Part III

Struggle

Chapter XVII - Tomb of Fire

DAY FIVE

The blood was rushing to his head and pooling in his thick skull, giving him a headache like no headache ever before. Maximilian Veers could feel his limbs going numb from the lack of life giving oxygen provided by the crimson cells. A swirling black cloud of smoke, which he also choked on each time he tried to breathe, obscured his vision. From what he could tell through the smoke a leg was entangled with a seat’s crash webbing. It was the only thing that kept his hanging form from crashing to the twisted and sharp edged ceiling now floor.

He had to get out of there and soon otherwise, he knew, he would suffocate on the oily black smoke or worse burn to death from the fire that was burning somewhere in the ship. Veers grabbed onto a dangling strap of the crash webbing and pulled himself up so that he could untangle his leg. He could not remember how he ended up in this position or back in the passenger compartment. At the moment he really did not care how, his concern was just to get away from the soon-to-be tomb.

He held onto the webbing with his good arm as he yanked and pulled with his leg in an attempt to get free. Veers struggled with the crash webbing for what felt like eons. As more time seemed to pass to him, the more he struggled to get free and the more he began to choke on the dirty air. He knew he was going to die of suffocation first before he burned if he did not get his leg free.

With a twist of his ankle, his booted foot slipped free of the crash webbing and Veers involuntary flipped to hang from the webbing by a hand. He dropped the remaining two feet of space between him and the jagged floor and made a dash for the ramp switch to leave the dead shuttle. The Colonel slammed the heel of his hand into the switch and heard gears and pistons groan and hiss in protest as the machine attempted to open its mouth.

The ceiling parted slightly to allow a slash of light penetrate the oily smoke but was soon partially obscured as the smoke found it’s way through the small opening. Maximilian Veers squinted his eyes at the light and then stepped toward it. His foot brushed up against something soft and the Imperial instructor cast his eyes downward to see what he had hit.

Veers choked on the smoggy atmosphere in the shuttle cabin from shock at seeing the sight of a bodiless head. Coughing, he knelt down beside the head and turned it over to see who it was that had been unfortunate to die by decapitation. He felt no remorseful emotions as he recognized the face of the Lorrdian. The woman’s terrified and shocked expression was frozen in place by her facial muscles constricting permanently in place upon death.

"Looks like Death favored you more than me." He choked and pushed the head away before standing again. Veers stepped up to the ramp above him and grabbed on to the opening. It was wide just enough for him to squeeze his body through, but it was going to be a tight fit. Before he could pull himself up, a hand grabbed onto his ankle.

"What the..." He exclaimed at the hand and followed the arm to the owner. "You."

"Please...help me." She pleaded and choked on the air.

"Why should I? You would have left me to die." Veers began to turn away.

"And so you would do the same and be all that you claim we are?" Lana jabbed at him and he stopped reaching for the edge of the opening. "Some tough and compassionate Imperial. Ha. More like the ruthless and uncaring warmonger my people keep saying your kind are."

He cringed.

Something in the back popped loudly and a burst of flames shot forth from the engine compartment. The fire was beginning to spread rapidly now and neither of them had much time to continue to debate about his moral conscience.

"Fine. Leave me to burn." She said in resignation.

"Oh shut up." Veers snapped back and began helping her out from underneath a beam and a pile of earth and duristeel. Once he had her out, he lifted her up as best he could with an injured and good arm. Lana grabbed hold of the edge and began pulling herself through the small opening. She was half way through when something else ignited in the engine compartment and sending a river of flame flowing across the uneven surface of the ground.

Fuel! Veers hurriedly pushed Lana's legs through the opening when he noticed the river of fire flowing in his direction.

“Give me a hand!” He asked the female Rebel as the last of her legs disappeared through the opening. Veers received no response from her nor did he see her reappear again.She left me! He realized and grabbed for the edge.

Suddenly and without warning, the ramp closed on him and nearly clipping his fingers off in the process. The river of fire reached his position and he was forced to fall back in retreat. The fuel fed fire spread across the floor, consuming Leilonia’s head. He was trapped and suffocating inside a tomb of fire with no way out. A wall of burning flames blocked the controls to the shuttle ramp.

“Lana!” He shouted for her help and did not really expect her to come back for him. For all he knew, she could have chosen to condemn him by closing the ramp shut again. Veers backed away from the fire and used his arms to shield his face from the searing heat radiating from the flames. With the way to the controls blocked, he had to find an alternate way out or find a way to get to the ramp controls or he would die.

The Imperial chose to find another way out instead of facing the inferno in his way. He made a dash for the cockpit door, hoping that the viewscreen had been destroyed in the crash and providing an escape. When he reached the door and tried to open it both manually and by the control panel, he discovered much to his dismay that the door had been fused shut from the heat. He could feel the door was hot and knew that there was another fire on the other side.

“LANA!” He choked while spinning around to start back toward the ramp. “Lana!”

Colonel Veers began to choke, as less and less breathable air became unavailable to him. He pulled the Rebel jacket over his face, trying to filter out the black smoke. His eyes stung and watered from the tiny specks of ash in the noxious cloud. The Colonel dropped to his knees choking and gasping.

“Exar!” He desperately cried, hoping that the ghastly ghost would come to his summoning and save him from a fiery death.

“I am here.” He heard rather than saw the Sith Lord. Veers brought his head up and watched as the flames took on a form and became his Master.

“Help me...” He pleaded.

“Then concentrate, my disciple.” Exar Kun replied and motioned toward the controls and the wall of flame. “Focus on the control panel or the fire and visualize how to manipulate either one with the Force.”

“I don’t have time for these games!” Veers shouted angrily. Here he was dying and the Sith was teaching him the Force.

“Then you will die.” And the flames flared upward as the image of Exar Kun disappeared.

“No! Don’t leave me in here to die!” He choked and reached out with a hand where the Sith apparition had been. Realizing that Lana and the Dark Lord were abandoning him to die, Veers felt a malicious, scathing rage consume him.

He tried to think of a solution that would save his life without the help of either one of them. But each time he tried, the danger that was posed to him increased another notch, further trapping him inside the fiery tomb. The thoughts of being left to die further hindered his chances of escaping.

Veers struggled to stay conscious, as his vision began to swim and his legs weakened beneath him. Sweat poured forth from his skin to briefly soak his clothing before the searing heat of the burning fuel boiled it away. He was ready to accept his fate when he could not think of a way out, “Ihn Socorri nyeve min bhiq suman ehn nyiad!” he cursed the two in Old Corellian, “Halle metes chun, petchuk!”

Bone shards and tissues of brain exploded from the Lorrdian’s broiled skull to splatter everywhere and onto everything, including the Colonel. Upon feeling the brain matter striking his flesh, the intense feelings of rage and abandonment he once harbored faded from his mind. Resurfacing in its place was the deadly problem that he had yet to solve and a solution that he had handed to him.

Surely the Sith Lord would really not have allowed his new apprentice to die so soon?

Veers recalled the words Exar Kun had tried to tell him. He now understood that the specter had not abandoned him, but had given him the key he needed to make his escape. So while choking for fresh air, the Colonel focused his entire attention on the control panel. He concentrated on ignoring his surroundings and tuned his mind on the task at hand. He envisioned an invisible hand pressing in the controls to open the ramp and struggled to hold on to that image.

Across the compartment and behind the burning flames, slowly the control switches began to react to an unknown force and with a click, the ramp that once had been closed now began to open with an agonizing hiss from the hydraulics. The sound caused Veers to lose his concentration, as he lifted his gaze to the reopened ramp.

He almost shouted with triumphant excitement at his victory.

Then someone jabbed a metal slab that belonged to the shuttle in between the opening, preventing the ramp from closing in on itself again. Then the face of Lana appeared much to Veers surprise.

“Come on!” She urged him with a hand and then offered it to him. Without voicing the questions in his head or accusing her of attempted murder, he would address them later, Veers accepted the hand and with her help he was able to escape the fiery death that almost had become his fate.

Chapter XVIII - Dark Confessions

“You almost had it in there.” Lana told him after they had walked several minutes away from the burning wreckage. Veers had been coughing the toxic fumes from his lungs along the way and had used the female Rebel for support. She still held him up by an arm over her shoulder and her arm around his waist. Lana did not understand why she suddenly now chose to help him. He had been the cause of the shuttle crash and the deaths of four of her friends.

“I would have perished no thanks to you double-crossing me.” Veers chastised and pulled away from her.

“What!” She exclaimed in bafflement and was appalled at what the Imperial was implying. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play innocent with me, scum!” Veers snapped and pointed an accusing finger toward her. “You closed the ramp on me before I could begin climbing out after you!”

“You thought I did that?” She replied back in the same tone he was using toward her. “You thought I had closed the ramp just to kill you? If I wanted you dead then why did I help you out! Answer me that question, Imperial!”

“You will address me as Colonel Veers,” he snarled and started walking away. Once more he wanted to get away from the crash site before any more Rebels showed up to capture him again. After a few minutes of walking and once he had the chance to calm down, he realized that Lana may not have been the cause of the ramp closing on him.

He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that she was following him. He had half expected her to stay with her dead comrades and wait for help to come.Maybe she still thinks I am her prisoner, he thought, and she has to stay with me? Veers knew they both were unarmed and he could easily overpower her and make her his prisoner instead.

“Why do you still follow me?” he asked.

Lana looked over in his direction and away from a woolamander that had been lumbering through the foliage nearby. “Why do you care?”

“You could have stayed at the shuttle until your friends showed up.”

“And wait to become some predators next meal?” Lana shook her head several times. “Besides, you are heading toward the Massassi ruins where I have a great deal of many friends waiting there.”

"They won't get the chance to capture me," Veers replied and turned his attention back to where he was going. His thoughts drifted to what the female had said to him.Could she be telling the truth? He thought and furrowed his eyebrows in frustration. He knew she had been right about wanting to kill him. If she had wanted to, she could have just left him to die in the burning shuttle. Yet she had not and that left him a little perplexed about the whole thing.Could the ramp just have closed on itself? There was a possibility for it, if the ramp's hydraulics had not been working properly.

He was uncertain as to what had happened with the ramp. All he knew was that it had closed and he was choking on the filthy air and sweating in the scorching heat. Veers had called for Exar Kun's help and the ghostly Sith Lord had materialized before him rather quickly and instructed him on how to get out of the mess he was in. The Imperial Colonel frowned noticeably as a thought struck him like a lightning bolt striking a tree.

He wouldn't have ... would he?

After an hour of silence and travel, Colonel Veers slowed his pace so that he could walk side by side with Lana. "You did not close the ramp on me?" he rhetorically asked her.

"I told you before," Lana bitterly replied and folded her arms across her chest. She did not look at him, but Veers could see the grief in her face at the loss of her friends. "Though maybe I should have."

He deserved that.

"Can ... you tell me what had happened then?" he asked. If perhaps she could shed some light on the incident, he might be able to draw some better conclusions and discard other and more ridiculously possibilities. The Rebel was silent for several long seconds before she turned her hazel gaze back on him. Her facial expression was quiet but he could still see some of the grief in the curve of her lips, the tightness of her jaw and the firmness of her brow.

"I don't know exactly what had happened," she answered and then lowered her gaze to the ground in front of her. "All I remember is you trying to push me out through the space and then I was turning around to offer you a hand when it ... I guess collapsed and closed on you."

"No sounds of mechanical failure?"

"I don't remember."

"Who were you talking to inside the transport?" Colonel Veers was caught off guard by her question and he opened his mouth to respond but could not find the words to answer her inquiry. He turned away from her and stared ahead of them and concentrated his gaze on a fallen and rotting tree. "Were one of the others still alive?"

He did not like her tone when she asked that. It sounded demanding and accusing to him. Veers shook his head slightly and answered; "No one else was in there except corpses."

"But I heard you speaking to someone," Lana paused for second as she looked at her memories on the crash. "Someone named Exar."

Veers came to a sudden and abrupt halt that surprised Lana. He could see that the Rebel realized she had overheard something important while he had been trapped in the shuttle. "It ... is just a ... curse," he stammered over his response. He saw that she did not buy into his answer and gave him an accusing look that suddenly reminded him of the way his wife glared at him when he was avoiding answering her questions about things.

"I know plenty of curses, including Corellian and I know Exar is not one of them."

"It is not important," he lied and started walking again. He brushed past her, storming ahead at a pace that his injuries would allow him.

"It must be if you are avoiding answer my questions about it!" Lana shouted after him.

Why don't you tell her? Veers heard in his ear from his master. The Imperial's eyebrows frowned in annoyance at the intrusion and he shook his head.

I don't want her to think I am crazy.

She already does.

How do you know? He bit back sarcastically.

Who here is the Sith Lord? Exar Kun rhetorically asked and Veers could almost see in his mind's eye a smirking ghost.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you anyway," Veers finally said over his shoulder. Lana Cordel caught up with him and walked at his side again.

"Try me," she challenged.

Veers stopped again and turned to face her with a contemplative look on his face. "He is Exar Kun, a dead Sith Lord who offered to help me off this moon." He had expected her to treat his confession as a ludicrous story to avoid in answering her. He had not expected her to recognize what he had told her and wear a horrorific and shocked look on her face. "What?"

"You didn’t..." she said at last, sounding astonished.