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The frozen planet of Bilzen shone below, a perfectly round blue marble against an endless black backdrop. But its space was currently the stage of a ferocious clash between the Separatists and the Republic, and both sides already sustained heavy damage. An A-wing soared past the bridge viewfinder of The Negotiator, spinning out of control from a blast to its tail.
“I don’t like this,” Shane said, turning to look at Obi-Wan. “General, permission to get out there and…do…something?!”
Obi-Wan’s hand covered his mouth and beard as he surveyed the field before them, calculating. “Permission granted, and I better go with you. Lieutenant Commander, you have the deck.”
“Sir!”
Obi-Wan and Shane rushed to the hangar to board their A-wings, and soon joined the fray. Aside from laser fire and other craft, they also had to dodge debris from disintegrated ships. They snaked through the debris field, heading straight for the Separatist battleship.
“I hate flying,” Obi-Wan stated through their direct link, bringing his ship to fly parallel to Shane’s black and silver A-wing.
She laughed. “I believe you’ve mentioned that before.”
“Cody, we’re going to draw the fighters back toward the flagship,” Obi-Wan announced over the comms. “Then you and your squadron flank them.”
“Roger that, sir,” came Cody’s curt reply.
“With me, Shane?”
“You know it,” replied Shane. “Let’s kick some tin can ass!” Adrenaline thrummed through her veins and pounded in her ears. She couldn’t help herself, she loved a good firefight. Her astromech, D9, whirled in agreement.
As they grew closer to the Separatist ship, the droid ships broke off their attack on The Negotiator and followed the A-wings. When the majority of the ships were tailing them, they sharply broke off their trajectory. Obi-Wan soared upward while Shane went down, splitting and confusing the droid squadrons. Before they could regroup, Cody and his team swooped in from behind, picking off the fighters one by one.
“WOOHOO!” Shane whooped as each offending dot disappeared from her radar. “Hell yeah, Blue Squadron!”
“Don’t bust out the spirits yet,” warned Obi-Wan. “Vulture droids inbound, and there’s a lot of them.”
Her radar screen lit up as he spoke, filling with so many red points that the monitor was becoming a solid color. She looked up at the warship and found she could barely see it because of the swarm of Mark 1 vulture droids pouring from its lower hangar. Several squadrons were already headed their way.
“Aw, shit.”
“Language,” quipped Obi-Wan in her ear. She rolled her eyes, but smirked.
Chaos didn’t begin to describe the ensuing battle with the vulture droids. Blue Squadron scrambled and reformed several times, forcing the enemy into more manageable groups. Still, they took losses. Shane and Obi-Wan focused on the outliers and stragglers, watching for and eliminating any that tried to flank the squadron.
The tide steadily turned in their favor. With so many droids decimated, the debris in the battlefield was making it harder for the remaining vultures to lock on.
But not impossible.
Shane swooped out of the way of an incoming missile, realizing too late that the maneuver left Obi-Wan’s tail exposed. She shouted a warning, but it was drowned out in the blast. The hit took out his starboard tail wing and the blue-white A-wing began a spiraling, smoking plummet to Bilzen below.
Shane wanted to swing her ship around and dive after him, but she couldn’t abandon Blue Squadron. Clenching her teeth, she shot after the vulture that fired on Obi-Wan, destroying it at such close range her own ship rattled through its debris field.
“Lieutenant General!” Cody shouted over the comm. “Several vultures are tailing General Kenobi’s ship to the surface!”
It was true. Three vulture droids had broken off from the main attack to follow Obi-Wan’s craft to Bilzen’s snowy surface, no doubt under command to ensure the target was eliminated.
“I’m going after the general. Keep the sky on our side, Cody!” Shane exclaimed and punched it, throwing her thrusters wide open in the direction of Bilzen.
“Aye, ma’am!” resounded the reply from all of Blue Squadron.
Shane’s entire focus centered on the three vulture droids ahead of her. They were in the planet’s orbit now, she could feel the gravitational pull on her ship, making the ride jerkier by the second. She locked onto the closest vulture droid as the glare of atmospheric entry started to glow around them. At such close range, the droid was decimated. She quickly did the same with the second droid.
When they exited entry the third vulture slowed, bringing itself swiftly behind Shane’s A-wing. It fired, taking out her rear port thruster instantly. She crashed into a snowbank moments after Obi-Wan’s ship made contact with the surface further on. The ship dug a long swatch through the ice and snow, finally stopping only when it slammed up against a rock face. Slightly disoriented, Shane stumbled from the ruined A-wing, yellow lightsaber ignited and at the ready.
The vulture droid landed a hundred yards or so from her crash site, transforming itself so that its wings became legs to propel it toward her in a steady march.
“Not today, you son of a bitch,” she snarled through gritted teeth. She was vaguely aware that she tasted blood, but she ignored it and took a defensive stance.
The droid began to fire blast after blast. She deflected them with her lightsaber, but one hit her A-wing and the resulting explosion threw her forward. She rolled to absorb some of the impact, feeling the stinging heat on her back. She rolled onto her feet, now standing directly beneath the droid.
With a savage yell, she thrust her lightsaber upward into the underbelly of the vulture droid. It screeched as circuits and wires ignited inside its shell, sending the system into a complete meltdown of the literal kind. She disengaged her lightsaber and bolted away from the droid, putting as much distance between them as possible before it detonated.
When things settled, she made sure the droid was definitely too damaged to be a threat any longer and, once satisfied with that, pulled her commlink from her pocket. “Commander Cody, come in. Commander Cody!”
“Lieutenant General! I’m glad to hear your voice, ma’am.”
“Likewise, Cody.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I dispatched the vultures but haven’t located Obi-Wa—General Kenobi yet. What is your status?”
“We’re cleaning house up here now, LG. We’ll send an extraction team to your location when it’s all clear. I hope you find the General quickly.”
“May the Force be with you,” Shane signed off. She changed the channel on the commlink to the one linked to Obi-Wan’s and hailed him. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, come in. I repeat: Obi-Wan Kenobi, come in.” She paused, hoping for a response. Silence met her. “Obi-Wan, come in. Come in, please.” The quiet stretched on, broken only by the icy wind that was picking up around her. She would have to find shelter soon, the cold was already biting into her skin.
“Have I mentioned I hate flying?” came a weak reply through the comms.
Shane’s heart pounded and she had to tamp down on her emotions to keep her mind clear. “Hold tight, I’m coming for you.”
“Holding tight.”
Shane closed her eyes, releasing herself from the physical world to feel the Force more intensely. She reached out all around her, touching the few life signatures that made such a harsh environment their home until she found Obi-Wan’s. She knew immediately that he was injured; his Force signature was like a candle burned down to the last of its wick. This alarmed her enough to break her concentration, but she knew where he was, and it was close.
She scoured the remains of her ship for anything useful, but only found debris. She felt a passing feeling of sadness for D9 as she set off along the rock wall; he had been her only astromech since she returned to help with the fight. While walking the wind grew worse and the temperature dropped dramatically. Thick white clouds crowded into the sky from the horizon, bringing with them a premature night and a chill that penetrated deep into her bones. She had to get to Obi-Wan, fast.
She found his A-wing half-buried in an embankment. The tail was snapped off and sat some yards away, but the ship wasn’t smoking or on fire. Obi-Wan was inside the cockpit, shifting in and out of consciousness, slumped in his seat with his straps keeping him from lying against the flight deck. Shane pried the cockpit open, and when the blast of cold air hit the general he groaned. Blood trickled down from his hairline into one of his eyes, which was blackened from an impact.
“Obi-Wan, hey—you need to stay awake,” she said, placing her hand under his chin to lift his head so he was looking at her. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused. “Try to focus on me,” she implored.
He attempted to nod, but nearly fell forward against his flight deck. Shane caught him by the shoulders, keeping him upright. She leaned him back against the chair so she could dig into her pocket for the commlink.
“Cody, Commander Cody, come in.” She was greeted with static. Looking up, she could see that the sky was completely dark now and the wind wasn’t calming. It seemed they were in for one of Bilzen’s infamous flash blizzards, and it was blocking communications. Likely an extraction team was going to have to wait until the storm passed to be able to land, so she was going to wait it out too, and keep Obi-Wan conscious in the meantime.
Their best shelter was the crashed A-wing. While it lacked power to heat the cockpit, the metal walls and shield glass would keep them out of the worst of the cold. But it was cramped, intended for one pilot and no one else, so she had to get creative. She removed bolts behind the seat to force it to recline, then slid herself behind Obi-Wan until she straddled his hips from behind and he could lean back against her chest. From this angle she could see his face and reach the wound along his hairline. She popped the first aid kit from its compartment under the dashboard and lastly, she wrapped Obi-Wan’s brown Jedi robe around him from warmth.
“Hey,” she murmured to him, close to his ear, “Still with me?”
“I’m here,” he replied, but his voice was far away. “Where is here?”
“We’re in your A-wing waiting out a blizzard on Bilzen,” she explained as she opened the first aid kit one handed. “The storm is blocking communications with Cody and The Negotiator, so we’re going to have to wait it out. Is your only injury to your head?” She wanted to keep him talking and alert in case he had a concussion like she feared.
“I’m injured?”
Shit, he definitely had a concussion. She took an antiseptic tissue from its packaging and gently dabbed it along his hairline until he hissed sharply with pain.
“Ah, so it appears I am injured,” he said soberly, feeling heavier against her suddenly. She didn’t mind, she rather liked how it felt to hold him, despite the circumstances. He was a warm, solid presence that did much to keep the cold raging outside at bay. The storm was in full force now and she could see only swirling white outside the cockpit. Hail beat against he glass, but not strong enough to crack it.
“You are and I’m worried you have a concussion, so you can’t fall asleep on me, you hear?” she spoke firmly, continuing to clean his wound as gently as possible. Once the blood was wiped away and the wound clotted, she set about covering it with a bacta patch to jump start the healing.
“If you didn’t want me to fall asleep, then you shouldn’t have made me so incredibly comfortable,” he murmured, pulling his robes up around them more snugly. There was a slight chill in the air of the cockpit, but they formed a cocoon of warmth underneath the robe.
His remark made her acutely aware of everywhere their bodies touched, the solid pressure of him against her chest, their legs entangled together. She suddenly wrapped her arms around him in an embrace, struck by the realization that he was nearly lost today.
His head rest against her chest, and he leaned into her now, closing his eyes. “You do continue to tempt me so, darling,” he whispered so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “Something about this war makes me believe I’m a fool not to give into it, how silly it all seems to deprive one of joy during a time of such darkness and despair.”
She was shocked listening to his words. Part of her said it was the concussion, but the rest of her knew he was finally speaking his unfiltered truth. Perhaps the injury was just the conduit. She didn’t say anything, afraid to stop him.
“I think about you constantly,” he admitted. She was positive he could feel her heart racing beneath her breast as close as they were. “I’m at peace with you by my side, more at peace than I have ever been in my life. My mind feels clear and focused, and the more I try to deny how I feel on behalf of the Code, the more I realize it is much too late.”
He was silent then, and Shane looked down to see his gray-blue eyes gazing back up at hers, pupils dilated. “Much too late?” she echoed quietly, afraid speaking would shatter this moment between them.
“Much too late to avoid falling in love with you, Shane Reynard.”
He shifted, turning to face her more fully, and reached up to cup her face in his palm. “I do not know what you see in me, but I can only offer you the way I am.”
She knew what he meant by those words, he would always be a Jedi first, but she never expected anything different from him, and yet he was acting lightyears beyond her expectations right now.
“I do not want you any other way, Obi-Wan.” She whispered, afraid the emotions in her would overflow in her voice. Her heart was racing and swelling, sparks running along her nerves like fireworks. She tried to remind herself that he had a concussion, but that surely wouldn’t alter his behavior so drastically. “Are you sure?”
His thumb lightly stroked her cheek, his gaze soft as he looked into her eyes. She could feel him through the Force, and he could feel her. She felt their signatures connect in a way she had never felt before, that she didn’t know was possible. It made her feel stronger, it felt right.
“I have never been more positive in my entire life,” he answered quietly.
“LG, General Kenobi, come in.”
Cody’s voice crackling over the commlink caused them both to jump. They exchanged sheepish smiles for being so caught up with one another, and then both reached for the comm at once. Their hands overlapped and Shane laughed, thinking of the cheesy romance-comedies she would watch with Padmé sometimes. She went to pull back her hand but Obi-Wan took it in his, his thumb stroking the back. With his free hand he picked up the commlink and responded to Commander Cody.
“General Kenobi, I’m glad you and LG Reynard are safe. Unfortunately, until the storm clears we won’t be able to get an extraction team down to retrieve you. Are you secure?”
“Yes, Cody, we’re safe,” he replied with an amused chuckle. “We’ll see you when the storm clears, we’ll be okay until then.” He looked up at Shane, a twinkle in his eye. She smirked back at him, placing her hand over the commlink. She pushed it away as Cody’s muffled affirmations came through, leaning down to gently press her lips to Obi-Wan’s.
He responded in kind, sliding his fingers through her hair to gently hold the back of her head. His lips were warm and soft, and the taste of blood returned.
Shane pulled back, wiping the back of her hand over her mouth and looking sheepishly at the pink stain left behind. “I must have bit the inside of my cheek when I crashed,” she explained.
Obi-Wan chuckled, unperturbed. “Allow me, love.” He placed his hand on the side of her face, cupping the offending cheek. Closing his eyes, he began to concentrate. She could feel the Force moving around them as he pulled on it, manipulating it to heal the wound inside her cheek. It tingled as the tissues knit themselves together at record speed, and when he was finished she ran her tongue over the now completely smooth area.
“I forgot how well you took to Force healing,” she remarked.
“Only for superficial wounds, I’m afraid.” He sounded more drained now, and she felt guilty that he expended his energy to heal an insignificant wound on her when he was worse off.
“That was careless,” she hissed at him. “Reserve the rest of your strength.”
Obi-Wan chuckled, looking up at her with fondness shining in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
The extraction team arrived several hours later. Shane gratefully passed Obi-Wan to the medic droid and sat adjacent from him on the blessedly warm transport. With all of the troopers around she couldn’t reach out and take his hand like she wanted to, so she settled with sharing a knowing smile and gaze with him across the aisle.