[fic] SW: Return From Exile

[machievelli]

Preparations

 

Mira

 

It was a nightmare. It was almost ten kilometers to Khoonda. We ran, knowing we were too late.

 

We were almost there when I waved for them to stop. I walked ahead, scanning left and right. “Republic mines, but they’re laid out wrong.”

 

“We don’t have time-”

 

“Remember that woman said ‘our friend’? How much you want to bet the defenses they have were buggered?” I asked. “You lay mines wrong they don’t do any good.”

 

“We can worry about that when we arrive.” Marai said.

 

We ran on. The building looked as if they had never heard of war. I looked at the turrets facing east. They should have been tracking us, but weren’t. More proof.

 

We were amazed to discover the ship and our friends uninjured. Bao Dur had been suspicious of a package someone had set against the forward landing strut and had removed a thermal detonator triggered bomb that would have blown the ship and the docking bay apart.

 

Administrator Adare listened to us, and nodded. “We can’t defeat them Our militia is not trained for a full scale battle against hardened troops.”

 

“Madam, it is a matter of repairing your defenses.” Marai told her. “And getting all of the farmers in where it will be safer.”

 

“But we have no space for all of them! I’ll have them surrender-”

 

“We can’t do that.” Marai sighed. “The commander tried to convince me to help him. I refused. He threatened that if we put up any real resistance, everyone on the planet dies.”

 

She stared at Marai. “And you couldn’t just lie to him?”

 

“And have him enraged when he found out I had?” I asked. “If the farmers are left at their homes, there is no way to protect them even if you had ten thousand troops. Here they have a chance.”

 

“But we have to get the defenses back on line.” I said. “The turrets weren’t tracking, and the minefield to the east were improperly laid.” Marai looked at me.

 

“My friend is an expert of sorts on mines.” She commented.

 

Adare called in the militia commander Zherron. He looked at the defenses, and shook his head. “The turrets have been offline with mechanical faults for the last three months. We had droids, but they are down. As for the mines, Modrel took a team out just yesterday to lay them.”

 

“He did.” The Handmaiden replied levelly. “How long has this man been your executive officer?”

 

“Five years now. He didn’t like it. He was riffed by the Navy right after the Jedi Civil war ended. Thought he should have had my job.” He sighed. “Ever find yourself in command of someone you would have had to call sir before?”

 

“Yes I did.” Marai told him.

 

“So what are you saying? That he set this up?”

 

“It would appear so. He was hoping we would notify the Administrator that you were incompetent.”

 

“That...” He picked up his com link. “Control.”

 

“Control, trooper Kastan here.”

 

“Find Lieutenant Modrel and have him report to the Administrator’s office.”

 

“Sorry sir, The lieutenant has checked out for the day. He had vacation time due, and decided to take the next four days.”

 

He looked at Marai. “I hear tell you’re The Marai Devos.”

 

“Yes, I am.” She said softly. I could feel her worry. If all this man remembered was Malachor...

 

“Well I have about two hundred men. More warm bodies than anything else. They’re armed, but with whatever they kept from the war, and a couple of stashes this Sanderal guy had never reported. They’re slow, overweight, and most have never faced an enemy in their lives. Our systems have been systematically screwed up according to you, and if we fail everyone dies.

 

“Heard you performed miracles during the war.” He waved toward the building. “Can you do it again?”

 

She sighed. “It looks like a case of have to rather than can I.”

 

“You have my full support.” Adare told her. “Save us, please.”

 

Marai seemed to shrink, then stood tall again. “Mira, get everyone from the ship. Leave T3 and Kreia there, but that includes HK.

 

“Sister, look over their positions. We have to change them and don't have a lot of time. Captain Zherron, I hope you men know how to operate a shovel...”

 

*****

 

Bao Dur.

 

I looked at the control panel, and began a diagnostic on the gun turrets. Someone had fed in an algorhythm which designated everything that moved as a target. Since they were behind most of the Militia positions, it would have slaughtered them if it had been activated.

 

I tried to reset it, but the system refused. It was a five day job, and we didn’t have five days. Instead I targeted all fire a minimum of fifteen meters from the building. It meant that a fast running force would get close, but it was the best I could do. Then I went down to the droid storeroom.

 

There were a dozen of them gathering rust. I started activating them, and had to buy equipment from the little electronics salesman that had set up shop in one of the rooms of the building. I had them all up and running when I found out why they were out of action in the first place. I knew the General would be very interested.

 

*****

 

Mira

 

Gently I emplaced the mine. I had left the first two in the sequence that had been laid alone. That way, they would think it was still as it had been so poorly set. I emplaced mines where they would have to kneel to try to take out the turrets from a safe distance, and where they would dive for cover when the guns began firing. I had a lot of loose explosives, and I had laid out where the mines should go as I made up a few jury rigged ones. I was down to wrapping commo wire and steel strips around them in lieu of shrapnel, but beggars can‘t be choosers.

 

*****

 

Atton

 

“Listen ma’am, we don’t have the time.”

 

“But my husband left for Khoonda, I have to ask him what to bring-”

 

I took her hand. “Ma’am, when he gets there, they aren’t going to let him leave. The mercenaries are going to kill everyone and we can’t protect you here.” Please, get aboard.”

 

“I don’t even know you-”

 

“But you know me Elsba.” Trooper Kail said. I had been chosen because I could fly the ship, but Anara Kail was the person everyone liked. This was the fourth farm we had stopped at, and every one of them had needed her touch. She didn’t argue with the trooper. I helped the woman load some things, looking at the cargo bay. Seventeen people so far. We were only hitting the farms that didn’t have com systems. It was taking too long.

 

“Next place, I’ll let you do the talking.” I said lifting off.

 

*****

 

Handmaiden

 

I moved slowly, looking for our enemy stopping beside a Blba tree. I could see for three kilometers ahead here, and I slowly scanned with my electro binoculars. Three kilometers before me, four behind me, that equaled an hour and a half before anyone I saw would be in position to attack.

 

They were frantically trying to get the rest of the civilians in but there were no guarantees we would succeed. A man once likened an emergency evacuation to emptying a bag of sugar. No matter how well you do it, some persistent grains are still in it. In fact My battle sister’s main hope was that they would try to attack us first, because we would at least bleed them enough that some would be missed.

 

The night had been rent by hundreds of people moving. Swoops being repaired, turrets now tracking as commanded. Droids rolling about, their weapons ready. The space port hangers had been jammed solid with people, and now she had the additional worry that one mortar round off range could kill all of those she wanted to save. We didn’t have enough men to cover every possible target, it was that simple.

 

I saw movement, and watched as a squad moved forward. Luckily, they had assumed that we would fight them on the ground because there their power was overwhelming. There were a few swoops, but they stayed in watch positions above their men. I called in a report, then moved back to the next ridge. I would shadow them from the front until they reached the valley.

 

*****

Visas

 

I sat, listening with the force. I felt a movement headed toward us very fast. But it was only one man. “Tell Marai that Master Vrook is returning.” I felt a storm cloud behind the old man, evil clouds with sheets of pure red fury in it. “The enemy troops are behind him about two kilometers.”

 

*****

 

Marai

 

I looked at the map, and my heart sank. We could slow them, bleed them, but I couldn’t guarantee we’d stop them. Five or more to one. I heard a shout of panic and stepped out of the small defile. A hundred odd Mandalorian warriors were marching toward our positions, and men started to raise their guns. “Hold your fire.” I ordered over the all-com channel. I went forward.

 

Mandalore motioned. “My people are out of this. They will await transport to Dxun.”

 

“How did you do that?”

 

“Back when the Mando-a first fought, we did so as mercenaries. The old laws says all contracts are held by the Mandalore. I merely revoked their contract.”

 

“I doubt it was that simple with Azkul.”

 

“No. He has made some rather stupid threats, but he has to get here to follow through on them. My men will go in there and await transport.” He signalled and the men we so desperately needed walked past us into the spaceport complex.

 

“But Mandalore-”

 

“I cannot order them to fight against those that had hired them.” He told me softly. “You know that. It would be dishonorable.

 

“However, my men are not going to sit on their butts and be slaughtered. I have told them that until the transport arrives that port is our bivouac, and we will defend it, and everyone in it. That I swear.”

 

I felt a rush of joy at that. Fully a third of our men were in positions designed primarily to protect that mass of humanity. “Then I will allow you to do that.” I lifted my com. “Platoon seven, hand over your positions to the Mandalorians. They won't fight beside us, but they will protect your families. The Mandalore has sworn it.”

 

There was a flash of movement, and Master Vrook came running in the long force assisted lope of a runner. He glared at me, then went to Zherron. His mood grew darker when that man signaled for him to tell me.

 

“They are coming. Thanks to your Mandalorian friend-” He said it like a highly religious man would say ‘whore’. “-They are down to just under 600 to the east. I don’t have time to check the west-”

 

“They are moving in now, Master.”

 

He growled. “Are you fully satisfied with your actions? These people will die thanks to you-”

 

“Master, as I am no longer a Jedi, I do not have to take this from you.” I turned, facing him squarely. “You see, like any religion, when you excommunicated me, I no longer had to answer to you.

 

“I was sent to find you all by Atris. She sent me to Onderon, to Nar Shaddaa, to Korriban to gather you all together. It was not my choice to be on this planet, and my arrival did not create this situation. But I am here, and these people need someone who has fought before to lead them.

 

“I did not protest the Council's actions when you exiled me. I gave up my entire life when you did. No doubt you think I spent time in the ranks of the Sith, and when you went looking for me you looked there first. After all, this is all I had left. But I walked away from war for almost ten years. I wasn’t willing to go to war again for anybody.

 

“The one thing the entire council ignored was we did what our teachers had taught us our entire lives. Put ourselves, our own bodies and lives between danger and those we were sworn to protect. While you complained that we didn’t listen we died. None of that Council had fought in a real war except for Kavar and Vash, but you condemned us for using war to end a war.

 

“Perhaps you were right, perhaps we failed in our charge when we did. But it was the only logical alternative most of us saw. I accept that we were wrong in the end. But I will not run away now or let these people die when you no longer have the authority to tell me what to do."

 

I sighed. “Master, when battle this is over, you may judge me as you wish and I will allow you that. But until that time, I will fight for them.”

 

He looked like I’d stuffed a lemon in his mouth, but nodded.

 

“If you would, go within and guard the Administrator. If she dies, we have failed.”

 

Atton came running up. “No more flights. There’s maybe five, six hundred still out there but we’re out of time.”

 

“No help for it. Are you going to man the ship?”

 

“No. T3 told me he’s run the guns before, I’m going to leave it with him and Goto on board. When the attack starts, they can lift up and strafe the enemy lines, or shoot down incoming. I’m going to man a swoop.” He pointed at the area where a bunch of the younger troopers were running them out. “Those kids think this is a cavalry charge, and they’ll get eaten up if they do it that way.”

 

“Be careful.”

 

He stormed away, and I went to Zherron. “Have you talked to the men?”

 

He shook his head. “Ma’am, I’m a soldier, not a politician. All I ever say to men I take into battle is ‘follow me‘.”

 

I had sensed a lot of worry out there. These men who had played at soldier for years were suddenly thrust into the front lines. My force was a glass bowl that would shatter at the first blow if they did not stiffen their spines. “Gather them over there by the main door.”

 

I went over, looking for my spot. The door opened, and the Administrator came out, followed by Vrook. She started to speak, but then stopped as the men came. They were filthy from digging in, tired because we had worked all night to get ready. Somehow I knew that if I failed in what I was about to do, they would run at the first shot. I motioned for the Administrator to stand aside.

 

I stood up on the edge of the planter, looking down at them. For a long time, the grumbling had continued, but as they noticed my silent regard, they fell silent. 200 men. That was all we had, and the enemy were a thousand or more.

 

“For those of you who have never seen me or my face, I am Marai Devos. I just wanted for you all to see that I am not three meters tall, covered with fur, and feeding on my own dead.”

 

There was a little laughter out there.

 

“Too often a leader will stand there, and impugn your manhood, or exhort you to stand because your families are in there.” I hooked a thumb toward the docking bays of the tiny space port. “They’ll tell you that you will be shrouded in glory, that your sacrifice will be remembered forever. I’m not going to do that. If the truth is not what you want to hear, I’ll find someone to lie to you.

 

“The odds are crap. We are outnumbered by five to one, and they are better armed. They have assault droids, and we don’t. They are trained professionals, and you’re just a bunch of guys trying to add to your take home pay. Glory? It doesn’t put food on the table, or protect your children. Honor? While I put store in my personal honor I have never been given a centi-cred because I hold to it. Does that pretty much cover the totally screwed position we’re in?”

 

“Damn straight.” Someone whispered. I looked down at him, grinning. ‘Good. Hate to be so terrified if I had no reason.” There was another chuckle. “Yeah, you’re scared but I’ve got a secret for you. So am I. I fought an entire war with that fear inside me every second. So when I speak, I’m not the hero on a podium, or the monster I am painted. I am a frightened human being right now people, just like you. Join the club.

 

“Did you know that I was offered a way out of this? The commander of those men told me personally that if I would bugger your defenses, that if I was willing to sacrifice all of you men, that your families would be safe. He also told me that if I didn’t help him, none of you would live. That he would slaughter you down to the last baby.

 

“Yet I am here with you now.

 

“Except to those that survive, this battle will be a footnote in history. We will fight and die, and a hundred years from now some fool will make it a punch line for a bad political joke. There will be no parades, no days named in your honor . Anyone who doesn’t want to fight can run, and I won‘t stop you. Anyone willing to let their families live that kind of life with them has my blessing to take a skimmer and get the hell out of here. “But I will tell you right now, that I will be staying.”

 

I jumped down, walking among them. “We don’t fight for territory here. We fight for your homes, and your families. I have a ship in there.” I pointed again at the space port. “I can get out of here at any time, and to tell you the truth, part of me wants to cower aboard and see the last of Dantooine. I want to see tomorrow, but the other part of me thinks of you men, your children, your wives, your brothers and sisters left in their hands. Part of me says, if I will not die to defend these people, what world is important enough to die for?

 

“So run if you want. I will not live to see your families killed. I will not drink in the Cantina and remember those dead. I will either live to drink those toasts with them, or I won’t live at all. It’s that simple.”

 

They were silent, staring at me. My words were so soft that those at the back leaned forward to hear. “My friends may run, I may be the only one standing here when they come, but I swear before all the gods of man, I will be here. Your society may die, but I. Will. Be. Here. So if you want to run, start now. I don’t know how long I will live. But that building-” I pointed at the fragile structure. “-That hope for your home and very way of life is where I stand and die.”

 

I walked back to where I had stood before, but instead I sat down. “So if you’re going to run, do it. I have work to do before they come.”

 

They stood there, then suddenly there was a roar. Men waved their guns, screaming. I heard my name used and I raised my hand. “No. Do not go to war with my name on you lips.” I leaped back up. “Home!” I screamed.

 

They repeated it, and it became a chant. No one was running, the faces had lost that fear, and a terrible resolve had taken it’s place.

 

“Stations, people. Be careful, may the Force watch over you all.”

 

Vrook whispered savagely, but the Administrator waved him off. She nodded to me, and went back inside. The Handmaiden came in. “They are a kilometer behind me.”

 

“They’ll have to coordinate the attacks.” I mused. “You know your position?”

 

“As much as it should by your side, yes. I will command the west left, Zherron the right. You will command this side.”

 

I nodded. HK had disappeared. I wondered, but I couldn’t really see where he would have been a major help. Mira would be on my right and control the mines, Atton would be our cavalry, Bao-Dur would run the turrets and droids. Mandalore commanded the defense of our civilian charges. Visas came from the building.

 

“I hold you to your promise.” She whispered.

 

“If she dies Visas, I will be... upset with you.”

 

“No more than I will.”

 

“We have to get ready.” I hugged the Handmaiden. “Go my sister. Be careful." Stay alive.” She grinned, and was gone.

 

Mira came up, fiddling with the pad she had rigged activate her mines and other improvised devices. “You know these will only take a few minutes to go through.” She commented. “What then?”

 

“Head for the star-port, my sweet. From that point on it will be blood and pain.”

 

“Right.” She wandered back to her position.

 

I heard the snarl of Swoops taking off. I only hoped we were ready.

[machievelli]

I am not going to post until the entire battle montage is done. That is why the section just posted was so short.

[Emperor Devon]

Marai's awfully charismatic. It should be interesting to see how you have her fend off a superior enemy that outnumbers the militia. In the game it seemed kind of ridiculous that the Ebon Hawk's crew could fight off an army almost singlehandedly.

[machievelli]

The Battle

 

The mercenaries moved forward. They knew what the enemy had, knew their defenses. There would be no surprises.

 

*****

 

Atton

 

I felt the wind whipping at me as we shot out from the settlement. There was a black blot ahead of me. The mercenaries were forming up for their attack. “All right, you know the drill! One pass, haul it back to the building.”

 

The three with me answered. I worried more about the other four heading east. Unfortunately the best of them was a hot dog, and it isn’t a good combination. As the old saying goes, there are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.

 

But I couldn't be in two places at once.

 

We swept into sight, then turned to the north, and the guns on the ground turned to follow us. they no doubt expected us to continue, come in from behind, then sweep through.

 

Guess again.

 

Two of the kids dropped so low they were scraping the grass, and moved back along our track. The one with me stayed stuck on my right as we howled north. We stayed low, and I could see their swoops headed for the rear to blindside us.

 

I head a click. The others were in position. I spun the bike on it’s axis, and was howling back at them at the speed of heat. There was a flash of faces below me staring in shock as I came over them, but I wasn’t shooting. I pressed the button and the two boxes of primed grenades behind me fell in a swath. To my right my wingman had done the same, and ahead of us and slightly to the left and right came the others.

 

Explosions walked through the massed men, and as we went Winchester on the bombing run the other two came through one above and the other below

our swaths and did the same.

 

“Run!” I shouted. I turned toward the settlement, mentally making an assessment. Maybe a hundred or two killed. I looked back, and one of my men was turning toward the swoops that were chasing us. “Number four! Obey orders damn you!”

 

He hesitated, and they overran him before he could start his turn. One of them went with him at least, but they had a couple dozen swoops to our eight. They could afford that loss.

 

We ran toward the settlement, hugging the earth as we did. The enemy followed. They had newer faster bikes. It was only a matter of time, and the four kilometers to the settlement wasn’t enough for us to really try to evade. All we could do was dodge their fire.

 

I saw the marker ahead. Mira had blown a tree down, making what for our enemy would be a handy abattis. “Now!”

 

We hit our retro thrusters, and dropped behind it, then dived from the bikes, huddling in, hoping it would work...

 

The enemy did what standard procedure ordered. Half of them cut right, half left, to sweep in from both sides, then they climbed to get a better angle...

 

The turrets on the west flank roared. Of the dozen swoops, five were blasted before they even knew they were under fire. Only three were able to escape, and one of them was smoking from a hit.

 

“Are you still there?” Bao-Dur asked.

 

“Yeah!”

 

“You have time for one more run.”

 

“I heard that!” We jumped on our bikes, running like hell for the settlement. We landed, and men began loading the last boxes of grenades. Only one returned from the east, and it wasn’t the hot shot.

 

“Number two, you help out on the east.” I ordered.

 

*****

 

Mercenaries

 

An army is as much an organism as the men within it, and this being recoiled from the pain. The brain was pushing it forward, but it was now wounded and tender. It would not move as fast as they wanted.

 

*****

 

Bao-Dur

 

It was an intricate dance, and Atton had proved he knew the steps to this pavane. His second strike didn’t do as well as the first of course, but the front of the enemy wave was now a snarled mess. His men had gained us some time, but only two, both of them from his group returned from that attack. They had been hurt but not as badly to the east. No one who had gone that way had lived, and now the enemy only had seven swoops total. I spotted a movement on the long range scanners. “Mandalore, there is a speeder section heading for the berm.” I reported.

 

“We’ll be ready.”

 

*****

 

HK

 

The four land speeders landed, and a dozen of my immature brethren disembarked. If I had been merely human I would have snorted. Genetic beings tend to think of themselves. They take cover, or wait for the others to arrive. But these improperly programmed things merely stood there until finally one of them motioned toward the berm.

 

“Irritated statement: Why must we corral the hostages?” One whined.

 

“Equally irritated response: Because if it were humans that undertook this mission, they would not be as efficient.” Another retorted.

 

I looked at the panel not-a-meat-bag Mira had made for me. She had known what I was doing. I wondered if she had notified not-a-meat-bag Marai and not-a-meat-bag Mandalore?

 

Unlike them I was under cover, my weapon extended. There was a Rodian meat bag named Adun Larp in the compound, and I had convinced him to let me have a Mandalorian heavy repeating blaster rifle by promising not to unscrew his head. As they approached my position, I set my finger on the trigger button.

 

Query: Who do humans and other organic meatbags assume that droids must use their equipment? I understand the logic of making it so they can use it as well, but I could just have easily linked it to my circuitry rather than have to carry it. But then again, they would have had to be more innovative.

 

I triggered the box, and a dozen ion grenades irradiated their circuits. I picked one that was still standing, and cut it’s arms free with neat precise blasts. There were four still standing, and they laced the woods around them with fire. However their addled circuits placed none of that fire near me. I took the others down with ease, then chopped the legs off my first target.

 

“Sarcastic assessment: Amateurs.” I stood, walking down to the remains. I linked to the unit that was still relatively functional, and accessed it’s

memory. “Irritated Query: All right you incompetent box of circuitry. You will tell me what I want to know.”

 

It didn’t take long as natural beings measure it. Merely a few seconds. But I disconnected and put a round through it’s brain. The bodies supplied a lot of usable equipment, including new motivators. When they had time, the not-a-meat-bags would be able to install them.

 

I moved down, emplacing bombs in each then setting the speeders to return to their camp. I walked up the berm, and found not-a-meat-bag Mandalore waiting.

 

“Statement: The first attempt has been stopped. I have mined the speeders, and they will kill more when they have returned to base.”

 

“Well done.”

 

“Irritated response: I am HK47. All of my actions are ‘well done’.”

 

He gave me an irritating grin, and went back to what he was doing.

 

*****

 

Mercenaries

 

Azkul ducked as the third speeder came in. Like the first two it had exploded. “Blow the other one to hell!” He screamed. He looked at the neatly planned operation coming apart around him. The Eastern unit that he led had taken a hundred plus casualties, but those damn ‘disabled’ swoops had killed almost three hundred in the Western sally. He spun, glaring at the man in Militia uniform.

 

“A fat lot of help you have been.” He snarled.

 

“Hey, I did just what I said i would!” Modrel protested. “I spiked the guns so they’d blast everyone, rigged the minefields so they were ineffective, helped that little Sullustan rip up the droids-”

 

“Yes, and so far the guns you ‘spiked’ have slaughtered my swoops, the swoops you ‘disabled’ have killed almost four hundred of my men, and I am sure the minefields were also fixed.” I walked over to him, standing face to face, my breath blowing in his face. “All you have done is helped my men die!”

 

He gasped as I jammed the blade in his stomach. I punched him in the throat, his scream dying as I smashed his larynx. I whipped the blade savagely, dumping his guts onto his boots.

 

“Since you can't do anything else right, why don’t you just die quietly.”

He turned away from the dying traitor. “All Eastern units, push forward as fast as you can. Do not, I repeat, do not use speeders or skimmers after you reach point Zed. All swoops, ground at point zed, and hold until relieved.

 

“All western units, get you men under control or by the gods when we’re done with them, we’re going to blow you to hell too!

 

“All mortar units. Moved forward and set up. You’re first target is the star port. I want it to be a stubble field before we come in contact.” He grinned furiously. “Let them think about their dead before they die!”

 

*****

 

Marai

 

The swoop attacks had hurt them, but not as badly as I might have hoped. We had reduced about 1500 men to just over a thousand, but there were still more to kill and we were still outnumbered badly. I considered redistributing my men, but did nothing. There would not be enough time between the western and Eastern attacks to switch men from one to the other.

 

I stood, looking at the terrified young woman that manned the console. “I am going out there. I will keep my com link open, so pass any orders I give.”

 

Visas stood there as calm as always. I regretted having her by my side because the hell we were going into was worse than most of my men imagined.

 

It was still quiet here. In the distance we could hear explosions as secondaries continued to cook off. I ran forward to the half kilometer mark. I had made them dig three lines of holes. One here, another a quarter kilometer back from it, another 100 meters back, the last the original holes they had dug before we arrived. We had spent no time stabilizing the soil camouflaging or making them as comfortable as that initial line, and it showed in the loose heaped dirt before the men. The first two lines were actually in front of our mines, and I knew they were all worried, because one coward behind us could activate it and kill us all when we retreated through them. But the fact that I was here seemed to calm the men down. We were going to take casualties, they all knew that. But they also knew if we didn’t bleed the enemy, we would lose.

 

“They’re half a klick away yet.” Mira told me. She was smudged, tired, filthy. I hugged her wordlessly. I could see most of that half kilometer from here. I knelt, touching the soil, picking up a handful, and held it as we waited. We were dying for this. For the people that would bring food from it, the men that would move it aside to build their homes, and those that would dig into it for ore to power it’s industry.

 

It was worth it.

 

I saw movement, and speeders pulled from the trees. They stopped, and men began deploying. A hundred, two, three... I lost count and still they came. To those behind me, it must have looked like an elemental force coming at us. A tsunami of men machines and death that we expected to stem with our bodies.

 

I saw a mortar section setting up.

 

“Control, warn the space port.” I ordered. “Mortar rounds will be in bound in just a few moments.” I listened to her repeat it over the command push.

 

As the men began to move cautiously forward, I heard the thump of mortars firing. The men behind me crouched deeper, but I knew instinctively we weren’t the target.

 

Suddenly there was a flash of light as the turret and anti-intruder systems of my ship roared. The shells that were falling were swept away. I heard a howl, and a swoop bike flashed past us. Then it did what’s called an idiot’s loop, sweeping up into a loop, and running back toward the compound. I caught a glimpse of four small objects flying up and away, then descending. They vanished into hundreds of bomblets.

 

There was a rolling flash of them exploding, and the mortars fell silent.

 

*****

 

Mercenaries.

 

Azkul didn't flinch as his mortars died. The western attack didn’t have any. Pure luck had placed the entire mortar company under one of those damn bombing attacks. “Push them, hard!”

 

*****

 

Mira

 

The men came not in a charge, but in a sidling rush. Men ran from cover to cover, coming toward us slowly. I caressed my control panel. A little closer...

 

They reached the point I had set, and I ran my finger along the contact.

 

“Not yet.” Marai said softly. I looked at her. She repeated the order. “Wait just a moment longer.”

 

The men reached the cover, then stood to advance toward us. The second wave was running toward us now.

 

“Now.”

 

I had not had enough mines to cover everything, and the Republic never went in for the massive mines the Sith and Mandalorians did. I’d had to make the damn things that went off now. Not grams but kilograms, tens of kilograms of blasting explosives went off. In front of them were millions of 5 millimeter balls, and those balls ripped through the first and second waves like a reaper from hell. Men dissolved into muck that would have to have DNA tests to even know who had died.

 

Some men, maybe fifty or so were past that point, and they were slammed down by the shockwave. As they tried to get themselves back together, Marai shouted, “Fire!”

 

There were only thirty or forty guys with us, but they were primed, ready to fight, and had simple orders. If it’s in front of you, and alive, kill it. Blasters went to auto fire and those men that had survived the explosions went down like ten pins.

 

“Withdraw!” Marai shouted. The men leaped up, running like hell toward the rear. Marai backed more slowly, watching the enemy. I stayed with her and Visas.

 

We reached the second line, dropping into our holes. Marai looked at me, then held out her hand. “Give me the panel, Mira.”

 

“Hey, you take care of the war, I’ll take care of the mines!”

“Mira, how many have you killed today?”

 

“I don’t like it, but how many of ours have been saved by me?” I snapped back. “You do your job, let me do mine.”

 

She sighed, and looked toward the enemy again. They had reached our line, and men started to drop into those holes. I waited until the next wave was starting to move past them and triggered my next surprise. I had moved along those holes, and planted charges in the bottom of each. They blasted upwards, taking more men with them.

 

“Hey! We’re sitting on explosives?” One man complained.

 

“I promise that if it goes off prematurely, I will take any complaints by survivors in my office after the battle.” Marai said.

 

There was a grunting laugh from some of the men.

 

*****

 

Handmaiden

 

I watched the men charging toward our first line. I wished for a moment that Mira was here instead of I. Killing men with mines is to me, unsatisfactory. Atton’s attacks had cut these men to about half of what had started, but the survivors were out for blood. They came firing, and I waited as long as I could before I fired the charges. A hundred or more men died in bloody swaths and those that had run past the charges kept running.

 

We opened fire, but they were too close. Men fell, and my men died with them.

 

We killed the last, then the twenty odd survivors stood and ran toward the next line. Men with sniper rifles harrowed their ranks, and I dropped into my hole with less than a dozen remaining. I triggered the explosives in that line of dugouts, then stood. Blaster bolts whizzed past me. My very presence, standing as if it were just another spring day egged them on. They charged, and as they did I touched the next series. Mines fired, and men died out there, and still they came on. “One volley and retreat!” I shouted.

 

The blasters fired, and my men ran toward the bridge. I waited until all had gone, then ran to follow. The enemy was not pausing now. Survival depended on them being in as close a contact with my men as possible, and they ran. I leaped, activating the minefield as I landed thirty meters on. The shockwave threw me on my face as they ran into it.

 

I leaped to my feet, running. The men had gotten pinned at the bridge. and sharpshooters were picking them off. I spun in place, and as the first men came at me, my lightsaber bounced their shots away. There were ten of them, but they had as much chances as a group of boy scouts against a threshing machine. I killed them, slowly retreating. The next group came at me in a rush, and I bounced shots into their midst then killed the few that did reach me.

 

The sharpshooters had started targeting me, that allowed the few that remained to escape across the bridge. But I would not be so lucky.

 

“Duck!” I dived, and massed fire ripped into the men that were charging at me. I looked back, and Atton waved as his men poured fire into our attackers. “If you’re coming, do it now!”

 

I leaped up, crossed the bridge, and activated the last of our mines on this side as we fell back to Khoonda.

 

*****

 

Bao Dur

 

I had been using the turrets to smash an attempt to run in on us with skimmers and speeders. I had gutted that attack, but the troops nearby had smashed my turrets. The droids were out, and giving a good account, but they were going to be blown away in a few minutes. I sighed, picking up my rifle. Time to join the party.

 

*****

 

Marai

 

We reached the last line of defenses. We had hurt them badly, but there were more than 300 facing us still, and all I had to stop them was less than a hundred. From the fragmentary report I had heard, there were about 200 on the other side, but they were making up for their losses with sheer ferocity. They were facing about sixty defenders.

 

They had settled into positions where they could snipe at us, and we couldn’t hold forever. My men were down to the last magazines they had.

 

I crawled over into the hole beside Mira. Her mines were all fired, and she had had nothing to do for the last few minutes. “Mira-”

 

“No.” She looked at me, and that hard core was showing. “I am not going to run.”

 

I reached out, took hold of her head, and pressed her to me, forehead to forehead. “I’ve failed Mira. We’re going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop that. I won’t see you die. Go to the ship.”

 

“No.”

 

“Please.” She looked at me with unshed tears.

 

I bit my lip. “All right. But I’m only going for my lightsaber. I’m coming back.”

 

“I know you will.” She said.

 

*****

 

Mira

 

I watched, then took off like a broken field runner. The enemy was surprised, and I reached the gate before their fire caught up with me. The Mandalorians nodded to me, settled in their defensive positions. They had already informed the enemy that they would fire if attacked, and the mercenaries to the west had avoided shooting at them.

 

People were huddled everywhere, and I walked past them with a sinking heart. These people would live, but what of Marai? What of Visas, the Handmaiden, Atton, Bao-Dur?

 

There were a group around the ramp of the ship, and someone was trying to hotwire the system.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

 

“We’re getting the hell out of here.” Some woman snarled at me. She was an older woman who looked like her life had really been hard. “We tried to grab the ship and that little droid locked it up. But we’ll be in any minute.”

 

“Oh yeah?” I lifted my com link. “T3, activate intruder systems.”

 

There was a siren, and the ventral anti-intruder guns dropped out, spinning. the people moved back sharply, but the woman stood glaring at me. “So you’re going to stop us? You and what army little girl?” She reached out, and I reacted. The Handmaiden had deplored my stance, but she would have been proud. I caught the woman’s wrist, rolled it, and my thumb jammed into the nerve plexus on the back of her hand. She screamed as I dropped her to her knees.

 

“For filth like you I don’t need a stinking army.” I hissed. I glared at her fellows. A lot were scavengers, but a lot were farmers. “Those people are fighting and dying for you!” I bent to the woman on her knees. “There were some that said we should let you take your chances. It was those people out there that saved your life!” I put my foot in her chest, and shoved her violently away. The ramp came down, and I went aboard. I came back down with bandoliers of ammo packs, everything I could find aboard. In my hands the lightsaber. The honey gold of the blade sent them scrambling back.

 

“A Jedi!” Someone wailed.

 

“What of it?” I demanded. “The Jedi in the enclave died to protect your kind, and all they get is complaints.” I pointed at the old man that had insulted Marai. “You called her a witch!” I pointed at another pair. “You two just thought of how much you could make off a captured Jedi! Every one of you owes the fact that you’re alive at this very minute to them. Three of the women out there could claim to be Jedi, and they are dying for you!”

 

There was a clump, and HK47 came down the ramp. Goto followed. “I’m going back out there, and I expect to die. Every one of you that lives out this day will owe me for your lives, and to tell you the truth I don’t know why they are even bothering!

 

“You sit in here, a little crowded, safe, and whine! You're not worth my sweat let alone their blood!” I turned to the ship. “T3, full intruder systems activated. Kill anyone who even gets close enough to breath on her!”

 

There was a man a little younger than Marai to one side. He and his wife had been huddled together, but he stood up. “Life and love. Yes we do owe them.”

 

“Shen-”

 

“No, Rahasia. A Jedi brought us together, made our families reconcile.” He came over to me, grabbing the bandoliers. “If you’ll keep them off my back, I’m going with you.”

 

“Hell Mr. Matale.” A older man with a weather worn face stood up. He held a Republic issued Blaster rifle. “Always thought this damn thing would be hanging on the wall, but I expect it’ll still fire.”

 

Men, women, people sick of being pushed around came forward. I looked at them, and felt the thrill Marai must have felt when she talked to all of those men before.

 

“What’ll you do for weapons?” Mandalore said walking up.

 

“According to you honor code, your men will only defend their positions, right?” Shen Matale asked. “But is there any rule that says your guns have to stay here?”

 

The Mandalorian looked at him for a long time. He drew his blaster, tapping the barrel on his hand, then handed it over. “Bring it back.”

 

*****

 

Azkul screamed. Over half of his men dead, and they still weren’t winning! He had gone beyond fury into the realm of madness. He called on the com link. “All men will advance, now!”

 

*****

 

Atton

 

They rose in a wave and charged at us. It was madness, but they did. But that madness was catching. My blaster ran dry, and I flung it aside to leap at them. Men rose around me, following. There were only about thirty left, and at least a hundred of them, but we no longer cared.

 

The Handmaiden leaped past me, landing like a living dement band saw, and men flew aside in chunks as she charged forward. I entered the thick of it and everything I had been trained in came to the fore. I was death on two feet, and nothing lived within my reach.

 

*****

 

Marai.

 

I heard the scream, saw the enemy rise and charge, and leaped up to meet them. Together Visas and I sliced into them. The few men I still had joined us and the madness was total. I had less than a hundred, there were at least 200 remaining for us to kill, and we didn’t care.

 

There was a smashing when we met, and some men literally were thrown up and out of that press in broken pieces.

 

I killed, and the same battle madness that had gripped me so many years ago waited. I knew that I would die here, but nothing would survive me.

 

Then suddenly a third group descended on us, blasters firing into the press. I saw Mira, HK, Goto in the fore. People that we had been sheltering had decided to take a hand and they were fresh. A trio of girls leaped on a man screaming, one of them wrapping a chain around his neck and strangling him as the others pinned him down. An old woman screamed falling, her chest blown open.

 

Mira moved like a homicidal china doll, and men fell all around her as her light saber whipped. She rolled across one man‘s back, stabbing forward and back, and two more died as she leaped to the attack again.

 

****

 

Azkul stood carefully. His arm was broken, his leg felt like it had been dislocated, but the door was right there! He staggered forward, opening it. He saw the Administrator, and drew his knife. “I win!” He screamed.

 

Something hit him in the chest, and he looked into an old man’s face. The damn Jedi that had gotten away. “Guess again.”

 

*****

 

Mira

 

I fell to my knees, sucking in deep gasps of air. Around me there was nothing but stillness. I saw Marai to one side, looking around, Visas beside her. The woman that had seen her husband go out so proudly was kneeling beside him weeping. I staggered over to her, and checked his pulse. “He’s just knocked out, Mrs. Matale.” I told her.

 

Farmers, scavengers, surviving soldiers, they were milling around aimlessly. I stood up, clapping my hands. “All right! All of you able bodied civilians, start carrying the wounded into the space port. There must be some med techs, they can start triaging the wounded.”

 

“What about him.” One of them pointed at a wounded mercenary.

 

“He deserves his chance.” I told them, waving at the bodies scattered around us. “There won't be a lot of them from either side.”

[machievelli]

Condemnation

 

Marai

 

It took three days to clean things up enough to even think about what to do. I kept coming back to the pad with ‘my’ casualties on it.

 

Forty men and women had survived. Of the 200 I had led into that horror, forty. I had been almost devastated just looking at the carnage, and the idea that we had faced 1500 and annihilated them earned me no kudos in my own mind.

 

I kept trying to find a way I could have done it differently. If I had placed the mines closer in. If I had flown one of the swoops myself. If my men had been better placed.

 

No one second guesses themselves as much as an infantry field commander after the fact. A Naval officer sees just the shattered ships. The snub commander sees the empty seats.

 

But an infantry commander sees the bodies torn by the horror of war. Feels the blood on them, or on the ground as they tread over that field. These aren’t statistics, x percentage killed and wounded. It is real men who depended on you, looking shell shocked because somehow they survived, in pain, still in death. You can’t help feeling that you have failed them somehow.

 

Until the pursuit was completed I was still technically their commander. About 200 Mercenaries had not been either killed wounded or captured, and we could not let them live. They were a danger that must be ended. If they surrendered, we’d let them live. But if they did not, the Administrator had ordered that they must die.

 

Those farmers who had saved us at the end were the ones pursuing the mercenaries. It was not my choice, but every one of us that had fought the entire battle were honestly too tired to even consider the necessary pursuit. Once Zherron and his uninjured men were back on their feet, I had sent them out to mitigate the slaughter I knew would occur. No one is more willing to commit murder than those that you have harassed and brutalized.

 

I had already had the ones we had captured under guard with the Mandalorians watching them. If I had not the 200 odd that had surrendered would have been murdered already. They had been disarmed, and as soon a another ship arrived, we were going to send them off to some other world.

 

But I ended up in charge of that. Masters Kavar and Zez Kai Ell had arrived, but neither had been willing to speak with me. They had instead closeted themselves with Master Vrook. I was merely waiting for Atris to arrive.

 

The Sullustan Arrekke was brought in, and I stood. “Explain this please.” His face stiffened as I handed him the hydrospanner Bao-Dur had dug from the innards of one of the droids.

 

“My sister. She needed money and-”

 

“Spare me.” I said. “Constable, find out where his sister is. Assure that she has enough money to take care of her needs. Lock this man up for attempted murder.”

 

“What! I don‘t kill anyone!”

 

“If my people had not been here, if we had not worked miracles on the defensive systems, those droids would have been sitting waiting for you to strip them even more. I will not let someone who put every life on this planet in danger walk away free.” I nodded to the constable.

 

Kreia came to see me. “The Masters are ready for you now.”

 

“Atris has arrived?”

 

“Atris is not coming.” She said softly. “They are waiting for you at the Enclave.”

 

I sighed, standing. The girl that had been my secretary looked up as left the office. “I am going to the Jedi enclave. When Captain Zherron gets back, tell him that I was dragooned into this, and I am done. He can have his job back.”

 

She grinned at me.

 

The land was still torn, and there was the stench of death in the air. You couldn't have almost a thousand people die in such a small place without it. But droids were already smoothing the landscape, plowing the pieces of uncollected flesh and spills of blood under. A few weeks from now it would be a peaceful trimmed greensward again. But they had placed a marker. I had told them that no one would care, but I had. I had gotten a large stone, and had it moved to the area where we had faced that final charge. I had set my lightsaber to a narrow short beam setting. I was not good at carving, but this I was good enough for;

 

FOR THE MILITIA MEN WHO DIED HERE SO

THAT THEIR WORLD WOULD BE FREE

I SHALL NEVER FORGET YOU

MARAI DEVOS

 

I walked, breathing the air, feeling the life returning. The animals hat had been terrified by all of that thunder had come home, and even knowing that a Kath hound would consider me a meal kept me from the wonder of watching a bunch of puppies frolicking around their mother.

 

I stopped before the hill that would reveal the enclave to me. I still remembered the total devastation of it. I didn't want to see this again. Kreia looked at me, smiling slightly. “Do you think they hunker in the center of a disaster still? There are rooms of the Enclave that survived.

 

We came over the hill, and I stared at the shattered buildings again. Part of me wanted to die.

 

“Come.” Kreia said.

 

*****

Kreia

 

She was like a child expecting to be punished. We walked down the hill. At the entrance to the enclave there was the scattered remnant of a camp. The scavengers had set up here, but the attack by the mercenaries had put some spine into the local farmers. After having scavengers rip up their land, steal everything not being watched, and lord it over them, they had decided that enough was quite enough. The farmers had taken all of those weapons that the mercenaries had left laying around, and the scavengers had decided that law or no law, there were much safer places to be.

 

We came to the bridge, and she stopped again. “I remember when it was whole and beautiful.” She said wistfully. “I was sent here for three years so I could learn more forceful techniques for my lightsaber work from Master Zhar. Diplomacy with Master Vandar. Logic with Master Vrook. In a way it was the worst time of my career. Master Vander believed the only diplomacy I would ever learn was slapping someone as hard as I could. Master Zhar always said I was too busy attacking to think about defending myself. And Vrook...” She sighed. “Revan and I got along too well from his view. We would argue politics, sports, anything. Not with acrimony mind you, though the floor dripped with blood when we fiercely disagreed. He sent me a message before we departed to the Republic. ‘You have stolen my Padawan. That is something I will never forgive’. As if anyone could make up her mind for her.”

 

we walked, and I motioned to the left. “But I was told the only way still accessible was over there.” She pointed to the right.

 

“To the sublevels, yes. But the Jedi are wiser than some realize. Those with the force could have opened the main door more readily.”

 

She shrugged, and we walked on. The door stood open, and she paused again. The inner hall was deep in dirt and filth. There were areas where bodies once had lain, and to the left of the door was a burnt out pyre. She walked over, touching the ashes silently. Then she walked in. The courtyard had trees growing wild, and grass had forced itself up between the paving stones.

 

I suddenly felt it all. So many memories I had thought I had forgotten, or no longer cared, but seeing it in this way drove into me how much I had lost. I walked over to the buttress wall around the saplings that had replaced the great tree. I leaned into it, then turned, using it to support me.

 

“Kreia? Are you all right?”

 

“Yes, yes.” I snapped. “An old woman has a right to be tired some times. They are waiting for you in the council room. Go on. I will be along shortly.” She turned, walking across the courtyard. “Marai.” She turned. “I have not been kind to you, but please remember. I have never lied to you. Trust in what I have taught you. If you cannot trust me, trust your instincts.” She turned, and was gone.

 

*****

 

Marai

 

The council chamber had been ripped open, the priceless mosaics commissioned by Master Baas when he had built it were shattered, laying on the floor like a broken child’s toy. I stared at the shattered dome with horror. I had so loved that mosaic...

 

The three masters were standing near the scattered remnants of the seats they would have once occupied. “It is not as it was.” Vrook said with a sad tone in his voice.

 

“Perhaps that is for the best.” Zez Kai Ell said. “If the order is to survive, it must be rebuilt and reformed just as this room must.”

 

“I just wish...” Kavar’s thought was unspoken as he saw me. The others looked toward me.

 

“We were wondering when you would arrive.” Vrook said coldly. “Obviously you have come for answers. Or maybe it is vengeance you seek?”

 

“No.” I said softly. “I received my answers from masters Kavar and Zez Kai Ell. I have no need for vengeance. I came to ask if I can help.”

 

“As you did Dantooine? How many more must die for your bloodlust?” Vrook snapped.

 

“Master.” I looked away. Still he hated me. I sighed.

 

“We will wait.” Kavar said. “Until the enemy finally reveals himself.”

 

“Wait?” I looked at them in shock. “The enemy is the Sith!”

 

“The Sith are a symptom, not the disease.” Vrook snarled. “This is not a physical battle where you can merely chop them to pieces. It is a battle within the force itself. Something you have no hope of understanding or participating in."

 

“I sensed it on Onderon.” Kavar said. “Something that was trying to drain the very life from the planet.”

 

“A pool of dark force energy wanting to devour all life.” I whispered.

 

“What?” Zez Kai Ell asked sharply.

 

“Some of my companions stopped a ritual on Dxun. Sith dark lords had entered the tomb of Freedon Nadd and had tried to unleash a pool of dark force as I have described.”

 

“So it was you that stopped it.” Kavar replied.

 

“No matter.” Vrook snarled. “Whatever moved through the force was not there, I have told you that. If the masters that died on Katarr were unable to stop it, how could some force-blinded woman do it?”

 

“I have asked both of them, now this I will ask, Master Vrook. If the Council did not take my abilities away, what did?”

 

“Malachor did.” Vrook snapped. “It is why you were exiled.”

 

“Because I fought at Malachor?”

 

“Because you caused Malachor!” He growled.

 

“Master, as I told Master Zez Kai Ell, I admit to having the Shadow Mass Generator brought there. I admit that much. But I did not-”

 

“It doesn’t matter!” He roared over me. “If you had not followed Revan, if you had not disobeyed the Council, this would not have happened.

 

“We might have cast you out for that reason alone, but there was another.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me? I asked.

 

“You had come back, the only Jedi to do so. And you had changed.” Zez Kai Ell said.

 

“Changed.”

 

“You were no longer Jedi.” Kavar answered softly. “But why that was true would have made no sense if we had merely told you that. You had to come to your own realization.”

“What had happened was punishment enough.” Zez Kai Ell said. “As much as Atris wanted you to die, we could not agree at that time.”

 

“At that time?”

 

“If you had remained in the order, it was believed that you would cause us to change, and that we could not allow.” Vrook said.

 

“Changed you? How could an apprentice or even a Padawan change the order by existing?”

 

“You know, and if you do not you are more stupid than you realize.” Vrook said. “Look at your followers. Have you noticed that when you decide on a course of action, they follow?”

 

I looked surprised. “When I was a General others deferred to my decisions.”

 

“But you aren't a general anymore. Yet still you are the focal point of those around you. Your followers do what you bid, even when it is against their nature.”

 

Ever since her loss at Malachor V, I have felt incomplete. A hollow shell of a person, desperate to be healed...But this wound felt comfort when I met you. It felt drained as we fought in sparring. Perhaps this wound will be healed. The words of the Handmaiden as she had foresworn herself.

 

I have found peace in my life for the first time since I awoke on a dead planet and I cannot sacrifice that peace no matter how you ask. Visas swearing herself to me.

 

I felt... Maybe if I helped you... Maybe the screaming would stop, and I could have a decent night’s sleep again. Atton on Nar Shaddaa.

 

You brought this out, you made me see, if anyone is going to teach me, it’s going to be you if I have to pound your head into the pavement to get that idea through! Mira on Nar Shaddaa. She had not even considered another teacher.

 

I haven't cried in years. Ever since you came back into my life, suddenly it’s not as hard to deal with any more. All that anger, that hatred of them and myself. It’s begun floating away. I no longer hate myself. Bao-Dur. Did I heal him only to use him?

 

Before I could always back away from it, leave the bounty alive. But since I’ve met you, it’s like a reflex. I don't like it, and I don't know why it suddenly became easy. Mira on Onderon. And here, she had become a stark warrior with no visible remorse.

 

I was suddenly terrified that the masters were right.

 

Kavar was looking at me sadly. “I saw you in combat, Marai. you are a leader, you earned the title General. But it is deeper than that. I have watched you agonize over those you lost in battle. The last two days here. You did not even know those men personally, yet you spent as much time agonizing over their deaths as if you had grown up with them. It comes back to Force bonds.”

 

“I don’t understand. Of course I know what a force bond is, but how does that affect anyone other than a Jedi?”

 

“The Force affects everything around you.” Vrook snapped. “Between a teacher and a student, between a master and apprentices, a force bond aids in understanding. You knew this as both student and teacher, yet you ignore it here?

 

“Force bonds help you learn, and teach. But when that bond is with those who are merely force sensitive like your compatriots, or those who cannot touch the force, it becomes something that can be turned to evil. When you suffer, they feel your pain. When they suffer, their pains drives you. This is not the first time it had happened to you.”

 

“There was another time.” Zez Kai Ell said.

 

“Malachor.”

 

“Yes, Malachor.” Kavar said. The battle of Malachor is in the past, yet it resonates inside you still.”

 

“Three million men and women, smashed by a planet’s gravity, seared by the plasma of a failed star.” Vrook spat. “And their deaths resonate inside you at this very moment.”

 

“Such a loss in one place was too much for any to bear.” Zez Kai Ell said. “It is a wonder that all of the Jedi in the system did not follow them into death with such a shock. But of all, you worried us the most. Others were hundreds of thousands, millions of kilometers away. You were within that effect wave. The ship you had just captured was almost destroyed by it. Yet you lived.”

 

“You thought we had stripped your powers away, you had done it to yourself. No person linked to the force could have survived, and you slashed away that ability from yourself to survive.“ Kavar said softly. “I felt it‘s possibility at Dxun. Remember I spoke with you of it. Yet you persisted as did the others. Malachor ripped them apart as it did you, but where they merely twisted what remained into hate, you had no capability to use any more.”

 

Kreia stirred. She had been listening quietly. The same thought she had in the berthing area awaiting Marai came back up. Would they listen? Or condemn?

 

“You were deafened.” Kavar said.

 

At last you could hear. For only with it's loss do you understand.

 

“You were broken.” Zez Kai Ell added.

 

Only that which is broken can be healed.

 

“You were blinded.” Vrook snapped.

 

But only then could you see. Kreia stood. She wished for her old staff. It had been what, five years since she had seen it. She was piqued. So much for a grand entrance.

 

“When you alone returned from Malachor, we sensed it. A hole within you, a void hungry to be filled. You were a wound in the force.”

 

“But master, I have found my connection to the force again.”

 

Vrook waved off my protestation. “It might just be Dantooine, but I do not feel it. If you have regained the force it is as we feared, for that wound is a sucking void.

 

“In you we saw the end of the force. You may feel the force, but you cannot feel yourself. You are an enigma. Something that feeds on the force, feeds on the will of others, dominating and controlling others to assure that you have enough to survive.”

 

“These new Sith teachings speak of it as a given. That all of living flesh is there to feast upon. Those teachings are symptomatic of what we first sensed in you.” Zez Kai Ell said. “Have you not noticed that in all of the conflicts you have faced, in all of the battles you have won hundreds die, yet you grow stronger? Whether you admit it or not, you are doing what these monsters have done.”

 

“Master, may I point out the flaw in your logic?”

 

“Oh this I must hear!” Vrook sneered.

 

“Within the cloister of the Academy and temples, there is peace, there is no conflict beyond the occasional harsh word. But for those outside these walls life is pain and struggle. You yourself master Vrook told me that if we stayed our entire lives within these walls we would be pure, and at the same time unable to help because of that very purity. We must ’get our hands dirty’ helping others.

 

“We know this but our knowledge has always been at one remove. We choose what pains we will accept. We choose what conflicts we face. They do not have that option. A woman trying to feed her children cannot merely decide that her job is not worth the effort. Not and keep those children alive. There are those warped by this into evil, but most survive such pain day to day.

 

“But in war, this is accelerated. You face as I did, not only your own death but the deaths of those that have sworn their lives to you. Even if you do everything perfectly, some of them will die. You know this, you feel this, you worry about them all, and there is nothing you can do to guarantee that any of them see their homes again.

 

“Yet look who led us. Sure there was Revan Malak and the others, but there was Saul Karath, who if he had not fallen would have been an icon to the Republic. There were those too stupid to lead, but for every Quintain the Navy put up with, there was an Admiral Dodonna. For every Trancas the ground forces dealt with, there was a Yusanis. These are not people who touch the force. They are normal humans without our abilities that transcend what they are to become someone worthy of respect and honor.

 

“I cast aside my weapons when I returned from war. Not because I could no longer do it, but because I needed a cause worthy of that. More than the maundering of some senator who feels disabused, or some planetary leader who feels disrespected. If I had not been cast out, I would have fought and died for you against Revan. As much as you feel that I was a step from the dark side, I had seen what it could do and wanted nothing more than to step back, end that war, and live my life.”

 

“But you could use the force. You were not only a leader, but with this evil attached to you, you had become a threat.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

Vrook took on that ‘you’re and idiot, but I will try to explain’ tone he did so well. “You were the possible future, and that future frightened us. What if other Jedi who had suffered as you did, found this link to the void, and made use of it? What if war is the crucible that draw our own to the darkness?”

 

“For you, that confluence of events named Malachor was that crucible.” Zez Kai Ell said softly. “We saw what had come from that mold, and we saw the end of the Force. Perhaps the end of all life.”

 

“What is worse, is there are such beings leading the Sith against us now. When Katarr died, we discovered that you were not alone. The death of Katarr resonated in the same echoes of what you had become.

 

“You taught them this hunger. We do not know how, but it must be true.” Kavar said almost sadly. “We cannot allow you to remain.”

 

“Our judgment stands. You must be exiled, but we will do what we should have done then. All ability to touch the force must be removed. You must be swept clean of it forever.”

 

“We do this to save all life, Marai.” Zez Kai Ell said. “It is a step not taken lightly.”

 

Each of them reached for their lightsabers. They obviously expected the monster I had become to fight them. But I understood why they were doing it. If I were what they claimed, Dantooine would be just the first world to die because of me. After all my dead, I couldn’t bear that as well.

 

I took my lightsaber from my belt, setting it on the ground gently. Then I bowed my head. “I accept your judgment, Masters.”

 

They relaxed incrementally. They spread out, and I saw Kavar raise his hands. “Marai, I’m sorry.”

 

“Do it. Please.”

 

The two that were on the outside reached, and I felt a tugging in my chest. Then Master Vrook reached out, and it felt as if they were tearing me apart.

 

“You will feel no pain. Just relax and this will be over with.”

 

I would have called him a liar if I could have spoken. Agony ripped through me and I collapsed.

 

*****

 

Kreia

 

I stepped in, and felt them ripping the force from her. I waved a hand, and they were slammed off their feet. “Bullies. Children that see the one that is different and torment them. Worse yet, create reasons to make it acceptable!

 

“You will not harm her. You will never harm her ever again.”

 

“You!” Vrook shouted. “If there was a beneficent god you would have died at Malachor!”

 

“Yes, I know, the author of all your pain, the one that convinced so many to run away. Someone had to be blamed, and I was I that bore the brunt of it. Foolish men that hid away in their cloisters and tried to judge the real world like a blind man describing a Drexl by what he can touch!

 

“She brought truth, told you of that world, and you still condemn her! By what right do you punish the messenger?”

 

“So you are the one that brought her here?”

 

“Fate and the force brought her here. Brought her to Telos where she confronted Atris, brought her to Dxun and Onderon to save them, brought her to Nar Shaddaa to help the refugees. She has earned the title of Jedi more thoroughly than any of you Masters ever did, for she did her work starting as a normal human being.

 

“Ten years she walked with no touch of the force in her life. Ten years of living as do those people we watched out for. Until she truly needed it, she had no touch of the force. Not until the force itself took a hand to make her return.”

 

“So you have trained her. The same filth that drew Revan and Malak into the darkness-”

 

“Spare me your hypocrisy. You are like the man who sits in his comfortable chair and glories in the wars of the past without realizing that war is death. You teach how glorious it is, how wonderful it can be, the honor that can be won, then flinch away at it’s most gentle kiss!”

 

Lightsabers blazed in their hands, but I had no need to approach. “As you would judge her, I shall judge you all.”

 

I reached out, and severed the link to the force that each man had. Vrook looked as if I had eviscerated him. Zez Kai Ell screamed in agony. Only Kavar was able to stand and face me still.

 

“There. But I will be more merciful. You will not have to go through the hell she has for ten years.” I reached out again, and they collapsed bonelessly.

 

I looked at her, laying there, still quivering in agony at what they had tried to do. She was still linked, I could feel it, and that link would only grow stronger. In that they had been correct.

 

But would it be for good or ill? Had I condemned the galaxy or saved it?

 

“I finally understand, my student.” I brushed her hair with my hand. “How a stark fierce warrior could walk away from all that you had, from the very power that Malachor would have gifted you with. I had thought it was fear, but it was fear for those you loved. The men under your command, the planets you protected, the order you still swore to. It was fear that you would not be worthy of all of that, that you would destroy it with a careless thought.

 

“A fear I find admirable.

 

“But I cannot stay with you. The final steps must be taken without my interference. They are the steps you must take to reach the heights of your power in wisdom.”

 

I kissed her cheek. “Make me proud.”

 

I could hear people approaching. Her friends, wondering what had happened. I touched one, and she paused, allowing the others to go on. I made myself small, insignificant. I walked past Atton and Bao-Dur. Past Visas and Mira.

 

The Handmaiden stood outside. I walked up to her, and she flinched.

 

“I have done great evil my child. I must be judged, and none remain but Atris. You must take me to her.”

 

“But Marai-”

 

Marai is no more. The masters struck her down, and I struck them down. It is all my fault and Atris is the only Master remaining.”

 

She spun, running toward the land speeder. I smiled inwardly. It had to be done, and only she could get me in before my vengeful student followed.

[Emperor Devon]

Choice chapters, but I'm surprised so few people are commenting. After 1,689 views, I seem to be the only person who gives frequent feeback.

[machievelli]

All right people, A: What did you think of the battle, and B: Why is my nephew here the only one commenting consistently?

 

Oh BTW, ED, is there an easy way to use the module for the droid factory/planet? Remember my computer illiteracy

[Emperor Devon]

Why is my nephew here the only one commenting consistently?

 

Nephew?

 

Oh BTW, ED, is there an easy way to use the module for the droid factory/planet? Remember my computer illiteracy

 

I'll explain the droid planet situation in a bit more depth; it doesn't even have a complete story. There's only what the group I'm part of (Team Bantha) has come up with. As I said, I'm not willing to reveal it before the mod is finished. While the droid planet modules exist, there is almost nothing in them, due to the lack of a story. You'll find nothing but hostile droids, some that won't talk to you, and the areas themselves. There's not a single peice of dialogue in there. Even the fog colors aren't finished.

 

The HK factory is a different matter. While there is dialogue there, it's incomplete. There are gameplay programmer notes throughout the place, and the most important pieces of the dialogue can't be activated. You can download what little there is for both the droid planet and HK factory here, in the misc. section. Since I've sent you all the important Malachor dialogue, I'll send what's not included in there soon.

 

To activate these modules, copy them and put them into your modules directory, which is within SWKotOR2. If you've enabled cheats already, type 'warp 298tel' to get to the military base sublevel, and warp '299tel' to get the level below it, which is the factory. The sublevel does have HK-50 units and dialogue, so don't go directly to the factory. To get to what little there is of the droid planet modules, type 'warp 80<1 to 7>dro' to go to various modules there.

 

If you haven't enabled cheats, open swkotor2.ini (sometimes it won't have .ini at the end) and go to the end of game options. Type 'EnableCheats=1', and make sure there's still a blank row between what's in game options and the other things. Press ` to activate the invisible cheat console. What you type won't appear on the screen.

[Tysyacha]

When I first played The Sith Lords, I could not believe that after I'd worked

so hard to find the Jedi Masters and gather them upon Dantooine, after I'd

struggled not to say or do anything that would turn them against me...

 

...they would do that. Consider me an enemy, as much of a threat

as the Sith themselves! I was shell-shocked. How could they condemn me?

 

Nevertheless, after they explained their reasoning, I thought I understood

enough to submit, as Marai did, through my heartbreak. I felt Marai's pain

acutely, because I'd felt it myself the first time that I played the Exile.

 

Through your superb chapter, I found the arguments that I'd wished

to use against the three Masters when I had first played, but

I was too busy going "grrga grgh? What the crap? Why did you betray

me, Jedi? Arrrgghhhh!" to think of anything halfway coherent to say.

 

Good thing the pre-scripted dialogue did all the arguing for me, eh?

 

I wonder what Marai will do with Kreia. Half of me hopes that she'll

wish for Kreia's redemption, but the other half hopes that Marai

will rightly battle her to the death because of her many betrayals.

I wanted to reach out and kiss Marai's cheek, as you had Kreia do in the

ruins of the Jedi Enclave. I felt like I knew what she'd been through.

 

Brava! You are an incredible writer, and I mean that sincerely.

This chapter must have spent you, as my last chapter of Ya--Yevo' did!

 

(By the way, I wish you could fast-forward to the Trayus Core. Unless...

no. Marai wouldn't revel in the deaths of so many streaming towards her,

even if they were Sith. All those hostile mannequins on Mal V--just so

empty, more hack-and-slash before the final confrontation with Kreia.)

 

(P.P.S. I wish you roleplayed, or would co-write something with me. That

Condemnation chapter was the crux of TSL for me, and you portrayed it

perfectly!)

[machievelli]

Nephew?

 

 

My own little joke. As if my family is the only one here commenting.

[Rain128]

more brilliant chapters Mach...

 

just out of curiosity tho, why didnt you get Bao-dur and Atton in on the Jedi thing?

I could see that maybe Atton has too much anger, and hate towards the Jedi, but you did mention that Marai could see Bao from the ship on Duxon, so that showed that he has potental...

 

Anyway, it just seems a bit late to train hem to be effecive... (but thats just me)

 

 

“Because I fought at Malachor?”

 

“Because you caused Malachor!” He growled.

 

“Master, as I told Master Zez Kai Ell, I admit to having the Shadow Mass Generator brought there. I admit that much. But I did not-”

 

“It doesn’t matter!” He roared over me. “If you had not followed Revan, if you had not disobeyed the Council, this would not have happened.

 

“We might have cast you out for that reason alone, but there was another.”

 

Im pretty sure its Mass Shadow Generator...

[Darth Jester]

Well I have read all of this so far and I can only say it is a pity the game is not like your descriptions (it would be a lot more fun) so please keep up the hard work.

[machievelli]

more brilliant chapters Mach...

 

just out of curiosity tho, why didnt you get Bao-dur and Atton in on the Jedi thing?

I could see that maybe Atton has too much anger, and hate towards the Jedi, but you did mention that Marai could see Bao from the ship on Duxon, so that showed that he has potental...

 

Actually the scene with Visas coming up will explain part of it. Quite frankly if that doesn't explain it, you'll have to wait until the Trayus Core.

 

Anyway, it just seems a bit late to train hem to be effecive... (but thats just me)

Im pretty sure its Mass Shadow Generator...

 

 

I only saw two references, and I have been calling it the SMG instead of MSG all this time. If you'r correct it will be corrected here without a problem

[machievelli]

Pursuit

 

Marai

 

I was standing on a night swept plain. Off in the distance, I could see the glow of a force field interacting with the atmosphere. I felt a surge of the force so great I was driven to my knees.

 

Telos, I was on Telos. Above me glowing in the sunlight was Citadel Station. I reached out, how I do not know, and was shooting upward like a missile. Something was happening...

 

Ships had come out of hyperspace, a fleet of nightmares. Republic ships cruised alongside Mandalorian and Sith vessels. But the bulk of that fleet had been ripped apart by some massive force. There were rents in the hulls, drives with their fairings ripped away.

 

At their center came the largest warship I had ever seen. One I knew well, because I had seen it in dry dock, sections of the hull still not emplaced. Naked ribs shown through those tears, and within it I tried to feel what should have been there, but it was not.

 

The fleet closed on the station, fighters racing ahead. It began firing on the weapons on the station, smashing guns and men away as it closed. Then suddenly I felt a wrenching.

 

I was on the deck of a module. Men were running toward their stations when suddenly they clutched their heads, screaming. Then they fell. On every deck I knew it was happening. half a million men women and children dying, and the out-rushing of the force from them ripped at me as well, but I was still here.

 

Then I felt it from below. The animals, trees, all of the effort the Ithorians had put into trying to bring Telos back to life was undone in seconds.

 

I was alone on a dead station above a dead world...

 

*****

 

Atton

 

I froze when I saw her collapsed. I had failed, she had died and I hadn’t been there to protect her. I ran over, lifting her from the ground. I almost screamed with joy when I heard her breathing.

 

Visas and Mira had walked past me. Visas had gone to the bodies, but Mira was looking at the ground. “She walked in, stood there. They had been moving around, but stopped when she arrived and took up defensive positions.”

 

“What?”

 

“Their placement. One facing her in the center, two others flanking and slightly forward. If you attack one, the others sweep in and assist. They expected her to fight. But she did not move forward. Everything that was done was from a distance. And back here.” She moved back toward the door. “Another stood. Kreia.”

 

“These men are not just dead, they are drained of life and force.” She leaned back, head tilted. “Yet it was not done as my old master would have. They have joined the force in death. But it was ripped from them first. Almost as if the killer wanted them to feel the pain of loss first.”

 

“So Marai-”

 

“No. She’s still here. This was Kreia’s doing.” Mira was adamant. “After all, Marai saw both Zez Kai Ell and Kavar alone. She could have killed them without this cantina gunfight motif.”

 

Bao-Dur was looking around. “Where is the Handmaiden?” He and Mira ran out. They came back. “The other speeder is gone. They must have left together.”

 

“But why?” Visas asked. “She feels for Marai as we do. Why would she abandon her?”

 

“She wouldn’t unless Kreia told her they murdered her, and the Handmaiden would have run home to Telos.” I snapped. Marai groaned, and I held her tight.

 

“Atton?”

 

“Yes, I‘m here.”

 

“I don’t want you think I dislike you...”

 

“I don’t think that.”

 

“But if you don’t let me go, I am going to vomit all over you.”

 

My father once said you can tell true love when you hold your date’s hair out of the line of fire when she vomits. Must have been love.

 

She wiped her mouth, and allowed me to help her stand. She looked at the Masters’ bodies and all she said was ‘Kreia.”

 

We hurried out, pouring into the land speeder It only sat three comfortably. But Mira sat in Marai’s lap, and Visas sat primly on mine as Bao-Dur almost burned out the engine getting us back to Khoonda. Before we breasted the hill a square nosed ship was already taking off, and we’d IDed it as the one Kavar had arrived in.

 

*****

 

The Administrator was waiting when we arrived with Captain Zherron.

 

“General-”

 

“I do not have time.” Marai said softly but adamantly. “One of my people has murdered the Jedi Masters, and is enroute to Telos even as we speak. A force of Sith will be attacking there in the next few days and I must be there to fight them.”

 

“But...” She looked at Zherron helplessly.

 

“Which one? The old woman or the girl?” The man asked.

 

“It was the old woman that killed them.”

 

“Then...” He also looked confused. “Then why did she tell me to get as many of my men as possible together to go with you?”

 

“What?”

 

“She stopped by my office.” The Administrator said. “Told me that Telos would be destroyed if they did not get help. Said ‘if Telos dies, so does the Republic’ then she and the girl departed to contact the Jedi on Telos themselves.”

 

“Then she found me when I got back here, and told me to get ready to follow you.” Zherron said.

 

“I do not know what is happening, but she was correct in saying that the second death of Telos will kill the Republic.” Marai told them. “The one thing that has held us together since the war has been hope. Hope that we can bring the dead worlds back to life. If Telos dies, there will be no reason to spend the money, the hope will fade, and soon we will be squabbling planets without even the old Galactic Trade Authority to hold us together.

 

“No more support from the Republic. Mercenaries pirates and bandits taking what they can as they tried here, repeated on a quarter million worlds.” She shook her head.

 

“I must go. I may fail to stop it but I must try! The dead Masters would have wanted it.”

 

“Give me ten minutes.” Zherron snapped, running away.

 

We boarded the ship. Marai went to the com room, and spent the time talking with several people. Mandalore came in, went in and was with her for some of that time.

 

Eight and a half minutes later, Zherron and twenty men came running aboard. All but six were soldiers that had fought under her earlier. The rest were farmers with grim expressions. “Captain-”

 

“You said we had to hurry ma’am or everyone would be here. I’m, sorry.”

 

“Not that. Why?” She waved at the men behind him. “How did you convince them so quickly?”

 

“I told them you needed help. It was all I had to say.”

 

There was a thud, and one of the Mandalorians came running up the ramp. He saluted Marai, then bowed his head to Mandalore. “Chu!”

 

“All of the men. Take that ship and go directly to Telos.” Mandalore ordered, pointing on the larger ship Zez Kai Ell had used to arrive.

 

“Chu!” He ran down, and a flood of Mandalorians began throwing equipment aboard.

 

Mandalore looked at Marai. “We will be there.”

 

Marai looked at me. “Atton, take us to Telos. I have an old friend to see before we arrive at the station.”

 

*****

 

Onderon.

 

Queen Talia stretched. It had been a long day. The rebellion had fizzled out, and now it was just cleaning up the mess. She stood, pulling on her robe. Her servants had set up a breakfast, and as always, there was a stack of pads beside her plate.

 

She looked at each only in passing, nothing to... She found herself frozen. One hand at her mouth with a piece of fruit held between her teeth. The other with the pad she had just read.

 

“Where is my Chamberlain?” She snapped.

 

“Your grace?”

 

“Bring him here. Now!” The girl scurried off.

 

The door opened, but it was not the chamberlain. A woman in Beast Rider leather came forward, then dropped to one knee.

 

“What means this.”

 

“Your grace, I am Bakkel. When the young Jedi first came, I was a lost cause to our people. She made me see what I had become, and I have redeemed myself in the eyes of our beasts. Last night I felt an urge to come back to the city, and when I did I knew why.

 

“She is in danger, and needs our help. I must repay that debt. I ask for a ship.”

 

The door opened, and the Chamberlain came in. He had served under Talia’s father, and his walk and stance bespoke years of being the power before the throne. He bowed, but before he could speak, the queen thrust the pad into his hands. “Explain this.”

 

“It was received four hours ago, your grace. You were still asleep, so I told the woman that I would bring it to your attention when you woke.”

 

Talia took a step forward, and her full body was behind the arm that slapped the man off his feet. She stood over him, towering in rage. “How dare you impugn my honor in such a way. You were there when I said, ‘ask anything of us and it will be done. I swear it upon my life’.” She stalked toward him and the old man scuttled backwards.

 

“We owe this woman our lives you pusillanimous worm! Master Kavar told me that if the Sith had released that horror from Dxun everything on our world would have died and you didn’t think her request was important?” She reached under a table beside her, and with a shriek flung it across the room, spinning to those that stood stunned around her.

 

“Call the fleet. Every ship that can fly is ordered to descend and load troops. I will be with them shortly. Thanks to this fool I must apologize in person. You.” She pointed at Bakkel. “All that wish to go with you be at the star port. I will show these monster what the people of Onderon can do.” She glared at the chamberlain

 

“As for you. You will come with me to explain to a woman that risked her life for our people how honor is not important. Vaklu argued it with her and died.” She turned, seeing everyone frozen in shock

 

“Do I have to use a prod to get you moving?”

 

*****

 

Mical sat in the chair. This would be kind of hard to explain. The holo-com before him lit up, and Admiral Carth Onasi looked at him. “Admiral, I found the Exile. She was on Dantooine until recently, and I met her.

 

“That is good to hear, but it could have waited.”

 

“No it could not. According to her the Sith intend to attack Telos and destroy it completely this time. She has gathered people from here to assist in the defense of the system, including almost a hundred Mandalorians. However I will not be there.”

 

“You won’t?” Carth looked surprised. “You always wanted to see a space battle first hand. What kept you from coming?”

 

“Well it seems some droid stole my ship...”

 

Ebon Hawk

 

Enroute to Telos

 

Visas

 

It was as if she had merely changed places with Kreia, who always meditated in here alone. Marai knelt, facing away from the door.

 

“You are troubled.”

 

“That took no skill to work out.” She said. I knew she was speaking from some internal pain. Having spent my life in pain as she had said, it took no great skill.

 

“What did you learn from the Masters that had caused you such anguish?”

 

“Why are you here?” She asked. “Not just aboard this ship, but here standing at my side?”

 

“Because you need me to be here.”

 

She gave a small pained chuckle. “So you are here because I made you be here.” Then it turned into a sob “They were right.”

 

“In what way?” I walked up behind her. “When I swore myself to you, I said my life was yours to use as you pleased. I would die gladly, even if it was your hand that took my life.”

 

“That’s what they said!” She wailed. “That I am a web weaver, I draw others to me and when they come I devour them! I...I can’t stand this any more. I will cause you all to die, and I will feed on your rotting corpses, and go on!”

 

I knelt beside her, turning her to face me. she resisted until I caught her a chin and made her look at me.

 

“If there is an ending between us, it will be at the right time. This I feel. If my death will keep you alive a second longer I would leap into the void with that thought to sustain me. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to what people must do. This is what I must do.”

 

“But is that you speaking or me?” She wailed.

 

“What did they say that has struck so deeply at your core?”

 

“That I have always been able to form bonds with those around me readily. That I can direct them, make them my puppets. You, Mira, Bao-Dur, Atton, those men in the cargo bays. What if they are just puppets I have been playing with!”

 

“It is a danger they have created from the information they had.” I told her. “That such power in someone’s hands automatically makes them evil. Yet I have seen someone with such power. Felt his body, felt his anger need and hunger. Things they attribute to you.

 

“But I see none of it in you. Where I felt his anger, in you I feel your compassion. Where I felt his need, in you I feel the desire to hold us all free of danger, even if you die alone. Where I felt his hunger, I feel in you the boundless willingness to give of yourself. Even thinking yourself unworthy, you try to teach us all, and nurture us all. Where my old master seeks to devour all life, you nurture it as if we are all your children. The other side of this coin of power. Like the gods of my people, the Destroyer, and the Preserver. You were needed to balance him.”

 

“The Jedi masters have spent so much time being masters, they have forgotten what it is like to be human and without the force. They do not understand what an awakening experience it is to have to find another way to see, to feel, to react. For ten years you were blind and you had to learn how to see the world just with your eyes. When you regained the force, you could not see it as they had. You were now judging it by those years of blind movement.

 

“Where they had the force to guide them, you had to walk alone like the rest of the people out there. As I did before my master made me see again. You see, I did what you had done. I cut myself away from my abilities so I would not have to witness the horror around me. If he had not come, taken me away, forced me to do what I have done, I would have died content because as any child will tell you a horror you cannot see cannot harm you. I spent five years seeing only what he wished me to see, seeking what he wanted me to seek. Then... Then I found you.

 

“I heard something so soft, so gentle, so beautiful there was no way I could have avoided loving it. I felt the call of all that beauty my master destroys embodied in one spirit one mind one body, one woman. I felt in you a wound so like my own that my very being was subsumed. Someone out there had suffered a loss as great if not greater than my own. I came to die by your hand, for such beauty would take my life without the glee my master felt. Nothing so beautiful could enjoy my death. I would have been enfolded in gentle death, and there was nothing I yearned for more. Killing me would have been mercy.

 

“Yet instead, you redeemed me. As he made me see, your words, your actions, your very spirit made me want to so desperately see the world as you do. Not the filth he sees everything as, but in the joy and wonder you have at a simple sunrise, the joy you feel when you teach Mira, the sorrow you feel when you held Bao-Dur in his nightmares. The simple pleasure you get from cooking. Even the mercy you gave to Atton for all of his sins. The effort you spent on me as well. Not out of a sense of duty, but because it is what you are.”

 

I turned from her, and felt a sob in my own throat. “I understand if you are terrified of this, that you feel the need to go alone, leave us in the darkness so you can chase the death you now seek. But as long as you remain among us, treasure that horrible nasty link you have with us all. Our world will be a dark and empty place when you are gone. Do not put out the light so readily.”

 

I fell to my knees, weeping. I felt her arms enfold me, and spun, burying my face in her neck.

 

“What is wrong.”

 

“He will be there not long after us. He will come, and he will kill, and you will face him, for you could no more stand aside than a moth can avoid being attracted to a flame.

 

“He will try to take you, to wound you as he had done to me. He will take you from me, and I cannot bear it!” I reached up, felt her face. Damn it I wished I could see! “Please, I beg you, don’t go. Stay here, stay with us... stay with me. I will not live beyond you, and I cannot bear that you will go to death first!”

 

“I can’t stand by and let him murder the dreams of trillions of lives.” She whispered in my ear. I could feel her tears on my face. “Not and live myself. I must face him, even if it means my death.”

 

“I know.” I whispered. “But I will not let you face him alone. Whatever else happens, I beg you to remember your promise. Do not cast me aside and face him alone. If death takes you, I wish to be there hand in hand to make the crossing as I failed to do with my family. It is all I ever asked of you, and I beg you. Please.”

 

“Visas...”

 

“Do not deny me the choice of my passage to death!” I leaned back, hands touching her face. “I wish I could see with eyes like you do. To me you are a presence, a voice, a shape of the force before me. I want to see the woman that leads us, to see her face as the skin I can touch. The eyes that weep as I do. The hair that is always getting loose from that insufferable bun as a sheet. To see the color of it!

 

“I want to see the woman, understand why the Handmaiden feels such contentment in your very presences. Why Atton’s heart beats faster when you walk by. Why Mira clings to you like a frightened little sister. Why Bao-Dur found strength within himself just because you have asked him to go with you!

 

“The masters and elders of my people could do this. I wish...” I leaned back, tearing off my hood, grasped her face between my hands. “It is no longer a wish. I will see you!”

 

I reached out, feeling the force flow through us, and...

 

“Your hair.” I loosened the bun. “It is golden, but with a reddish tint, as if copper was added to it. Your eyes are gray, with flecks of fire in them as well.” I whispered. “Your skin is as soft to my sight as it is to my hands.”

 

I held her face between my hands. “I understand now why Mira forsook her solitude. Why the Handmaiden saw in you what she had always wished to be and walked away from Atris. Why those of us that are women loved you, and yearned to merely sit at your feet and learn. Remember that, Marai. You are us, and to deny any of us denies yourself.

 

“You are these things to us, as we are all parts of what you have been. You have been cast aside as the Handmaiden has, wounded as I have been, lost and alone as Mira has. We see someone who has gone through that horror we have faced, and has survived beyond it. You are the ideal we all strive for.

 

“You are our leader, the one for whom all will die for. Each of us had an answering echo of your pain. That is what draws us, even the men that boarded our ship at Dantooine. But where my master would have used it, you have drained it, cleansed it filled it, removed it. Made it no more.

 

“I understand why Atton yearns for your touch, your body against his. I understand how Bao-Dur can look upon you and see all that he has lost regained by your presence. All of us shall die a little when you die.

 

“To my master we were pawns to be expended. To you we are that for we play this game for the Galaxy itself. But as this game is played out, as we die, know this my heart. We know the player weeps for us. We know that part of you will die with each of us, and our dying will wound you. So we strive to live, to make sure that we will not wound you. For you are our heart and soul.”

 

I stood, touching her face again. I felt her heart lighten a bit. Not much, but anything was better than that deep gloom.

 

“Perhaps the three of us that remain can see what we will do to Atton’s blood pressure?”

 

She chuckled.

 

*****

 

Marai

 

Some of the recordings Mical had found at the enclave had been loaded aboard our ship by mistake I thought. But his note that I might enjoy reading them told me otherwise. While I love history, I was looking at a future where there might not be any more.

 

So I was cooking. Since we had almost 30 people aboard, that meant I had to use our largest pots, and was making enough stew to literally feed an army. The oven was filled with pan after pan of bread. I wasn’t happy, but it was the closest I had been to it since this entire mess had begun.

 

Mira came in, holding a holocron. “Marai-”

 

“Stir this.” I said. I turned to pull the loaves from the oven. The smell of fresh bread permeated the room, and a moment later, I had to assume the entire ship because eager faces could be seen in the passageways leading into the mess hall.

 

“Guys, I need a moment alone with our chef. Do you mind?” Mira said. They looked crestfallen. “Don’t worry, I’ll slice up a loaf and bring it to you!”

 

I shrugged. There would be enough so that any who lost their appetites would have their chance. “All right Mira. Talk to me.”

 

“It’s something I have to show you.” She pulled me away from the stove, sitting me down, and started the holocron. I failed to see what was so important. The holocron was a history of the Academy, with images of the faculty. Baas and his teaching staff, then his successor Master Alisi Windu and her staff. Then finally Master Vandar and his...

 

I stared at the face. “Kreia.”

 

“Yeah, but look at that.” She pointed at the subtitle which gave name and position. Her name hadn’t been Kreia then.

 

 

Telos

 

Handmaiden

 

I flared out the ship, settling it in the snow near the entrance. I felt numb as I had for the last two days of our trip.

 

Marai was dead. She had died, and I had failed her, failed the Jedi she followed. Failed so abjectly that nothing I could do would redeem me. Kreia had been as social as she always had been, and I was grateful for the silence.

 

We crossed the snow, and entered the redoubt. My sister nodded curtly. “The Mistress wishes to see this one first. Wait here.” Even at her most angry, she had never spoken this coldly to me. I would have been alarmed if I had emotion to waste on it.

 

I was left in our common room alone. All four of my sisters ignored me.

 

*****

 

Atris

 

I knelt among all that wisdom, and felt nothing. My plans had come to fruition, yet I felt no joy in it. The others no doubt still waited for my arrival. But they were the ragged remains of an outmoded order. The order I would build would be strong. It would not meekly stand by and let the Senate and the Chancellor push them around. We would give them order if I had to ram it down their throats!

 

The door opened, and I fumed. No one came in here, that was the first thing I told all of my budding young acolytes. I would be here alone.

 

“Who dares disturb my meditation?” I hissed.

 

There was a dry chuckle. “I knew I would find you surrounded by the wealth of knowledge like a catcher bird filling it‘s nest with shiny things. and expending just as much thought.” I had heard that voice before. In one of the holocrons that lay in serried rows around me.

 

“Who are you?” I demanded.

 

“Who I am is not the question my little friend. It is what am I?”

 

“You are Sith. That much I can tell. But I am Atris, last of the historians of the Jedi order. Last Jedi of the old order itself! I am your doom.”

 

“Sith. Jedi. Historian.” Each word was a stinging brand. “Titles, Atris. Titles you have woven around yourself, used to ease your mind. All are titles I also held. But they are not what or who I am. No more than ‘Master’ is what you are.” Again that dry chuckle. I saw a robed shape move among my collected works, her very actions driving me to fury. She picked up one of them, idly perusing the title. “The collected musical works of Zardan Landru of Fondor. Most claim he was the first of the humans that later would claim to be Sith almost thirty years before the Republic was even founded. But he was not the first.”

 

“Who are you?” I demanded again.

 

“I have had many names. My most recent if Kreia. But before that I was known as Traya, Darth Traya. For Darth Traya was the premier teacher of those fools that call themselves the Sith. Betrayed by her own teachings. Betrayed by her own body. Betrayed by her order, and at the last, betrayed by her own students. While that Darth Traya no longer exists, the title still remains. There must always be such a person in the Galaxy. Otherwise it will die of sheer boredom.”

 

She moved to the other side of them, running her fingers through the wealth of knowledge. “So many different books, so many points of view. Jedi, Sith, the writings of the ancient Sith race. The few works saved by Revan of the Rakata that predate us all.

 

“Yet you have failed to grasp the most important part of all of this. To hold the knowledge to you like a miser wastes it. I knew that when I was your age, and I gave of it freely. I was condemned for it in fact. That I would not simply spout the rote knowledge the Council wished spoken, not tread the narrow path they wished of me.

 

“Yet there was so much good I did with it. An enquiring mind will always seek the best possible answer. It might not be what the Council would wish, but we were supposed to be teaching them about the galaxy beyond, not what we wanted them to think of it.

 

“This you knew, but there is a fatal flaw in your use of it. I used it to show the outer world in all it’s horrors so that my students would not be surprised by it. You have merely taken it and incorporated it and called it all good.

 

“Sith is what I might have been, but look into the mirror my young friend. You are as much a Sith as I ever was.”

 

“I can’t...” I wanted to rail at her, but in my heart, I knew she was correct. In trying to pick and choose, I had chosen unwisely. “How could this have happened?” I asked plaintively.

 

“It is such a quiet thing to fall at the first. But so much more painful when you realize that you have fallen, isn’t it? As I said. You can not blame battle for your fall, as you did with Marai and Revan. You cannot blame the ‘New Sith’ teachings, for as any fool could see, the New Sith teachings are but variations of the very old. You cannot even blame Malachor, for this has happened before, and you, the one who should have seen it was blinded by your own sanctimonious stand.

 

“As for Marai. The ‘exile’ you still call her. You were too busy demanding something you were not worthy of from her when you were students, and that festered. That grew. That if you want a true starting point, was your fall.”

 

“No! I loved her like a sister!”

 

“Rather more I think.” The woman said. “For only love of that sort turns so readily to hatred when unrequited. She spurned you. Oh not through any intent. She knew some about the Echani, and assumed much that need not have been true. But you drove yourself into this. She had nothing to do with it beyond sheer naiveté.

 

“And unlike you and I there is hope for her still.”

 

“I thought-”

 

“Ah, you thought she would face them and act as you would. That they would all die and leave you to rule. A common fallacy. She went meekly to face them, willing to give up all she had regained because even after ten years of punishment, she still believed.

 

“I’ve seen your representation of the obelisk. Justice severed you thought. But her final statement was ‘how can you dispense justice when you will not seek the truth first’? None of you on that council sought truth. All of you came with your own view of what the truth was, and none of you actually looked for it. As in my case, it was easier to react than it was to think then act.”

 

“Your case?” I looked at her, and she lowered her hood. “Oh gods-”

 

“The Gods do not hear our kind, Atris. The force does, but the Force is more egalitarian. It give to all who can seek it without judgment as to why you want it‘s power.

 

“But judgment is coming here. You and I stand condemned from our own mouths. She may yet be condemned by her actions. But you and I deserve what comes.

 

“Tell me, for my records if nothing else. What has hurt you worse? The fall? Or the idea that with all your pride in place when she stood before you, that she never betrayed that trust?” She pulled the hood back up. “Call your Handmaidens. There is a test that must be given before the one you betrayed arrives.”

 

*****

 

Handmaiden

 

I had never felt uncomfortable in this place before, why did I feel so now? My sisters had gone, and I was told to wait here. But I wanted to move, wanted to do something!

 

I left the room, walking toward the council chamber. We had called it that since our arrival over five years ago, when Atris had relocated from Coruscant. This place, this atmosphere had been my home for almost ten years, yet I felt like that crawling thing in the oceans that used the shells of dead creatures to protect themselves. I had outgrown this shell, and didn’t want to return to it.

 

The door of Mistress Atris’ meditation chamber opened, and my sisters filed out of it. All four of them walked down toward me. Their stances had changed incrementally. They were more self assured, but...

 

“No.” I whispered, stopping.

 

They filed into the room, moving in two pairs to my left and right. They thrummed with power, but I knew it was nothing like what I had felt with Marai and the others. It was...

 

“Gods, she has fallen, and taken you with her.” I gasped.

 

“Silence.” The eldest said. “It is good that you have come here.” She waved at the room. “You have come before judgment. You have much to answer for.”

 

“My sister-”

 

“You have never been my sister of blood, and only the link of Flesh has kept you as ‘sister’ all this time. Yet even that you foreswore!” She screamed. “You betrayed us, you betrayed Atris! You sought power and were willing to give us all up in that search.”

 

“Sister, that is not true!”

 

“Silence.” Another of them said. “You who were our sister of flesh, but never of blood, you are no longer our sister. We deny your flesh. We curse you in sitting, in standing and lying.”

 

“No, please.” I fell to my knees. Not the Cold curse!

 

“We curse you by day and by night.” The next eldest said. “We curse your friends, and those you cling to.”

 

“We curse your issue, and the man that sinks so low as to take you to his bed and home.” The next said softly. She had always felt at least something for me. But it did not dissuade her.

 

“We curse you in life, and only your death will end this curse.” The youngest said. “Be gone.”

 

“Sisters, somehow Atris has been touch by the Sith-”

 

“Silence woman of no family. If you will not leave we will kill you.”

 

I stood. “You have denied me, but my flesh still feels the call. For the sake of you all, I must stand against you in this.”

 

“It is a crime to spill the blood of family.” The eldest stepped forward. “Have you sunk so low?”

 

“I will not fight unless you force it of me. But you have been led into the darkness by she whom I had obeyed. For the sake of our family, I must stand here. Please, do not force this upon me.”

 

She struck at me with her fist, and I flowed beneath it. I caught her wrist, flipping her aside as another came at me. I caught her arm, kicking her in the side below the ribs, rolling away from her as the last two came at me together.

 

I was caught by the arm, and I used that fulcrum to kick out with both feet, punching that one off the ground, then rolled back, my body rolling on the ground, feet against her chest, and flung her away.

 

I was on my feet, facing them again. The eldest stood, and there was a snap as her staff leaped to it’s full length. The others drew, all of them facing me.

 

“It is a sin to spill the blood of family, but by the cold curse you are betrayer to that blood, and there is no sin in killing you.”

 

I drew my lightsaber, then put it away. She saw this and laughed. “Pathetic to the last, hoping that blood will tell what flesh cannot. You have earned this, betrayer.”

 

Together they leaped at me.

 

*****

 

Atris

 

I heard the fighting die down, and sighed. The first step in the plan was complete, and now the second. I came from my meditation room, and stopped at the door of the council room. My Hand maidens lay dead. The one who was foresworn was clutching the obelisk, one hand at her side.

 

“My sisters...” She whispered with pain not of her wounds. “I am sorry.” She looked up, and her face grew harsh. She shoved away from the pillar, staggering slightly. “Why Atris. Why did you do this?”

 

“I do this?” I laughed. “It was you, foresworn one that had murdered her sisters. You that consorted with the demon to gain what? Power? She has none, and her teachings are garbage before what I possess.

 

“Love? She does not have a scintilla within her.

 

“Then why did you command me to go?”

 

“Did I command you to foreswear you oaths? To ask, no, beg her to teach you? To use the excuse that an oath to your father was more important than your oaths to me?” By the last sentence I was screaming. “Of course I did no such thing! I wanted to keep track of her whereabouts. To see what she did when she murdered the last Masters that might have forestalled my plan!

 

“I offered you the galaxy to rule as my subject, and you spurned it for what? For Her!”

 

I reached out, and the force slammed her into the obelisk. I burned her with fire, I smashed her down with the sheer power of what I had learned. “Why?” I screamed. “Did you have feelings for her as I once had? Did you look upon that face and feel love? Did her touch do for you what your own flesh you have murdered here would not?”

 

She had staggered to her feet, and I could see her own loss of her sisters in her face. “She gave me what none of you would. A choice.”

 

“There is no love in that woman!” I slammed her against the post again and again. “She is a shell, she is a void formed by Malachor, and you willingly gave yourself to the void! You have earned this!”

 

I caught her throat. Not with my force, but with my hand. “You have tried to steal even that from me!” I screamed in her face as she fell unconscious.

 

“Let her go.” I looked up. Marai was there, and I felt the fury she refused to show.

 

I dropped the girl. “So, an exile comes to save another exile. It is almost touching.”

 

“Atris, I was a stupid young girl that didn’t understand what I was offered those years ago. If I had, perhaps we could have bonded as you asked. But I have not taken it and turned it into a hatred spanning almost two decades. If you want to punish someone, I am here. It was my acts then that made you what you are now. I will not let you harm her because you think she achieved what you did not.”

 

“Ah, so you have feelings for this one. Perhaps there is humanity still in you. You came across the span of the void to save this one?”

 

“I came for her. I also came for Kreia.”

 

“Kreia!” I roared with laughter. “That is not her name. She has already left. She is beyond your reach, Marai. When I have dealt with you I shall go to her, and your death will cause the galaxy itself to die!”

 

“Atris, by the love we once shared as sisters, by all we meant at one time to each other, I beg you do not do this.”

 

I took the lightsaber I carried, and it thrummed. “You execution has been delayed, nothing more.”

[Emperor Devon]

What a fantabulous chapter! Atris and her handmiadens are colder than all the snow on Telos.

[Rain128]

However I will not be there.”

 

“You won’t?” Carth looked surprised. “You always wanted to see a space battle first hand. What kept you from coming?”

 

“Well it seems some over droid stole my ship...”

 

not to be nit picky, but the carth question seem to be him asking in the past tence... also i was wondering what an over droid was...

[machievelli]

I will have to reread this. Today I have my entire column to flesh out, and jury duty. I did correct the over droid. You see, I had HK steal his ship for his own purpose which would have come clear in the next section.

[machievelli]

Marai

 

I looked into that face I had once cared so deeply for, and felt nothing in return. My own saber-staff hummed, Then she came at me.

 

It was all attack, with no thought of defense. Against someone who had never faced a lightsaber it would have been my death. I had fought like that once, back when I first learned, and Master Zhar had broken me of it. It had been painful, and it would be this time for her.

 

I matched her strokes, making her work, making her put more energy into her attack, making her make the same mistake I had. Because I did not have to expend half as much energy as she did in blocking her. Her strokes became ragged, and at the appropriate time, I merely blocked her blade aside, stepped into her within that circle of death, and hit her with my fist in the chest, slamming her off her feet.

 

She rolled to her feet, and came at me again. But she had not yet learned what I had with the first punch against my chest all those years ago. I allowed her to expend her energy, and yet again stepped in. This time, I caught her from below, my open palm slapping into her chin, lifting and throwing her with the force rather than the blow to limit the injury. She flew backwards, slamming into the wall. the blade dropping from her hand. I reached out, and drew it to my hand with the force.

 

She screamed, and turned, running toward the meditation chamber. I set the lightsaber down beside my fallen sister, and gave chase.

 

The massive blast door was closing as I reached it and I closed my eyes, using the force to stop their progress. The generators whined in protest, and I pushed harder, harder, then suddenly there was a shriek and the right side generator exploded into scrap. I switch my mental grip, and the left side shattered as well.

 

Atris stood there, and as I walked in I felt such a miasma of evil that I paused. Around her in ignored piles were books of the Jedi, taken from wherever her assistants had gained them. More that Goto had collected I am sure. But in the places of honor, rising up the dome in their serried ranks were the holocrons of the Sith. The bookshelves behind her were stuffed with Sith teachings, and all that the Jedi had ever said were spurned on the ground.

 

No, not all. The histories of the wars written by Jedi had been stuffed in with the Sith ones in some mad effort to rationalize it.

 

“She said you would come, but Atris was not worried.” She spun like a young girl dancing in the moonlight. “All the knowledge of the Sith and Jedi. War, diplomacy, teachings of how the force should be used, all hers. She has spent months, years in this room. When the Telosians fled this planet She seized this place, stuffed it with all I had gathered for her, but oh so secretly.” She put a finger to her lips as if whispering a secret. “You see, Master Vandar had begun to worry about Atris, oh yes he did. He had asked her to represent him at Katarr, but I was not fool enough to allow her to go. You see, I had figured out we faced even then. It has happened before, back in the midst of time, before the Republic was even born!”

 

“Atris-”

 

“Atris?” She looked at me. “I have not been Atris for over ten years. Atris withdrew from the world when the one she loved left her to go to war. When you spurned her so you could fight.”

 

I looked at her remembering that day:

 

I had been finishing my packing when she came to my rooms. She had taken my hands, dragged me away from my bag.

 

Stay here. please. She had whispered. Or let me go with you!

 

Atris. I had sighed. I touched her face, the first time I had touched her since we were student and teacher. Her eyes had closed in bliss, leaning into my hand. I ask you to stay, but I must go.

 

She had opened her eyes, wounded by my words. Why?

 

Every warrior needs one thing before they go to battle, Atris. That is something to come back to. Something that holds them in this world even as slaughter happens about them. You have been my anchor for years.

 

Anchor. The kind of thing you tie to someone’s feet so they are dragged down!

 

Never, Atris. I had touched my lips to her palm. An anchor holds a ship from being cast upon the rocks and shattered. War will be my storm, and the rocks that I fear. You will hold me, give me something to look for, and return to.

 

If I meant that much to you, why will you not bond with me?

 

Because... I am afraid of it. I cannot stand here with you, or bond with you, for if the bond is so strong, what happens if I die? Will I drag you down into death?

 

Go. She snarled. Go and be damned! I will not be an anchor for anyone such as you!

 

“I did not spurn her. She refused to let me live unbonded.”

 

“Ah, but I know that even if she did not!” Atris replied.

 

“Gods above, what happened to you?”

 

“Malachor happened to her. When you returned you ignored her! You did not come to be held as Atris would have wished. To have the one thing that would hold you to this world beside you again. In her eyes your words when you departed were just wind, and the wind moves nothing! ‘Be my anchor’ you said, and when that anchor would have held you, you cut it free, yet another casualty of Malachor.

 

“Do you remember the crystal? The one you gave to her? She threw it into space the day after you left but regretted that act of pique. Perhaps that is why after your trial she took this.” My old lightsaber lit in her hands. “I had not even known she had done so until you came here the first time. So she has also betrayed me, sneaking out to do things of which I had no knowledge. She is the one that sent the Handmaiden you suborned to you. She must have hoped inside that you would give to her what you would not to Atris. But even that pathetic little girl only got the teacher, didn’t she? The teacher that gave Atris nothing.

 

“The old woman you travel with revealed to me what had happened. You see, I had a vision of how to save the order that Atris did not. She merely intended to bring these girls here, teach them secretly, keep them safe until the Jedi and Sith had destroyed themselves, then return, bringing back to the Galaxy what they needed.

 

“But I took that plan one better. Why should people of such power bow and scrape to monsters that would murder their own children for enough votes to sit in the Senate? Even the Sith were appalled by such arrant nonsense.

 

“I would have brought them order. I would have brought them peace. True it would have been the peace of a team under one whip, but I would have been sparing with the lash!”

 

“Please, Atris, there is no reason for us to fight. Just tell me where Kreia has gone, and I will leave you in peace.”

 

“Now that I cannot do. You are the one fly in the ointment. As long as you live, the Galaxy has a chance to turn from what I will offer. I needed you here, because you would draw the most powerful of the Sith here. After he had killed you, I would defeat him, and the grateful galaxy would name me God!” She sighed. “But you arrived too soon. The Sith have not come, and they will not be weakened for me.

 

“But if I slay you, Kreia told me that the secret of defeating him will be revealed!”

 

She came at me. I was heartily sick of this, and instead of meeting her blade to blade, I snatched the weapon from her hands.

 

She stared at me, then stood defiant. “So kill me, carry out the vengeance you have held since you left me alone!” She screamed at me. “Here, I’ll even make it easier!” She spun on her heel, back to me. “You never had the guts to face me in truth. So from behind like a coward suits you.”

 

I stepped forward, and my arm encircled her below her bosom. I kissed her neck, then stepped back. “I could not be what you wished me to be, Atris. A lover in truth. For that I apologize.”

 

“Then you leave me alive in pain! Such mercy!” She wept, screaming at me. “So Kreia lied to me as well! It is not I she awaits, it is you!”

 

“I must end this, Atris. Even if it means my life. I ask you again, where did she go.”

 

“But you know!” She said with a laugh. “Where it all began. Where the hole that you bear was formed! She has known of it since it happened, for she was there to witness it.

 

“You and her share a link, have shared one since that day though you knew it not. You felt her pain along it, and both of you have feared her death. But have you ever thought that your deaths are exactly what she has hoped for?

 

“As linked as you are both to her and to Malachor, your deaths would create a hole that will suck up the force throughout the galaxy! It will cleanse the galaxy in one great orgiastic blast, and the sad chapter of life with it would be finally finished and closed!” She laughed, the cackle of a woman no longer linked in anyway to reality.

 

I walked away.

 

“Come back here! Kill me!” She screamed.

 

“I can’t, Atris.” I looked back and felt tears on my cheeks. “Even as you are, you are too precious to me.”

 

“Liar!” I saw the blade an instant before she thrust it into her own bosom. I leaped into a run, catching her as she stood, stunned by her own actions. Her hand released the hilt, touching my face as she collapsed.

 

“Marai...” She smiled. “At last, you came back to me.”

 

“Atris?”

 

“Have I changed so much that you do not recognize me? Has my love meant nothing?”

 

“No, Atris.” I saw a tear fall on her face. She touched it in wonder, then touched my face again.

 

“No more tears. We are together at last as it was meant to be. We will bond, you and I, we will grow old watching the children of our bodies grow into adulthood...” She was no longer seeing me. “Our bond will grow and soon there will be love within it. I will not accept otherwise...”

 

I held her body, and cried for her.

 

****

 

Handmaiden

 

I felt a hand on my cheek. I opened my eyes, and Marai was looking at me, crying.

 

“You’re dead. Kreia told me-”

 

“As much as she said she has never lied to me, none of you seemed to have been exempted. She needed to be here to confront Atris before I did.”

 

“Marai...” I didn't know what to believe. She was dead, Kreia had told me so! I was alone, only my sisters... I looked. One of them lay there. her neck had been snapped. I remembered it, fighting them, trying not to hurt them but there were too many. When my eldest sister had broken one of my ribs, I had stopped trying to keep them from harm.

 

“Oh Gods!” I rolled to my knees, looking at the bodies. My sisters, half of my flesh, and I had killed them all!

 

“Marai, Atris had gone to the dark side.” I whispered.

 

“Atris is at peace finally.” She replied.

 

She held me in my grief. I did not know what was the worse pain, that my father’s line had died, or that it had happened by my hand. I clung to her, and both of us cried for what we had lost.

 

She finally sighed, standing. “We must go.”

 

“But...” I waved at the bodies around us. She took my hand, helping me to my feet.

 

“The Sith are coming, and if we take the time to do them the honor they deserve, we will join them.” She said softly. “If we survive that attack, I promise they shall get their due.”

 

There was a movement, and we spun, weapons out, lightsabers humming. The droid walked forward, hands empty.

 

“HK?” Marai asked.

 

“Amused reply: I so detest the ability of meatbags to restate the obvious. Query: Did you forget that I was not aboard the Ebon Hawk?”

 

Marai looked chagrined. “I hadn’t noticed. I did have a lot on my mind.”

 

“Irritated answer: It is nice to know that this unit is so important to you. If you would peruse this document at your leisure, I will... clean up the mess.”

 

“They deserve-”

 

“Rejoinder: I know the practices of the Jedi and five hundred other races and seven thousand planets. I will prepare them for your return. It seems we have company overhead.”

 

I looked at her, then dropped to my knees. “I am no longer the last Handmaiden.” I looked up at her. “She who bound me has betrayed us all, and died. My sisters that followed her have died. For my line, I must do this.

 

“I, Brianna Rekavali Bai Echani beg that you take me into your service. To avenge the wrong done to my family I will fight and die at your side.”

 

“Brianna.” She smiled shyly. “May I call you that?” She shrugged “It is much better than ‘hey you’. Though that is what I have been doing for so long.”

 

“In love I give it, in hope I offer it, in patience I await it.” I said, bowing my head. The bow not of a liegeman, but of a slave. She caught my chin, lifting my head, making me look into her eyes.

 

“In grace I receive it, in love do I cherish it, in humility I shall honor it.” She replied. The oath of a sister in law to her new family. “My sister, you have no flesh to call your own. Will you be mine?”

 

“Marai-” I turned my head. “Would you give me what you denied Atris?”

 

“To bond as sister is not what she asked.” She replied softly. “At least in her heart. Do you expect the same?”

 

“No!” I reached out. “My sister, love is not always such!”

 

“Then bond with me. As sisters we shall fight to save not only ourselves, but those we cherish. As sisters we shall hold each other in pain, laugh together in pleasure, face the world one flesh, one heart, one soul.”

 

I hugged her. A sister in truth at last.

[machievelli]

I apologize about the brevity of today's post. However I have a serious combat scene coming, and want to give it my full attention. On top of that I have jury duty, so bear with me...

 

Additional information on jury duty. After 3 days the defendant plead guilty, so I am done. But no one has commented WHEEMPER!

[Emperor Devon]

But no one has commented WHEEMPER!

 

I'm not done with my education, mach. I have less time in which to comment on your fic now, and so do most of the other forumites.

 

Your latest chapter was good, and the idea of HK performing any rituals to honor the dead is amusing to say the very least. Your chapter left some door open as to Atris' sexuality, but that's moot with how she's dead.

[Darth Jester]

I find it amusing that an assasin droid would care aboutr buryial rites, still keep up the hard work

[machievelli]

I find it amusing that an assasin droid would care aboutr buryial rites, still keep up the hard work

 

I was just making a sarcastic stab at C3PO's 'I know six million languages' but with something that HK would no doubt know, how they would dispose of the body afterward.

[Jae Onasi]

I'm afraid HK will do the 'bot equivalent of spitting on their graves.

 

Glad jury duty's over for you.

I've been swamped with this crazy crisis in my history group that has created some of the ugliest politics I've ever seen--I've put in about 200+ hours on it in the last 4 weeks or so, and have several hundred left to go before an October meeting. So I haven't had much time to comment.

However, I have been one of those 2000+ viewing it.

 

I chuckled at Atton's version of 'true love', didn't quite agree with your take on Talia but could see it just the same (I couldn't see her throwing a table across the room), thought the monologue with Visas needed to be broken up a bit and condensed, followed Atris' descent into madness with great interest, and felt Brianna's pain at having to kill her sisters. All in all, quite the emotional romp and an enjoyable read, and I imagine the rest will be just as interesting. And I caught the Landru reference.

[machievelli]

Citadel Station

Ships had come out of hyperspace, a fleet of nightmares. Republic ships cruised alongside Mandalorian and Sith vessels. But the bulk of that fleet had been ripped apart by some massive force. There were rents in the hulls, drives with their fairings ripped away.

 

At their center came the largest warship ever seen.

 

Lieutenant Grenn stared at the horror coming toward them. It wasn’t the largest Sith fleet he had ever seen, but it was one of horrors because the light codes flashing told him that most had been listed as lost over ten years ago.

 

“Sir?” The officer on the sensor panel looked up in horror. “That large ship! It’s reading as Ravager!”

 

“Well it looks like the Sith have been busy getting ships from somewhere. Now we know where.” Grenn replied. “Battle stations.”

 

The people of Citadel station turned in shock as the battle klaxons rang. “All civilians, return to quarters immediately. I repeat, All civilians, return to quarters immediately!” Came the call over every intercom. The three thousand odd men of the Telosian Security forces ran to their armories, loading up on weapons, slapping on their armor. They had as much chance as a pint of Tihaar at a Mandalorian Wake, but they had to try.

 

*****

 

Queen Talia heard the klaxon, and ran to the com panel.

 

“Ma’am this line is restricted to operations at this time, please-”

 

“Tell whoever is in charge that I will lead my men to their assistance. If they will stand here and waffle, we shall fight alone if need be!” She flicked off the screen, turning to the men with her. “Riiken, Gelesi, take a third of the men each. I hear their fuel is low, and destroying it will win the battle for the enemy.”

 

The men ran off. The com chimed, and she opened the channel. “I am Lieutenant Dol Grenn. You wanted to speak to me?”

 

“I have two thousands of men on this station, and by the oath I swore, we will defend it even if you do not!”

 

“Calm down, lady-”

 

“That Lady is queen Talia!” My chamberlain shouted.

 

“Shut up, you worm.” Talia snapped. “Call me what you will, Lieutenant, but my captains have moved to protect the fuel stores. I only ask where I will stand with what remains.”

 

He looked at her for a long time. “Well since you put it that way, check the station schematics. Modules 42 through 65 need support.”

 

“I shall be there.” She flicked off the switch, then drew the gold chased sidearm she wore. “As for you.” She pointed at the Chamberlain. “You will come with me.”

 

*****

 

Corren Falt looked up from his panel. While the company had taken one hell of a hit from Lorso’s arrest, he had caught them up. The openings the Ithorians had promised to resources on his promise to stop interfering with them had brought them back into the black with a vengeance.

 

“What’s going on?” He demanded.

 

“The Sith are attacking the station, sir.” His assistant reported. “We’re preparing your ship for departure-”

 

“Do I look like Lorso?” He asked in a cold voice. “We have an investment, and by the gods we’re protecting it! Arm all of our men, get those mercenaries that are sitting on their butts off them!”

 

*****

 

Marai

 

It was a scene from my nightmare, and now it was real.

 

“Where did they get a fleet like that?” Atton asked.

 

“Malachor.” I answered. I touched the light codes. “Republic cruiser Endeavour, Mandalorian frigate Ralshia. Over three quarters of them are ships lost at Malachor. The rest are just what the Sith have left.”

 

“Ship approaching Citadel Station, this is the Security force,. Override seven is in effect, veer off, leave the system immediately!”

 

“Security this is the Ebon Hawk. This is my party, and I will be here for it.” I snapped. I pointed. “Is bay 2 on module 126 still open?”

 

Atton checked. “Yeah. A ship just pulled out of there.”

 

“Then put us down.”

 

The ship flew through the cloud of fighters running ahead of the monster fleet. There weren’t as many as I would have anticipated. Only the ten or fifteen Sith ships had put them out. It didn’t mean they didn‘t have more, but it gave me some heart.

 

But Ravager filled me with cold terror. Was the generator still aboard? If it was, we’d all die just as they had at Malachor.

 

We flared out for our landing, and my crew leaped down onto the deck. TSF troops stood there staring at us. Grenn pushed himself through, and glared at me.

 

“Are you always going to be disrupting my station every time you come here?” He snapped.

 

“I promise, this will be the last time.” I replied.

 

He grinned. “From what I hear, I have you to thank for the Queen and her entourage. “ He motioned. “Her men are covering the fuel stores, and it gave my men the breathing room they needed. Add in almost a thousand Mandalorians, and we might even be able to hold our own.”

 

“Only until Ravager gets here.” I corrected him. “If the Shadow Mass Generator is still aboard, she can crush us like an egg in less than an hour. Even without it, it will be tight.”

 

“When it rains it pours.” He sighed. “I’m out of my depth here, lady. Got any ideas?”

 

“Ravager left the yards unfinished. she didn’t need to be complete to carry out her assigned mission. Her guns were operational, so were shields and engines, but not a lot more. If we can smash her, the rest of the fleet can still kill us, but can’t guarantee it.”

 

“You just told me all weapons and defenses are operational.”

 

“Weapon shields yes. They can block enemy fire. But a shuttle or fighter can get close enough.”

 

“Flying through that hell? Who in their right mind...” His voice died as he looked at my face. “Never mind. Where can we get a shuttle?”

 

“In docking bay 74 module 17, almost directly in their path.” We turned as Mandalore and a few of his men came in. “We already have the shuttle prepped.” The helmet turned. “We’re just waiting for you, Jedi.”

 

I looked at the others. “Brianna, stay here, you are injured. Mira, you and the others go along with Lieutenant Grenn. Advance as possible, but stay safe.”

 

“Wait-” Atton started to say.

 

“Atton, this is my show.” I looked at Visas. “Our show. You will help them, Atton.”

 

Visas Mandalore and I ran toward the shuttle pod to the next module. The enemy had not taken into account that every section was it’s own little fortress. If a single squadron of fighters had been tasked with blasting any pods, we would have been trapped.

 

We fought alone, alongside TSF troops, alongside Onderoni including Beast Riders, we even found ourselves leading a charge of Czerka Security men in Module 82, fighting our way toward module 17.

 

I heard a cheer, and the Onderoni beside me screamed “The Republic fleet has arrived!”

 

*****

 

Carth

 

The Frigate Sojourn came out of hyper drive, and her dozen fighters were flushed even as the sensors stabilized. Admiral Onasi looked at the screen, at the phantoms of the past that confronted him. Behind him, the fleet arrived, doing a slight swirling motion to shake out into their proper formation. Something that looked so simple, but took months of practice.

 

“Admiral-” Technician Hapa gasped.

 

“Calm down, son.” Onasi patted the young man on the shoulder. “They died at Malachor, and no one told them different. First division, right flank, Second division, left. Third, straight up the middle. Cripple them if possible, but we have to hit the Ravager before she gets close.”

 

The thirty ships, ten frigates and 20 corvettes charged into the fray.

 

*****

 

Ravager

The ship was silent. She moved, and fought like the others, but she and those that had died at Malachor were silent because their commander demanded it. He stood on the bridge, gloating. It had been long since he had fed properly, and this was his chance. The report had said the Jedi were meeting her, fresh power to drain, to sustain his own existence.

 

If he had considered it from the view of those people, his very existence was an abomination. Draining people to stay alive. But he had not cared what most people thought for more than two decades, and his present condition reflected that.

 

He sent the commands, not orders, not words, but his own thoughts.

 

Closer.

 

Past that worthless station with it’s few hundred thousand worthless lives.

 

Close enough to drain the planet. Those people would die with it, but they were a snack compared to the feast that awaited!

 

*****

 

Visas

 

I staggered. I could feel his regard, but my master had not seen us! How was that so? I followed in Marai’s wake. Actually the safest place to be because nothing that faced her lived. She spun, her lightsaber flying in an arc to cut down a Sith trooper and shatter the turret he had been setting up. She reached out while it was spinning away, and a wall shattered down the long main promenade, smashing a dozen more from their feet.

 

“Come on!” She screamed, charging forward. The men before us fought, and they died. We were an unstoppable force.

 

I looked at one of them as we paused to survey our next field of battle. I touched Marai, and took the helmet from the trooper that had died at our feet. He looked... gaunt.

 

“What?” She gasped.

 

“This man must have been upon my master’s ship. He feeds from all those around them. To be assigned to his ship is to waste away. He grows desperate. The men aboard are dying even as we kill them.”

 

“Then why don’t we feel it?”

 

“I do not know. He does not see us. Yet you should be like a solar flare to him!”

 

“Enough talk.” Mandalore snapped. “One more pod to go.”

 

“What was your plan, Mandalore?”

 

“Board the ship, plant proton warheads, get off, and blow him to hell.”

 

“It has the advantage of being simple.” Marai said, then she ran at full tilt down the promenade. She leaped, bounced off the wall, and landed behind a planter. Screams echoed, and she stood, shutting off her weapon. “Did you plan on surviving this?” She continued the conversation.

 

“No one lives forever.” Mandalore replied.

 

We fought our way to the last pod, and debouched into module 17. A Sith shuttle that had carried the troops in was sitting there. A dozen Mandalorians led by Kelborn were there, carrying the dismounted proton heads. Each was equal to about five kilotons of blasting explosives. Mandalore lit his holographic projector, and touch the ship in four places. “Eight of you in two four man teams will set charges on this side, Kelborn.” He motioned to two of the dots. “The Jedi and I will do the same on the other.”

 

“Death or Glory.” Kelborn replied.

 

We boarded the shuttle, blasting up through the confusion. A Republic fighter made a pass, but missed us. Then we were in the shuttle bay aboard Ravager. The Mandalorians leaped aboard, blasting as we followed.

 

*****

 

Marai

 

Ravager looked no different. I almost expected that damn Quintain to traipse in, using that ‘I am so much more important’ tone he always had. The men that had been there were already dead, and I didn’t need to do more than look to know that we had only sped the inevitable. Each was gaunt as if they had been held without food for months. The Mandalorians moved off, and the team that was with us followed as I led the way.

 

Mandalore might have studied this ship, but only Visas and I had ever walked her decks. My memory led me to the section where Mandalore had wanted to set the first charge. We set it, and moved toward the second. On the other side of the ship, the Mandalorian teams kept us apprised. They had run into resistance, but nothing to really worry about. Every man we had seen and fought so far were all in the same condition.

 

We set the second charge, and had turned to run when the ship side slipped a few meters as if someone had thrown it. We staggered into the bulkheads, barely staying on our feet. Mandalore flicked his com link. “Damn it, I told you all to wait!”

 

“Mandalore.” I heard the voice. Zuka, in terrible pain. “Republic fighter... He blew the charge early...”

 

“Situation!”

 

“Kelborn... Dead. I’m all that’s left...” He hissed in pain.

 

“Was it in it’s proper positions?”

 

“Negative... too far forward... Not good enough...Need another charge... Weapons bay... Need diversion...”

 

“We’ll take it to the bridge.” I told him. “We had to make sure he is dead anyway, so attacking the monster there was something I needed to do.” I told him.

 

Mandalore looked at me. “You’re on your own. But once we set that charge to blow, you don't have a lot of time.”

 

“Understood.” I clasped his hand. “Death or Glory.”

 

“Give them hell, Marai.” He signalled, and Visas and I were alone.

 

*****

 

Visas

 

We ran down the passageway to the lift, and shot up to the command deck. I started to lead, then stopped. The door that had haunted me since I was a child was there, and I froze, staring at it.

 

“Visas?”

 

“This was my cell.” I said softly. I touched the annunciator, and the hatch hissed aside. “Please, a moment.”

 

She followed as I walked through the sumptuous room. It had been visiting flag officer’s quarters. What would have been a dining room had been converted into a horror for that child I had been. My master’s will had made it so.

 

Yet...

 

It no longer terrified me. It was a place I had spent five years of my life, spilled blood when he punished me, yet even those memories were softened by the person I had become with Marai.

 

“Once there was a world.” I whispered. “Strong in the force, home to a peaceful people. Now it is a wasteland, thanks to him.”

 

I knelt. “But past the surface, there is still the force. I must return to you, I know. I must walk again, grieve for all of you. I lost my way, but now I have found my rudder.

 

“What happens here is not done from hate, or vengeance. It is done because it is right. For the sake of all life, we must cut this last bond. I ask you all, forgive me, Kreeon my father Variala my mother, Maris my big sister Canalaro my brother. Oh how I miss you most!” I sobbed. I felt...

 

“Father?” I gasped. The spirits of my family, of my people filled it now. Freed somehow from his power, here to tell me they forgave me for surviving. I felt them surround me, phantom hands reaching out, touching my face, my arms. I held them to me, then turned. They knew, as did I that it was a brief moment. For if he lived, they would again be trapped.

 

“My body is no longer a prison.” I told them softly as they moved away. “I will join you, but not until the evil is gone from this world.”

 

Marai touched my shoulder, hugging me to her.

 

We opened the door leading to the last passageway. A man lay crumpled to the side, and as we approached, he looked up. I saw the pistol he held in his hand, but it wasn’t aimed at us, it was aimed at his own chest. The knuckles of his right forefinger were white with exertion, but the gun didn’t fire.

 

“He won’t let me die.” Colonel Tobin said in a hoarse whisper. “He stands up there so damn sanctimonious, and he won’t. Let. Me. Die!” He looked at the weapon as if it were his only hope of salvation. More true than he knew.

 

“The final insult. You and those fools that follow you stripped the General of his due. Tried to strip him of his troops.”

 

Marai knelt. “We do not have time for this, Tobin.” She said softly. “What are you doing here? I thought you died on Onderon.”

 

“I did, I think.” He looked up, and I could see pride and terror warring in his mind. “The Drexl hurt me badly, but a woman saved my life. Told me that the last of the Jedi were here. I came to him...” He looked upward. “Now, I await my death, and it’s the only thing I have left to wish for!”

 

“When he is done here, Onderon will soon be the target.” Marai pressed.

“Onderon has been dying since the war.” He ignored her. “What is worse, the slow wasting away as the Republic drains it of life year by year? Or the flash of the bolt hitting it between the eyes?” He laughed. “Could the Republic offer such a sweet swift death?”

 

“But your people, your home-”

 

“Spare me you sympathy! If I cannot sit at the right hand of the ruler of my world, it doesn’t deserve to live!” He had a wistful look. “When he came to me, and then to the General, it had been so easy. He had men, ships, power. Enough to wash that stupid twit of a girl from the throne. But he cared nothing for us, for our people. He builds nothing, maintains nothing, creates nothing.”

 

“As if you did?” She snapped. ‘If you can’t rule they don't deserve to live‘? Are those the word of a patriot or a hypocrite? Is it really better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?”

 

“It doesn’t matter. People live only to feed his hunger, worlds live only for that purpose. He is an omnivoracity, feeding upon the lives of everyone around him, and none of us matters.”

 

“How did he get this ship away from Malachor? It should still be trapped inside the Shadow Mass Generator field!”

 

He laughed. “He turned it off, you stupid fool! He turned it off, removed it from the ship, left it on the rock and had this towed from the maw of hell to serve him again!” He slapped the deck almost fondly. “She was battered, wrecked, even now the only thing that holds it together is his will. He would not leave Malachor without it. It was his, had always been his, and would always remain his.”

 

“I think Malachor formed him.” I said. “As if Malachor is a crucible that melts away all but the pure person beneath all of the dross, and his present existence is all he ever really was.”

 

“Oh yes he had a life there. Or an existence. He would never die if he did not leave it, but the food is so much better out here!” Tobin laughed and sobbed at the same time. “Onderoni must not be too toothsome, because the Sith seem to fall so much faster than I. I wonder if he prefers human over Twi-lek? Do Hutt taste like the slugs they mimic? Will he like the taste of you?” He looked at the lightsaber in Marai’s hands.

 

“Oh yes, a Jedi, pumped full of all that glorious force energy! You will be the bon bon of his delight!”

 

“But why here? Why did you tell him to come here?” She caught his shoulders. “Why Telos?”

 

“Because she told me the Jedi were here! Told me where to find him.”

 

“Kreia.” I whispered.

 

“But there are no Jedi below.”

 

“Then he will be, upset with me. His hunger grows, and the normal walk of life does not feed him so well. He is a starving man on an island stuffing grass into him mouth in the hope that he will live until he catches a fish.” He looked up at Marai. “Those lies have condemned them all, for Jedi or not, he will feed.”

 

“If he believes there were Jedi here it would explain this mad attack.” Marai said. “Just about all the Sith have left are out there. The Republic fleet is already smashing them, and soon only he will remain.

 

“I did not come all this way to see Telos die.” She looked up at me, and that determination burned in her.

 

“Kreia did this to weaken him.” I said. “Even the thousands, no hundreds of thousands down there will not sustain him for long.”

 

“And all of us will die when he feeds!” Tobin looked almost gleeful. “Everyone aboard this ship will

 

“I will stop him.”

 

“Stop him.” He began to chuckle. “Stop him? You? You, your friend, the men attacking this ship it‘s crew. We all mean nothing to him. We are insects crawling on the ground, grains of sand on a beach. Planets are large enough to attract his gaze, but nothing smaller. We are only important if he decides to devour where we happen to be. Grit in the sandwich of his life.”

 

“You made your choice, Colonel. One way or another you will be free in a short while.” Marai stood, and we walked away from him. We reached the lift.

 

“Visas.” She stopped me. “You don’t have to go any farther.”

 

“I must I told her softly. “He must die, and I must see him die. I will go with you, even unto death.”

 

We walked down the passageway, and the door to the bridge opened. We walked through, and there in the distance, was he who had been my master.

 

*****

 

Marai

 

I stopped when I saw him. He was cloaked in a full robe, a painted mask on his face. But I knew him somehow. He paced back and forth before the massive transparisteel panels, hands clasped behind his back, almost strutting...

The ship was new, segments of metal still gleamed, because they had not taken the time to paint it. I looked at it as the shuttle approached, Revan sitting beside me.

 

No one ever imagined anything so... huge. She said. Except for you.

 

I didn’t imagine the damn thing. I told her. We needed some huge ship to transport the device, and that- I pointed at the giant arrowhead, -was what Bu-ships had in the production queue.

 

We approached, and I could see the ranked guns on her side, the huge dorsal fin with a winged bridge. What maniac would spend what that ship must have cost in the middle of a war?

 

Of course I knew what maniac. After Costigan’s Drift, everyone with half a brain knew Quintain was going to be beached. He had lost too many, failed too many times. Dxun had been the second to the last straw, but we had finally gotten him sent home.

 

Oh, not to be cashiered. Being nephew of the Prime Minister of Corellia had saved him from that. No, he was sent to Bu-ships, where he took a smoothly running machine, and came up with... that.

 

Well, I said. She’s still open to space over half of her length, her frames are naked to space, and she will only support half of the 6,000 men she would carry normally. No fighters, barely able to move. What fool would want to command her in that condition? There was no reply. Revan was suddenly intently interested in the seat back before her. Suddenly I knew.

 

Oh no-

 

We needed a commander willing to take her to space. One that would take her to Malachor. Someone-

 

Tell me it isn’t him. I demanded. She was silent. Damn it, Revan, you let an incompetent idiot control the Shadow Mass Generator?

 

I didn’t have a choice. She replied coolly. You told me the mass of the ship we needed to carry the weapon fully assembled. That was the only ship in the inventory large enough. When he found out that this would be the final battle, he leaned on his uncle, suggesting that without his actions work stoppages ‘redesign conferences’ that kind of thing would delay her indefinitely.

 

So we had a choice of the ship we want now, or what, another year and a half of war? She nodded dumbly. Why didn’t you just send me back to Corellia? I nodded toward the ship. I would have chopped him into hound food, let myself go to jail for life, rather than have him here.

 

The shuttle had landed, and we’d gone through all of the interminable ballyhoo that happens when a fleet commander and senior Army general arrive. We finally reached the bridge, and I knew it would be the only part of the ship that would be completed.

 

Admiral Valentin Lord Quintain greeted us. He might be our junior now, but this was his ship, and he ruled her decks. He had walked us through the controls, men standing at consoles rather than seated. He had always thought the navy too soft on the men, and he’d actually designed this ship with only one seat on the bridge, his. It was almost a throne, mounted on a raised dais, heavy arms and high back so he could lean back, and survey his domain like a rule out of ancient history. After showing us around the bridge, he had mounted that throne, rubbing the arm of that chair. All he had to say was one word.

 

Mine.

 

‘It was his, had always been his, and would always remain his.’ Tobin had said, and suddenly I knew who that monster had been.

 

“Quintain!” I roared. The figure paused, turning. He faced us as I stalked forward.

 

Visas had fallen in to my left, pacing me. I came toward him, and the figure watched our approach silently.

 

“He calls himself Lord Nihilus now.” She told me.

 

“I don’t care what you call yourself, butcher.” I snapped coldly, standing in front of him. “You were always a fool, and this proves it!”

 

He still stared at me. Visas sighed. “He doesn’t believe you are who he thinks you are.” Visas told me. “He knows Marai Devos is dead. He slew her in his last great victory.”

 

“Victory.” I snarled. “Three million dead, half of them our own people! Only you would have considered it a victory!”

 

He shrugged, turning back to the planet.

 

“Once he has dealt with the Jedi below, he will deal with you.” Visas reported.

“There are no Jedi, you fool!” I screamed. “I am the only Jedi here!”

 

He turned, and even I could sense his horror. “Yes, you damn fool. I don’t care who told you but the Jedi are dead, and I am all you can eat here!”

 

He stumbled, then straightened. A lightsaber leaped into his hand, and I ripped it from his grasp.

 

“You came to feast because you are dying, but there’s nothing here! Even if you kill everyone in this system, the crews of your own ships will die before you reach home! Choke on that!”

 

He reached out, and like the Masters on Dantooine I felt him try to drain me. But there was a flash, and he staggered back. He could not draw the force from me.

 

Something about that event had transferred to me, suddenly I knew how it was supposed to work. They would reach in, cutting the links that led from the force to the midichlorians, merely making them unable to absorb it. I would have woken up, and my mid-count would have been nonexistent.

 

As He recoiled, I suddenly knew how his power worked. I knew how it worked, and also knew how to do it without taking the step he had done. Not feeding upon it, but using it to help those around me, like Battle meditation will guide men fighting.

 

I caught his hands, sucking the life from him instead. He tried to struggle, but as I drained it, I released it, freeing all of those lives trapped for so long in a corpse that wouldn't die. I felt the men around me strengthen as their lives returned to them, and felt the body in front of me start to shrivel. He clawed at my hands frantically, but the gloves began to slip as the flesh beneath shrank away from them. The broad chest began to wither away, and still he fought to break free.

 

“Damn you to all the hells, Quintain. Die!”

 

He made a noise at the end, a sobbing scream as I plumbed down, taking everything he had stolen to stay alive. The body shriveled even more, and I let go as he collapsed in a pile of skin and bones.

 

The crew stared at me as I stood away from the dead monster. “Abandon ship you fools!”

 

*****

 

Mandalore

 

I reached the weapons bay. Zuka had dragged himself to the nearest missile, and was tinkering with the warhead. He clutched his side where shrapnel was even now leaking his life away.

 

“I have it, sir.” He gasped, wiring a handle into the circuit.

 

“Zuka-”

 

“Death or Glory, my Mandalore.” He gasped. “I’ll hold it as long as I can for you.”

 

I hugged him to me fiercely. Then signalled, and my men fell back. “Marai, report!” There was nothing. The ship still thrummed as weapons fire went out, or slammed into it’s shields. “Damn it Marai!” I screamed.

 

We fought our way to the shuttle. I leaped aboard, looking back. I’d give them ten seconds...

 

Ten seconds passed. All right, ten more...

 

Seven passed before Marai and Visas came running. We ran aboard, slamming the hatch, and the shuttle was already spinning under Tagren’s hands as we punched back out through her shields.

 

“How long will-” His question was answered as a massive explosion blew out the side of the ship behind us. Another, then another. The ship exploded into pieces, ripping itself apart as it’s engines tore forward through the debris. The fleet was turning, but it was trapped between the guns of the station, and the charging Republic fleet. We rode silently down to the station, and docked.

[machievelli]

For those of you that looked at the last post, and think perhaps I am slipping...

 

I admit it was rushed, and i am editing and expanding it. I will repost it before I post the next segment.