverie was interrupted by a distant-sounding voice. When she opened her eyes, she caught a glimpse of movement outside the cockpit. As she leaned in closer, she could discern the face of a human girl, oddly distorted by the cracked transparisteel. The face pieced together of multiple sections that repeated some features, including half an eye, while others were left out completely. It looked grotesque and at the same time intriguing.

“Go away”, said Aeron, too weakly to be heard. “What? I can’t understand you!” she heard dimply. Aeron impatiently flung a hand at the button that would open that canopy. Latches unclasped, and the canopy shifted slightly forward and rose about a hand's breadth, then stopped. Aeron reached up to give it a push, but something in the machinery seemed to have got stuck quite conclusively. She groaned in exasperation and fell back into her seat.

A pair of brown eyes peered in through the gap, and after a second Aeron turned her head to meet it. "Well, either you shoot me dead right here and now, or you run and fetch a crowbar to get this thing open." She didn't quite know herself why she was being so hostile.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There was hesitation on the part of Asha’s father when the woman’s voice echoed out of the crack of the cockpit - rude...expectant? No… He was used to that, the casual way that arbiters of justice threw entitlement around. Of course they’d receive help - they were the heroes! But this voice seemed tired, indifferent, almost bothered by his daughter’s attempt to help. That left him curious enough to go and grab something to pry open the cockpit despite his best instincts.

By the time he and Asha had managed to use their combined weight to leverage the cockpit open, the sleek transport carrying Unit soldiers was nearly upon them. In a space void of much air traffic due to the dangerous presence of ship-eating flying lizards (oh this planet…), there was no mistaking the sound of repulsor lifts positioning another landing.

When he looked up and saw the men in black armor, he grabbed his daughter by the arm and pulled her behind him.

“Dad, what th--”

“Quiet Asha, not a word,” he hissed, fear rattling his heart in his chest. Had they just inadvertently helped someone at odds with the Spider?

His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth as four men, rifles carried with the afterthought of practice, surrounded the x-wing. One jumped on what was left of the nose, aiming down in to the cockpit. Another came up to him, voice a tinny modulation through a mask that covered the lower half of his face.

“Do you know this woman?”

“No,” Asha’s father replied without hesitation. “We saw her crash and wanted to see if there was anything to scrap.” The lie was easy, and believable. He felt Asha tense. The soldier paused, assessing for a moment before nodding and walking off. He knew that those soldiers would hunt them down easily if anything about the woman turned out to be a bigger problem, that now they’d been seen and would be in a database somewhere. Dangerous.

“Why didn’t you tell them we knew her, try to get her out of it?” Asha asked accusingly as the pair watched the woman escorted to the transport by her new companions - at gunpoint, of course.

“Because lying to save her would only have gotten us killed,” he answered simply. He would throw that stranger to the dogs a million times over to protect his daughter. For the briefest moment, he felt his heart clench at the fact that one day Asha would learn to be brutal just the same. And then, as the transport lifted up and away, it loosened.

_______​

​

The dry grasslands were a blur below the transport as it sped back to the Unit, as sleek as anything the galaxy had to offer. It was loud, not meant for a pleasure cruise, but beautiful and efficient nonetheless.

It was doubtful however, whether their guest was really appreciating any of it.

Agent Milton, one hand reaching up to hold a support pole along the ceiling, raised his voice to be heard over the scream of rushing wind.

“So - mind telling me what happened out there?” he said to their...guest. She wasn’t handcuffed, a seeming oversight on their part. But who needed cuffs when a swift kick out the door would suffice should anything...foolish be tried?

[member="Aeron Djo"]​

 

[Aeron Djo]

There was the ominous sound of an approaching ship. Aeron looked up instinctively to locate its source, but couldn't see through the canopy. Eventually it gave in and opened, and she jumped up onto her seat to look all around her. She stuck out from the X-wing's cockpit like an alarmed meerkat from its hole in the ground.

A shuttle had landed and from it emerged a troop of darkly armoured soldiers that came straight for the crashed foreign ship. Aeron's narrowed eyes looked down suspiciously at the girl and her father. They seemed anxious, but that didn't mean this wasn't their fault. Perhaps it really wasn't. Salvagers - that figured. A galaxy full of awful people who only looked out for themselves wasn't news.

***​

Aeron sat unmoving, her face blank, expressionless but for the dark eyes that were windows into a deep, terrifying void. She had not spoken a word, nor otherwise shown any reaction to the soldiers taking her away. She seemed... gone.

She was staring out of the open door into the grey atmosphere below which the dark ground sped past, absent-mindedly, without apparent interest, perhaps simply because it was the obvious way to look to ignore other people. She showed no reaction at first when eventually slowly turned her head towards him. She examined him for another second before she spoke.

"I made a mistake", she said tonelessly. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she stood up slowly, so as not to alarm anyone. The unsteady flight in the turmoiled atmosphere caused her to stumble as she moved towards the transport's open door...

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​