The hangar doors whizzed open, and behind the Ebon Hawk, beyond the open flight doors, the scenes of destruction unfolded. Smoke filled the outdoor sky, and the atmosphere itself glowed red. Pulses of light exploded across the Upper City.


Another door opened at the opposite end of the hangar. Two familiar faces ran through, as well as four battle droids.


“Damn those Sith! They’re bombing the whole planet! I knew they’d turn on us sooner or…,” yelled Davik Kang. He and Calo Nord stopped when they saw the others.


“Aah! It’s Davik!” said Hudrow. All weapons were raised.


“Well! What do we have here? Thieves in the hangar! And Canderous — has this been your game all along? Did you think you could steal my getaway ship and leave me high and dry while the Sith turn the planet into dust?!” said Davik.


“I’ll take care of them, Davik, said Calo. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”


“Make it quick, Calo, the Sith mean business. And these ones have a Jedi with them…”


“OH, COME ON!” Tails yelled over the shaking and thundering. “Let’s all get aboard, and then we can discuss killing each other!”


No one listened. Both Calo and Davik opened fire. Tails kicked Hudrow behind some cargo crates as Carth and Canderous ducked for cover. Bastila stood her ground, but Tails looked to the ceiling. There was more than enough room to fly in the hangar!


Tails squatted so low his knees were in his throat as he spun up his tails. His tails curved into propellers, he rocked forward onto his toes, and the boy launched himself into the air like a rocket. He had more than ten meters between the floor and ceiling to play with, and four times that much from wall to wall. Tails took pot shots at Davik and Calo, and their battle droids answered in kind. The fox kept close to the back wall. He was as agile as a hummingbird in the air, but his spinning tails made him a bigger target than his size suggested.


Bastila attempted to cross the gap between her and Davik, but with little success. Davik, Calo, and the droids were all shielded, and they took cover behind storage crates. She could reflect their shots back at them, but even a direct hit wasn’t enough to bring them down. Their fire kept her pinned, and Calo lobbed grenades in Bastila’s path to keep her from advancing.


From above, Tails saw two of the droids break off and sneak around all the cargo crates — likely to try to take Carth, Canderous, and the cowering Hudrow by surprise. He dashed along the opposite wall, concrete exploding behind him from blaster fire. He zoomed in low and kicked the uppermost crates above the droids, causing an avalanche that crushed one of them. Tails sped on, dodging the fire of the other droid as he looped around. His modified rifle was useless outside twenty meters, but he peppered the second droid as he zoomed to intercept it. Tails taxed his probabilistic clairvoyance and sheer dumb luck to the extreme as he approached, flying between multiple overlapping cones of fire. He tucked into a ball, hardened his tails, took the blaster shot he couldn’t dodge, then spun like a sawblade, smashing the droid to pieces.


There was a roaring sound behind him, and Tails turned to see a rocket flying at him! He contorted midair; the rocket exploded on the wall above him, knocking the wind out of him and showering him with debris. There was a tearing pain in his gut as his stab would tried to reopen, but Tails recovered before hitting the floor. Several more rockets followed — Tails followed their flight path with his eyes, and saw they originated with Calo, fired from a wrist-mounted rocket launcher!


Tails dodged the next several rockets, giving each ample space to blow up far from him. They all homed in on him, though, making avoiding them a pain — literally, as he felt his side reopen and blood leak out over his fur. One rocket blew up on the ceiling, blasting apart the open truss frame supporting it. This gave Tails an idea. The boy sped back up to the ceiling, blaster fire and rockets trailing not far behind. He weaved through the truss frame, slashing and hacking at the members above Davik and Calo’s heads. The homing rockets blasted apart the frame behind him, causing huge chunks of debris to fall below.


“Calo, you idiot!” said Davik as he threw himself out of the way. The debris destroyed the remaining two droids, but Davik found himself caught out in the open. Carth, Canderous, and Tee-Three opened up on him, and Davik had no hope to survive. Blaster fire cut through his already weakened personal shield, and Davik’s armor couldn’t weather the sustained barrage. Davik fell dead in a heap.


Tails had already gone light-headed, and he descended erratically toward his companions. He hit the ground with a thud, rolling several meters and smearing a trail of blood over the floor.


“Tails!” said Carth, and the man pulled him to safety behind cover. He got out a medkit and injected more bio-sealant into Tails’ stab wound.


“Oh, that is IT!” Calo bellowed over the din. Everyone else peered over his or her cover. The short, squat man in the middle of the hangar grasped an explosive device the size of his fist. “All of you, back off, or this thermal detonator will blow us all to bits!” He scooted closer to the Ebon Hawk. “You may have me outnumbered and outgunned, but if I’m going down, I’m taking all of you with me!”


But before Calo could get any closer, the building next to Davik’s estate exploded. The whole building shuddered and swayed as its structural integrity was compromised. “Damn those Sith!” roared Calo. “There’re going to bring this whole hangar down around our ears!”


He was right. With another shudder and groan, more of the ceiling caved in — right over Calo’s head. He looked up just in time to watch.


“AAUUURGH!”


The entire ceiling gave way over Calo, dumping the whole floor above down upon him. The squat bounty hunter was buried under tons of concrete, metal, and other debris. His last scream echoed throughout the hangar.


“Now’s our chance!” said Canderous. “Let’s get this ship fired up. We’ll pick up your Twi’lek and Wookie friend, but then we have to get off this planet!


Carth scooped up Tails like a heavy child. Bastila grabbed Hudrow by the arm, and Tee-three drove around the huge pile of debris as fast as his wheels would let him. The security system deactivated and they all clambered up the boarding ramp. Tails groggily opened his eyes — the last thing he saw of the hangar was Calo’s boots sticking out of the debris pile.


“Hey… what?”


“You passed out for a minute. Can you stand?” said Carth, already setting the boy down on the floor. Tails wobbled onto a bulkhead. “Good enough!”


Carth raced ahead and around the corner to the cockpit, and Tails struggled to follow. Hudrow was already in the pilot’s seat, and Carth took co-pilot. Carth didn’t feel he needed Hudrow in the slightest, but he wasn’t going fuss about it now.


“Oh shit, oh shit,” said Hudrow as his hands flew over his console. Outside the flight doors, Taris burned. Streaks of crimson light rained from the sky over the city and detonated with the force of several kilotons of high explosive. Kilometers-high spires blew apart like Jenga towers and imploded down to their foundations.


The Ebon Hawk complained noisily as its systems booted up cold, but it was fully operational in under a minute. “Engines on, thrusters on, navcom on, deflector shields to maximum!” Hudrow called out, more for his own nerves than anyone else’s. The boarding ramp closed, the landing gear retracted, and the Hawk groaned as it lifted off. It yawed on its central axis with agonizing slowness, taking precious seconds to bring its engines around. Finally, it crawled out of the hangar.


The building in front and to the right took a lance of light and blew to pieces, and a flying girder struck the Hawk with terrible force. The impact threw everyone not seated to the floor, but the ship’s shields held, and the Ebon Hawk sped on into the sky.


“Stop here,” said Carth, bringing up coordinates on the nav screen.


“What! Are you crazy? We’re all gonna die!” Hudrow bleated.


“Do as instructed before I throw you outside!” Carth roared. He put a hand on his pistol grip just to make his point clear.


Hudrow’s eyes wide. “Yes, boss,” he squeaked.

---

 

Aboard the Leviathan, Darth Malak watched the destruction of Taris. Even from orbit, the effects of the bombardment could be seen through the bridge viewport. For each flash of light on the surface, Malak hoped Bastila Shan was meeting her doom.


Admiral Saul Karath approached from behind. “Taris is defenseless against our assault, Lord Malak,” he reported. There was the slightest quiver in his voice when he added, “They are offering no resistance. The city is in ruins.”


Malak continued to glare out the viewport for a moment. “Continue the bombardment, Admiral. Wipe this pathetic planet from the face of the galaxy!”



 

---

Tails could hardly believe his eyes. Amidst all the destruction, the old apartment complex still stood, though there was a chunk missing from the spire’s side. “Check for a roof access hatch somewhere!”


‘Please be on the roof, please be on the roof!’ Tails thought. The ship circled the building, and but saw no one. “Check the apartment window!”


Inside the old hideout, Mission and Zaalbar held each other with quiet resignation. No words needed to be said. Their years of friendship on Taris spoke for both of them, even if that friendship was about to come to a sudden close.


The suddenness and total devastation of the bombardment left them stunned and speechless. At once, the view of Upper City turned from sunny and placid to horrifying. And it wasn’t just the Upper City getting hit. Even if few shots reached the planet’s true surface, the Lower City was being destroyed as Taris’ shining towers came crashing down. In little over a minute, half the city disintegrated.


The apartment complex shook and trembled as the explosions hit. The deafening, thunderous cacophony drowned out all other sound. Their apartment’s single window cracked under the repeated shock waves booming through the air. Flaming chunks of debris tore through the side of the building. Black smoke billowed into the atmosphere. Thousands of people instantly perished with each tower’s collapse; everything down to their foundations was utterly obliterated, leaving only dust and echoes in their wake.


Mission and Zaalbar could only watch in disbelief. They had absolutely nothing they could compare the devastation to. Life itself as they knew it was ending, and they barely had time to wonder when they were going to be next.


It would have been easy to resent Tails and the others for leaving them behind, but the thought didn’t even cross Mission’s mind. Tails promised them he would come get them. But even if he couldn’t, even as her home burned around her, Mission sincerely hoped they had gotten away somehow. Then Mission took one last look out the window.


“What the… Big Z, look out!”


The whole wall smashed inward, and both Mission and Zaalbar scurried away as a shielded hull pulled away and left open air in its wake.


“Gently,” said Carth. “Drop ventral shields so they can access the ramp!”


Tails needed no instruction. He raced for the boarding ramp, panting heavily and clutching his stab wound. The ramp lowered, blasting the interior of the ship with smoke and gale-force winds. “Mission!” he yelled as he slid down the ramp. “Zaalbar!”


He saw them both, dazed and confused and utterly jubilant all at once. Tails saw the gap was still nearly seven meters from the ramp to the apartment floor. “We need to get closer!”


“I’m trying!” said Hudrow. He angled the Ebon Hawk up and to the left, but the cockpit was practically smashing the adjacent apartment. The shape of the ship, combined with the shields, prevent the Hawk from getting any closer than five meters. The hull was already crushing into the floor above.


“Come on, come on!” said Tails, waving to Mission and Zaalbar.


Big Z hoisted Mission into his arms, and the big Wookiee sprinted with all his might. Right at the edge, he hurled the young Twi’lek towards Tails and the open ramp, transferring all his forward momentum into her. Mission screamed as she sailed across the void, and she landed with a thud on top of Tails. The boy grasped her securely and pushed her up.


“Tails! You came back for us!” she said.


“Go on, get in, I’ll take care of Big Z!” he told her.


Tails turned his attention back to the apartment. He saw Zaalbar all the way back at the door, tensing for a final sprint. Zaalbar took off, bounding for the Ebon Hawk, when something exploded nearby. The whole building swayed, and the Hawk was jostled out of its nook. Five meters became nine meters in an instant.


‘He’s not going to make it!’


Zaalbar jumped. Tails saw him arc through the air — he was already tensing his legs. He saw Zaalbar peak, beginning a descent that would never reach the boarding ramp. Tails made his calculations, and the Mobian jumped to meet him midair, tails crackling. Tails and Zaalbar collided, almost knocking the wind out of the boy and shooting fresh pain throughout his body, but Wookiee and Mobian locked arms as they fell. Tails’ tails spun for all they were worth, but it took several seconds to halt their freefall.


The Hawk maneuvered outward, its pilots trying to fix Tails’ and Zaalbar’s position. Tails climbed through the air as fast as he could muster. They met the ship halfway, and both Tails and Zaalbar collapsed onto the ramp. The boy rested only a second as the ship climbed, unable to close the ramp while they were still on it.


As the ship ascended, Tails glanced out to where their apartment was. To his shock, someone else was in the smashed opening.


“Waaaaaait!” a shrill voice pierced the din.


He couldn’t believe it. He recognized her — it was Dia, from ages ago! All around, only this spire remained. A landscape of fire and wreckage extended for kilometers. How much time was left before that one was leveled, too? How many seconds did she have to live and wait for death? Tails gave no further thought as he leapt from the ramp. Now a hundred meters away, he fell rapidly, and he met her at the wall. He grabbed her and kicked off again in the same instant, reversing velocity fast enough to give Dia whiplash.


Now with a much lighter burden, Tails zoomed back for the Ebon Hawk. It was nearly where he left it, though it had stopped again. He bolted up the ramp with his charge and rolled onto the interior floor in a single swoop, and the ramp closed behind them.


“Are you out of your mind, kid?” said Canderous. Tails ignored him.


“What’s going on?” Dia shrieked. “Why is this happening?”


Tails had no words to answer.


“We have to go back,” Tails panted as he ran for the cockpit. “Carth, we have to go back!”


“Absolutely not!” said Carth. “What even for?”


“Because there people down there who need saving!”


“Have you gone brain-dead? Tails, the whole planet is on fire!”


Above them, hellfire streaked from the sky. Below them, despair and devastation claimed the citizens of Taris amongst the flames and explosions.


“One street. I beg of you, one street!” Tails wailed.


Tails saw the turmoil on Carth’s face. He saw the Republic officer struggle between compassion and self-preservation. He saw him weigh the staggering risk to their ship and their lives against the meager hope of saving a few more people on the surface.


“No. We’re evacuating now!”


Tails was crushed. The fox’s face twisted into a snarling rage. He wordlessly sped out of the cockpit to the boarding ramp, and before anyone could respond, he hit the release switch.


“Tails, are you crazy?”


The boy leapt through the gap before Carth could hit the override, and his tails whisked past before it could reverse and close on them.


Tails let himself freefall. The Ebon Hawk had nearly reached the edge of the troposphere when he jumped out. Never before had he witnessed such a literal manifestation of hell. Smoke and ash filled the sky below. Burning buildings created swirling firestorms out of the wreckage. Few structures remained intact, and for a moment, Tails thought he was too late to save anyone. He thought of everyone he had met on Taris, everyone he had helped or saved, all of them screaming as the flames took them or the spires collapsed on them. He couldn’t believe this was happening. It was too surreal. It was too utterly nightmarish to fathom being real. Not even everything he had suffered on Mobius, everything Mobius itself had suffered, could compare to what was before his eyes.


He felt detached as in a dream from which he couldn’t wake. In a way, that helped him. Tails focused his mind and powered up his namesakes, and he raced for the only structure in visual range that still looked relatively intact. His ears popped from the sudden pressure spike during his rapid descent, and he even felt his eardrums tear and bleed when his ears couldn’t equalize quick enough. Tails held his arms out in front of him. He made himself as aerodynamic as possible. He felt the sudden surge of pressure against the leading edges of his body as he brushed against the speed of sound, vapor trails forming on his fingers, arms, and muzzle!


“Turn this ship around! That’s an order!” Carth bellowed.


“No way in hell!” said Hudrow. “I’m not killing us all for some furb—”


POW!


Carth socked Davik’s ex-pilot in the jaw, KOed him in a single blow. He yanked Hudrow’s body out of the pilot’s seat and dumped him on the floor.


“Hang on, you stupid kid!” Carth said has he took the controls.


He could barely see, he could barely hear, but Tails swore he could feel the Hawk behind him even as he flirted with the sound barrier. He slowed as he made his final approach, the crushing wall of pressure in front of him diminishing. Hundreds of people crowded the highest street between two burning spires, and the whole structure threatened to collapse any second. He dared glance behind him and confirmed that, yes, the Hawk was gaining rapidly! Tails barely recognized the Upper City street as he drew near, but he realized it was one he’d walked upon himself several times, just a few klicks south of the apartment!


The Ebon Hawk was nearly upon him now, and Tails continued to slow to a hard grappling speed. He looked to the ship and saw its boarding ramp down, with both Zaalbar and Canderous steadying themselves on its edge!


The moment came. Tails saw a man holding a woman in his arms, a mother carrying a child, and the mass of people behind became an indistinct blur. He hit the first person with the force of a truck, grappled and spun, and hurled them on to the Hawk’s boarding ramp. He grabbed the next person, and the next one, and the next two — he grappled them with his arms and his legs, even juggling two or three people at once! He even thought he recognized a few of them. He thought he saw Zelka and Kebla and Nithya amongst the crowd, but they went by in such a blur he couldn’t see who he was grabbing.


Tails threw everyone he could grab onto the ramp as hard and as fast as possible, knowing his was breaking bones and causing internal damage. That could heal. There was a deafening roar and billowing of smoke just as he reached for a little boy in his path… who slipped away as the structure gave way beneath, carrying everyone and everything down into the darkness below. Tails mind blanked. He had been so close, and the little boy’s face seared itself into his memory as he fell away.


There was nothing left. The air was choked thick with smoke. Lightning flashed across the hellish red sky from the vortexes of dust and ash. Blaster bolts continued to pound Taris from orbit. The heat of the flames threatened to cook Tails alive.


Nothing remained to save.


Tails felt sicker than he had ever felt before, and he almost didn’t make it back inside the Hawk. Zaalbar hoisted him in, and the closing ramp shut out the world. The environmental systems purged the air of smoke and dust, but a layer of ash coated the floor and everything else. Tails fell to the floor and clutched his gut with his arms, gasping for breath, but only a strangled noise came out. It wasn’t the smoke, or his stab injury. Another kind of wound had torn him open, one that pierced to the very center of his person.


The engines of the Hawk roared to maximum power, hurtling them out of Taris’ atmosphere. The sky darkened as it got thinner and thinner, until stars resolved themselves in the inky blackness. The ships of Malak’s fleet came into view, crisscrossing across the face of the planet, sparing absolutely nothing.  None of them fired on the Ebon Hawk.


“Plot a course for Dantooine,” said Bastila. “There’s a Jedi Enclave there were we can find refuge.” An alarm chirped in the cockpit. “What happened? Have they locked onto us?” she asked.


“No, we’re broadcasting their departure codes,” said Carth. “Someone must have spotted us visually. Incoming fighters!”


“What defenses does this ship have?”


“Four blaster turrets, one on each side,” said Canderous.


Tails suddenly appeared inside the cockpit. He couldn’t nap just yet. Bastila spotted him. “Quickly, to the gun turrets,” she said. “We have to hold those Sith fighters off until we can get those hyperspace coordinates punched in!”


Canderous shooed him out of the cockpit. Tails spotted a ladder and climbed up to the dorsal turret with no further instruction. Canderous took the ventral turret, and Mission and Zaalbar took port and starboard. There was a seat that was cramped even for Tails, and a transparent dome overlaid with targeting data. He climbed in and intuited the firing controls even as the ship shuddered. A light blinked: Dorsal Shield, 92%, and a curved bar gauge depleted with each hit.


Tails’ teeth were fully bared. His claws were fully extended. His vision reddened as he returned fire on the Sith fighters. The controls felt sluggish and unresponsive. He steadied his breathing, wholly focusing on destroying the threat. The Hawk’s shields flared with each hit, the shield gauge dropping to seventy-five percent, then fifty. Tails fired as fast as the turrets would cycle, leading each shot as much as he could.


He saw Taris far in the background. He saw the ships raining death upon its surface. But Taris was lost now, and he put it out of mind. An audible alarm rang as the dorsal shield fell below twenty percent. Even with four arcs of fire, the Sith fighters eluded most of their shots, but they were being taken out one by one. Tails’ breath quickened. The shield gauge read fourteen, nine, four percent!


“Tails, the dorsal shield’s collapsing!” someone screamed.


He saw the last fighter. It swerved to make its final approach, and Tails tracked it. He struggled to zero the reticle on the fighter, leading the turret as close as he could. In another instant, the fighter would kill them all.


“AAAAUGH!”


He fired the cannons, and the shots flew true. The fighter craft blew apart, little bits of itself bouncing off the failing shields. In that instant, the stars stretched far and wide, and the Ebon Hawk jumped to hyperspace. All Tails could see out the turret dome was blinding white light.


All emotion drained from him. All that remained was an empty husk. Tails’ whole body trembled. He shakily got out of the turret seat and tried to descend the ladder, but he slipped and smacked the floor below. The noise and light hurt him. He curled into the tiniest ball where he lay, shaking and wheezing and about to vomit.


All he wanted to do was cry, but his eyes remained dry as bone.