The Dragon and the Force

by FenrisianBrony


Old Friends, New Enemies

Spike let out a clipped sigh as he watched the final interdictor generator was loaded into the freight elevator, the few engineers that knew anything about the technology fretting over it as the doors slid closed, and they began what would mostly likely be their final trip into the earth.

Spike hadn’t told the men the real reason why they were moving the generators into the mines, a quick story about wanting to make sure they were as defended as possible for the coming attacks had been enough to convince them to not question the orders. Truth be told the mine was a very defensible position, a single entrance and only one way out from the lift. At the same time though it would be a death trap waiting to happen. All it would take would be a large enough pump and some gas, and most of them would be choking up their lungs in minutes, leaving only Spike behind. Spike was not going to let that happen.

“Moonstone?” Spike asked as he walked. “Moonstone, I need to talk to you.”

“Oh you do, do you?” the mare asked, appearing and trotting beside Spike. “So now you want to talk to me, after giving your amazing plan and setting it into motion, now you want to talk to me? What’s to say I still want to talk to you?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Spike pointed out. “You may not like any of this, I sure as hell don’t, but I don’t want to die knowing that the last words I left with you were bad ones. I’m sure you don’t want that either.”

“I’m not sure it really matters, Spike,” Moonstone shrugged, a stony expression on her face. “If you die today, I die, so it doesn’t really matter what I think now does it?”

“Oh come off it, you’re really trying to tell me in a universe full of magic and the force that you don’t believe there’s something waiting for us after our next great journey?” Spike scoffed. “Come off it, we’re both seen enough shit to believe in a higher power.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re not going to die here today,” Moonstone snapped. “You and I both know that.”

“I don’t want to survive this!” Spike roared, a few soldiers looking over at him, forcing him to control his voice before speaking again. “I don’t…I just… If this plan works, if we stop the Sith here, we destroy this planet and every soul on it, then lies at my feet, and I sure as hell don’t want to live past today to try and come to terms with that. I struggle with losses, I can’t…I won’t go through that again.”

“Spike you are not going to die here,” Moonstone deadpanned. “You’ve been through too much, I won’t let you…”

“Won’t let me do what?” Spike snorted. “Moonstone, I’m not having this conversation with you, not now, and there won’t be an ever to have it in, so please, let me say we have made up, and let me go to my death in peace. As much as I ever can. Please?”

“Fine, Spike,” Moonstone nodded. “But we were never off even ground, Spike, I play the devil’s advocate, or in this case the angels advocate, but I know your mind, and for that we will always see eye to eye. Given time.”

“Thank you,” Spike whispered, before a shout broke his concentration, Moonstone fading out of existence almost instantly.

“General! Long range scanners are picking up Sith movement!”

It took Spike a few moments to locate the source of the voice, but eventually he caught sight of a solider beckoning for him to come over from across the square.

“Rough numbers?” Spike asked as he jogged over, drawing his Lightsaber as he spoke.

“A shit ton, sir,” the man replied. “Looks like their biggest attack so far, tanks, bombers, infantry, the whole nine yards.”

“They’re going to try and crumple the shields again,” Spike cursed. “Get to the shield generators, I want a report on how they’re all doing, I want to know how much longer they can survive a heavy bombardment. Everyone else!” Spike raised his voice to a roar as he spread his wings. “Get to the front lines! There’s Sith with a death wish coming right at us!”

With that, Spike took to the sky, beating his wings hard before landing behind the frontline fortifications, crouching down to conceal his form beneath the man high structure.

“Alright, listen up! We got Sith incoming, biggest attack yet. We don’t give them an inch less they pay for it in blood! If we’re pushed back then get to the mines and form defensive positions by the lift, we’ll hold again there! If the shields go…if they go then fall back to the mines anyway.”

Spike was cut off as three explosions suddenly blossomed on the shield, followed by three more, and another, until the entire front of the shield was little more than a shimmering field of explosions. Even the top wasn’t clear anymore, hundreds of Sith fighters soaring overhead, blasting away as they zoomed past.

“They’re here,” Spike muttered, surveying the shield with a practiced eye, before closing his eyes and reaching out with his magic, feeling the eb and flow of it as he searched for signs of excessive weakness or failures to its structure, before opening his eyes and raising his voice, making sure everyone could hear him.

“Men, listen up. This could well be our last battle together, the Sith are getting restless, they’re scared of us, scared of this little holdout we have here. They’re throwing everything they’ve got at us…all those other attacks, they were just warm ups for this. We don’t know what our chances of survival are, so we fight as if they’re zero. We don’t know exactly what we are facing, so we fight as if it’s the fucking gods themselves! No one will remember us now and we will never be buried beneath Republic soil, even if we win today, this will be our grave, you mark my words. If we can’t be buried on our own land, then we build our own memorial, right here, on this ground that we have bled to defend. The army might lose us, and the Republic might forget we existed, but the Sith? The Sith will know! The Sith, will, remember us! We will hurt them so badly that they will never forget us! Even when the stars burn out, when the Force finally fades away at the end of time…when the Sith are dying, when the last of those who follow their twisted ideologies are screaming at the dark, their last thought will be of us! That is our memorial! Here! Now! On this blood soaked ground! We make our memorial, we carve it into the annuls of history, and into the heart of the Sith! We can’t loose here today, because no matter what happens, our memory will live on in those who oppose the Republic, and through that we have already won!”

With a flourish, Spike raised his cannon arm, the white blade springing forth from it as he thrust it upwards, making sure everyone present could see it.

“Here they come, lads! For the Republic!”

Rising up, Spike aimed his cannon at the shield. He couldn’t see through it thanks to the explosions, but he knew the Sith infantry wouldn’t be far behind. They had adopted a pattern over the past week, first would come the artillery, their big guns, then their tanks and aircraft would open fire to blind the shield and those behind it, which is what was happening now. The infantry would already be on their way, thousands of men and droids swarming towards the cratered landscape like vermin, using the blindness their guns were creating to advance unopposed. The guns would only stop firing when their infantry got within ten meters, and by the time the shields finally cleared once more, the Sith would already be through the shields, a scant few meters away from where the Republic were hiding.

“Fire everything you’ve got!” Spike bellowed, spraying laser bolts wildly at the shield, the rest of his soldiers doing the same. If even a few got lucky, it would mean less Sith for them to face later on.

And then, the guns stopped, the deafening explosions ceasing. For a few seconds there was only the sound of Republic blasters, and the muffled sounds of roaring men, before the shields finally cleared, and then the Sith were through, hundreds upon hundreds of silver clad men running towards them, larger war droids slowly marching through behind them, and like that, the battle started in earnest.

“Come and get some you bastards!” Spike roared, before unleashing a gout of flame above the heads of his men, several of the Sith troopers turning to run, before their own men pushed them forward towards the Republic lines.

Before the men could fully recover their senses, Spike leapt over the barricade, the few soldiers he had still standing who knew how to wield swords following his lead. A few of the Sith soldiers with swords of their own stepped forward, but the majority were still clutching their rifles as Spike slammed into them, both his Lightsabers ignited as he hacked at his enemy.

Limbs, heads and corpses hit the floor as Spike became a whirlwind of death, the Lightsaber attached to his cannon slicing through the left arm of a Sith Trooper with ease, before he kicked out at another one, sending him flying back into a trio of his colleagues.

“Keep hitting them! We can push them back!” Spike bellowed, closing his wings over his face as a grenade went of beside him, shrapnel cutting into the leathery skin, before he threw them back behind him, a powerful gust of wind staggering the Sith in front of him. “This is my planet god damn it! Get the fuck off it!”

“This planet belongs to the Sith!” a robed and hooded figure shouted, leaping at Spike from out of the throng of enemy soldiers, a red Lightsaber clutched in both hands.

“Really?” Spike snorted, turning aside the blow, before delivering one of his own, the Dark Jedi ducking low to avoid it. “Seems to me like you’re having a bit of trouble getting us off your world, dog.”

“You can’t win this!” the man sprinting at Spike. “The only way you live is to give yourself over to the Sith.”

“Someone tried to tempt me to your side once before, and he was a real Sith,” Spike laughed. “You’re just a pale imitation, Padawan.”

“I am a Padawan no longer!” the man screeched. “I am an apprentice to…”

Whoever the man was an apprentice to was lost on Spike as his Lightsaber cleaved through his head, Spike taking advantage of his distraction to end the fight.

“Keep pushing them back!” Spike roared, before bending down and pulling the hood off the fallen Sith’s face, looking at the man beneath and furloughing his brow. He knew this man, he had seen him around the temple before, but his name escaped him. Before he could focus enough to recall the name, a soldier ran over to him, panting slightly, before beginning to speak.

“They…they seem to be falling back, sir.”

“We can’t have broken them,” Spike muttered. “Not this quickly. “You’re sure? All along the line?”

“Yes, sir. Everywhere is reporting the same thing, Sith troopers are pulling back through the shields.”

“I don’t like…” Spike began, before an explosion, bigger than any before it, impacted on the shield. The entire surface rippled and bucked, glowing brighter than the sun, and forcing everyone to look away, before with a massive pop and a pressure wave that threw some of the men from their feet, the shield disappeared.

Then came the fire.

Sith fighters swooped down, the shield no longer stopping them from targeting the Republic troops directly. Explosions blossomed within their ranks, men screaming as they were picked up and tossed aside by the huge fireballs. In an instant the Republic line was in tatters, but the Sith fighters weren’t showing any signs of stopping, banking around to deliver yet another barrage of death.

"Everyone fall back to the mines!” Spike roared, beating his wings to clear some of the smoke that was now rolling over the Republic positions. “Fall back squad by squad!”

Spike’s first words were heeded by his men quickly enough, men beginning to turn tail and run, ignoring his shouts to impose some sort of order on the chaos as they scrambled over one another, desperate to escape the punishing fire of the fighters and the troopers, who were advancing once more, the Sith battle droids and tanks not far behind them.

With a wordless curse, Spike began to fall back, firing off a few shots as he went, but mostly having to work to deflect as many blaster bolts as he could, more than one slamming into his scales as he tried to protect as many of his soldiers as possible.

“Captain Veers!” Spike shouted into his radio. “The defences up here are broken, the men are routing. Bring the generators on line!”

“It will take some time, Spike,” Veers called back. “The final generator is still being brought back on line after it was brought back here. I need at least fifteen minutes.”

“You have ten,” Spike grunted as a trio of bolts slammed into his chest, doubling him over in pain. “We can’t hold out much longer. Just…get it done, Veers.”

The radio went dead as Spike finally turned around, setting off at a sprint into the thick smoke, his cybernetic eye helping to pierce the thick black fog, but the map he usually saw was blinking and fizzing after a shot glanced off his head, essentially meaning Spike had to find his way to the lift the same way his men did, frantic searching, unaided by mapping tech, decent sight or smell. Spike hadn’t felt so vulnerable in a long time.

“General!” someone bellowed out, Spike only just hearing it over the roar of the fires and the screams of the dying. “Over here! Hurry! We can’t keep the lift here forever!”

Turning towards the source of the voice, Spike sprinted headlong into the dense smoke, allowing the force and his own magic to guide him around any obstacles in his path, before he finally reached the lift, skidding to a halt at the packed metal box.

“General, thank god you got here in time,” the man who had shouted before spluttered, keeping a hand over his mouth to try and ward off some of the smoke.

“How many lifts have gone down already?” Spike asked.

“Four, general, this will be the fifth. I’m not sure we’ll have time for a sixth.”

“We hold it for five more minutes,” Spike nodded, before raising his voice, amplifying the sound as much as his cybernetics would allow him. “All Republic soldiers still active, come to my voice! You have five minutes!”

“You know the Sith will have heard that too, right, general?” one of the soldiers asked.

“We have to hold out, for them,” Spike nodded.

“You heard the general, men,” the soldier called, raising his rifle and dropping to a knee. “We have five…”

The man suddenly screamed, flying forward into the smoke, towards a red haze, before his scream was suddenly cut short.

“Another Dark Jedi,” Spike cursed, taking a step forward, the red haze getting closer. “Come on then! You want to try your luck too? The apprentice you sent earlier was hardly a challenge! Come on and…face…me.”

Spike trailed off, staggering to a halt as the Dark Jedi continued to walk towards him, becoming an outline, rather than just a haze. Spike could now make out the blade of the Lightsaber the Sith warrior was holding, the blade passing in front of his body in a grip that would have been completely unnatural for a normal Lightsaber, but one that was more than a little bit familiar to Spike.

“Please…not you,” Spike whispered, finally remembering who the apprentice he had killed before was.

“S- Stratmum,” he muttered, before raising his Lightsabers. “That…That was Stratmum, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was,” a terrifyingly familiar voice echoed across the battlefield, everything going quite as he spoke, the figure finally stepping out of the smoke.

“So nice to see you again, brother,” Tarhal snarled, before leaping forward at Spike, his crimson Lightsaber slicing through the air towards Spike.