Queen Ahsoka (Book 4, Yuuzhan Vong War)

Buried Alive

Yomin Carr's POV

After the skirmish, they had patiently waited. Nothing else they could do. Their enemy had to come out at some point in time.

At around 10:00h the next morning, the Prefect of the Sacred Precinct paid them a visit. In his fine attire, he climbed down the crater looking for Yomin Carr. When he found him, he started: "What is the situation here?"

"Well, I believe, the enemy is hiding in that building."

"Which enemy?"

"Jedi!"

The Prefect reasoned: "Why don't you go in there, capture them and then they will be sacrificed to the gods. We will organize a big festival."

Yomin Carr: "Unfortunately, it's not that easy. They have barricaded themselves in a building of the infidels which is right below here."

"So you mean, you cannot get them?"

"Yes, we have to wait until they come out."

"When will that be?"

"I have no idea. It cannot be more than a couple of days. They need fresh air, water and also food."

The Prefect put his brain to work for a couple of seconds, then came to a conclusion: "NO! Can be, that this building is self-sustaining. The infidels of this galaxy had built such buildings. We will just close the hole, problem solved."

Two hours later, a terraforming team with giant moles came and started to push the dirt back into the hole and burry the rooftop of the 500 Republica again.

Ahsoka's POV

At the time, one of the Jedaii, who guarded the door on the rooftop, called Ahsoka on her comlink: "We are getting buried. The Vong are pushing the earth back into the hole."

Frantically, Ahsoka ran to the elevator, pressed the top floor, but when she came out, the door had been completely buried already. She still heard the moles working above her, but nothing they could do now. Even if they'd manage to dig a small path to the surface, the Vong warriors would await them. They were getting buried alive and nothing they could do about it.

The door did not have to be guarded any longer and together with the 5 Jedaii, she used the elevator to get back to level -3. She let Pami and Baba in into the new situation and both lost all facial features. The Baba came back to his wits a bit quicker: "Our biggest problem for now is air. When the building is buried, then the air-con cannot intake fresh air. As such, I will shut down the air-con. We can let oxygen out from the tank of the generators. If we stay in the generator room it will keep us alive as long as it lasts."

Baba's idea was excellent, but it was only a temporary relieve. Help was really needed now and Ahsoka turned to the one who had the highest likelihood of having a feasible solution: "Your eternal and divine holiness, master of all evil and my evil guide. What can we do now?"

The opportunity for punishment had already arrived for the dark side. Faster than it had expected it. Ahsoka and the Jedaii were the ones who could extend their lives using the force when the oxygen level dropped too low. A fine punishment, much to the liking of the dark side. Suffocation was a nice death, horrible minutes of gasping for air. Pami and all other team members would die.

"Ahsoka, my love, my cute Queen. What's the matter?"

"We need to get out!"

"Well, my love, you have wasted valuable time. What do you want with that gold? It has zero value to you once you are dead."

The dark side was right, unfortunately. That gold was now worthless to them. The only thing, which mattered, was getting out alive. Seeing all the gold had clouded the vision of everyone in her team including herself. It had been the demise of those mummies and could as well become their own demise.

The dark side added: "Listen, my love, you will extract what I want from vault No. 6, then I tell you how you can get out of here."

"Is that so important?"

The dark side was adamant: "Go! Don't waste more time!"

Ahsoka knew, as the dark side was so adamant about it, they had to get to work. She instructed her team and at first they had been reluctant, but once she told them the key to their escape was in vault 6, they were more motivated. She had no idea, if the key to their escape really was in vault 6, but she had to motivate them somehow. Sitting around would get them nowhere.

In 40 minutes, they had opened the hole into vault 6 and Ahsoka peeped in to see what was inside. Vault 6 was one of the smaller vaults, only 4m². There were weapons of many ages and types => priceless. 3 pristine armors => priceless. Jedi and Sith artifacts => priceless. Electronic storage devices from the Rakata => priceless. Optical storage disks from the Eternal Empire => priceless. Power crystals => priceless. And more. The value of the gold in the other vault was incalculable, but the content in this vault was simply - priceless. She looked around and she peeped two boxes, which likely held holocrons and the dark side informed her: "This is what you have to get! These two!"

The next thing she spotted were a number of spheres, which could have been bombs. They looked very, very old and the question was, if they still worked, but they could potentially get them out. Help them blast a way out. If at all they were bombs and not something else. In regards, she instructed her team to retrieve the boxes and the spheres.

An hour later the few items had been retrieved from the vault. In essence, they were ready to leave now. She addressed the engineer: "Baba, can you examine these spheres, please? They look like bombs and you need to find out how they work."

Baba's response was: "We cannot use them. First, I have no idea what they are, they could be bombs or something else. Second, assuming they are bombs, I would not know how to trigger them, at least not now. If given the time for research, I might be able to find out, but that does not help us. Even if they would be bombs and I would figure out how to trigger them, we still cannot use them. We need a very defined blast, so that only the dirt over the building is blasted off. Too little or too much, neither one helps us."

The answer devastated Ahsoka. Baba was right. Too much power could blow themselves into Kingdom come and too little would just trigger the attention of the Vong, but not create a big enough opening. How could they get out now? They could use a pickaxe and a shovel and dig a small tunnel upward. Apart from the odds of running out of oxygen before the tunnel was finished, coming out of the tunnel one by one was just a death sentence, because the Vong could greet them in whatever means they deemed fit.