Session 29: The Infinity Path, Part VII

General Summary

Day 11, Late Afternoon The battle on the beach rages on. The Initiates are outnumbered and taking heavy losses, and things don't look good. As Tomla uses her abilities to lift Cidcreper in the air and spin him, the remaining droids all concentrate their fire on Lem. The lightsaber duelist does his best to defect as many shots as he can, but it's only a matter of time before he succumbs to the barrage. Suddenly, another lightsaber appears next to Lem, defending him from the hail of laser fire and redirecting them back at the droids. In the brief respite this creates, Lem sees Dal Konur standing next to him. The Jedi Master must have taken a portal from Selvaris, seeing that his former padawans were in trouble. Wasting no time, Dal shouts to everyone that he has to return so that he can help Dorsk 82 to operate the portal, but there are bombs and hostages in the hotel that needs to be dealt with. He takes out a couple more droids, and as Cidcreper sees the battle unexpectedly turning against them orders everyone to commence the evacuation. As soon as they begin retreating, Dal disappears through a portal back to Selvaris. Everyone left standing piles into the speeder. Rin smashes the accelerator with his handless arm just as one of the retreating droids fires a lucky shot at the speeder's engine, igniting the vehicle's rear. The chaos creates discord and Tomla and Rin begin to argue about what to do: get the injured to the hospital or save the hostages in the hotel from the bombs about to go off. Not wanting to waste time, Tomla simply lifts Rin into the air above the speeder, leaving him floating above them as they fly. Lem steps in and tells Tomla that they need to disable the bomb or people will die. To break the impasse, Tomla asks the security staff for input on the situation, and they recommend that one of them takes the speeder to the hospital with the wounded while the rest try to disable the bombs. Tomla agrees, and Lem begins discussing the best strategy for the situation with Tomla. Rin, tired of all of the talk while lives are on the line, jumps from the speeder onto the island, landing amidst the trees on the coast not far from the landing pad where the The True and Loyals are currently boarding ships to evacuate. Seeing this, Tomla also notices that the speeder is still on fire and puts it out with her all-temperature cloak. Lem tells the security team to take the wounded to the hospital, then jumps off the speeder as well, not willing to let a disabled Rin take on an army by himself. On the island, Rin scopes out the plaza and sees the droids and T&L officers loading into their ships. To avoid detection, Rin heads down the cliffside and makes his way underneath the landing pad toward the hotel. Meanwhile, Lem heads in the same direction, looking for Rin. However, he doesn't see his Duros friend since he stays on the cliff's edge. A frustrated Tomla asks the defacto head of the security team, Kenth, to join her Jedi colleagues on the island while she takes the wounded on the speeder to the hospital. After dropping Kenth off on the beach, she flies to Northwest Coromons 3 and gets the soldiers treated. One of them reports in to Major Jacob Jason who says that a force is being assembled and will be on its way to The Resort soon. Tomla also has her wounds treated, and takes a moment to reach out to Luke Skywalker once again. Finally reaching him, she simply says "Selvaris". Luke connects with her in return, sending feelings of reassurance and thanks. Rin makes his way around the island and arrives at the back of the hotel. At the same time, Lem heads the opposite way around the island and meets up with Kenth. Not too long after Rin, they also make it to the back of the hotel from the other direction, and the three of them reunite to come up with a plan: Kenth will rescue the hostages while Rin and Lem defuse bombs. Lem reaches out to Tomla telepathically to see if she is coming to help, but Tomla's lack of an enthusiastic confirmation tells Lem that they shouldn't wait for her. Back at the hospital, Tomla reaches out to Luke again, sending him an image of Kyp Durron, Dorsk 82, and Dal activating the Star Temple, but doesn't get a response back. She then checks on Lyshea and finds her Zeltron friend still unconscious, but in a bacta tank. The medical team assures her that she should make a full recovery, although it will take some time. Tomla then comms Major Jason to see what his team's status is. He assures her that they are on a ship and on their way to The Resort now to deal with the T&L invasion force. Tomla hears a ship's blaster fire in the background and Major Jason disconnects. As Tomla waits in the hospital to hear how her friends are faring with the rescue mission, she doesn't notice that Kyp Durron is not in the hospital any longer... At the hotel, Kenth enters the building first. Soon after, Rin and Lem hear blaster fire inside and they rush in from separate sides of the building. They find Kenth taking cover behind a pillar, trying to unjam his blaster rifle, while an assault droid fires in his direction. Lem maneuvers around behind the droid, unnoticed, and as the machines moves in to engage Kenth, Lem surprises the droid with a lightsaber attack. As it turns around to face the unexpected threat, Rin emerges from the other side and slams him with a blast of Force energy. With the droid off balance, Lem executes of flourish of saber slices, reducing it to a pile of durasteel on the floor. With that threat neutralized, they get to work. Rin and Lem begin searching everywhere for the explosives while Kenth finds the hostages in the dining area, tied up and against the wall. As he begins freeing them and moving them out of the building, Rin finds the first bomb but isn't sure what to do with it without hands to disarm it. Soon after, Lem finds another bomb and simply throws it out the window in his haste. The bomb lands on the ground, directly adjacent to the power generator for the island, but thankfully doesn't explode. Rin realizes that they don't have enough time to find and disarm all of the bombs, especially in his present condition, and yells to Lem to abandon the building, but his fellow padawan doesn't hear him, especially with the noise from the battle between the T&L cruisers and the ISP starfighters beginning outside. Kenth is getting the hostages out of the building and Rin aids the effort while telepathically reaching out to Lem to abandon the building. Hearing this, Lem leaps out of the nearest window from the second floor. As he lands, he sees Rin and Kenth leading all of the hostages toward the northern cliff of the island as ships fire and explode above them.